The Ministry of a Braxton Scholar: A Taste of Sarah Peterson’s Writing

Editor’s note: The current print edition of ESR Reports includes Development Director Marty Sulek’s article, “Parallel Lives,” a profile of benefactor Viola Braxton and student Sarah Peterson. For more recent work by Sarah and other ESR students, visit esr.earlham.edu/writing-as-ministry. Marty writes, “Sarah Peterson believes that writing and storytelling are important ways to communicate God’s transforming power. Through ESR’s Writing as Ministry curriculum, she’s had the chance to improve her writing skills as an aspect of her training in ministry. The following story is excerpted from a lighthearted writing exercise that was conducted in Peter Anderson’s August 2003 intensive course, Aspects of Writing as Christian Ministry.”

I put my hands up to wet my hair, already worrying that shampooing it again will wash out more of the dye I so painstakingly put in only days before. Before dyeing it Black Cherry Red, I remembered the stories my mother has antagonized me with—Russian women she knew who, in trying to color or curl their hair, scorched themselves so miserably with vile chemicals that all their hair broke off, never, for some reason not fully explained, to grow again.

In direct contradiction to my mother’s fears, my hair hardly notices the chemicals I slather it with. The dye washes out as quickly as it can. I wonder if even the chemicals the Russian women used would be strong enough to bring my hair to heel.

My hair is like my life in that regard. I long for lightening bolts, drama that will turn me inside out before setting me on my feet again. I want to be harrowed by raw experience, prepared for the planting of spiritual seeds. Instead, I feel, I have spent the last year in a spiritual drought, pacing anxiously, scanning the sky for signs of rain, worrying about the future of the crops.

I do things to step out, to shake my fist at the sky, to send up smoke signals, warnings that things will be different. I wanted that with my hair—to start a year decisively, to make everyone turn their heads and stare. Instead, these gestures seem like prisoners shifting weakly under their chains, the creaking and clanking audible but signifying nothing.

My hair feels like that now, as I rub it with shampoo. When I lean back into the shower stream, letting it rinse out the soap, water swirls and spatters in the white ceramic basin pink around my feet.