The Last Waltz

I always wanted to be a good dancer. It started as a first grader at Ella Darling Elementary School in Greenville, Mississippi. I had seen my friend, Marilyn Arnold, dance in her tap shoes at a class talent show, and I knew that's what I wanted for myself. I even lied to other friends about taking dancing lessons, ballet and tap, but I knew my own single mother was too poor to spend money on such a luxury.

When I was around ten though, my mother hooked up with a new boyfriend. Evidently, she shared with him my goal of taking dancing lessons. He agreed to pay for them. I remember the excitement of putting on my soft pink ballet slippers for the first time. I knew that I had a wonderful career in front of me. Unfortunately, what I didn't count on was having two left feet by that time; I had reached that pre-adolescent stage with a stiff body that was anything but "light on her feet." Fortunately, my mother broke up soon with her boyfriend, and my potential dance career ended.

I danced somewhat awkwardly as a teenager when rock and roll was the rage in the late '50 and early '60's to the tunes of Elvis, Chubby Checker, The Big Bopper, and others. I slow danced to those of Johnny Mathis, The Platters, and Marvin Gay. As a young married woman, however, I did not dance. My husband had been raised in a Southern Baptist Church (as I had), but his church did not believe in such amusements as card playing, movies, drinking, smoking, and certainly not dancing. I never lost, however, my desire to glide beautifully across a dance floor with my partner.

I thought about my childhood dreams on Tuesday afternoon of this week when I went to see the small independent film That Evening Sun. The Hal Holbrook character deals with such issues as aging, the longevity of relationships, stubbornness, class, land, and so on. My husband and I wanted to see the film because of those themes but also because it was Holbrook's wife, Dixie Carter's, last movie. There is a poignant scene at the end which shows the two characters dancing a slow dance and loving their relationship. It reminded me of the brevity of life and the transience of it. I used to think as a graduate student at Ole Miss that the Romantics' interest in this issue was obsessive. Now I see their point. While "a thing of beauty is a joy forever," people aren't. They grow old.

This summer I will have been married forty-five years (and my mother said the marriage would never last). While I know I will never be able to glide in this life seamlessly across the dance floor (now because of creaking old bones more likely), I envision a time in eternity when I will enjoy "the last waltz" with my husband. It will be beautiful, and it will last forever.

The Epidemic of Victimology

It seems the big topic of both churches and culture, in general, these days is that of victimology. Everyone's a victim. In church for the past few months, we have been hearing both liberal and even more traditionally conservative theologians speak of Christ's being a victim of the Roman Empire. This idea, of course, runs counter to what churches have taught for thousands of years, namely that God sent His son into the world to be the propitiation for the sins of humanity. Even Judas, the disciple, has been seen recently as a victim of God's big plan for Christ's life and death. Some say Judas should be viewed as a rather sympathetic person in the New Testament since he was just a tool in the plan.

In culture, we have been hearing for some years now about the victimization of children in the Catholic Church. They have been subjected to sexual abuse by priests. I can certainly agree with this view; children are victims when the people they trust most in the world, other than their parents, take advantage of their naivete.

What bothers me, however, most about the epidemic of victimology in our culture is the adult who claims to be a victim and perhaps is not. I am thinking most recently of the media discussion of Sandra Bullock and Elin Wood. I fall into the category of people who believe these wives are smart and must have had a clue as to their husbands' infidelities and fetishes. Also, I am amazed by the mistresses of Tiger who believe they are victims because they had the mistaken belief that they were the ONLY mistresses in Tiger's life.

The shifting of personal responsibility to others, unfortunately, has been a characteristic of humanity since the Garden of Eden. Will we ever learn to simply say, "I am sorry; I am responsible; I knew but turned my cheek the other way."

The Astonishing Vanishing Jesus

Our spiritual formation class last Sunday ended its session with a question from our teacher, "What does the sudden disappearance of Christ on the road to Emmaus mean for each of us?" I had never thought about the idea before this time. As I went back and reread the passages in the gospels of Mark and Luke, I agreed with Larry, our teacher, that basically He wanted to say to his disciples, "I am going away, and now I am leaving my ministry with you." Larry also pointed out that the disciples did not recognize Him until He blessed bread, broke it, and gave it to them. The Scripture in Mark says, "Then their eyes were opened, and they knew Him" (24:31). I also think there was another quite important reason to consider for this final appearance of Christ. I believe He wanted to convince them of the importance of using the Holy Scriptures as a guide for their lives and others.

