On the Election

Years ago when my children were small, we owned an old falling down house in East Point—it’s amazing how many bedrooms you can get for $60k when you don’t need up to code electricity, a dry roof, or reliable plumbing. It was there one night when my husband was out of town that somebody shot somebody else in a car right front of our house and the victim jumped out and disappeared between us and the big old falling down house next door.

The good news—I heard later the guy was ok. But being alone in the house with little boys, terrified, on the phone with a husband 300 miles away, trying to talk me in to cocking a shotgun (his father’s) that I wasn’t about to touch, being alone in that situation prompted me to take action—I made a bunch of flyers and delivered them on foot with the boys, inviting people to come to a meeting of the neighborhood association. There wasn’t actually an association, but I spoke to the local police and they gave us (me and whoever accepted) a room to meet and a few people showed up. And we talked about being safe and maybe having our first neighborhood cleanup day.

So monthly, I kept doing the same thing. Making flyers, distributing them. I invited someone from Trees Atlanta to come speak to us and we did several tree plantings. And then we had refreshments. And more people came. And we did beautification projects and made lists of the old people or those who were housebound that we needed to keep an eye on. At risk boys were invited to Boy Scouts.

There was no sales pitch on my part—and by default I became the first president. All I said was come to the meetings and the cleanups if you can, or just remember to pick up a piece of trash when you see it and look out for your neighbors. And it just kept growing, so big that one day Vincent came back from the Scout hut (Methodist Church) out of breath saying, “Mom, there was this crazy lady with purple hair and she was yelling at the City Council!” The council was holding a meeting there that must have involved public input.

That crazy lady turned out to be the second president of the Frog Hollow neighborhood association. After it was big enough to have a voice, it became political. It got so organized that it had a newsletter and socials and I was given a bouquet of yellow roses to usher me out of office. Which was fine by me. My goal had been far less ambitious than the new president, and the group eventually became a force to be reckoned with down at City Hall.

It reminds me a little of Acts--in the sense that Christianity started in a very organic way. By the time Christ died, he had a lot of followers who believed his message. And it wasn’t long before the 11 remaining apostles started to get organized. Each of them became a bishop and they threw the Biblical equivalent of dice (bones) for who would replace Judas.

Right now, the comparison between that election of Matthias, the second 12th apostle and I believe the first elected bishop, and our current election process for the new bishop of Atlanta has not gone unnoticed. What is most important? The ability to administrate? Charisma? Knowledge of our diocese, or the ability to build consensus or youth programs and membership? Or maybe a prophetic voice and the courage to stand up against injustice?

Those are the types of questions the clergy and delegates are wrestling with now and will be no doubt until the election on June 2. Grace and peace (and luck) to them all.