Joanne and Johanna

I've started this blog to begin a conversation about the people, moments and stories that shape our lives, form our faith and give us courage and renewed energy and hope.  Especially the people.  Especially the women, those ones whose names go unremembered in the world, whose stories start small but ripple wide, who battered down walls when faced with them, who found a voice with which to face the world.  I'll be sharing about these folks here and hope that you will add stories and comments from your life as well.

Today I want you to meet Joanne and Johanna.  I grew up in the South, Alabama to be specific, in a Mayberry of a town with magnolia trees in the front yard, pine pollen coating the broad front porch and times full of changing winds.  More of those changes another day.

At any rate, I grew up an only child in the home my father was born in and died in.  Luckier than almost everyone I know, I grew up with a deep stability that my father by temperament and tenure imbued into me.  Except for the fact that I was sick all the time.  Very sick much of the time.  A preemie, my lungs have been my weak link all my life.  Much of my early life was spent in bed, creating kingdoms out of counterpane, struggling to breathe and spending holidays in hospitals with black and orange construction paper bats taped to windows and the hazy disorientation of oxygen tents.

When I was in first grade, I had to drop out of school and be tutored at home.  One memory that sticks out for me was of my mother's friend, Joanne, coming to the house to help me learn to read.  I don't remember my tutor, poor darling, the one who slogged it out with me day by day.  But I do remember 'Miss Joanne'.  There was something clean, no nonsense, calm and durable about her.  Dutiful, too, maybe.  "See Spot run" will forever be associated with her in bermuda shorts and a pressed blouse sitting next to me on my bed while my mother got a rest.  She helped to unlock a door in me: there were things on the earth that could run and words could make it so.  I thank God for Joanne.

Years later, battered not by illness but by church, I found my way to Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary and to The Rev. Dr. Johanna Bos.  When I left the deep south bound for seminary, disappearing around the tree lined streets and heading north, first to Sewanee and then to Lousiville, I had never seen a woman minister.  I thought that I and I alone would make up for the singular lack of leadership estrogen in the church.  I quickly learned how small I was and how utterly dispensable.  Until I got to Louisville and met Johanna.  How I got on her good side, I do not know. From the moment I met her she decided that I had a voice to unleash in the world and she pushed and tugged on me until I began to squeak it out for myself.  I don't think she ever used the words, but Johanna somehow told me that I was enough for my life, enough even for the church, just enough.  She believed in me, still does.  I thank God for Johanna.

'Miss Joanne' unlocked the world of others voices for me.  Dr. Johanna unlocked the world of my own.

Who taught you to read? Who gave you your first taste of 'voice'?