On Sunday morning, someone in one of my Facebook groups exclaimed the awesomeness of “so many pics of red shoes” in her newsfeed. I then looked through mine; no red shoes and no other mention of them. So I went back to the group and asked what it was about, and I got a one-word response: “PENTECOST!!!”
And I was still baffled.
The respondent had to show me the liturgical colors explanation from the United Church of Christ for me to even come close to understanding that not only is red the color of this Christian holy day, but that women (and maybe men too?) wear red shoes. I’m still not sure I get the shoe thing…but what I do know is that I felt out of the loop.
It feels strange to not understand Christian practices, as someone who grew up in late 20th century America. It’s one thing to not understand Muslim practices, or Hindu practices, for example, as I didn’t grow up in communities where those religions surrounded me. But I know – or thought I knew – at least the basics of Christianity. In order to get a good religious education in a town too far from a Unitarian Universalist congregation, our folks sent us to the local Methodist church. Studies of English and American history and literature requires a knowledge of Christianity. And heck, our own denomination springs from two Christian denominations.
So why don’t I understand red shoes on Pentecost? Or why Protestants get all into the Lent/Holy week thing, when they didn’t when I was a kid? Or any number of other things that everyone else seems to know and considers basic, but I don’t?
I feel out of the loop – but also that I’m missing something. Other people are off singing and dancing in their new red shoes, and I’m sitting here surrounded by flower communions and final services and just random everyday UU services, filled with people who have no clue this is a special day in the religion from whence we sprang.
And honestly, it makes me sad. Not because I think we should be like other Christians – one look at Channing’s Baltimore Sermon scratches that off the list. And not because we should adopt the Christian liturgical calendar and do all the things they do. We have too many other sources whose wisdom and traditions we also want to celebrate.
But are we missing something by only celebrating our Christian sources on Easter and Christmas? Or are we honoring what we have become? Is it really okay that we have our own liturgical calendar, with special holy days that are just ours (flower communion, ingathering, etc.) with just hints of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, pagan, and other holy days? Is it okay to feel out of the loop?
I admit to feeling a bit heartsick that I don’t have a tradition of wearing red shoes on Pentecost or feeling the agony and ecstasy of Holy Week, or observing the fullness of Passover, or marking all the sabbats with glorious circles and spiral dances.
And so I sit, longing for a kind of belonging I will never have as long as Unitarian Universalism is what makes my heart sing. It’s not a bad thing… just something to ponder.
Kevin (not his real name) and his girlfriend Joann (not her real name either) had joined me for lunch, and the discussion found its way to the shooting in California, #NotAllMen, #YesAllWomen, and the subsequent conversations that have erupted this week.
Kevin, one of the most gentle and progressive men I know, was struggling to understand why the two of us, who had never experienced sexual violence, were so adamant that #YesAllWomen spoke a broader truth. How could it be that every woman could say they lived under fear and frustration due to systematic misogyny?
That’s when I asked Joann to pull out her keys as though she was going to her car alone – while I did the same. Together, we held our keys like weapons, each key sticking out between our fingers like a strange set of brass knuckles.
Kevin was surprised. A bit taken aback.
I then reminded him that while not all men act on impulses, women don’t know which ones will or won’t. And Kevin let out a quiet “oh” as he finally got it. Our conversation then veered toward recognition of privilege and how moments like this help us be more sensitive and better allies.
Unfortunately, not every conversation in the last week has been so positive. For every good post about how men can push back against systematic misogyny, there was an equal and opposite post by men, and even some women, pushing back hard against #YesAllWomen – arguments full of false equivalencies and accusations of emotionalism (can we say “gaslighting?”). (No, I’m not linking to them.) Yes, even some of the “helpful” posts on how men can be better allies for women were still somewhat difficult in places. And – not surprisingly, men who said positive things tended to get more attention than women. My friend Scott Bateman illustrated this:
The irony almost writes itself.
