The Miracle Worker!

We did discover the old movie from 1962, The Miracle Worker. Patty Duke did a wonderful job showing us Helen Keller. We were awestruck by the development of this child, from raw and uninstructed, to fully expressive and interactive as a human and an instructor of others.
I have always been curious about Helen Keller, as I guess, everyone who knows the story and certainly anyone who has seen Patty Duke portray her. I have spent some years meditating on the elements of human development that are illucidated in the blow by blow descriptions of her determined teacher Annie Sullivan.
My hypothesis on this, is that God is shining a light on the development of His people in the church, when these spectacles come to fruition. Perhaps I am stretching my imagination to think that God would show us ourselves in something as oblivious as the relationship of teacher and student. Perhaps also, there is more infinite a God as to have lessons in every teacher student relationship for Christ's Church, but I think it observable and mentionable to my children for me to share it.

Especially, in those days of the early 60's was the church blind and deaf and dumb, in its activity. So much of what was going on in church was blinded and deafened by racial division.

When Annie met Helen, it was acted out that Helen sat and mimicked, taking Annies glasses and rocking with her dolly. I think that we did that as the church in the 60's. We took on the name of Christ and acted out the motions, but were blind to our own condition. God will certainly not leave us in our condition of deliberate blindness to corporate sin. He will and has shaken us out of our fatal ease. We fight, personally and corporately against the change that God has for us, to bring us into conformity to Christ. The test is, when we see our sin, will we repent and turn.

Christ's miracle working power is still at work with His people. He is making us a beautiful bride, not having spot or wrinkle. He is opening our eyes and minds to see Him and respond in loving obedience to His truth.

In a Wild House, from a Wide House...

In a Wild House, From a Wide House


I do remember being small enough to ride my trike down the pathway to the gate and back again. About a 2 Yard length track was our runway for the trikes and we had the best time riding back and forth up and down the pathway. I remember when my parents had that pathway laid and the back door put into the house at 113.

The sight of a possible wild mimosa tree coming up, in my makeshift garden, today, delighted my heart beyond measure. I remember wanting to climb the branches of our delicate mimosa, growing up. We certainly would have broken it down to nothing, had my mother not protected it, as she did. Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! Don’t touch it! I want the feathers to make something. I want to touch the leaves that are so delicate. The apple tree was too tall to get up into the branches, but the mimosa was so luscious to consider and we could easily have made a catapault for one of the little ones to launch them out into outer space somehow. Don’t touch it! Okay! Well, I never got to launch one of my siblings from its branches, but I did see how it closed and opened when I brushed its leaves. I did touch it, ever so gently and see it respond to my every motion. {what a precocious child I was?} Can’t we tie one of the children to the tippy top and see how far they get? No! Okay! We rode the bikes back and forth past it and had races and it heard every word and cry that happened in that house, my mimosa. I always wanted one. And now, it looks like, I might have one coming up, completely, by accident. Wow!
We are so blessed.

And Don't forget to Be Authentic. Bible Entertainment Class 2011---

Why do I love my husband?

I was reared to be prejudiced against 2 groups of people,{excuse my french} "White people" and "Uncle Toms". And then the Lord saved me. I was somewhat young, when God arrested my affections and taught me to love Him, first. He certainly took alot of time and attention to wrestle my affections from stereotyping people, from those 2 categories. An "Uncle Tom" would have been considered anyone with that awe inspiring condescension to white people. Most Black Baptists were seen to be in this category. Their heads would genuflect, as we did as Catholics, at the name of Jesus. They would do this when a White person walked into the room. I saw them do it and I saw the look of glee in the person's eye to be thus exalted. God took years to wrestle these categories from my breast. God taught me to see the importance of loving "white people" and "uncle tom's" and to see that even these sins are cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Maybe, only they will be in heaven. The scriptures state that we must exalt others as better than ourselves. I have learned these things from my precious husband and he has learned not to genuflect in the presence of "White people". My precious husband and I have grown up together, learned to see and appreciate one another's views and value the credibility of Scripture above labels and stereotypes. If a brother or sister is in one of his prejudicial categories and is a Christian, he asks me for assistance in dealing with his own reticence in loving them with the love of the Lord. If he is fearing their faces, because they are White and he grew up to honor that group of people, that is where my gifts come into play. I do love people, and even those whom I have been taught to despise, in Christ, but what I hate is that spirit that has grown up in this country, in covert, that is antagonistic to the spirit of Mordecai. The spirit that would feel comfortable when others bow in their presence and doesn't immediately throw that pride off, scares me. I run like the plague from people who are comfortable with Black people feeling subservient to them. That is why and what I love about my husband. He teaches me where subservience is godly and where it is excessive, from scripture and from experience. He is a tremendously gifted man who has humbled himself and given himself to the tasks at hand and been stepped upon and used by those who have seen his submission as weakness. God knows!

