Episode Three: Shui Sherard and Dr. Arthur C. Donart

This episode explores stories from Tellin’ Tales’ “Hands Up” series.  This series tackles topic including race, faith, and disability through diverse personal stories that connect past and present, broadening perspectives and celebrating unique journeys of resilience and growth.

Featured Stories:

“God is in the Numbers” - Shui Sherard’s childhood curiosity about math and time sparks a lifelong spiritual journey through various religions, leading to the realization that faith transcends words and study, existing in the spaces beyond human understanding.

“My Brother's Funeral” - Dr. Arthur C. Donart’s story reflects on life’s journey, weaving experiences in education, service, and faith to show how personal history and changing times shape values, connections, and the meaning of purpose.

Transcript

Shui

00:00

If it ain't my old pal, Robert. 

Robert

Hey, Shui. It's great to see you. 

Shui

Sweet talker.

Robert

00:27

I figured we should take a few minutes and talk about Telling Tales', Hands Up! series. 

Shui

Ancient history. 

Robert

Not so much. We've only been around, oh, three or four years. We wanted to get different stories and different perspectives. Like, if we could have gotten that black guy who infiltrated the Klan, we would have loved that. And also, honestly, if we could have gotten a Klansman's reaction to being infiltrated, we really would have loved that, too.

Shui

00:55

Same topics. Lots of perspectives.

Robert

00:58

As many as possible. Because, I mean, really, how do you broaden your own perspective without a lot of other perspectives?

Shui

01:06

Well, it's not like you shy away from tough topics. 

Robert

Hands Up! Police.

Shui

That must have been something.

Robert

01:10

It was. We've done a lot of things. Hands up, Body. We did a mental illness show called Misunderstood Minds.

Shui

01:20

Because not all disabilities are visible.

Robert

01:22

But there's commonality, too. Like faith.

Shui

01:25

Clever. Because that's where we are now. We're on the faith program.

Robert

01:29

Yep. You and Art. We'll start with you. 

Shui

Okay. 

Robert

Would you like to tell us something deep and personal about yourself, Shui?

Shui

01:39

Well, it's pretty much covered my story. My story's the journey from math through religions and into philosophy. In short, geek!

Robert

01:50

And from there, we go to cooking, right?

Shui

01:53

By a very long way around.

Robert

01:55

And a very tasty way, I'm sure. Okay. Let's hear your story.

(Music)

Shui

02:01

I was in third grade when we started talking about how to express fractions as decimals. And I got halves. Halves I got. 5 plus 5 equals 10, so .5 plus .5 equals 1. Two halves of an apple, you got an apple. I was good with that. But thirds? I never got thirds. Because 3 times 3 equals 9. Doesn't equal 10. So it should be .9, not 1.0. And no matter how many threes you add to it, it's still .999999. There's never a time when you carry the 1 and all the zeros magically cascade down. And I just didn't get it. And I asked the teacher, and the teacher said, You're just going to have to accept that at some point in the infinity of 9-ness, it just equals 1. It doesn't approximate 1, it equals 1. So I said, well, okay, but if you're going to do that, then there has to also be a 1.0000001 that also equals 1. And she's like, no, that's not how it works. And I said, but it has to. Because if you've got this long series of nines, as you say, you know what, screw it, we're at 1, then subtract that tiny sliver from 1, add it back to 1, and then you've got a mirror on the other side of 1, that also equals 1. And then also equals .999999. And she's like, no, it doesn't work like that. And I wouldn't let it go because I couldn't let it go. And the rest of my class were rolling their eyes, and Jesus just let this go, and shut up, bitch, and when's lunch? And then I said, is that how time works? And, oh my God, that poor teacher, huh? I said, is that how time works? That we go from the past to the present to the future, .999999 to 1 to 1.0000001? That it moves so quickly that we don't even see it, and we have to experience time as a verb rather than looking at it as a noun, because otherwise we miss it. We go from the past to the future without ever spending a second in the present. By the time we even recognize it's the present, it's already the past. 

And the bell rang, and you have never in your life seen a teacher so relieved that the bell rang. Oh my God. Like somewhere in the halls of weird moments in teaching is this poor woman's face in a frame, frozen for all time. Like, oh. And she held me after class, and she said, you're going to have to find your answer somewhere else, because your mind is asking questions that can't be answered in school. Truth exists, but you're never going to get to capital T Truth in a third grade math class. 

Well, you know, fair enough, right? So I said, well, religions say they've got the truth, so I started studying religions. And I went through religions like water. Oh my God. I'd study the texts, I'd go to their houses of worship, I'd learn the prayers, and I'd go and I'd ask my questions like, Father, why was Jesus born on a solar calendar but died on a lunar calendar? Isn't that backwards? Shouldn't he have been born on a lunar calendar because he was born Jewish and then died on a solar calendar, indicating the difference between a moon-based religion and a sun-based religion? And the priest just froze. Next!

