One of My Personal Heroes: Jimmy Carter

I am writing a series of blog posts about my personal heroes. Last week I wrote about my paternal grandmother, Colleen Miller. Of all my heroes, she is the one I was closest to personally. Today I’m going to write briefly about another one of my heroes, this time someone I’ve never met. His name is Jimmy Carter.

As you all know, Jimmy Carter was the 39th President of the United States from 1976-1980. I was born in 1978 so I have no recollection of his presidency. From what I hear, from every single person who has volunteered the information, Jimmy Carter was perceived to be an ineffective president. Some called him naïve others called him incompetent. One person said, “He tried to run this country with his Christian values and you just can’t do that successfully.” This person wasn’t saying that Jimmy Carter proselytized or even favored Christianity during his term. What this person was getting at was that he felt that President Carter valued peace over national security. I didn’t know enough to agree or disagree. Other than very little knowledge about an oil shortage and a hostage crisis in Iran, I don’t know much about his presidency at all. He is not my hero because he was president, just as Ronald Reagan isn’t a hero to many people because he was an actor. What is important to me is what Jimmy Carter has done after his presidency.

First of all, Jimmy Carter is one of my heroes because he is a man of deep Christian faith. He has shared this faith with others for decades through writing faith-based books and daily devotionals. I read his words every day for a year and I have a deeper faith because of it. Jimmy Carter shows me that it is possible to have Christian faith, even an Evangelical faith, yet not to be affiliated or aligned with the political far right. His faith has led him to tirelessly work for peace through The Carter Center, which he founded for the purposes of “waging peace, fighting disease, and building hope.” In 2002, Jimmy Carter was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.” You can learn about the Carter Center and their work by clicking on The Carter Center.

Jimmy Carter has spent his life serving God in Jesus Christ through trying to bring people together to settle their conflicts in peaceful rather than violent ways. That is why he is one of my heroes. Here are some quotes from him:

“I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.”

“A fundamentalist can’t bring himself or herself to negotiate with people who disagree with them because the negotiating process itself is an indication of implied equality.”

“I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God's eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews - everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.”

“I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don't have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don't adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.”

“My position has always been, along with many other people, that any differences can be resolved in a nonviolent way.”

“There should be an honest attempt at the reconciliation of differences before resorting to combat.”

“Too many of us now tend to worship self indulgence and consumption.”

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.”

“We can choose to alleviate suffering. We can choose to work together for peace. We can make these changes—and we must.”

One of My Personal Heroes: Colleen Miller

I decided this week that I’m going to write some posts about my personal heroes. I probably won’t write all of these posts in consecutive weeks but will write them when there is nothing else that calls out for immediate attention. Some of the folks I will write about will be famous people, some will be people I’ve never met but whom I greatly admire, and some will be people I’ve known in my own life. Today I begin with one of my greatest heroes: Colleen Miller. She was my paternal grandmother, whom I called Granny.

Verda Colleen Miller was born on April 21, 1931. Colleen, as she was known, was born and raised in rural Kansas. Her father was what they used to call a cad or a scamp who was pretty much never around. She found out later in life that her father had a couple of other families in different parts of the country. Her mother was young and was a bit of a “rolling stone” herself so Colleen was mostly raised by her aunts in the tiny little hamlet of Miltonvale, Kansas. After high school she moved to Enid, Oklahoma to attend a business school. There she met Everett Miller (sound familiar?) and they married in 1950. They lived on the Miller family wheat farm and raised four children (including my dad Lee) while also raising crops and animals. While Everett was more of a joker, Colleen was very stern with the kids and made them toe the line. Sometimes, perhaps to get away from it all, she used to like to go walking through a small orchard on the family land. After all four of the kids were grown and out of the house, the marriage disintegrated and, after being a farm wife and mother for three decades, she was on her own. Everett remarried soon after the divorce and died just a few years later of pancreatic cancer. Both of them must have been somewhere around 50 years old when they divorced. Colleen asked, “What now?” She did what every 50-year-old does (read sarcasm); she went to college. She enrolled at Phillips University in Enid, Oklahoma, a small liberal arts college (that doesn’t exist anymore) affiliated with the Disciples of Christ denomination. She got a degree in sociology. “What now?” she asked. “Grad school!” She enrolled in the school of social work at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. She graduated and became a licensed medical social worker, taking a position on the birthing floor at the University of Oklahoma Hospital in Oklahoma City. She did a lot of work with incarcerated mothers, impoverished mothers, drug addicted mothers, etc. All this time I really didn’t know her that well as I was a kid growing up in South Carolina. I’d spent a little bit of time with her, received a one dollar bill for every birthday and talked to her on the phone at Christmas, but that was about it.

