Episode 13: Lynda Randle: Family Dynamics: All The Things
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations.
Patsy: Well, listen, Andrew. I’m excited about today because we have a friend coming in who’s going to help us cover some bridges musically.
Andrew: Absolutely. Lynda Randle is her name — wonderful artist, wonderful singer. You might know her as well, not only has she been popular in the Gaither world, she’s an African American artist who works in a predominantly white demographic. She’s from the Northeast, and yet a lot of her audience is from the South. So she has these very interesting perspectives that are born from and inspired by a little bit of the rub, if you will, a good positive rub with different people, different places, with different experiences. So because of that, I believe she has a lot to teach us.
Patsy: Boy, and I’m all ears to hear because we can imagine being the only one until we’ve been the only one, and then we have an opportunity to build bridges. You can build bridges or walls, and she’s chosen the bridge route.
I love bridges because they span the air to give us something solid to stand on. At least we hope when we start across a bridge that it’s solid. But I was looking at the Chain Bridge that spans the Potomac, and in looking at the history of it, there’ve been eight of them. They started in the 1700s, and the first one only lasted seven years and it rotted and caved in. I didn’t want to be on that bridge. So they replaced it with another wooden one, which means sometimes we’re a little slow at catching on, but that one burned. And then they did more, and those came down by flood. So it’s had quite a history.
Now it’s steel and it’s steady, and it’s ready for you; and it carries water across too, so it’s an aqueduct for the Arlington area. So I’m learning all these things because of our very special guest who’s from that very area.
Andrew: Lynda Randle is here with us.
Lynda: Hi, everybody. Oh wow.
Patsy: Have you ever been on the Chain Bridge?
Lynda: Well, I live in Washington, D.C., hello. But the Potomac River Bridge and all that, yeah. As a matter of fact, my parents — they tell us this because we didn’t know them when they were dating because we weren’t here — used to go and watch the planes take off there at the Potomac River, and there was a place they’d go and park and...we’ll just leave it right there...and watch the planes take off and all. And then we would go and have picnics in that area all the time at the Potomac River. It was incredible.
Patsy: They say it was beautiful.
Lynda: It’s even nicer now. You go there now, and I’m like, Wow, it has changed so much. I remember we were kind of playing in that area and somebody lost a football just right over the railing of the Potomac River, and I believe somebody in our group jumped in to get that football. That’s just how accessible it was. You don’t get in that river today. It’s pretty bad.
Andrew: Okay, so you don’t swim in it.
Patsy: But you know what I read? I read that they have up to a thousand dolphins in the Potomac.
Lynda: Wow.
Andrew: Have you heard of this?
Lynda: No.
Patsy: They come in from the Atlantic, they summer there, have their babies, and go back out.
Lynda: I’ve never…
Andrew: But we’re curious-- Well, I’m curious, and maybe Wikipedia’s not curious. But yeah, it is curious because it’s not salt water, right. Or maybe it is.
Lynda: I never knew there were dolphins there. Wow.
Patsy: I never heard of such a thing. It confused me, but then, I’m not good on geography. It doesn’t take a lot to confuse me.
Lynda: So have the dolphins always been there?
Andrew: Potomac? Pacific?
Lynda: I think the dolphins just came. I don’t know. We didn’t have dolphins growing up. It would’ve wowed us out. You’re from the hood and you see a dolphin.
Patsy: But you were looking up at the planes.
Lynda: That’s right. That’s right. Exactly.
Andrew: You do have a rich family history. You do kind of have a wow history, and you talk about it a lot. I think we’ve always known a little bit about Lynda Randle’s family. Just every time you’re on stage, every time that we see a new children’s book, anything, it has to do with your family. So tell us what it was like growing up in your family.
Lynda: When you said that, I just got chills. I don’t know why. Of all the families I could’ve been born in and born to, it’s the Tait family. And just the name Tait, by the way, I did a little research on that, and it’s an English name and it means “happy.” Can you figure that?
