Women’s luncheon.

What’s your reaction?  Let me guess.

How about “Baptist women’s luncheon”?

Or “African-American Baptist women’s luncheon”?

So you get an invitation to attend a women’s luncheon.

An African-American Baptist women’s luncheon.

And by the way, you look white.  You’ll probably be the only white person there.

Do you go?

Hell, yeah.  What a great time!  And get dressed, do it right.  That means panty-hose, girls, and that suit and tie, guys.

Yes, there were men there, too.

There was a band, a youth band, an incredible youth band that played jazz, blues, R&B, you name it.  They were wonderful.

There were two singers who performed solo, one of them completely acapella.  Breathtaking.

A local elected official spoke, gave a speech that moved me to tears.  I wanted to shout, AMEN!

But several other women did just that for me.

Okay, it might not be your cup of tea, getting gussied up and sitting through a luncheon, regardless of how moving the program may be.  But this particular luncheon was different from any other women’s luncheon I’ve ever been to in my life.

I had an incredible epiphany, struck me like a thunderclap in the middle of the guest speaker’s presentation.

He spoke about a common, everyday circumstance that every person in that room understood without elaboration. 

Except for me.

He spoke of picking cotton and seeing rain coming off in the distance, what that meant to the folk working the rows of cotton.

They all nodded their heads in unison, some of them able to predict almost word for word what he would say next.

Except for me.

And if you’re not African-American, you would have been as mystified as I was at the parable’s direction; you would not have predicted the outcome.  Yet the story moved me as much, maybe more, than the rest of the audience.

I got it.  I understood something profound, not about the parable, but about the people to whom it belonged.

We all of us have cultural stories that we haven’t shared with other people not of our culture.  We share them with people who we are sure will get them, even though other people will get them.  We make assumptions about our stories and others – and they’re ill-founded.  We keep them to ourselves, share them in the safety of our cultural circle.  We hoard them without realizing that we are doing this.

We -- as the other people -- don’t make a concerted effort to learn about the stories of others.  We've hoarded our attention for the safety of our own culture.  We happen upon stories of others from differing cultures but we don’t make a great enough effort to seek them, and we should.  They make an enormous difference in our ability to meet each other in constructive collaboration.

This has to change if we are every going to breach the divide between races and ethnic groups.  We are going to have to reach out and share, both in telling our stories and in seeking them.

Even if it means putting on a tie or wearing pantyhose once in a while to do so.

11:10:01 PM    comment []