I had a conversation with my professor and mentor, Berkley Hudson, before I came to Mississippi. Berkley is a journalism professor at the University of Missouri, but he grew up in Columbus and has spent a good part of his academic career on a project centered around this town.
When he was preparing me for Columbus — lending books about the South, sharing songs by B.B. King and Big Joe Shelton, emailing links to desegregation articles — he told me something that’s proved to be the most defining lesson of the summer.
He talked about how history was tangible in Columbus, how it was something every person from here carried with them. It did not sink in until I saw the antebellum homes and heard the “when my great-times-seven-grandfather built this place…” stories. Until I asked people why they were so upset about the Confederate flag coming down and had them tell me what the South means to them. Until I was told by the first woman who integrated The W, who still lives here, about when white students dumped trash on her in the cafeteria.
“Don’t forget that,” Berkley said. “When you pass someone on the street, just know they have some of that in them. White or black, there are gradations swirling beneath the surface.”
I went to a different church each of the 10 Sundays I’ve been in Columbus.
Sitting in a pew or chair or bench every week, I felt what Berkley had told me.
I looked around and marveled at the range of people that all self-identified as the same word. “Christian.”
Mississippi is home to the most religious population in the country, according to Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion and Public Life in 2009. Ninety-one percent of people polled said they believe in God with absolute certainty, and 60 percent attended a religious service at least once a week.
It’s bizarre to think that 60 percent of the people we pass on the streets here wake up every Sunday and go to the same building. They say ‘Hi’ to the same people and they usually sit in the same spot. Then they listen to whatever message the preacher or pastor or priest delivers.
It’s bizarre because let me tell you: the messages are all different.
Sure, hope and forgiveness is basically at the heart of them all. People usually sing, usually pray, and always give money.
But past that, things are up in the air.
This summer, I’ve listened to messages of fire and brimstone, and of forgiveness and acceptance, and of fighting back against a culture that’s put the church “under attack.”
I’ve swayed in a black Apostolic church as people spoke in tongues around me, and sang “Amazing Grace” with old women in pristine hats and white gloves. I’m convinced that there are bigger differences between some of the denominations in this town than there are between entire other religions.
In another life on a college campus in Missouri, I am a philosophy major. I grew up Christian and have always been interested in religion, so I’ve read the Bible multiple times. And I get it: There is no One Message. This is hard stuff to understand. But it’s important to try, because again, 60 percent of people here listen to some interpretation of it every week.
So back to what Berkley said.
The point is, if I had grown up in the Divine Destiny Apostolic Church and swayed and praised and spoke in tongues for three hours every week, I would be a very different person than if I grew up nodding in silent agreement to a man in embroidered robes at St. Paul’s Episcopal.
And there are people that do both, and then Monday morning, they wake up and carry on, and maybe you or I interact with them and have no idea which are which.
Those are the gradations, swirling beneath the surface.
So I had that realization here: That everyone’s experience is horrifyingly and irrevocably different. I think everyone flirts with this idea at some point, but too often we bury it under the salience of our own minds.
We shouldn’t.
Live conscious of this realization.
You don’t know — you can’t know — what made the person behind you at the grocery store or your coworker or your father the way they are.
The most you can do is try to understand (and the “try” is just as important as the “understand”). Wonder about them, because with wondering will come empathy and with empathy, hopefully, will come love.
And that’s what Christianity is, and what humanity is. Love thy neighbor as thyself.
I shudder that I’m about to quote Faulkner in my column about the South, but I’m sorry, OK, the man gets it. He once wrote that “no one is without Christianity, if we agree on what we mean by that word.”
He calls religion “man’s reminder of his duty inside the human race.”
We all need that reminder: To try and understand each other. If you don’t get it from a church service, fine. Get it from a conversation with a friend. Or a stranger. Get it from a book or a movie or a sunset. Get it from an excellent piece of journalism.
But get it.
I’m leaving Mississippi now, for the foreseeable future. Before I came here, Berkley also told me there wouldn’t be enough time to see everyone and do everything I should. That proved true as well.
But if nothing else, I’m glad I’ll take this reminder with me. When I see the news and there’s a politician I disagree with, or when someone cuts me off on the highway, or when I’m frustrated that I can’t make someone see things the way I do, I’ll try to remember.
There are gradations, just below the surface. And I’ll try to understand them.
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