The Book: Labors of Love and the Soil

With my late maternal grandparents Joseph and Pearl Parker at their 50th wedding anniversary celebration in June 1982

We As A People Will Get to the Promised Land. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. April 3, 1968

One of the things I remember about growing up in my 1960s, extended family, rural Virginia environment was that almost every black family had a vegetable garden. Ours was a pretty nice one— the plot’s yield very important to our wellbeing. On this life-enriching piece of land, my grandparents planted a variety of crops: string beans, collard greens, butter beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers, just to name several. They set aside some of the vegetables for us to eat right away, shared what they could with other families, then canned the rest so they’d be readily available to us in the winter. Joseph (Joe) Everett and Pearl Cargill Parker easily saw the fruits of their labor. How? Because we weren’t hungry!

In addition to the garden, there was also family life, the house, chores, and the yard to tend to. Nevertheless, with wisdom and devotion, they anchored the generations in these visible acts of purpose. They both especially looked forward to the activities in their garden every year, as they knew these efforts would produce a yield that would enable them to fulfill their responsibilities to themselves and all of us. And whenever they could, they shared this mental and tangible bounty within and beyond the community.

For Joe and Pearl Parker, poor, twentieth-century, Southern black folks, their garden was in many ways, their Promised Land. They had a measure of contentment there, a safe haven— with more freedom, opportunity, and control on that soil than anywhere else on Earth.

View a Video about this book Promised Land Video

I was very positively influenced by the love and guidance of my late maternal grandparents. Referring to them as “two of the wisest people I’ve ever known,” I include their names in my consulting business, The DPJ (Deborah, Pearl, and Joseph) Training Group. This honor and dedication grounds me and connects me with these spiritual business associates.

My late grandparents, Joseph and Pearl Parker

A realization for me is that blessings come in all forms and at all times. I was raised in the home of this patriarch and matriarch without always connecting the value of the experience. In fact, I didn’t fully honor the richness of it until much later on my journey—the situation was, no doubt, a gift in the making.

So now I honor them by making their wit and wisdom available to the world.

Also as a child of the Civil Rights movement, I was inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King’s final speech on April 3, 1968 where he said, We as a people will get to the Promised Land.”  These words rooted me in titling this book.

Read On!

The book is available at https://www.createspace.com/4302667

Or Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Tools-Cultivate-Promised-Land-Grandparents/dp/1489597581