Nov 5

Written by: glendajoy
11/5/2009 9:16 PM

I learned something this week. You don’t have to speak to communicate, even something you feel very passionately about. Sometimes silence shouts louder than words.

It was my honor to stand in prayer across from the Women’s Center on Welshwood Drive. As I did, I was reminded of an event in my own life in 1969. I was a teenager, and not easily impacted by many things of real consequence. It was on the occasion of the funeral procession for my great grandmother. A line of cars left the funeral home in Fayetteville bound for a tiny cemetery in Flintville, where my family had lived since the early 1920’s.

She was not famous, even in that tiny Tennessee community. As we wound around a small highway, cars began to pull off the road, and park. Both drivers and passengers got out and stood reverently. Men took off hats, as women bowed their heads for someone they did not even know as the hearse passed by. That honoring of her life by strangers is still engraved on my heart.

This memory motivated me to join others praying in front of the Women’s Center. I was there for many reasons, not the least of which was to make a very personal statement on the value of every life- the baby (unseen and unheard), the mother, the father, the receptionist, the nurse, the doctor, the administrator, the owner of the Center. Each life is priceless. I wanted to communicate to each of them the same message those people in 1969 gave my great grandmother, and her family. “Even not knowing you, I honor the value of your life, and gladly stand today as a silent witness to acknowledge that reality.”

As I stood there, one stark difference in the lives of those I have mentioned overwhelmed me. One of them has not yet known the joy of feeling the warm sun in an azure sky as I did that day, or the cool wind as it touched my face. A deep longing arose in me for that precious one to know by experience what the rest of us already know. With all of its ups and downs, joys and sorrows, laughter and tears: life is good. A life is a life, no matter how small. And, when we don’t acknowledge the extraordinary value of every life, we devalue our own in the process.

Copyright ©2009 glenda clark

Tags: