|
First
things first. I'd like to say "thank you" to all
of you for coming tonight and listening to me speak. Out of
the nearly 3000 members of our congregation and the countless
others in our community with great speaking talents, I am
still thoroughly surprised and truly honored to be asked to
be here tonight. I hope what I have to say speaks to your
heart and helps you to know me better.
Let us
a pause for a brief word of prayer. "Lord, may the words
of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts, be acceptable
in thy sight, Oh Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. Amen."
*
* * * *
Many of
you here tonight knew my grandmother, Gertrude Welch. She
was a truly great lady and a constant inspiration to me growing
up. I lived with her on and off for the last six years of
her life. During that time, we became more than members of
the same family, we truly became friends. We often marveled
at how 50 years difference in age did little to detract from
the meeting of our hearts and minds. We had many lively discussions
about any topic you could think of, but still I found the
most profound moments to be those when she would share her
own life stories with me.
One of
these stories, which I will share with you now, was told to
me on Memorial Day in 1994. We had packed a picnic lunch of
cheese sandwiches, apples and iced tea and had trooped off
to the cemetery to pay our respects to our ancestors. We were
at Oakview Cemetery in Royal Oak- you know the one, north
on Main Street where the road forks. We had tidied the grave
of little Anne Lorraine, the child she lost during WWII, and
were sitting on the grass above my Great-Great-Grandma Gablemann
to have our lunch. Grandma pointed over the way to a patch
of graves marked Penney about 20 yards away and said: "Those
stones are for Pop's family. Funny how close we are to our
enemies when we are laid to rest."
"What
do you mean?" I asked.
And so
it began. When my grandmother was growing up, she lived on
what was then referred to as 16 ½ mile road, just a bit
north of where the Somerset Collection sits today. She and
Mum and Pop (her parents) lived in a small house with her
two brothers and one sister. They didn't have electricity
for several years because Detroit Edison didn't feel there
were enough paying customers on her dirt road to warrant the
expense of running an electric line down that way. They did
have a telephone, but one that rarely rang in that time. Grandma's
Mum was a German girl with a talent for tailoring and making
stollen. Her Pop was English and a carpenter by trade. His
parents were less than pleased with his choice of a German
bride and had pretty well shunned the couple and their children
since the time of their wedding.
I paused
Grandma then and asked what was so bad about an Englishman
having a German bride. I am young enough to be far removed
from the idea that the English and the Germans have not always
been on friendly terms. She reminded me that her folks were
married in 1914, and that the reality of WWI had not faded
from anyone's memory just yet. It mattered little to my English
relatives that my German relatives had moved to the States
years before any fighting broke out, or that they had supported
the US in its efforts during that war. German was German and
Pop should have chosen one of his own for a bride.
The story
continued and Grandma told of how one day there was a great
deal of excitement in their little house. The telephone rang,
as it rarely did, and it was her Pop's own father on the other
end. Her grandfather was calling to ask Pop to load up the
Model T with the kids and come over to his house for a brief
visit. The reason? Well, Grandfather owned a century plant.
Century plants are remarkable in that they only bloom once
every hundred years. Apparently the hundred year mark had
come and the century plant was in bloom. Grandfather felt
that this was a momentous enough occasion to lay down his
prejudice. He knew that seeing the bloom was a once-in-a-lifetime
event and was not to be missed. And so they went.
Grandma
chuckled a bit about that day. She told of how excited they
were to go and see this marvelous plant. She admitted that
once she saw it, she thought it was really not a pretty bloom
in any way, but that its presence had opened a door for the
first time. The rift and prejudice of those times were not
magically healed by the century plant, but tensions did relax
slightly and the family assumed a careful stance of tolerance.
Grandma always felt the greatest irony is that both sets of
her own grandparents are buried in Oakview Cemetery not even
20 yards apart.
This brings
me to my topic for the evening: Tolerance. This word has become
an increasingly overused buzzword in our current society.
Its use and meaning matter to me on a personal level a great
deal. Why? Because I have an incredibly beautiful, loveable
child who will be "tolerated" by many during her
life. In case any of you have missed it, my husband looks
a little different than most of you. We found each other,
fell in love with each other, and did something that would
have been completely taboo as little as 30 years ago. We got
married and had a child. Our half-Filipino-half-European baby
is something that many people will still just "tolerate."
Tolerance, according to Webster, implies enduring. In layman's
terms, "to put up with." In my work in healthcare,
I'm most familiar with the word tolerance in relation to treatments
like chemotherapy, as in "how well did the patient tolerate
the procedure or medication?" The idea that people would
be forced to "endure" the presence of my child in
their world brings out every finely tuned protection instinct
a momma can have. Given that I feel profoundly that God brought
Dan and I together, blessed our union and further committed
our lives by giving us Giselle, I was compelled to check my
Bible about this concept of "tolerance."
