Why Me?
Why Me?: 15 June 2025
My grandmother had Alzheimer’s. When Mama visited, she brought little treats for all the ladies gathered in the activity room. She particularly remembered two ladies, one who always demanded, “What about me??” when she saw Mama handing things out. And one who, when offered something, was always surprised and said, “What? For me?”
It's hard not to read into this the poignant distillation of one’s stance toward life, of being stripped by a disease to one’s deepest need, or fear. Mama and I both hoped, in a similar situation, that our stance would be the second—gratitude.
It’s my welling up of tears at the profligate bounty of Earth’s beauty, and the love I feel for my husband, children and friends, and watching humans be kind to one another. Grace upon grace upon unearned grace. Why me? Most of the time I recognize these gifts as the uncomprehensible love of God. But sometimes I slip.
Earlier this week I was asked to pinch hit for notetaking for a church committee. I don’t love this task, so I rarely volunteer, but I agreed to take one for the team. I briefly considered trying to use AI. My brother now records his zoom meetings and uses AI to create minutes based on the agenda. Afterwards, he goes back and fills in nuances and tweaks things, but on the whole, he’s been impressed with how easily AI can produce a good working draft. It allows him to focus on the discussion instead of on notetaking. I wasn’t brave enough to try.
Mid-meeting I noticed myself skipping into a deep but untended groove. Listening, jotting things down, letting the voices flow around and through me, getting a sense of the discussion, and then writing a concise summary. It’s a groove I haven’t visited in a long time, cultivated during my Quaker years while serving as a Recording Clerk.
The Recording Clerk is akin to a secretary, but with a distinct difference. Minutes are created in the face of the meeting, meaning in real time, then read aloud, and edited until they can be approved unanimously. I’ve participated in profound, emotional, multilayered discussions that veered all over the place, had a big backstory and uncertain way forward, that lasted an hour or more, leaving everyone exhausted. The Clerk would signal a pause, giving the Recording Clerk time and silence. How in the world, I would think, can anyone craft a paragraph that conveys the sense of the discussion, the discerned way forward, and any action items?
But they would. I’ve listened in awe as that person offered a few sentences so beautiful and comprehensive that it took my breath away. The Clerk would ask whether everyone agreed that this minute reflected the breadth and resolution of the discussion, and usually with only minor tweaks or a little wordsmithing, we did agree.
So, when I was asked to consider serving as an assistant Recording Clerk It caught me off guard. Internally I thought, why me? But I trusted the Friend who asked and knew that for the first year I would be assisting an amazingly capable person, almost magical in her skill, before taking it on myself. It was exciting and challenging to listen well and neutrally, to hear beyond the words to the true kernel of someone’s position, to balance the narrative with the overall direction, and to craft a summary that everyone present could approve.
Is AI the new Recording Clerk? Can AI produce the ‘sense of the Meeting’? We can ask it to summarize long and difficult texts and it can give us competent distillations. But in the case of a complicated multilayer discussion, could it capture the nuance of the emotion? The fear behind the bluster? The hope underneath the challenge? The pride or greed or envy that colors the pronouncement? What do we lose when we use AI, instead of humans, to describe us to ourselves?
How do we describe ourselves? That’s what I’ve been pondering on my porches.
I love early June. I like to be on the porch in Greenville, the soft Oaxacan rug under my bare feet, with the chirps of small birds and the loud squawky hawky who’s learning to hunt. And I like to be on the porch in Montreat, listening to the faithful creek and looking for the first lightning bugs twinkling under the rhododendron. June feels full of promise, of possibility.
In June I can start a project, go to work, come home and it’s just like I left it. Not messed up or usurped by someone else’s need. It’s a gift to be able to focus on one project. Sometimes that project is me, and the project is about changing my narrative about myself in some way.
In my best moments I can appreciate that my children are constantly navigating the grand project of creating—short term—the human they want to project to the world and—long term—the human they want to be in the world. It’s exciting but also exhausting. For everyone.
I want to support that exploration and innovation while also keeping them mindful of all of the other people in the world who also deserve some of their attention. Like the people inhabiting the same household or, for instance, sharing the same bathroom. In the project of ourselves we still must acknowledge and affirm the other.
Recently I asked Emma to tell me something about her day, and she muttered, why me? and continued up the steps. She wasn’t even trying to be hurtful. It was that casual, exasperated irritation that eviscerated me. But after I returned my intestines to the inside of my body, I felt a certain sympathy with her bluntness. Haven’t we all felt drained by someone else’s attention, someone else’s need for our attention? Still. Let’s remember gratitude.
One aspect of love as it’s defined in Corinthians: love bears all things. That includes people’s irritating need for our attention. Darling Emma—when you were three did you really think I wanted to read Dinosaurs Love Underpants that many times? I can assure you I did not.
We all ask why me?, and then we show up for other people. We read the book one more time. We answer the question. We do the dishes, cut the grass, take a meal, take the minutes.
When the world feels overwhelming, we ask what can one person do? which is a close cousin to why me?. Here’s what we do. We keep in mind the end game: love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (There’s more. It’s worth reading the whole of I Corinthians 13.) This is how to love our family, our neighbor, our country.
When we remember that, then we show up for change. We vote, we go to the protest, we give money. We give away our cloak, walk the extra mile, welcome the stranger, protect the refugee.
I’ve thought many times about the transformation allowed me because I said yes to someone calling out a gift in me. If my why me? had prevented me from trying my hand at being a Recording Clerk, I would not have learned the art of focused listening and concise summary. It’s likely I would never have attempted the scary ambition of writing a monthly essay, and we would not be sharing this moment.
Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for other people’s emerging gifts, to encourage them to think past their immediate competencies and maybe find a depth of new possibilities. It is a gift to be called to develop a new way to serve. And it is a gift to serve in the new way.
Where are you being called to serve? What are you resisting by asking why me?
Why you? Because there is only you. And me. Together.
“There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest. ”
