End of Summer Epistle — Josina Guess

Homemade refrigerator dill pickles, from our first summer in Georgia. I'll put the recipe in my next post.

My kids started school at the beginning of this month so it feels like summer is over, even though it’s only the middle of August. Temperatures are still in the 90’s, but I feel autumn coming to northeast Georgia as the leaves on the blueberry bushes turn red, and the first yellowing leaves are falling from the pecan tree. It feels good to be getting up and out of the house at the same time every cool morning and to fall asleep earlier at night. I’m starting to get myself into a better writing rhythm which also feels good. It's time for picking lots of tomatoes and making dill pickles. The problem with not writing in a while is that I don't know where to begin or what all to include. I can't cover all the events of the past few months, but I hope you'll get yourself a cup of tea and read this like it's a long letter, hand-scrawled on legal paper and mailed to you in a nicely stamped envelope.

Back in November of 2017, I found out that I was selected as one of 25 recipients of a Pastoral Study Project Grant from the Louisville Institute. I know many of my friends are scrambling to get their applications in by the September 1 deadline so I thought I would share a little bit about what this Louisville Grant has meant for me thus far as a way of offering some encouragement. Last summer, as my husband and I were deciding to transition out of living and working full-time Jubilee Partners, we still wanted to stay rooted in Georgia and with Jubilee as our faith community and I still wanted to stay connected as a monthly worship leader. The Louisville Institute offers this grant to ordained and lay Christian leaders. The timing of the grant felt like the affirmation I needed to take a step into an uncharted path.

In February, I got to spend a few days at the Louisville Seminary in Kentucky and meet the other recipients as we offered feedback and support to one another in our projects. I woke up my first morning there feeling like “this is just right where I need to be right now.” A friend of mine had just sent me a link to the Porter's Gate album Work Songs. I was already familiar with that album because another friend had already shared it with me a few months earlier. But it was good to be reminded of that collection and I played the song Establish the Work of our Hands. This is what it feels like to really have a vocation, I thought to myself. To be led by a sense of calling and gathered with other people of faith who share a similar passion to create and ask hard questions. Imagine my surprise and delight when I found myself in a small focus group with Isaac Wardell the founder of the Porter's Gate whose music had just been filling me up that very morning and whose album Lamentations by Bifrost Arts had already worked its way into our worship community. It's tiny moments like this that affirm in me a sense that the Holy Spirit moves in our lives. And if our ears are open to it we can sense the Spirit moving even in a morning playlist.

The few days in Louisville continued to feel like an unfolding gift of connections and inspiration with Christian leaders from across North America. I fear that someone might feel left out, so please go ahead and look at all 25 projects – everything from a theology of attachment parenting to researching how church leaders handle (or mishandle) sex abuse, to exploring how mending quilts can be a metaphor for mending institutions. Murphy Davis from the Open Door community is writing about her lifetime of solidarity with the poor as she journeyed through cancer treatment as a Georgia Medicaid recipient and Dayna Olson-Getty is writing about the unique grief of bearing and grieving a child that she knew would not survive. Starlette Thomas has a specific call to build up an undivided church that embraces a "raceless gospel" and is doing a close study of Clarence Jordan and Koinonia Farm. Britney Winn Lee is compiling a litany of prayers for congregations that are hungry for words of faith and justice in these troubling times. I met Dan Smith who is working to remember the enslaved members of his congregation in Boston and tell the often-overlooked legacy of slavery in New England while looking into what reparations would mean for his church. If you are thinking about applying or are in the process I pray that it will be a blessed experience for you. ( I spent three years thinking about it before I applied) Also, if you find yourself wondering, "Where are the Christians who care about intersections of justice, art, spirituality, ecology, economic sustainability, grief, racism, sexuality, and healing?" Well, the Louisville Institute seems to be a good incubator for amplifying the voices of such folk and I'm really thankful to be among them.

And what's my project about? Basically, I am trying to write my own story of race, healing, community, finding my way home and my connection with land overlaid with the larger narrative of racism, agriculture, war and migration in the American South. I had thought I would call my book Paint: A Memoir in Color and its Application but now I’m thinking about calling it Raisin’ a Little Heaven: the Sacred Work of Parenting, Activism, Gardening and Growing Community in the Rural South. What do you think? (I’d love a few title suggestions or feedback in the comments. I’m in conversation with a few different presses about my book proposal so a little feedback from potential readers would be super helpful.)