When I moved to Oklahoma in high school I started to spend some more time with her on breaks from school. She lived in an apartment in a high rise building in downtown Oklahoma City. Whenever I visited her I slept on her red velour couch. She always called it a “divan,” which is a word I’d never heard and sounded quite fancy. Also, Granny liked computers. She had the internet before I’d ever even seen it before, and she immediately started using it to do genealogy. I loved going out on her balcony at night to see all the city lights. I got to know her fairly well during those times, although I never appreciated her. What I remember most about those years was her little “briefcase.” Granny was quite short, maybe 5’0”, and she had to carry a little cassette tape case with her everywhere she went. It looked like a little briefcase. It was to put on the floor to place her feet on in a restaurant or at the movies because otherwise her feet wouldn’t touch the floor and it hurt her back. She was a breast cancer survivor and she had osteoporosis, heart disease, and severe sciatica. She was in pain a great deal of the time. Oftentimes I was given the job of carrying her little “briefcase” when I was with her. As a teenager I hated that and cared too much about what other random strangers might think of me. I did it, though, because Granny could get pretty grumpy. My cousins and I still talk about how she would tear into a waiter if they got her order wrong. Because of her health she had to be very particular about her food. As long as you weren’t a waiter, though, she was a very kind person.

On the morning of April 19, 1995, while I was a couple of hours away in the town where I went to high school, Granny went to work as she always did. The hospital was just a few miles from her high rise apartment. While she was in the elevator at work at 9:01 am the elevator jolted and there was a loud boom. She got off at her floor and found out in the coming hours that the unthinkable had happened—a Ryder truck filled with homemade explosives had been ignited at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building less than two miles away in downtown Oklahoma City, later finding that 168 people had died. Granny worked throughout the day and coming days as patients came through the doors of the hospital. Also, in that split second that it took that bomb to ignite, my Granny became homeless. Her apartment building was across the street from the Murrah Building. The building had cracked and every window on her side was blown out imbedding glass into everything she owned. She lost pretty much everything. She had to start over… again.

She finally decided to retire and she moved to Norman where she had two daughters, a son-in-law, and three grandsons living. She got a little apartment not far from the OU campus. That was a factor in my deciding to attend the University of Oklahoma. I later transferred to Oklahoma State. During those two years at OU, I spent a lot of time at Granny’s apartment. We ate Arby’s together and she always had Sprite in the fridge because she knew it was my favorite. We watched Animal Planet together and she loved her little parakeet Petey (I think that was his name). They had lengthy conversations together. Eventually, after an accident, she had to give up her green Ford Escort and start using a scooter that she named Blue. She would ride Blue across the street to the grocery store and through the neighborhood to St. Stephen's United Methodist Church where she became a very active member in her later years. She was one of my best friends during the first two years of college, which were very rough for me. I had a lot of trouble making friends but Granny was always there for me. She didn’t always tell me what I wanted to hear but she was always there. During those years I had no idea how poor she was financially. I didn’t realize that until I mentioned to one of my aunts that I was going to ask Granny for a loan to help me out with school. She’d been so generous to me that I assumed she had a bunch of money. My aunt informed me of the actual situation and I never asked for the money, which is good because Granny probably would have given it.