So what’s to do? Last week, I brought up my concern over women in ministry, and a call for our denomination to act. Others within our denomination did the same (see UUWorld’s Interconnected Web roundup for more links). I can report some steps are being taken:
First, the UU Women’s Federation is calling for us to examine our study action around reproductive justice to see where we need to push into issues of discrimination, harassment, and hate crimes.
Standing on the Side of Love posted an amazing story and call to action; I can report I will be meeting with some of the staff members of SSL at General Assembly to see what we can do next.
Mostly, I can tell you that I am not staying silent. I will keep talking about this; Rev. Sean Dennison suggested we should create space for ‘hearings’ – for people to tell their stories. (Sean also suggested we examine what we mean by ‘women’ and ‘misogyny’ as relates to people elsewhere on the gender identity/expression spectrum. I fully concur, knowing that I too need to learn more.) It’s vital that we tell our stories – they humanize us; they reveal, in their particularities, universal truths; they make it harder to discriminate and harm others. And for those who have suffered, it helps the healing to know we’re not alone.
I also know that something artistic will come out of this… I don’t know what it is yet, but women’s stories must be told. Maybe it’s the next step in my nameless project. Stay tuned.
But mostly, we just can’t keep quiet. My call this week is to keep on telling the stories. Keep on talking about this. I reached Kevin last week – imagine who I can reach this week, if I just keep talking?
A friend and I were sitting on a bench on a busy street one evening, eating ice cream, laughing and enjoying the people watching. The bench was elevated, and my friend’s sandaled foot was at chest-level to the people walking past. Suddenly, a young man – clearly drunk, clearly college-aged – grabbed at her foot and started cooing after her brightly painted toenails. She said no and pulled her foot away. He chased after it. I stood up to intervene, and his friends pulled him away. One of them apologized. My friend was shaken, but more, she added this to the very long list of inappropriate touches and harassment she’s suffered in her life.
The next day, when we processed it, I made the stupid observation that I have never been the victim of inappropriate touch and harassment and while I could sympathize I could not truly empathize.
I call it stupid, because first and foremost, it was insensitive to separate myself from other women* and spread my own insecurities on a friend who had been harassed, but also because while I have not experienced the explicit harassment I witnessed that evening, I have been implicitly harmed because of the rampant misogyny that exists in our culture:
I have been excluded from certain committees, jobs, projects because I am a woman.
I am questioned – often with scorn – about being a single, child-free woman.
I carry my keys like a weapon when walking alone.
I know basic self-defense moves.
I keep an eye on other women I see walking alone to make sure they stay safe, and am on high alert when I hear a man and woman arguing.
I know many women who have suffered some sort of sexual abuse.
I cover up low-cut tops when going outside.
I have had medical concerns dismissed by medical professionals because I was making it up/overdramatizing/clearly seeking attention.
I know women who have been denied contraceptives.
I have been mansplained to by men. So has every woman I know.
I have been insulted for calling myself a feminist.
I am entering a profession where women are not always allowed the same access and position as men.
I have been called a bitch for turning a man down.
I have been called a bitch for asserting my position.
I have been called a bitch for simply existing.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The hashtag #YesAllWomen has made significant waves in the last day or so, in reaction to a tragic mass murder in California where the suspect made his disdain for women clear…and men, appropriately shocked by his actions, started to assert their concern with #NotAllMen. It was a good effort, and women are so grateful that not all men are misogynistic. Yet even that does not speak to the reality of #YesAllWomen.
Yes, all women experience abuse, discrimination, and condemnation. Yes, all women are affected by an unreasonable measure of beauty and womanhood. Yes, all women are affected by the institutionalizing of rape culture. Yes, all women are harmed by troubling religious texts and practices. No, not all men do these things, but yes, all women are hurt by them.
As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. EVERY person. We cannot stay silent in this war against women. I know that many of our congregations open their doors to Planned Parenthood and NOW meetings, when no one else will. I know that many of our members fight for reproductive rights. I know that our sexuality education program, Our Whole Lives, promotes healthy boundaries and sexual behaviors.
