by
Rosemary WilliamsRecently Don McClanen and I visited Elizabeth in her Washington, DC apartment. She sat amongst her papers, wearing a blue denim dress and matching hat with a pink flower pinned on the brim and waved at us to find a place to sit. She talked of her next book and told us we need to read, read, read. "Get a Great Books Group going and read the classics again!" We have to touch those great minds and infuse our culture with good thinking, she advised.
Perhaps, in addition to taking her advice about the classics, we need to reread her books and remember her words as her gifts to us. Elizabeth was a patron saint of gifts: gifts given, gifts called forth and gifts used. She wouldn't have wanted to be called that, but in fact that is what she was. She helped us evoke our gifts, whether we were in her physical presence or just in the presence of her words.
I envisioned her as a Statue of Liberty woman with a Mahalia Jackson voice. When I finally met her some twenty years later, I couldn't believe my eyes and ears as I was introduced to a small woman with a small whisper of a voice. Another friend of hers recently said, "When I remember EIizabeth it's within the context of this passage. '...then the Lord passed by and sent a furious wind that split the hills and shattered the rocks -- but the Lord was not in the wind. The wind stopped blowing, and then there was an earthquake -- but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire -- but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire there was a small whisper of a voice.' (1 Kings 19:11-12) In the winds, earthquakes and fires that shake my life in the world, hers will always be a small whisper through which the voice of the Lord can be heard."
- Rosemary C. Williams
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