When does life begin?

• Fertilization: the sperm cell of the male and the egg of the female join to form a zygote (immediate, less than one day). This is commonly called conception.
• Implantation: the zygote, which has grown to be a blastocyst, imbeds itself in the lining of the uterus (about one week after fertilization). This is loosely based on the idea that the blastocyst receives oxygen, “the breath of life.”
• Brain Function: the embryo has developed to a point that it has a brain stem (about four to six weeks after fertilization).
• Viability: the embryo, now developed to the point of being a fetus, can survive outside the woman’s womb either on its own or with mechanical and technological aid (about 22 to 24 weeks gestation, although a few fetuses have survived birth as early as 20 to 22 weeks).
• Birth: the fetus, at whatever week of gestation, leaves the womb to survive in the world external to his mother.

I am not a doctor, a scientist, or an expert on the definitions given above. And, I admit, I did not research long scientific treatises to discover these definitions. I cribbed them from Wikipedia, the people’s encyclopedia.  In full disclosure, I will list all the entries at the end of this blog.

I can add my non-scientific evidence to the definitions:

• During my first pregnancy, my body reacted allergically to my pregnancy within days of conception. Before I had confirmation from a pregnancy test, I was sure something different was happening in my body.
• Within weeks of conception, my body told me that something was draining me—I have never been more tired in my life—I’ve always eschewed naps, but not during pregnancy.
• Some time about the fifth month of pregnancy, my child, still in utero, made himself known by moving around quite actively. And, when I dropped a heavy pan on the kitchen floor, he jumped so violently that I jumped, too. No doubt the noise, which he heard, had awakened him from a pleasant sleep.

In other words, I am with the tribe of people who believe that life begins at conception.  Shouldn’t that fact make me staunchly pro-life? The answer should be a no-brainer. Of course, I’m pro-life—and in my previous blog I made the point that personally I AM pro-life.

The poems on abortion from Gwendolyn Brooks and from Lucille Clifton also affirm, by their very tone and language, that these fetuses lived enough to deserve an explanation for their premature departure from their mother’s wombs (see citations from previous blog to see full poems). The speakers in both poems are also pro-life; it is just that they are pro-life for the children they have already borne.

I am not willing to give up on my pro-choice, either. I still believe that I cannot speak for another woman, even if I think she is making a mistake. We’ve all made mistakes, some of them quite horrible and consequential, but conventional wisdom is that we learn from our mistakes and that we don’t learn much from being shamed or shunned. For the record, one of my biggest problems with the pro-life movement in general is that often they have been militant and judgmental, hence their language of “baby killers” and “murderers” and their threats to charge women who have had abortions with murder.

Fortunately, not all pro-life individuals and organizations have such attitudes. An important pro-life organization in our community is the Living Alternatives Pregnancy Resource Center (PRC). It is one of several centers that serve North Central Illinois’ communities under this name. Their statement of purpose includes the following two sentences: “We want to counsel [pregnant women] and support all types of women in crisis – abortion-minded and not abortion-minded. Our other services, which include parenting classes, providing maternity and baby clothing, abstinence education and post abortion counseling, are secondary services.”

I have not just read the words or heard them recited by some official, I have seen them played out by the people who work and volunteer at our local center. As head of the missions council at my church (CCUA), I have had many interactions with the PRC because our congregation financially supports it. Last winter, well before COVID hit us, the local PRC director, Kristen Lonberger, came to speak to one of our CCUA small groups. One attendee began to speak the “party line” on abortion, including using the word “murderer” to characterize a woman who has had an abortion. Kristen answered her comment with examples of how the center works with compassion with all women whether they decide to continue a pregnancy, leave the center to seek an abortion, or come back for counseling after having an abortion.

Such an attitude has changed my thoughts about pro-life centers such as this one. They are helping to educate pregnant women about all their possible choices for the future of their children—choices that don’t have to end in abortion, saving both the life of the child and the mental and emotional anguish of the mother.

The PRC has recently helped me to examine one of my personal beliefs about abortion and rape. I have always said that a woman should have the right to terminate a pregnancy that was the result of rape or incest. I still believe that women deserve that right. Now, however, I have heard a woman who shared her story of rape—and the subsequent birth of her child. Jennifer Christie, the speaker at PRC’s recent “virtual banquet,” shared a horrific narrative of being trapped, raped, beaten, and left for dead. She and her husband were shattered by the facts of the act; they could not reconcile themselves to the violence that had broken both her body and her spirit.

Six weeks later, when she was away from home, she had an ultrasound to verify that she was pregnant. When she saw the “pea” on the screen, she smiled for the first time since the attack. Instead of being angry or bitter, she felt love for this new life. When she relayed the news to her husband, he, too, was filled with the sense that they were being given a gift—they could redeem the violent conception by rescuing this new life.

I’ve never heard anything more inspiring than Jennifer Christie’s story. I had never heard of a rape victim who could react with love to what had to be the worst day of her life. Now, I know that I cannot unilaterally say that the rape victim needs the right to abort. Now, I need to say that the rape victim needs to hear all options for the life of the child that did not ask to be conceived.

I’m trying to decide what I should call myself now. I’m definitely pro-choice for women, but I’m also definitely pro-life for children. I support organizations such as the PRC that want to show women that choices are available to them so that they don’t have to choose abortion. They can choose life for the unborn child, whether they keep the child or give up the child for adoption. In so doing, they are pro-life, too, even while they have choices. If all of us could follow the loving, compassionate way of viewing women who find their lives in crisis due to an unplanned or unwanted or forced pregnancy, we might find that Roe v Wade could stand in our books. It just might not be used that often.

