The Sacred

No Answer

We sat on the thread-bare couch together and stared at the television screen. Most days Mr. Mom was watching football, but not today. Today there had been another school shooting. 

Mr. Mom looked at me. “I can’t do it, Ms. Sally. I can’t send my babies to school if this is what’s happening.”

He had tears running down his cheeks. It was the first time I had ever seen a man like this cry. 

My job as an At-Home Teacher took me to all sorts of places. I saw students in gated communities and students in mobile homes. I stepped over trash piles and petted dogs that I knew by name as I knocked on the door. I went to homes with goats and chickens roaming the yard, houses that were spotless and houses that had roofs falling in. They were all different, but had one thing in common – the parents loved their children and wanted them to get an education. 

Mr. Mom lived in a tiny home in what most people would call a “low-income” neighborhood. His wife worked every day while he stayed home with the kids. He was an ex-football player, was twice my size, and loved to yell at the TV as he re-watched football games all day. To be quite honest, he was someone who I would have been scared of if I passed him on the street.

But I had learned that Mr. Mom was a teddy bear of a man, who laughed easily and was always very respectful. We were as different as could be, and while I didn’t always agree with his parenting choices, he loved his babies more than anything.

Most days I worked on the floor with the children as he blared the television. The children and I would sing songs, read books, count, and draw. Sometimes the two cats and pit-bull puppy would join us on the floor and crawl into my lap. There was also a White Anaconda snake in an aquarium in the corner that I always kept my left eye on, just in case he decided he wanted to join our lessons too. 

“What am I sending my babies to, Ms. Sally? Why are they shooting our kids?” Mr. Mom’s big brown eyes were pleading with mine, begging me for an answer. 

But I had no answers for him. As I sat beside him on the couch, I felt the tears sting my own eyes as I tried to offer words of comfort. I stumbled my way through an explanation of how we as teachers will protect our students at any cost, how we are trained in active shooter drills, how we have hiding places for our children at school. But my words fell flat as I watched the tears continue to roll, so I quit talking. I sat back down on the floor with the children and we started singing a song, as their dad continued to cry silently on the couch. 

Every once in a while I would glance up at this giant of a man, who was dressed in pajama pants, a gold chain around his neck, and slippers. Tears rolled down his cheeks for the remainder of my lesson. At the end, as I was packing up my toys and heading out, he was gathering his children in his arms and squeezing them tight. 

I wanted to tell him that everything would be ok, that his kids would be safe at school, that no one would harm them there. But I didn’t say any of those things because I knew they were empty promises. There was nothing I could say that would make any of this go away. No words would give Mr. Mom the answer he needed. 

And now – many years later as I watch another tragic school shooting in Texas unfold, I  still have no answers to offer. I can tell you that we, as teachers, have plans in our heads of what we will do if a shooter comes into a classroom. I can tell you that we will shield our students until we die. I can tell you that our schools know and rehearse the threat of shooters in the building. 

But those words still fall flat, just like they did all those years ago with Mr. Mom. Because when we hit the bottom and we sob on the couch as we watch another school shooting, we just know it shouldn’t be happening. And no words will ever solve the problem. 

So maybe, instead of more words of what we can do better, or how the teachers are trained to take bullets, or what everyone in the country is doing wrong to cause the problem  – maybe we should all go sit on the couch of someone we would be scared of if we saw him on the street. Maybe we should get to know his life – pet his pit-bull puppy as the dog slobbers on our shoes and cuddle his children in our laps.

Maybe we should cry with the one who is different from us, sit down and shed tears with the one who we thought we hated. Maybe we should reach out to the one who has more money than us, or less money than us, or lives in scary neighborhoods, or drives fancy cars, or voted for the enemy, or played on the wrong team. 

Maybe, just maybe, if we reach out to those whose life is so very different from our own, if we stretch our hands outward instead of inward, if our hearts connect with a hurting world, we will not need words at all because our actions will shout louder than any words ever could. 

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A Mother’s Day Blessing

Dear Lord,

Today we come to you and ask you to bless the mothers. 

Bless the mothers who are in this very room – the mothers of fresh little babies, wiggling in their arms and bouncing on their hips. The mothers of teenagers who are growing taller by the day. The mothers of grown children who are raising families of their own. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who are not with us today. The mothers who are taking care of loved ones. The mothers who are no longer able to venture out of their homes. The mothers who have responsibilities that carry them away from us. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who live around us and who we see every day. Bless the mothers who are far from us, who we will never meet. Bless the mothers who speak beautiful languages other than ours. Bless the mothers who live in large and expensive homes and the mothers who live in one room houses with dirt floors. Bless the mothers of our world, Lord. May they know how much they are loved. 

Bless the mothers who work in an office, the mothers who work at home, the mothers who farm land all day, the mothers who teach in classrooms, the mothers who work non-stop to keep everything going. Bless the single mothers, the mothers who live in affluence, the mothers who live in poverty. Bless the mothers who have worries larger than some of us may ever know. Bless the mothers who have children with special needs, the mothers watching over their children in a hospital bed, the mothers who are also their child’s nurse and constant caregiver. May they know how much they are loved. 

