Pamela Jean Owens off-line

I found this blog item in my documents folder — I can’t quite figure out if I ever posted it.  In the melancholiat at coming to the end of a momentous 2008, personally and for the world, I was feeling rather down, feeling the house too quiet after the holiday bustle of family and a baby once again.  But with so many stars in my sky, how can I not give thanks for my life?  My posting again starts with those who are gone, but it is about life, not death, something I need to daily remind myself to remember:

“Let the dead walk before you and acquaint yourself with their names…”
So speaks the motto splashed boldly across the print Jim Dombrowski gave me of an original poster he created commemorating one of the bloody police massacres of union organizers in labor history.  I do remember those who have walked before me and I endeavor to acquaint myself and others with their names, as my elders taught me to do.   I consider myself to be one of the most fortunate and blessed individuals I know, for the lifetime I have had to sit at the feet and be taught at the knee of such great men and women of social justice history as those with whom I have crossed paths and sometimes shared a day, a week, a month, a year, or more.

Jim Dombrowski — Th.D. Union Seminary, 1920’s sometime — thesis on communistic societies of the early American republic — old line union organizer, North Carolina and throughout the south — beat up and ridden out of town on a rail, countless times and places I’m sure.  C.P. member? Maybe.  Freedom fighter,  Definitely.  Widower, grandfather, lover of justice, of art, of kindness, of life, of family and friends, and of New Orleans.  Mentor to young adult organizers my age, but just as much of budding toddler artists like our little Ruthie.  If I were to “google” Jim today, what would I find?  I wasn’t on-line as I wrote these thoughts, but I’ll check it later.  Would I be as amazed at what I would find about Jim as I was when I “googled” Anne Braden, my old friend, the widow of my primary mentor in organizing, Carl Braden?  I had no idea how widely she was known, being out of the south so long.  Fire brands when I knew them in the seventies, she died not so long ago, respected by all strata of those who love justice.

Anne and Carl were my teachers, my surrogate parents at times; they showed me what parents of activists could be like when I felt far from my own. Carl brought Jim Dombrowski to meet me, interview me, and then go to New York City to raise the money to pay me to organize on the Charolotte Three and the Wilmington Ten.  Carl and Anne were committed to the struggles in North Carolina, in particular, because their own correspondent for the Southern Patriot, Jim Grant, was one of the Black organizers who had been targeted.  And oh, what I learned from Jim, who still lives, as far as I know.

I was blessed to live in the house with T.J. and Vicki Reddy when Julien Bond, then “merely” a poet, came to visit T.J., a fellow poet, in jail.  I was blessed to be sleeping in the apartment whose steps made the platform for the late Allen Ginsberg to do his “after-hours” reading when he came to Vanderbilt University in 1969.  My boy friend’s roommate was Allen’s host, and was sent to buy Allen a toothbrush, since Allen had forgotten his at his last stop.  What little things we remember.  I don’t remember what he read, but I remember that he sat on the stairs as we spilled out of the hallway into the street, because there was no other place to be, and that he waved his hands as he spoke, and that he needed a new toothbrush.  Oh, the importance of poets for our movements.  Denise Levertof, who I never met but who T.J. spoke of as a sister.  So many more.

And the priests — some dead, and some still living, in my life, I’ve known them well.  George Celestian, who took me to hear John Prine in Austin when he had an extra ticket, then soon went to Central America with his order and I don’t know what became of him later.  Tom Sheetz, the Jesuit who was getting a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Texas so he could vote the Jesuit’s shares in companies such as Gulf and Western, and bring social conscience to the stock holders meetings of large corporations doing evil.  Father Al Moser, Paulist Priest, lover of life and love, gentle soul who told us to name our children something we were comfortable with (when we asked how to do the last name thing), because if they were our children, they would choose their own names when they wanted to anyway.  How right he was!  Still I say the prayer he taught us, “Holy Spirit of God, take me as your disciple. Guide me. Illumine me. Consecrate me.  Be my God.  Be my guide.  Wherever you lead me, I will go.  Whatever you say, I will do.  Whatever you forbid, I will abhore.  Lead me then, into the fullness of your truth.” I think I may have a few of the words wrong, but more or less correctly, that has been my prayer for the past thirty plus years.  Father Al Moser, I don’t know whether you live now on earth or in heaven, but I appreciate you and thank God for your being in my life.

Father Joe Znotas.  The stories I could tell . . . . Another day, another blogging.  We named our first son for you.  That says it all. I strive always to do what I think you would do in any situation of daily life, for you taught me more than anyone that the real work for justice is in the minutes and the hours, not in the campaigns and the headlines.  You died too young.  You are sorely missed.

I am thankful that Angela Davis and I crossed paths for a few days in North Carolina, shared a bedroom in Professor Helen Otho’s home, sat through a trial together and spoke on the same rally platform.  I learned from you, my tall black sister, and I think perhaps you learned from me as well, though I will probably never know.  I saw you vulnerable, soon after you had been those many months in solitary confinement in jail, for no reason, innocent but held anyway, with no blankets but the ones they let you crochet to pass the time, with poor food, for you were a vegetarian, with nothing but time to think, to meditate, possibly even to pray.  I wondered if you, an avowed Communist, were truly an atheist.  You seemed full of the spirit to me.

Some are dead: Elizabeth Chavis.  Igal Rodenko. My grand parents.  My Aunt Maude. Rachel Henderlite. John Jansen.
And some are living:  Ralph DiGia.  David McReynolds, Karl, Judith, Walter Harrelson, Martin Marty, James Gustafson, David Tracey, Anthony Yu, Prescott Williams, Bob Shelton.  In my life, I’ve loved them all.

I have roots.  I have a base to stand on and a reservoir of wisdom to tap and call upon.  I have never gone out into the world alone, even when I knew no one in the room, for the cloud of witnesses behind me are always with me.  The cloud of witnesses is not just a pretty platitude from the epistle to the Hebrews; it is reality and I feel it daily, hourly, minute by minute.

I am so very very blessed by those I have known, loved, and been loved by.  How, then, can I want for anything?