Identity is a difficult thing. You nourish yourself; you strive for education, experience, and perhaps an adventure. These choices change you and shape you. But who you really are is what finds you. You imagine you have put yourself in this place, but the reality is that where you come from, whom you were born to, and what was placed in front of you is what shapes who you are at your core. That these things can conflict is not design, it is inevitable.
I am who I am
I was born in Atlanta, Georgia to two loving parents from Georgia whose parents were from Georgia and South Carolina and Virginia whose parents were from Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia, and so on and so on until the parents were from Europe and America still sent the King a lovely Christmas card. We were members of the Methodist Church. My mom was a girl scout, my dad was a boy scout, and my brother and I were boy scouts. Everyone was a Democrat. We were taught to love the world we occupied, love the people around us, and have faith that we were being watched over and cared for. At the time, this all made sense.
You could love grits and collard greens and still vote for a Democrat. You could be in the Boy Scouts and it was not a political statement. Chick-fil-a was the standard after school snack or what you grabbed on the way to a troop meeting. We could enjoy these things and still love the world we occupied, love the people around us, and have faith that we were being watched over and cared for.
Atlanta was the city too busy to hate, but let’s not kid ourselves. Anyone who lives there will tell you that you do not have to hate to be insidious. Racial lines are drawn all the time – they do it officially every ten years – and yet you continue to grow up alongside people of all kinds, rarely noticing a difference. It was a place where you might not hear English even if you walked through a crowded supermarket. We could ignore the petty racial fights – race was just a proxy for personal power struggles, anyway. It was the perfect place because it taught us to love the world we occupied, love the people around us, and have faith that we were being watched over and cared for.
I had friends in the Boy Scouts who were gay, but no one seemed to care at the time. We went through Boy Scouts to become not straight men or gay me, but men. And we became men. The values we were taught then are the ones I hold to my core today: trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. The Boy Scouts reinforced us to love the world we occupied, love the people around us, and have faith that we were being watched over and cared for.
The United Methodist Church was – in the grand scheme of religion – pretty liberal, but it did have some hold out policies. That didn’t matter, because there were great people and great churches. The church taught me that God is love, Jesus showed us to help each other, and being Christian was done through charity, goodwill, and above all else, love. The core message was to love the world you occupied, love the people around you, and have faith that you are being watched over and cared for.
Maybe I was always fooling myself – stuck inside some magical bubble where porch swings and iced tea brought people together from all walks of life; where great minds and artists flourished in a community of inclusion, faith, and love. That dream has all the trappings of reality: I have waved to and chatted with the black church ladies strolling to Sunday service while sitting on my porch; I have read Flannery O’Conner and William Faulkner while sipping on a bourbon in a porch swing; I have raised cane with my friends – gay, straight, white, black, rich, and poor – all while the smell of jasmine and honeysuckle permeated our lungs and our lives. That is the south, to me.
I do not know when that was taken away – when some cruel culture warrior decided to pop that bubble. The warriors spilled the tea, tossed out the books, and set the porch swing on fire. They filled these oak groves with intolerance, hate, and ignorance – marching through like Sherman, laying waste to our art, history, and faith.
look away
look away
cry
look away.
Whether that was true or not does not matter much to me. It is a dream now. A distant vision of who I am – my identity – that I long for. I have seen it in others. A small flame of what was and what could be again. You hope to bring those flames together and find a place that was lost. You search them out, call to the world to find those kindred spirits so that you can create that place again: a place of porches and neighbors and books and faith, where all are welcomed because all are different. A place of love for the world you live in and the people around you.
Well said, Billy. Alex linked to this on his Facebook page. First I knew that you had a blog.
*cough* http://www.druidhills.org ‘radical love lives here!’ *cough*
But seriously, if I had the patience to simply write out how I felt (once one removed me from the cultural fight I found myself fighting), it would look shockingly similar to what you have done here. No surprise there, brother.
Very well done.
Thank you Ms . .. err. . . .Diane? There is something particularly special about a former English teacher – one who taught American Lit, no less – complimenting this post. I’m glad you got to read it.
Daniel, I’ve never been to DHUMC, but I know it well enough to know that it fits right in with St. Mark and Foundry and the others that we know and love. You were certainly part of the inspiration for this post – few people I know are as passionate about this you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.
