Personal Legend

The phrase personal legend comes from The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. My friend is reading the book right now and she texted me, "What's your personal legend? What's mine?" We've known each other for 40 years, so it's quite possible that one of us would be able to define the other's personal legend quite easily, even though we may not be able to readily define our own. I decided to include this "personal legend" idea in my memoir blog, though it does not come from Natalie Goldberg's book: Old Friend from Far Away.

When I asked Jane what mine was she wrote back a text, "As a child, I always thought of you as strong and free." Her words infused a momentary spirit of backbone and health into my currently weakened self. Yes, I remember "strong" and "free." Now though, I am in a period of darkness, the dark night of the soul perhaps; my strength has been replaced by questions, pain and fear. I am able to state that plainly and without shame because I know God is doing something wonderful in my life. Something good comes when God steps into my pain. It's happened before, I know.

One day when I was very young, I have no idea my age, I was playing with Joanie. She was my friend down the street, a year older than I and a conservative Christian. She often brought me tracts from her church and I remember the pictures today. On this day we got to talking about "poor people." We knew a couple. My grandparents had a friend, "Louise" who had worked in the fields in their town when she was younger, but now she was old and lived in a tiny shack, quite literally, a quarter mile away. I often accompanied my Grammy when she took dinner or fresh vegetables to Louise. She was tall, thin, black and she smiled a lot. I wanted to help Louise so Joanie and I got a jar and walked around the neighborhood knocking on doors asking people to give money "to help poor people."

We had a few coins in the jar when we went to my next door neighbor, an elderly lady who was friends with our family. In fact, she was the one from whom the story of this blog title came. After we left her porch, she called my mom. "Jane? Do you know that Jennie is going door to door asking for money for the poor?" I don't remember what my mom said, but it wasn't in anger or anything, she just said we should stop. She knew our hearts, but she also knew, well, that just wasn't the way things are done in the world.

When I think back to that story I feel two things: absolute enthusiastic joy and deflating shame. It's strange to think that adults would rather see two little girls digging in a sandbox or jumping rope than getting blindly excited by the idea of helping people. And it's hard to think, for some reason I cannot define, of how humiliating it was to be told that what we were doing was somehow wrong. Flash forward 10 years or so. I was in college and getting very interested in joining the Peace Corps. It was the only thing in four years of college that made me excited to be alive. Then, I suppose, something inside of me said, "No. It's stupid to think YOU could do that."

I think my personal legend, the thing that makes me feel most strong and free and sure, is helping people. It's where my heart is, it's what makes me feel good waking up in the morning. And it's not what I'm doing at all. Lord help me find a place to serve.