Yet women ministers struggle in Unitarian Universalist pulpits. They face criticism over their clothing, their hair, their accents, their child-bearing responsibilities. They struggle with challenges to their ministerial authority. They bring the same truths that #YesAllWomen speaks to their pulpits, but if they talk about women’s issues more than three times in a year, they are condemned for being one-issue preachers. And frankly, as a woman going into ordained ministry, I fear that the shift of ministry into a “helping” profession will allow boards to reduce pay, lumping them into the same category as teachers and nurses, whose work is vital and whose pay is consistently too low.
I could go on and on, and on and on. Frankly, the more I write, the angrier I get. But that won’t solve anything. Instead, I am calling on our denomination – primarily the Standing on the Side of Love campaign – to take up the cause of women. We are fighting a scary, dangerous war, that compromises half the planet. We speak there of fighting vitriolic rhetoric – now is the time to speak out and say Yes, All Women are bullied when one is bullied. Yes, All Women are harmed when one is harmed. Yes, All Women deserve our full support as we erase the hate that perpetuates rape culture and misogyny.
We must take up this fight. For all women. For all people.
*”Women” in this post includes ALL people on the gender spectrum who identify on the female side – be they cis-gendered, femmes, genderqueer, trans, or other. We here on the Far Fringe recognize the complexity of gender identity and gender expression.
I am not a mother. I have no children, either those I have born or those I have adopted or fostered. I don’t have any spiritual or emotional children either. There is no one in my life who calls me Mom for any reason.
That is by choice.
I can tell you the two times in my life I have considered the idea of having children: the first was listening to one romantic partner’s wondering what it would be like to raise a child with two moms; the second was recognizing the admirable parental attributes of another romantic partner and thinking briefly that if I were 20 years younger, I might have considered having children with him. I thought about being a mother for maybe five minutes total.
I am, in fact, intentionally child free. I have really never had the mothering instinct, I have never felt that biological clock ticking, have never gone wistful seeing a baby, never thought how important it would be for me to be a mother.
But that’s only half the story. Most people are willing and eager, in fact, to emphasize how I give birth to creative projects and mother in other ways. It’s as though I have to replace having actual children with metaphorical children. It’s as though I am incomplete as a woman if I don’t have some sort of children. And it’s not just some friends and acquaintances who say this, offering this heartfelt replacement for what has to be a hole in my life. Our entire culture is centered around mothers and mothering, and on Mother’s Day, we are bombarded with images of mothers and exhortations to call your mom, send her flowers, do something nice for her.
In our congregations, there is a Mother’s Day celebration, usually with flowers and women standing up – and usually, the well-meaning worship leader includes as an afterthought “those who mother in other ways” – as though I am not enough of a woman if I am not considered a mother. Now it is true that other kinds of mothers are indeed left out of Mother’s Day – and I am grateful that the Unitarian Universalist Association is taking steps to celebrate Mama’s Day. As they write on their website,
With “Mamas Day,” we hear a call to honor all those who mother, especially those who bear the brunt of hurtful policies or who are weighed down by stigma in our culture. We celebrate trans mamas, immigrant mamas, single mamas, lesbian mamas, young mamas, and others. It’s opportunity to take action to create the conditions so that all families can thrive.
Yes, this is vitally important. We don’t see enough mamas of non-white, non-heteronormative identities and abilities in the Mother’s Day exhortations. We need this Mama’s Day celebration to check privilege and honor all kinds of mothers.
But we do not need to include all women in this celebration.
We do not need to include me.
I am glad there are mamas of many shapes and sizes, colors and actions. I am grateful for those who have mothered me. I am grateful for those who have mothered others. But I am not a mama, nor do I want to be.
