Cold Calling

I come from a long line of salesmen. My dad's father was a Dunlop tire salesman. My dad sold Tide detergent before he went to seminary, and won all kinds of top sales awards. Even my Granddaddy Moore majored and worked in business before he entered the ministry. And then, well, there are all those Baptist preachers in my family tree. Some might say that every sermon is a big sales pitch leading up to the "call" at the end. Closing the deal for Jesus.

But me, the most I ever sold was a few candy bars on the bus, raising money for the high school band. They don't call my professional experience "nonprofit management" for nothing. And here I am on my firstever major creative endeavor, faced with the challenge of cold-calling. Hardly what you think of when you picture the Bohemian artist lifestyle.

Big breath, here I go.

The first one on my list is Sam Oni. He's the one from Ghana who joined my grandfather's Macon, Georgia church in 1963 (more of the story). I know he lives in Atlanta and I'm going there next week. Think he'll talk to me?

Fingers on the keypad. I can do this. One ring, two, three--oh good, I'll get the answering machine. Quick, think of what to say. His beautiful, lilting accent the on the answering machine--yes, this must be the right number! "Hi, my name is Cindy McMahon, and my grandfather was Walter Moore, the pastor at Vineville Baptist Church in Macon, and--" >click< a person! "Ohhhhh," he says, after a pause, "you are an answer to prayer."

His response takes my breath away and with it, all of my words.

He was meditating, he explains to me, but when he heard my voice and message, he had to come to the phone. I'm coming to Atlanta? Of course he'd love to talk to me. Just phone again when I get to town, and we'll set it up. "You can't imagine," he tells me, "the joy I am feeling now."

And I'm sure he can't imagine the warmth that spreads all the way down to my fingertips. Funny when a call to a complete stranger provides an immediate reminder of the closely woven strands of humanity.

We are inexplicably inextricable.

The Visitor

Unlike my parents, who gave up everything they owned to belong to Koinonia, I went there to be an observer. A sponge.

I dropped my stuff off at the cheerful yellow house where I'd be spending the night, and hung onto my sense of detachment as Button, my spry and cheerful host, explained that she keeps a gallon of water sitting on the bathtub drain to keep the critters out at night. "Usually just ants," she said, "and a couple of frogs, which is great. I really love the frogs. And then there were the two pit vipers. Don't you worry, though--we disposed of them without killing them." What a relief.

From there, I started my exploration.

I crawled into the archives and mined out all the relevant ore I could find. I stood in the door of Clarence's writing shack--aside from the coat of garish green paint on the outside, it seems relatively untouched since his heart stopped beating there 37 years ago. I breathed in the air off the crop fields--deep south Georgia springtime breaths--as sunset pink faded from the clouds. I stood in the center of the little Koinonia library, imagining Dad poring over the sections that would draw him in: new age stuff, alternative medicine, Hebrew and Greek. I followed a map of the farm, winding my way through the pecan groves to Picnic Hill, where the Jordans' graves are marked by a big sandy stone uncomfortably bearing a formal-looking plaque (at that point I did step out of my observer shoes momentarily, building a small cairn of rock shards on top of the big one. After all, I'm family--you don't visit a grave without leaving a little something behind).

And then, after my early morning walk on Sunday, I stepped into Button's kitchen, and everything changed.

Button was there with two friends, Emory and Nashua, having a cheerful breakfast and discussing an article in the paper about the "new" gospel of Judas. It was obvious that I had stepped into an oft-rehearsed scene. They all had their roles--Button spiritual and optimistic, Nashua dark and brooding, Emory challenging. I brought my simple bread, cheese, and tea, and sat down at the table, intending to listen and enjoy.

And then, from what seemed like out of the blue, Nashua said, "well, the Bible says we're supposed to leave all and follow Jesus." My head whipped around, there was an orange-yellow flash of light behind my eyes, and I snapped into engagement: "What is this, a KOINONIA THING???" Observer no longer.

At that, the words tumbled out of my mouth, and I told my whole story--being born at Koinonia, Dad's activism, his mental illness, my journey. What it feels like to be six years old, and on the other side of "leave all." They listened with wide eyes, and welcomed me to their breakfast table. I had come to the true Koinonia at last.