Superlatively Impressed! "Crumbs from the Queen's Table"

I am so impressed by the exportation of hope, from America, to the hope ravaged country of South Africa. It is unimaginable, that in so short a time we have grown to a point where we are exporting an impression of respectful and respectable Black womanhood. The carrying of an African American First lady and daughters and mother, to the apartheid shadowed nation, is something that was unimaginable when I was a child. It was only a dream to me. A very longed for dream, but a dream, none the less.




The example of Melba Moore paying homage to the mother and queen of soul, as she did, in the introduction to her most famous and beautiful rendition of "Lean on Me" is the message that I would have carried to South Africa, today, were I given the privilege of speaking to the ladies. Honor your mother, by hitting that note and holding that note and doing "it", as Melba did. She called it crumbs from the queens table. They were crumbs, meaning that this was the b side of the "45" and she made it a single! Let us do what our mothers do. Let us honor what they had to endure and carry it to the next level. Let us take what they endured on the b side of the 45 and take it to a single, Not throwing out their memory, but accepting the "crumbs from the queens' tables".

Confessions of an Antifeminist...

Mon and Del were the first to challenge my father's old fashioned and severe tactics of parenting. Everytime they came over, a challenging, agressive argument ensued. I saw him peruse their introductions to the reasoning method of discipline. Nope, it rarely budged him. He would stew over the new concepts around the house and spouted arguments for a few days.
I really loved that my daddy was transparent to us. He let us see his development of thought. He allowed us to look at his adulthood as a growth process. He wasn't in charge because he was right, but because he was dad. We learned to respect hi. s authority, whether we agreed or not. I respected that he made it clear that he didn't have a father and he was going to give his children something he didn't have. He recited every observation of masculinity to me and how it shaped him.
In terms of his severe discipline, with girls, Monica was the only one to stand up to him. In our family respect didn't always mean agreement. Those two disagreed, most intensely. First cousins they were, Monica was the voice of higher education.
I do remember the first Thanksgiving the happy and adored couple came home for Thanksgiving with their 2 toddlers. They were beautiful. They were educated, emancipated and equals. He was tall and powerful, a runner, a coach, a professor. She, now a mother was making it very clear that she was not about to let motherhood slow her down in her taking life by the horns. I am still in competition and growth in my profession. No talk of diapers and child development, except to challenge the status quo. She was all of our, intellectual superior, we all knew that. We should all be sitting at her feet. She had speed of thought and command of language. It was clear that the happy couple were teammates. This was a completely new concept for us all. No servitude and commander, teammates. She said things to Del that made us all look at eachother and say, who is the boss here?

I remember the glowing look that they both had, in their late 20's and I in my early 10's. They were the special guest star at the family celebration, anytime they came home.

The song, Young Gifted and Black seemed written just about them. Still, I never said that is what I want to be when I grow up. Dad always said it. You will be like, Monica. He admired her greatly. No.
As soon as she opened her mouth, I recoiled. Her words seemed to me to be dissembling our family and the command method that we had learned.

I know now that because of my headship of being an older sister, the thought of each person commanding themselves was a blow to my ego and my totalitarian headship of my younger siblings. I had little mercy, in those days. Commands were to be followed immediately and without question. I walked away from her little disciple group, sadly. I cannot embrace her words, as much as I wanted to. It would mean the end of my regime as well as my father's.

Confessions of an Antifeminist

Believe it or not, I am old enough to remember the early days of the feminist revolution. I remember most women, being married with children. Definitely, on TV, this was the case, even if it wasn't in my life. My mom was an at home mom, but both my grandmas were single mothers and very savvy with themselves; tremendously believers in women's rights.
Because my daddy had been reared in a female dominated family, he felt it his mission, to share the pitfalls of living in such a state. Anything, that hurt my daddy used to hurt me. I understood the look on his face of loss and grief, when he saw others' fathers, interacting with them.
I told you, this morning dear Evvie, about the development of family concensus in our family. The attacks and some of the effects of the philosophies that grew up in the 60s.