Places in the Heart

I've always been an early riser.  As a young child whenever my family visited my grandmother in Graceville, Florida, I would get up before everyone else and go to the living room.  There I would find an old VHS of Places in the Heart.  I would watch it enraptured until some other family member rose and suggested a nice cartoon instead.

For the record, those cartoons never measured up.

This fascination with Places in the Heart likely marked the beginning of my interest in race relations.  Being as my father was white and his two best friends were African (as in raised in Africa) I was baffled that people in America profiled each other based on skin color.  Some of the best people I knew- and know, to this day- couldn't look less like me.

Today I packed my bags and left Auburn, accompanied my parents to Atlanta, where we put The Sister Formerly Known as Boo

(hereafter TSFKAB) on a plane to London and drove back to Tallahassee.  I ate my final meal at Toomer's, naturally, and as I drove away the Samford Hall carillon was chiming our fight song.  It was fitting; almost as though Samford itself was giving me a permissive nod to move on with my life.

I was tired once we reached home, but I was following TSFKAB's plane tracking online.  Note below: blue is what the plane is supposed to do.  Orange is what the plane is doing.

You know...no big deal.  TSFKAB will love Norway.

So I decided to stay up a bit longer to watch that plane tracking.  (Big sisters have cross-continental super powers that can redirect planes.)  About thirty minutes later, the tracking looked like this:

...She does speak a little Spanish.  But maybe this only means that the plan is re-orienting.  Thirty minutes later:

Mmmkay.  We all know there's a mighty big lot of ash floating through the air over this particular part of the world right now.  Maybe that's what's up.  Just in case those pilots decided to try anything else, I opted to stay with it for a while.  As the plane defied its course I watched Places in the Heart.

Places in the Heart was produced in 1984, starring a strawberry-blond Sally Field and a young Danny Glover.  The plot unfolds in Waxahachie, Texas in 1935.  I love the film for its artful use of hymns and its themes of rejuvenation, resilience, and the perseverance of an unconventional family unit- a white widow and her two young children, a blind white man not related by blood, and a homeless black man not related by society.  Within the first ten minutes Sally Field's husband is accidentally shot and killed by a young drunk black boy.  Also within the first ten minutes, that black boy is killed by vengeful white men.  They tied him to the back of a truck and drug him to death, later hanging his body from a tree.  When the men try to show their work to Sally Field they are shamefully sent away.  While lynchings seem barbaric now, it's astounding to realize how common they were in our own country just seventy years ago.

Today I learned something new about that part of American history.  I've been reading Good News About Injustice by Gary Haugen (president and CEO of the International Justice Mission, a DC-based Christian human rights organization where I'll intern this summer.)  In relating atrocities occurring around the world to something more tangible to Americans, Haugen discusses the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching.  This group of Protestant women banned together in the 1940s to oppose lynching- predominately that of black men.  More than four million women were involved in this movement.  These women called in police forces whenever they suspected lynchings were about to occur, and sometimes went without backup to fight back mobs attempting to lynch someone.  In 1941, 40 instances of successfully-combated lynch attempts were documented.  The ASWPL's work led to more than 1,300 police officers signing pledges to oppose lynchings and was a catalyst in the dramatic disappearance of lynchings in the South. 

Lynching may not be a huge deal down here any longer.  But millions of people around the world will go to sleep tonight in rational fear of similar hate crimes.  The safety and comfort of my lifestyle is so far from the global norm.  As shown by the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, though, dedicated advocates can  and should make a difference through the grace of God.  Over the next week I hope to blog about IJM and how its people are about the world meeting God's desire for justice.

About time.

Today I graduated from Auburn University.  While the moments were bittersweet and nostalgic, it was about time.  College, what for many Americans has become a quintessential right of passage, is meant to be outgrown.  None of us could or should stay forever.  Even students who aim to teach at their alma mater must first acquire a terminal degree from some other institution.  There is much to be said for branching out and moving forward.

Throughout my senior year I've returned time and again to Hebrews 11:13-16:
 " ¹³All these people were still living by faith when they died.  They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance.  And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth.  ¹⁴People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own.  ¹⁵If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return.  ¹⁶Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one.  Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them."

The lessons through which I've walked with this passage are the sum of what I've learned while at Auburn:

• Things any of us are positively destined to receive won't always be acquired when we expect them to come.
• What we want or expect for ourselves is not always what's best.
• As humans we can barely begin to understand the height or depth of our Lord's presence or of his love for us.  As Greta Schrumm said, "Prayer is our tired reaching out to the One who holds us closer and loves us more than we would ever dare imagine."
•  The road awaiting those who follow the voice of God is deeper and richer at every bend.  We can look forward in full faith that the Lord who goes before us is preparing everything we need for being about his glory; as we are made in his image, nothing could bring us more satisfaction than making that glory known.

I learned more from Auburn than ever would have been expected.  The culture shocked me, threw me, and grew me.  While I came at first looking to enlighten a group whom I saw in need of knowledge and experience, I was humbled as I realized how much those people stood to teach me.  That's what I'll take from Auburn: a firm understanding of my own short-sightedness, and a resolve to work to understand others.

Thank you, Auburn.  Thank you for lessons in hospitality, in football, in deep friendship, in the redeeming lessons of earthly failure, in grace, and in faith.

Now in that faith- carrying what we've learned- it's time to press forward.  While part of me would love to sit for days reflecting over the past four years I've glimpsed just enough of the good Lord's glory to yearn for what more is ahead.  It's about time to dare to imagine how close he is.  It's about time to dare to expect him to move among us- but only as we strike out in search of what he has prepared.