A Quilted Life, Catherine Meeks (foreword by Michelle Miller). Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802882899) 2024.

Summary: The story of a sharecropper’s daughter who overcame racism and health issues to teach and to lead racial healing efforts.

Catherine Meeks has led an amazing life by all accounts. Born the daughter of a hardworking sharecropper, raised in substandard educational conditions, raising two sons on her own, facing racism, and struggling with rheumatoid arthritis, life wasn’t easy. Yet eventually she completed a doctorate, held a number of academic positions, traveled in West Africa, preached in the National Cathedral, and led a ministry of racial healing.

She likens her life to the rag quilts her mother made from seemingly useless scraps of fabric. But nothing in her life, even her poverty, marginalization, and denigration, proved useless. Love and faith were the threads that wove the pieces together, beginning with the love in her home, the determination of her mother, and the faith she discovered as a teenager through a Church of Christ. She was able to attend Pepperdine, where she was mentored in racial healing by Ruby Holland.

Returning to the South, she briefly worked in a difficult mental health position before taking a job as assistant dean of women at Mercer College in Macon. Eventually, she pursued an MSW while directing Mercer’s African-American studies program, in addition to her student life work. Realizing her lack of a doctorate meant other faculty looked down on her, despite her efforts. As a result, she pursued a doctorate. This came with an opportunity to take a group of students to West Africa, where she met her future husband. Children followed, then rheumatoid arthritis, an affliction she continues to deal with. Then her husband divorced her, leaving her to raise her two boys on her own.

Despite all this, she continued to pursue her academic work. She crafted an innovative program, Standing on Their Shoulders. It recognized outstanding Black women in the Macon community, eventually numbering one hundred. Then the mayor, a Mercer law professor, recruited her to work out of his office to address gang violence. One of her first acts was to raise her voice to be assigned a real office, not a broom closet. But this was followed by community murals, gun buybacks, marches, a quilt of remembrance, working with religious leaders and meeting Colin Powell.

Instead of returning to Mercer, she accepted appointment to a chair at Wesleyan College. Subsequently, she launched the Lane Center for Community Service, for which she raised millions of dollars. During all this time, she learned to use her voice to advocate not only for herself but for the marginalized. In one of the book’s chapters she describes three practices that sustained her and helped her know when to use her voice: silence, journaling, and dream work. In retirement, she became involved in anti-racism work with her Episcopal Diocese. This led to creation of the Absalom Jones Episcopal Center for Racial Healing. This last brought her to the attention of David Brooks, who interviewed her, a speaking invitation at the National Cathedral, and to receiving the Joseph R. Biden Lifetime Achievement Award for Service, all in 2022.

Along the way, we witness the transformation of a woman who once lived under the fear of God. She describes the deep work of the Creator in her to affirm her as beloved. This plainspoken, honest memoir offers a stirring account of a life well-lived. Quilt pieces of suffering and denigration intermix with gritty achievements. This quilted life portrays a “long obedience” in the pursuit of racial healing sustained by a tenacious faith in a good and beautiful Creator.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.