B197. Life, Chapter 10, Page 1

 

Tomorrow begins chapter 10 of my life. Yes, I do think in chapters: birth to school age, grades 1-8, high school, college, Sparta, seminary, WRHS, RCCC, retirement, and tomorrow will open page 1 of the Staunton chapter.

So many songs about change - probably because change can bring such a harvest of emotions. In the past two weeks I have packed all my material belongings in 100+ boxes, hauled 4 carloads of trash and recycling and 4 to Goodwill, sold 20+ large items on Facebook Marketplace, given items away to friends, and Habitat came to pick up some donations. Physically I have worked harder than I’ve worked since building houses in Honduras when I was 25 years younger. Emotionally I am the proverbial roller coaster. One day I’m whistling happy tunes with every packed box; the next, I’m heavy hearted with leaky eyes.

How I have loved my life in Salisbury. 33 years. 3 chapters. I have lived here longer than everywhere else added together. How I will miss my house: the Japanese maple I planted as a sapling, whose dramatic seasonal changes keep me awestruck; my quiet screened in deck where I sit at the edge of the woods communing with the cardinals, robins, wrens, and squirrels, and delighting at the red-shouldered hawk, barred owl, downy and red-bellied woodpeckers, and patter of rain on the tin roof. How I will miss my dear First Pres family: the loving relationships that have healed my soul, the special memories that will ever be a well of joy.

And how I will miss the physical nearness to the dearest friends imaginable - the walks in the park, the lunches, the tea times. Friends and family are forever. We will plan visits - to look for dolphins and herons; to eat Katana, Sabaidee, and LA Murph’s; to show you around my new town; and we will use phone calls, social media, and Facetime to stay close between visits. Please please please, all friends and family, plan your nearby travels to cut through Staunton and stop over - I will love that!

Chapter 10 is unwritten, blank pages without words or numbers. I go with a sense of excitement, as Staunton has been a beloved second home for some 21 years. I love the fresh mountain air, the view of the mountains from my new back deck, and the healthy eating options that cater to my food intolerances. Beyond that, God only knows. I will turn each page as it comes, try to live each moment, to fully be wherever I am. Where will I fit in my new church, in my new community? Which strangers will grow to be friends? What good trouble will I find? Chapter 10, page 1, tomorrow.

B196. Flag Day 2025

 

I pledge my allegiance to this flag, to the Democratic Republic the flag stands for. One nation, undividable, with equal freedom and justice for all people.

Are we pledging allegiance today to the country for which this pledge was written? Are we honoring and protecting its democracy? Are we one nation? Do we even want to be? Surely, we can no longer call ourselves indivisible, for we have indisputably allowed ourselves to be deeply divided, brother hating brother, because of made up labels we accept without questioning. And much deeper, our fight is between "liberty and justice for all" (all races, genders, political affiliations, orientations, heritages, religions, languages, economic and social status) or liberty and power (not justice) for one.

I wonder too, my friends, is it blasphemous to call ourselves a "nation under God" if we are fighting against all the "better angels" God instilled in us, and against the very words of the pledge we so love to recite. And dare we cry out "God, bless America" as we stand with a rock in our hand and hatred against our neighbor?

On this day that honors our beloved flag, I pledge allegiance to the country that lives in the pledge. May we join forces and stand together for its breath. Undividable. Before we no longer can.

B195. Memorial Day 2025

I used to tell my students: "We cannot understand freedom until we have lived without it." Friends, we are on a fast downhill fall toward that painful understanding.

Freedom of the Press means newspapers and tv news gatherers can tell us the truth of what's happening without being imprisoned or killed for it. Freedom of religion means people of any religion can gather without being imprisoned or killed for it . . .

 
George Takei posted yesterday: "This Memorial Day Weekend, the best way to honor the soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice is to honor and protect the freedoms and the democracy they died for."

Today we say we honor those who gave their lives for our freedom, but we deceive ourselves if we continue to vote against it . . . though voting is another freedom we could soon find ourselves without . . .

Remembering and honoring those who never made it home. Memorial Day 2025.

B194. A Poem of Refocus

 

When the load grows too heavy,

as often it does,

for I pick up and pick up

‘til unload’s a must,

I climb up the mountain

where vision is clear.

I choose what is mine,

what my own soul calls dear.

Then down I return,

more focused, and freer.

There’s work to be done,

now my sight’s again clearer.

#443

KV 4/3/2025

B193. Remembering Betty Fellows

When I came to First Presbyterian in 2012, knowing almost no one, one of my most welcoming and real connections was Betty Fellows. I had joined Betty’s Sunday School class, and we soon learned that we had the same birthday. She was 82, and I was, to the day, exactly 32 years younger. We called each other “my Birthday Buddy,” and every year, except for a COVID year or two when everyone was isolating, we celebrated together, sometimes just the two of us going out to lunch, other times other friends would join us. I often joked with her that we were twins, or that we were college roommates, because we attended the same college - also years apart.

