An Easter Message
I suppose everyone’s family is unique. Most of us, perhaps, see our own family as a soap opera. and often view them as a divine embarrassment, mortified to show them to others yet proud as a peacock at all their foibles and wouldn’t want them to change. As a child I lived in quiet certitude and rebellious conformity. My parents were stable, predictable, embraced by an anonymous nobility, and they were uncritical. My father was quiet, to the extreme, I think. My mother never stopped talking. But I never remember any nonsense coming from her mouth, if you define nonsense as silliness. She was ready to laugh but never even told a joke, yet she said some of the funniest things I have ever heard. I remember once we got into a discussion on the subject of art. We were in the car driving through Charlotte, North Carolina. There was much ado about a copy of a Greek statue of very ancient origin being erected somewhere in the city, but it had no head. Mother said, with the same finality she said everything, “What good is a statue without a head. If they are going to have a statue, they ort to at least put a head on it.” And that ended our discussion on art, though she added a few more choice words about the stupidity of the city fathers, and she had a very hard time letting the subject rest.
When I was a little boy, I wanted to run away from home but had nothing to run away from. As likely as not mother would have packed me a lunch to take with me and told me to be home before dark. My parents had a ubiquitous presence, giving us the assurance that the world was a safe place. I do not remember them quarrelling, and though they both worked nights in the cotton mill, the house was never empty, one never felt abandoned, yet from my upstairs bedroom a thousand times I watched the taillight of our Pontiac leave the driveway near midnight. The taillights would stop at the end of the lane to pick up Miss Mabrey and then disappear. Everyone in our little mill village lived on the same schedule. What is odd about that?
My mother never preached a sermon. She was not religious. I never saw her read the Bible. I never saw or heard her pray, though she reverently bowed her head and closed her eyes when others prayed. She never folded her arms. It was as if she were waiting for the prayer to end, as if it were an interruption, rather than actually participating, yet she accepted God and Christ as she accepted the sun rise and the sun set. Her believe in God was imbedded, irreproachable, and above argument. It was an assumption upon which she unconsciously based her life. She lived inside of God’s kingdom. Where was there room for doubt.
A moment that my mother couldn't possibly remember was the time she taught me about Christ. I knew His name, of course, but until that moment He wasn't real to me. It was in her same absolute manner that I knew so well. She invited me into her definite world of innocent assumptions. She did not qualify her beliefs. They preexisted. E.E. Cummings said that Boston Ladies lived in “furnished souls.” I like that phrase; When mother came to earth she brought the furniture of faith with her and, even under the assault of the fiery darts of the adversary, it never wore out, was never debated, examined, or modified. Her faith was matter of fact. It was as comfortable to wear as her skin.
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