My 83 year old mom and I exchange emails just about every day, keeping close tabs on each other these days, since we live far away from each other. I live in South Louisiana and she lives in Abilene, Texas – some 800 miles away. Sure, my younger sister and her family live there, but Laura is busy with three teenaged girls, two dogs, a doctor husband and inordinate number of friends and activities typical of women in her situation. So, Mom and I often communicate much more often that Mom and Laura do.
My mom is not what you would call a typical 83 year old, nor are most of the women in our family and ancestry. In fact, when my daughter, Rebecca, graduated from college she became the fifth generation of women in our family, going back through me, my mom, her mom and her mom, to obtain a college degree! And I have all of their college diplomas matted and framed and hanging in my house. That’s pretty phenomenal when you think about it.
You see – their families were all Quakers, who were very education oriented even where women were concerned. First, I have the diploma of my great-grandmother, my Mom’s maternal grandmother, Elizabeth Stanley, which is on actual sheepskin. She received her college degree from the University of Kansas in June 1877 from what was termed the "Normal Department." She was a teacher who went down into Oklahoma territory to teach after she graduated from college and before she married and had a family of her own.
My maternal grandmother, Milly Lois Davidson, graduated from Friends University in Kansas in 1910, receiving her degree in English, with a minor in foreign languages. I know she graduated on June 8, 1910 and I know it was a Bachelor of Arts, but otherwise I can’t really read the rest of her diploma because it is written entirely in Latin.
My mom earned her Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Texas Technological College (now Texas Tech University) in 1943 and I finally (at 40) earned my Bachelor of Science in Communication, with an emphasis in Journalism – News/Editorial, from the University of Southern Mississippi in 1986. Two years later, in 1988, Rebecca earned her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Lubbock Christian University and gave us the distinction of having five women in a row to earn college degrees.
I suppose I had to try to outshine everyone by going on and obtaining my Juris Doctorate from Loyola School of Law – New Orleans, but believe me, there are many other advanced degrees to be found in close proximity within the family. The lights shine bright when we all get together.
A couple of days ago, my mom sent me an email that I thought had some really neat thoughts in them and want to pass them along. They are about two completely different things, with no comparison to each other, but are both very interesting observations, I thought. The first has to do with blogging, which she had never mentioned to me before, nor I her. The second was in response to some questions I had asked her to comment in on for me to help me in my own thinking.
On Blogging:
Dear Dee,
I wondered how much you knew about blogging. There’s so much said about it these days, but I didn’t have a clue about it. Of course, the older I get the behinder I get, and these days you can get behind a lot faster than in the old days!!
[Note: Isn't that the truth!! You don't have to be 83 to feel that way!]
* * * *
On the Role of Women in the Church:
Personally, I don’t understand the thinking of women who want to be involved [in a formal way] in the worship service. To me, I don’t really see that there’s anything specifically said about a "worship" service and how it should be conducted anyway. I think what we do is all right, but I don’t think it’s necessarily the only way. Jesus just told the Samaritan woman that it just had to be in spirit and in truth–and that can be wherever you are.
From my experience, the women I’ve known who want to be involved that way have an attitutude that they feel "put down" by men or think men think women are sort of inferior somehow. I grew up never feeling that way, maybe because my Mom & Grandma were educated and my Dad always respected them and we all seemed the same. I think Tom is that way about you, too.
When we were in Tucson, [one friend of mine] had grown up with that feeling and that she was the first generation of women in her family to get a college education, and she thought that women were looked down on in the church. I feel more comfortable just talking or doing things for people in a more personal way. Women generally have a better perception of people’s feelings and needs in ways that don’t lend themselves to "public" recognition. There’s no shortage of things to do without being "up front".
Well, so much for that!!
* * * * *
Yes – so much for that! My mind and heart are drawn to what Jesus had to say in Matthew 25 about the judgment and what we will be judged on – giving someone a cup of cold water, visiting someone in prison, giving someone something to eat – all in his name. My mom has done all of those things and is my best example of Christian service.
I know it’s not "Mother’s Day," but, thanks Mom for being such a wonderful Christian mother.
Enjoyed reading! Your mom sounds like a real together lady!
I wrote this over a year ago in response to women’s role in the church:
My daddy told me about an incident that happened when he was in Vietnam in 1966. It seems that there was this bridge that our side kept bombing. I saw pictures of this bridge once those pictures were declassified. The destruction of this bridge was heralded as a major victory for our side, and with that press, Colonels became Generals, and Generals were able to rally public support for this police action a little longer. We took that bridge and because of that, we had achieved a significant blow to the other side.
Daddy showed me a succession of pictures of that bridge before it was bombed, immediately after it was bombed and one week after it was bombed which demonstrated how the locals were able to restore the rubble and make that bridge useable once again. I don’t remember how many times we bombed that bridge, it was always restored fairly quickly. It was far from the significant victory for which it had been heralded.
But, it was sold to the press as significant. It was trumpeted as a milestone.
When we take the ground we are after, what will really change? If we destroy the bridge that keeps women from leading in worship, what in the kingdom will really change? Will the quality of our mission change? Will more people receive Christ? Will it improve our efforts to accomplish God’s work here on earth? I have not studied this issue enough to form my own assessment of the matter. I guess I have always seen opportunities for women that went untapped under the present system. And isn’t that the power of the gospel, that is every culture and in every nation, it spreads? And isn’t it amazing that during a time when slavery was allowed and women were severely restricted that it was that church in its infancy that took the world for Christ?
