Black and White and Grey

I locked the car and set out across the parking lot toward the church where others gathered in groups, greeting each other with warm embraces and subdued conversation.  

Family members, I figured.  

Well, maybe not all family members, I reasoned, realizing it actually included quite a number of small groups of people. 

For a fleeting moment, I thought how nice it would feel to be welcomed so warmly by one of the groups milling about outside the church.  

But only for a moment. 

I knew my place.  I was an outsider.  


I had come at the request of my friend and high school classmate, LeRoy.  

Only we’d known him as Leroy, without the capital R, back then.

We’d been a very close class.  More than just classmates; we had been family.
  
We went to class together, worked together, ate together in the cafeteria, voluntarily gave up our lunch breaks to form prayer groups where we would pray together – for the school, for each other, for the country….  

So over the years, it’s not a surprise that so many of us still feel a closeness to each other.  Our friendship lasted long after the tearful graduation, and even the adventures of college.  We were close before the advent of Facebook.


So when LeRoy spent his bedside vigil at his mother’s side in her last days, many of us were there with him in spirit, lifting him up in prayer and as best we could.  We loved him, and we carried his burden in our hearts.

And thus I arrived at a church I'd never been to, sixty-five miles away from my home, and made my way, invisibly, through the crowded front sidewalk and foyer.

Inside, I stood in line and waited my turn to sign the guest book.  A solemn, older, well-dressed woman with a hat stood behind the counter with the guest book, handing out programs.  

She greeted most of the people by name, or at least if she didn’t use a name, smiled and asked politely, “Would you like a program?”

When I signed the guest book, she stood there, clasping the programs tightly, almost protectively, to her breast saying not a word. 

I stood for a moment, caught somewhat off guard in the resounding silence, feeling suddenly off balance and vulnerable.  

She looked at me intently from behind the counter between us, and then just stood there staring off over my shoulder as though I wasn't there.
  

Awkwardly, I reached down to pick up a program from the stack between us on the counter top.  

But when I glanced at it, my confusion turned to embarrassment.  It wasn’t a program at all, but instead, a brochure for the mortuary.

“That’s for the mortuary,” the woman with the hat said, finally looking down her nose at me.  

She then turned, reaching around me, and offered one of her precious programs to the person who had been behind me in the guest book line.

I put the mortuary advertisement back on its stack and politely waited until the woman with the hat had finished her transaction with the person after me and apologetically asked if I might have a program as the next person in line wrote their address in the guest book.

The woman with the hat again held the programs close to her chest for a moment as though trying to make a decision, then very deliberately took one from the top of her stack and reluctantly handed it to me.  


I thanked her and she gave me a mechanical smile and nodded ever so slightly and then greeted the next signer of the book by name and handed her a program, commenting on her beautiful dress.

I walked into the sanctuary and stood quietly just inside the door, taking in the room – the area, the lighting… 

I looked across the wide space, deciding what angles would make good photos.  
I wanted to get a few photos before people came in and the service began.  








I had promised to take some photos for LeRoy to commemorate the day.

I stood in the back, northwest corner of the sanctuary behind the chest-high sound booth, where I was out of the way and not really noticeable from anywhere unless someone was looking backward from their place in the church.  

I could use the wooden railing of the booth as a level support for the camera in lieu of a tripod.

I was quietly caught up in catching the light and the lofty rafters when I noticed another photographer, a church member by the looks of him, had taken my lead and come over to my corner of the church and was mimicking my moves and catching some of my angles as well.

Just then, a middle-aged man in a suit approached me, cleared his throat to get my attention and said, “I see you are taking pictures.”

“Yes,” I said, giving him a brief smile before turning back to my camera.  

"There's lovely light in here."


He was the first person in twenty minutes who had spoken to me, other than the lady who didn’t want to part with the program.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“You mean taking pictures?” I asked.  


“Is it a problem, I mean, taking pictures in the church?” I asked, looking over at the other photographer standing not five feet away from me. 

I had never considered that there might be some problem with taking photos in the church, and I would be very quick to apologize had I stepped on some toes. 





But, he adjusted his tie authoritatively and said, “No.  I mean what are you here for?”

