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Shaped to Serve

By Charles Rush

October 31, 2010

[ Audio (mp3, 6.7Mb) ]

ese days, I have the wonderful pleasure of witnessing the simple but important ways that we shape the rising generations. My grandson Charlie and I are eating breakfast at the Summit diner. Charlie is like 2 and some change. We are sitting at the counter, spinning on the stools. I pull up a section of the New York Post- no one reads the New York Times at the Summit diner- I pull up a section of the New York Post and open it to the sports, fold the paper, so I can glance at it and talk to Charlie. Charlie can't read, of course, but he gets a section of the Star Ledger and folds it the same way I do, and glances at it.

I do the crossword puzzle because my grandparents and my parents did them every day. Now, I'll be sitting in my chair working a puzzle and my granddaughter Natalie will get up in my lap, pull out a pen and start making x's in the squares on my puzzle. I've noticed that I fill in the letters with the same little formal letters that my grandfather did. When he was done, the puzzle was perfect, like a little art work.

If your children have been to my office, and they all have, you will know that I keep a couple little bowls of candy, not for me, I actually don't notice them hardly at all. I started doing it completely subconsciously. My great grandfather, was really old when I knew him. But I would walk back to his study, a room in my Grandmother's house in Memphis, and the first thing he would do is motion me over to a great big glass bowl with a metal lid on the top of it from the 30's, and I'd reach in for a piece of chocolate. I don't have many memories of him but they are warm. I must have made a note to self that he was a smart guy. And now, all of your kids, they may not remember much from church, but warmer memories at least about the Minister's Office.

We pause, today, to remember the Saints in our lives, the people who shaped us, gave us the values that shaped us positively. Who are you thinking about right now? I want you to call to mind, in the next few minutes one of those people who developed you.

For a lot of us, we think of a parent. Representative John Lewis, the long-time Congressman from Georgia, said this about his father. "My father, Eddie Lewis, was a hardworking man who loved his family. He gave me a sense of pride and responsibility that I carry with me all of my days. I still remember in 1944, when I was 4 years old, my father paid $300 for 110 acres of land in Troy, Alabama.

He worked that land from sunrise to sunset, raising cotton, corn, peanuts, hogs and chickens. When the land was too dry or too wet, he took on extra work at the sawmill or driving a school bus. Looking back, I do not know how he was able to purchase that land, raise a family and survive the cruelty and injustice of racial segregation. But he did it. My 88-year-old mother still lives on that 110 acres of land.

My father was so proud that I was part of the Civil Rights Movement. In 1958, as a college freshman, I decided to attempt to desegregate Troy State University. I wrote to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. about my intentions, and Dr. King responded by sending me a bus ticket to Montgomery so that he could meet with me. It was my father who drove me to the Greyhound bus station for my first trip to meet Dr. King. I only wish he were here today to experience the distance we have come."

So many of us, especially those right around retirement age, had the experience of parents that gave us skills to develop a better way of life than they had, and we got educated and oriented because our parents wanted for us what they couldn't have. Dr. David Satcher, the former United States Surgeon General, said this, "My father was Wilmer Satcher. He never finished first grade, but he was one of the wisest people I've ever met. He cared enough to make sure that we all had an opportunity to get an education, even though he didn't have that opportunity.

He was also a very religious man. The only office my dad ever held was in the church--he was a deacon and believe it or not, he was superintendent of the Sunday school for almost 25 years. My mother, Anna, taught him to read, and he was really looked upon as a Biblical scholar.

I often tell a story about when I was getting ready to leave for Morehouse College, and he took me to the bus station to catch the bus. And I remember thinking, I wonder how he feels, because he was always giving me advice. And now, I'm going somewhere that he's never been. He doesn't know anything about college--he's never been to a college campus and he's taking me to the bus station to go to Morehouse.

I was ready to get on the bus and he said, 'David' I said, 'Yes, dad: He said, 'I want you to promise me one thing: I said, 'What's that?' He said, 'Where you're going, you're going to meet people who have much more than you have. And you might even meet some people who have less than you have. But promise me that you're going to treat everybody with respect, regardless of what they have. Promise me that you're going to treat everybody the same and you're going to treat everybody with respect.' And I said, 'I promise you, dad. I'll do that'

I've never received any better advice in my life. I've tried to do that. Whether I was surgeon general or president of the Medical School at Morehouse or just out in the street, I've tried to treat everybody with respect. And it pays off. So without question, the faith of my father and my mother, and their deeply held belief in education, shaped my life."[i]

Faith and education, and of course, you really need that value of respecting each and every person if you are the Surgeon General. We hope you can't be a Surgeon General without it.

I think of that tremendous gift that some people have to make others feel accepted. Some parents and grandparents are just very gifted like this and what a blessing they are. Melissa Blake wrote a piece about growing up disabled from a rare bone and muscle disease that required her to have 27 surgeries in the first 28 years of life.

She says, “You see, my mom planted the seed in me at a very young age that I could do anything I wanted and that I should never let my disability define me. I think this is what made me reach for so many things in life. In high school, I was a member of the National Honor Society, and in college, I was editor-in-chief of my school newspaper. I don't know if I would have had the confidence to push myself if my mother hadn't been there, cheering me on and always willing to give me a reality check if I ever got down on myself.

Yes, I soon discovered my mother's secret superpower lied in her ability to teach me about life as I was in the midst of living it. She's sneaky like that. Mothers aren't just people who shake a stern fist when you track clumps of mud on the porcelain-white living room carpet. And they're not just people who lecture until their face turns a blazing red when you leave heaps of dirty clothes piled in your room. They shape who you are, and they must get you ready to go out into that big world.

