I’m thinking that this is a good day for a story! For this day—Pentecost—began with a story of tongues of fire, of people surprised by good news, of Spirit igniting and inspiring. This is a good day for a story! For this day—Mother’s Day—began as a story of one woman named Julia Ward Howe who believed that mothers, by standing together, could transform warfare and bloodshed into peace and harmony. Today is a good day for a story! For today, in this community of faith, we are still wounded, stunned, trying to make sense of the life story which ended far too soon for our dear Bettye Wheeler. And in the midst of our grief, we are facing yet another story—the story we have been preparing to write for nearly two years—this is the story of the very first sabbatical season for Redlands UCC. What might these various stories have in common? All are fueled by Spirit’s flames; all are healed by Spirit’s touch; and all are filled by Spirit’s refreshing breath.
Yes, given the stories that surround us today—stories of grief, of hope, of tongues of fire and of Spirit’s breathing into each one of us, this is a good day to hear a story!
And, as it happens, thanks to our own Galilee Glanville, who shared this story with me several weeks ago, we have a story to lead us into the writing of our future story together. It is a story that speaks of Spirit. It speaks of following nudges and attending to hunches. It speaks of making a positive difference in the world. This story chosen especially for today is the story of The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering, written by a woman who is a writer, teacher, healer, mother, and grandmother, who has lived and worked in Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Guatemala, Mexico, Spain, France, and Canada. Perhaps this story will invite us to see more clearly and with fresh eyes the Pentecost-Mothers Day-Sabbatical-Grief journey we currently travel, as we try to sort out our own feelings, and set our course for these next few months.
The story begins, like today, on a Sunday: On a buffety, blustery early summer day, when the news was bad and the sky turned yellow, a strange thing happened in the town where I live. That morning, two grandmothers who had never met, not even by accident, put on their summer Sunday clothes, their most comfortable shoes, their favorite sun hats, and walked to the park in the center of town. Now that, of course, wasn’t the strange part because lots of people walk to the park, especially in summer. It’s what the grandmothers did after they got there that set the whole town on its collective ear. What, you ask, could two grandmothers do that would cause such a buzz on a buffety, blustery early summer day? Well, just wait till you hear.
The grandmothers who had never met, not even by accident, walked past the river and past the rose garden and past the playground to the center of the big grassy area that faces the town square. And there they stood. Not speaking. Not looking at squirrels. Not munching on coconut candy. In actual point of fact, not anything at all.
Ryan Reilly was the first to notice. He’s the busboy at Beever Brothers Café that overlooks the park. Every time he cleared coffee cups and water glasses from the table by the window, he saw the grandmothers. “What do you think they’re doing?” he asked Willie and Erma Beans, who always sit at the table by the window. “Dunno,” said Willie. “Maybe they’re waiting for someone,” Erma offered. “Mighty long wait,” said Ryan. Robin the waitress bustled by with a coffeepot. “Maybe they’re pretending to be statues,” she said. “People do that, you know.” Sue Ann Renfrew got up and looked out the window. “Maybe it’s a meditation exercise.” “Well, if that’s exercise, it’s the kind I could get into,” said Leslie Plunkett, who, with her five-year-old daughter, Polly, joined Sue Ann at the window.
For several minutes everyone in Beever Brothers Café watched the grandmothers stand in the center of the big grassy area facing the town square. No one could come up with a reasonable explanation for their behavior. No one, that is, until a very little voice said, “I know what they’re doing.” Leslie looked down at her topsy-haired daughter. “You do?” said Willie and Erma and Su Ann and Leslie and Ryan Reilly and Robin the waitress. “Yes,” she said, suddenly shy from all the attention. “Well then tell us,” said Ryan Reilly. Polly took a gulpy breath and announced quite matter-of-factly, “They’re saving the world.”
For exactly two-point-five seconds, no one said a word. Then they all laughed. Leslie scooped up her daughter and everyone went back to their tables, and that was that. Except it wasn’t. When Ryan Reilly got off work that afternoon, he cut through the park on his way home like he always does, and the grandmothers were still there. They had been standing in the middle of the big grassy area the whole day long. Ryan was puzzled, perplexed and more than a little perturbed. The world was already askew and getting askewer every day. If grandmothers started doing unpredictably curious things, there was no telling where it might end. At that very moment, more than anything, Ryan needed to know why the grandmothers were standing in the park. So he did the only thing he could think of—he asked. The two grandmothers, whose glistening faces were as pink as watermelon flesh, smiled weary smiles.
And with just a hint of sadness, mixed with just a hint of hope, they said almost in unison: “We’re saving the world.”
