We’ve been looking at lessons from the story of Ruby Bridges who integrated a New Orleans elementary school in 1960 through the eyes of psychiatrist Dr. Robert Coles. The close of his essay is also provocative. It contrasts what I reported yesterday – that Ruby Bridges actually applied scripture to life – with his own experience.

He talks about having maid service in their dorm at Harvard. He wrote:

I remember when I was in college. We would come back to our rooms and a woman would be there, cleaning our rooms and making our beds. We had a name for these women in the Harvard of the 1950s. We called them biddies. We never knew the name of the woman who did this for us because she was just our biddy. She cleaned up after us…I don’t want to remember how many times we never thanked her. At the same time, of course, we were taking courses. Courses, for instance, in psychology, where we would learn about empathy. You would get an A in a course by writing for a whole hour on empathy. But I couldn’t tell you the biddy’s name. We weren’t asked to do that, because that wasn’t part of the curriculum, core or otherwise. It still isn’t.  – Dr. Robert Coles, “The Inexplicable Prayers of Ruby Bridges,” in Finding God at Harvard by Kelly Monroe, emphasis mine (You might be able to read the entire essay here.)

His point was that he was educated while Ruby Bridges and her family were not. Yet they could apply profound truths to life while he, with all his sophisticated understanding of human behavior, could not. 

I wrote earlier that I’ve heard a lot of sophisticated sermons with profound theological insights from people who could never do what our pastor did recently: apply love and forgiveness in a real-life situation.

Maybe we start by paying attention and learning people’s names.

As Jesus went on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax collector’s booth. “Follow me,” he told him, and Matthew got up and followed him. (Matthew 9.9, NIV, emphasis mine)

As [Jesus] went along, he saw a man blind from birth. (John 9.1, NIV, emphasis mine)