Sanctuary's Sharing

I missed church this past Sunday. Thanks to The Rev. Beth Long for the supply.  Instead, I drove with some alumnae friends to Furman and remembered and commended to God's eternal care one Betty Alverson in a worship service led by Furman classmate, Bishop Stacy Sauls

"Miss A" directed operations and programs of the Student Center, Furman's "Third Person/Building of the campus Trinity" along with our Library and the Dining Hall.  Betty's work from that building changed lives that in most instances didn't know they needed changing.

Most of us were attending her memorial because of her CESC, Collegiate Educational Service Corps and how our turns at volunteering through it to the larger Greenville and Upstate community awakened something within us.  Alumni from the 60's to the 90's shared memories about Miss A and time after time named the changes we recognized in ourselves because of her influence and leadership.

Miss A had a way of taking our privilege -- there's that word again -- and leveraging it for all those "others" around Furman. Most of us didn't know it was happening until it did.  And it did in some unforgettable ways.  Unforgettable because it moved us from our smaller private lives of being good individuals into a much larger collective effort for a more open and fair community that found and celebrated opportunity, self-confidence and a second chance at life for others.

We were volunteers.  That was how it worked.  No judge ordered us there, no registrar listed extra credit hours for us, no society bestowed ribbons or honors at graduation.

Student volunteers staffed the Boys and Girls Clubs, city parks and playgrounds, reading and mentoring programs, suicide hotlines, crisis centers, nursing homes, residential care facilities for the mentally and physically disabled, small church youth groups and more and more!

And it changed us.  Lord knows some of us needed it. But the better part of that transformation was less a personal gain and more an awakening to a collective potential.  Theologically you would call it the Kingdom of God coming near.  As we lived out from under from our over-privileged cocoons and worked and breathed and sweated and cried with Greenville's under-privileged and under-served others we were joined into God's shalom -- a commonwealth of shared resources and mutual interest.

How could it not change us? 17 year-old -- back then we called them -- coeds answering phones hoping to help someone avoid suicide.  Brainy pre-law students holding hands with adults whose own brains could not form words.  Small town valedictorians thrust into making urgent, one-on-one appeals to mayors and governors!  Again, how could it not change us?

As we shared memories and remarks at the luncheon, almost to a person you could see a larger world had been brought into focus.  Our interests had become less personal and now remained more communal, were less about our individual salvation and more about realizing heaven on earth, less about "Jesus loves me, this I know," and more about "Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world!"

Thanks to Miss A's sometimes edgy, sometimes flat, clearly not-Southern, always honest and sternly prophetic confidence in and expectation of us, the world around Furman was changed with us and became a little closer to the Kingdom of God. Thank you, Miss A! And thanks be to God!