September/October 2001

Editor’s Note: Margaret Lawrence, born in an Episcopal rectory in Vicksburg, Mississippi, is one of the nation’s foremost child psychiatrists. In active retirement in Skyview Acres (a fifty-year-old cooperative community the Lawrences helped found in Pomona, New York) she has long been active in the Episcopal Church, the Episcopal Peace Fellowship, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation. She and her husband Charles both served on the FOR National Council (he was the NC chairperson in the 1950s).

Now in her eighty-seventh year, she was interviewed by Fellowship for this special issue on aging on July 7, 2001 by Richard Deats, editor.

RD: People often think of psychiatry as apart from religion. Yet, as your daughter Sara says in her biography of you, Balm in Gilead, your personal and professional life includes a soulful center. It has roots in ritual, music, mystery, and ministry. How have you combined these two perspectives of life?

ML: I was a pediatrician in residence before I was a psychiatrist. Already my faith was part of my life. I became interested in child psychiatry because I found that as an instructor at Meharry Medical College I was teaching a lot of child psychiatry–for which I had not been trained. With the recommendation of Clarence Pickett of AFSC, I talked about my intent to become a child psychiatrist with Dr. Viola Bernard in New York. She urged me to enter residency training at the New York Psychiatric Institute together with psychoanalytic training at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center for Training and Research. This I accomplished, but only with the help of Dr. Bernard and others who were, in 1946, already working to help Negro (as we were then called) applicants to obtain psychiatric training in New York City. In one of my first classes at the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center I learned that my color was not the only characteristic that made me unusual. The director in his lecture said, "Never accept a patient who says he is religious. He is too dependent." A fellow trainee later commented, "Margaret, you'll get in trouble if Rado (the director) finds out you are religious." A brother trainee (we had the same analyst) later told me that one day when he was lying on the couch he interrupted his flow of free associations, saying, "Do you know that Dr. Lawrence is religious?" There was a long silence. Finally, Dr. Milch responded, "How do you know that I’m not?"

I knew my faith, and I knew it made a difference in both my personal and professional relationships. But in working with people, I never raised questions about their faith. If they did so, that was fine. Then we were able to communicate.

I am no longer responsible to "the rules of the trade." What’s more, in retirement I find myself increasingly involved in matters of the spirit and I’m free to talk about it with my family, church sisters and brothers, and friends. In my home I have a number of small altars, complete with icons and candles. We at St. Paul’s Episcopal, Spring Valley, New York, have organized a monthly meeting of Home Fellowship for Bible Study and Spiritual Seeking, open to all.

RD: As a professional who is both African-American and a woman, how have you dealt with the prejudice of both gender and race?

ML: Both personally and professionally, I have always treated being a woman as an advantage. After leaving Vicksburg, Mississippi, at the age of fourteen and returning to New York to continue my education it was often my lot to find myself "a first." I was the first Negro trainee at Columbia Psychoanalytic Center and the first Negro resident at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Particularly at the Institute I chose to become an advocate for Negroes and other minorities–the poor and the sick. I became an advocate because persons of color, who were few, did not, to my eye, receive the best care that the Institute had to offer. My thesis became: Find ways to help all persons identify their strengths. Knowing their own strengths, persons can learn to do what is best for themselves and for others as well.

This was my challenge as I joined the faculty of the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University. Meanwhile my "vineyard" was at Harlem Hospital Center, an affiliate of Columbia P&S. I returned to Harlem in 1963. Earlier, I had had an internship and residency in pediatrics there. I was invited by Dr. Elizabeth Bishop Davis, then chief of psychiatry. Her invitation was augmented by a dream: "I was walking along happily with a black baby in my arms. Suddenly I stopped. I had dropped the baby. I recovered the baby and resumed my happy walk. I looked. I had dropped the baby again. This scene was repeated until the end of the dream." I knew then that I must return to Harlem. There I organized a Developmental Psychiatry Service for infants, young children, and their families. This service included a therapeutic nursery for preschool children, located in a nearby day care center.