After my outburst, Nashua expressed his relief to find out who I really was. Before that, he said, I was the "Mystery Woman Who Came to Walk the Land." I liked that image. I thought that's who I was, too. But I guess not.

As I follow my serpentine path, I never seem to know what's around the next curve. But I'm always happy when it's not a pit viper.

LEAVE ALL

It's time to tell the story of LEAVE ALL.

When I went to Greenville a month or so ago to have lunch with my parents' good friend Dave, he told me about one thing in particular that really stuck with me. Stuck with me in the way of sticking in my throat, feeling physically there, like that lump that comes up when I can no longer hide how I really feel.

You see, Dave met our family when I was still a blonde cherub in diapers, and he spent more intense time with Dad than anyone else during that period. He was the driver and Dad was the attendant on an ambulance in downtown Atlanta at the end of the 60's. Lots to see, lots to experience, lots to share with each other.

So what did they talk about, riding around in that ambulance? Here are Dave's words:

Dave: A lot of the theme of what he was talking about, that he kept coming back to, was the notion of leaving all, as a concept, to follow Jesus. We had a lot of serious set-tos about that.
Me: Leaving ALL?
Dave: I think that's what he was trying to thrash out. He was very interested in not being materialistic, and he didn't want to own any more than he had to, to get by with. I can remember saying, "but Al, you've got a family to take care of," and he'd say, "but the Bible says, 'leave all, and follow me.'"
Me: Leave all, including your family, apparently.
Dave: Well, that's where his mind was going, and I couldn't understand that. I never could quite get an emotional understanding of his urge to shuck everything and leave. It seems to me that was an urge from when I first met him--that concept was something he was mulling in his mind.

I came home from Greenville and sat with it. Here was proof that from when I was in diapers, my dad was trying to figure out a way to leave me behind. And then, when I turned 6, he did. For the first time, anyway.

My head knows that it's not about me--he was mentally ill, and desperately seeking to justify his urge to escape the pressures of his life. But my heart just doesn't get it.

Yesterday's Aha

I've been reading through all kinds of old papers, looking for new insights about my dad and grandfather. Buddha said that carrying one's anger is like holding a burning-hot stone in your hand--I'm hoping that new understanding will help me finally trade the hot weight of resentment for the cool water of forgiveness, running lightly across my fingers.

I recently got another gift--letters from me to a friend, who had carefully saved them over the years. When I read through them, I felt the old familiar flush of embarrassment creeping up my neck. This always happens when I read back over things I've written long ago. I begin to judge myself: how could I have been so superficial, or pitiful, or naive, or [fill in the blank with whatever other critical adjective you can come up with]?

It may be that Dad's not the only one I need to forgive. Forgiving myself may be the hardest task of all. And the most important.

Family Tree

Today I walked on a path through the swamp, and found myself thinking of my dad. He lived in the swamp for a little while--'til the rangers found out about it and impounded his tent. I found a note about it that recent rainy day in the shed. The note said he could go get his stuff and wouldn't be in trouble, but I'm pretty sure he never did. Then he'd have to make nice.

There were great trees in the swamp today. Dad often said that some of his best friends were trees. They may have understood him better than the rest of us were able to.

As I walked along the nature trail, admiring the new life of the April trees, I came to this sign:

A Fallen Log
When a tree dies, its role in the forest does
not end. A fallen log is really the forerunner
of future forests. Its rotting wood, through
the work of plants, bacteria, and insects,
enriches the soil so that other plants
may grow.

We do carry on.

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.

On the Road

My ducks are getting antsy again. It's about time to hit the road. And the day after tomorrow, I will. I'm going to Koinonia Farm to see what I find there, and then to visit my Uncle Buddy (of the high dive fame) in Florida. Southland in the springtime. Open road. I'm looking forward to it.

My dad felt the call of the open road on a regular basis. He hitchhiked from one end of the country to the other, and had plenty of interesting stories to tell, most of them too interesting to be true. Canada, Key West, California, and everyplace in between. We often had no idea where he was.

