Out of the blue last week I got a message from an “Amy Jo White.” (Not her real name.) She had spotted my name while surfing the web and reached me through my former church.
Amy Jo. Amy Jo. Amy Jo.
DING.
Her family and my family were devoted members of Mill Creek Baptist Church in Youngstown, Ohio, a church that unwaveringly preached born-again, washed-in-the-blood fundamentalism.
I hadn’t seen or heard of Amy Jo since she was 24 and I was 16. She was friends with my older brother and sister, not me.
Amy Jo was the talk of the church because she was the first in our congregation of working class families to go to college. She became a nurse.
My mother adored Amy Jo. She admired her poise, demeanor, education, and wisdom.
When I was contemplating college during my junior year, my mother consulted Amy Jo. My parents had no clue how to select a suitable college.
My father was adamant that I attend Moody Bible Institute in Chicago because he mistrusted colleges and universities. He wanted me properly indoctrinated.
My mother did not. She wanted me properly educated. She knew the difference. She admired professors, psychologists, and physicians—ministers, not so much.
Amy Jo begged my mother to resist my father’s recommendation in favor of Wheaton College and the liberal arts it offered. My mother heeded her advice. She stood firm and my father—surprisingly—relented.
And just like that, thanks to Amy Jo, my life was spared intellectual and spiritual twaddle.
At Wheaton I read widely. Plato, Aristotle, Marcus Aurelius, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Hume, Voltaire, Thomas Hardy, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Simone Weil, T.S. Eliot, Flannery O’Connor, Hannah Arendt. I studied anthropology, pyschology, sociology, and biology. I earned a BA in philosophy.
Amy Jo fell off my radar long ago, but I still thought wistfully of her now and then and wished I had thanked her at least once. Alas, by now I figured she might be dead.
Last week I found out she wasn’t. I contacted her immediately.
She told me she’d come across reviews of my most recent book, The Bible Reexamined, and was curious how a child of fundamentalism had become such a progressive freethinker like herself.
Well, Amy Jo, let me tell you how it all began.
I sure liked that! Amy Jo’s in our lives are the magic of who we are. I wonder if you aren’t also Amy Jo’s Amy Jo. 😉
And opportunity knocked and you opened the door. A positive note this quiet Sunday morning. Thank you.
What a marvelous heart-tugging piece! Perhaps Meister Eckhart said it best: “If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.” I am grateful for your morning prayer!
Everybody needs an Amy Jo advocate in their lives at critical junctures where a life can be made or broken. Sadly it doesn’t happen for everybody. Some rip and tear at everyone who reaches out to them, unwittingly pushing away a generous, helping hand. Others of us remain simply unaware. But hope, someday, someway, someone will break through and ultimately save us.
Yes, there is an openness we develop. And it’s serendipitous. We might not recognize it until so many years later. I think we have been saved a bunch of times. 😉 (and fallen down too) It looks like Randy’s mom had a lot to do with all that too. I like choosing to think about this today. Enjoy your garden today.
Thanks Amy Jo for all us free thinkers and Jesus lovers in Shepherdstown. Real education matters and can change lives. Real education frees us from the bonds of rigid orthodoxy and dusty bigotry. Thanks for sharing your intellectual freedom with us.
Oh there are so many people I’d like to thank. But, alas, they are gone now. Start with my parents, and then progress through my family and on to so many friends.
And then there are the teachers and professors … long gone. Perhaps the most influential teacher was my HS physics teacher, Edward North. He went on to teach at Chote school in Connecticut. I finally tracked him down … but he had died three years earlier. He was great teacher about having purpose in life.
And the list goes on …
I thank them, even if they are gone from this place, Out loud. It feels so right for us.
Amy Jo couldn’t wait to escape the constraints of her upbringing, just like you and just like so many of us. Yay, Amy Jo!
After the Army in 1966 I was at loose ends. Took a course in Greek history from a guy who looked like a classic Greek with red, curly hair. Years later, I realized this was my “aha” moment. Sadly, don’t remember his name but I went on to major in history and become a park ranger historian and museum curator in the National Park Service
Fabulous! We can be Amy Jo’s and don’t know it. Carry on, good people.
What a great story. It’s these little serendipitous choices that shape one life which shaped so many more. Great job…mom…and Happy Father’s Day!
We all need some folks like Amy Jo in our lives. How wonderful that you are in contact again!
Cool.
Amy Jo…changed your life. So wonderful you could reconnect! Mine was “the son of a preacher man” – life is so rich with others who come & go & make a difference – even if they never know.
We never know how much we touch another life in some way large or small, unless that opportunity comes along to express it. Here’s to all the Amy Jo’s… lending a voice, a hand, an important point of view…one of whom just might be a Randy (Jo?).
All the times that I’ve cried
Keepin’ all the things I knew inside
It’s hard but it’s harder to ignore it
If they were right I’d agree
But it’s them they know, not me
Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away
I know I have to go
-Father and Son, Cat Stevens
Amy Jo planted seeds in a fertile garden decades ago. How fortunate for her that she lived to receive a lush bouquet of perennials from the still-flourishing garden? The real gift of a lifetime!