Make Good Choices

 Drains gurgle.

Bathtubs and sinks make a distinctive sound.  When a plug is pulled, and the pipes are clear, drains gurgle.

Emptiness makes a noise.

Ears ring after a party.  A hall, after the reception, echoes.  A church, after a wedding, sounds like traffic or birds or a furnace or an air conditioner.  Leaving is a wordless language.

 

Parents speak a wordless language on a first child's first day of school.  Ann understood leaving.  Girlhood behind her, and high school completed, meant Ann faced decisions.  Drained was the joy of graduate school admission.  Empty pages awaited her dissertation.

"How's that big paper coming?" Ann's mother asked.  

Awarded a Fulbright Scholarship, Ann left her family for South African study.  Apartheid's plug was already pulled but a tub of Truth and Reconciliation gurgled:

Many unnamed and unknown South Africans were the victims of gross violations of human rights during the Commission’s mandate period [1960-1994]. Their stories came to the Commission in the stories of other victims and in the accounts of perpetrators of violations.  

 Like other victims of political conflict and violence in South Africa, they experienced suffering and injury. Some died, some lost their homes. Many experienced the loss of friends, family members and a livelihood. Some experienced brutality at the hands of the security forces or vigilante groups. Others experienced ill-treatment at the hands of members of the liberation movements and other political organisations [sic].

 The unknown victims of human rights violations in South Africa were not necessarily aligned to any particular political organisation or party. Neither were they confined to a particular province or region in the country. Men and women, young and old alike fell victim to the violence and suffering spawned by Apartheid. (reference)

Emptying thirty-four years of racial segregation left a ring on South African society.  

Ann witness Nelson Mandela's May 10, 1994 presidential inauguration and was changed while listening to South African radio.  In May, 2026 she shared her story at the Breslin Center of Michigan State University.  "Nelson Mandela was president when we were in South Africa. He was attending a memorial remembering an anti-apartheid worker. The national anthem was normally sung in 5 languages but at the event Afrikaans - the language of apartheid architects - was omitted.  Mandela asked them to play the national anthem again and include Afrikaans.  He made a choice consistent with his values."

Ann familiarized herself with Mandela's values, including his 1964 Speech From The Dock:

I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die. ~ Nelson Mandela, 1964

Witnessing Mandela's sometimes unpopular adherence to his values convicted Ann to clearly articulate her own values.  At Michigan State University, she reflected, "Guiding ethics and qualities shape myriad choices of peers I respect. Core values guide decisions and actions.  Courage, fairness, curiosity, honesty, compassion are examples...[of core values] What core values motivate you? Make good choices in selecting values that are your unique signature.  As Thomas Merton reminded, we must make the choices that enable us to fulfill the deepest capacities of our real selves."

Thomas's emptiness made a noise; Merton's emptiness sounded like war.  Perhaps he learned leaving's wordless language as a child. 

During World War I, in August 1915, the Merton family left France for the United States. They lived first with Ruth's parents in Queens, New York, and then settled near them in Douglaston. In 1917, the family moved into an old house in Flushing, Queens, where Merton's brother, John Paul, was born on November 2, 1918.  The family was considering returning to France when Ruth was diagnosed with stomach cancer. She died from it on October 21, 1921, in Bellevue Hospital. Merton was six years old and his brother not yet three. (reference)

Mandela's imprisonment, and Merton's life, gurgle in Ann.  Perhaps Ann spoke a wordless language on her children's first days of school.  Parenting produced an interior ring.  Her maternal admonition to 'make good choices' sullied a conversation far removed from domesticity.

After finishing her PhD and Fulbright studies, Ann became a professor.  Eventually she led students back to South Africa for study.  While dropping them off at a grocery store, she encouraged them to 'make good choices'.

Each adult snapped to attention and remarked the maternal ring in Ann's voice.  Later, her flock of graduate students contemplated on the electric charge her exhortation produced.  Adults felt shepherded, even parented, by the nudge and Ann admitted the origin was her child-rearing.  Together, the exchange students also recognized potential beyond guiding offspring.

What does it mean for PhD's-to-be, or Americans abroad, to make good choices?  Ann shared, "...[a] doctorate allows decision making. You're urged to bring your full capacities to your work.  Which signature values and qualities will you bring, in addition to your intellect, to your work?  What values will you bring? What knowledge do you bring? Making good choices will require both.

"Kindness, service and community have been elevated in my work. They help me make good choices. I see my work as service.  I try to be kind and create community. Take time to reflect on values and qualities you find important.  Make good choices; your list can be long but does well to be specific."

Listening is a choice.

Listening to Ann is a good choices.  She reintroduced the lives of Merton and Mandela.  Though they are dead, the ears of the living still ring.  If Ann can spur the living to action using the examples of the dead, how much more might the Gospel spur the living?

Following Jesus Christ is a choice. 

Following Christ's unction to attend a graduation celebration for one student among thousands was a choice.  So many attended that attempts to find the celebrant were abandoned.  Leaving with his graduation gift in-hand exposed Ann's unintended consequence.

She shared a message that needs to be shared.  In the city the author first heard a drain gurgle, Ann would be called a preacher.

Sharing a message that a preacher shared is evangelism.

May each, author and reader alike, clear wind pipes and make a distinctive sound.

Great preaching can present Jesus to the modern mind, transposing him from a world of goats, camels, fig trees, and mustard seeds to a world of crack, teenage gun fights, child abuse, stealing in high places, and education without values, keeping alive his transforming and saving power generation after generation.

~ Samuel DeWitt Proctor