And finally, we ask that You bless the mothers who are hurting. Bless the mothers who are waiting to become a mom one day, the mothers whose children are now with You, the mothers who are motherless, the mothers who grieve for lost children. Bless the mother’s who have a mother’s heart – who poured their lives into other people’s children even though they had no children of their own. May they know how much they are loved. 

Lord, give these mothers Your blessing today and all the days. May every single mother know she is seen by You, that her prayers are heard by You, that she is tenderly held by You, and loved by You, the Mother and Father of us all. 

Amen. 

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No Mere Mortal

My Grandmother is famous for many things. Like her bad habit of hiding Christmas presents around the house as she buys them throughout the year, only to forget about them in December and requesting that the family go on a scavenger hunt to find the lost items. 

Or the way she would drive pell-mell all over the counties of Mississippi, braking with her left foot and flooring it with her right, her small frame barely reaching over the giant steering wheel. My grandfather taught her to drive after they were married, and she never quite mastered the finer points of, let’s say, steering and stopping and turning. The story goes that one time she came home with only 3 out of the 4 hubcaps on her Pontiac. She insisted to everyone that she had no clue where the hubcap could have dropped off, while my grandfather insisted that she had to have hit something to knock it off. After several weeks, the missing hubcap was discovered by my grandfather next to a dented guardrail. He proudly brought it home and nailed it to a tree – a little monument to my grandmother’s driving skills that she had to see every time she looked out the kitchen window. 

Or the time she decided to serve tacos for our Christmas meal because she was tired of ham and turkey. 

Or how she would stick little sandwich bags of cash in the freezer for safe keeping. 

Or her many margarine dishes in the fridge that contained everything but margarine. 

But probably the thing she is most famous for, amongst all family members and at least three neighboring counties, are her biscuits. 

Handmade, crispy on the bottom, flaky on the top, melt in your mouth biscuits. 

“Biscuits in the well” is what she calls them and I can’t remember a day I didn’t love them. When I was a child visiting her house, I would wake up in the mornings to sounds of laughter and conversation floating from the kitchen. I would sit up from my lumpy pallet on the floor, crawl over all the twisted limbs and tangled heads of cousins sleeping next to me, and sniff the air greedily. Biscuits. 

Still half asleep, I would shuffle my feet on the dusty, tan linoleum floor and make my way to the kitchen. An oval wooden table with a dozen chairs, none matching, but somehow all looking like they belonged there, would greet me. And there would be my grandmother, standing in front of the sink, hands deep in flour and oil, rolling out biscuits. Her apron would be covered in grease stains and fresh flour. She would still be wearing her night dress. Aunts, uncles, neighbors and sometimes strangers would be sitting at the table. Newspapers were spread out, debates were in full swing, a dog would be barking, and a baby would be banging on the table with tiny fists. 

The biscuits would be baking on cast iron sheet pans, so heavy mere mortals could not lift them out of the oven. But somehow my Grandmother could do it. Probably because she is no mere mortal. 

As soon as a fresh batch would make it out of the oven, hands would grab for them. Eating them hot was always the best, but they tasted just fine when they were cold. Or even better crumbled up in a glass of milk for supper. 

Those biscuits fed babies and old men. They fed wanderers who were just sleeping over on their way to another destination. They fed good friends. They fed people who had grown up on that very soil in rural Mississippi and they fed internationals who had never stepped foot on American dirt before. They fed rich, poor, black, white, believers and doubters. They fed anyone who was invited to the table, which was exactly everyone. 

If I had to stop and guess, I think those biscuits made it into the hands of more people than can fit into the LSU stadium. I speculate that thousands of humans on this earth have enjoyed hot biscuits rolled by my Grandmother’s hands and plopped onto cast iron sheet pans.

Now that I’ve reached the ripe old age of 42, I’ve been thinking a lot about changing the world. What happened to that young girl who was so eager to make a difference? She was going to set out to do something BIG. What has she done at all to improve this place? Does a mortgage and a dented Mom Car count? 

And then I think about my Grandmother. Covered in flour and standing in front of a sink, wearing an old night dress and rolling biscuits by hand. 

She changed the world with a pan of biscuits. 

I’m sure she never set out to have her biscuits be life-changing. All she wanted was to provide a meal for the people she loved. But somewhere in those biscuits she discovered the secret for changing the world. And it’s been there the whole time, the secret staring at me, ready for me to discover it too. 

Maybe I don’t need to start a revolution. Maybe I don’t need to write the next great American novel or make millions. Maybe all the things I have been chasing don’t really matter at all. Maybe I’ve been too focused on all the wrong things.

Maybe all I need to do to change the world is to offer someone a seat at my table and a pan of biscuits. 

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