A poet, a flight delay, and a spirit of love spreads across cultures

May 10, 2013

“Gate A-4”
Poet Naomi Shihab Nye is the daughter of a Palestinian father and an American mother and lived for a time in Palestine. In this link, she tells of a deeply moving incident that offers hope to our world in these troubled times. It all started with a four-hour flight delay at the Albuquerque airport  and an urgent announcement about a need for someone who spoke Arabic to go to Gate A-4 immediately. That was her gate!  Read what happened next; it will touch you at your deepest level. This poetic narrative was reprinted with permission on the Poets.org website from the Academy of American Poets. It was originally published in Nye’s 2008 book, Honeybee: Poems and Short Prose.

Letha Dawson Scanzoni is an independent scholar, writer, and editor, and is the author or coauthor of nine books. In 1978, she and Virginia Ramey Mollenkott wrote Is the Homosexual My Neighbor?, one of the earliest books urging evangelical Christians to rethink their views on homosexuality (updated edition, 1994, HarperOne). More recently, Letha coauthored (with social psychologist David G. Myers) What God Has Joined Together: The Christian Case for Gay Marriage (HarperOne, 2005 and 2006). Another of Letha’s most well-known books is All We’re Meant to Be: Biblical Feminism for Today, coauthored with Nancy A. Hardesty (Word Books, 1974; revised edition, Abingdon, 1986; updated and expanded edition, Eerdmans, 1992). Letha served as editor of Christian Feminism Today in both its former print edition (EEWC Update) and its website for 19 years until her retirement in December 2013.

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