“I’m here for the funeral,” I said, somewhat surprised and confused.

I looked around the church, the pews that were now slowly beginning to fill.  Other faces had turned, some close by, some farther off, and many whispered quietly.  


Apparently Mr. Suit was not the only curious one.  

Then I noticed something that hadn't dawned on me earlier - in the flash of a moment before Mr. Suit continued - there was not another Caucasian person in the entire building.

"Why?


Who are you?” Mr. Suit challenged my authority to be here at the funeral of Mrs. Baker.



Are you serious?  We’re really going to go there? 

This really is what this is all about?  

It wasn’t my imagination.  


The being ignored at the door…  


The not being offered a program…  


And now the “Why are you standing in my church, white girl?”

Up until this moment, it didn’t occur to me that I was the outsider because I was the white girl.  

I’d been that girl before.  


I’d been beaten up and terrorized as a child in the school yard for being the only white girl.  


I knew all about being the outsider who is disliked, despised, beaten up, and shunned because of the color of my skin.

I knew I was the outsider when I came to this funeral.  I knew that I wouldn’t know anyone here but LeRoy.  But it never occurred to me that they would be offended by my being an outsider in their midst! 

It never occurred to me that I would be white and they would be black.  It never occurred to me in a million years.  

I guess I am just too long at this life’s journey.  I guess that after growing up in the islands, and then living so many decades in Southern California, I just don’t really ‘see’ people any more.  I guess I just forget that people have colors.  To me, they all look the same.

But for that moment, it all came back.  For just a moment I remembered the girl who had been so mistreated and beaten and even bloodied for the color of her skin and her pale green eyes.  For an instant my indignant anger flared. 

But just for an instant.  For a millisecond I wanted to lash out at this confrontational man.  But I took a breath. Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do….

I held my tongue for a moment.
  
Long enough to pray for patience and understanding, and then I replied, “I’m an old friend of LeRoy Baker’s.  He asked me to be here.”

I’ve always hated name-droppers. 

But this once, I felt it necessary to be one.  

I just didn’t realize what a name-dropper I was being.

Mr. Suit literally stepped back and put his hands up, momentarily, in a "hands off" pose before telling me that no, it was fine; I could take as many pictures as I wanted if I was a friend of LeRoy's. Then he turned and walked away.

As I sat through the more than three-hour-long funeral, I learned that LeRoy Baker was the only child of an amazing man and woman.  They adopted him when they were in their forties - an amazing couple who devoted their entire life to the church and evangelistic efforts.

By the end of the nearly four-hour experience, I felt a longing for Peggy Baker.  I felt so cheated that I had not known this amazing woman in life, but felt blessed to have at least met her, in death, on this day.

Then one pastor got up and reminded us all how far ‘we’ had come; how far the church of today had come from the church that Sister Baker started out serving seventy-plus years ago.  

The church that was not always so accepting of her at times – back when blacks were openly persecuted for the color of her skin.

I let my mind travel back through the painful years of the civil rights movement and my heart ached for Ms. Peggy.  

Then I saw the chilly look of the woman clasping the programs to her bosom, and heard the persistent grilling of the middle aged man in the suit.

How would the beautiful, warm-hearted Mrs. Peggy Baker feel to see a white stranger within the walls of the church she had helped build treated like an intrusive gnat?

And for that matter, did Mrs. Program and Mr. Suit even know what they looked like in the mirror?
  
I doubt it.  


I am sure they both think of themselves as good, God-fearing, loving Christians who serve the Lord, and doubt that either realizes they came off as anything less.


Sometimes we all are so busy being important that we forget to be compassionate and kind.  I would like to think Ms. Baker would have been the type to have welcomed me warmly and invited me into her church.


In fact, it wasn't until just now, re-reading this that the comparison came to me.  And forgive me, LeRoy, but it seemed so fitting.

I can't help but compare my coming to the church to honor Mrs. Baker to a Christian coming to the church to meet God.  

So often they are put off by the flaws of human Christians (who maybe don't share their programs freely enough or don't welcome strangers with their cameras.)  

But all they need to do is to say, "I am here because the Son invited me."  


That is a name that is ALWAYS worth dropping.

