Tag Archives: Sonsyrea Tate Montgomery

I’m OK You’re OK

Posted on by sonsyrea

I’m OK You’re OK

After three bouts of violence with Grandma that day, I saw Granddad plopped down on a chair in the dining room and cry. This caregiving is taking a lot out of him - but also adding a lot of character and spiritual strength to him. After his tears Grandma was calm again and he called her to him for a hug.

After three bouts of violence with Grandma that day, I saw Granddad plop down on a chair in the dining room and cry. This caregiving is taking a lot out of him – but also adding a lot of character and spiritual strength to him. After his tears Grandma was calm again and he called her to him for a hug. “Baby you know I love you,” he said. They kissed and I almost cried – but instead raced to get my cellie for a photo.

I showed the photo of the kissing crusaders – Grandma and Granddad – to my co-workers this morning and they marveled at the beauty of the moment. The facebook note I posted with the photo was simply: 74 years married. Still Standing. Prayers up everyone. One-hundred-fifty people had liked it overnight. When I showed my supervisor and another colleague, they also ooooed and awed. I volunteered the back story – that the kiss came after a long day of fighting and managing Grandma’s disease – and they made the moment sweeter.   My supervisor – who has also become a dear friend – Michelle – said my grandparents remind her of her aunt and uncle who were so close they took care of each other all their lives. When her uncle was put in a nursing home, her aunt took a bus to visit him every day. The day her uncle died during the visit, her aunt went home and died of a heart attack less than an hour later. The other colleague, Tracy, said when her father was in the hospital, comatose, the doctors advised her and her siblings to tell him it was ok for him to leave. They each visited and after all eight of them told him they were fine and he could leave, he died within hours.   “That reminds me of when my brother was dying at 16,” I said. “We told him he didn’t have to stay in that body for us. He was in so much pain. The cancer had spread to his lungs.” He died a few weeks after that conversation. “Maybe it’s time we have that conversation with my grandparents,” I wondered out loud.   I remembered giving my grandparents hints that I’m ok. Several times in the past year Grandma looked in my face and asked, “Why are you so sad?” She knows something’s not right in my marriage because she hasn’t seen my husband.  She’d told me to “turn it over to God…let God fight your battles.” But at one point Saturday she looked in my face and said, “Look at those big, pretty brown eyes,” nurturing and cheering me on and she has done all my life. I felt like she survived her life-threatening surgery four years ago just to be alive and help me through the latest heartbreak. My last big heartbreak was almost 20 years ago and she had nursed me back to whole then.   Yesterday when I visited – doing my Wednesday and Thursday evening caretaking stint – I told Granddad that I’m OK. When he asked how things are going on my job, I seized the opportunity to assure him that I’m doing well, standing on my own two feet, feeling secure, unafraid of getting fired or burned out again.   “How did the people act about you taking off early today,” Granddad said, speaking over his shoulder as he stood at the sink washing greens.   “No problem. This job is waaaay less demanding than any job I’ve had before. I’m not in charge, so it’s not all on my shoulders. All I have to do is make sure my work gets done and I put in the hours,” I said.   “What about the people you’re working with? How are they?”   “My supervisor is great! She’s a praying woman. In fact, we pray together every week,” I said.   “That’s a change from that last one you had cursing you,” he said. We both laughed.   “Yep. My mother-in-law told me to not just pray for any job, but pray for my divine job,” I said. “I really feel like this is a divine job.”   With that, I realized I was telling him I am financially secure enough. I’m OK. My mother-in-law has been the moral support I’ve needed, encouraging me, counseling and consoling me as if God put her in place at the door where Grandma will exit.   Maybe later today I will ask my mother what she thinks about us each having that conversation with our elders, assuring them that we’re ok and they are free to go. I think she will say they are seeing and sensing how well we are and they will leave when they feel like they’ve given us all they can and that we’ve received all we can.

Muslim Madness: No More

Posted on by sonsyrea

 

save-meriam-ibrahim

Muslim Mayhem: No More

I will sing louder. When I lend my voice, lifting praise of God and Christ, I will sing louder than ever before. Never mind if I sound off-key. The angels will laugh. Holding the red, battered book of treasured hymnals up near my heart, standing in the pews where Christians pray, I will hurl those gospel tunes to the high heavens. Singing for the 27-year-old Sudanese woman sentenced to death for converting from Islam to Christianity. I was raised Muslim in America and converted to Christianity without retribution – because I live in America.