Verse 32 says, " Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?" Today in many liberal churches, the Holy Scripture has lost its authority within the church due to the questions raised about its symbolic and metaphorical interpretations versus its literal, conservative interpretations of the past. If we are to emulate Christ, however, we realize that He turned to the Scripture many times during His three-year ministry before His Crucifixion. It even began with His teaching of the Rabbis in the temple as a twelve-year old. If He valued the Scripture to such an extent, should we not also do so?

Jesus disappeared quickly after His Resurrection in order that the disciples could begin the work on earth to establish the kingdom both here and later in heaven. It is up to us as His followers to continue to study the Word, minister to the people through our hospitality, and teach His principles to others.

Shall We Gather at the River?

When I was a child, I thought as a child. One of the Bible verses that gave me the most trouble in my mind was one that spoke of the Resurrection. I remember that my mother was the teacher of the Sunday School class I attended and seemed somewhat astonished when I, at age six, asked the question, “How can the dead rise first from the graves when Jesus comes? What about those people who drowned in the sea or those who were burned to death? Their bodies are not in the graves to rise up.” My exhausted parent, who was a single mother working as a waitress and only moonlighting on Sunday morning as a real Sunday School teacher at Second Baptist Church in Greenville, Mississippi, simply said, “Lisa, we’ll talk about this later, but that’s a good question.”
Another annoying habit I developed as a child was actually to think about the meaning of the song lyrics my grandmother beside me in church was singing, along of course with the other members of the congregation. After my mother became too tired and depressed to raise my sister and me, at age 16 and 12 respectively, we lived with our grandmother in a small town of 1,000 people in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. We attended her Baptist church with her every Sunday. I continued to think about the idea of our being possibly resurrected since Jesus had promised it both for Himself and for us, His followers. After all, my life had been rather traumatic to this point with an alcoholic father, a clinically depressed mother, temporary homes with relatives, sexual abuse as a three-year old, poverty, and so on. I certainly wanted to believe in the idea that this life was not all there was.
One of the songs our church congregation frequently sang was “Shall We Gather at the River,” which again raises the idea of resurrection. My grandmother’s sixty plus year old voice broke as she sang the hymn, “Yes, we’ll gather at the river, / the beautiful, the beautiful river; / gather with the saints at the river / that flows by the throne of God.” The verses spoke of a “crystal tide,” a “silver spray,” a “golden day,” happy hearts,” and “peace.” The song described a beautiful picture of life after death, and I was comforted by its promises.
As I grew older, I found myself skipping more services of the church as a typical teenager is prone to do. I no longer raised any hard theological questions with myself. Instead, I concentrated on becoming as popular as I could and set my sights on becoming recognized in such roles as homecoming maid, class favorite, and the ultimate one: Miss West Tallahatchie High School. I still believed in eternal life and the resurrection of Christians after death, but I gave up the hard questions of my childhood. In short, “I put childish ways behind me” (I Corinthians 13:11).
I have to confess that, since my teen years, I still am rather erratic as a seeker of life’s big questions. As a result of my prior spiritual quests, however, I at least now know how to describe my spiritual beliefs to others: I am biblically conservative and socially liberal. It’s an odd combination that still makes me somewhat of an outsider in both wings of our Christian faith. I am now sixty-five years old and still looking for plausible answers--but not so much as before.
Since Easter is approaching in another week, the focus of our spiritual formation class over the past few weeks has been on the last few hours of Christ’s life before His Crucifixion. Our teacher Larry has encouraged each of us to reflect upon this question: What does the Resurrection mean to you?
In response to this question, I am challenged to once again seek an answer to the age-old question. In short, the Resurrection of Christ means to me that He was truly the Son of God, His promises are true, and He is preparing a place for us in Heaven. Otherwise, He would have told us as He says in the Word in John 14:2 (NIV): “In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you.” I also long to be reunited with all the women of my family who have gone on before me: my mother, my grandmother, my aunt, and so on.
Since I am now attending an Episcopal Church, which tends to interpret the Scripture liberally, I am challenged to believe that perhaps the Resurrection of Christ was only symbolic and metaphorical. For me, it is not a stretch to believe that, if God created the world, He can also supernaturally put back together our bodies to meet Christ in the air for a second coming. It is also possible that the universe is filled with places we cannot see—a perfect place for a literal heaven. I believe that a metaphorical view removes all hope of the heaven described by Jesus. Even at this moment I am listening to an NPR presentation by author Lisa Miller where the statistic was just given that 80% of all believers, whether Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, believe in a literal heaven and that it is God’s home. I am happy to include myself in the majority opinion. Shall we gather together in eternity? I believe we will, and it will be with the other “saints at the river.”

