With an Accent

My O’s betray me, especially when I’m tired.  God becomes Gahd, and not become naht.  My college roommate could always tell when I’d been talking to my mahm back in Chicago because my O’s wouldn’t right themselves for hours.  

O gives away the fact that I’m from a place where minnows and muskrat count as marine life, and spring arrives late and leaves early, and an imprisoned, known criminal set the wheels in motion to abolish the death penalty.  No matter where else I’ve lived and tried to blend in, O gives away the secret that I’m not from there.

This week’s reading from Matthew includes the part of the Passion narrative where Peter denies knowing Jesus.  At the third denial, a group of folks come up to Peter and say that he must be with Jesus and the other Galileans, “for your accent betrays you.”  Peter swears he doesn’t know Jesus, but he can’t hide where he’s from

Thank Gahd our accents can’t be scrubbed off too easily, because they reveal something of our different histories and realities, even when it seems as though everyone everywhere has begun to eat the same food and wear the same jeans and watch the same movies – or at least strives to.  We’re unique in the way we say things, uniquely inclined and equipped to care for one another and our world in the time we have together.