Before the fall of 1998 I decided to transfer to Oklahoma State University about 90 minutes away. I later found out that this grieved my Granny deeply. I graduated, got married, Danielle graduated, and then we moved to Austin, Texas for me to attend seminary. I didn’t call Granny as much as I should have but when I did she was always glad to hear from me. In the spring of 2005 I headed up to Oklahoma to meet with some folks about doing an internship in a small Oklahoma town about an hour from Norman. I was excited that I’d get to reunite with Granny on a regular basis, at least for ten weeks. The night before the meeting, I slept on Granny’s pull out couch (the old divan had been destroyed in the bombing). I opened the fridge and there was a can of Sprite waiting for me and we had Arby’s for supper. Granny had lost a lot of weight since I’d seen her, and her sciatic nerve pain was excruciating. She told me several times how much she loved me and how proud of me she was. Also, that night she handed me a $1,000 check and told me that she wanted Danielle and me to have it. I tried to refuse but she wouldn’t let me. I didn’t know where she’d gotten $1,000. The next morning it was really cold and I didn’t have a coat with me as I was used to Austin. She made me put on her pastel blue and pink Southwestern print fleece jacket. She hugged me extra long and stood in the doorway and waved as I pulled out of the parking spot. That was in April. On Wednesday, May 18, just a couple of weeks before I was to move up to Oklahoma for the summer, my dad called me to tell me that Granny had died in her sleep. I wasn’t surprised but I was devastated.

When Granny died she was really just my Granny, but as I matured and experienced more in my life, through my memories of her and stories told by others, she became not just my Granny, but my hero. I will give you four quick reasons why Colleen became my hero.

Colleen was an avid lifelong learner. She read constantly and when her eyes went bad she listened to books on tape. She learned how to use the computer at an age when most people wouldn’t bother. She kept me supplied with books, often taking me to Borders or Barnes & Noble and letting me pick out a book for her to buy for me. She also started volunteering with a theater company in Oklahoma City. It was something she’d always wanted to do. She loved the theater. Her curiosity was insatiable and no subject was outside of her interests. I’m a lot like her in that way. When she died she was enrolled in a conversational Spanish course through her church. What she planned to use that Spanish for I have no idea. She probably just wanted to learn it. That’s one reason she is my hero.

Colleen served others in the midst of her suffering. My Grandpa had left her, so she went to school to learn how to help others. She was in physical pain all the time, yet she’d take us out to eat or to the movies. She suffered from depression yet she helped young women through some terribly depressing situations. She lost everything she owned, yet she helped others who’d lost someone they loved. She complained much less than I would have, and she served much more than I would have too. She even donated her body for medical research to help medical students learn to become doctors. That’s another reason she is my hero.

Colleen was a very spiritual person. After her divorce she eventually became a Roman Catholic, going through all that entails. I actually have her confirmation stole in my office. She eventually left the Catholic Church, though, because although she loved deeply the liturgy and pageantry of the Catholic Church she simply couldn’t abide any longer the Catholic Church’s views on several issues such as homosexuality and the role of women in ministry. I remember asking Granny once, “What’s the Holy Spirit like?” She thought for a moment and then responded, “The way I experience the Holy Spirit is like a jar of warm oil being poured over my head.” I’ve obviously never forgot that. She studied the Bible and prayed and served as long as she could. She had a quiet spirituality about her but she was always willing to talk about it if I asked. That’s another reason she is my hero.

When she finally found the church where she felt she belonged, it was St. Stephen’s Methodist Church in Norman. She loved St. Stephen’s. St. Stephen’s motto is “Where all are welcome.” They describe themselves as “a progressive Christian church that is open and affirming of all ages, ethnicities, sexual orientations, economic brackets and walks of life.” At the time, and in some ways still today, it was the only congregation in Norman that took all comers and took them as they were. Whatever venom she didn’t use on waiters who didn’t get her seventeen substitutions right, she would put into someone whom she felt was a bigot. My Granny was fierce in defending her open and affirming church. When I would raise my eyebrows about some things, she would often say something to me like “This isn’t about an issue; this is about a person. How would you want to be treated if you were that person?” At least by the last decade or so of her life, Colleen was the most accepting person I’ve ever met. Her memory encourages me to stretch my own acceptance. That’s yet another reason she is my hero.