Our family traveled a lot when he was with us, too, usually camping or visiting friends along the way. We never had any money, but that didn't keep us at home.

Dad was always the one to pack the car. When we lived in an apartment on the edge of Atlanta, he'd spread all our stuff out in the parking lot before a trip--all of it out there for the world to see--and then pack it meticulously away in the back of the station wagon, leaving only a little squirrel hole in the very-back for my sleeping bag, a good book, and me. If only he could have organized his own mind so efficiently, with a comfortable place for me there, too.

I remember heading out on a trip in the still-dark wee hours. Very exciting. I loved it.

And then off we'd go, hours and hours in the car to wherever. No DVD's or seatbelts then. Instead, we counted squiggly line signs, climbed over the seats, followed the alphabet on the billboards, and sang our hearts out. Go to sleep, you weary hobo . . . I ain't gonna study war no more, ain't gonna study war no more, ain't gonna study war no more, no more, no more . . .

and the one that always made me think of Dad:

If you see me passin' by,
And you sit and you wonder why,
And you wish that you were a rambler too,
Nail your shoes to the kitchen floor,
Lace them up and bar the door,
Thank your stars for the roof that's over you.

It made me want to climb in his lap while he drove and watch the line in the middle of the road disappear under the car. So I did. There were good moments, and I relished them.

Now that I'm grown with my own family, we've brought some of those good moments into our family travels as well. Not the part about sitting on Dad's lap in the driver's seat, mind you. But we still play the alphabet game, and we still sing our hearts out. Now I'm the one who takes pride in packing the back of the van like a ship. And the redheads love the excitement of setting out on an adventure in the still-dark wee hours. Buckle up!

I used to be afraid that I would become the main character in the film Chocolat. The wind would shift and I would feel an irresistable urge to leave it all behind. Fly like a bird to the mountain.

But as much as I love these solo adventures to immerse myself in this exciting project, coming home is the best part.

What the Ogre Knows

As I do this research, learning more and more about my loved ones and myself, I do continue to feel like I'm peeling back the layers of an onion. What really happened, and why. The different selves that each of us showed to ourselves, each other, our closest friends, the outside world.

On Sunday I interviewed my best girlfriend from high school, who happened to be a grown, married man with children, even back then. But he knew me like a best girlfriend. I recently recognized that I'd been asking all these questions about my dad and my grandfather, but this book is supposed to be about me, too, so maybe it was time to get another perspective on the third character as well. Me.

Before we got to me, my friend told me about the day he met my mother. He prefaced the story by telling me what a poor first impression judge he is, and how he always has to go back and reexamine his first impressions. In this case, he said, he couldn't have been further from the truth. And then he told me,

When I met your mother, I thought it was all an act--the whole sweet Georgia girl thing--the accent, the unbelievable cheerfulness, the incredible optimism about absolutely everything, it was really . . . don’t ask me why, I’m just telling you I’m very bad at first impressions.

It was 1977. My parents were still married. I'm wondering if he's as bad at first impressions as he thinks he is.

Layers of the onion.

And then he went on to tell me about me. He talked about the me that he saw, and how different it was from the me that other people complained about. He saw me as funny, analytical, confident. He says my family worried about my "self-esteem problem," and others talked about the "hot-headed redhead," describing me as caustic and angry. One friend confessed to him that she had the most cynical person in Celo looking after her kids. Meaning me.

Layers of the onion.

And what was my perspective? I think I mostly agreed with the majority. I openly said I didn't like myself, and I generally thought of myself as prickly and angry. I did have plenty to be angry about, after all, whether other people knew it or not. And I saw my hard sarcastic shell as my only protection.

So why did my friend see something that no one else saw, not even me? Had I convinced myself that this protective persona was the real me, when my friend saw something else entirely? And had Mom done the same thing, but with a sunny persona instead? What were our real selves? Or are we all just made up of layers? Does the combination of layers, all together, make up the truth?

This I know: when you start peeling the onion, be prepared for the tears.