In April I used grant funds to attend the Festival of Faith and Writing in Grand Rapids and I got to reconnect with and meet so many lovely writers. Again, please forgive me if I don't mention you by name. I think I accomplished in four days what a years' worth of emails could have done. It is so good to meet writers and editors face to face. I shared in an earlier post that a highlight of that trip was the spontaneous poetry reading at the Grand Rapids airport. I am so thankful that I could spend a few magical moments with the recently departed, fiercely brilliant, Anya Silver. Please read her NY Times obituary and her gorgeous poems.

I also had the pleasure of connecting with Patrice Gopo. We met through reading one another's work online, but its so nice to meet people face to face. Her beautiful new collection of essays All The Colors We Will See just released this month. Here is my interview with her for Bearings the online journal of Collegeville Institute. It was interesting during the back and forth with the editor that Patrice asked that her lower-case “black” not be changed to upper-case “Black.” It was a theme she touches on in her book of very thoughtful and timely essays about identity and belonging.

I also met some editors at Sojourners Magazine. I asked, “Do you have anyone covering the opening events at the EJI Museum and Memorial in Montgomery?” I had made plans to use some grant funds to travel to the opening and attend the Peace and Justice Summit and thought it would be amazing to write about my experience for the magazine that I grew up reading as a child in Washington, DC. They accepted my offer and it felt like a real honor to visit that space with a commission to share with readers who may not be able to get there in person. Here’s a link to the article, you’ll need to be a Sojourners subscriber to read the whole thing.

When I attended a workshop a few years ago with Vincent Harding he asked us to introduce ourselves by stating our full names and our place of birth and then our mother's full name and place of birth and finally our maternal grandmother's full name and place of birth. Only after naming the women and places that formed us could we comment or bring our thoughts into the conversation. He said that our maternal grandmothers play a special role in encouraging us to follow our dreams. I ache to sit at Grandma Flossie's kitchen table and share this copy of the magazine with her. "I am so proud of thee and thy accomplishments," she would say in her old Quaker way. Oh, Grief, it's so sneaky, the way it just crept into this paragraph.

Here I am with my maternal grandma Florence "Flossie" Edgerton Rockwell

My Sojourners article really only scratches the surface of all that those few days held for me and my two older children who came with me. The heaviness of the subject matter of lynching and systematic terror was offset by the sense of celebration and convening of so many influential people: EJI's founder Bryan Stevenson, Partners in Health Founder Paul Farmer, the Rev. William Barber, Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, Senator Cory Booker, Jacqueline Woodson, Common, Britney Packnett, Elizabeth Alexander, Ava Duvernay, Sweet Honey in the Rock, The Roots, Britney Ford from the Alabama Shakes, Kirk Franklin, Stevie Wonder and the list goes on! It was like drinking from an overflowing fountain of talent, beauty and courage. My kids didn’t know who all of these folks were but I’m so glad that they got to hear their voices and see their faces. Perhaps one of the most moving moments was to be in a packed auditorium and being invited to shout out the names the people that came before us whose memories we wish to honor and at the end of that gathering to stand and sing Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing. That is the anthem that I will always stand to sing. This NPR piece reflects on the staying power of this song.

I have more plans to keep traveling to and reflecting on other points of personal and national interest in the South, including nurturing the land and stories in my own backyard (more on that later). The next trip will be to The Federation of Southern Cooperatives in Epes Alabama, where I was born, and then to the new Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, MS. I'm also interested in joining with other people in the county where I live in Georgia to get a historical marker for a farmer named Lent Shaw who was falsely accused and lynched within earshot of his terrified family. His great-grandson recently came to Colbert, Georgia looking for answers. A Historical Marker for Mr. Shaw would be a healthy step in working toward healing these wounds. Eventually, Madison County can join the more than 800 other counties across the country in claiming a steel column from the EJI Memorial for Peace and Justice in remembrance of the African-American people lynched between 1877-1950. The steel column for Madison County bears these names:

George Herbert 7/11/1907
___ Oglesby 9/6/1910
___ Brooks 9/6/1910
Cliff Bolton 9/6/1910
Lint Shaw 4/28/1936

There is a column for every county in which an African American person was lynched.
This is the one for the county that I call home.

I have not yet been able to uncover any information about the other four people listed here, and I'm eager to learn their stories. I encourage you to contact EJI to find out what you can do to remember lynching victims in your own communities.

Well, if you've read this far, thank you. And please do comment about possible book titles or anything else that triggers a response.

[I just edited out an earlier version of this post in which I asked folks to share the same info that Vincent Harding asked us to share in our retreat. There is a difference between being in a circle of people in a room and being on the web. I think that level of sharing is best done in person]