“Beginning of human personhood.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_human_personhood

Beginning of pregnancy controversy.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beginning_of_pregnancy_controversy

Christie, Jennifer. “Raped by a stranger—but then I kept his baby.” That’s Life. https://www.thatslife.com.au/raped-by-a-stranger-but-i-kept-his-baby

“Fetal Viability.” Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fetal_viability

Gestational Age versus Fetal Age. Mountain Star Health. https://mountainstar.com/blog/entry/gestational-age-versus-fetal-age

“Organizational Statements.” Pregnancy Resource Center. https://www.pregnancyresourcecenter.org/about-us/organizational-statements/

“We can do something about it if you don’t want it,” the nurse said to me, obviously misinterpreting my sobbing.

The “it” was an embryo that would become a fetus that would become my first son.

The nurse said what she did because I had just found out that I was pregnant and she was trying to help me in the era after the Roe v Wade decision.

The sobbing was because I was afraid to tell my husband. We had been having marital difficulties. I wasn’t even sure the marriage was going to last, and now there was a baby to think about.

“No, no, I don’t need you to do anything about it, I just have to get used to this idea. I wouldn’t get rid of the baby—no, it’s not that at all. It’s just the situation. I just have to think it all through,” I said rather passionately. Really, I just wanted her to leave me alone. I wanted to get out of the office so I could think, so I could cry some more.

At the time, the nurse’s suggestion did not register in my mind as an invitation to abort this child. I was much too upset about the situation as it was to pay much attention to her words. But these many years later, with the controversy over legal abortion being stronger than ever in the US, I have thought of that long ago suggestion and the ramifications had I decided to consider the nurse’s suggestion.

But I never considered the suggestion, then or later. Two more pregnancies resulted in two more live births—I have three sons whom I love dearly. I can’t imagine not having each of them. In my mind I never questioned whether I would have each child that grew within me. Before I ever married, I knew that I wanted to have at least one child. I plotted ways to have children if I didn’t ever marry. In other words, I have never doubted the worth of each child and would never have considered an abortion instead of a viable pregnancy.

On the other hand, I have never been one who wanted to make decisions for others. I cannot know the situations of women; I cannot know the conditions that might make a woman choose an abortion instead of a birth. Something within me just won’t let me think that I have a right to tell someone else what to do, even if I would not make the decision that she might make.

In other words, I am pro-choice. Most of my evangelical friends don’t know that because I keep fairly quiet about something that is so scandalous in the evangelical church. I could be grouped with all the “baby killers” just for thinking that such a stance is possible. I do not have any good way to justify my thinking. I am not a “baby killer” myself, nor would I ever call another person that. The loss of a baby, for whatever reason, is traumatic. I imagine that the loss of the baby because of the choice a woman makee is even more traumatic than the loss of one through miscarriage or death in the womb. It must be an event the memory of which cannot be escaped.

My thinking has been influenced by my own cultural development through the years. I taught high school for many years in inner city settings. My students were poor, whether black or white. Life was difficult for students and their parents or grandparents who raised them. Girls became pregnant too early and too easily. Most of them did not have abortions, but usually the coming of the baby was the end of the girl’s education. I could understand the possible attraction of an abortion in their young lives. I could also understand the abortions that a mother, an aunt, or even a grandmother might have had. Sometimes there were just too many children and not enough resources to take care of them, especially when the father was absent.

Two African American poets have witnessed to the reality of the hard choices some women have to make. Gwendolyn Brooks published “the mother” in 1945. It begins with the words, “Abortions will not let you forget” (l.1). She writes of the lasting trauma of the woman with the words, “If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths, / Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate” (ll. 20-21) and ends with the words “I loved you / All” (ll. 32-33). The poem is both a poignant love song to the child and a ragged confession of the “crime” (l. 23).

In 1972, Lucille Clifton published “the lost baby poem.” It, too, is an ode to the baby who will never live. The speaker begins with the words, “the time I dropped your almost body down/down to meet the waters under the city” (ll. 1-2) and continues with the description of a family who have no heat, no transportation, no way to get what they need to survive. Desperation causes this abortion. The speaker vows to take care of the baby’s “definite brothers and sisters” for her “never named sake” (ll. 15, 20).

The two poems convey the pain, the heartache, the desperate longing of mothers who have had abortions. Dare I call them “baby killers”? No, I cannot be so crass. Instead, I can grieve with them. The choice was not a good one.

I have been troubled by some conservative legislatures that have used the occasion of the coronavirus pandemic to try to make abortions more difficult to get in certain states. Do I think abortion is the right way to take care of an unwanted pregnancy? No, I do not. But I cannot say what a woman is going through when she makes that choice. And I know I would rather she make that choice in a clean, safe clinic rather than in some dark, unsanitary room.

I would prefer a woman to make a different choice, but I can’t make her do that—and I can’t make her life better by shunning her. I would just share my story with her. Three healthy babies that became strong, good men were worth the agony of that first moment of realization that I would have a baby with no guarantee of a stable home. Indeed, the home was not stable. I ended up a single mother—but I’m glad I ended up a single mother with the joys of having these sons rather than as a woman who chose the sorrow of not knowing her child.

