When I met Jim Wallis and the Sojourners Community for the first time in the mid-1970s, I had no idea that I was being given the gift of new family and friendships that would be part of my life for the remainder of it. This relationship of friend, sister, counselor, and contributor to the life of the community and the love, support, and counsel that have been provided for me by the community have all come together in a way that has created a foundation from which much good has come.
In the beginning I found myself very puzzled about what would motivate a collective of young, white, mostly middle-class people to move into the heart of an African-American community to live a life based upon economic simplicity. I had many questions about the wisdom of this arrangement for them and for the people with whom they shared their lives.
The lessons from the liberation struggles of the '60s taught me that white people needed to take responsibility for their own community and leave African Americans alone. Some of my teachers, Malcolm X, Frantz Fanon, and others, as well as my personal experiences, continued to affirm the impossibility of whites really having the capacity to do anything beyond passing their guilt onto the African-American community, which was already overburdened by the negative projections of white people.
So, even though I never said it, initially I wondered why these folks didn't return to their own people and change the system that had twisted all of us into shapes that made life so difficult.
What is clear to me now, and wasn't at that time, is that God is always looking at more of the whole picture than we are. That is part of the beauty of the journey with God: God's perspective goes far beyond what most of us can see or even imagine at any given moment.
So God was working. It was no coincidence that my new boss at Mercer University had sent me to Newark for the conference on racism and that Jim Wallis was one of the facilitators for the workshop I had selected before I left Macon. It was a part of that tapestry of God for us to meet and for the work to occur inside of me regarding many of my attitudes as well as resolving many issues that I had about God's call for my own life.
The most profound question that began to rise in my heart was, Why are they there and I am not? It has taken almost 20 years for me to find a resting place inside myself with that question. I have learned so much from Sojourners about responding to God's call upon one's life. Standing in solidarity with them has helped me to have the courage that I have needed to bring a radical teaching methodology to my classroom; to engage white and black students without apology regarding their prejudices to name sexism, political repression, and oppression; and to stand uncompromisingly against many of the decisions made by the governing bodies of my university and of the city of Macon.
My reflection upon the courage that Sojourners has had to call forth in order to continue their life together, and their willingness to struggle to find that courage and to stay faithful to the call to live in this place even through times of great personal and sometimes collective darkness, has served as a source of help to me as I face challenges that are given to me each day.
In addition to this, I have come to understand the importance of working out one's shadow issues in a place that allows one to reflect and to see one's darkness more clearly. Therefore, from a psychological perspective, it makes perfect sense that young white folks who want to move beyond their own racial rage and guilt to some place of genuine inner healing would need to be in an African-American community. It appears that God thought this to be the place where that work and whatever other inner work was needed could be done, and thus God sent them.
On the other hand, God sent me to a place that is very different for the very same reason. I needed to work on my shadow, and the environment that I needed was not the same as Sojourners, even though the work is exactly the same in many ways.
THUS WE HOLD EACH other in our heads and hearts as we go about our respective work. It is only fantasy to think that my journey would be better if I were there with Sojourners or that theirs would be better if they were here with me. Our journeys can only be good when we are where God wants us to be. The opportunity to walk on this road toward wholeness together has clarified this truth for me.
The gifts that I have gotten from this community have been numerous, but the most profound one has been the gift of affirmation and support -- a gift that I have tried to share with others as faithfully as possible. We are family, we are together, and the problem of geography has little to do with the connection. It is in the realm of the heart, and it will always be present.
It is the understanding of the nature of this connection that gives me hope for the future and great gratitude for the present. As I think of raising my two beautiful little boys in a racist America, I have hope because I know some white people who are affirming new visions of empowerment that do not include having to denigrate others. As I think about the future, I can be hope-filled because the same God who called Sojourners and who called me will continue to call us forward to face our own darkness and to face the collective darkness. And that same God will stand with the gifts of grace and peace for us.
As Sojourner Truth's and Harriet Tubman's descendant, I have come to realize that their legacy of faith is the greatest gift that they left for us -- all of us, regardless of race or gender -- and that it is that faith which kept them alive and will continue to keep us alive as it has in the past. In addition to this, as Howard Thurman says, "The only refuge that we really have is in the heart of another person and because of that we need to make sure that our heart is a swinging door." The heart of Sojourners Community is a swinging door, and I, as well as countless others, have found refuge there.
Catherine Meeks, a Sojourners contributing editor, was an instructor and director of Afro-American studies at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia when this article appeared.
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