Almost from the beginning, she would sit with me in worship, and I remember well my first Sunday of communion there. Before First Presbyterian, I had been visiting different churches, and it seemed that they all had their own distinct rituals of how communion was administered. Before the service started, I was feeling a little tense, not knowing what communion procedure to expect. Sitting beside me, Betty seemed to read my thoughts. She quietly explained to me that as we passed the communion trays to the person beside us, we said to them quietly “the body of Christ, given for you” and “the blood of Christ, shed for you,” so that everyone was served personally by someone, and everyone personally served someone else. It was a blessing to me to be served by Betty that day and many other days, and, when the tray came from the other direction, to get to serve her.

With others, we attended together Presbyterian Women Bible Studies, retreats, Church Women United gatherings, church meals and special events, and a weekly small group reading circle we called R4. I think the last time she was able to physically attend church was Ash Wednesday 2024. I picked her up at her house and she moved slowly with her cane. She shared several times how special that was, especially seeing the children getting their ashes.

Over the years, I became a regular at her house. She took me on the forest trails around her house. Sometimes we hiked. Sometimes she drove us in her golf cart, at first with her dog Sam running ahead of us; then in later years it was little Roscoe. She always showed me her flowers, in whatever season, and, both avid readers, we often talked about the books we were reading. Once when I was visiting, a bird flew inside her house, and the two of us scampered around closing doors to eventually get it back outside.

Oh, and she loved riding in my “cute little red car.” I took her to the park a couple of times, and once she arranged a visit to introduce me to Dot Swing, which was so special to me, as Dot's sister had meant so much to me in Greensboro years ago. And just while I knew Betty, she was a member of multiple reading groups, including one in Winston where, we came to realize, she knew my daddy’s twin cousins Nancy and Pat. She wanted to set up a visit for us all, but we never got around to making it happen.

Often she talked of her favorite memories of me: the women’s retreat I led in 2019, hearing me share my story in 2016, our 95th/63rd birthday when I brought a few friends and boxed lunches to her house to celebrate; and I’m not sure why, but she would laugh in delight at the memory of when I drove her to vote curbside, maybe just because it was a different way to experience voting. “Wasn’t that such fun!” she would say.

I only got to know Betty the last 13 of her 95 years, but she shared many stories with me, some repeatedly; like, when she lived in Durham and taught second grade. Her students were mostly African American, with one "Chinese girl" and one “little blonde boy.” Their classroom was at the end of the hallway, room 100, and she used to tell them that when they made it into the room, they had already made 100; and that the man who cared for the plants was the “plant manager.”

Betty was a PK (Pastor’s Kid), the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. Then she married a Presbyterian minister. They had three daughters, then grandchildren, and now there are great grandchildren. I’ve heard loving stories about every one of them.

Two days ago, as I entered Betty’s door, her face lit up as it always did. “You’re here!” she said, and she told me her breathing had been difficult all morning. “Kathy,” she said later in the visit, “is there anything in this room you’d like to take, to remember the day?” The day. She knew, didn't she. Before the next daybreak, she would be in another place.

Dear Betty, this morning the church learned of your passing. And we had communion. “The body of Christ given for you,” I could hear you saying to me as I wiped away tears. I'll catch up with you later, dear friend. Thank you for your forever imprint on my life.

B192. I Called My Sister a What??

“You dil#o!” I yelled to my little sister. It was a new insult the kids at school were using to call someone stupid. Of course I had no idea what the word meant, but it sounded funny, and I picked it up. My mom sent me to the dictionary to look up the word, then to decide if that was something I wanted to call my little sister. (Impressive parenting moment there!) It was not. I was embarrassed.

I don’t know who started that ridiculous use of that word, or how widespread it was. Was that just my little school circle, or were children across the nation calling each other sex toys? Thankfully, to my memory, it was as short-lived as wearing elephant-leg pants or hairy socks, and I probably wouldn't remember it at all had it not been for that dictionary moment.

As a linguist, what I do know is that words and language, at their roots, are intentional, and a powerful tool for shaping or manipulating our minds. Following are a few words I remember from my childhood that meant little to me at the time but were quietly shaping my prejudices.

The term, jew or jew down, used pejoratively as a verb, meant to bargain down a price to the point of cheating the buyer/seller. “Don’t let him jew you down.” I understood the term as a child, but I knew nothing about Jewish people, and, to my knowledge, there were no Jewish people anywhere near the area where I grew up. Still, the bargaining language I was using was prejudicing my mind for the later time when I would become aware of Jewish people.

