Legacy

Forty-two.

My Jackie Robinson year.

A number that carries weight far beyond chronology. Forty-two is legacy. It is courage embodied. It is walking into spaces not built for you and refusing to disappear once you arrive. It is carrying the burden and blessing of being “the first,” “the only,” or “the one willing.” Jackie Robinson’s #42 represents cultural disruption, holy resistance, dignity under pressure, and the audacity to believe your life can shift the trajectory for those coming behind you. And this past year, I have felt that deeply.

The past 12 months have invited me to slow down long enough to touch the dirt beneath my feet and ask myself what it means to truly live with purpose. Dirt has become sacred to me. Dirt remembers. Dirt holds memory, pain, labor, blood, tears, resilience, survival, and rebirth. Dirt connects us all in our shared humanity, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.

During a summer evening in August, I sat at one of the prepared dinner tables hosted by the Princeton Theological Seminary’s Farminary. As part of a summer series where strangers come together in community and conversation, that evening we discussed the theology and ethics of food. During the conversation, I found myself returning to a question first asked of me while interning in the hills of Coonoor, India in the summer of 2013.

“Where does your food come from?”  

A question that silenced me because I had never truly considered it. Not really. I had never thought about the hands bent over in the dirt harvesting the food lining my grocery store aisles. I never thought about whose backs ache so that mine can be nourished. What does it mean to live in a society that disconnects food from the people and the land that produces it? Is it easier to separate families, dismiss people when you never have to touch the dirt they labor in?

In September, I visited the Whitney Plantation. I walked the grounds where enslaved Black bodies once toiled, prayed, suffered, and survived. Before boarding the bus, the trip coordinator shouted, 

“have fun!” 

And the dissonance of those words sat heavily in my spirit. There is nothing entertaining about walking the dirt where people who looked like me were treated as property. Yet even there, the ground testified to survival.

In the March heat of McAllen, Texas, the words,  

“touch their pain,” 

shared by a group facilitator deeply resonated with me. Standing near the Rio Grande Valley border wall where dirt is disrupted by razor wire, bloodshed, displacement, and political violence, I reflected upon how dangerous it is to speak on places and people whose pain you have never physically walked through. You cannot value, let alone effectively lead, what you refuse to see.

During my spring break, I visited the Legacy Sites in Montgomery, Alabama and stood before jars of dirt collected from lynching sites across this country. Dirt holding the memory of  lives stolen by hatred and lies. Dirt serving as a witness when history tried to look away.  

Then came Selma. I walked in the annual crossing of the Edmund Pettus Bridge during its 61st Jubilee, retracing the footsteps of 9-year-old Sheyann Webb, 14-year-old Jo Ann Bland, and the late John Lewis, and Hosea Williams. Their courage still lingers in the Alabama clay. Their footsteps still preach. 

And now, this June, I will walk the sacred ground of Pine Ridge Reservation with students, learning from and standing alongside the Oglala Lakota people, and visiting the site of the Wounded Knee Massacre. More sacred dirt. More truth held in the land. Another invitation to listen, learn, and remember.

At 42, I am no longer interested in hiding from who I am or who I believe I was created to be. We are molded from and return to dirt for a reason. There is purpose in our becoming, beauty in our scars, wisdom in our wandering, and responsibility in our stories. This Jackie Robinson year is teaching me that legacy is not about fame. It is about courage and about making room for others. It is leading authentically, loving boldly, and living truthfully enough that someone else feels permission to do the same.

May we all learn to touch the dirt long enough to reconnect to our own humanity, so that we can be reminded to look for it in others.

Forty-two.

Legacy.