The scripture
I chose for my talk tonight was first taught to me in the
form of a camp song. Those of you who attended last Sunday
morning's 8:30 worship service may remember hearing me sing
it with some of my sisters. The text from 1st John
commands us to love one another, for love is of God and he
who does not know love cannot truly know God.
I am not
a theologian, but rather a scientist. I am not an expert in
biblical studies, but am one of the many who have signed up
to take Disciple 1 with Carl Price this fall to expand my
understanding of the scriptures. Having said that, I would
like to comment about this "love" thing. To my way
of thinking, that is THE Commandment. It is the encompassing
theme of the entire New Testament. It is the essence of Christ's
coming and Christ's message to us. The references to that
word alone in a biblical concordance are greater than any
other single word, save the name of Jesus. In my own mind,
when I hear the verse about Christ being "the way, the
truth, and the light," I translate that to mean that
if you follow his commandment to love one another as Christ
has loved you, you will come to the Father and know him as
Christ knows him.
As a teenager
and college student, my friends and I would often pose the
discussion of "why are we here, what is our purpose in
life?" For some reason, the answer to these questions
has always been entirely obvious to me. I'm here on this earth
to learn about love, to work at loving in all of its beauty,
its pain, and in the ways that it is both comfortable and
uncomfortable.
I have
had the pleasure of singing at many of the weddings performed
here at our church. I have heard Dr. Ritter give enough wedding
homilies, including my own, that I can quote some of his best
advice word for word. With a little permission here, I will.
Dr. Ritter always reminds the bride and groom that they are
vowing before God and family to love one another. He would
then say: "It is easy to love the lovely (he points to
the couple) and look, aren't they both lovely?" Of course
they are! People look more beautiful on their wedding day
than practically any other day of their life. Dr. Ritter would
then continue: "It is harder yet to love the unlovely
... to love the flaky and frumpy ones, the timid and tired
ones, the sick and sad ones, the strange and stubborn ones."
I love that little speech. I love the looks the bride and
groom exchange with each adjective. It's nearly impossible
not to conjecture each one on my own life and marriage.
But what
of this loving ... how do we do it? How do we show it? How
does it happen? To me, loving is about giving. It is about
opening yourself, your heart and your mind, and allowing someone
to have a little piece of you. I'd like to read you a little
something on giving. It's from a favorite comfort book-you
know, the kind you keep in your nightstand and read when the
world seems to be coming off its axis a bit. It's The Prophet
by Kahlil Gibran. And yes, my Grandma gave me this one, too.
Then
said a rich man, Speak to us of giving.
And
he answered:
You
give but little when you give of your possessions. It is
when you give of yourself that you truly give. For what
are your possessions but things you keep and guard for fear
you may need them tomorrow? And tomorrow, what shall tomorrow
bring to the over-prudent dog burying bones in the trackless
sand as he follows the pilgrims to the holy city? And what
is fear of need but need itself? Is not dread of thirst
when your well is full, the thirst that is unquenchable?
It is
well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked,
through understanding; and to the open handed the search
for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving. And
is there aught you would withhold? All you have shall some
day be given; therefore give now, that the season of giving
may be yours and not your inheritors.
You
often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving."
The trees of your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in
your pasture. They give that they may live, for to withhold
is to perish. Surely he who is worthy to receive his days
and his nights, is worthy of all else from you. And he who
has deserved to drink from the ocean of life deserves to
fill his cup from your little stream. And what desert greater
shall there be, than that which lies in the courage and
confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? And who are you
that men should rend their bosom and unveil their pride,
that you may see their worth naked and their pride unabashed?
See first that you yourself deserve to be a giver, and an
instrument of giving. For in truth it is life that gives
unto life - while you, who deem yourself a giver, are but
a witness.
I am awed
every time by the wisdom of such words. To recognize that
in God's creation of earth, all things save humans give freely
all that they have. The flocks of your pasture and the trees
of your orchard "give that they may live, for to withhold
is to perish." It is not a matter of choosing who is
deserving of their fruit, but rather a grace that comes from
giving with openness. I want to make the connection for you
that choosing to merely tolerate your fellow humans on this
planet is not enough. To follow Jesus' commandment to "Love
thy neighbor as thyself" involves giving of oneself.
It involves cracking open a closed door enough to see the
light. To merely tolerate your fellow man invokes an image
of hostile acknowledgement: I see you - I don't like you -
but see how I am putting up with your presence?