What I DO want is to be recognized as whole, as a complete human being with inherent worth and dignity, without needing to take on a role – physically or metaphorically – that is not mine. Now this isn’t to say I’m not nurturing; I believe I am. And it’s not to say I haven’t created some big projects and set some intriguing things in motion. I have. But men do that all the time, and they’re not considered less than whole. Why should I be? Why does my gender require me to be recognized as a mother if I don’t identify as such?
I don’t want to be recognized for something I am not. Don’t make me stand up on May 11th to accept pity and a last minute nod to my existence.
The building of my home congregation is wedged between three worlds: a funeral home, where people bring their grief and mourning; an old home subdivided into a surprising number of small, crowded, but affordable apartments for those who make little in the tourist industry; and an extraordinarily large, recently constructed stone mansion, complete with gatehouse and dog runs, owned by a couple desperate to make their mark in society – going so far as to shop around a reality show about their life to various cable networks. Down one street is an elite college and equally elite neighborhood, a combination of old and new money, and predominantly white. Down another is a poorer neighborhood, where low-income housing and homeless shelters exist in the predominantly minority neighborhood. Down a third is the thoroughbred race track, a symbol of opulence – hiding the oppressive conditions of living quarters for the migrants who are employed by the track (called the backstretch workers).
Depending on the door you look out, you might think the most pressing social justice concern is emotional pain, or income inequality, or immigration, or the war on workers, or homelessness, or racism.
And the truth is, they are all the most pressing social justice concern.
At General Assembly 2013 in Louisville, I attended a workshop by Rev. Beth Ellen Cooper entitled “Occupy Your Faith.” Rev. Cooper spoke about ways to make our faith real and active; like the Occupy movement, she said, our faith isn’t anarchical; rather, it is immediate and active, not an idea with manifestos and declarations. The call isn’t to declare what issue we want to tackle, but to get out there and tackle it. She challenged us to consider “who is our neighbor, and what is their pain?”
Since General Assembly, I have been thinking about this charge, and have been challenged by it. At Union Theological Seminary, we are in a beautiful, upper class institution, on the edge of Harlem – between the opulence of Columbia University and the struggles of 125th Street, between comfortable middle class apartments and people sleeping on benches in Riverside Park. And that’s just our neighborhood; inside the ‘castle’ we have people and organizations who speak about and work toward justice in a variety of areas – from the Poverty Initiative to the Edible Churchyard, from the Black and Latin@ Caucuses to the Institute for Women, Religion, and Globalization, and more – each group speaking loudly about the call to action our faith demands. Every issue is important. Every concern is vital to people’s lives. Every injustice – to people and to the earth – requires full and immediate attention.
And the call is clear; as Frederick Buechner writes, “There can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too.”
The call is clear: as Rabbie Arthur Waskow wrote in The Freedom Seder[1]:
For if we were to end a single genocide but not to stop the other wars that kill men and women as we sit here, it would not be sufficient; If we were to end those bloody wars but not disarm the nations of the weapons that could destroy all mankind, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to disarm the nations but not to end the brutality with which the police attack black people in some countries, brown people in others;
Moslems in some countries, Hindus in other; Baptists in some countries, atheists in others; Communists in some countries, conservatives in others—it would not be sufficient;
If we were to end outright police brutality but not prevent some people from wallowing in luxury while others starved, it would not be sufficient;
If we were to make sure that no one starved but were not to free the daring poets from their jails, it would not be sufficient; If we were to free the poets from their jails but to train the minds of people so that they could not understand the poets, it would not be sufficient;
If we educated all men and women to understand the free creative poets but forbade them to explore their own inner ecstasies, it would not be sufficient; If we allowed men and women to explore their inner ecstasies but would not allow them to love one another and share in the human fraternity, it would not be sufficient.
How much then are we in duty bound to struggle, work, share, give, think, plan, feel, organize, sit-in, speak out, hope, and be on behalf of Mankind!