My mom and dad, it’s just really cool. I heard this about them. Of course, we weren’t born yet, but my parents, they were married really early, and their marriage was horrible. They were not getting along, and I heard that my dad was… They would tote guns, and he was an alcoholic, and they had so much dysfunction going on and everything. And they had one child at the time, my brother Bill, who saw a lot of that. My dad was driving in his cab one day — he was a cab driver in the D.C. area — and he heard the gospel of Jesus and he pulled over his cab.
He and my mom had been separated. My mom was in North Carolina and my dad was in D.C., and he called her after that conversion and said, “Hey, can we give this another try?” My mother agreed to come back home, and then not only did they have one kid, but God gave them six more kids, and that’s when I was born.
So growing up with dad as the cab driver, my mom worked for the government. She was a health inspector, and she would go to these restaurants and inspect places. You weren’t supposed to really get a lot of gifts because it could be bribes, but they loved my mother. And so she would go to these Chinese restaurants, and they didn’t want to get shut down. I like Chinese food, so don’t write any emails or anything like that. But anywhere she would go, she was just so full of life and love, and my dad the same, never met a stranger. And so being born in that household with my siblings and being taught so many wonderful principles about life and about the Lord and relationships, it was just life-changing.
It was really cool because my dad especially, and my mom, she was really more the disciplinarian in the family, but it was so cool because when I got in trouble, which was, um, every now and then — it was pretty bad — I’d go through the whole discipline period, and my dad never gave me an opportunity for penance. Sometimes you discipline and your kid has to sulk for three or four days and then you talk to them. But after it was all over and everything and I got out of trouble, he would say, “Chub, baby, you want to go get some ice cream?”
It was really just the way he loved us, the way they loved us, and we were taught to love people no matter the color of their skin. We only had two white families, and I’d tease sometimes and call us chocolate and vanilla in our neighborhood. I remember hearing something and calling one of my white friends really not a great name, and I really got in trouble for that. My parents said, “We taught you to love people, period. It doesn’t matter.” So we just had a family full of love. There was music. There was laughter. But when you guys are ready for the real talk, I’ll tell you some of the real journey with siblings and struggles and drugs and things like that. It was quite a journey.
Andrew: You don’t have to wait. I do want to ask one question just based on we were reading through The Cab Driver’s Daughter. No matter who we are or where we come from, we will be confronted, and I say that in a positive manner, with our differences, but our parents will be the first ones… I want to relate to that story of yours real quick because I’m just remembering when my mom — this had nothing to do with skin color but socioeconomic maybe — and we were going to pick up a couple girls to take them to the youth group, who I knew from my brother’s youth group. I don’t think their parents went to the church, but the girls did.
And so we’re coming into church — we grew up in rural Texas — and we’re pulling in an RV park, a trailer park, which is where they lived. I was maybe second, third grade. I was the youngest, and I was always talking, so that has not changed.
“No matter who we are or where we come from, we will be confronted with our differences.”
Lynda: Go figure, right.
Andrew: So most of it was ignored, but my mother heard me say something — I don’t remember what it was — about “This is where they live?” in a derogatory term or a negative connotation, and she turned around so fast and she said, “There is no difference between them and us.” And that was it, just even my mother to say that so quickly, like your mother.
So we’re all confronted with it at different times, but in the book, because you were going down some wrong paths, which maybe we should talk about that in a minute, which wrong paths, your parents put you in a Christian school where you were the only African American girl.
Lynda: For the most part. There were a few but not a lot. It was enough to be cultural shock to anybody. Being honest with you, I thought for a very long time, because I’m young and everything and I’m watching the television shows, I thought that all white people were rich and smart, and that’s the honest-to-God truth.
Up until the time I was probably 7 or 8, I remember bathing with ivory soap, hoping that I could just rub this off. That’s the truth, Patsy. I really felt that way because the people of color that were portrayed on television back then were either gangbangers, drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and there weren’t any good images. Now, Diahann Carroll was really good. It was so positive.