The word
tolerance is used repeatedly in our society when referencing
such subjects as race, class, gender, weight, sexual orientation,
youth, religion, elderly. Say it however you want, but what
I'm getting at is people who are different in some way from
yourself. We "tolerate" each other because it is
the minimum requirement of our social laws. But what of God's
laws? What of God's wisdom? Loving and giving are two very
simple commands, but oh so difficult when the object is not
like you or yours. It is so much easier to ignore the feelings
of a person who is fat, to criticize the activities of the
inner-city blacks, or deny the fidelity and commitment felt
between two persons of the same sex. But I say to you, "Surely,
he who is worthy to receive his days and his nights is worthy
of all else from you. Surely he who has deserved to drink
from the ocean of life deserves to fill his cup from your
little stream." And surely the Way, the Truth, and the
Light come by means of love.
I've had
my moment of "preaching," but how do I put it into
practice? Well, as mentioned in the lovely introduction given
by Nancy Keesee, I still work three days a week at Henry Ford
Hospital in downtown Detroit. I have moved up the ladder in
the past seven years and, along the way, have learned a great
deal about life in an urban city where I am the minority.
It's a bold awakening to be the one who must be tolerated
rather than the one who tolerates. It has taught me lessons
which I am still learning today.
Let me
put it into a historical perspective for you. I was born in
1969. The life of Dr. Martin Luther King was snuffed out before
I was even conceived. The idea of racial differences was not
part of my vocabulary until I was of high school age. It wasn't
until I was in college that I learned about Black Americans
singing an extended National Anthem. In the 60's, they would
sing our National Anthem immediately followed by the hymn
"We Shall Overcome" as part of their regular practice.
This is generally not true today, and that says something.
I have
a "roommate" at work. I share a pretty tiny office
with a wonderful woman about five years older than myself.
She is black, born in Alabama, but proud to be an adult member
of the Detroit community. She tells me that they don't sing
"We Shall Overcome" anymore because they "Already
Came Over." Vergie helped me to understand that Detroit
is the only truly Black city in our country and that Black
Americans are proud of it despite its shortcomings.
I might
not like some of the blight that I have to drive around to
get to the hospital, but that blight speaks of something I
can only begin to understand. Ownership of an area is power
- the power to build up and the power to tear down. Having
never before had the empowerment that comes with ownership,
it has been tested by Detroiters in a way that is frankly
negative. Surprisingly, over time, the tearing down process
has helped Detroiters feel their power and many of the frustrated
vandals have matured enough to want to build the city up again.
It is easy to say that all young black men with a hat on are
criminals, but it just isn't so. Many smart, talented and
educated black folks are rebuilding their city brick by brick.
The way Detroit will continue to evolve will not be as I might
have done it, or you might have done it, or any other "white"
person may have done it. But as Vergie puts it, "This
is our city and we will make it better in our own way."
It takes time and patience, but it is happening slowly and
surely. Detroit is different than it was 30 years ago, and
will be different 30 years from now. And with more than just
minimal tolerance, we will all be able to enjoy that difference.
People
are different. My sweet little daughter will be different
than all of you. Her Asian heritage is part of her being and
will be part of her upbringing. It goes beyond looks, beyond
genes, and beyond the fact that her grandparents eat rice
three times a day. When we get beyond tolerance to giving
and loving, which with Giselle is pretty darn easy to do,
we find that we are closer to God than we could ever be while
riding the horse of self-righteousness.
What scares
me is this. What if someone who is Asian commits a horrible
crime or starts a war against our country? How many people
will then pick up the tar brush and decide all Asians are
dangerous criminals? Think that can't happen? It certainly
did during WWII and it certainly did with my own great-great-grandparents
in 1915. Take a look at common American perceptions of people
of Arabic nations. Don't many of us have an inherent distrust
of Arabs and believe them to be a bunch of terrorists? Our
media has recounted countless stories of easy sex among members
of the gay community. Does it cause you to feel that all people
who are gay are easy with their bodies and incapable of committed
relationships? The reality is that people who seem just like
us and who live in our community may commit crimes and be
free with their sexual behavior. But because they look like
us and seem like us, we judge only their actions as bad, not
their difference. When you encounter that person in your daily
life who is old, Jewish, fat, gay, black, Arab, or otherwise
different, how do you respond to them? How quickly do you
reach for your mantle of "my way is the only way?"
Later,
we will sing "We Shall Overcome" and I ask, "Who
is that must come over? Who is it that must give up their
prejudice, their intolerance, their hard-to-kill notions to
find their way to God and follow his greatest commandment?"
For the sake of my child, I hope we all can.
Giselle,
Sharon, and Dan
|