And that's why to my sister and me, she's Ms. Bear. Not because she's a towering, aggressive creature. To us, she represents a larger-than-life figure, a protector who takes care of her baby cubs. When my father died from suicide, I knew she not only lost her husband but her soul-mate. But instead of retreating into despair, she continued to take care of us - comforting us, hugging us, being our anchor during the storm of grief. I wish all mothers knew how important they are to their children, especially their daughters. We know you're always watching over us like a mother bear watches over her cubs.”[ii]

Even today, you hear so many people remember what it was like moving to a new country, a new culture, a new language. So many people have originally come to our country as political or religious refugees or as immigrants from the Old World.

“My parents, my aunt and I left Cuba under bad circumstances. We entered the United States as refugees. We came with one change of clothing and each other. That was it.

I cannot point to a particular event where I learned gratitude and love of country. Though I was always told about the Cuba of old, the love of country was for the country that took us in; the country that gave us opportunity; MY country -- the United States. Along with this love, came the value of being thankful -- gratitude.

Through my parents' and my aunt's daily examples, I understood that I had to be thankful for our very existence. As I grew, I often wondered what I could do when I grew up to thank my country, to give back for all it had given us. Somewhere in my late teens, it dawned upon me...join the military and give service to my country. Needless to say, my mother had never thought that this is what I would do; she was afraid for her only child's safety.

Years went by as I went to college, became a teacher and worked at Elizabeth High School. My mother probably thought that I had forgotten my military service desire...but I had not. At the age of 26 I enlisted in the US Army Reserve. She cried out of sadness and fear when I left for basic training, and she cried out of pride when I graduated from basic training. She worried when my unit when we were activated. However, throughout my military career (9 years) she never missed an opportunity to tell people that her daughter was in the Army to give back to this country.

Similarly, love of family just became part of me as I grew up. We were there for each other in good and bad times. When my aunt's business burned to the ground, my parents gave her, not only emotional support, but monetary support -- even though we had very little ourselves. When my parents had a car accident, my aunt came from California to stay with us and help us. There was never any doubt that we would always be there to help each other for life.”

Of course, not all of our homes are so anchored. I got a note from a man that described his family as very limited in their emotional life. His father, in particular, was just not very close to other people, a fact that he was aware of as a child, but not entirely as is so often the case when we are growing up. We don't entirely understand what we aren't getting. So he remembers a couple of his High School teachers, men who encouraged him, and his football coach in particular. He was a junior in High School and the team was reviewing the film from the previous game, after which the Coach would hand out decals for great plays that you could add to your helmet. They get to a piece where he intercepts a pass and runs it back almost the whole way down the field. The coach plays it, rewinds it, plays it, rewinds it and says out loud to the whole team, “just look at him, he runs like a gazelle”. It is funny how those blessings can reverberate down the course of time. Twenty years later, he is still blessed by it. Someone believed in him and told him so.

I got another quick note from someone that said that grew up in a home that just didn't have any love in it. As a result, he made many mistakes in relationships and was really miserable as a young man. He said something like ‘everything I've learned about love, I've learned from my wife.' She had been a healing for him, at least in this generation.

This is what we do for each other. It is one of the principal reasons that we actually wake up on a Sunday morning and drag ourselves to Church. There isn't any magic bullet on a given Sunday, but the cumulative effect, we are building a channel for blessing the next generation and it works in ways small and probably profound.

I was talking to Rev. Yarborough and she mentioned that her son has started playing the trombone. I have to believe that he was influenced by Tom Nazelli marching the kids into church, playing on his trombone “When the Saints Go Marching In”.

You would be surprised, like we are routinely, when we ask our 8th graders to identify people in the congregation that they might like as a Mentor for the year. They usually list a couple of names. Even if they don't know you well. They are watching.

When we make those baptismal vows and promise to be there for each other's children and together create the fabric of a substantial enough spiritual community that they get some remedial guidance on how to live and what kind of character we need for them to develop. Those are important promises.

I'm grateful for the people that put together our lunches, our Advent Workshops and Chili Cookoffs so that our kids collectively are able to experience this community as a safe place.

I'm grateful for everyone that volunteers for crowd control teaching Sunday School. In our own halting way, something important is being communicated, quite in spite of appearances. More than that, a few of you will be beacons in their lives in the future, directly or indirectly, they will look to you to find the way home to safe harbor.

I'm grateful for everyone that works with our teenagers and helps them stay connected through High School with other kids that are a bit more spiritually grounded, so that they can return their focus to the things that are important, the things that matter. And a few of you will have the great privilege one day, of watching them get married, have a first child, and seeing this more difficult phase blossom into something becoming. A few of you will know them then.

I'm grateful for everyone that has raised our budget and helped us build the building and the Nursery School next door, so that we can have a context to bless the rising generation so much more effectively, we pray, than the previous generation.

We need you, and some of us here, because of the Church, will actually find one of our most important blessings in the future, when get to watch the character of the rising generation of people connected to your family become women and men of substance. That is what we are all about.

We really are compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses. Hebrews says, “Seeing as how you are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings to us so closely, and run the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” Amen.

Our Gracious God, we remember before you those that laid down positive values for us that we could follow, people that shaped us for the better. Bless them with all of the gratitude that is within us, bless them with all of our soul… We remember them before you right now….

Fill us with that same Spirit that we might look to the future with the promise and courage that is within us. Grant that together, we might imprint the rising generation with love, character, and a more substantial way of being in the world. Bring us together in your guidance, we pray. Amen.

[i] Both of these were in an article on Father's in Ebony Magazine, June, 2003.

[ii] Melissa Blake in Psychology Today http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/disabled-and-thriving/200911/the-sneaky-ways-your-mother-shaped-you