Christianity has soothed my psyche, in many manners saved my soul. I will sing this song loud as I can. I will sing for Meriam Ibrahim and the 20-month-old child who is currently in jail with her as she serves time awaiting execution for her conversion. I will sing for the eight-month-old fetus she is carrying, a baby that will be allowed birth before mother is hanged. This baby may grow up denouncing religion altogether, an unborn soul, a witness to Muslim mayhem and religious rot. I will sing for the baby’s salvation.

Catching up on the news today, I read articles about Meriam, a beautiful woman who also is scheduled to be lashed 100 times for “illegitimate sexual relations” because her husband is non-Muslim. Will she become the female Jesus on the cross – lashed and hung to die?

602-sharia-whip-610

Sudan authorities are killing individuals who denounce Islam. Sudan’s penal code criminalizes the conversion of Muslims into other religions, which is punishable by death, according to an article by the Associated Press.

“Religious thinker and politician Mahmoud Mohammed Taha, a critic of (former President Jafaar Nimeiri who incorporated Shariah and its traditional punishments into law)…was sentenced to death after his conviction of apostasy. He was executed in 1985 at the age of 76,” says the AP article. “A number of Sudanese have been convicted of apostasy in recent years, but they all escaped execution by recanting their new faith.”

That’s Muslim madness run amok. It’s one thing for parents to bully/guilt-trip their children into embracing family beliefs and carrying on certain family traditions. We see it often. And we understand that in every country some religious beliefs become law. But when a country will kill its citizens over a disagreement of religious ideas, that’s just crazy.

That is about power and imposition. It’s about controlling what is precious: the human spirit. This is about forcing human beings – their mental and physical energy – to serve a particular doctrine. This. Is. Just. Wrong.

Of course Muslim madness is not contained in Sudan. We read about Muslims bombing Christian churches in Cairo and elsewhere. We read about Nigerian warlords, claiming to be Muslim, kidnapping 300 schoolgirls, believing that Western education is anti-Islamic, threatening to sell the girls into marriage. These mad Muslims over-shadow the millions of sensible Muslims living quiet, productive lives, clinging to Islam because of the personal peace they have found in Islamic practices. Meriam, like me, found her peace/power in Christian customs. But she is called to pay a deadly price.

An article in the U.K.’s Telegraph quotes Sudan Judge Abbas Mohammed Al-Khalifa telling Meriam, “We gave you three days to recant but you insist on not returning to Islam. I sentence you to be hanged.”

The judge should be fried. Meriam was born a Muslim, but after her father left her family, her mother raised her as a Christian, according to news reports. Meriam told the judge, “I am a Christian and I never committed apostasy.”

Amnesty International weighed in saying, “The fact that a woman could be sentenced to death for her religious choice and to flogging for being married to a man of an allegedly different religion is abhorrent and should never be even considered.” In a joint statement, the embassies of Britain, the United States, Canada and the Netherlands expressed “deep concern” over her case. “We call upon the government of Sudan to respect the right to freedom of religion, including one’s right to change one’s faith or beliefs,” they said.

Some will condemn this execution, which, even according to the Shariah law cannot take place until two years after the woman gives birth. Some will call for respect for religious freedom. For my part, I will sing the Christian songs my Muslim-bred heart has embraced. I will sing them loud and clear.

Creative Writing – Week 10

Posted on by sonsyrea

J. California Cooper (one of my favorite storytellers!) tells Marita Golden she loved telling stories with – and to – her paper dolls growing up.

 

M.G.: I read in an article that you played with paper dolls.

C.C.: Until I was 18.

 

M.G.: What did you like about paper dolls?

 

CC: You could tell a story. And that was that. The fact is, they were paper, so they couldn’t do it without you. It was the fact that you had somebody who could stand there and say, “Oh Howard, don’t do that.” My mother said you could put me in a room by myself and shut the door and you’d think a crowd of people were in there if you didn’t know I was in there by myself, because I talked to myself.