This was definitely not what Ryan wanted to hear. It made no sense. Two grandmothers standing in the park cannot save the world. Everyone knows that—except maybe Polly Plunkett, but she’s only five. He didn’t know what to say next, and the more he didn’t know what to say, the more flustered he got. “It’s just that…well…you can’t…” Finally, he threw his hands in the air and darted across the lawn toward home, his face as pink as the grandmothers’.
The big television set in the family room was on when Ryan and his parents sat down to dinner. They always ate with the TV tuned to the news, and the news was always bad. Lately it had been especially bad. The only time anyone talked during dinner, except to say, “Please pass the parsnips,” was when a commercial came on. That night, Ryan could hardly wait for the commercial so he could tell his parents about the two grandmothers who stood in the park all day. “Why would they do such a thing?” asked his mother. “They said they were saving the world.” His father laughed, shook his head and kept on eating.
But his mother stopped—a fork full of parsnips suspended in the air midway between the plate and her mouth. She stared at her son, saying nothing, even though the commercial was still on and it was okay to talk. That same evening, Willie and Erma Beans met with their weekly cribbage-and-dessert group. Erma told the women at her table about the grandmothers who stood in the park doing nothing. When Madeline Swivet asked, “Whatever for?” Erma said, “I heard they’re saving the world.” She didn’t mention she heard it in the coffee shop from a five-year-old. The women at Erma’s table were oddly quiet the rest of the night. Their husbands thought they were up to something.
On Monday, the morning dawned gray and drippy, a day not at all befitting early summer. Ryan Reilly was clearing off the window table at the café when he saw them: the two grandmothers standing smack in the middle of the park’s big grassy area. The only difference was, they were holding umbrellas instead of wearing sun hats. Well, that would have been the only difference, if it weren’t for the other one. This time, standing with the grandmothers were Erma Beans, Madeline Swivet, Leslie Plunkett and her very own mother! Robin the waitress passed the window on her way to refill Sue Ann’s coffee cup. “Whatcha staring at Ry?” Ryan opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was a sound like a cat with a hairball.
Dinner was late at the Reilly house that night, and for the first time Ryan could remember, they missed the news. The meal of leftover parsnips was interrupted by phone calls from every woman his mother knew. Seventeen in all. The same thing happened at the Beans’ house. Leslie Plunkett was besieged by women at Melville’s Grocery.
And Madeline Swivet’s doorbell never stopped ringing.
On Tuesday, Ryan Reilly had been at work two hours and had not gone near the table by the window. Coffee cups and water glasses had piled up and up until there was hardly any green Formica showing through. Robin the waitress knew why. In the middle of the park’s big grassy area were the two grandmothers, and Erma Beans, Madeline Swivet, Leslie Plunkett,
Mrs. Reilly and one hundred and six other women. Standing. Stock. Still.
At 11:37 a.m., Jason P. Mason, a reporter for the local newspaper, scurried through the door of Beever Brothers Café. He ordered a bowl of soup and for the next hour slurped and wrote. Ryan and Robin tried to see what he was writing, but every time they came close, Jason covered his notes with his skinny little arm. “You’ll see soon enough,” he said, dribbling soup down the front of his brown plaid shirt. They didn’t have long to wait.
That afternoon, The Town Trumpet ran his story on the front page along with a photo of the women taken from the roof of City Hall. Mostly it showed the tops of their heads. Jason P. Mason, who was not considered a particularly colorful journalist, even by his own mother, must have been inspired by something in the Beever Brothers’ soup because the story he wrote was brilliant. At least that’s what the men said who gathered at the Coffee Corner in Bumble’s bookstore. The article poked pitiful fun at women who thought they could save the world—or anything else for that matter—by standing in the park. As for the silly, misguided grandmothers
who started it, best they get back to their knitting. “The world doesn’t need saving,” said Murphy Beebell, unofficial leader of the Coffee Corner group. “And if it did, we have armies for that, and elected officials.” “Hear, hear!” said Clyde Cleveland. “Besides, they’re not even carrying banners or shouting slogans,” said Duncan Willows. “Everyone knows you can’t save the world without banners and slogans.”
The men nodded in agreement. “Well, that’s that,” said Mayor Pudge with a smiley smirk after reading Jason’s article. “No woman will dare show her face in the park now.” And at any other time, in any other place, when the news wasn’t bad and the world wasn’t askew, that might have been true. But not this time.