Works Cited

Brooks, Gwendolyn. “the mother.” Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43309/the-mother-56d2220767a02

Clifton, Lucille. “the lost baby poem.” Poetry Foundation https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53239/the-lost-baby-poem

One by one, sometimes two by two, they came and stood at the end of the flag-draped coffin to pay their respects to the tiny woman whose body was lying in state. Ruth Bader Ginsberg had achieved so many successes, rising to the top of her chosen career in law by being named to the US Supreme Court in 1993. Now she had achieved two “firsts” in her death: Ginsberg was the first woman and the first Jewish individual to lie in state in the Capitol.

Now they came, one by one and two by two, standing for mere seconds at the end of the coffin. Some crossed themselves, following the sign of their Christian faith.  Some folded their hands and bowed their heads in a silent moment of prayer. Some reached out their hands, almost as if they were asking a favor. One raised her fist in a representation of solidarity with the ideas of this woman who had been taken from us. Some stood quietly with no outward sign of emotion.

When death came, it brought with it a picture of the best of the American spirit of equality. Ruth Bader Ginsberg was a noted liberal voice on the court, but conservatives came to pay their respects. She was a champion of women’s rights, but men, recognizing her work for gender equality, came to pay their respects. Her ethnic background was Jewish, but American immigrants from various ethnicities and countries of origin, African Americans from a background of slavery, those Americans who can proudly proclaim indigenous Indian background, other Americans who can’t even recite a particular background–all came to pay their respects. She was a woman of strong personal faith—the Jewish faith, but people of all faiths—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, others—came to pay their respects.

As I watched the solemn lines pass by the coffin that contained that little body, I was pleased for this woman to be recognized. She deserved it. Her career was studded by important cases, many having to do with gender discrimination. Many have praised her writing of opinions as being lucid, clear enough for the lay person to understand the complexities of the court’s decisions. Towards the end of her life, she had become something of a “rock star,” gaining the respect and love of many young Americans.

Yes, she deserved tis posthumous recognition, but I was more pleased that this recognition was a culmination of years of respect and love that Ruth Bader Ginsberg had received during her life.  Because none of us know exactly what our consciousness might be after this life ends, we should be cognizant of this uncertainty and pay our accolades to one another while we are in this life.

I’ve been thinking about this idea during the course of this current pandemic, when individuals have become so ill that they have ended up in isolation in COVID wards in hospitals, sometimes losing their battles with the disease without ever being able to interact with their loved ones. Those loved ones were left with memories only—I only hope that the memories include memories of telling those individuals how important they were, how loved they were.

Most of us tend to behave as if we will always have tomorrow. We let our busy-ness for all our “urgent” tasks take precedence over more important matters, such as telling those that we love and respect why they are so important to us. Of course, while I am using the safe words “we” and “us,” I am really speaking directly about myself. I have attended to the urgent details of my daily life when I should be finding ways to let those people important to me know just how and why they are important to me.

So, here, in no particular order, are the first names of people and a phrase that speaks to the importance of these dear ones in my life. You may notice I have decided to focus only on women, my own nod of respect to RBG.

Ramona, my sister, who single-handedly keeps our family informed of each other’s successes, woes, and joys.

Donna, a friend who didn’t mind my elbowing into her French classes, even though I was about 50 years older than her other students.

Jody, my counselor, who has a generosity of spirit and an incredible amount of wisdom, both of which she shares with all those around her.

Shirlee, friend and former colleague, who expresses an optimism in her faith, even while she is battling a debilitating disease.

Jan, friend since high school days, who is just a solid rock of stability, no matter what I say or do.

Another Donna, this one, my college roommate, who has remained friends with me even though we’ve not lived close to one another since we were in our mid-20s and even though we have polar opposite political views.

Jill, another former colleague, friend, and travel buddy, who has the most lovely spirit I have ever seen.

Jana, my young friend who has faced much more adversity than most of us face in many more years of living than she, who has courageously faced and conquered cancer and its treatments.

Ruth, more than friend, more than confidante, something like a “twin” from another mother, who has faced great loss, great sorrow with great strength and great determination to keep living.

The list could be so much longer—but better than my creating this list will be my behavior when I personally begin to speak to these and others in my life about how important they are to me. I can only be assured of this day to speak my truth and to show my respect to others.

“I get anxious about being a liberal evangelical. I’m so afraid to voice an opinion for fear that I will be rejected. Yet, sometimes I want to say something when I disagree so fervently with what is going on in our nation.” This was my complaint to my pastor a week ago. His answer surprised me: “I think there are a lot of conservative evangelicals that feel really vulnerable now, too.”

My first response—unspoken, of course—was “Really?” I know my church. It’s a solid red mass of balloons when it comes to politics with a little blue deflated balloon poking through here and there. Most of my church friends say whatever they want about their political views, simply because they assume that everyone around them agrees with them. I, on the other hand, keep my mouth firmly shut most of the time, biting my tongue, afraid that my voice would not be heard in the present environment.

But, as I have pondered my pastor’s words, I’ve considered the alternatives to the impasse that has come to our nation. The political divisions have become so deep that the chasm seems fathomless—and so wide that to try to span across the divide would mean instant death to either party who would risk reaching across.  

How can the body of Christ be so divided? The hallmarks of Christianity are love, reconciliation, and unity.  And I am not talking about the divisions somewhere out there in the wide world of red v blue. I’m talking about the body of Christ that worships together in the building (and, at present, online) in my hometown, in other words, my home church. Most evangelicals support a particular political party, which has, as its leader a man whom I consider arrogant, rude, and dismissive of those who do not share all his views.

In good conscience, I cannot share many of those views. I cannot ignore behavior and speech that does so much harm to so many. In truth, I do not know how my conservative evangelical friends can do so, but I have no doubt that they do. And, so, for the past several weeks, I’ve been stuck in this dilemma—how to write something about my feelings and thoughts without offending and alienating my conservative evangelical Christian friends.    

