A quote I’d never read before recently caught my attention: “When someone you love becomes a memory, that memory becomes a treasure.” My grandpa would have been 90 this year. He passed away less than two months after his 80th birthday. When my family and I visit the Illinois farm he and my grandma bought and developed in the late 60s, I still envision things the way they used to be when grandpa was alive.

When I look out over the pond, now covered with algae, I remember a pond that seemed much larger, with a surface that was smooth until grandpa tossed out a handful of fish food from the bank. I remember casting our fishing lines into the churning water with anticipation. I remember grandpa forming wood pieces into furniture in the garage. I remember the feel of the round, flat stepping stones under my bare feet when we’d arrive from Michigan after dark and walk the path to the house; I have a picture in my mind of grandpa standing in the screened doorway next to the the yellow porch light, waiting to greet us all. The chair where grandpa used to sit early each morning to read his Bible and pray for his family still sits in the corner of the dining room. There’s nothing about that farm that doesn’t represent him, and that feels sweeter to me now than it did for the first few years after he died. It’s not so deeply painful, just deep. He was real, and he invested his life into that place. When I look over the landscape, I think about the lives, the generations past, and the simple, steady work ethic that went into making life happen on that land, among those very old trees and fields.

A couple summers ago, Nate, Selah and I were able to go spend a week with my grandma on the farm. We spent one evening at the state park that used to be the Siloam Springs community where my grandparents grew up and where all the family reunions of their relatives still take place. I spent another evening listening to stories my grandma told about her parents and their lives, people I’ve always heard her talk about with love, admiration, and respect. I listened to her describe personality traits that made me realize that some of mine are just echoes of those who have lived before me. There’s an indescribable sturdiness and solidness and sense of belonging that comes from being in a place, a specific part of the world, that has held six generations of my family. I’m bound. It’s where I’ve come from. These generations have given me inherent traits I can’t change. There’s something freeing in that. Freeing, because I’m proud of my family and thankful for where I’ve come from.

When I look around our new urban neighborhood, I like to imagine what the landscape must have been when Clark University, the Methodist school that was begun to provide education to freed slaves, began its South Atlanta history in 1871. Just six short years after the end of the Civil War, South Atlanta began to unfold around Clark University and name its streets after the professors of the school. I envision a culture and community that remembers what used to be and is proud to claim it as their heritage – a people who rose above oppression, and a place where their history has been respected, cherished, and valued. I believe we are located in the middle of a treasure. We are surrounded by the stories of elders who have been here for many years and who remember the stories of those who preceded them.

But somehow, over the last few generations, the landscape has changed. When I look around our neighborhood, my eyes see the evidence of deep spiritual, emotional, relational and material poverty. Even as caring and committed neighbors struggle to restore the community, large, new homes, recently built for anticipated profit, have been turned instead into low-income rental properties, or are boarded up, having been stripped clean of AC units, gutters, appliances, carpeting, and piping. I see houses with the windows broken by thrown rocks. Trash and debris fill the yards in front of houses that are falling apart, some of them abandoned and left to become crack houses. When my family and I drive through our neighborhood, we see young women standing on street corners waiting to sell their bodies for the price of one hit of cocaine. Much of the treasure that was once South Atlanta has been lost.

Yet the history and heritage remain, and they are a foundation to be built upon. The beautiful stories are still being retold by men and women who have spent lifetimes in this community. FCS Urban Ministries, who we have joined, has roots that go down 30 years into this urban soil, roots that provide us an amazing opportunity to help renew this once strong neighborhood in anticipation of a hopeful future. We are part of a generation committed to restoring wholeness and health to this community so that young girls no longer have to make a desperate living on the street. We are privileged to be part of reclaiming a heritage that will enable the people of this community to re-establish roots that future generations will be proud to claim.