Old Be You

Last night I had dinner with Joe and Ronda. It's been a while since I've seen them. Too long. Ronda and Joe live in South Bend and we were at Broadway Christian Parish UMC together. Ronda works for Church World Service and Joe is a painter, a writer, a musician, a teacher (of electrical engineering among other things) -- he is the ultimate renaissance man. My favorite memory of Joe is that every year at Easter he would take his banjo and lead the congregation in the singing of a song called "Hallelujah" that became the sound of Easter to my ears (in fact, I have in my memorial service arrangements the request that Joe would come and lead the congregation in that song).

Before Joe worked as a college professor in electrical engineering he was a professional folk musician. He has written books on how to play the banjo and the guitar. The picture at the top is of Joe performing at a student peace conference at Notre Dame. He not only taught at college, but he also taught folk music to the children of the Head Start program in South Bend. He's also a wonderful cook and wine maker. As he cooked up a terrific (and healthy) Italian dinner we reminisced and visited. We talked about things that were going on in our lives.

As I sit here this evening I am thinking back on some of the projects we worked on together.

In our Food Pantry at Broadway Christian Parish we would ask three questions at the end of a pretty extensive survey when our neighbors came in to get some food. The three questions are:
1) What three things do you do well enough that you could teach someone else how to do it?
2) What three things would you like to learn that you don't already know?
3) And who besides God and me is going to go with you along the way?
(many thanks to John McKnight and folks from Lawndale in Chicago who developed the survey that inspired this one).

My favorite question was that first one.

We took that first question and we asked people if they wanted to teach in what we called "The School of the Spirit." They had to get the students there -- but if they would get at least 3 students Broadway would pay for the needed supplies. The first group of classes were a Mexican cooking class, a basic auto repair class, a quilt making class, a guitar playing class, and a Bible Study. Later classes included instruction in Tai Chi(?), oil painting and acrylic painting, drama and a class on Hollywood Westerns and Why Black Men were left out. It was a pretty eclectic mix.

We would not pay the teachers but we would put a coffee can in the room and if people donated the teachers could keep what was given. Joe had the idea of building on this by taking the classes that were most successful and starting something he called "Broadway University." This would be something that people would need to register for and the teachers would be paid a very small stipend for the six week courses they offered. The Indiana Arts Commission helped support this.

One of the first set of Broadway University courses included a class in "Conversational Physics." When the article appeared in the paper we got a call at the church about enrolling in the class on "conversational psychic." "Oh," I told the woman who called, "it's 'physics' not 'psychics.'" "Oh my," she replied laughing, "I guess I got that all wrong!" The psychics class was the one she wanted -- after I hung up I couldn't help sitting there and thinking about what that class must have been like. I imagined a room full of people sitting together in silence, because they would all know what each other were thinking!

Joe encouraged us to call Broadway University "Old B.U." (hoping that the folks from Boston University wouldn't crack down on us for using that name). He pointed out that it fit the whole idea of what we were doing if we thought of it as "Old Be You."

Joe is one of those people who helps people be themselves. He doesn't suffer stuffed shirts very well. He's a man of the people. He is himself. And by being who he is -- we know ourselves all the better. Thanks Joe!