I still don’t have an answer, but I decided I could not stay away from the keyboard any longer. Writing is an outlet that helps me clarify my thinking; avoiding writing has, therefore, done nothing to help me clarify anything. I will have to write my way into some kind of solution.

I was reading a book by former missionary Kay Browning, who, with her husband, served in the Middle East for more than thirty years. She recounted the story of one of their Israeli Arab pastors who was struck with the need for reconciliation between Arabic Christians and Jewish Christians. He joined a group of pastors that wanted to work on such issues. At one meeting, to show his love and sense of Christian unity with his Christian brothers, both Arabic and Jewish, he grabbed a towel and a basin, asked the men to take off their shoes, and washed their feet. In turn, one of the Jewish pastors washed his feet. What could be more humbling than the honesty of such a gesture.

Our church doesn’t practice foot washing as part of our demonstration of our love for one another, but all of us, in all Christian settings, participate in receiving the Eucharist. What could be more unifying that eating from the common plate and drinking from the common cup, recognizing our oneness as we partake of the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So, how do I move forward in these seven weeks until the election? I keep my own counsel about political matters, but I show love for my evangelical friends who think so differently from me. I recognize that all of us in this American culture cannot help but feel vulnerable. The culture feeds on the escalation of divisive rhetoric. Our 24/7 news cycle, available to us in so many different formats, gives us what we want to hear. This culture that prizes consumers’ choices makes sure that we can find our comfort zone, our safe cocoon that insulates us from viewpoints we don’t want to recognize. The result, of course, is that we hear more and more of what we already like—but we may not be hearing all the truth.

I admit that I expect the worst when I hear that our current president has done something. But I was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had given the medal of honor to a young Army captain who had led a force that rescued about 40 troops from where they had been held hostage. The medal was presented on the anniversary of the tragedy of 9/11. Was the time and choice politically motivated? Perhaps. Was it a good time and choice? Yes, it was. I was reminded that no man is all good or all bad. We are all complex human beings who have the capability to do good or ill. Most of us do some of both.

My pastor gave me another word last Sunday: the reminder that we all “see through a glass darkly.” Usually when I hear that phrase from 1 Corinthians 13, I connect it with the idea that we cannot know all that we will know when we are united with Christ in the final resurrection. But when the pastor said those words this past week, I realized that none of us see anything purely and clearly. We are an amalgam of our past experiences, our joys and sorrows, our traumas, our emotional scars, our cultural heritages, and our unconscious biases, however unintended we might think they are. All of us, liberal, conservative, uninformed, or sincerely ignorant, we all see through the glass darkly from our own skewed perceptions. I doubt any of us know where all our ideas and beliefs come from. Of course, some are more aware than others, but none can claim purity and clarity of that glass.

For the near future, I want to remember that my good evangelical friends see through their glasses darkly. I want them to remember the same about me. Above all else, we realize that we need to see the world through a Christian lens, that upside-down lens that points beyond earthly values to kingdom values, the values taught by our Savior Jesus.

A tall, thin man stands at the window looking out into the gathering dusk. In his arms is a small toddler, a little girl wrapped in a corduroy romper, whose hand is reaching toward the coal oil lamp on the oval table. As the man pulls her hand back from the hot glass chimney of the lamp, he whispers to her, “No, don’t do that. I have something much better than that hot lamp. There’s ice cream in the kitchen. Do you want some?”

The small toddler sits in a corner on a crockery pot. As she looks around, she sees nothing in front of her but her mother, who is on her hands and knees, scrubbing the worn linoleum with a rag that she keeps dipping into the warm, soapy water in the tin bucket. The mother says, “Are you finished, then?” and makes her way to the corner, where she wipes the child and lifts her from the crock, which obviously is being used as a chamber pot.

Two scenes. Different settings. Different adults. One child. The same child in both scenes. That child was me. And those scenes are my first two memories, both occurring at a time when I was between 18-and 24-months old. The memories are fragments, but family members have filled in the context of the scenes for me.

The first scene took place at a house we were renting on a country road halfway between Harrisville and Haysville. It was close to the railroad tracks that stretched from west to east, from Winchester to Union City. My father was working as the manager of a gas station. Sometimes, when he had to work into the evening, he brought home the special treat of ice cream, ice cream that had to be eaten quickly, for we had no electricity and, therefore, no refrigerator to keep anything cold, let alone frozen.

The second scene took place at the house that devolved to my father’s ownership that same year,, the house that he had grown up in, the house that he and my mother had shared with my grandparents when they were first married and until after my two older siblings were born. Both his brothers already had houses of their own, so my father was able to move, cost free, into the now empty house with my mother and my two sisters and me. My brother was already married. This house was superior to the rental houses because it had electricity, but, at first, we still had a cold cellar, lined with bricks and covered by a thick, round, wooden lid out in the side yard. Later, we would have my uncle’s old cast-off refrigerator, one with the processing coils exposed at the top. And it would be four more years before we had running water in the house. We had a pump above our well that provided us with “running” water.

Before we moved into our grandparents’ house, while we were still in the country rental house, the small toddler, who was I, would find an open Coca-Cola bottle and tip it to my lips. For whatever reason, I didn’t realize that the liquid was too thick and too bitter to be that sweet drink that was another rare treat. I was drinking kerosene. Rushed to the hospital to have my stomach pumped, I survived, but have no memory of that dangerous day. I only know of it because it became part of our family lore. My father would often blame my kerosene drinking for my short stature: “It stunted her growth,” he would say.

