I did very little reading this past week -- just a book of poems in preparation for hearing Dr. Walker speak this past Thursday. She opened the first annual meeting of the Center for Womanist Leadership. The conference took place over the weekend downtown, but the organizers graciously offered free tickets to hear Alice Walker Thursday night, and St. Paul's Baptist offered their ballpark sized sanctuary to accommodate the extra crowd.
After her talk I had the feeling that I'd spent an hour or two with her. Certain things she said stood out - about the joys of aging, about the connection between revealing your wound and finding your medicine, about the upcoming release of Zora Neal Hurston's extensive interview with one of the last enslaved Africans to survive the middle passage - but more than any one thing she said, her tone of voice, her comfort level, her whole presence felt like a teaching.
I've read and heard others talk about the "transmission" of wisdom as a full-bodied experience. The teacher walks the walk, in obvious and subtle ways, which makes it possible for the student to integrate the teaching into his or her own life. That's how I felt about her talk - she offered us some wisdom, mostly just by being who she is.
Notes
- unclench my teeth/ long enough to tell him so
- held his soul/ so tightly/ it shrank/ to fit his hand
- and if a hundred photographs survive/ each one will show a different face
- ...Voice/ to flatten the ears/ of all the world
- Don't let them fool you. He was himself a beginning/ of the new man. His love in front...
- But see how this saint too is hung defenselessly/ on walls, his strong hands pinned;/ his pious look causes us to blush, for him
- When next they looked they hardly noticed/ he no longer looked himself
- in the meantime i hang on/ fighting addiction/ to the old dream
- is forgiveness/ that permits a promise/ of our return/ at the end
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