So while I did have parents that were instilling those positive things in me and I could be better than my environment, it still affected me, what I saw, and I was like, I don’t want to be Black because are you kidding me? So when they put me in this Christian school, I thought, They have lost their ever-loving minds. I was like, Are you kidding me?
I failed the ninth grade with 32 Fs. This is prior to the Christian school. I was pretty much a straight-A student up until the ninth grade, but because I had really good skills — I was a really great visual artist. Like the books we’re talking about, if I had stayed with it, I probably could’ve done my own illustrations. So I was really good at that.
I wasn’t singing at the time, and so when I went to the special school, it was Della Reese that taught there. This is before me. Phylicia Rashad’s sister, Debbie Allen. They had dance, drama, visual arts. That was the class I was in, and so I went basically just to clown around because this was the first time I ever went to a school that wasn’t in walking distance from my home. I got to ride on a metro bus, no parents, nobody’s gonna tell me what to do. Oh my lanta, I just showed out. I was the class clown. I couldn’t believe it.
And the thing is I wasn’t dumb or ignorant. I was a very smart kid, but I just decided I wasn’t going to study, so I literally failed that year, had to go back to the junior high school, and somehow the desks seemed to have shrunk or something. But no, I had gotten older and larger, a little bigger.
I was struggling through the tenth grade in the public schools in D.C., and my parents really, really prayed about it, and they decided to put me in Riverdale Baptist Christian School in Largo, Maryland. It was so life-changing. One of the last things I said to my dad before he took his last breath, I whispered in his ear, and I thanked him for putting me in a Christian school because it changed my life, and it was my first time really interacting with that many white kids.
It wasn’t easy, and I don’t play the pour little Black girl syndrome or anything like that, but it wasn’t easy because some of these kids, they didn’t grow up around us either, so they didn’t know how to… You know, you talking about bridges. I was a bridge, Patsy. I was a bridge. I was the brunt of some jokes, and people were sometimes very, very rude and didn’t say things that were nice, but I had to kind of toughen up and just go, I’m not going to treat them how they treat me.
From there, God began to just use music because when I got to the school, they didn’t have the art class I wanted. They put me in a music class, and so in the book, you see where I was the only chocolate face in the all vanilla choir. That is so true. And they kept giving me these Negro spirituals. I go, “What is wrong with you guys? Are you serious?” But it’s just really neat to see how it’s all evolved.
And then now I’m in mixed circles literally all around the world, getting to sing in places that I never dreamed of as a child. My parents used to tell us, and I was telling this to our mutual friend Emily Cole. We were talking about our folks, I feel like they are that greater cloud of witnesses. My brother’s Michael Tait with Newsboys, so I went to see the God’s Not Dead movie. And so I’m seeing him on the big screen, and I went to see him three times, and I thought, Mom and dad used to say that if we just live for God, live for Jesus, the sky would be the limit. And I’m like, not even the sky’s the limit. It’s just boundless what you can do when you’re so surrendered and so focused.
I know they are so proud, and I mean that in the most Jesus humility way because we’re trying to stay on that path. It’s been quite a journey. It’s been amazing.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: “Where would I be if I did not believe I would experience the Lord’s favor in the land of the living? Rely on the Lord! Be strong and confident! Rely on the Lord!” Those are the last two verses of Psalm 27 from the Abide Bible. It is a new Bible that has been in my home now for several months, so I’ve had time to work with it and it to work inside of me. It offers beautiful, old art that is associated with verses, so it helps it to become a bigger picture in our mind and our retention is improved. It has places for us to journal on the side as we read. It also has instructions on how to pray this Scripture, how to meditate on it, how to contemplate it so we can sit and soak in God’s Word and allow it to dwell richly within us.