The call is clear. And it is enough to paralyze a person. The list of injustices is so overwhelming , we can be paralyzed in deep anguish so we can’t even register the thousands of ways, big and small, our world is hurting. As Rebecca Parker says in Blessing the World, “our despair keeps us from being able to see.”
So what can I do? How can I engage every social justice concern in my ministry, knowing that alone I cannot solve every problem, knowing that every problem is dependent upon every other problem? It goes back to Rev. Cooper’s challenge: Who is my neighbor, and what is their pain?
As I leave New York City for the warmth of Key West, Florida, and my ministerial internship at One Island Family, I know my first step is to learn who my neighbor is. I already know there are issues of homelessness in Key West, as well as a similar question of income inequality in a tourist town. I already know people come to Key West for a variety of reasons, but that one of those is escape from personal pain. But that’s just what I know from some discussions with Rev. Dr. Randy Becker and a short visit in March. I imagine that in Key West – much like any location I find myself in – the first months will be exegeting the community and learning who these people are and what they face.
The second step, of course, is action. How can I help ease their burdens? And how can the congregations and communities I find myself in help others? We don’t have to take on large tasks – I think of Bishop Desmond Tutu’s comment that “the good news to a hungry person is bread.” If we can offer food to someone who is hungry, or a roof to someone who is homeless, or child care to someone who needs help in order to work, or medicine to someone who is sick, then we should do that first. The letters to politicians, the marches and protests, the large fundraising efforts – those are important too. As Margaret Mead rightly said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
Our most pressing social justice concern is the one in front of us – we fail as ministers if we do not act.
Below is the video and script for my thesis project, a 30-minutes chapel service called Nameless, held Monday, March 3, 2014.
Juliana Bateman– Samson’s wife (Judges 14)
Natalie Renee Perkins – Jephthah’s daughter (Judges 11:34-40)
Ranwa Hammamy – Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10)
Ashley Birt – Lot’s wife (Genesis 19:15-26)
Jessica Christy – Job’s wife (Job 2:1-10)
Shamika Goddard – the witch of Endor (1 Sam 28:3-25)
Emily Hamilton – the woman from Tekoa (2 Sam 14:1-22)
Sandra Rivera – widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17:8-16)
Lindsey Nye – guard
AJ Turner – the narrator
Zach Walter– the rhythm
As people enter, Lindsey will be seen guarding the Tomb of the Unnamed Woman.
Zach will be lightly playing a military beat on the cajon.
AJ:
Samson told his father and mother, “I saw a Philistine woman at Timnah; (Juliana perks up) now get her for me as my wife.’ But his father and mother said to him, ‘Is there not a woman among all our people, that you must go to take a wife from the uncircumcised Philistines?’ But Samson said to his father, ‘Get her for me, because she pleases me.’ His father and mother did not know that this was from the LORD; for he was seeking a pretext to act against the Philistines.
As he returned to Timnah, a young lion roared at Samson, who tore the lion apart with his bare hands. But he did not tell his father or mother what he had done. Then he went down and talked with the woman, (Juliana perks up again, a little) and she pleased Samson. After a while he returned to marry her, and he turned aside to see that there was honey in the carcass of the lion. He scraped it out into his hands, and went on, eating as he went.
His father went down to the woman, (Juliana a little less enthused) and Samson made a feast there as the young men were accustomed to do. When the people saw him, they brought thirty companions to be with him. Samson said to them, ‘Let me now put a riddle to you. If you can explain it within the seven days of the feast, I will give you thirty linen garments and thirty festal garments. But if you cannot, you shall give the same to me.’ So they said, ‘Ask your riddle.’ He said, ‘Out of the eater came something to eat. Out of the strong came something sweet.’
But for three days they could not explain the riddle.
On the fourth day they said to Samson’s wife, (Juliana visibly and audibly annoyed) ‘Coax your husband to explain the riddle to us, or we will burn you and your father’s house with fire. Have you invited us here to impoverish us?’ So Samson’s wife…
Juliana:
Sheesh.
