06 Apr The prayer (JOHN IZZO)
Lea, 58, is an African American woman who grew up in the segregated South. As a child, she had known great love from her own community as well as the pain of hatred from outside her community. She told me: “You carry this hatred with you even though you don’t realize it. When I moved back to the south when I was in my mid-fifties, I remembered how painful it was to realize you were being judged by the color of your skin. As a young person, I remember when I first realized that there was this difference, that there were certain things that you were not allowed. I remember an experience I had in junior high school. I had attended an all-black elementary school, but our parents decided we would go to this integrated junior high school. My parents prepared us by telling us what we were likely to experience. When we got there the kids were not friendly, and teachers did not think much of you. One day there was a celebration of the town’s anniversary, and it was a very hot day watching the parade. We were on a corner, and I got sunstroke and fainted, and I remember there was a drugstore on the corner that did not allow blacks in it. One of the white men went in to get me a Coke—and I remember it so well, we were at the mercy of these people—no power of one’s own—I still remember that so vividly. But I also remember that person’s choice to act with love.”
Lea told me about a morning ritual she has, a time of meditation as she begins her own day. “Each morning I take time for quiet and for reading. Then before I leave the house I say a simple prayer: Lord make me open to love from the time I leave my house until the time I come home. Help me so that when I meet those in my path for whom a kind word, a smile, a thank you might be life changing for them, please do not let me be so busy that I will miss it.”
What a beautiful prayer. It is the prayer of those who know this secret, that if we choose to be kind and loving from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed each day, something profound happens to us. And when we choose to become love, to be loving to each person we meet, we fulfill one of the core purposes of a human life, to make the world better because we were here.
The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die
JOHN IZZO
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