Andrew: What I love about the Abide Bible is that it’s invitational, not just informational. It’s inviting us not to just exercise the Word of God in our head but to really invite it to dwell in our hearts, which to me reminds me of John 15:4: “Abide in me and I in you.” So you can order your copy of the Abide Bible today at bridgesshow.com/abide.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: I’m excited about Food for the Hungry because they know how to get to the need of people. If you meet their needs, then their heart is open to anything else you say, so they’re feeding the children not only to nurture them and prepare them for real life but to hear about Jesus. And one of the ways that they’re able to help these families and it be sustainable is by chickens, Andrew.
Andrew: That’s right. It’s incredible. For just $14, you can provide a family with a chicken, and if you want to multiply that blessing, you can provide them with two chickens for just $28. And we know that chickens multiply, so that’s more eggs for the children to have the protein that they need, for them to sell the extras at market, and those chickens last eight to 10 years. It’s a huge blessing. All you have to do is go to fh.org/bridges.
Patsy: Is there a question you’ve always wished someone would ask you?
Lynda: Oh, that’s a very good one there. You know, when I do interviews and people say, “Is there anything else you have to say or want to say or need to say,” I love talking about my husband and my girls.
Patsy: Do it.
Lynda: My husband, Michael Randle, he is going to get me for saying this on this radio podcast…
Andrew: Do it.
Lynda: But I hope he never ever hears this because he’s barred me from saying I’m married to the most gorgeous chocolate man alive. Gloria has a crush on him. Everybody I meet I’m like, “No, he’s mine. He’s mine.”
Honey, I love you, but I couldn’t resist saying that. I know you told me not to because it embarrasses you.
Andrew: He doesn’t want you saying that?
Lynda: He doesn’t want me to say that. I don’t know why.
Andrew: Humble man of God.
Lynda: That’s me, babe. I love you to pieces.
We have two beautiful daughters, Patience and Joy. Patience is 28-years-young, beautiful, and she graduated from Anderson University. Her degree is in audio visual and film, and she minored in French. She’s brilliant, and she’s a writer, a filmmaker, blogger. Kansas City did an article on four of the people in Kansas City you want to sit down and have a conversation with, and Patience was one of them. So that was pretty cool in the Kansas City Star. Mommy loves you, babe.
And I’m so proud of them. See, I always tease and say you can’t tell when chocolate people are blushing and red, but I’m just blushing because I love my babies, and they’re really sweet.
And then Joy is 22, and she just graduated from MidAmerica Nazarene University with a degree in biology. Brilliant, and she doesn’t know if she wants to do the doctor thing or be in public health or whatever. And she sings like an angel, just a sweetheart. And they are the best of friends. They went to Paris together without us. Like what? Just this past May for Joy’s graduation. And she was so funny because we always tour Europe together, and she said, “Mom, it was so strange to be in our hotel room and not to look down the hall and see that you and dad had your own room or something.”
But Patsy, Andrew, they are so close, and they’re each other’s cheerleaders and everything like that. That is the greatest treasure for me is my husband and our kids.
Patsy: Let me ask you about your daughters’ friendship. Was that natural for them, or were there certain things you did as parents that helped to solidify some of that?
Lynda: I think it would be both of those things. They’re six years apart, and interject this — they were 10 lb. 9 oz. at birth and 10 lb. 12 oz. I was 250. It was unreal.
Patsy: Good size.
Lynda: Yeah. Before I had them and before I was married, I said, “Somebody when I get married, I want six of my own and adopt six.” But after the two babies that big, I said forget it.
So we really encouraged that. We encouraged them getting along. Part of it is because of my history with my sisters. This breaks me up every time I talk about this. I lost a sister to AIDS at 37, and I have a sister still here with us, and I love you and I know she loves me. Our relationship has been strained and challenging. When they were making decisions back then, the drugs and different things like that, I couldn’t follow them, and so I didn’t have them for examples. And because of that, it just did something to me, and that’s why I do the conferences that we do with women and everything. And so I wanted my daughters to just really know what a real friendship and sistership looks like.
