I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:1-3
My Latin Teacher Died She and I had nothing in common, well almost nothing. She was as Baptist as I was Lutheran. I thought worship at her church felt more like a congregational meeting than worship and she called worship at my church stilted and scripted. She was as Democratic as my family was Republican, proclaiming that Ronald Reagan would bring an end to society as we know it and that the day would come soon when we would all mourn the loss of Jimmy Carter as our President. She loved sports and I loathed them. She loathed popular fiction and I thought Stephen King was one of the finest writers to have ever put a pen to paper. Miss Nancy Worley and I did not agree on anything during my four years of high school during which she was my speech teacher for one year and my Latin teacher for three years. I loved and respected her for those four years and the 39 years after that in which we maintained a friendship over the phone, mail, and Facebook. Miss Worley died last year. I said we had nothing in common, except for one thing. She and I both believed that we could love and respect one another not only in spite of our differences but because of them. We saw in one another the polar opposite of ourselves and were able to hone our own edges on each other. I have noticed that, in my adult life, I have often sought out friendships with people who were very different from me because of my positive experience with Miss Worley. The only thing we really had in common was our faith in Jesus and we strove to do as St. Paul said, “I therefore, a prisoner for the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.” See you don’t have to agree with one another to walk with one another. As long as you agree that Jesus is Lord, everything else can become a way of growth and understanding. That was what allowed me to be friends with Miss Worley for 43 years. We could walk together in a manner worthy of our calling, bearing with one another in love and having completely different ideas about almost everything. Miss Worley died suddenly of a weird infection. She was only 70 years old. She had been the Alabama Secretary of State for one term and the President of the Alabama Education Association twice. She had just finished a stint as the Chair of the Alabama Democratic Party and was considering what was next in her life when her time was up and she was received into paradise. She was only 12 years older than I, and she taught me how to speak extemporaneously, how to decline Latin nouns and conjugate Latin verbs, but more importantly than any of that, she taught me that we can love and respect people with whom we categorically disagree, and that reality is often what helps us to grow the most. I look forward to the Day of the Resurrection and seeing Miss Worley again. Hopefully, she will be holding hands with both Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. |
