HOW I GOT TO WHERE I AM: SOME REFLECTIONS

This post may disappoint some readers because it is about something other than occult subjects (at least, not in an obvious way). I often receive compliments on my writing. You would think such a thing would be a stroke to the ego. But what it does to me, instead, is remind me of how I got here.

I did not get to this place of proficiency alone. I had a lot of trouble writing in fourth grade, especially with grammar. Things like how to structure sentences and paragraphs so my thoughts build on each other. I was particularly fond of fantasy writing. I could envision worlds in my mind’s eye just fine, but as many writers know, putting those worlds to pen and paper is a whole other thing!

My English teacher could see all of this as fate would have it. I couldn’t see the potential yet, just the problem. But SHE saw the potential and did not give up on me. She called me up front after class one day and made me an offer: if I were willing to spend an hour, every day, after school for a year, she would teach me how to write better. So I did.

I didn’t know until years later that the time she spent with me was time away from her family. She had a baby at that time. Yes, she had a husband, but anyone with children knows it is hard for a mom to be away from her newborn. I also learned that she and her husband, from Belfast, Ireland, had lived through the Time of Troubles there. Her husband would give a homily at school and show us one of the bullet casings he pulled out of the wall of their home when they were shot up one night. They made it out, but many people did not. I went to Ireland many years later after those Troubles ended, and I saw pubs still empty and charred from rockets fired into them.

She and her husband had been through a lot and had to rebuild their family here in America. By the end of their careers, they were hands down the most celebrated and revered teachers in the history of my grade school.

I am telling this story because, as good as my writing may be, I did not get to this place alone. Every single time I pick up a pen or put my fingers to a keyboard, I remember Mrs. H. Every time I get up to speak or preach in front of a group of people, I remember Rev. Dr. DeVries, my first spiritual mother who encouraged me to articulate my progressive Christian faith aloud in a religion where my Religious Right brethren have dominated for way too long. Every time I pray, I think of Grandma, who taught me how to get on my knees to stay strong.

The list of people I could name who shaped and formed who I am is long. I know there are self-made people in this world, in my country, but I am not one of them. I have met some self-made people, and they are impressive. But even with them, if you get down to it, someone almost always helped them become who they are.

It is a strength of America (and no, not ONLY America!) that we can come from wildly different and diverse backgrounds and when we are operating at our best, we lift each other up. We make each other better than when we found each other. Sometimes, I shudder to think what kind of educated Black man I would have become had that Irish woman from the Time of Troubles not opened her heart to me. But she did, and in doing so, she lit a fire in me to do the same for others who cross my path.

We hear a lot about what’s wrong all the time, and it is very easy to focus on that and get lost down that rabbit hole. That’s why I take moments like this and actively remember what is right and good—that my life is not just disappointments and struggles but a life of light, love, and compassion, sometimes from the most surprising of places.

I’m not going to be Polyanna about it, though. I know some have never had this sort of experience. I have had my share of crushing moments myself. Sometimes, the fact remains that, in those places and spaces where hope is grim, we have to make the hope ourselves. One of the reasons I practice the spiritualities I do, especially ATRs, is because they do not acquiesce to fate. It may take sacrifice, even painful sacrifice, but change can happen. I also subscribe to the theology of Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman, who repeatedly asserted that the contradictions of life are never final but held by God in all their fullness. My sense of being held through the good and bad was the difference between giving up and taking just one more step. That, and remembering people like Mrs. H., who didn’t give up on me, believed in me, and, in a way, saw me before I saw myself.

Few of us are self-made, but we can help each other become better versions of ourselves. That is my prayer and hope, anyway.