Bully Pulpit

Hubby and I will spend next Sunday morning taking our turn at teaching youth Sunday School. It's always an interesting experience. Sitting with a room full of teenagers is like staring into an abyss. You don't know what's out there, but you're pretty sure there is something. Some of the teens will speak up, others, like the two that we've been raised by, will sit silently and stare.

Yet, we're excited. It's always interesting to see where the discussion will lead, and this one will be particularly poignant to me. It's national anti-bullying month so the youth group leaders, and I have come up with a program which we hope will spark some discussions or at least linger in their minds. I'm collecting quotes from celebrities who felt bullied - we'll let them see if they can match them up. I'm also collecting quotes from fellow church members and leaders. I think it's helpful to see that people you respect and know personally have been through similar tough experiences. I remember as a teenager I thought all adults had it so together. Us adults know that ain't so. 

Trying to discuss bullying is hard for me. I've been bullied, and I know how it feels. Frankly my teen years give way too much fodder for discussion in regards to bullies. I think if you have empathy then when something occurs that hits close to home with one of your own experiences, the memories can almost overwhelm you. Recently there was a story about a girl in Michigan (Whitney Kropp) who was "jokingly" placed on the homecoming court. The (not so) cool kids thought it would be "funny". @$%^^&!!! I instantly was transported to the teen girl who was invited to a party at one of the cool kids houses. Ohhh, I was so delighted. I remember vividly the new outfit - cream colored velour lace up the front bell bottoms (don't hate me - it was the '70's and I was skinny), with a blue top and a silver ankh necklace. I was prepared to become cool. But becoming cool isn't possible if you've been invited to an event just to be the court jester. I also vividly remember how it felt when someone purposely tripped me, and the entire crowd laughed hysterically at me sprawled on the floor. Still I was a little dense, and stayed on. At least I stayed until I overheard some of the girls. The words used to describe me will not be used here. But I knew then that it was time to leave. So I called my parents. When Daddy came to pick me up, I started crying and the poor man didn't know what to do. He gave comfort as best he could. But it's hard to be a teenager discovering who you are when others are so quick to tell you who you aren't, and can't possibly ever become.

Now this may sound like one small instance. One bad memory that I should "just get over". But I have years of examples of name calling, and ridicule, humiliation and hurt. And I have to say that I feel sorry for the bullies, too. I wonder now just what was so hard in their lives that they needed to feel this power and superiority at my expense. Of course, having sympathy for them is made easier by having a wonderful marriage, and two kids I adore, and close friends who love me - regardless of my outfits. Somehow I was blessed with the ability to get up and walk away from the bullies. It doesn't mean it didn't affect who I am. Do NOT put me in a room full of women and expect the real me. I revert. I don't mean to, and I try not to, but I am overwhelmed at the prospect. I wrote "A Kind Place to Sit" over a year ago. I still look for someone kind in the room. And even at my age, sometimes they aren't there. Some of the young bullies just grow up to be more finessed bullies. That's where mercy, empathy, faith, compassion, and forgiveness can all play a part. Maybe they won't change. But how we react, and what we accept as reasonable behavior can change. We can each show others a level of respect and mercy whether it is shown to us or not. And we can teach our children to do that through our examples. I've had a few of my former bullies become my friends on Facebook. Most of them (not all) seem to have grown up and changed their ways. As our pastor pointed out yesterday in his sermon (Happiness Happens to Those Who Are Brokers of Second Chances) - second chances are important. I think they may be more important to us than to them. Second chances allow us to grow and change. I pray that the bullies change, and may the bullied have the strength to walk away and forgive them.

My Mama and the Sister-Lady

The box of photographs fell to the floor when I bumped into the cedar chest. I had promised to have all the pictures scanned long ago. They are the last links to our past lives, other than each other, my brother, my sisters and I. Each photo has a memory tucked inside it, waiting for one of us to tell. I leaned over to swipe the pile back into the box, to get them out of sight before I was distracted by them and their stories, but it was too late.

A pixie face in a nun’s wimple peaked up at me, as if admonishing me not to be in such a hurry to bury the past. Sister Margaret Marie, my Mama’s buddy and my second grade teacher, was staring at me from a Suburban School photo. Suburban came to Sacred Heart Elementary every year to chronicle our lives. My mother taught kindergarten there, and we have a progression of photos from her years of teaching. Sister Margaret Marie had signed the back of her photo, “To Anna, Ain’t we something!” Just like that, I remembered my mother and her, heads together, two school girls in teachers’ guise, planning trouble.

It was right after school and I was looking for my mother’s car, hoping I could go to my “cool” sister Regina’s apartment. Mama wasn’t in her car but on the steps of the convent with her head down, listening to Sister Margaret Marie. Sister Margaret barely hit five feet in height and was the shape of a rubber ball, rosy cheeked with a few wisps of salt and pepper hair just sticking out from her wimple. She and Mama were grinning like loons and I knew something was up. Turned out we were going to run an “errand” that entailed eating Chinese food at three o’clock in the afternoon.

That was a first. I never had Chinese food, let alone gone to a restaurant with a nun. It was one of many firsts. One Saturday, Mama wasn’t home and when she did walk in she was wearing a cover up and a bathing suit. Mama didn’t take off and go sunbathing. In fact, Mama didn’t take off at all. I was a little off balance, and my feeling of vertigo doubled when she told us all about the day she spent with the “sisters.”  Someone had lent their house for the day for the teachers at the Cathedral to “let their hair down.” I was only vaguely aware that nuns were people, let alone that they could let their hair down. This was in the very late sixties, early seventies at best. I was a tow-headed kid who couldn’t stop talking, but the story Mama told us that day had me speechless.