In 1954, with Dr. John A.P. Millet, I co-founded the Rockland County Community Mental Health Center. I directed the Center's Children's Services; the School Mental Health Unit (1957-63); and finally the Child Development Center for pre-school children (1967-74). Once, at a School Mental Health Unit conference, Dr. Louis Hay, founder of "Junior Guidance Classes" in New York City, asked, "How do you, as a Negro, deal with prejudice towards you in working with the nine school districts in the County?" My answer: "I think we are too busy and the schools too glad to have the service to be prejudiced." However, a few years later, in the Seventies, some of us attended a meeting of the County Legislature concerning the Mental Health Center. When my turn came I asked why, since the founding of the Center, with the exception of two assistant teachers in the therapeutic nursery, there was still only one (OOPS!)...black person on the entire Center staff. It was the first time that I had said "black" in public.

RD: As a leader in the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and in FOR, what observations do you have for peacemakers? Why do peacemakers, for example, sometimes have difficulty making peace among themselves?

ML: After a big FOR party at Al and Dotty Hassler’s, someone asked, "How many odd, would you say, attended the festivities?" The answer came, "Do you mean how many in all?" (laughter)

My husband Charles and I many years ago had an article in Fellowship on peace and anger. I've always felt that many–including myself–in our intent to be peacemakers don’t know how to listen to or deal with anger. Often, too, we find it difficult to "speak the truth in love." We don’t want to hurt the other. Anger at a "level of unawareness" may inhibit us in giving the best that we have to offer.

RD: How do you keep centered?

ML: When? (Laughter) I don’t always stay centered. But I pray. It takes a lot of prayer. I have on my wall in the kitchen a plaque, made from a gourd, that says: "Pray without ceasing." A Nigerian lady attending the centennial of the ICWA and its World Day of Prayer at Stony Point, brought it to me in 1986, soon after Charles Lawrence died. Henri Nouwen’s book on icons, The Beauty of the Lord has been very helpful, as have the small and large volumes of Lady Julian of Norwich and Hildegard of Bingen. Daughter Paula (an Episcopal priest) constantly supports my spiritual life.

In this period of aging, I pray, "O God you will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are fixed on you; for in returning and rest we shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be our strength"(Isaiah 26:3; 30:15). I have in my house a "healing pool" that was blessed by sisters of the Convent of St. Helena and named Siloam, from the story of Jesus healing the blind man. [When Jesus asked him, "What do you want that I should do for you?," the blind man replied, "That I should receive my sight." Jesus spat on the ground, and with his fingers rubbed the spittle into the dirt. The clay he placed on the blind man’s eyes and then told him to go bathe in the pool of Siloam (John 9).]

Each morning I get into the healing pool and meditate, pray, and exercise. Outside of Siloam’s large windows is a forest of trees. In formations of trees one can sight the Trinity. After Siloam comes yoga exercises, which I have practiced daily from age sixty until now. After breakfast, Forward by a Day, a devotional book, aids me in regular, structured reading of the Bible and daily worship. I write down notes in journals about what I read, think, and feel, and what I dream.

As I look back, Charles and I were centered a lot in each other. In a social setting he did all the talking and I would listen. (My very grown children say that this isn't so!) But then, off I would go, with "Excuse me" and a smile, into fascinating conversations. People now will often tell me they've read Balm in Gilead–and then before you know it, someone is telling me her life story! (laughter)

Charles’ death caused me to move out more to others, but he is still in my center and in my dreams. Sometimes I can’t tell the difference between a dream and a vision.

In analysis–others’ and my own–I use dreams a lot. And if I want to dream, I can literally have one. With a slight show of interest on their part, I will teach my friends how to study their dreams. One’s dreams can solve problems.

RD: Many people, especially men, identify intelligence with logic and analytical ability. How do you contrast this orientation with the more intuitive approach which characterizes your thinking?

ML: Charles was a great intellect. He sat at the head of the table and we had serious, deep discussions as a family. If someone would ask, "What does this word mean?" he’d rise from his seat and go to his study to consult the dictionary.

The Hassler and Lawrence families had a book club. Once when we were reading Buber's I and Thou Al said, "I don’t understand what Buber means in this passage." Charles said he didn't either. Its meaning was obvious to me and I told them. It was a revelation to me that these two men didn’t understand what was so clear to me! (laughter).

I know nothing about theology. I don’t read theology and I regret that. At a meeting of Religion in Higher Education, Seward Hiltner, a clergyman and psychologist, told me not to worry. He said, "You can engage in spiritual matters without pursuing theology per se."

I have a friend who is always asking in matters of the spirit, "What does this mean?" I ask rather, "In what form does this arrive in my spiritual center? What does the Holy Spirit say?" The medium is prayer.

When I am in my healing pool, I send out spiritual messages to others from my center to theirs. This assumes that all have spiritual centers.

