Episode 37: Lynda Randle: A Pilgrim in Progress
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m a Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Patsy: Season Two is brought to you by Food for the Hungry.
Andrew: Meeting the physical and spiritual needs of people all around the world for over 50 years.
Patsy: I have a question for you, Andrew. When I say certain phrases, you tell me who you think of.
Amazing personality that bubbles over with life but has known the harder side, has had a father who was a cab driver that gave her a set of diverse conversations that she would’ve otherwise missed out on had it not been that way. But she brings to the table for us great love, great talent, and a great ability to see things as they have been and as they are and as they can be.
Andrew: I know who.
Patsy: Who?
Andrew: Lynda Randle. She is a good friend of ours, and she is a wonderful messenger, is what I think of her as. Though she is known for her musical talent and for her singing abilities all over the world, really she is someone who has continued to build bridges. She comes from a predominantly white audience but grew up in a Black culture, and so I think it’s so cool how she melds these things together with such natural style and grace.
She has a new record that really is celebrating some of the older spirituals, and she and our mutual friend, Cindy Morgan, wrote some new songs in the thread of those spirituals. That record is called Pilgrim Journey. You’ll hear a little bit about that, but we really want you to hear more about Lynda’s journey as we continue to highlight Black History Month this month on Bridges.
Patsy: 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 a viaduct 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, DC, hello. But the Potomac, yeah, river bridge and all that. As a matter of fact, my parents would — they’d tell us this because we didn’t know them when they were dating because we weren't here — but they used to go and watch the planes take off there at the Potomac River. And there was a place they would go and park — we’ll just leave that 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. I mean, you go there now, and I’m like, wow, it has changed so much. It was great.
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. And 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.
Andrew: But we’re curious because… 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.
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, or did they just come…
Andrew: Potomac… Pacific…
Lynda: Yeah. I think the dolphins just came. I don’t know. We didn’t have dolphins growing up. It would’ve wild us out. You’re from the hood and you see a dolphin, you’re like, whoa.
Patsy: But you were looking up at the planes.
Lynda: That’s right, that’s right. Exactly, exactly.
Andrew: You do have a rich family history though. 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?
So 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 like… 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, and he was a cab driver in the DC area. He heard the gospel of Jesus, and he pulled over his cab, and he and my mom had been separated. My mom was in North Carolina, my dad was in DC, 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.
And so growing up with dad as the cab driver, my mom worked for the government. She was a health inspector, and she would go into 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. Nothing with… 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. You know, daddy’s girl. But it was so cool because when I got in trouble, which was every now and then — it was pretty bad — I’d go through the whole discipline period, and my dad was no… He never gave me an opportunity for penance, you know. 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 wanna 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 tease sometimes and call us chocolate and vanilla, but in our neighborhood. I remember hearing something and calling one of my white friends a really not a great name, and I really got in trouble for that. My parents said, “We taught you to love people, period.”
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 and stuff like that. But it was quite a journey.
Andrew: You don’t have to wait. I mean, 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. And I was maybe second, third grade. I was the youngest and I was always talking, so that has not changed. 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: Yeah, for the most part. There were a few but not a lot. It was enough to be cultural shock to anybody. Because being honest with you, I thought for a very long time, because I’m young and everything and I’m watching the television shows, and I thought that all white people were rich and smart, and that’s the honest to God truth. And up until the time I can remember, I was probably 7 or 8, I remember bathing with Ivory soap, hoping that I could just rub this off. That’s the truth. I really felt that way because the people of color that were portrayed on television back then were either gang bangers, drug dealers, prostitutes, pimps, and there weren’t any good images. Now Diahann Carroll was really good. She 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 a straight-A, pretty much, 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, 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 seem to have shrunk or something. But not, I had gotten older and larger, a little bigger. I’m not gonna say bigger, but anyway.
I was struggling through the 10th grade in the public schools in DC, and they 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 poor 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 talk about bridges. I was a bridge, Patsy. I was a bridge. I was the brunt of some jokes, and some of those 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 gonna treat them like they treat me.