AJ:
…wept before him, saying, ‘You hate me; you do not really love me. You have asked a riddle of my people, but you have not explained it to me.’ He said to her, ‘Look, I have not told my father or my mother. Why should I tell you?’ She wept before him every day that their feast lasted; and because she nagged him, on the seventh day he told her the answer. Then she explained the riddle to her people. The men of the town said to him on the seventh day before the sun went down, ‘What is sweeter than honey? What is stronger than a lion?’
And he said to them, ‘If you had not ploughed with my heifer, you would not have found out my riddle.’
Juliana:
Seriously?!? (stands, begins ranting)
AJ:
Then the spirit of the LORD rushed on him, and …. (Juliana confronts him) … WHAT?
Juliana:
“Samson’s wife” this and “Samson’s wife that.”
AJ:
That’s who you are… isn’t it?
Juliana:
I have a name! Without me, this whole stupid vendetta against my people wouldn’t be close to fulfilled. Without me, there is no story. Samson gets a name. Even his second wife, Delilah, gets a name. What’s MY name?
(AJ is visibly shaken with the realization, sits)
Juliana:
All I did was fall in love with a handsome foreigner. I didn’t know I was going to be used. I didn’t know I was going to be accused of being unfaithful and deceitful just to further some warrior’s tale. The least you could do is the courtesy of a name. What’s my name? WHAT’S MY NAME?
(whisper, in time with drum) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Ashley:
I supported my husband Lot when he asked us to leave my home. Of course I turned back to look once more on Sodom, the town I loved. I sacrificed my life for my husband and daughters, whose own future was uncertain in these terrible times, whose lives I could have protected. But you only call me Lot’s wife. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Ranwa:
I saved a Hebrew child in an act of civil disobedience, knowing my father had ordered all the Hebrew children to be killed. I raised him like my own son, and risked further exposure when I let him go to his people to lead them out of Egypt. Without Moses, there is no Exodus. But you only call me Pharaoh’s daughter. What’s MY name
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Jessica:
I lost everything too. I lost my home, my friends, my children, my livelihood too. I stood by my husband Job through all of the pain and suffering. I was angry at God too, but I also remained faithful to my husband and to my God. But you only call me Job’s wife. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Shamika:
What people forget is that Saul came to me. He sought counsel, and even though I eventually recognized him, I saw how terrified he was, and I not only helped him seek wisdom from the spirit of his father, I fed him. Without me, Saul might not have become a great ruler. But you only call me the Witch of Endor. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Emily:
I stood before King David to lobby him on behalf of Joab. I alone was strong enough to stand before the king, using my wits to political advantage. And I wanted to – I wanted to ask this king why he had planned destruction of the people of God. I was a powerful political voice for my time, but you only call me the woman of Tekoa. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Sandra:
I was a widow without family or means, the poorest of the poor, when Elijah arrived in my town. He demanded of me a meal, when I could not even feed myself or my young son. Yet this man was compelling, and I did feed this stranger, who went on to become a beloved prophet and miracle worker. But you only call me the widow of Zarephath. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Natalie:
My father was returning, triumphant from battle. How could I know he had made a vow to God that would put my life in jeopardy? I only wanted to welcome him home, but he blamed me for bringing him low, when I was the one to be sacrificed. I lost my life because of my father, but you only call me Jephthah’s daughter. What’s MY name?
(joins whisper) What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name? What’s my name?
Lindsey:
(stops marching as guard) What of all the other unnamed women? The widows? The wives? The daughters? The sisters? The lovers? The sick? The faithful? The outspoken? What of their names?
All:
(joins whisper, which now gets LOUDER) What’s my name? What’s My Name? WHAT’S MY NAME?
SILENCE.
Natalie moves to “her” headstone, places a rose, and sings “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”. At end, Zach begins to drum a heart beat.
Kimberley:
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today, to remember these women.
These women – who walked among us.
(Juliana places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who lived and breathed, who loved and lost.
