Weaving Sacred Wholeness

I wrote this for my church last Sunday about the "Weaving Sacred Wholeness" conference.

Weaving Sacred Wholeness

Stepping outside the Savannah airport, I met Seth Barch, a Friend about my age who was picking me up after my day of flying across the continent. He told me we had been invited to dinner at the house of another Friend if I wanted to go and asked me what I would like to do until then. I immediately answered, “Forsyth Park”. Driving into the city, we found a place to park on a side street and I had one of those “I’m really here!” moments. We not only walked through the park, but all over the historical district of Savannah.

Between that night and the next day, I was immersed in the history of Georgia. Savannah was already a thriving city before the Civil War and seeing history come to life around me was the most moving experience of the whole trip. Seeing the stones in the road brought over as ballast in the slave ships, laying my hands on the bricks of churches built by slaves and seeing holes to secret compartments on the Underground Railroad made some of the things I’ve only carried in my head move to my heart.

Along with Seth, half German, half Jamaican, my other touring companion was a black woman named Genevieve, an artist and kindred spirit. While hearing a talk about the First African Baptist Church, I looked around me in the pews and noticed I was the only white person in the entire room. They told me history from the black perspective, eyes I have never seen through, but I did that afternoon and continued to see it throughout the weekend as I met other Friends out on St. Helena Island, talking and making friends with both black and white, getting to share time with other young adult Quakers, an experience I do not often have, and I found myself once again fascinated by how we are all so unique yet we are all one.

At one point in the silence, I spent time watching a black woman across the circle from me. She had a brightly colored scarf on her head and as a black woman is one of my favorite images of God, I imagined she was God, sitting there with us. In a much deeper and more real way, I think it was true.

Another experience from the weekend that has stayed with me was a woman who had cerebral palsy. You really had to listen to understand her but as I got to know her through the weekend, she was the one who spoke the truest things to me, the messages that hit home time and time again. I learned through her that even though a package may be more difficult to open, there are incredible gifts inside. Whether this gift is playing in the Atlantic ocean, or meeting new people from other cultures than my own, the gift expanded me, expanded my vision and my picture of who I am and who others are. The more diversity I see, the more I truly believe we are all born of One.

Sarah Katreen Hoggatt

For those interested, I will write about the car catching fire tomorrow.

3656-09 #96