Right, so off I went. So Judaism was next. And Judaism is just weird, right? Every letter is a number, every number is a letter, and every word in the Torah has music interwoven into it. All the little notes are written right on the word. And so I went and I studied, and the first thing I learned is that there's this Yod Yod God. Yod is a little tick, and it's the number 10. And then there's the yod-heh-vav-heh God, which is 10, 5, 8, 5. And the 5 is also an H sound and an AH sound, and the word Thee. And the 8 is also a V sound and an O sound, and OOO, and the word AND. And this God did this and that God said that, and somehow or another they're supposed to be the same God. So they call all these different deities in the Old Testament Adonai and just hope everything is resolved in the background except Elohim. Elohim has the male pluralization, I am, of the female noun for goddess. Like how in the world is this a monotheistic religion? And yet if Jews believe anything, and that is a much bigger question than you may expect, it's that all of these gods running around the Old Testament are the same God. 

But they are completely different. Their names are different, their numerology is different, their grammatica is different. And how is it that Jehovah has the feminine name ending like Sarah and Rebecca? Well, now I have my question that I was pretty sure once I went to the Rabbi, he'd say, OK, go find your next religion. And I said to him, Rabbi, how are we supposed to believe that God is all male all the time when Jehovah is clearly female? He said, uh-uh, yeah. Well, God is male and female and everything else and nothing. He says you've got to stop reading the words. The words are written by men for their own purposes. You're not going to learn about God by reading words written by men. You can't get to faith through study. 

Well, how do I get to faith then? He said, well, what led you here in the first place? I said, math. He said, well, if math led you to God, let math keep leading you to God. He says God is the space that exists between words and the air that rests between sentences. The word spirit comes from the word for breath. So every time you get to that point where there's nothing there, that moment is God. So if you're meditating or if you're losing yourself in cooking or in art or in music or the love of animals, the second you lose yourself, you find God. Well, that's not at all what I thought Judaism was. He says, well, nobody really knows. 

So I started consciously looking at breath. Breath leads you to mindfulness, and mindfulness leads you to meditation. The next thing you know, you're in all the Eastern religions. Whoopsie! What are you doing here? I don't know. Because in Western religion, God is out. But in Eastern religion, God is in. And you don't need to find God because God's already there. You just need to manifest it. And you start thinking, okay, well, yad, yad, ten, ten. Yad, hey, vav, hey. Ten equals five and five. Of course they're the same thing. Ten fingers, ten toes. When you pray, move your feet. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might. Faith and works. Ten fingers, ten toes, son. There is hatred and war and injustice and discrimination and sexism and racism and homophobia. There are people starving in every city in the world. And the world is drowning in a sea of garbage. And global warming is going to teach us all to tread water for a very long time. Ten fingers, ten toes. We're God's hands on earth. Get to work.

(Music)

Robert

11:54

Ten fingers, ten toes.

Shui

11:56

Ten fingers, ten toes.

Robert

11:59

Everyone's journey is different.

Shui

12:01

So, art didn't start with fractions?

Robert

12:04

No. Art taught English in both, or I should say at both, Western Illinois University and in Thailand. 

Shui

Tough commute. 

Robert

It would have been had he done them simultaneously, but he did not. In the intervening years, he had the distinction of being the only male member of the Illinois Commission on the Status of Women. And, I'm not sure he was the first, but he had to be one of the first. He was, let's say, the first Catholic officiant to perform a same-sex wedding. And that was between me and my husband.

Shui

12:39

Oh, that's so wonderful. 

Robert

Yep. 

Shui

Anything else I need to know?

Robert

12:43

Yes. To that, he is a Roman Catholic Deacon, retired, and obviously my father-in-law.

Shui

12:50

Terrific. Let's hear his story.

(Music)

Art

12:52

I'm the oldest in the family. My brother's five years younger. I never had a lot to do with him, and that's because when he was 11, I went to a seminary for two years. And then when I got back, I joined the Army for three years. Getting out of the Army, I went to college for four years. In the meantime, my brother turned 18. He joined the Navy. He got married. He had a son, Patrick, and then later a daughter, Michelle. And the family grew a little larger because they adopted a little Korean girl, Tina. After 22 years in the Navy, he retired as a chief petty officer. 

So when we'd go to Florida, we'd stop by and see him. Of course, the reason for the breakup was his wife, Mary, found out he was gay. So then in Charleston, he found the love of his life, Richard. They pledged faith to each other. They attended the Metropolitan Church. We would go on trips to Florida and stop by and see him. He was happy. He really was. He loved to cook. He loved to sew. And it's the happiest I've ever seen him.