On Wednesday, by eight o’clock that morning, squiggle-squeezed into the big grassy area, the rose garden, the playground and the pathway leading to the wading pool were two thousand two hundred and twenty-three women and one five-year-old girl. The mayor was beside himself. “We’ll be a laughingstock,” he said to Police Chief Barker-Poles. “Do something. Make them go away.” The police chief thought and thought. The women weren’t disturbing the peace. They were not destroying city property. They weren’t even littering. “Aha!” he said finally. “I’ve got it!” He grabbed his purple police-chief megaphone and bellowed at the women, who could have heard him even if he’d whispered. “Ladies, your organization didn’t apply for a permit to gather in the park. You will have to disperse immediately.”
The women smiled weary smiles. No one budged. Not even a millimeter. “Make them move now,” the mayor hissed. “Tell them you’ll call the police.” “I am the police,” the police chief said. “Excuse me, sir,” said one of the grandmothers. “We belong to no organization. We’re simply women who have chosen to visit a public park, which is our right to do. Wouldn’t you agree?” Chief Barker-Poles, although not used to being disobeyed, especially when he used his purple police-chief megaphone, was a fair and thoughtful man. He pondered and pondered. “They have a point,” he said. And for the rest of the day the women stood in the park. Not speaking. Not looking at squirrels. Not munching on coconut candy. Not anything at all.
On Thursday, the morning newspapers all over the country carried Jason P. Mason’s story about 2,223 women, including the mayor’s wife, Vera, standing in the park to save the world. Most of the men who read the article laughed. Most of the women became oddly quiet.
Mayor Pudge groaned.
On Friday, network news broadcasts all led with the same story:
In towns and cities across America, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of women, many of them grandmothers, gathered in public parks, school yards, vacant lots, and on the steps of churches, synagogues, mosques and Buddhist centers. They carried no banners, shouted no slogans and belonged to no organization. When asked why they were gathering, one of the grandmothers said, “We’re saving the world.” The FBI is investigating.
When Ryan Reilly heard the story, he couldn’t help smiling as he ate his parsnips. Neither could his mother.
On Saturday, Erin Green, anchor of the International Television News Association, was first to break the story:
From Beijing to Baghdad, Cairo to Copenhagen, Jerusalem to Johannesburg, all over the world and in nearly every town in America, tens of millions of women are gathering in public squares, city parks, fields and forests. Many of them are grandmothers. They carry no banners, shout no slogans, have no leaders and belong to no organization. The gatherings seem to spring up spontaneously and are peaceful in nature. Stay tuned for more on this remarkable unfolding event. In an unrelated story: Reports are still coming in from our affiliates, but it would appear there has been no fighting anywhere in the world today.
Friends, as we stand on the cusp of sabbatical, still swirling in grief, yet longing to wear the bright festive red of Pentecost, if we only hear this story as a story of women doing the work, and men sitting by laughing, then perhaps we need to read it again! These grandmothers begin to map out for us a way to journey through this sabbatical season, a way to face this season of grief, a way to chart this season of the Spirit, this season we face both together and alone, a season which promises to reveal our gifts for our future ministry together, even as it invites us to grow and learn with the aid of the Spirit.
How do we face this multi-faceted season which is upon us? These wise grandmothers say to us today, that we do so by standing together… yet standing as distinctly and uniquely ourselves… we stand in the Spirit, in effect, by standing together, alone… respecting one another… listening to each other… appreciating the gifts that each one brings to the community… working together and separately over these next three months… dancing that dance of unique individuality and cooperative collaboration that is Redlands UCC.
Thanks to Bettye Wheeler, we have a perfect example of this dance. Just last Sunday, as one of our members was leaving the sanctuary, he commented to me that the service for Bettye the day before had been, to use his words, “RUCC at its best…” And that it was. For he, along with countless others of us, worked alone together, independently cooperating to prepare and serve and replenish the food, to usher guests, to plan and lead the service, to play and sing Bettye’s favorite music, to park the cars that overflowed our lot, and to accomplish the thousand other tasks necessitated by gracious hospitality. Without one single planning meeting or even a flurry of emails, we managed to work together, alone, each offering our unique gifts, each moving and dancing—alone and together—with the Spirit of God taking the lead. As we were “RUCC at its best” last weekend, so let us continue to be “RUCC at its best” for these next three months of sabbatical.
Like our Christian ancestors in faith, let us move in and with and through the Spirit by standing sometimes together… and sometimes alone… not always agreeing, of course, we are, after all, UCC!... but always loving, for we are followers of the Christ. May you, my dear sisters and brothers of Redlands UCC, keep one another and me in prayer as we enjoy and learn and grow from this sabbatical season that is upon us. And may the Spirit refresh us daily, so that each in our own place, we will continue to enjoy saving the world in a big grassy area of God’s park, facing the town square alone and together!