Two Men and a Bible

When I went to the History Room, I learned that Granddaddy Moore had two favorite Bible verses. The first was from the Sermon on the Mount:

Seek ye first the kingdom of the Lord and his righteousness
and all these things shall be added unto you.
Matthew 6:33

The second, from my version of the Bible (since I don't have a King James), is

he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you,
for power is made perfect in weakness."
So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses,
so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.
II Corinthians 12:9

In his life and in his preaching, Granddaddy put God first.

I learned today that Dad had favorite Bible verses as well. Buried in the trunks were two pieces of paper, neatly written in different colors of marker. The holes in them indicated that they had hung on a wall somewhere. Compared to all the other pencil-covered scraps, these were practically plaques. Here they are:

That's my dad.

Hail hath no fury

Last night after supper I went to my sister's house to unearth two wooden trunks at the back of a storage shed. They're pretty much all we have left of Dad besides our memories, and I had decided that today was the day to brave them. Janet and I moved stuff out of the way to clear a path, and then sat on her back porch and talked, still trying to puzzle out pieces that can never finally make complete sense. The rain was just beginning as I pulled into my own driveway.

Major storms in the night. Crashing thunder, daytime-bright lightning, and even hail. John ended up having to go to another room to sleep, and I found myself with little redheads on either side, snuggling up for mama-comfort. I lay there thinking, "Is that you, Dad? I don't care what you say, I'm going over there anyway. I'm opening up those trunks, and I'm seeing what's inside. I've put it off this long--you can't scare me away." After all, I'm familiar with Dad storming in the night. Yes, there's fear, but I've got my share of bravado, too.

This morning it was all I could do to drag myself out of bed, but I did it. And in the pouring-down rain, I drove back across town to face the trunks.

It was a far cry from my welcome to the History Room at Vineville Baptist Church (Welcome to the History Room), and my visit to the Walter Moore Papers in Special Collections at Mercer University. There, everything was in file folders, neatly labelled, all inventoried and categorized, well lit, with tables for spreading out and a copier nearby. Sanitary. Orderly. Typed. Sane.

Today, for a more realistic experience, I really should have been sorting through papers and books in a dark moldy tent in the woods. But I couldn't have done it. Instead, I spent two hours sitting on the floor of the storage shed with a flashlight, pulling out old books, opening envelopes, deciphering the pencilled notations of a manic tortured soul who wanted desperately to make sense of the world. I could only barely manage, surfacing every few minutes into the light and fresh air to regain my balance and perspective on the world.

What got to me most were the letters I found from my childhood self to her daddy, missing him, loving him, wishing him the best.

Oh, I do hope I have the strength for what lies ahead. Surely it can't be any harder than what I've been through already.

As I pulled out of Janet's driveway this morning, the sun broke through the clouds. I can do this. I can.

Fire & Water

My dad started out a preacher and ended up an astrologer. There's one thing you can say for him--he stayed focused on the heavens!

He was a scorpio, and though I really know nothing at all about such things, astrology.com just informed me that this is a very intense sign. Duh. Also that each sign has an element associated with it, and scorpio is a water sign. Fascinating, since Dad seemed so full of fire.

But water was his only medication. As I've said, he loved to swim. He also washed dishes--it was the one chore around the house he could be counted on to do, though you really couldn't count on the dishes coming out all that clean. He loved the river when he came to the mountains, and would also lie in the tub for hours. I always wondered why he didn't completely shrivel up. And when he left us, no longer able to hold it together, he moved to the beach. There, he could swim with the dolphins, sleep under a catamaran, and listen to the waves--calmly, steadily coming in, going out, coming in, going out. It must have reassured his racing mind, calmed his frenetic spirit. It was the earth saying the same thing Dad used to say to me, in his lyrical southern voice: "everything's gonna be alright."

When I've had a crazy week and all the details are getting to me, my one-and-only will say, "you need to go walk by a creek." And he's right. The continuous bubbles and splashes, over and under, they calm the nerves, lift the spirit, quench the flames of frustration. I may be a gemini and I may not be crazy, but I've got a touch of my daddy's fire in me, and I do love the water.

