Walking Before Wisdom: baby steps

      I am a licensed professional therapist.  The relative education and training I received has made me more aware of effective human communication patterns, and the lack thereof; but it didnt create wisdom. it merely created a part of the foundation upon which wisodm could be built. At the time I accepted the director position for Westwind, I had a limited private practice and was the school social worker in a large district school in Phoenix.
     While the education and training provided depth to my understanding of education, opportunity and justice, I became intrinsically entwined with the passion of social justice early in life.  I believe it had its roots in my early days in Georgia, to where I moved as a second grader.  When you are seven and someone plops you in the midst of a different culture, the adults tend to forget to tell you how the rules have changed.  And when you moved from the Midwest (Michigan) to the south (Atlanta) in 1964, you were definitely in for culture shock. I might as well have moved from the US to Mongolia. "But the language was the same," you might be thinking.  Think again.  Recall the delay experienced with a dial up connection and you will have an idea of  the time it took me to respond when asked a question right after moving to Atlanta.  "Fixin' to carry Teresa and Katy to the staoruh, do ya'll  wantta gao?" really meant, "I am going to drive Teresa and Katy to the store. do you and Marcia want to go with us?" Then there were the unspoken rules.  Like don't invite the black man for dinner. Not because we don't like the black man but because our neighbors don't like us or the black man. Us because we are from the North and the black man simply because he is black. And if we invite the black man for dinner we may not live to see the morning; and even if we do live to see the morning, it could be a very eventful night.
       My parents taught me to respect, acknowledge and obey adults no matter their color. So it made no sense to me when my friends would walk in a room where the maid was working and not say hello or thank you or "yes ma'am," which we were supposed to say to every other adult female, especially those who were cooking for us or doing our laundry.  In Michigan if you said "yes ma'am,  you would be slapped silly for being a smart allick. But things change south of the Mason Dixon Line,  as my dad used to say.  Then there was the Presidentisl election. My dad used to say that if the democrats ran a jackass for president, our friend Tex would vote for it just because it was a democrat. And that pretty much summed up the politics of  Georgia at that time. My mom said I was a true politician myself. Trying to navigate in a mine field, if someone asked who I was for for president, I would simply say, "well, who are you for?"  And whoever they were for, I was for. Stated with a smile. Perhaps it worked because it took my friends as long to understand what I said as it did for me to understand them....."loading..........." What does all this have to do with a timeline? ALOT. The walk to wisdom is a slow walk. I laughed hysterically watching the movie, "what About Bob?" But the truth of taking baby steps while carrying a goldfish in a jar was not lost on me. Be honest, how many of you have said to yourself on occasion, "baby steps, baby steps." And that's how it is with the walk to wisdom. As a young girl, I couldn't put the pieces together; but when I did, not only did it create passion, it provided wisdom that comes from being stretched beyond your comfort zone, even at the age of seven. I think that the roots of my passion for social justice were planted in the soil of the move in the early 60's. So, too, was my draw to people from other cultures and the richness culture brings to all of us, both the good and the bad aspects of it.