Putting Out Fires With Gasoline
April 7, 1986
I wasn't very involved with the campus ministry team when I was a student. What they were doing was very important. It was also very public. My idea about ministering to my classmates was a quiet, often secret thing.
I liked and trusted the Campus Chaplain, Don Fortenberry, a lot. George Harmon, the College Presiden,t blew hot and cold about the campus ministry team and Don. He blew hot and cold about me, too. George was a Christian, but he was never public about it, and he was confused by people who were.
The disposition of the campus ministry team wasn't a spot where expressing my opinion would help anything. George was pretty good about saying "goddamn it Boyd, you need to keep out of this." Sometimes, I need that.
You take a seventeen-year-old out of their mother's home, and stick them in a building, mostly unsupervised with a bunch of other seventeen-year-olds, and a whole bunch of beer, and issues of the heart, mind, and spirit will arise.
One day, the campus ministry folks and some other groups built a cardboard shantytown in the bowl to protest Apartheid and the Soweto slums in South Africa. I didn't know it yet, but this was the first step in a longer voyage between Jackson United Methodists and what was happening in Africa.
A group held a sit-in outside of George Harmon's office, demanding that he show the school's entire investment portfolio to make sure we didn't have holdings in abusive Afrikaner companies and mines.
Daddy, Bill Campbell, and Jack Woodward all encouraged him to do it because we'd never invested in anything crazy like that. "Hell, no." He said. "I can't give in to them because then they'll think they can control the portfolio whenever they want." To me, showing that we'd never invested in South African mines, or whatever, seemed like a no-brainer, but I figured this was one of those times I needed to keep out.
I had secret and illegal access to the roof of the academic complex. They've changed the locks to a type less easily foiled by a credit or stiff playing card, but the path still exists. My boy Sam has explored it.
I also had access to a raven-haired creature who was far less innocent than she appeared. Our time together had to be hidden from the other Chi Omegas because gossip, gossip, gossip.
She liked Bartles and James, which was gross, and port, which I could tolerate. Not being United Methodist, this was her communion wine. So, there we were, on the roof of the academic complex, celebrating the Eucharist with a full bottle and the host provided by Subway, watching the Campus Ministry team build a town out of cardboard to encourage more humanity out of people very far away.
The plan was for some people to spend the night in the cardboard ghetto, but as it got dark and cold, their numbers dwindled. We were pretty comfortable where we were. We had food, wine, blankets, and each other, although at that moment in time, ours was more of a courtly kind of love, just not a well-behaved one.
Cardboard burns pretty rapidly. Anyone who barbeques can tell you this. The fire started on the opposite side of the bowl from us. I could see people lighting it, but I couldn't see who. Knowing who did it would complicate things.
My obsidian-eyed companion and I considered the protest well-meaning, but silly and ineffectual; Now someone had set the cardboard village on fire. There were enough sleep-overs from the Campus Ministry Team to put the fire out before anybody got hurt or firetrucks had to be called. Spending the night watching a fire get put out with Daddy and Jack Woodward had happened before. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary this time.
The next day was Friday. There was a light on in Dean of Students Stuart Good's office. I brought coffee from the grill. Momma, not my actual Momma, but the black woman who was second in command at the grill, made pretty good coffee and lots of it.
"So, here's what we saw." I began.
He wanted to know who was with me. I said I'd rather not discuss that. He didn't bat an eye at the news that I spent the night with a girl in a forbidden vertical access space. I think he'd grown accustomed to it.
Had I been able to identify who started the fire, that'd be snitching, and that's another matter, but neither me or my Mediterranean coconspirator could say for sure. She'd returned to her princess persona anyway.
I felt pretty bad that these people who just wanted to make what I considered a meaningless gesture to help people far away had to deal with this. It wasn't meaningless to them. They’d been gathering cardboard for weeks. I assume whoever started the fire thought it'd be funny and were irritated by a bunch of Southern white kids throwing in their lot with the poorest of the African Blacks.
The current US president says there's a white genocide in South Africa. I don't know about all that. I know of one white Afrikaner who's not at all pleased with him. I'm much more worried about the genocide happening in America. Men in masks are ordered by the president to kidnap people attending middle school graduations and immigration hearings.
Maybe I should have been more up front and visible about my ministry when I was young. Maybe I should have been more up front and visible about a number of things. Hanging out on roofs, no matter how wonderful my companion might be, didn't make that much of a difference.
Sometimes, I wish Jeff Good would grow out his mustache to look more like his dad. I think about him a lot. Had I known I'd miss these guys so much, I would have spent more time with them when they were alive, but I don't suppose it's ever enough.
There will always be people who start fires, people who stomp out fires before calling 911, and people watching from rooftops. Ministry, in teams or alone, is one of the most important things you can do.
Things are better in South Africa, but worse here.
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning since the world's been turning
No, we didn't light it, but we tried to fight it
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone it will still burn on and on and on and on