So what made me remember those two early memories, one with my mother and one with my father? Sitting on a crock in a corner? That’s a rather stark memory, most likely remembered because potty training is always rather traumatic, for both parent and child. I have no visceral sense that the incident cast my mother as a task master. She was always kind, even when she was stern. I have no discernible emotion tied to that event; I just remember the blank emptiness of the room—just me, the crock, and my mother, the three major characters in the scene.

The memory of my father holding me in his arms as he looked out the window, saved me from burning my fingers, and promised me ice cream, too, is void of emotion. I don’t remember a feeling of being scolded as my hand reached too close to the flame, nor do I remember a feeling of glee because I was going to get the ice cream treat. I just remember being held in my father’s arms. Had I been held before? More than likely. Was I held after that? Probably. But it is the only time that I can remember that my father ever held me in his arms or showed me any physical aspect of affection.

Both of those early memories have become symbolic pictures of my parents: Even in her sternness, my mother was a soothing, constant presence, one I counted on every day of my life till she died at age 92. My father was not able to be “present” with us, even though he was with us till he died at age 87. For years I struggled to understand his emotional coldness; only that early memory reassured me that my father did care—he just couldn’t show it once a child became more than a toddler.

Note: My younger readers might not realize that the scenes I describe were not common for much of middle class America when I was a child. Those scenes reflect the poverty of the family at the time.

27A. I checked my ticket. Yes, that was my seat number. As I stood in the aisle, I looked across the two other seats towards that window seat, always my preference. No one was in 27C, but 27B was occupied, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to get past the character. His whole head was covered in a mask with coils for air. I had never seen such a contraption in real life before, but I was sure I knew what it was: a gas mask, worn to protect from noxious air-born gases that might be used during war. But we weren’t in a war. I had been out of the country for just three months, and I would have heard if a war had broken out. That would have been world-wide news.

While I was trying to comprehend why someone was on a plane leaving New York for Chicago, the young man, he of the gas mask, motioned to seat 27A, and I nodded. Graciously, he moved out of the way and I took my seat. Never one to start conversations with strangers, even those sharing my seat row in an airplane, I stared out the window and tried to believe—and act—as if it was a normal occurrence to sit beside someone in a gas mask. The plane couldn’t get off the ground soon enough for me—the sooner it took off, the sooner it would land, and I would be free of this monstrous looking creature next to me.

The year was 1968. The month was August. And what I didn’t know then, but what I found out when I landed in Chicago, was that the Democratic Party’s National Convention was being held there over the next four days. And, yes, there would be protests. Protests that targeted two wars—the military action in Vietnam and the racial unrest in the US.  How could I have forgotten? A typical college student, full of my memories of Guyana, South America, and the work our team had accomplished to help our churches, my thoughts were not on national or international problems. I had stories to tell, stories that had nothing to do with the protesters in Chicago.

But what I hadn’t realized was that the convention and the protests did matter to me, because as a newly minted twenty-one-year-old, I was eligible to vote in my very first presidential election, an event that I felt like I had been waiting for my whole life. My parents were avid news junkies and part of the charged-up electorate. They voted in every single election, and I would not, could not, do otherwise. From reading the daily newspapers (and the weekly paper called The Grit) and watching the nightly news on television, I became the same kind of avid news follower as my parents.

The first presidential election I voted in was 1960. Of course, it wasn’t a real vote, but a straw poll conducted by our eighth-grade history teacher. I stayed up as long as I was allowed on election night to see who had won—Kennedy or Nixon. But no one found out for sure till the following afternoon, and even then the vote count was disputed until Nixon conceded. That election whetted my appetite for all things political, an appetite that has lasted until now.

I wonder about my parents’ enthusiasm when they were young. Dad would have been eligible to vote in 1928, a year before they married, but Mother wouldn’t have been eligible till 1932. I wonder if she voted with a toddler on her hip. I wonder if she thought about the fact that women had only been voting since 1920. I don’t recall being educated about women’s suffrage in high school. I don’t believe any one of my history and social studies teachers, all of whom were male, had emphasized the phenomenal change that had occurred 45 years before I graduated from high school, but neither did they discuss Jim Crow laws or the ground-breaking Supreme Court case of Brown v Board of Education.

But by 1968, with three years of college behind me, I knew more and was ready to exercise my right to vote. I went to mock debates on campus hosted by the Young Republicans, a very large group, and the Young Democrats, a rather small maligned group. I had friends in both groups; I listened to all the arguments; I had my mind made up before hand: I would vote Democratic, the party favored most by my parents, especially my father, who was a union worker.

The years passed. I kept voting. I didn’t just vote in the presidential elections: I voted in every local and state election and rarely missed a primary. But the presidential elections continued to be the ones I cared most about. I’ve always thought that voting is not just something I like to do because of my penchant for politics: it is my solemn duty to participate in my democracy. To be given the right to vote for our leaders, even if we do have to go through the counting of electoral college votes instead of just the popular vote, is a lasting affirmation of our founding fathers’ plan for this democratic republic.

Now, in this year of the pandemic, some of us will be challenged in ways we cannot yet fathom if we wish to cast our vote. We may have to vote early; we may have to use the mail; we may have to don our masks and stand in lines on a cold, rainy November Tuesday. Whatever we do, we must vote. Every four years we are given this right that keeps our democracy strong. We must not fail to face the challenge that the pandemic has created. I will vote. I will pay homage to the women who fought so hard for the vote, so that our democracy 100 years ago became a bit more democratic, a bit more inclusive. I will hope and pray—and speak out—to make sure that this election, too, is a bit more democratic, a bit more inclusive. I will proudly wear my “I voted” sticker, although no one except my family will see it. I will do my part to keep this country strong, regardless of the outcome. The vote is the thing!

Note: another essay that more or less follows the guidelines I set for my class writers with the topic being autumn. This takes quite a few liberties with the topic, but the story’s contents all happened in the fall of the year.

“Look what came in the mail!” Mother cried, as she waved the fall/winter J C Penney’s catalog in the air.

I clapped my hands and begged, “Please let me see it now.”

“No, we need to finish our morning’s work and then we’ll sit down and go through it at lunchtime, okay?”

I helped as much as I could, wanting the two hours till lunch to pass quickly so that we could see all the new possibilities for the coming year.

The arrival of the catalog was the official beginning of the “back-to-school” season for us. We poured over the pages, folding down corners where we saw something that we especially liked. We “oohed” and “aahed” over some of the luscious colors like winterberry, frozen azure, smoky sky, and said “uh=huh” to  some styles that we thought were outlandish with their ruffles or asymmetrical collars or laced shoe tops.

But when we folded down page corners to mark our favorites, it wasn’t so that we could order the perfect dress or sweater. We didn’t have the money to buy most of the items in the catalog. Instead, Mother would work her wonders of sewing to create the style and color of at least one of the items we liked. Later we would also look through sale racks of clothes and shoes to see if we could find something that we could use that would look “in style” like the pictures in the catalog.

Later still, we girls would anticipate the coming of the Christmas catalog, hoping against hope that we would get just one thing that we really wanted. One year my sister got a life size toddler doll. She called him David. Interestingly, although both my other sister and I both used the name David for one of our sons, she never did use the name. I guess reality couldn’t match what she found in that toddler doll with his painted-on curls and his bright blue glassy eyes that closed when he was laid down.

Much later, when my sister was much too old to want dolls, I had my heart set on a 14-inxh ballerina doll who came in a suitcase with a tutu and an extra dress, quite stylish in its geometric print of pink and orange and its scoop collar of black velveteen. I tried to put it out of my mind, because it was much too expensive, much too extravagant to own. I could only dream. We could ask for one big toy, but not something that was too “big,” the code word for “too expensive.”

Not only did I get the doll, but my mother had created several additional costumes for her, including a wedding dress that was made from scraps from my older sister’s own wedding dress and a corduroy outfit made with leftovers from my other sister’s first “grown-up” suit. Someone, probably my older sister, created a wedding bouquet which the doll could hold. What a special Christmas that was, not only because I received something unthinkable in my mind, but also because my family had gone to some lengths to make the gift even more special.

I never remember being dissatisfied, either with my school clothes or with my Christmas gifts. We were a family of very modest means, but we children, at least the last two of us, my sister and I of the special dolls, were shielded from the poverty that was always lurking behind my mother’s special sewing and my father and mother’s efforts in the garden and my mother and older sister’s grueling, hot labor over canning vegetables and jams and butters. Meanwhile we last two children of the four were pleased with how we looked when we stood at the end of our sidewalk, waiting for the big yellow bus that would carry us to our country school in late in August each year.

Only when I was older did I feel shame over the decrepit appearance of our house with its brown imitation brick shingles and its peeling white paint. I had stood waiting for a bus right in front of the old, sad-looking house, never realizing that all the other students on the bus could see that house in its state of disrepair, giving the lie to my clothes that looked, as much as my mother could make them look, like everyone else’s.

As my siblings left with the end of high school to start their own adult lives as young marrieds, my parents’ income went further. The house was remodeled, more Christmas gifts were bought, not made, and Dad’s car models were bought new, instead of used. Still, I was mostly unaware of how much my parents had sacrificed for the lives that we lived. Only after my father’s death, many years after I had left home and had my own sons for whom to buy  special, over-the-top Christmas gifts, my older sister and I found a credit book. It documented what she had known all along. Every year my mother and father had charged our Christmas gifts to J. C. Penney’s or Sears and Roebuck stores and had paid off the debt just in time to charge the next year’s Christmas celebration. The catalogs gave us the dreams; my parents made them come true.

Corporal: relating to the human body

Corporeal: relating to the person’s body, especially as opposed to their spirit

Corporal: a cloth on which the chalice and the paten are placed during the celebration of the Eucharist

I went to church last Sunday. I “go” to church every Sunday, but last Sunday was different. It was an event to behold! I went to church in the church building. For the past five months, I’ve been going to church via YouTube, which has been a great experience. Our church staff has done a wonderful job of incorporating church members’ reading scripture and praying, of videoing the worship team members in various sections of the church building, of recording organ music from the sanctuary. We congregants have even been able to participate in the taking of Holy Communion through using our own bread and juice at home.

Ah, but going to church in the church building is a different matter entirely. It is not just being in the building: it is being with the Church in the church building. It is being together with the body of Christ in that building. One of the most familiar metaphors in the New Testament—and in use in most churches today—is the one Paul writes in his first letter to the Corinthians: “Now you are the body of Christ” (I Cor 12:27 NIV). Both in the verses following and in the ones preceding this one, Paul is teaching the Corinthian church that though there are many members, many organs, they are all part of one body. Though there are many functions, many roles, they are all equal parts of that one body. They are a corporal group, a unified corporation. They must work together and act together as one body, one “corporal” body to be Christ in the world, or as we today often say, “We are the hands and feet of Jesus.”