 

M.G.: And you were never alone when you were in your world of imagination.

 

C.C.: Right. That’s why when I was 18, my mother got scared and thought I was retarded or something….

 

I loved this book because it affirmed so much of what I knew, experienced, and felt as a writer, and because reading it feels like being in the company of a bunch of people who “Get it!”

 

Do you have a favorite book about writing or the writing life? If so, do share. And tell us why. 

Creative Writing – Week 9

Posted on by sonsyrea

“I had a notebook. You could buy little things from the canteen, and I bought a notebook and started writing things down. Prison ain’t exactly the best place to be telling somebody your deepest feelings, talking about your pain. So, I was writing stuff down. And I realized that it made me feel better, whatever I said, whether it was a paragraph or a page….”

 

(Award-winning author Nathan McCall tells award-winning author and master writing teacher Marita Golden in her book, “The Word”)

 

Do you have a writing routine? If so, for how long have you had it and what benefits have you gained from it? Is it time to rev. up your writing, take it to the next level? I’ve been journaling more than 15 years and this year I happened upon the book, “Creative Journaling,” which is helping me “monetize” this habit. It’s giving me ways to use this journaling habit to improve my craft and discover great stories – cha-ching!

Creative Writing – Week 8

Posted on by sonsyrea

Choose one of the five prompts and write to your heart’s content – but no less then 15 minutes. If you can make time in the evening or on the weekend, give yourself an hour or two to explore this prompt on paper.

 

1)   I give most of my time to….

2)   A letter to someone no longer in your life…

3)   The values I have chosen to live by…

4)   If I dared to say what I really think….

5)   The talent I would develop if I had half a chance is…

Creative Writing – Week 7

Posted on by sonsyrea

Go to your local library before the weekend is gone and check out a book about writing or the writing life. This assignment is two-fold. It gives you a reason to support your local library staying in the business of warehousing books and keeping them available; and it engages you in the book world – in a way.

Go and check out ay book about writing or the writing life.

Creative Writing Workshop – Week Six

Posted on by sonsyrea

Write about your worst habit. Twenty-minutes non-stop. Put it down. Plan to return to this assignment tomorrow for 20 more minutes. End this assignment by completing the sentence, “Now that I realize how (disgusting/or harmless) this habit is, I can…..”

The Other Side of Unemployment

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post

Find a way or make one. That was the motto drilled into a certain set of Washington area young women when they studied together at Clark Atlanta University. This motto fired them up through difficult times on campus, it helped them through bouts of unemployment, and it continues to instruct them today in their work on prominent Black radio and television shows and at the DNC, working on behalf of our first African American president.

I first heard their story when I met one of them at a networking party recently. I was fascinated that they all succeeded – and at the same time.  Sure, I had heard stories of all eight children in a family getting their college degrees and having successful professional careers. I had heard of groups of friends from college all succeeding in their respective endeavors. But after a few years of streaming reports of job loss, families losing their homes, and public frustration mounting to the levels of widespread “Occupy” protests, these young women’s stories of success, of success after set-backs, seemed refreshing, a nice reminder that things do work out. All is not loss.

As we geared up to celebrate Dr. King’s birthday, I asked them how Dr. King’s legacy and the motto they learned at their historically Black college helped shape their life.

“Find a way or make one? Those were words to live by,” said Janelle Morris, a Largo High School graduate. That motto instructed her when, just a few months after graduating, she and her husband learned they were having their first child. She was working as an administrative aide in Howard University’s School of Communications at the time while her husband continued his studies at Morehouse University.  She worried that starting a family might stall her career in television before it got started. She picked up extra work at CNN.

“It was right after 9/11 and they needed all the help they could get. That was my break into television,” she said. So, after working her nine-to-five at Howard, which she held onto to maintain health insurance, she clocked in at CNN and worked an over-night shift. Within months, however, she landed a full-time job working at WUSA. She loved working in her chosen career field and reaping full benefits. But then she was laid off when the company downsized. She was unemployed for almost a year. “That’s when the motto really kicked in, because I had to keep the faith that I would get back in.  Every report I saw said I’d be lucky if I got a job again, let alone a job in television,” she said. “I was unemployed on Oct. 16, 2010. On Oct. 16, 2011, I was in a live truck covering one of the biggest stories of my career. That’s my testimony of faith – and that motto,” she said.

