Stories of Home
Thursday, October 15, 2026
Feast Day of Teresa of Ávila
Theologian Willie Jennings recalls how his parents cultivated a sense of safety and belonging through stories told at home:
Mary, my mother, taught me to respect the dirt. Like many black women from the South, she knew the earth like she knew her own soul. I came along late. I was the last of her eleven children, born not of the South but of the North, the fruit of the great migration when black folks wearied of the Jim Crow South and, in search of work, pointed their hopes toward northern cities and replanted their lives in colder air. So I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and found myself each spring with my mother, Mary, in her garden in the backyard.
There near the soil Mary deepened my understanding of her life, her history, and her hopes. My mother and my father, Ivory Jennings, were both magnificent storytellers. They told stories the way water cascades over Niagara Falls or runs down the Mississippi, stories that encompassed larger or smaller fragments of people, places, jokes, incidents, sayings, sermons, arguments, clothing, foods, meals, body parts, and prayers. I could never take in all those stories. I had to simply let them wash over me, again and again, until I was able to locate myself in the stream of their historical consciousness.
Mary and Ivory Jennings found their home in Jesus, who sustained them in all circumstances:
Running through their amazing stories were several themes. Like large, immovable rocks that shaped the contours of the water’s flow, these themes carried the keys for understanding every story. Foremost was Jesus. Ivory and Mary loved Jesus. To say they were devout Christians is simply too pale a descriptor. A far more accurate characterization would be, “There were Ivory, Mary, and Jesus.” Woven into the fabric of their lives was the God-man Jesus, who, rather than simply serving as an indicator of their orthodoxy, became the very shape of their stories. The stories of Jesus and Israel were so tightly woven into the stories my parents told of themselves, their lives in the South and in the North and then with their youngest children in the North, that it took me years to separate the biblical figures from extended family members, biblical sinners from the sinners all around us, and biblical places of pain from their places of pain. I was never able to separate biblical hopes from their real hopes. They knew the Bible, but, far more important, they knew the world through the Bible….
As a little girl [my mother] lived with her grandmother, a former slave…. The experience of agricultural labor, life in the dirt, also brought her into a contradictory but very intimate relationship with the land itself.
My parents loved the soil, the earth, the outside, and in their garden I saw the freedom they felt with it. The garden announced to them and the world that they were absolutely free to be themselves.
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Sarah Young Jesus Calling
Jesus Calling: October 18th
Go gently through this day, keeping your eyes on Me. I will open up the way before you, as you take steps of trust along your path. Sometimes the way before you appears to be blocked. If you focus on the obstacle or search for a way around it, you will probably go off course. Instead, focus on Me, the Shepherd who is leading you along your life journey. Before you know it, the “obstacle” will be behind you and you will hardly know how you passed through it.
That is the secret of success in My kingdom. Although you remain aware of the visible world around you, your primary awareness is of Me. When the road before you looks rocky, you can trust Me to get you through that rough patch. My Presence enables you to face each day with confidence.
RELATED SCRIPTURE:
John 10:14-15 (NLT)
14 “I am the good shepherd; I know my own sheep, and they know me, 15 just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep.
Isaiah 26:7 (NLT)
7 But for those who are righteous,
the way is not steep and rough.
You are a God who does what is right,
and you smooth out the path ahead of them.
Additional insight regarding Isaiah 26:7,8: At times the “path” of the righteous doesn’t seem smooth, and it isn’t easy to do God’s will, but we are never alone when we face tough times. God is there to help us, to comfort us, and to lead us. God does this by giving us a purpose (keeping our mind centered on him, 26:3: You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!”) and giving us provisions as we travel. God provides us with relationships of family, friends, and mentors. God gives us the wisdom to make decisions and faith to trust him. Don’t despair; stay on God’s path.