And so 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 so anyway, it’s just really neat to see how it’s all evolved. And then now I’m in predominantly… I’m in all mixed circles literally all around the world, I mean getting to sing in places that I never dreamed of as a child. And 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’re that greater cloud of witnesses. My brother’s Michael Tait with the Newsboys, so I went to see the God’s Not Dead movie. And so I’m seeing him on the big screen, I went to see it 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 is the limit. It’s just boundless what you can do when you’re so surrendered and so focused. And so I know they’re so proud, and I mean that in the most Jesus humility way, because we’re trying to stay on that path, but it’s been quite a journey. It’s been amazing.
Food for the Hungry Sponsorship Message & Grand Prize Giveaway
Patsy: Food for the Hungry is giving us a wonderful way to take God’s Word and invest it all over the world, and we get to be a part of it. It will deepen their spiritual experience, it will help in literacy issues, it will bring light into dark places, and we can do it all if you will help us help others. And how do we do that, Andrew?
Andrew: It’s pretty simple. Our friends at Food for the Hungry are giving us a unique opportunity to purchase Bibles for folks all around the world, and here’s the cool part, Patsy. It’s translated, ready to go, ready to read in their language, and that’s a rare thing around the world.
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Patsy: For those of you who buy some Bibles to give away, there’s something for you.
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Patsy: I don’t.
Andrew: Well, I’m gonna tell you. You can choose from a selection of Patsy’s artwork, and we’ll make a special print for you that you’re gonna sign.
Patsy: Patsy’s artwork?
Andrew: Sure enough. And then you can pick your favorite hymn, whatever is your favorite hymn from the hymn book, you just let us know, and I will record an original version for you. Plus, that grand prize winner gets a stack of books and CDs signed by us just for them.
Now, here’s the other deal: Anyone who buys 10 or more Bibles to help those in need, we will do a little original Scripture watercolor for them where you’ll get your paint brush dashing across that canvas and I will write the Scripture of their choice hand written on it. We’ll number it, we’ll sign it. It’ll be a special art piece just for your home, and all to say thanks for helping us at 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: So 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: Yeah. I don’t know why, but he… 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 the people in Kansas City that 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.
I’m so proud of them. They still have me… 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. She doesn’t know if she wants to 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 and Andrew, they are that, so close, and they are each other’s cheerleaders and everything like that.
That is the greatest treasure for me is my husband and our kids. I love it.
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, Patsy. They’re six years apart, and interject this: They were 10.9 at birth and 10.12 pounds. I was 250. It was unreal.
Patsy: Good size.
Lynda: Yeah. Because before I had them and before I was married, I said, “Someday when I get married, I want six of my own and adopt six,” but after the two babies that big I said forget it.
But Patsy, so no, 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 that’s still here with us. Ann, I love you, and I know she loves me. Our relationships have been strained and challenging, and when they were making decisions back then and they were 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. So part of it was definitely like how we talk about them and raise 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 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. And she asked me — I’ll never forget it. 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 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, and so I sang at her service and all that.
So 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 sister was all part of the motivation of not having relationship that you so long 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 into 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 allowed that kind of invitation.
Lynda: To be honest with you, I had a dream, a physical like I went to bed and I dreamed, and this sounds kind of weird, but she was cutting me in my dream. I guess that was probably like life, maybe the wounds and everything, and I remember my dad, who he 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 just tell me to be strong and he would give me something but let them keep what…instead of… So it was kind of that peacemaker type thing but sometimes a little dysfunctional, and he didn’t know any different and 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,” and 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 same age as Patience, and we flew them there and just loved on them. But that was a journey, and 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, I need your love for her because it’s difficult. 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. 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.
I’ve made some decisions sometimes with Thanksgivings and Christmases, and we’re always at either my brother Michael’s 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.” And so I’m kind of learning that, and 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 ya 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 always as they 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 also, just like Patsy’s saying, a constant education.
“We were built for family.”
Lynda: It really is. And 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. And I am, too, kind of a peacemaker, a fixer in a way. I love to keep the peace. I’m the middle kid. It seems like sometimes we’re coming on both sides. 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, and this is really just surface. I’m not even getting into the deep stuff.