Part of it was definitely how we taught them and raised them up, and then between 12 and 18, there was some strain because a 12-year-old doesn’t run around with an 18-year-old. But something just clicked, Patsy, and I can tell you we’re doing absolutely nothing. They FaceTime. They live in Kansas City. They FaceTime and they talk. They don’t mind wearing the same things. They’re just so great together. It blesses us as parents to see that kind of friendship.
I never got that with my sister that passed at 37, but one of the things that God led me to do even after a very, very difficult relationship with her as children, he had me bring her to Kansas City a year before she passed, and I didn’t know she was dying, and just love on her. I’ll never forget. I was in the room, I was ironing, and she said, “Why would you be so kind to me? I treated you so bad.” And I said, “Sharon, this is the way that God loves me, God loves us, so why not?” And it was just a few weeks after that she went back home and came to know Christ as her Savior. My dad led her to the Lord, and it’s pretty amazing. I sang at her service and all that. I never really had those sisters, and so it’s important that my daughters get along.
Patsy: You think that bridge-building that would happen later between you and your sisters was all part of the motivation of not having relationship that you so longed for for them.
Lynda: Absolutely, yes.
Andrew: What do you do with dysfunction? So many people experience dysfunction that isn’t always because of anything motivated out of intent of hatred or ill intent or anything. It could be based on just choices in life. But what did you find yourself doing to be able to come to the place so that when y’all were adults you were able to invite her in your home and show love, because there could’ve been a lot of steps you took even just in your heart differently that would’ve never have allowed that kind of invitation.
Lynda: To be honest with you, I had a dream, like I went to bed and I dreamed, and in that dream, and this sounds kind of weird, but she was cutting me in my dream. And I guess that was probably like life, maybe the wounds and everything. I remember my dad, who was the most loving, forgiving father, but he was also a fixer, and sometimes he stepped in when he probably should’ve let things play out a little differently. When things were taken from me that were rightfully mine that I owned, he would tell me to be strong, and he would give me something but let them keep what they...instead of… So it was just kind of that peacemaker type thing but sometimes a little dysfunctional, and he didn’t know any different. He’s still the greatest dad ever.
But I can tell you when I had that dream and I woke up, and my dad in that dream was like, “It’s gonna be okay,” or something, I told my husband, I said, “Sweetie, I believe the Lord wants us to bring Sharon to Kansas City.” And at the time, she had her baby, my niece, Aria, who’s now the same age as Patience, and we flew them there and just loved on them. But that was a journey.
Right prior to that, I was going to my doctor who delivered both our babies, and we were talking and she said, “Lynda, had you ever asked Jesus to love Sharon through you, like give you his love for her?” And I go, “You know, I’ve never really asked that,” and I really started praying, Okay, I need your love for her because it’s difficult. And I believe that’s where that began, and so it wasn’t going through counseling or sitting and talking to anybody. It was literally I had this dream that she was wounding me again. It was crazy. And the next thing I woke up and my husband said, “Well, I know how she treated you, so if you feel that you want to bring her here, I’m all with you.” It was life-changing.
Andrew: It probably was a decision for him as well, being your husband.
Lynda: Oh yeah, he’s so protective, even to this day. And I’ve made some decisions sometimes with Thanksgivings and Christmases. We’re always at either my brother Michael or sister Angie in California, my baby sister, or it’s Kansas City. We’ve done that a lot. And then at some point, my husband said, “You know, you don’t have to always do that. You don’t always have to bring everybody together.” So I’m kind of learning that. He’s guarding these relationships that some of them are still in the process of being mended.
Patsy: I think the healing in families is a lifelong opportunity. We didn’t mean for it to be, but there you go.
“Healing in families is a lifelong opportunity.”
Andrew: It is interesting how difficult it can be to let go of that though. We know that because of how many people spend so much toxic time with family members, and I don’t think that has to diminish our love for one another. There is something with blood. I think we were built for family, so maybe it’s even just a desire for it to be as it was meant to be. But if we’re to be a healthy individual, we also know that it takes awareness of things are not as they always should be, and so I have to make decisions around that. So to be a part of a close family is a gift, and it’s a also, just like Patsy’s saying, a constant education.
