I recently read a story about John Lewis in Rev. MaryAnn McKibben Dana’s The Blue Room newsletter, and it’s been sitting with me ever since. I’m grateful to her for sharing it.
When John Lewis was a small child in rural Alabama, his world was surrounded by pine trees, cotton fields, and community. His family lived among other sharecroppers, most of them relatives. Every very adult was an aunt or uncle, and every child was some kind of cousin. One Saturday, about fifteen of those cousins were playing in his Aunt Seneva’s yard when the air began to shift, heavy with the threat of a coming storm.
Lewis wrote:
“The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore. I was terrified.
Lightning terrified me, and so did thunder. Aunt Seneva was the only adult around that day, and as the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside…
The wind was howling now, and the house was starting to shake… Now the house was beginning to sway… The corner of the room started lifting up.
That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. Line up and hold hands, she said, and we did as we were told. Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising…
And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.”
What an image — and what a truth to carry.
We can hold each other steady when the world begins to shake. We all know that feeling when things begin to lift right off their foundation.
And yet, this story reminds us of what’s possible when we move together. Even in times of chaos or fear, we can organize, reach for one another, and steady what matters most. That’s how we keep standing — by holding on, and by holding each other down in the best possible way.
—Renee Roederer
Smuggling Grace 