Neighborhood Saints

“I imagine God as a silver mist that’s everywhere,” said one daughter at the kitchen table. Her little sister immediately disagreed: “I thought God had hair like me with a red dress with short sleeves and a gold belt.”

This specificity from the 5-year-old struck me as the perfect pairing for the otherworldly, harder-to-perceive presence of God that her older sister pondered. I still find myself drawn to each of these ways of relating to God, both in observable aspects of the world and people around me, and in the immortal, invisible, beyond-us-all transcendence of the Divine. One pulls me to the other, and back again.

That’s the fun of diving into the lives of saints who have lived among us; the stories of their lives and work can help us recognize God’s presence in this created world and point us (if not to silver mist) to the deeper mysteries of God. People and loving actions and cotton-candy sunsets are not God themselves, but when they are of God, they draw us nearer to the source of our love and our belovedness. And contemplating the ineffable nature of God, so beyond our ability to grasp, tends to turn us next toward our neighbor and our neighborhood, where we long to see God’s reconciling power unfold. 

In 1902, a 23-year-old Black woman traveled alone by train across the South to San Antonio, Texas, at the invitation of Bishop James Steptoe Johnston of the Missionary District of Western Texas (now the Diocese of West Texas). Artemisia Bowden had been a student at an Episcopal school in Georgia and then St. Augustine’s in NC, and had begun a career as a teacher. The bishop believed she had the gifts to lead St. Philip’s Normal and Industrial School in San Antonio, which she did for 52 years as president and dean. 

That call required both invitation and acceptance; two faithful people seeking for their lives to be formed in relation to the God they drew near to in worship and prayer, both within the Episcopal church in this case. Those two faithful people expressed their desire to be part of God’s reconciling ways in the real-world work of making learning and education accessible in San Antonio.

The school had been established in 1898 for the education and benefit of those who had recently been emancipated from slavery. The first offering was a sewing class for six young women, taught by Miss Alice G. Cowan, an Episcopal missionary. During her remarkable tenure, Artemisia Bowden led the growth of St. Philip’s from a high school, then through its accreditation as a junior college in 1927, to which she was named as president. Bowden pursued her own graduate work during the summers at Columbia, Cheyney State Teachers College, and NYU School of Social Work, among others, and steered St. Philip’s through tremendous growth in its campus facilities and its reach in the community. Her civic engagement in the wider community focused on creating leadership, healthcare, quality of life, and recreational opportunities for San Antonians on the east side. 

In the 1930s, funding from the Episcopal Church was halted amidst the Great Depression. Bowden fought to keep the school going, using her own money to pay teachers and touring with campus singers in a fundraising effort. By the 1940s, she was successful in petitioning the San Antonio School Board to take over fiscal responsibility for the college, and St. Philip’s thus became a public institution affiliated with San Antonio College. 

Bowden was clearly a passionate educator and visionary, a determined leader. She left her post at the helm of St. Philip’s after more than five decades of tireless work that created both stability and momentum for the institution. St. Philip’s College has continued its mission to educate and equip people for meaningful work, and the campus has expanded to two locations. It is the only college that holds the federal designation of a historically Black college and Hispanic-serving institution, and has a student enrollment of 11,000, and re-established a relationship with its founding parish, St. Philip’s Church, in 2007. 

Don’t you think God can sometimes be spotted working in a short-sleeved red dress (gold belt optional)? Or pouring herself into creating opportunities for people to learn, stretch, grow, and be equipped for satisfying vocations in the world? That is to say, real-world people and actions that carry out kingdom values like justice, peace-making, and relationship-building in support of abundant life give us a glimpse of the holy.

God’s loving, reconciling purposes are made real to us in the actions of those who seek God and say yes to living out the love they encounter. In this back-to-school season, I give thanks for the light of Artemisia Bowden’s life, for her willingness to say yes to a lifelong calling, and for the fruit of her loving labor: educational opportunity that still blesses and bears witness to fullness of life. 

O God, by your Holy Spirit, you give gifts to your people so that they might faithfully serve your Church and the world: We give you praise for the gifts of perseverance, teaching and wisdom made manifest in your servant, Artemisia Bowden, whom you called far from home for the sake of educating the daughters and granddaughters of former slaves in Texas. We thank you for blessing and prospering her life’s work, and pray that, following her example, we may be ever mindful of the call to serve where you send us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.