Bare Feet

Hallelujah, it's barefoot season in the South! I wore sandals to church this morning and my toes are happy. Free at last, free at last.

That was one of the things we all loved about summers at Camp Celo. Shoes weren't only optional there, they were practically unheard of. You'd know you'd spent a summer at camp when the soles of your feet were as tough as the soles of your boots, and you could walk down the gravel road like nothin'. Tough feet were a badge of courage, and we strode with pride. Now my 9-year-old, Caleb, has Camp Celo fever, and he's got the dusty feet to prove it.

With my forays into the past, I've been thinking about the whole "walk a mile in my shoes" thing. Some of us would rather just take them off and wiggle our toes in the warm sand. But again, it's an image of changing perspective. Sharing perspective. With each other.

I've been asking--who knew how bad it was for us back then? What did they know? Why didn't more people know? Why didn't they get it? But this morning I took my shoes off and asked a different set of questions.

Okay, let's think of a family I'm close friends with. Got it. The parents are friends, the kids are friends, we hang out. Now imagine that the dad in that family has some wacky ideas, loves to talk about esoteric things. A little odd, but he's very charming, clearly well-educated, twinkle in his eye, interesting guy. The mom is a can-do woman. She has a job she loves, supports the family financially, and always seems to see the bright side of everything. She's very interested in what I'm up to, asks great questions, and always keeps the conversation going. Just one of those people that always seems cheerful, no matter what. Such a good friend. Good kids, too. Clean, healthy, smart, plenty of friends--they don't watch TV, so they're always reading books or playing outside or singing songs. Straight A kids.

There's the picture. Do I think the dad is beating up the mom, yelling in the night, controlling what they eat, where they go, who they see? Do I think he's paranoid, mentally ill, usually absent? Do I think I ought to find out more about what's happening, get involved, try to help?

No, frankly, I don't. There aren't any red flags. They seem okay to me. And the truth of the matter is, I don't want to believe that all that could possibly be true. I like these people. I want the best for them. I don't want to imagine that things could be that different, that horribly different, from how they appear.

Yep, I get it. I wouldn't want to see the truth either.

Sometimes, when I put my bare feet on solid ground, things get a little clearer. And when your feet are on solid ground, it's hard to imagine that the ground could be shaky for anybody else.

Near Misses

I've been thinking a lot lately about the many times our family could see History over the back fence.

Medgar Evers was gunned down on his front porch in Jackson, Mississippi on June 12, 1963. At that time, our family lived in Whitfield, 15 miles away.

That September, our family moved to Birmingham, where, as I've said, Dad was welcomed as minister of his new church on September 15, the same morning the Sixteenth St. Baptist Church was bombed, just 4 miles away. By that time, Dr. King had already written his famous "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," chastising the white ministers of Birmingham for being so unready for real change. Dad moved to Birmingham determined to be different than the rest and to integrate his church. He was different alright, but he couldn't pull it off. The city was polarized, the church was polarized, and so was he.

From there our family moved to Koinonia Farm in Americus, Georgia. I told a story (Sticks & Stones) about our time there, too, when the Sumter County Sherriff wouldn't let his daughter be friends with my sister Janet because we lived at Koinonia. Yesterday I learned that Martin Luther King had his own opportunity to get to know Sherriff Chappell. In An Easy Burden, Andrew Young described King's 1961 stay in the Americus jail:

Conditions in the Americus jail were so bad several demonstrators had to be bailed out because they simply could not withstand the discomfort and constant abuse. The marchers had not been prepared to go to jail and the morning of the march it had been fairly warm, so many of them had been arrested in light jackets, even shirtsleeves. Then a cold wave hit. When Martin asked Sheriff Chappell for blankets for the marchers, the heat was turned off, the few available blankets were removed, the windows were opened, and even the fans were turned on.

MLK described Sheriff Chappell as "the meanest man I have ever met." Probably just as well Janet never spent the night with the sheriff's daughter, her best friend.

From Koinonia our family moved to Atlanta, where Mom hung up on Coretta Scott King. And that, my friends, is a story for a different day.