To Barry . . . With Love

The first time I heard writer Barry Hannah read from his works I was very impressed by his topic. It was several years ago at a writers conference at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. I had gone to the event because I was curious. My sister Judy had been a fellow student with him at Mississippi College in the early 1960's, and our son, who was studying for his MA degree in English, at Ole Miss had spoken highly of him as well. I had not read his work at that time, but he spoke of being quite ill one night and in the hospital for treatment of his lymphoma. His memory of the event is that Jesus Himself entered his room and stood by his bed silently. Barry was, according to him under no influence of drugs at the time. Barry simply said to Christ something like, "I haven't done very much with you lately, have I?"

As I later went to Barry's novels to see what he had written about throughout his career up to that point, I saw immediately that my sister Judy had described him well, "He was a good old boy." His topics in his highly acclaimed novel Geronimo Rex ranged from adolescent coming-of-age in the America of the 1950s and '60s to seeing his autobiographical character living through sex, love, lies, and lunacies as he got older. Other novels through the years included Airships, High Lonesome, Bats Out of Hell, The Tennis Handsome, Hey Jack! and Ray.

Barry's final novel before his death a few weeks ago was Yonder Stands Your Orphan. According to a review in Publishers Weekly, it is "a Southern Gothic novel full of every kind of excess: violence, sex, religiosity, creepiness and humor." The university where I taught for twenty-two years invited Hannah to be the keynote speaker for another writers conference in 2005. By this time, Barry was again gravely ill with a recurrence of his lymphoma. He was able to impress the students, however, in his presentation at this very conservative Christian university by the story of his encounter with Jesus and his complete honesty about his struggle with his faith.

Today I remember Barry's generosity in writing a blurb for my first book, Four Women, One Century and later in writing me a letter saying that he had seen my book in the famous bookstore in Oxford, Mississippi--Square Books. The book was located, he said, in the honored first-floor section of the store. He said he was honored to have recommended it.

Today I remember Barry with fondness and respect. I hope he found what he was searching for.

The Popularity of Views that Deconstruct Jesus

One of the things I like most about my spiritual formation class on Sunday mornings is the fact that we get to pose all kinds of questions about traditional faith. One of the things I like least about the class is the fact that we get to pose all kinds of questions about traditional faith. It seems that, because of fifty or so years of training in a Southern Baptist church, I fall into an unusual category of believers: I am biblically conservative but socially liberal. The Bible has always been the source of authority for my faith, and I have been taught that it was written by a number of authors who were inspired by God. In my current class, there is an overt effort to deconstruct not only the Bible of us traditional believers but also even Jesus Himself.

For example, for the past few weeks we have continued a series of videotapes by two liberal theologians, Dominic Crossan and Marcus Borg. It's called "Living the Questions." Last week's lesson centered on the week before Jesus' death and indicated that Jesus' Palm Sunday ride into the city on a donkey was not a triumphal entry at all but simply a mocking demonstration of the power of the Roman Empire. Also, the cleansing of the temple by Jesus as he overthrew the money changers' tables obviously made little difference to the powerful Jews of the day. It too was but was a simple demonstration much like those in our day who protest war: impressive but not faith-changing.

While I am familiar in literature and other disciplines with the theory of deconstruction as an academic tool for analysis, I myself prefer traditional scholarship. I would like to see, for example, a number of moderate and traditional scholars presented who believe that Jesus was the Son of God and that the Bible is Truth and Inerrant. That way we can have opposing viewpoints and make our own decisions regarding our faith.

At the Back of Beyond

My book club has been reading several novels recently that focus on the theme of violence against women. Several months ago, we read Roberto Bolano' 2666, followed by Pat Conroy's South of Broad, and now culminating with Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. All have been highly successful bestselling pieces. I believe that, for me personally, I have now overdosed on the theme. In Larsson's novel, one of the key characters moves to a small town in Sweden which is referred to several times as being at the "back of beyond." I believe all of these writers have moved to this position symbolically with their pushing the bounds of common decency.

As a victim myself of childhood sexual abuse, I realize that these crimes against children and women are certainly a reflection of real life. As we have to do is turn on the nightly news to see the latest examples of young girls being kidnapped and subsequently murdered, women leaving clubs alone only to have their bodies found a few hours later dumped into trash bins, and wives being brutally beaten and killed by their own husbands. Jane Velez Mitchell of CNN's news and views show often speaks of "a war against women." I believe this war is taking place in both reality and in fiction.

Why, I ask myself, have the subjects of sadomasochism, torture, incest, bestiality, and other forms of sexual deviation become such mainstream topics of interest for the average person to love these books and revel in reading the details? The war against children and women should be taken seriously, not frivolously, for entertainment only. How much longer can we continue to go beyond the back of beyond?