A thought-provoking audio memoir shorts filled with stories, humor, anecdotes, and commentary on social, cultural, business, and religious issues. Whatever Linden remembers and thinks will entertain, challenge, and inform is a possible subject.
The Sunday service was filled with memorable moments: church ladies insisting his pregnant wife sit in the front "place of honor," glorious choir music led by Mac's fiancée, and Linden's awkward attempt at humor. Though he preached his sermon, he felt humbled by the pastor's eloquence.
But the true impact came after tragedy struck. When Linden's wife miscarried a day later, Mac asked how she was. Upon returning to Memphis, Linden discovered his apartment doorstep covered with prepared meals provided by a church that had met him exactly once.
His story challenges us all to recognize our shared humanity beyond color barriers. How might your life change if you crossed unnecessary social boundaries to genuinely connect with those different from yourself?
Here for the memories thought-provoking audio memoir shorts filled with stories, humor, anecdotes and commentary on social, cultural, business and religious issues. Whatever Lyndon remembers and thinks will entertain, challenge and inform is a possible subject. The collection of memories about one's life allows for the development and refinement of a sense of self, including who one is, how one has changed and what one might be like in the future.
Speaker 2:
Greetings and salutations. This is Lyndon Wolfe and you have found my audio memoir, not a podcast. It's called here for the Memories. I'm so glad that you joined. I hope you join others, like people that might know and love me, who want to know about my life, my thoughts, my opinions, my experiences, particularly after I leave this planet. You know it's easier to talk about it than write about it. Even though I've written almost 40,000 words of a memoir, this is so much easier and I think people are more likely to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2:
I'm not sure that most of my family knows this story. Now, I tell a lot of stories and most of them are true. Let me say that again. Many of them are true. My ministry stories, however, I can say with great confidence, are very, very accurate. I hold myself to a level of integrity with ministry stories that I might not elsewhere. Anyway, I'm not sure that most of my family knows this story, but it had a profound impact on me.
Speaker 2:
I grew up in a segregated world and, due to my high-level participation in both track as a sprinter and basketball, I had many black friends and sometimes I was the minority, so it wasn't unusual for me, while living in Memphis to have many black friends and clients. After all, memphis proper is 63% BAA black African American. Mac was one of them, both a client and a friend. We would lunch over church concerns, theology, spiritual vitality and so much more. The physical food was ancillary. One day Mac asked me if I would come preach at his all-black church, where he was one of over a dozen ministers, some of whom were as young as 10 years old. A lot for a church of less than 200. I said yes, but with a certain amount of trepidation.
Speaker 2:
That fateful Sunday morning, while participating in Sunday school class, my pregnant wife, not feeling too well, took up a seat in a pew near the back row. Before I could arrive to sit with her, a group of church ladies asked her if she was the preacher's wife. After an acknowledgment, she was escorted to a front pew in the rightful place of honor for a preacher's wife. They weren't going to have her seated anywhere else. What a beautiful touch. The music was a foretaste of the heavenly anthems. Angels, by the way, are never in Scripture said to sing. Anyway, the music was glorious. It was Mack's fiancée that led the energetic and incomparably gifted choir.
Speaker 2:
I remember that there were many offerings. There was a pastor offering a missions offering, a building offering, budget offering, etc. And each required the attendees to parade by rows by the altar and put their contribution in in front of the entire congregation. No pressure right. As I'm wont to do, I found a way to create a splash Upon being introduced. Before I spoke, I thanked them for their gracious welcoming hospitality and then I asked how did you know we were visitors? The congregants cackled while my wife, in an image forever etched in my cortex, held her head in her hands. I preached and I thought I was pretty decent at it, until the pastor stood and spoke so eloquently and powerfully that I wish I'd never opened my mouth. To hear a great black preacher like MLK in their environment is otherworldly. I knew then seminary had prepared me theologically, partially anyway, but I didn't have the chops to preach at this church. Partially anyway, but I didn't have the chops to preach at this church.
Speaker 2:
My under-the-weather wife passed on lunch with Mac and his fiancée and decided to head to Nashville that afternoon, december 23rd. Little did we know that she would, the next day, christmas Eve, miscarry our child as I sped down I-40 to be there, knowing our gifts the next day would be playpens, bassinets, baby clothes and all things needed for first-time parents. Mac happened to call and check on her. I told him what had occurred. He committed to pray for us the situation and ask if there was anything that he or his fiancée could do. I told him no, I'm sure she'll stay with her parents and I will return to work in Memphis soon after the dampened holiday festivities. I told him what day that I would return and that we would catch up then. He then asked if it was okay to share this. I told him what day that I would return and that we would catch up. Then he then asked if it was okay to share this as a matter of prayer with his church. And of course I said of course.
Speaker 2:
Upon returning from Nashville to Memphis, as I pulled into our tiny apartment complex and trudged over to our first floor door, there it was Food upon food boxed up and in coolers, ready to be heated up enough to last me and my wife for at least a week. Max Church had seen the need and opportunity to give to a white preacher who wasn't even a good preacher, who they had only met for a few minutes. The outpouring so moved me that I cried for the first time over the loss of the child I was looking forward to. I have never been the same, because I realized more than ever that our pigment doesn't have to be the same. God honors unity over uniformity, and Mack's church taught me once again that my family consists of every tongue, tribe, nation and color. Now and forever.
Speaker 2:
This is Lyndon Wolfe. This is here for the Memories, my audio memoir. I'm so glad you joined and I pray you can look back over experiences that you've had where people crossed racial boundaries and unnecessary obstacles and just loved each other for who they were and what you had in common, not what you didn't have in common. That you were moved and touched to give people of other colors your heart and your life and watched as they gave you theirs. What a beautiful thing. As a Christian, there's only one race. That's the human race.
Speaker 1:
God bless. Go to buymeacoffeecom slash here for the memories. That's buymeacoffeecom slash here for the memories Much appreciated.
