Meeting Mary Gonzales

Right now I’m looking at Mary Gonzales’ handwriting—her phone number and email address scrawled down among my notes from her lecture. I’m not even sure how I got there exactly, but this past Friday, I found myself in a modest, outdated Lutheran church surrounded by young activists and old believers and everyone in between, listening in joyful rapture to Mary Gonzales talk about community organizing.

This is the woman who worked alongside Barak Obama, and I would be lying if I didn’t confess that this is the only drawing card that brought me to the Redeemer Lutheran church on a Friday night. I am just as captivated as the rest of the world when it comes to Obama. I only regret my t-shirt has not arrived in the mail in time for Mary’s lecture.

She is motivated and energetic. She doesn’t use a mic because her booming, musical voice doesn’t need one. She talks about the projects that she’s worked on, describing everyday people working towards a common purpose to solve social problems. Solve. Win. Overcome.

And then she turns to us. The audience. The ball is in our court now. What are we going to do with it?

I suppose that is the question I’m asking, as I look at her handwriting in my book. What am I going to do with it? There is no question in Mary Gonzales’ mind that we are all magnificent. She is training people to believe in their own magnificence. And when they come to believe in their own brilliant power, they also come to realize that they have a responsibility to share it, use it for good, pass it on.

I had to introduce myself to her after the lecture. I had to shake her hand and thank her for reminding us of our responsibility to each other. I soaked up a few more of her stories and easy laughter. I think there are notebooks all around the world with Mary’s handwriting. “This is my personal cell number,” she tells every eager listener as they watch her jot down her name and contact info. And that in itself becomes a call to action.