But just loving them, and you just stay in a stance of forgiveness. And 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 days, 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 the 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, yes. That’s easy.
Andrew: I mean, she’s been trying to let this go the whole time.
Patsy: I think that 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.
You know, 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. From the 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 that’s been built between them, I would say to some degree as a result of an innate desire for that to happen. And then even, I mean, one of the most obvious bridges on the surface is that 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. So 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. Well, I sing 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 my life. 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 a 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 what I call the dead fish handshake, and I’d tell them, “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, honey.
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. 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 little safari suit on, 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. So 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 but we enjoy together what God is doing in ways neither one of us deserve.
Lynda Randle singing “Plenty Good Room”
Plenty good room, plenty good room
Plenty good room in my Father’s Kingdom
Plenty good room, plenty good room
Choose your seat and sit down
I’ve got a long white robe
Up in heaven I know
I’ve got a long white robe
Up in heaven I know
I’ve got a long white robe
Up in heaven I know
Choose your seat and sit down
Plenty good room, plenty good room
Plenty good room in my Father’s Kingdom
Plenty good room, plenty good room
Choose your seat and sit down
Patsy: Andrew, I understand, word is out, that you do another podcast with a friend of ours. Tell us about that.
Andrew: Mr. Mark Lowry, who was a guest on this podcast. He’s my co-host for Dinner Conversations with Mark Lowry and Andrew Greer. We have a ton of fun talking about all kinds of topics around the table, and you can find them at dinner-conversations.com.
Do you know something that we both love a lot of, Patsy?
Patsy: What’s that?
Andrew: That’s books.
Patsy: Food
Andrew: That too. But I hear you have a book club.
Patsy: I do have a book club. It’s called Porch Pals Book Club, and you can find out more about the book club by going to patsyclairmont.com.
The Abide Bible Sponsorship Message
Patsy: “Shout out praises to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with joy. Enter his presence with joyful singing. Acknowledge that the Lord is God. He made us and we belong to him; we are his people and the sheep of his pasture.”
That’s Psalm 100, verses 1 and 2, from my own Abide Bible.
When we abide him and his words abide in us, everything changes — our perspective, our attitude. So it anchors my soul when I go to the Word of God. It teaches me better behavior than I’d have otherwise because I can really suffer from a case of the attitude. So this helps to keep me in a better place with a sweeter attitude in a difficult world.
The Abide Bible comes in two different versions. I don’t know if you have a favorite, but there’s a New King James and then there’s the New English translation. It is set up so you can journal, so those of you who love to do notes on the side, this paper is set up to receive those notes. It also gives you insights on the edges of the pages that help us to read the Word in a more meaningful way, to meditate in such a way that it begins to sink into the very depths of our being, to pray the verse so that we get better claim on the truth in it, and then to contemplate so that as we move forward the Word goes with us.
So that is what I want to tell you about the Abide Bible because I believe in passing on the Good News.
Andrew: We have been talking about the Abide Bible throughout the entire Bridges broadcast, but one new way to highlight your experience of reading the Bible is a free 21-day video devotional series called Experience Abide. It’s an incredible way for people to experience the Bible themselves and adds a free benefit to your own spiritual growth, and so we are excited to offer not only the Bible but this free Experience Abide devotional series straight from bridgesshow.com/abide.
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: Bridges is produced by my co-host, Andrew Greer.
Andrew: And co-produced by my co-host, Patsy Clairmont. Our podcast is recorded by Jesse Phillips.
Patsy: And sometimes my son, Jason Clairmont.
Andrew: At the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee. Jesse Phillips is also our editor and mixes our show. And our theme music is written by Kyle Buchanan and yours truly, and all of the instruments of the music were played by Kyle Buchanan at Aries Lounge in Spring Hill, Tennessee. Our transcripts are provided by Rachel Worsham. Thanks, Rachel, for all your work.
Patsy: If you like what you’ve been listening to, you can help us out by leaving a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to our show.
Andrew: For more information about Patsy, myself, or to read transcripts and to listen to more episodes, go to bridgesshow.com.
Patsy: Catch you next time.