If you’ve lived in Boston for even a little while, and you own a car,
chances are you’ve had the perilous experience of driving on the Jamaicaway, a
road that was built long before every household had 2 cars and one of them was
an SUV. Just getting on the Jamaicaway from any feeder road is an adventure,
especially at rush hour. And having the fortitude to do that requires something
of us that is not in great supply these days. Before I heard Liz Walker speak
at Sacred Threads last Tuesday night, I would have said that what we need more
of is patience. Lots of it. But now, I
know it requires something much greater than patience. It requires grace.
Liz Walker is a former WBZ-TV Boston anchor and award-winning
journalist, who is now a minister and a preacher at the Roxbury Presbyterian
Church. When she began her Sacred
Threads talk last Tuesday night by talking about the challenges of getting onto
the Jamaicaway, I wondered what that had to do with grace. Of course, I KNEW
what she was talking about; I used to live on the Jamaicaway where a regular
sport was watching the daily accidents, yet I still wondered: “Why is she
talking about THIS? Isn’t she supposed to be talking about grace?” And then, it
hit me, how the challenge of getting onto, and driving on the Jamaicaway, is a
perfect metaphor for discussing the topic of grace. Let me tell you why.
As Liz says, “the Jamaicaway is not a gracious road.” What getting on
to it and driving on it does, however, is force you to find a place within you
where grace exists and let that grace take over instead of all your instincts
to push forward, edge out the cars around you, and drive in attack mode. Anne Lamott says, “Grace is not something I
DO, or can chase down; but it is something I can receive, when I stop trying to
be in charge.” To find grace in us, no
matter what we are doing (like driving on the Jamaicaway), Walker tells us to
do just that- to let go and stop trying to be in charge, so we can receive
grace. Let the anxious drivers go ahead, stop trying to be first, and even
bless them as they go. A tall order on your best day, but that’s what grace is
all about.
Liz Walker will tell you she’s no saint and she still isn’t always
able to be gracious. Few of us are. But, a powerful conversion experience opened
her eyes to the need for grace in all of our lives. That happened on a series
of trips to South Sudan with a group of Boston humanitarians. It was 2001 and
she felt “called to do something else” other than TV news; she thought the trip
to South Sudan would yield a good story and might just guide her on a new
path. It turned out to be much more than
that. She went there to cover a story as a
“removed” journalist, but she left “touched by grace,” realizing a
removed stance from the world’s stories was no longer acceptable for her. Walker
says, the lessons she learned in South Sudan were all connected to grace, so she
continued to visit there for eleven more years, each trip deepening her commitment
to and appreciation of the power of grace in our lives.
On one such trip, the group’s luggage was lost. They were left with no
tent, no food, no supplies, no water. Word about their misfortune quickly
spread throughout the village and people started to arrive with “gifts” for
them; brightly colored cloth to wear, hand hewed cots for sleeping, pots of
goat to eat, and children brought sticks for them to brush their teeth. As
Walker says of that experience, “the people in South Sudan had nothing, but
they were willing to share everything. They had nothing materially, but
everything relationally. In that moment I realized that although we came to
save Africa, Africa saved us through God’s grace.”
Walker says she now understands that grace is much more than a prayer
before meals or a disposition to be generous.
Grace says, “I need to lean on you and you need to lean on me.” It’s the
kind of love reflected in Martin Luther King’s philosophy about love and
forgiveness, and practicing it takes courage and risk. It’s like the Ubuntu
concept of Bishop Desmond Tutu that says, “I can’t be my best unless you are
your best.” It’s “I’m going to love you not because you love me back, but
because you NEED love.” By their actions, the South Sudanese women showed her
exactly what grace in action looks like and she wanted to take that with her
and live it and reflect it in her work.
Walker is fond of quoting Anne Lamott’s statement that, “Grace meets
us wherever we are, but does not leave us where it found us.” Grace met Liz
Walker long ago in Alabama, came with her to Boston, to television news, to the
Harvard Divinity School, to South Sudan and now has taken her to Roxbury Presbyterian
Church where she works each day to help break the cycle of violence, build
relationships, and pray for forgiveness, grace and love, which, she says, “is
not innate. It has to be learned and unless you have a model for it, you don’t
know where to begin.” So, she’s trying to model it.
Back to the Jamaicaway, Liz says like most of us, she hasn’t mastered
being in grace all the time yet. But, when attempting to enter that busy road,
she tries to be conscious, patient and remember what the Sudanese women taught
her- “that there is no us and them, only US.”
Frederich Buechner says, “The place God calls you to is the place
where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” We are all glad that the deep hunger in
Boston and South Sudan was the place where Liz Walker found her deep gladness,
and she heeded God’s call. She is a passionate human being who has chosen to
live her life as a testament to the powerful need we all have for grace in our
lives. And, I for one am thankful.
Pamela Econoply Woodnick
11.10.13
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