“When we became a we” by Tom Lee
If you spent the Nashville ice storm doom-scrolling social media, wearing down device batteries between automotive warmup-and-charging sessions, lashing out at remote and disengaged decisionmakers, you may have seen an interview with the inestimable Amy Grant.
The story involves a difficult stretch of post-divorce childrearing Amy was experiencing (all of Nashville is on a first-name basis with Amy) and advice she received from Jimmy Gentry, a Middle Tennessee World War II veteran who’d earned the right to address the celebrity by her first name. This is the version Amy told faithwire.com in November 2019:
“One of my kids was going through an especially rascally stage, and I just said, ‘Oh, God, I need some help,’” Grant recalled, “and [Jimmy] said, ‘Amy, I’m gonna give you five phrases, and I want you to say these phrases as often as possible to your child.’
When he first told her the mantra, Gentry held out five fingers. The first phrase is, “How can I help you?” After folding down his thumb, he moved to the four-word phrase, “I’m proud of you.” The three-word phrase that followed is, “I love you,” followed then by the two-word phrase, “Thank you.”
“Then the one-word phrase he made me guess, and I couldn’t guess it,” Grant said. “He said, ‘This will change everything.’ And I said, ‘I don’t even know what it is?’ And he said, ‘‘We.’ Look at the world as ‘we.’’”
Nothing resembles an “I” experience so much as a crisis. It matters not if others share the crisis—a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or, if you will, an ice storm—or if it is unique to an individual—the loss of a love, the death of a child, a disabling illness. The dislocation, isolation, and disruption are the same. The deep engravings on our souls are the same. In time, we may live these memories so deeply they become us.
Or, we become them.
These last two paragraphs I’ve borrowed heavily—ok, stole—from the Rev. Carol Cavin-Dillon’s sermon at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville on February 1. With churches in town still without power a week after the storm, West End invited in the connection from Glendale, Belle Meade, and Calvary UMCs. We shared eggs, grits, and coffee in the church basement, heard master storyteller Tyler Merritt remind us of the connections that change everything, and then we headed into the sanctuary, still chilled from the week.
A lot of us began in tears, from the stress of the storm. But in the familiar old hymns (“From All that Dwell Below the Skies” and “Heal Us, Emmanuel, Hear Our Prayer”), the communion bread broken and shared, and the story from Mark of Jesus healing a man with leprosy, a man who said he could be healed if Jesus only so chose, those of us with our own marks and markings evolved into something new.
“O, send us not despairing home,” we sang our final words together. “Send none unhealed away.”
And, then, Jesus did so choose. He healed the pain each of us was carrying.
We embraced. We stayed into the afternoon to talk. We rekindled old friendships and began new missions. Just as Jimmy promised Amy, each of us saw the world differently.
We became a we. And the world, still broken, began to look a little more promising.
