Dear Susan—
You don’t know me, and until yesterday afternoon, I didn’t know you. I was tired, cranky, discouraged about a host of burdens weighing on my heart. Between meetings at church, I signed onto Facebook to check on family and friends, and found a link to you, from someone who said that watching you would dispel all cynicism. Right, I said cynically, and figured I’d be better off eating lunch. Still, something in the clip I saw—your honest, earnest face, perhaps—made me click on the image in YouTube.
It didn’t take me long to get mad at the way people were talking to you, after you made your way onto the stage of “Britain’s Got Talent,” that condescending tone they used as though talking to a stupid child. These shows already have such a reputation for victimizing vulnerable people with delusions of stardom. I was angry for you, protective of you. What right did people have to make fun of you because you dreamed of singing? Did it really matter how bad you would be? Why should they let you humiliate yourself in front of all the world, just for ratings?
I’m almost ashamed to write this, dear Susan, because I had imagined they had found you in an audition room: unemployed and lonely, plain and off-key. I saw the clip as the camera panned the audience, filled mostly with young, pretty, grimacing women and girls. I half-closed my eyes and prepared to wince as the music rose, as I waited for the errant notes to come.
What came instead were my tears. I listened to you sing and I found myself remembering everything about my own life, when people thought they knew what was inside my heart because of what they saw outside—my dark skin; my nappy hair; my short, dumpy, ill-dressed body; my naïve and open smile, my wild desire to be something, to say something, to have someone know that I was in this world. You made me remember everything, Susan, and I sat in my office and cried while you sang as though God had sent you Herself.
I have been listening to you all day long; I have played that clip for everyone I know, and you have been in my prayers today, in gratitude that you have never given up the dream of standing in the light. When we who minister try to explain something of the nature of the Holy, its arrival in unexpected places, its wild and crazy blessings, some of what we mean is you, and your extraordinary gift, biding its time until revelation.
So forgive me for being just another person, like so many others, who saw you but never really saw you. Accept my gratitude for reminding me that we all come into life with songs to sing, with stories to tell, with steps to dance and with gifts to give. I give thanks, too, that the song that has made you famous is not yet true, that life has not yet killed the dream you’re dreaming. Please let me root for you—as millions of others do who have heard you give voice to your dream. I know I’ll be watching—not just for your sake, but for my own, too. Many blessings, Susan Boyle. Knock ‘em dead, girl!
Faithfully,
Rosemary
Pingback: Clergy sexual misconduct, preservation dollars, and Susan Boyle « uuworld.org : The Interdependent Web