Finding Direction: The Wind Vane Chronicles » Blog Archive » Resting Here Until Day Breaks . . . // Oct 30, 2006 at 11:52 am
[...] October 30th, 2006 at 11:47 am by Dee O’Neil Andrews "Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, the last Chief of the Comanches" (On the tombstone of Chief Quanah Parker, Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.) Today I tell a poignant, but ultimately uplifting story from American history and tie it to my own. More specifically about Texas and Oklahoma history and Chief Quanah Parker, to whom I may even be kin. I wrote a few weeks ago about death and eulogies and epitaphs that I called "Journey to a Far Shore." Remember? In that post in which I said I was not trying to be morbid (which I wasn’t and am not today), I compared death to sailing off into the sunset toward a lighthouse across the short way whose beacon guides us home.I talked about all of the loving voices from our family and friends calling out to us in the growing darkness across the water also helping to guide us home.Today I talk about some interesting lives, then death as resting quietly for a bit while waiting for morning. As fate would have it and as life unfolds ever surprisingly, both good and bad, it wasn’t but a few days after I wrote that other post that when I went into the hospital in Durango, Colorado with multiple immediate life threatening problems beginning with acute kidney failure and I thought about what I had written.But something seemed lacking. I’ve also mentioned over the past three or four months that Tom and I recently made wills, signed health care directives and powers of attorney and talked with each of our children at length about life, death, values and beliefs. We talked about worldy possesions and eternal destinies. We talked about plans to have a headstone carved now to put on our graves for the time when we shall lie next to Tom’s dad in the Old Biloxi cemetery under the majestic live oaks.Something still seemed lacking.Then providence intervened, as it so often does, and I discovered the missing pieces. They are some of the words above that Tom and I want engraved on our headstone and it’s an interesting story about how we found them and why we want to use them.We were on our "Route 66" road trip coming home across the panhandle of Texas when we saw a most unusual rest area on I-40 east of Amarillo. It was on the other side of the interstate for people headed the other way, but we were so intrigued we drove to the next exit and turned around to come back to it.It was a huge manmade hill built in the middle of the flat prairie. Its center was cut through front to back and composed of high glass walls with a ceiling soaring above. Outside rose a giganitic wind turbine while inside an old windmill spun slowly under the power of an electric motor. Numerous displays told the story of the "old west" beginning with the Spanish conquistedors who came up through what is now Texas looking for gold in the early 1500s. When they got there they found no gold, but countless clans of native American pueblo dwellers and other clans of nomads roaming the vast prairies hunting buffalo for sustenance. One such group was composed of many smaller clans, all tribes of the Comanches. They lived and roamed across northern Texas and Oklahoma.They were warrior tribes in many ways, but mostly after being hunted down and killed by the white man who later came to take over their lands. In truth, they were a peace loving at heart and had great families.In 1836 a young white girl of about 9 who lived in West Texas, Cynthia Ann Parker, was captured along with two other children by a Comanche raiding party. She became part of the Comanche culture, part of a loving family, forgot the English language and never was fully integrated into the white world again.Her story is a sad one. She died heartbroken at 43 after being forcefully taken back to her white family 25 years after her capture. She’d just learned of the death of three of her children by her Comanche husband from influenza. She’d cut her hair short – the Comanche way of showing grief – and mourned. There is a a last picture of her, thus, with her baby daughter, Prairie Flower, at her breast. But her life was also filled with goodness. The blue eyed girl had married a Comanche chief, Peta Nocona and had children the lived, the oldest being Quanah Parker, who became the last great chief of all the Comanche tribes, beginning with his own, the Quahadi tribe. He never lost a battle against the white man and later worked with them, even journeying to Washington, D. C. to bring about peace between his people and theirs. Quanah Parker (check out each link to different photos and interesting facts about Quanah) provided forceful leaderhip and supported education, ranching and farming as a new way of life for the Comanches. In 1905, Parker even rode next to Geronimo in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade. He could not read, but spoke three languages, English, Spanish and Indian, and moved with ease between his mother’s and his father’s peoples. He educated his children among the white man so that they would be prepaerd in the early 20th century for their lives to come lived nearly exclusivly among white men.Quanah Parker (read especially this last link which vividly describes Quanah’s life achievements, family life and death) died on February 21, 1911 at age 63 when his great heart went out and was interred next to his mother’s grave, which he had just recently moved from Texas to Oklahoma to be near him and the people who had become hers and who she loved. Their graves had to be moved a couple of times later, but with honor and are now at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma.According to the rest area displayout near Amarillo, Quanah Parker’s grave reads: "Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappears is Quanah Parker, the last chief of the Comanches." I loved that and copied it down on a post a note that I have here on my big wooden desk.You see, my own heritiage and ancestry includes my great-grandmother on my dad’s side who was native American from either Texas or Oklahoma, I’m not sure which, or maybe even Georgia. My great-grandmother on my mother’s side (see this post) taught school in the late 1800s in Oklahoma Indian territory before it became our 46th state in 1907. Tom is part Cherokee, as well, some of whom were in Mississippi, and his heritage shows. While I tan easily, even when I’m at my darkest, I’m ligther than Tom whose skins quickly turns Indian brown. So we wish to have the words of the great chief Quanah Parker on our tombstone as well. I now think of them every night when I go to sleep along with "Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray Thee Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray Thee Lord my soul to take. If I should live for other days, I pray Thee Lord to guide my ways." They comfort me with thoughts of momentary peaceful rest until the dawn of an eternal sunrise and the brightest of all tomorrows."Resting here until day breaks and shadows fall and darkness disappers . . ." [...]