“Did you know Sister Catherine Regina used to be a Rockette?” Mama was breathless. “She dove into the pool and it was like poetry, and then here comes Margaret Marie (Whoa, wait a minute, my Mom was on a first name basis with a nun!), and she just runs like a maniac towards the pool and yells ‘CANNONBALL!’ and torpedoed into the pool!”  My mind was reeling, nuns that could swim, nuns that were dancers, nuns who wore, gasp! Bathing suits! To tell you the truth, I was a bit jealous that Mama had somehow broken into this inner circle of the sisters. She saw them for what they were; dedicated to a life of giving in a way that most of us can’t comprehend, and human just the same.

When school was over for the year, the Sisters would stay in the convent for another week or two, cleaning out the classrooms, and then packing up to go to their Mother House. That was when Sister Margaret Marie and my Mama would sneak away, saying they were running yet more “errands”. Because I was the youngest in my family, I often got to tag along with them. I could sit in the back seat of that old Fury III and listen to them for hours. They talked about their childhoods, school, life; they talked about faith and about God, family and friendship. They were remarkable together.

One time we drove to my sister Elizabeth’s house in Willow Springs. Back then it was as far away from Raleigh as you could get in the eyes of an eleven year-old. On the way we stopped at a country store called Olive’s. The store itself was a large, white, concrete block building, and it sold farm wear and gear in droves. Sister Margaret Marie was like a child at play. She walked the aisles of “Osh Kosh” overalls and “Levi” jeans with wide eyes, feeling the fabric and cooing. She had been brought up in the country and she wanted some overalls to garden in at the Mother House so her habit wouldn’t get dirty. The old timers just stared, all except for Olive, the owner. I often wondered if it was his shape at birth that had earned him his name. He was olive shaped and ripe with enthusiasm behind his counter and he stood larger than life. To say he was a big man would have belittled him. Everything about him was huge, including his kindness. He doffed a make-believe hat when my Mama and Sister Margaret Marie walked in. I heard his sotto whisper to one of the regulars to “straighten up and show some respect, that there is a Sister-Lady.”

When Sister Margaret Marie walked to the counter with two pairs of overalls you could have heard a pin drop. Olive insisted she take them, “on the house,” and Margaret Marie grinned from ear to ear as she blessed him. You would have thought that he had been in an audience with the Pope. It was precious, it was country, it was a little piece of the South at its very best, and it was a moment I won’t forget. My Mama and “the Sister-Lady” got back into the car and Sister Margaret Marie couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful everyone was. I suppose it was in that moment I realized how very wonderful she was. She was personality, a bundle of life in black and white, dedicated and faithful in ways I am still so far from understanding. Most of all, she was my Mama’s very true friend.

When the Mother House called Sister Margaret Marie away to another assignment, I don’t recall hearing either bemoaning the situation. They wrote steady through the years, letters passing back and forth until word came that Sister Margaret Marie was in the infirmary and her prognosis broke my mother’s heart. Years after she passed my mother would still send contributions to the infirmary in Sister Margaret Marie’s name, yet she seldom spoke of her again.

As a kid, I don’t think I quite understood what was going on because of the “uniform” of a nun. Today, holding that still very colorful photo of Sister Margaret Marie in my hands, I’m struck by the power of friendship. It takes all forms, it can come at us from the most unlikely places, and if we’re lucky enough, we pass time reveling in it.

Can We Reform the Reformers?

Here’s the deal. I know I’m about to step on major toes with this one, but for the life of me, I can’t stay my fingers on the keyboard. This past week the House Oversight Government Reform Committee met to discuss whether the Contraceptive Mandate, imposed by the White House, intruded on religious freedom. In answer to this, the first committee panel consisted entirely of male religious figures opposed to not just the policy, but to contraceptives as well. The second panel of five only had two women on the committee, with the same opinions as the first. Sound a bit lop-sided to anyone?

In the first place, yes, there is a separation of Church and State. However, once a Church puts people on a payroll, the church has to take out Federal/State and FICA, at that point, there is no separation. They should also offer comprehensive health coverage for their full-time employees, and coverage is something that is now defined by the government. It’s my own opinion, but logic stays ideology and emotion every time. In the second place, what dang year are we living in that men are deciding what my health care should look like?

Has a man ever had ovarian cancer? Has a man ever been high risk for delivering a child? Has a man ever been told he could never carry a child full term and if he did, he and the baby would be at risk? Quite frankly, it’s up to all of us to exercise our discretion as to how we handle our own bodies and what our beliefs consist of. Our Faith teaches us what is right and wrong, and the minute leaders of Faith go to Congress to tell us what we should be doing by law, is the moment free will disappears. That’s something I believe is strongly upheld by most religious beliefs.

I don’t want my church or a group of men from any faith, whether they believe in contraceptives or not, to dictate to me what I can or can’t do with my body where my health is concerned. That’s my earnest view. I wouldn’t want that to happen anymore than I would want our husbands to dictate what we could and couldn’t wear. Just tell me if my slip is showing, and I’ll be fine.