Alice Graham

Coming to Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina with a group of Hood Theological seminarians was my initiation into a new phase of my life journey. I wanted my students to learn about the challenges of ministry in the midst of a communal disaster. However, I deepened my own understanding of ministry as I encountered the commitment to survival by people whose physical environment was in rubble.

It was in the months following, I discerned God’s leading to remain in Mississippi as a permanent resident. I would have to break a promise I made myself more than 50 years earlier, never to set foot in the state, after Emmett Till, a black teenager accused of flirting with a white woman, was murdered there. But I knew that if I did not return and live in Mississippi that my soul life would be diminished.

For the last five years I have served as Executive Director of Interfaith Partnerships in Gulfport, MS.

Mississippi leads the nation in many health-related concerns that are the product of stress, being uninsured and underinsured, lack of care and unhealthy lifestyles. We work to facilitate behavioral changes that support a healthy lifestyle, and connect congregations and organizations that serve vulnerable communities to information, education and training. The disaster “band-aid” response is insufficient to address this history of overwhelming need.

I am encouraged and inspired daily by the residents and community leaders who collaboratively and individually push against the barriers to work at changing the calculus of Mississippi. I believe older workers like myself bring a long view that allows them to pay attention to what really matters sorting through the wheat from the chaff. We are able to focus on doing meaningful work well rather than proving ourselves or getting ahead.

A wonderful moment occurred during a training session on reflective listening with a member of our congregation. The lesson teaches how to hear an individual’s concerns correctly. One of the disaster coordinators responded that these newfangled ideas would not work for her and only reluctantly agreed to try them out. She returned elated about the outcome and demanding to know whether I was permanently on the Gulf Coast. I assured her that I was now a permanent resident. She responded that she was relying on me as her “back-up” so that she could be helpful to her fellow parishioners.

(Alice Graham was honored as an Encore.org Purpose Prize Fellow in 2013.)