But churches aside, I dare to venture a wager that many of us might not recognize the real us we would see if we were to glimpse ourselves in the mirror of honest reality.  


So often, the person we think we are gets lost in the persona we portray to the world.


We may think we are great, friendly people, but we get so stressed and busy that we get a little more prickly on the outside than we realize.
   

We might get so caught up in trying to get things perfect that we snap at our loved ones in our frustration.  Or so busy with what we are doing we don’t make time for our loved ones at all!




It's not always so intentional and clear as black and white, but sometimes smudges of grey.

This week's blog is dedicated to thinking twice, and acting once.

Labels

On Tuesday I got a friends request on Facebook from Samuel Harry Gibbens. I know a couple of Samuels, but none of them are Harrys or Gibbenses, I mused. I was about to click “ignore” when I saw that there was a message included and boy did that take me back a few decades!


Sam (as I’d known him back in 1979/80) had been one of our long-term summer campers at Cedar Falls when I was a counselor up there. Because he had been a four-week-in-a-row camper, he became very familiar with so many of the staff members and formed a special bond. He was like everybody’s kid brother. Huge smile, quick wit, and gorgeous blonde curls/waves.


It was such a kick hearing from him (despite the bitter sweet memories of being madly in love with my now former husband.) I went to his Facebook page and realized – wait! I must have confused him with somebody else! This Samuel Harry Gibbens was forty-two years old and no longer appears to have blonde curls. But there was no mistaking those eyes and that smile.


It got me thinking about how we are so often good at freezing people in our memories and making them mere two-dimensional caricatures of who they really are. Our pictures of them don’t keep up with their growth and development.


My adorable niece (or is it ex-niece if I’m divorced from her uncle?), who was the first child of my heart before I had kids of my own, turned out to be a very gifted and talented 30-something mother of a beautiful baby of her own when I located her on FB a few months ago. I had to look at the photos in her profile over and over before I could reconcile that beautiful woman with the little girl I used to play with and give piggy back rids to.


And then there are my daughters, who I’ve had to work very hard to ‘grow’ in my mind over the years of separation, keeping track of them through friends and photos. 

They are now both grown women also. I remember Erin being ever curious, always popular, very affectionate and kind of sassy. 

But who knows how that profile fits her today. As one friend reminded me recently – she was always attached to you (hanging on your arm, piggy-backing, sitting with her feet in your lap for a massage...)


And in their minds, I am apparently frozen as the woman who fought (unsuccessfully) tooth and nail to prevent them from being tormented by an abusive father. 

In their minds, I am the spiteful bitch their father portrayed. They cannot see the pain and sorrow those years caused me too. 

They don’t see me as a multi-dimensional woman who can be loving and funny and endlessly supportive. They just see me as the mean lady. 
I wish they could know who I am.


And I have to also include my older sister here. Although we have been in touch over the years, she still doesn’t ever see me for who I really am. I think that somehow, without realizing it, she’s frozen me as the helpless cry-baby I was as a child.


In a conversation a few years ago, she was surprised to hear I was on antidepressants. Though I’ve struggled with depression all my life and was finally diagnosed in my mid-thirties, this sister I’ve known for 50 years asked, “What do you need those for? You’ve never been depressed. You just cried a lot because you were a cry-baby!” I had to laugh. (And I thank God for antidepressants and the way they have changed my life dramatically and freed me to be the person I am!)


And when I begged my sister several times over the last year to read the book I was working on (which was finally published last week!) and to help me out by giving me her impressions, she refused every time. She said it was because she didn’t want to ruin it for herself. She only wanted to read it when she could read the whole thing.


I finally convinced her, just recently, to read it with all but the last chapter written. She started Saturday night and could not put it down until after 2:00 a.m. Then she read a few more chapters before Mass on Sunday morning and returned straight from church and started reading again and didn’t stop until the book was finished. She said she was floored and that I was really good at writing. To those who know me, that is not a news flash, but to my sister who refuses to see the me that really is, it was a huge shock.


Over the years, she’s also been stunned to find that I recycle, have contributed to the Audubon Society, have done volunteer work, and that I am a very spiritual person (despite not being Catholic.)