When we use that little catch phrase, we often are thinking of going and doing—perhaps working in a mission, perhaps serving the homeless, perhaps visiting the sick or elderly. But the body isn’t just about action; it is also about thinking and feeling and decision making. Somehow to think or feel or make decisions as the body of Christ in a unified way is much more difficult than the going and doing. To discern the mind of Christ in our unified body is never easy, but to discern the mind of Christ, to be unified in both thought and action, seems much more difficult when we are not in each other’s bodily presence.

We are not just a corporal entity; we are a corporeal entity. When we say we need each other in the church, we may assume that we mean we need a unified church. Perhaps we should consider that we need the bodily physical presence of each other as well. That’s what I realized last Sunday when I went to church to “be” the church in the church building. We really needed to be the corporeal body of Christ to one another. Even with masks and social distancing, we needed to see each other’s eyes light up with joy at each other’s physical presence; we needed to hear words tumbling over each other as we tried to catch up on each other’s lives; we needed to taste with the elements of the Eucharist at the same time as others, even if it was a pre-packaged slim wafer and a weak few drops of juice.

And in that tasting we became the unified body of Christ in yet another way. Our bodies became the recipients of the same bread and juice, just as we all were commemorating Christ’s body broken and blood shed for us. Is there any more unifying action that the Church can take than sharing in the Eucharist? Is there any higher reminder that we are, indeed, the body of Christ than sharing in the Eucharist? Is there any clearer way to be transformed into the hands and feet and voice and mind of Jesus than sharing in the Eucharist?

Yes, I went to church last Sunday. I went to the church building. But I was the Church with my fellow believers—both corporally and corporeally—and it was just the reminder I needed to be the hands and feet and voice and mind of Jesus in this world—with the rest of the Church doing the same.

Works Cited

“Define corporal.” Google Dictionary. Definitions 2 and 3. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=corporal

“Define corporeal.” Google Dictionary. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=define+corporeal&forcedict=corporeal&dictcorpus=en-US&expnd=1

Note: this is another writing based on an assignment for my memoir class, the assignment being “my favorite vacation spot”

What were we thinking! We had just arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport with our 26” bags and our carry-ons. We had told our friend that we could take the train into the city and to her house. But here we were at the bottom of a very long flight of stairs—the only way up to the main level of the Metro Station. Two fifty-something-year-old women, slight in both stature and frame, looking at the stairs in dismay. Indeed, what were we thinking?

First came one young man and then another, swooping gracefully over our suitcases as if they were two storks who were picking up baby deliveries. In no time at all, our suitcases were deposited at the top of the steps, and the young men, doing nothing more than glancing back to see if we were close behind, waved a friendly goodbye.

That was my introduction to Paris, France. And that was all that I needed to dispel all the negative thoughts that others had tried to put into my head: “The French are rude.” “The French people don’t want you to speak to them in English, but they don’t like it if you speak bad French.” “The French don’t like Americans.”  Those young men had not even stopped to consider if we were Americans, although they probably knew we were—we seem to wear our nationality as a badge, not necessarily of honor, but a badge, nevertheless. And they didn’t try to engage us in conversation in either French or English—they just helped us and disappeared into the crowd.

I have loved Paris ever since. Of course, not just for that reason, but that first arrival was indeed memorable. Memorable, too, was our location. Our friend had arranged for us to stay at her future in-laws’ apartment in one of the outlying neighborhoods. The neighborhoods in Paris are half its charm—each neighborhood has its own complement of groceries, patisseries, cafes, and restaurants. Whatever we needed we could find within walking distance of the apartment and the metro station. Baguettes, cheeses, teas—all we needed for a quick breakfast or light meal were available to us. Every evening, we ended the day, each ensconced in one of the apartment’s bedrooms, travel books spread on our beds, calling back and forth across the hallway about possible itineraries.

Museums galore filled our days—the Louvre with its overwhelming collection of French painters of all centuries, the Musee d’Orsay with its stunning collection of every important impressionist artist, the Marmottan with its Monet waterlilies from a variety of years, each successive painting showing the progressive nature of Monet’s failing eyesight and health.

When we tired of the art (although there really is no such thing as tiring of art), we covered the historical museums and monuments, such as Napoleon’s tomb and the Pantheon with the great Foucault’s pendulum. We wandered through the Conciergerie, with its mock-up prison rooms of Marie Antoinette and others. Then we walked over to the nearby Saint-Chapelle where we sat for over an hour “reading” the stories of the Bible as portrayed in the richly colored medieval stained-glass windows that soar above the viewers’ heads.

Of course, we had to eat, so often we would pop into a bakery to get some bread and into a grocer for some cheese and juice to enjoy outside. One day, sitting on a park bench somewhere on the Ile de la Cite, we were enjoying a break from walking and eating our lunch. Naturally, a dog came to beg from us. What could I do but feed him? He was friendly, of course. I found almost all Parisians, human or animal to be friendly! Another day we hopped on a train to go out to a far eastern neighborhood to visit the Pere Lachaise cemetery. Both of us being literature professors, of course we wanted to see the grave of Oscar Wilde. We refrained from kissing it. After all, who would want to kiss something that is literally smeared with thousands of lipstick kisses! We were interested in other’s graves—Marcel Proust, Moliere, Chopin. Although we didn’t walk all 110 acres of the cemetery, we wandered long enough that we needed to rest. Finding a bench close to Chopin’s grave, we sat and ate our lunch in the cool shade of an old tree.

