What I’m reading now…

In The Warmth of Other Suns Elizabeth Wilkerson”has documented the sweeping 55-year-long migration of black Americans across their own country. She has challenged the dismissive assumptions that are sometimes made about that migration, treating it as a briefer and more easily explained event.” Read the NY times review

Since 2001, the books I tend to love the most are about life in the southern United States. I have long held To Kill a Mockingbird as my favorite book and I read it every couple of years. In 2001 I took a course at the University of Houston titled African American Psychology. The course surveyed and we discussed African American literature and since that course I have been drawn to books like this one, The Help, A Lesson Before Dying, Cane River…the list is endless. My fellow class members were mostly African American. They were at the campus in Houston and I attended by video from The Woodlands. During one discussion I discovered that they were still very angry about slavery. I remained quiet, there wasn’t anything I could say. I hated the idea of slavery. The professor finally said, “Vanalee, you have been awfully quiet, do you have anything you would like to say?’ I said that there was nothing I could say. I told them that my heart ached and that I hated what had happened, but I couldn’t truly understand because it hadn’t happened to me. I was truly sorry that it had happened at all. Suddenly, the class remembered that I was there. This course opened my eyes.  It was my favorite class of my long university studies.

My heart breaks at man’s inhumanity to man. A young activist friend’s blog detailing her efforts on the Thai/Burma border often brought tears to my eyes and aching to my heart. My visits to Cambodia and India this year opened my eyes a tiny bit to the poverty and suffering there. What can an aching heart and tears do to help? I don’t know the answer yet, but there is longing inside of me searching for some small way I can help someone. A way to serve and help lift the hands that hang down…Hebrews12:12.