My point is that we all manage in life to put labels on others, be they friends, family, students, neighbors, or strangers we pass on the street. 

It’s a natural thing to do. We are taught to do that from a very early age.



That’s the only way our minds can process the massive amount of information that comes our way on a daily basis. 

We categorize things and group them together and label them. Sometimes we have sub-groups or have to reevaluate our categories, but subconsciously, that is what we do every day. It is a useful strategy for making sense of all the data our brain processes on a constant, ongoing basis.


But in some ways it is a curse. It sometimes keeps us from developing a realistic picture of people, or situations or events. We, as people, are always growing and changing. We cannot help but be influenced by the events and people that come into our lives. And it’s only by taking the time to invest in others that we can get to know them. The same is true with God. Not that God is changing, but that He is so multifaceted and infinite that it would take an eternity to know Him fully.


And I think probably the greatest disservice that we do God is putting Him in a box. Maybe a two-dimensional box. We try to label Him. We’ve all been taught over the years that God is love. God is holy. God is omniscient. God is faithful. All of these things are true and are wonderful. But so very finite. I think they limit our God horribly. He is so much infinitely more.


I think back to an email I got a few years back from a former student who is still like family to me. She was very upset and struggling with the thought of going to heaven. She said, “Don’t take me wrong. I want nothing more than to go to heaven. But I love my boyfriend so much and the Bible tells us that in heaven there will be no marriage nor giving in marriage. I don’t want to be somewhere where I can’t love him.”


I sat at the keyboard for quite a while pondering what to say. Finally I wrote to her saying that our minds, as humans, are so limited. God doesn’t say there won’t be love in heaven. What you will have in heaven will not preclude your loving him.


It’s just that as humans, our concept of love is so carnal and selfish. We love our boyfriends or spouses selfishly, and naturally, don’t want there to be any love interests in their lives. We are needy. Face it.


Because of the void that sin places in our hearts, we are forever trying to fill that hole. And we strive to do it with a constricted, human concept of love; to get what (or whom) we can and hold on tight to that love.


But I suggest that the void in ones heart can never be fully filled with human love. And is it not possible that that hole is there for a reason? To remind us that because of sin, life can never be perfect here on earth. We will continue to try to fill that hole with what there is to offer here on earth until we realize that only God's love can completely fill that void.


I then told her a little about the long, lonely path that led me finally to this conclusion. I told her about losing my mother at age nine and then being sent away to boarding school at age 14 and how rejected and lonely I’d been.


How I’d met my ‘long lost’ aunt (my mother’s sister) while I was in college. I even went to visit her across the country in South Carolina. It was love at first sight for both of us as we hit it off immediately. She begged me to move back to South Carolina and live with her and finish my college at Clemson University nearby.


I told her I was already committed to working at summer camp in California that summer, but I promised I would come back in the fall. But she was killed that summer in a car accident. And yet again my heart was broken. I cried for what seemed an eternity.


I met Eddie that summer and wonder if my falling in love with him wasn't an attempt, once again, to fill the terrible hole left by my Aunt Mary's passing.


I contintued, telling my friend how my heart and family had been destroyed with the abandonment by my husband. Then the further rejection and sorrow inflicted by my own daughters. All of these things she’d known, as she and her family were like family to me.


This was followed by the death years later of a man that I loved. Someone I had met years after I’d given up on ever finding love again. Then, like that, in an instant, he was taken from this world in a matter of days after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. (see previous blog)


The last thing he said to me before he died was, “Liz, promise me that you won’t close your heart down after I’m gone. Promise me you will love again.”
And I’ve learned in the years since then that one can love again. And that our concept of love is so very different of God’s concept of love. So restricting and limiting.


Loving those I’ve lost – my dad, my aunt, my husband, my daughters and John - does not take away or negate that love. And I have not lost anything.  I can forever be thankful for their love, as human and imperfect as that love was.


God’s love doesn’t cling selfishly. It’s not selfish or possessive. And I am sure that none of us can fathom the dimensions of God’s love, nor the beauty of what He has in store for us.




Liz Carson Rosas
6 November 2009




Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. 1 Corinthians 4 - 8