You can imagine how shocked I was when I got a phone call from Richard telling me my brother Jerry was dying and he wanted me to be at his bedside. Well, of course, definitely. I'd do what I could to get there as fast as I could. The next morning, early, I got a call from Kim. It was Richard's voice. He said, Pat, your brother is dead. Too late. But he did ask me to ask you if you would please do his funeral for him. Certainly, I could always do that for my brother. That was important. It was important to him. It was important to me. I was glad he felt that way.

I called my sisters, Betty and Rosie, told them I'd be picking them up. We could all go to Jerry's funeral together. I packed my vestments, my missile, my sacramentary, and anything else I would need. I'd helped and did a lot of grave-side services before and would assist at funerals, but I'd never done fully a funeral on my own. 

We got to Charleston late. Richard led us in. You could tell he'd taken things pretty hard. Then he began to let us know over a cup of coffee about the little troubles within Jerry's family. It seemed that Michelle was not allowed by her husband to go see her gay father while he was in the hospital. That really upset Jerry, so he managed to change his will and leave her $1. Didn't deter her. She came and took his sewing machine. She would have liked to have had his car, but he'd already given that to Patrick. 

Then there was the problem of Tina, their adopted Korean daughter. She was blaming her mom for the breakup of the marriage. It seemed that she'd decided to have nothing to do with the whole family. Richard wasn't even sure she'd go to her dad's funeral. Finally, the other big conflict was Michelle wanted her dad's ashes, and Richard felt he should have her dad's ashes. I asked him, well, would you be satisfied with half the ashes? He was amenable to that. 

That was kind of a sleepless night for me. The family feud stuff kept sloshing in and out of my head as I kept going over and over the liturgy to make sure I had everything right. His ashes were on the table in front of the altar with his picture, that the ribbons were in the right place in the sacramentary. Then Richard came in with my sisters, Rose and Betty, and his son Patrick. They went to the front and sat in the front pews. Other people trickled in, about 30. Then his ex-wife Mary and her husband and Michelle came in. They sat in the opposite front pew. I was watching my watch. I always wanted to start on time. Two minutes ago, I had not seen anything of Tina. But then she came in with her boyfriend. They were wearing their black motorcycle, leather jackets. His head was shaved. Her hair was spiked green and blue. I was delighted to see them. 

Then we began the service in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. His son Patrick read the Old Testament. Then a friend of Jerry's read the sequence. Michelle read the New Testament section. I proclaimed the gospel and started the homily. It was going to be short. I planned it to be short. I choked up with tears and shortened it up even further. 

We arrived at the Charleston Battery. Richard was muttering, this is going to be terrible. She would not listen. About 30 mourners were there. Michelle opened the box. With great gusto, she threw the ashes up toward the sea. But, as Richard said, the wind blows in. The ashes got all over her face, her clothes. They blew on everybody else's clothes. She let out a war hoot. Her mom fainted. Everybody else brushed ashes off. Except Richard had warned us, so we were ready. Betty, Rosie, Richard and I, we made our escape. We went back to Richard's home.

When we got back to the house, Jerry's friends had set up a Shiva table for him. They had nice, different Jewish food placed on it. Other people had brought baked beans, chips, sloppy joes, cakes, cookies. It was really a nice crowd. Then Richard, carrying Jerry's ashes in the bowl, asked Rosie, Betty and I to follow him. We went out to the back porch. There sat a chair near the swamp. He said Jerry loved to sit for hours in this chair and watch the swamp animals. This was his favorite place. Then he poured Jerry's ashes into the swamp. I thought, yes, Jerry is at peace now. But he certainly was amused at what happened at the battery.

(Music)

Shui

21:33

What a great story. How he uses time. Clearly this was in the 1980s. How much has society changed since then?

Robert

21:42

Stories weave and flow the storyteller's pace, building connection across time and space. Some stories weave across cultures and echo through history. 

Shui

Pretty deep, Robert. 

Robert

Everybody has a story, Shui.

Shui

And you will hear them on. 

Robert and Shui

21:58

Telling Tales, Tales Told.

Robert

22:02

Oh, we forgot to say what stories we're doing the next time we meet.

Shui

22:08

What stories are we doing next time we meet?

Robert

22:10

I don't know. Steve, our fearless program director and my fabulous husband, said we should do mine. Oh. And another one.

Shui

22:21

So how about we do one of yours and one of Stephen's? Your beautiful, sexy husband. Sexy, caring, understanding, sexy bear of a man. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve

22:32

You convinced me. It's in. 

Robert

All right.

Shui

22:35

Well, there you go. All right. Steve, you'll be on the next Telling Tales.

Robert, Steve and Shui

22:40

Tales Told

(Music).