After Granny’s death, and after her ashes were returned to us, we took half of them up to the old orchard where she used to walk and watch birds. My son Wyatt, who is now six and never got to meet her, was just starting to walk at the time. It was a really windy day in northern Oklahoma. My uncle stepped over the barbed wire fence and avoided cow patties to spread her ashes out. Right at the moment he released them, the wind shifted and blew Granny all over his face. He came back wiping his face off and laughing. “Granny’s revenge!” we called it. The other half of her ashes was placed in the columbarium in the courtyard of her beloved St. Stephen’s Methodist Church. I was able to be a part of that simple committal service as well. I miss her every single day. She wasn’t just my Granny. She was my friend. She was my mentor. She was my hero.

By the way, my three-year-old daughter’s name is Josselyn Colleen Miller. She hasn’t started yelling at waiters yet, but like her great-grandmother, her curiosity is insatiable.

May the peace of God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fill your week.

Pastor Everett

Confessions of a Former Racist

I grew up (ages 3-14) in South Carolina where the Civil War is merely on a temporary ceasefire. The culture I grew up in was pretty racist. Don’t get me wrong; not everyone in South Carolina is a racist. I’m just saying that the culture, at least during the 80’s and 90’s when I lived there, seemed pretty racist when I think back on it. The racism I grew up around wasn’t usually an aggressive kind of racism; it was more of a condescending kind of racism. “She’s pretty…for a black woman” or “He’s seems articulate for a black man” were the kinds of statements I heard fairly regularly. I remember someone in my family saying, “I’m not a racist, but I can’t stand Filipinos.” I’m pretty sure that the second clause in that statement negates the first clause. When we were in another part of the country I remember hearing from another part of my family, “Not that I’m a racist, but I’d like this town a lot better if it wasn’t so full of Mexicans.” Stuff like that. Also, I am grieved to admit that I bullied a boy during middle school because he was biracial. This bullying took a more violent turn when I was thirteen and some older boys goaded me into fighting that boy. I have sought him out and apologized to him for my behavior all those years ago. Someday I will tell you the full story behind that incident. I’ve lived with the guilt of what I did that day for over twenty years now. The racism got a pretty good hold on me by the time I was in early adulthood. Even into college I had no problem using the “n-word” in casual conversation. I was, of course, too big of a wimp to use that language toward someone else, however. I was definitely a racist. So what changed?

Probably the first thing that changed was that I went to work in an office with people of different races. I actually got to know people who looked different from me. I got to know their stories. I got to a point where I could, as Dr. King said, “judge them based not upon the color of their skin but upon the content of their character.” It is much harder to be a racist when you are spending ten hour work days sitting just a few feet from people of other races. A second thing that happened was that I finally moved out of a homogenous small town and moved to a big city. While living in Austin, Texas, I was surrounded by people of many races and nationalities, especially by people of Mexican heritage, many of whom still spoke Spanish as their primary language. Also, I became good friends with seminary classmates of other races, had professors of other races, and learned more about different cultures and their history. For one of my classes, I went to worship at a predominantly African American Catholic Church as well as to Spanish speaking worship services. The experiences of my first job and then seminary in Austin put me in positions where I either had to grow in acceptance or retreat into an insulated homogeny. I’m glad that the Holy Spirit kept pulling me toward an acceptance that better reflects the Kingdom of God.

The most powerful experience for me in regard to finally getting me out of the darkness of racial prejudice into the light of celebrating diversity came when I served a ten week intensive internship as the student pastor to four small congregations in rural Oklahoma. Two of those congregations were Presbyterian congregations that had been founded at the end of the Seminole Trail of Tears from Florida to Oklahoma. All of the church members were also members of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and one of those congregations conducted their services completely in the Seminole language (a dialect of the Creek language). I spent long days during which I was the only person who was not Native American and quite often the only person that did not understand the language. My skin and hair were light and everyone else had reddish brown skin and black hair. I ate food I’d never heard of and learned of the joys and challenges of being Native American in the 21st Century. I went to powwows and ate fry bread. During that summer I read Seminole history and found out the tragic reality of what racism can do when it is institutionalized. I learned what it was like to walk into a room and have everyone turn to stare at you. It was an intensely lonely feeling sometimes, but it was invaluable.