RD: Who are some of your mentors?

ML: Dan Berrigan, who came to FOR to talk about his book on Isaiah. Reading Berrigan’s book, I realized how much Isaiah speaks to me. Henri Nouwen is a good counselor, though I never met. Julian of Norwich, the great English anchoress, is another. In 1988 I participated in the Canterbury Peace March from London to Canterbury at the time of the Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1988. (I was the oldest one on the Walk.) We walked for six days, slept in sleeping bags in churches. I took the opportunity to go to Norwich and see Julian’s cell, a copy of the original, in St. Julian’s Chapel, rebuilt following destruction by fire. Surrounding the Chapel are gardens, and under the window of Julian’s cell is a bench where people came to ask her counsel. She always referred to Mother God as well as Father God. She said we are all part of nature. We are all part of God. We are all part of Grace. Whatever trials we have, whatever relations we are in, God is always there.

I find my mentors in unusual places. I was driving home late at night from New York City. On the radio a journalist in London was telling of hearing a homeless man singing as he walked alone on the dark street. He recorded his song. A CD was made of the homeless man singing with symphonic music in the background, growing in volume and intensity as the man repeated again and again his simple, eloquent song: "Jesus’ blood never failed me yet. Jesus’ blood never failed me yet. I think I know, because he loves me so." The music continued for more than an hour. It had such power and grace! I wept as I drove. I can still sing it while cooking, or in Siloam, and be inspired.

Tears come readily to me: when I am sad, angry, joyful, have empathy with another, or even when inspired.

RD: Everyone faces eventual diminishment and death. How do you deal with these realities?

ML: I’ll be eighty-seven on August 19. I insist that diminishment and age are not the same thing, and I ask my physicians to consider my expectation of good health, rather than my age.

I see Charles standing at the corner of the fireplace watching me do yoga early in the morning, saying with his big smile, "Go, girl!"

When I was sixty I decided to do something about my body. Since I was thirty-five I've had evidence of arthritis, and at age sixty I dared ask Blanche DeVries Bernard to take me on as a student. She was eighty-seven! I studied with her weekly for six months, when alas, an accident made her an invalid. But it was Walter Walker, a fellow volunteer at the beginning of the Rockland County Mental Health Center and his wife Dorothy (both of whom came from Texas) who were my first non-church spiritual guides. They were, as my father was want to say, "of the other persuasion." My father meant that they were not colored. Walter taught me to know myself as a whole: body, mind, feeling life, and spirit, as long as life shall last. I have, perhaps more recently, learned to face death with "Living or dying, I am the Lord’s!" Walter and Dorothy gave me my first Martin Buber books. Walter was a person of great spirit. He died several years ago. Dorothy, a spiritual heavyweight herself, and I continue our valued friendship across many miles. Both of them are in my prayers.

RD: What do you struggle with in aging?

ML: The biggest thing I must work with is loss. It’s inevitable. You lose somebody. You lose somebodies.

I say to the youngest child, "It must be a great comfort (comfort = to make strong) to you to know you'll always have her (the deceased person’s) love. And you will always have your love for her."

When I work with a child in therapy, for instance when a child has lost a loved one, I have her make a "family play" with dolls. Children can tell you about the things that bother them. Never short-change the young. It is very important if a child has trauma, physical or emotional, for that child to be helped to talk about it. Listen to her. Help her to know it’s all right to feel what she feels. People can go throughout life with the influence of early trauma, unresolved, shaping their lives. Adults too, need help with trauma, especially with loss. I have been fortunate in having spiritual guidance from priests, in our Episcopal Shared Ministry of Rockland, who are called "missioners" (meaning "sent"). My family and good friends share this role with me, as I age. When you listen to someone else telling of her feeling of loss, you should identify with her what she is already doing to help herself.

RD: Have you any final thoughts?

ML: When Charles was president of the House of Deputies of the Episcopal Church, he arranged a silent retreat for all the chairs of church standing committees, just before the General Convention in Louisville, Kentucky. At the retreat we began each day with a story, offered us by the two leaders. They were preparing us for two twenty-four-hour days in silence.

One of the stories was to see ourselves as spiritually lost, in the bottom of an empty well, standing in the muck, and being completely overcome, unable to get out. Then after a long struggle a voice is heard: "You are my beloved daughter, in whom I am well pleased."

And that gave me the strength to make it out of the well.

©2001 Fellowship of Reconciliation