When I finished my master's degree in English at Chapel Hill, I knew I didn't want to be an academic, but I had no clue what I was supposed to be doing. A friend suggested that I volunteer as a tutor at the local literacy council. So I did, and before I knew it I was the executive director. It was a hold-onto-your-hat kind of experience.
I learned so much in that job--about management, nonprofits and how they work, and the field of literacy. (Here's a picture of a highlight day from that job: I got to introduce one of my personal heroes, Lee Smith, when she spoke at a fund-raising event.)
Through my work in literacy I learned the word "participatory," and it spoke to so much of my upbringing: finding the strengths that already exist in a person or community and fanning the embers, rather than bringing flames from the outside. I learned that even in a town like Chapel Hill, where you can hardly spit without dampening a PhD, there are many adults who grew up without the printed word, and are still getting by. It takes real strength and ingenuity to get by like that.
I know because I've done my own share of getting by, slipping through. As I've said, my dad turned against the church in 1965, one year before my birth. So once I came along, we never darkened a church's doors. And that meant that while my older sisters had a fairly decent foundation for their biblical education, I missed out altogether. No Sunday School, no sermons, no bible reading, nothing. Zilch. My mom tried, but I had been well-schooled by Dad in the hypocrisy of organized religion, and I bucked it. So I missed out. While my friends in high school, college, and graduate school were picking up the Christian references like windfall apples, I was blithely watching the butterflies. I faked it, wrote about other things. Slid through.
And now here I am, writing the story of two seminarians who were both deeply influenced by their reading of the scripture. They were steeped in it. And I'm illiterate. Where in heaven do I start?
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