Fire
- Dr. Tom Wagner
- Oct 19
- 5 min read
“Fire” was once a cry for safety. Now, it’s the spark of a calling. This reflection follows the transformation of one woman’s fear into fierce compassion.
The Blog Article Follows this Invitation!
SMC Event: Navigating Thanksgiving with Grace and Gratitude
Sunday, November 2
Telva at the Ridge | Webster Groves, MO
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Fire
“When I was seven years old,” our keynote speaker began, “my mother taught me how to kill a man.” I wondered if the long, pin-drop silence that followed was left there on purpose, like a jazz musician leaves space between the notes? Or was our speaker, like her audience, regaining her footing after absorbing the emotional shockwaves of such a traumatic memory? Next, in case anyone missed it the first time, she slowed it way down and looped it back around. “When I was seven years old…my mother taught me…how to kill a man.”
Up until that moment, an audience dressed in ball gowns, suits, and black ties was jovial philanthropists at a fundraising gala. Comfort zones be damned! Dr. Alice Prince ascended the speaker’s dais on a mission to grab us by our lapels and yank us into a neighborhood where a mother felt it necessary to teach her seven-year-old little girl how to kill a man in self-defense. As if obeying her mother in real time, her voice volume crescendoed as she echoed the words she was instructed to shout at the top of her lungs, while performing the life-saving/life-ending procedures. “Fire!” “Fire!” In the cadences of a Black preacher, Dr. Prince explained, in her mother’s voice, why a diminutive African American little girl in Saint Louis’ inner city should yell, “Fire,” rather than, “Help.”
Nobody comin’ to save your black behind. We’ve been yelling, “Help,” for decades, and ain’t nobody come to help us. If you yell, “Fire,” the nosy neighbors are going to come out to see what house is on fire.
It's an old, familiar story. Redlining, white flight, community vivisection by highway—all of these things, and more, had robbed her neighborhood of jobs, good schools, libraries, grocery stores, and safety, too. A few days after her talk, Dr. Prince gave me the back story to her mother’s tutorial. An epidemic of black inner-city children disappearing was going on in St. Louis when Alice was in first grade. Just like other cities in America, black families couldn’t get anyone to pay attention to the problem. That was in the mid-’80s. But to this day, when violence, disappearing, or death happens in neighborhoods like Alice Prince’s, that story gets way less attention in the Saint Louis Post-Dispatch than the MLB Cardinals’ latest game updates. When such horrendous things happen in more affluent sections of town, that story catches “Fire!” “Fire!”
The counselor in me wants to know how a little girl with the deck stacked against her in those ways regulates her fight-or-flight response well enough to learn multiplication tables and reading comprehension techniques. When your day starts by walking six dark blocks to a bus stop…by abandoned buildings…where someone could disappear you…all the while wondering if you might have to “kill a man” today…such things have a way of starting a fire in your endocrine system. When your cortisol and adrenaline levels reach the “I could be disappeared forever” levels, the prefrontal cortex, necessary for learning, has a way of going offline. So how did little Alice manage to get through those years successfully enough to become the “Doctor Alice” of today, with a beautiful family and a successful career?
When Resilience Is Grace
It wasn’t so much something she was taught that accounted for her getting through those years so successfully. It was more something that she caught. “I always felt the presence of God, even at an early age,” she told me. Come to find out, it wasn’t so much the ability to yell, “Fire,” that soothed her heart down. It was a sense of companionship, or Presence that accompanied her on those dark mornings. “I was always looking for ways to deepen my relationship with God, even when my family quit going to church.”
A Vocation
I’ve heard it said that “when your deep passion meets a need in the world,” that’s a vocation. Well, here in the current time zone, Dr. Alice Prince has found her calling. Like “Gabe Kotter,” in the 1970s sitcom, Welcome Back Kotter, Dr. Prince has returned to her old neighborhood. Come to find out, one of the ways that she “deepened her relationship with God” was getting a graduate degree in Pastoral Theology. For all intents and purposes, now she’s the associate pastor alongside “Father Mitch,” in the brand-new north St. Louis parish, “Saint Josephine Bakhita” (named after an African woman who broke the chains of slavery and became a sister). In fact, it was a fundraiser for that parish last week, where I met Dr. Alice and heard her share a part of her story.
As we listened to Dr. Alice Prince describe what’s going on in her new church, you could feel a fierce kind of fire fueling her words. Something vibrant and authentic is going on there. Food pantries are feeding the hungry to the tune of five hundred a week. A once-empty rectory is housing a mother and her children after that horrible tornado took their home. Low-income housing is being built one family at a time. Unhoused people are getting showers, food, and medical help.
So many feel let down by their churches these days. Some feel rejected. Some feel just bone-deep disappointment. When I went and prayed with the parishioners of Saint Josephine Bakhita, I could see that what Dr. Prince shared in her speech was true. In the words of Lin-Manuel Miranda, here was a community that “was young, scrappy, and hungry.” They aren’t about to “throw away their shot” to live an authentic spiritual life according to the pattern of feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, welcoming the stranger, caring for the prisoner, healing the sick, and meeting that deep-down kind of thirst for intimacy and transcendent meaning.
Dialogue and Discussion Questions:
Longtime SMC readers know that “the Dialogue” section of this article is set aside for a good conversation over a cup of coffee—with a friend, with a group, or just with yourself! As always, feel free to share your reaction or reflection in the “Comments” section below.
What stood out to you in this article? Did you notice any dissonance while you read it?
Where does your “deep passion meet a need in the world?” Dr. Alice Prince feels a kind of fire inside around her calling. Do you feel a sense of calling in your life?
How do you see a faith community like Saint Josephine Bakita meeting a need in our world today?
Are you a part of a faith community? What drew you to it? What keeps you there?
If you no longer have a faith community, is there anything you miss about it?
A small group project: Design and describe the kind of church community that you believe would be worthy of your membership.
Please share with the SMC community your thoughts and/or reflections in the comments below.
Comments