As a little girl, I was somewhat reckless and quite impatient—traits that resulted in an inordinate amount of scrapes and scabs, and a tendency to tear them open before they were healed. I never minded. To me, they seemed almost like bold reminders of a trial by fire akin to a soldier’s wounds, the small pain that came with them proof of battle—or, more likely, proof that I lived.
In reality, there are physical wounds and there are wounds of the heart. Everyone has a wound emblazoned somewhere on his or her soul. The wound could be the loss of someone dear—one that, with time, holds not just grief, but the joyful memory of the person. Or it could be an experience that touches the heart so deeply that one would never wish to recover from it. That’s what my mission experience in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, is for me.
That July I ended up with forty people I barely knew, mostly high school students like me, on a trip sponsored by the archdiocesan Office for Youth Ministry. The Gospel Road II program was a service and poverty encounter experience. Like my soon-to-be-friends, I was unsure what to expect. I hadn’t traveled to many southern states before. Being a fan of accents and dialects, however, I hoped to pick up a bit of Alabama’s southern drawl. Most specifically, I wanted to learn how to say “y’all” just right. Perhaps it was because I like country music, or because in a random flight of fancy I’d decided it was definitely one of the best accents to emulate. I had it all planned—I’d fit in perfectly with my acquired “y’all.”
Holy Spirit Parish in Tuscaloosa welcomed us with unmatched graciousness. But I should have known myself well enough to realize that once I got there, I wouldn’t dare speak the way the locals did—it was pretentious, right? I wasn’t from the South, I wasn’t staying, and when it came down to it, I had no real right to say “y’all.” It didn’t really belong to me.
Our group traveled around—painting houses, doing yard work, visiting, even laying down linoleum (a little jagged around the edges, I must admit). We came back to a church whose parishioners cooked for us every night and had Krispy Kreme donuts every morning. And somehow, as much as I refused to allow myself to speak with a southern accent, I found myself wanting to be like them.
At the time I didn’t know what it was exactly that attracted me to the people there, what made me so want to be like them. Now, with time and space between us, I realize it was the generosity of their community. I’d never really seen that kind of openness before. It’s just not done up North where I grew up. Sure, we have food drives and clothing drives and we care about others, but the people in Tuscaloosa welcomed us into their homes, cooked for us, and served us every night. We didn’t ask them to do it, but then—as far as they were concerned—we didn’t have to. They saw us as their guests—with sleeping bags in their preschool rooms and over half the church hall. It didn’t matter to them that the whole reason we were there was to serve—not be served. The greatest gift I received from them was learning how to receive what they offered graciously.
I can’t help but be reminded of the story of the widow’s mite in which Jesus chastises those who give from their abundance, and exalts one woman who gives all she had, little though it may have seemed. Holy Spirit Parish is not a wealthy community, but it is a blessed one. The spirit of generosity and Southern hospitality is a richness that flooded us all. Red and Leroy, who had only a trailer and a small plot of land for subsistence farming, shared all they had with us, even their meager food supply. There were also some nuns from Italy there who gave us drinks and ice cream—even though it must’ve cost them dearly to do that for forty kids three days in a row. Time and again we witnessed this generosity of spirit.
I left Alabama wanting to be like the people I met there; in fact, I still do. By the end of the trip I was unable to stop myself from slipping into Southern phrases, but couldn’t help saying “you all.” I was very silly. People so generous could not mind sharing their accent with a fifteen-year-old from Boston. A chaperone from Mississippi finally heard my awkward “you all” along with some others’ attempts to avoid drawl, and she had laughter in her eyes as she teased, “Come on, folks, it’s ‘y’all.’” I finally began to say it.
Most of us came back saying “y’all,” but I believe I am the only one who still does. There are other ways to keep the soul-wound from Alabama open, I imagine. But for me, every time I say “y’all,” I still think of Tuscaloosa and Greene County, Eutaw and Boligee. I still think of forty kids from Boston trying to love as God taught us. I still think of sugary Krispy Kreme and “sweet tea” that seemed bitter and all those wonderful, gut-wrenching days. I don’t have a bandage or scar that points to this wound; I have only my heart and my memory and my own duty to keep my memories of that time fresh. So I say “y’all,” and guard against the day I would stop and close the wound that the love I experienced in Alabama gave me. God help me if I ever stop, for that will be the day I have forgotten why I say “y’all,” and how I came to say it in the first place.
—Alice
We usually think of a wound as something that hurts and needs to be healed. To the apostle Thomas, however, wounds were proof—hard evidence that the person standing before him was Jesus, risen from the dead. Soul wounds also show us Christ, both in bearing them and exposing them. Have you ever felt “wounded” in this way? What would it take for something to touch you that deeply?
Alice was most touched by the generosity of the people she served and realized that you don’t need to have much in order to give much. What do you have little of? Time, energy, money, spirit? How can you be generous with what you do have?