Friday, January 9, 2015

A Pursuit of Larger Ends

When I went to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day speech last Thursday, I really didn't expect to end up in front of a crowd.

It was one of those odd switches. It's something like when you buy a cup of coffee for someone with your last dollar, and then someone buys a whole meal for you. Hours after surrendering my pride and the need to have attention, I stood with my back to an audience of hundreds who cheered and clapped for me.

This wasn't planned. I had already been wanting to go to Les Purce's speech, not because he's the president of Evergreen College, but because he was speaking on topics related to Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and as the first black person to be elected as an official in Idaho, I thought he would have an interesting perspective. So instead of staying home watching episodes of Turtleman, I climbed the hill to the Administration Building to listen to Purce.

If you ever end up on the University of Idaho campus, one of the most beautiful things to see - if you stop a moment and really look - is the administration building on a speech night, when the stained-glass windows glow between the wreaths of ivy just below the stars. I was a little apprehensive about going to the speech alone but the windows were worth it.

Purce joked with Don Burnett, the interim UI president, and sang us an entire song without accompaniment. Surprisingly, he didn't focus too much on race issues. He talked about poverty, and how Martin Luther King Jr. was an advocate of the poor regardless of race because "we are inevitably our brothers' keepers." He talked about his family, especially of how his grandmother found ways to help people even though she wasn't allowed to be the teacher she was trained to be.

Les Purce. With a cake.
After the speech, there were two questions, and then there was a gap of silence. I wanted to get up and share my heart and I figured there would be a way to turn it into a question if I talked long enough, so I walked to the microphone smiling vaguely at the stage.

"Hi, I'm Bethany."

"Hello Bethany, where are you from?"

"Joseph, Oregon."

"Ah, Joseph! That's a beautiful place!"

"Yes, I love it...So I was in your speech, actually."

"Really?"

"I'm the one who never went to high school because of poverty."

I should have been so nervous that my voice would be shaking, but Les has a big smile and this natural ease about him, and that made me feel like I was talking to a friend.

"I can't believe I get to go to college. Sometimes my friends complain about having to take classes, and I try to be sympathetic, but inside I'm thinking, 'I'm so lucky to be here. You're so lucky to be here.'"

We talked about the poverty mindset and I said I didn't believe you could throw money at the poor to fix their problems. The only thing I've seen that's worked is individual attention. Are there any programs that can actually help?

He asked me questions about how I got this individual attention, and made a light bulb click on over my head when he commented, "Programs are full of people."

He asked what year in college I was and what I wanted to do. When I said I'd be graduating in December with a major in public relations and minors in Spanish and political science, he said, "You go!" And the crowd was suddenly clapping and Les said I needed to come to his next speech because he'd sing me a song called "Joe the Bandit" about Joseph. I felt the oddest desire to bow as I thanked him and reluctantly left, so I sort of nodded deeply and smiled sheepishly.

I sat down brimming with gratitude for everything, and feeling like God had just spoken through me somehow to at least one person, so that when Les said we must be in a "pursuit of ends larger than ourselves" he was confirming what I felt like God had been telling me earlier.

I've been a small group leader for a Bible study for the last semester, but I don't think I can do it anymore. I'm too self-centered and power hungry to be a true leader. Somehow I can always turn things around so they're about me instead of God. I'm sure I even steal the spotlight from my group members.

And then God said, "You don't want to be a leader? Then stop. Be a servant."

Brenda Zollman told me as I spilled all my troubles to her over the phone, "If you didn't feel desperate, you wouldn't hang on to Him. If you have to rely on Him, you're exactly where you need to be."

It sounds a little awful to be desperate - but I don't think it's the "my car just broke down in East Portland" type of desperate. Today it felt a little bit more like being in love - when you feel an urgency to be with the other person, as though it almost hurts to be away from them. It's a sensitivity that's impossible to keep forever, but you wish you could, even though it hurts.

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