Another term I heard as a child was Indian giver. This referred to someone who gave you something and then took it back. Again, as a child, I used the term with my schoolmates without realizing that the term was prejudicing us into thinking that Native American people could not be trusted.

There was another term I used to hear that meant that something broken was not really fixed but was rigged to function a little while, like maybe with a rubber band holding it together. The blatantly racist term was later softened by one letter change to jigger-rigged. As a child, this language taught me that black people weren't smart enough to properly repair something.

My schoolmates also used to tell polack jokes. I had no idea what the word polack meant, that it had anything to do with Poland or Polish, or that it was a pejorative term. The jokes were just about foolish people, similar to the more recent “blond” jokes. How many polacks does it take to screw in a light bulb, etc. Yet, at whatever point in my life I learned what the word polack meant, I already had an ingrained impression about the people.

Let's look at one more. Several of my childhood friends, myself included, had a deck of Old Maid cards. This was a children’s matching game, in which every card had a match except for the Old Maid card, which was forever being traded around, because whoever ended up the Old Maid at the end of the game was the loser. Again, the term old maid meant nothing to me as a child. It was just a game. But whoever originated the idea to market such a game to children had a strategy - to feed into children’s minds that there was something bad about women who did not marry. Otherwise, would he not have chosen to make the unmatched card a skunk or a rotten egg or almost anything else? Why an unmarried woman, which is not even a childhood concept.

Our schoolmates, our parents, and our communities did not make up these terms. The language was passed down to them as children just as it was passed to us, and that earlier generation got it the same way from their elders. My childhood community was agricultural and hard-working, not analyzers of language or studiers of people groups.

At some point in history, each of these terms was deliberately, intentionally, and strategically set into motion by someone or a group of someones who wanted to plant seeds of prejudice into our minds. New terms are continually invading our brain space, coming from politics, social media, religion, etc.

We don’t have to invite them in to stay. We can train ourselves to recognize the terms as invaders and to block them from setting up tents or constructing castles to live forever in our minds. And we can ask ourselves who is benefitting from poisoning our minds with such prejudices, and what is behind such manipulation.

What other prejudicial terms have you encountered?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Questions for deeper thought:

1. Why target children with terms they don't even understand?

2. How else does this happen? In songs for example.

3. If someone wanted to manipulate the minds of an entire culture, where/how would they make such an attempt? To what ages? Might certain segments of the population be easier to manipulate than others? Why (not)?

4. How can similar strategies be used for good, to teach us love, compassion, and care for each other? Where have you seen examples of this?

B191. Is Truth Deeper than Words?

 I remember, as a child, picking up from my schoolmates that it was OK to lie if we had our fingers crossed. Even at that young age, I thought this was flawed, but it seemed good to have a loophole. I questioned it more after someone told me they had their legs crossed. Who is making up the rules, I remember asking myself.

Even as adults, we hear people justifying their untruths by their words. "I didn't exactly say that. My exact words were . . ." And this strategy of not exactly lying in words is used constantly by advertisers, politicians, and biased media. We are manipulated to "hear" a particular idea, but the actual words don't really spell it out. Is it truth then? Is it lie? 

I remember childhood questions in Sunday School about whether it was ever OK to lie. Such thought-provoking discussions are important for developing critical thinking and deeper morality in children, and in adults too. Is it OK to lie/cheat in order to pass a test? to win a game? to convert someone to your faith? to get an age discount? to save a life? to get a day off? to pay less taxes? to avoid hurting someone's' feelings? to make more money? Does the end justify the means?

Can we recognize when we are being misled? Take, for example, being led to vote for a particular candidate based on gas prices. Imagine if the gas prices during party A's last term ranged from 2.79 to 4.09, and the prices during party B's term had the same range. Either party could claim "When we were in control, gas cost 2.79, and when the other party was in control, gas cost 4.09. Technically, these words would be 'true" from either side. But are they?

Is Truth really about words, or is Truth something deeper than utterances?

Jesus claimed to be the Truth. Did he mean something deeper than words? (Why did he not just say he tells the truth?) Are we satisfied with where we measure up?

We all draw our own lines. Of the eleven questions in paragraph three above, I would personally answer yes to two of them. Well, maybe more like one and a half. What about you?

If our intent is to deceive, do our "true" words trump the deception? Is this a game like crossing our fingers? Who's making the rules? Whose standard am I following? And you?

Does it even matter?

I say, yes, yes, it matters a lot. Yes, Truth is deeper than words. And yes, if we find that deeper Truth within ourselves, we will strive to make our words match that inner Truth, because that is at the core of who we are: the core of me, the core of you, the core of them.

You might also like:

B65. FOX News, Truth, and Me Playing Basketball

B146: Fake News: The Smeller's the Feller