Lynda: It really is. You just have to be determined to be the best you in all of this madness and not let anybody dictate to you anything different. I am, too, kind of a peacemaker, a fixer in a way. I love to keep the peace. I’m the middle kid. But I love my sisters, I love my siblings, and out of the five that are still here — I have a brother in prison, and the Lord’s mended that relationship. I mean, we could just go on and on. The stories are so just incredibly deep.
This is really just surface. I didn’t get into the deep stuff. But, just loving them, and you just stay in a stance of forgiveness. You just have to come in the relationship with that in your heart and with your mind because it’s always gonna be something that somebody does, and I will do things and people will get offended. And so I try not to have that thin skin, don’t let everything bother me, and all that kind of stuff, but just loving them where they are because I want the same as I’m still growing in life too.
Patsy: One of the things I find difficult is when to let it go and when to use my voice, when to take a break and when to come back together. Those points are very sensitive points. I think sometimes I’ve done it right and sometimes I’ve not.
Lynda: Yes, that’s easy.
Andrew: She’s been trying to let this go the whole time.
Patsy: I think the picture of that Chain Bridge burning down and being rebuilt…
Andrew: She sees me underneath it.
Patsy: It’s been really good for Andrew and I with the difference in ages and stages of life to learn how to have conversations, especially those that make sense.
Andrew: Which is rare. But we find that quite charming.
The show is about bridges, and it’s not just bridging generations. Everything you’ve voiced, everything we’ve talked about today, there are bridges so built into your conversations and your history. I see that not only as you being kind of the bridge between older siblings and younger siblings. From a past life, if you think about it, an older sibling with a father who was a different father and evolved into a different man by the time he was your father. And then of course having your own girls and the bridge has been built between them I would say to some degree as a result of an innate desire for that to happen.
And then even one of the most obvious bridges on the surface is the world of music you are in where you are one of the few African American artists in a predominantly Caucasian scene, and you have done that and done that with grace and style for many years. You weren’t just a novelty; you have become a family. Has that always been a part of the resonance of who you are, like building bridges, or has that just been a natural result of what you love?
Lynda: I feel like it’s just my makeup. I feel like I was born for this. I really do. But it’s something, yes, that I feel like I was born to do, but I didn’t know that, realize it, until it started happening and you’re getting in these circles with these people. And I’ll be honest, when I first sang in a predominantly white audience, it was really interesting because in the Black church, when you’re singing, people talk back to you. They get excited and they start throwing things and throwing babies over the balcony. No, no babies over the balcony. But it gets exciting, and you’re just like, Yeah, you’re gonna sing. When I sang in the first predominantly white audience ever…
Patsy: Silence.
Lynda: Silent. I was like, They hate me. I could not figure that out to save… And I was singing some upbeat, getting after it and everything. And then after it was over, people came up to me and tears were streaming down their face and they would say things like, “Oh, I want you to know I was dancing in my heart. I couldn’t get it to my feet, but my heart was dancing.” I’m like, Okay, cool. That’s a new one.
So that was kind of the beginning of that, but then I really, in the rural South, it got pretty sticky where I was called to some of the white churches to sing, but they had an agenda because I was a token. They wanted a certain song, and not like, “This is the sermon we’re preaching. Can you give us a song to go with that?” It was literally like, “We want this Black woman, we want this voice, but we don’t want it to be who you really are. We don’t want the real Black lady.”
So I found myself in these circles, and then sometimes people would come up — I’m being honest — and they’d give you what I call the dead fish handshake. And I’d tell them, “Honey, the chocolate is not rubbing off. This is a permanent tan. You’re not gonna catch it. Hello.”
Patsy: I would love to catch some of it.
Lynda: I’ll bottle it up for you. It’d be a big seller, I’ll tell you that much.