Billy, I agree with Daniel. You spoke words that would have just as likely come out of my mouth err fingers. Thank you.
Mr. Joyner, Beautifully written and I agree. And I am not a born and raised Southerner but have lived here for almost 40 years. Keep up the honest writing.
Billy, we don’t know each other, but we share a treasured friend, Melita Easters. Her FB post is how I came to find this. Reading your blog post, I was reminded of something that the President of Pfeiffer University in North Carolina said yesterday at graduation. I will paraphrase it because I wasn’t there and heard the account of it secondhand from my daughter, who is on the Pfeiffer faculty and heard the address. He posed a question to those gathered: “When did we become enemies?” He went on to say that at some point in recent history, the act of disagreeing with each other devolved into the act of refusing to listen to any viewpoint that doesn’t line up with our own and further slid down the slope when we began giving ourselves permission to label the person with the opposing opinion – “hater”, “ignorant”, “intolerant”. His simple plea was that we all try harder not to do that – no matter what side of an issue we find ourselves on. Like you, I am thoroughly Southern. Your memories are mine (if you substitute the Girl Scouts and the Baptists and Charlotte for the Boy Scouts and the Methodists and Atlanta). And you do remember it correctly – that is who we were and probably always will be. Thing is, at some point, I became a Conservative and you became a Liberal. Other than that, we are a long lost brother and sister who never met. I don’t know you, but I respect the things that you care about, even though we probably don’t agree on very many of them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all take that position and just start right there and see where we end up? Thanks for this blog post – I’ll try to check back often. Oh – and feel free to check out my little blog as well – http://www.bethyarbrough.blogspot.com – aka “Sweet Tea Gazette”.
Thank you for the kind words and for stopping by. I really appreciate the comment because you illustrate the ultimate point – we always disagreed, and there were always people who were different, but there was a time when we all got along regardless. I’m gladly following your blog now and I look forward to more posts.
My sister Melita Easters linked this on her facebook — I had to share! Well said- many of my friends here is South Ga and elsewhere have liked this post. It sounds like something that our beloved “preacherman” would say here at First Christian-Valdosta before communion. Thank you for such a great post.
That means a lot to me since my father went to church down the street – a proud Wildcat and VHS grad. Thank you for the kind words and stopping by
I am a friend of Lydia’s and loved your post! My husband is Jody Cooley and he is running for the 9th District Congressional seat as a Democrat. You ought to check out his site/blogs. You are not alone in wishing for folks to get along… There are more out there like you than you hear about!
Lora
http://www.cooleyforcongress.com
Thank you for your thoughtful blog. A couple preacher friends of mine posted links on Facebook. As I read it I thought “that’ll preach!” as we preachers often say! I grew up in small town Arkansas and while I know we all tend to romanticize our childhood and the past, I do remember many moments in school and church (S. Baptist) that were about respecting, loving and caring for each other. Is it just me or do you look like John Cusak?
Billy, I am a “Yankee” at the core. Raided in the Bronx by 2nd generation immigrant parents. Liberal to the “core” and Jewish to boot. I have been living in a rural (population 4,000 ) Georgia town for the past 8 years. My core and the friends I have made her seem to blend at the nexus of two fundamental traits; honesty and trust. Why I found that I could be as liberal and as Jewish as I wanted to be (with the expected sad exceptions) if I remained honest to myself and m new neighbors about who I was and consistent in my expressed values, Anyway, I am glad you speak your mind. I like the way it reads too.
“I haven’t lost faith, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
First off, your post is wonderful and your sentiments are clearly shared by many others. Let that encourage you. We tend to remember the better days of the past instead of the worse for reasons both unconscious and conscious. That’s an important characteristic of human beings. It shows what we value.
The voices of hatred and intolerance are always loudest, but they’re also the quickest to fade away. Like a raging fever, they cannot sustain themselves, and eventually eat themselves alive. Acts of kindness and lives filled with love may not make the front page news, but they line the pages of history. Dr. King was right. Goodness and justice are certainly not the current theme of our culture or our politics, but they will win in the end. Your writing this post and the responses it engendered are proof alone of that.