TARA SANDLIN
Paired With: Pamela Elaine Herbert
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Out of all the plentiful and impressive archival materials relating to the life and death of Pamela Elaine Herbert, one letter written by Michael Sandoval—a teenage friend of Pam’s—to remember her on the 23rd anniversary of the bombing, grabs my attention the most. To his memory of Pam, he said this:
“You: devout without being sanctimonious; wise as a wizard and always humble. You listened. I gained a breath of life.”
Pam’s persistent Christian faith is a consistent theme across the memories that her loved ones had of her. As a person of faith and aspiring pastor myself, I was inspired by her devotion: its strength, but also its impact on her life and how she exuded the love of the Divine to the people she knew without being holier-than-thou. Pam and I both belong to a religion whose holy text states that God—the most sacred Being in the universe—put breath into humankind, into dry bones that then came to life, into holy words we study and repeat thousands of years later. We believe that part of God is a Spirit who dwells inside human beings, and the etymology of the word for Spirit is closely related to the word “breath.” This is powerful, renewing, healing. It helps us act forward. Thus, when I read this short snippet of Sandoval’s letter, I knew immediately that Pam’s breath-of-life-giving faith needed to be the focus of my work.
Faith is not an easy thing to depict, probably because it isn’t something we can see. But the places where Pamela Herbert grow, nurtured, and shared her faith in the meaningful community are quite visible. For this project, I sought out images of spiritual spaces that meant something to Pam and/or that Pam meant something to. My sewn design is a compilation of three of these spaces (from top to bottom): the wall behind the altar in Lockett Memorial Church of God in Christ, where Pam attended before moving to Battle Creek, MI; the rafters in the Bowdoin College Chapel, where a moving memorial was held for her; and the exterior of Second Missionary Baptist, a building where her home congregation of First Pentecostal Church of God in Christ held many services, including her homegoing service.
I have also embroidered a few small clusters of little, pronged white specks on the piece. Maybe they are white flowers, lilies even, which are commonly associated with the rebirth and new life of Easter. Maybe they are sparkles to recall the infectiousness of Pam’s smile. Maybe they are something else; they are ambiguous so that they can be many things to many people, just as Pam Herbert was. But to me, they represent little droplets of “breath of life” and thus of Spirit, which Pam exhaled into all she did, and unto all she met.