But anyway, that was kind of interesting, and I don’t think I was prepared for that world. And hate him or love him, Jerry Falwell put my brother and I through college at Liberty University, and boy, that was something else. And so this bridge thing, it wasn’t always comfortable, and I didn’t even realize what was happening, and then all of a sudden, I look up a few years after all of this and I’m going, Wow, God’s given me a voice. And while I thought when I surrendered completely to God at 16, I was going to be a missionary running through the jungles of Africa. I had the safari suit and the big ol’ Bible. But God made me a missionary to white America, and I’m not even saying that in any weird way. Really, he has. He’s given me a voice and a way to communicate in love, not to be offensive but to speak truth. And my husband’s preaching a message now on it’s not sameness, it’s oneness. You don’t have to be like me, but we’re to be one.
John 17, as Jesus prayed for the body that we would be one. So I think that’s really neat that this bridge thing has just kind of evolved, but I do know I was destined even before I was thought of, born for this.
“God made me a missionary to white America.”
Patsy: That’s beautiful. I love the way that you’ve said that, and I love his emphasis, that it’s not that you become me or I become you. We enjoy together what God is doing in ways neither one of us deserve.
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have a new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: Andrew, I’m so excited that one of our sponsors is Food for the Hungry because I like people who are feeding people. I say let’s get to the basic need that a person has, and let’s build up from there. And when you feed a child, you feed their brain, you feed their disposition, you feed their ability to have strength to do the hard work that oftentimes is involved, even if it’s just their studies. If the synapses aren’t snapping, it’s gonna really be tough, so Food for the Hungry’s got the right idea, and they’re talking chickens.
Andrew: That’s right, Patsy. Bawk-bawk-bawk. You can give a family a chicken or a pair of chickens to help them find the nutrition they need on a daily basis, as well as these chickens are producing eggs all the time. We know that, right? We have friends and neighbors who have chickens now here in the States, and they provide those eggs, which then can be sold at market. So a chicken is this warehouse of opportunity for a family. Now, get this: You can provide one chicken for a family in need for $14. That’s it. That’s the chicken. That chicken lives for eight to 10 years and provides those daily eggs. It’s incredible. You can provide a pair of chickens, because we know chickens multiply fast, to help that family on an even deeper level for $28.
Patsy: Yes. I love the idea you can double the blessing for just $28, and this goes to countries like Bolivia, Peru, Ethiopia, Rwanda, and the Dominican Republic. So it’s a wide reach, and it’s something that God spoke to us about and that is giving to the poor and offering something that will help their life. Let’s feed the hungry.
Andrew: Go to fh.org/bridges to provide some chickens for families in need today.
Patsy: And every chicken you purchase for our friends across the world, it becomes an entry into our first ever Bridges giveaway.
Andrew: That’s right. One winner and a guest will receive roundtrip airfare, one night’s lodging, and ground transportation for a getaway in our hometown, Patsy, of Franklin, Tennessee. Plus, we’ll take you to dinner and interview you on a special episode of Bridges.
Patsy: The winner will be drawn on March 31, 2021, so get your chicken before then.
Patsy: I have loved this Cab Driver’s Daughter book that you’ve written. I’m a woman of verse. I love that. But I also love the artwork in it, and I love the storytelling because we all have a story to tell. And I hope a lot of people run out and get this book, The Cab Driver’s Daughter.
Lynda: Yes, it’s Amazon. And Diana Rendell is the illustrator, by the way. She’s amazing. She goes to our church in Kansas City. So thank you, Diana. I just gave you a shoutout on that.
Andrew: While you’re reading The Cab Driver’s Daughter, I’ll be salivating over What’s So Great About Mama’s Plate?, which seems to be the follow-up, also illustrated by Diana. I would love to illustrate food for the rest of my life, except real food.
Lynda: Well, you know, I’ve met a lot of kids who just think there are certain foods that are yucky. Like I thought broccoli was like a little tree or something, and the carrots. But I thought it’s something about mama’s plate, even as a grown woman. My husband, I’m like, “You need to get your own food.” First of all, I’m not your mama. And then my kids, I’ll order stuff at the restaurant and somehow my plate looks better. You know that, Patsy, right?
