Being There

Coming home was delicious, just as I knew it would be. The familiar routines, my own bed, the arms of my beloved family wrapped all around me. Ahhhh.

But you know, it's good to go, too. And not only because then you get to appreciate coming home. I gain new perspectives when I go away. And being there, in the new place, never fails to bring me new insights about whatever's on my mind.

In this case, it was Koinonia. When our family moved away from there I was 9 months old, so I had no memories of it. I needed some, and now I have them. Now I have driven by the Sumter County Hospital and thought, "there's where I drew my first breath." Now I have walked the sand road where my sisters used to walk me, round and round, in the fussy time of day for babies. Now I have explored the pecan groves, and appreciated their special geometry--I love the way the trees are planted, so that you're always looking straight down a row, no matter which way you're heading. Now I've been there.

I went to Koinonia with a certain story in my mind--I've heard different versions of this story, and I wanted to see if I could get more evidence about how it really happened. Here's the short version:

Somewhere around Christmastime in 1965, my granddaddy, Dr. Walter L. Moore, was scheduled to preach to an association of churches in Americus, GA. My parents went to hear him, along with Clarence Jordan, Millard Fuller, and Collins McGee, an African American friend of theirs. Needless to say, this motley crew did not get a friendly welcome, and they ended up leaving the church before Granddaddy even came out on the platform. It was a memorable evening for all of them, and a told-and-retold part of my family's history.

Now the way my mama tells this story, it is both personal and painful. She and her daddy were extremely close, and when she found out (in the newspaper) that he would be preaching, she was excited about the opportunity to go. She was less than thrilled when it turned into a group excursion, because she really didn't want to cause a scene. He was her daddy, and he had been invited as a guest preacher.

Millard, who has told this story in books and countless lectures, tells it a different way. To hear him tell it, Granddaddy came out to Koinonia for lunch that day, and as he was leaving, gave a typical southern "y'all come" invitation to come hear him preach that night. To hear Millard tell it, Mom was out in front of the group, pushing her way in, saying "he's my daddy, and he invited us!"

To hear Millard tell it, it was a Civil Rights Event. To hear Mom, it's the story of a breaking heart, caught in between the father she had admired forever, and the husband to whom she had pledged her life. I went to Koinonia, determined to find out how it actually happened.

I did find out how it happened--Mom's story is borne out by all the different versions of it that appear in the Koinonia archives. But I also learned something much more interesting, and it didn't come from Koinonia at all. It came from inside me. When I was in the space. Just being there.

You see, I went to that church in Americus. I went there for Sunday morning service on Palm Sunday. Arriving by myself, appropriately dressed, I was barely even noticed. I fit right in. I passed. I sat in approximately the same pew were they sat, that Advent evening in 1965. I looked around the big neoclassical sanctuary and thought about what it must've felt like to sit down and have the pews around me empty out simultaneously. When the usher handed me a visitor card with a big smile, I imagined what it would feel like if, instead, he had reached over and grabbed the collar of my friend, threatening to drag him out of the church. I slipped inside my mother's body, 4 months pregnant with little me, and felt her feelings of fear, disappointment, sadness, and humiliation. I understood her turmoil in a whole new way.

I understood it because when I walked into that church, I felt a feeling that I never expected to feel. Comfort. Now that I'm a regular church-goer myself, I understand the comfort of all of the familiar rituals: reading the bulletin, holding the hymnal, sitting in the pew, listening to the choir. My voice blending with all the others in the old familiar hymns. It feels a little like coming home. And how much more so if you know your daddy's going to preach.

Until my family left Birmingham, my mother had gone to church every Sunday of her life, most of them with her daddy in the pulpit. But when they moved to Koinonia, that familiar comfort was jerked roughly away from her. This was her first chance to go to church since then, and she must have leapt at the chance. How much more painful, then, to have it all dissolve before her eyes. I finally understood that it wasn't just embarassment, and worrying about making a scene. It was grief.

I liked being at Koinonia--the people were warm and welcoming, the culture was familiar for a grown-up hippy child like myself, and there was lots for me to soak up. But I was happy to see it recede in the rear view mirror. Happy to come back to the present.