Two favorite sites of most visitors, including me, are the Eiffel Tower and the Cathedral of Notre Dame. “Rising straight from the flat plaza surrounding it” applies to both places. The Eiffel Tower sits in the middle of an area that includes both concrete and park-like walkways. The glorious metal structure shines iron-gray by day and glittering-yellow by night. Is the allure the sheer size of it as it rises 1000 feet above the ant-size humans at its base? For some it’s the marvel of its engineering genius. For others it’s the 360-degree view of the city spread below.

Notre Dame, until the great fire of 2019, has afforded views of the city to any person who is willing to walk up the 387 narrow spiral stone steps to the Chimera Gallery, which includes all kinds of fantastical stone creatures. The gallery also sports views of many of the gargoyles that surround the building as both waterspouts and as protection from evil. It also gives access to the south bell tower where the largest bells are housed. But, at ground level, the cathedral is at its most reverent. Even when it is full of visitors, it maintains its sacred atmosphere. Small chapels, often dedicated to a saint or a devout person, afford places for the erstwhile pilgrim to pray, as do the many stations of candles where prayers can be made and candles lit for the particular need of the wandering visitor.

I have now visited  Paris eight times: twice with my good traveling companion Ruth, who piloted me on my first visit, once with my family at Christmas time, four times with student groups who were either coming from or going to Burkina Faso on mission trips, and once with my husband and our good couple-friends. If someone said I could get on a plane tomorrow and visit it again, I would. I never grow tired of the wonderful “City of Light.”

“Only what I want to believe is real,” says Winslow in today’s Prickly City comic (Scott Stantis, Prickly City in Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, July 21, 2020, Section 4, pg. 6).

Winslow is responding to Carmen’s statement that men were walking on the moon 51 years ago. Actually, that was yesterday’s date, not today’s, but close enough. Winslow, in his smug way, is refuting her claim with his own claim of “fake news.”

I read cartoons rather innocently and naively, for the humor. I do enjoy the fact that several cartoon artists have written the coronavirus pandemic into their characters’ lives, along with the occasional political jab. According to some of the members of the GoComics website, Stantis usually makes conservatives happier than he does liberals. I don’t really mind one way or the other. I have been struck with the idea that Carmen is grieving over the state of our country and is trying to decide what to do in November. I’m afraid she may not vote at all!

But a truth is a truth, and today’s truth from Winslow is both simplistic and profound. It is simplistic because it relies on the absolute sovereignty of the individual—and the absolute self-centeredness of said human being. How absurdly conceited. And how wrong-headed. At the same time, it is profound because no one can refute what comes out of a person’s mouth. What one says, if said sincerely, is truth to that person. It is, indeed, what the individual believes.

What is devastating about Winslow’s statement, a statement that echoes the words—and beliefs—of many people in our world, is the inclusion of the word “want.” That’s where the self-centeredness, the conceit, and the wrong-headedness resides: in the person’s “want,” in desire, in, perhaps, lust. For people to create their own realities seeds chaos and sows unrest. Coalitions between these people are created when they “want” to believe the same rhetoric for a while. But those coalitions are not stable; they are as fluid as people’s wants are.

What first caught my eye in Stantis’s cartoon this morning was the mention of the moon walk, an event which I remember well. I was in Guyana, South America for the summer, living with a group of college students in a missionary’s home in Georgetown. The evening after the moon walk occurred on July 20, the whole town’s population seemed to be in the downtown square looking up at a bright, clear moon. We Americans were so proud that our astronauts had accomplished something that had never happened before.

But some of our Guyanese friends were more than incredulous: they did not believe the event. They thought the American government had created the images we had seen on the television screen. Not us Americans: we knew our scientists, we knew our technology, we knew our dedication, we knew our determination. We had no doubt that our astronauts had walked on the moon. It wasn’t what we “wanted” to believe was true. We trusted what we knew to be true and real, based on our past experiences and knowledge of our space program.

“Want” is such a weak word. I don’t intend to build my reality on weakness. My reality is based on all kinds of knowledge and experience and wisdom gained from others’ knowledge and experience. My religious tradition is that of John Wesley, and my church teaches the importance of the “Wesleyan quadrilateral.” What makes our faith strong is the combination of four elements: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. Our religious reality is not what we “want” to believe; it is a strong amalgam of inside and outside forces, of past and present ideas, of words and actions.

This strong kind of belief, which is not based on desire, but on a solid foundation of scripture, tradition, reason, and experience reminds me of the life of the late congressman John Lewis. Throughout his life his belief system was strong and consistent. He was for the equality of all at any cost to himself, but he would deal with everyone, even those who called themselves his enemies, with kindness and non-violence. He never was satisfied to “want” a particular reality; he worked daily to bring about that reality. He died with his bill to restore the complete Voting Rights Act on the Senate Majority Leader’s desk and several other bills that he was sponsoring or co-sponsoring in committee, including one that was presented just one day before he died.

The strength of his belief kept him steady through all his years. His reality included a skull fracture he received when police beat him as he crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday in 1965. It included many arrests and nights in jail when he protested the unfairness of the “Jim Crow” laws that ruled in the South. It included being castigated by racists who wanted to silence him. But the reality was not based on a weak “want” but on a strong belief, buoyed by scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.

May we all build the same kind of reality.

Works Cited

Stantis, Scott. Prickly City. Chicago Tribune, Tuesday, July 21, 2020, Section 4, page 6.

Stantis, Scott. Prickly City. GOComics. Tuesday, July 21, 2020. https://www.gocomics.com/pricklycity