Patsy: I do.
Lynda: So when your mama cooks your food with love and seasons it with grace, that’s what’s so great about mama’s plate. And there’s a little goofy kid song.
Andrew: Oh yeah, I love this. The seaweed and cucumbers are wrapped around raw fish. I think they call it sushi. It’s a Japanese dish. Good luck with that, kids.
Patsy: Have you ever read something so lovely that you knew that the pen that wrote it was first dipped in the heart of the individual? That’s how I felt when I read this because it is part of her journey, part of her insight, and for us who listen, we get to be blessed with wisdom that we may not have gained in other ways. So may our eyes be open to the truth this holds of our dear friend Lynda Randle as she shares her journey.
Lynda: The bridge is out. Somebody oughta do something. As most of you know, I have been Black all of my life, and if I live to be a hundred-year-old, I will still be Black. I will die Black.
Oh, don’t get me wrong — I’m not sorry about the beautiful brown or, as many of you have heard me say, chocolate skin that our sovereign Lord chose to cover my medium build body in. Neither am I apologizing for the way in which I was fearfully and wonderfully made.
What I’m trying to say though is because I am Black and having had the rare and sometimes bittersweet opportunity to be in a lot of predominantly white circles because of choices that my parents made for us early on, I have painfully observed more times than not many issues and myths that keep us apart, especially those of us who are of the household of faith. And while I am thankful that I have been afforded the privilege of being a voice during the Black History Awareness Month, it grieves me to think, for most of us, this is all this month will mean: awareness.
Aware that in this 21st century there are people who still will be judged by the color of their skin and not be the content of their character. Aware that there are still hate crimes that happen somewhere in our world everyday. Aware that the media will still perpetuate racial hatred and disunity by reporting current news and events from a biased perspective. Aware that our daughter who attends a predominantly white Christian school is still the brunt of age-old generational racist stereotypes and comments because parents refuse to teach their children otherwise.
So my question to you is: Now that we are aware, now what? Where do we go from here, and how do we get there?
May I suggest a bridge? That’s right, a bridge. For so long, we’ve talked about tearing down walls that separate us, and most of us who have been trying to make a difference are aware that many walls have come down and that’s great. But for some reason, we still can’t seem to get together. Oh, I see you over there and you see me over here. We wave at a distance, we smile, we nod, and occasionally, we might pause just long enough to shout, “We oughta get together some time.” But then fear and ignorance raises its ugly head, and our learned behaviors of the familiar starts to sing the same old song: Play it safe, do what you’re comfortable doing, and nobody gets hurt.
Nothing will ever change if we continue to keep this mindset. The bridge is out, and somebody ought to do something. We’re living in very challenging times, to say the least, and we’re divided over things that God never intended to divide us when he created us. And unless we are intentional in our efforts to get together and build bridges, we will remain apart.
We’ve got to intentionally invite people to our dinner tables that may not look like us. We’ve got to intentionally make conversations with coworkers that may not be from the other side of the tracks or even the other side of the world. We’ve got to start having staff and employees in our ministry circles that model heaven and the vast diversity that awaits us there. Our congregations need to reach beyond the four walls and reach out to the suburbs, inner cities, and even rural communities in order to show the world, who’s always looking on, a little bit of heaven. We’ve got to be intentional in our efforts to teach our children that while a person’s skin color may describe them, that it surely doesn’t define them. Let’s get to know people for who they are and not for who or what we wish them to be.
In closing, let me say that my prayer for us as God’s children is that this Black History Awareness Month will be different from all the rest because this time, unlike times in the past, you will make an intentional, on-purpose decision to be the bridge that brings us together and not the river that keeps us apart.
“We’re divided over things that God never intended to divide us when he created us.”
Patsy: You’ve been listening to Bridges, and I’m Patsy Clairmont, the Boomer.
Andrew: And I am Andrew Greer, the Millennial. Tune in next time to Bridges: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations.
Patsy: Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.