It was during my time in seminary that I started to learn more about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and to actually read some of his writings. I checked out an anthology of his writings from the library and I was mesmerized. Like most everyone else, I was blown away by his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” especially in hearing that he wrote that letter in bits and pieces on old newspapers and toilet paper in his jail cell. The fact that he wrote that letter to other pastors, specifically white pastors who claimed to support civil rights but wouldn’t aid Dr. King when he came to their own city, convicted me and forced me to ask, “Would I actually be willing to face a policeman’s baton or a police dog for what I claim to believe?” Also, would I be willing to face my own congregation (in the 1960’s South), many of whom would disagree with me, and be willing to stand up to them for justice? That would probably be harder than facing the police. Those police couldn’t fire you and kick you and your family out of the manse. Also during that time I learned about Dietrich Bonheoffer, the German Lutheran pastor, who stood up to Hitler by speaking against the Nazi extermination of Jews (the ultimate example of institutionalized racism) and ended up being executed in a Nazi prison just days before the war in Europe came to an end.

When I look at my life, I see that I had to overcome more than twenty years of racism, both around me and within me. I don’t want my kids to have to undo twenty years of prejudice like I did. So I am raising them in a way that celebrates diversity. At first, we tried to raise our kids without a concept of race. We just never mentioned it. We never differentiated between one person or another. It was an experiment. Then we started getting questions from the kids about why people look differently. Josselyn, who is three, pointed at Denzel Washington on the TV and asked if he was made of chocolate. I have to admit that we got a pretty good laugh out of that one, mostly because our little girl is so obsessed with food that she checks out books at the library about food groups and now she thinks people are made out of food! So we had to address the issue of race with the kids. With Wyatt, who is six, I’ve started to explain that people’s skin is different shades mostly based upon which part of the world their ancestors came from. We have also

read the children’s book Shades of People quite a bit in our house. Last week I read it as a part of my children’s sermon as well. It is a great book for young children. Also, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Wyatt and I have read Who Was Martin Luther King Jr.? together. After we read that I showed Wyatt film footage from the march on Selma as well as from the “I Have a Dream” speech. We have also read The Picture Book of Rosa Parks, The Picture Book of Frederick Douglass, and The Picture Book of Cesar Chavez. Today Wyatt read My First Biography: Martin Luther King Jr. to Josselyn and we talked about it together. A few days ago Wyatt and I read an amazing children’s book (from which I learned a great deal) called As Good As Anybody. The first part of the book is the story of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The second part of the book is the story of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel.

The third part of the book is about how they came together. It is a very powerful book. For me, it is of utmost importance that the home Christian discipleship training I provide for my kids to be training that incorporates the saving gospel of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and the elements of diversity, peace, and justice.

So am I still a racist? Well, I think it is kind of like being an alcoholic. It is still in there somewhere. With God’s help, I fight it. In addition to being like alcoholism, I think it is also kind of like lust. For instance, when I notice an attractive woman other than my wife, I recognize it. I reject it. I move on. I don’t beat myself up about it because I know that isn’t who I am. It is the same with racism. A condescending racist thought will come to mind. I recognize. I reject it. I move on. I don’t beat myself up about it because I know that isn’t who I am anymore because my mind and heart are continually being transformed by the same Spirit who sent Philip to the Ethiopian Eunuch, who sent Peter to the Roman Cornelius, and who strengthened Dr. King and who heard as Dr. King and the others “prayed with their feet” time and time again. So I guess I should say that I am not an active racist anymore. But I am not a perfect person; I am a sinner who has been granted forgiveness through the cross. So in gratitude for that forgiveness, I open myself to the Spirit so that I might continually be made more and more in the likeness of Christ and through that become a better citizen of the Kingdom of God. It is my prayer that, while my kids will surely have much to repent of in their lives, that they won’t have to repent of the same things I did. It is also my prayer that they might not even think of races as much as they will think of different shades of people within one human race, all of whom are created in the image of God.

See the Christ in others this week, and show them the Christ in you.

Grace and Peace,
Pastor Everett