She was hired by Roland Martin’s Washington Watch, TV One’s premier political talk show, just in time to help produce the network’s three-hour live broadcast of the historic dedication of the King Memorial on the National Mall last year. Now, she is excited about helping cover the presidential race this year, excited about producing live television at the DNC when America’s first African American president likely gets officially crowned by his party for re-election.

Teria Rogers, who grew up in Fort Washington and graduated from Friendly High School, is one of the producers of the Michael Eric Dyson Show.  She has also produced for local radio talk show calebs including Bernie Mac and George Wilson. “Find a way or make one? I had to apply that early on. Financial aid didn’t come through? What? Find a way or make one. This class is full? Find a way or make one,” she said. When she graduated in 2000, she found a paid internship at News USA in Fairfax, Va. She later landed jobs at WHUR and Radio One, and made lasting relationships with mentors.

When Teria was between radio gigs once, she took a job working for an afterschool program. In 2008, Teria, who was raised in Grace United Methodist Church in Fort Washington and still draws on her spiritual beliefs, found herself producing Sirius XM Radio’s popular Mark Thompson show live from the Democratic National Convention when Obama was nominated as the party’s first Black presidential candidate.

Teria and Janelle have been friends since middle school. On campus at Clark Atlanta, they befriended Janaye Ingram, who would go on to become Al Sharpton’s D.C. Bureau Chief for his National Action Network, Kimberly Marcus, who would land a job as the Democratic National Committee’s national director for African American outreach, and Valeisha Butterfield-Jones works on Obama’s campaign, charged with helping turn out the youth vote for 2012.  Together, they became what President Obama, Al Sharpton, Michael Eric Dyson, and Roland Martin all have in common.  They are among the women behind the movement today.

In her DNC capacity Kimberly planned King Day volunteer efforts in D.C., Pennsylvania, and N.Y.  Gearing up for Black history month she is promoting even bigger plans.  She is working to ensure Black voter turn-out for candidates “up and down the ballot,” she said.  “Most importantly, this cycle we’re making sure President Obama gets re-elected.”

Kimberly moved to Maryland from New York ten years ago to work for the NAACP as its director of economic development, before starting her own consulting firm, then going to work for Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow/P.U.S.H. Coalition in D.C.  “I left corporate America because I needed to do something to contribute to the up-liftment of my people,” said Marcus, who is also married to the soul mate she met in college and raising their three-year-old twins.

Hearing their stories reminded me of so many I have heard, and experienced – but had forgotten during the recent years over-shadowed by stories of economic crisis and public turmoil.

Creative Writing – Week 5

Posted on by sonsyrea

No break for the holiday. I read in Walter Mosley’s book, “Finish Your Novel This Year,” that he writes every single day – weekends and holidays are no exception. So, here’s something for you to think about this week – and something for you to do.

Ethan Canin enrolled in the Iowa Writer’s Workshop at the age of 22 and felt so “utterly paralyzed” by the experience that he barely completed two short stories in two years. After finishing the program, he enrolled in Harvard Medical School, where the stories began pouring out of him. While dealing with the brutal workloads that cause many medical students to drop out, Canin completed the ten stories in his first book, “Emperor of the Air,” which won a Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship. That success was followed by two novels, “Blue River” and “For Kings and Planets,” as well as a book of novellas.

 

“I’ve always set assignments for myself,” Canin told The Atlantic Monthly, according to the book, “Writer’s Block,” by Jason Rekulak. “The assignment for the story ‘Emperor of the Air,’ for example, was to write a story in which an unlikable character becomes likable by the end of the story. For ‘Accountant’, it was to write a story in which a pair of socks takes on large emotional importance.”

 

Jason Rulak suggests tackling one of these assignments yourself.

A Personal Resurrection

Posted on by sonsyrea

Previously published in The Washington Post

As millions of Christians around the world celebrated the resurrection of Jesus Christ Sunday, I joined my grandparents, 92, for the celebration at Tenth Street Baptist Church on R Street, N.W. We read from Mark 16:11, and Pastor Michael A. Durant gave a powerful sermon about redemption and resurrection. But the real ministry for me was from the brothers in the congregation who jumped up in joy and broke down in tears.

