Reflection on Jo Ann Morris The Church of the Holy Trinity, Hertford, NC
March 9, 2024 Thomas E Wilson, Celebrant
Humming When Words Are Forgotten
I want to thank you all for being here to remember Jo Ann and to witness to a life well lived. You are witnesses as she was a witness. The Greek word for Witness is μάρτυρας, (martyras), and I know that many of you would feel real uncomfortable being labeled as Martyrs, when I called you witnesses. After all it was not that great a sacrifice for you to come here this morning and having to endure an Episcopal service. It will be in the 16th and 17th centuries that translators into English will start to translate μάρτυρας, as two different ways, “martyr” as those whose blood was shed and “witness” those who saw what was happening and were able to testify about what they saw. We are here to witness, to testify with our presence.
I have a third definition about people who saw and their lives were changed. Maya Angelou in her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings , relates that to really love someone is to know the song their heart sings and to hum it back to them on the days they forget how it goes. I like the idea of being a witness is one who can hum the song in our hearts when we are in danger of forgetting the tune and the words.
When I talked with people who knew JoAnn, it did not take long after they shared memories about what she did, evolved to how their lives were affected by being connected to this woman. These are people who knew her as a neighbor to this good neighbor. She gave herself in jobs which tried the patience of many so-called Saints. She was able to hum the song about Market Street, so residents could remember the words.
One of her jobs which she worked at for 20 years was working with Juveniles who needed support and guidance. She did it as a witness. Curtis Almquist of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist writes of witness:
There is a job that needs to be done and somedays the job is so frustrating that you want to quit- the hell with it - but it needs to be done. You die to that thought for a moment or an hour or a day, but you die to it because that is what your faith tells you to do.
Around that same time she was working with Juveniles, I was down in New Hanover County doing the same kind of work, working for two years with Juveniles who needed support and guidance, after I worked three years working with school dropouts. Five years was as much time as it took and I realized I needed to know more and went to Grad School for a Masters In Social Work Degree.
You see I have this Y Chromosome which means that my push is to find solutions. She worked for 20 years, I think it was because she saw it as a calling to witness. To be a witness to not just to what was done to cause the intervention in their lives, but to be a witness to what could be done if they were shown love and reality. From what I hear about her; she did her work out of love. I did my work out of wanting to be a “Professional”. She did her witness of love as a lay person. I later went to seminary to be a Priest so I could find definitions of, and preach about, love. She did not have to leave town,
She knew how to love. She loved her community and she emptied herself out for it. One of the people I talked to said she was known as the “Queen of Market Street”, out of her love of witness for the neighborhood. Beyond her neighborhood, she served on the Hertford Town Council for the whole town as a witness of the deeper soul of this town. She was a witness for the whole state on the North Carolina Martin Luther King Jr. Commission, of the hope of being released from the dead past where people were afraid to across race lines. She loved. I am reminded of, not the context but some words, in Othello's last speech where he admits he “Loved not wisely but too well”.
If
you want to continue her witness to love in this community, love each
other, so you can know the song that in the heart of others and hum
it to them when they need it.
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