 

First, the church band cranked up DeAndre Patterson’s gospel hit “He’s Alive – And I know it” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hbcD-u4pPY). That got us stirred up, and had me on my feet rocking and swaying and singing at the top of my lungs. “Jesus died, and I know it. He’s alive, ’cause he rose again.”

 

The pastor lectured on resurrection – from despondency, disappointment and despair. He lectured, too, on resurrection from death.

 

“Even those who say they want to go to heaven don’t want to go through the cemetery,” Durant said. With that, I understood clearly my sadness about recent deaths in my family. There’s something sad about putting our loved ones’ bodies in the dirt even if we believe their souls are going to some place better. That “ashes to ashes, dust to dust” reading over their buried bodies somehow reduces our grand love to something as common as the ground. So, Easter morning I relished the idea of everlasting life, keeping our loved ones alive in our hearts. I belted out my hopes in Patterson’s song. “He’s alive! And I know it!”

 

The band was electrifying. A keyboard artist in his 20s sang out loud, inviting us to follow. A slightly older man in beautiful dreadlocks wailed on his electric guitar. A bearded, bow tied brother kicked on his drums, and a calm, bespectacled young man rocked the bass line. Next, a young woman in the choir stood to lead an Easter morning classic, “The Lamb of God,” and all manners of restraint were loosed.

 

Individuals began shouting. “Hallelujah!” Praise him!” The shouting gave way to people jumping up from their seats, dancing in the isles, spinning, twisting, shouting, and crying. It was a typical southern-Baptist-style, “holy-ghost-getting” kind of celebration. A middle-aged man in the congregation jumped up, shouting and crying. He bowed down on one knee crying on the front pew. Another middle-aged man in the pulpit shouted, jumped, jerked and cried. The young man who had been sitting next to him pressed the palm of his hand to the crying man’s back to keep him from falling off the platform. What we witnessed was an enormous emotional release.

 

I used to think there was something wrong with such public displays of emotion. Growing up in the Nation of Islam, I had learned to dismiss such overwhelming emotions. (Malcolm X’s legendary passionate oratory skills aside, our Sunday services were decidedly cerebral.) At best, I believed, emotions were a sign of weakness. This belief was reinforced by many other influences over the years.

 

In recent years I have preferred the quiet, happy, guilt-free sermons of Joel Olsteen on Sunday mornings. But a couple of my friends have been urging me to go to church. It’s a different experience than watching it on TV, they insisted. Easter morning found me completely engaged at Tenth Street Baptist.

 

As the young woman sang and the men shouted and cried, I considered how much better our world might be if people simply cried sometimes. I wondered if we would have less violence – and fewer unwanted pregnancies – if we accept, expect, even encourage crying sometimes as a proper emotional release.

 

As the singing continued, I reached for my smartphone to research the benefits of crying. Sure enough, doctors say crying is healthy physically, and psychologically. (http://www.netdoctor.co.uk/healthy-living/wellbeing/the-health-benefits-of-crying.htm) I was reminded of when and why I had stopped crying so many years ago. Where I’m from, the motto was curse, don’t cry. Those of us not inclined to cursing – simply held it in, watered it with liquor, numbed it with drugs. I had not seen my grandparents cry until they were past 90. I saw my dad cry only once in his life – on his death bed a couple days before he died. So I delighted in the flow of tears Easter morning.

After service, I wanted to know what my granddad thought about it.

 

“I haven’t seen that much crying – ever,” I said as we were leaving.

 

“Oh yeah, people shout in here,” he said with a chuckle. “Even the pastor will be up their shouting.”

 

I prefer crying to shouting.

Millions of Christians around the world – and many in this Washington area – will spend this week, known as Bright Week, from Easter Sunday through the following Sunday, celebrating resurrection. For the whole week, they will meditate on Psalms in the Bible, and in other ways tune into spiritual songs and truths celebrating Christ. I will be with them in spirit. Celebrating the resurrection of Christ – and of my own compassion and emotional compass.