(Ashley places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who played as young girls, who learned to cook and sew, who learned to love their family and their God.
(Ranwa places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who felt and thought and sang and prayed.
(Jessica places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who made choices.
(Shamika places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who were chosen.
(Emily places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone)
These women – who are only known in relation to someone else.
(Sandra places rose and sits at ‘her’ headstone; Lindsey sits near the tomb of the unnamed woman.)
These women lived in a long ago time in a far away place… but they have been living in me for nearly three years. Their stories – their heartbreak, their pain, their suffering, and their joy – have filled my thoughts. I want to stand next to Lot’s wife as she makes her final goodbyes to the home she loved. I want to comfort Samson’s wife as she finds herself torn between the men of her family and the man she loves. I want to hold Jephthah’s daughter to shield her from her father’s shocking pronouncement. I want to stroke their hair and hold their hands and call them by name.
But we have lost their names, and with them the fullness of their stories.
In this holy book, this Word of God, women are largely unnamed, unnoticed, unremarkable.
But let us be clear. God didn’t do this. This is not God’s problem. We did this to each other. Over centuries and millennia, through tellings and retellings, through writing and redacting, through additions and deletions, women’s names got left on the cutting room floor.
What we are left with is a text that along with serving as inspiration, is a model of how we are to live with each other. This model, which says it’s okay not to name women, even women without whom the story wouldn’t happen. This model, which says it’s okay to withhold names as long as the woman has no family or no means of support. This model, which says it’s okay to rape and dismember, as long as the woman is a concubine. This model, which finds no reason to name daughters who don’t obey… or daughters that do. This model, which says women do not actually get counted, but simply come along, among the masses. This model, which says even powerful and influential women don’t need to be remembered by name.
You might think that God is okay with it. But God didn’t do this. We did this to each other.
And God’s not okay with it.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who gave their lives in the Triangle Shirt Factory fire, or in the name of women’s suffrage, or in one of the many devastating wars we have fought, or in back alley abortion clinics.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who cross the borderlands and give up their given names in order to escape the notice of INS officials.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who are losing their lives while protesting in the streets of Turkey and the Ukraine and Venezuela.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been sold into slavery or the sex trade.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who have been raped and who are shamed into hiding the truth of their trauma.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who sleep on the steps outside our buildings and whose basic needs cannot be met by a system that is increasingly ignoring them.
God’s not okay with our not knowing the names of the women who serve us and care for us and protect us every day – the woman at the front desk, the housekeeper, the visiting nurse, the beat cop, the barista, the cashier, the soldier.
These women have names. They have stories. They have influence. But they too are in danger of not being remembered, of joining the unnamed in the great cloud of witnesses.
But we don’t have to keep the cycle going. The scribes and clerics gave us this sacred text, full of women placed in only one particular part of the story, known only in relation to someone else, known only for a place where they existed, known only by the terror of their texts. These scribes and clerics gave us a model we must reject. What happens when we actually speak their stories? Phyllis Tribble suggests that we must speak for these women, to “interpret against narrator, plot, other characters, and the Biblical tradition – because they have shown … neither compassion nor attention.”
Imagine if we give them our attention – how much harder it would be for us to accept some of the situations the Bible describes for us. What if we knew that Jephthah’s daughter was musical and had learned new songs to play for her father when he returned from war? What if we knew that the widow of Zarephath had been known to bake the best bread in town, back when there was plenty? What if we knew that Pharoah’s daughter found out she could not bear children of her own yet loved them desperately? If we had stories like these, suddenly, we might not accept the fate of these women – we might not accept that they weren’t that important to the stories in which they appear, and we would not accept that we should not call them by name. Just as we cannot accept the damage and disregard namelessness does to women today.
Today, let us make a change.
Dearly beloved, let us pray.
God of many names known and unknown,
hear our sorrow as we mourn these unnamed women…
in their death, we are all diminished…
their stories are alive, but all is not well.
Hold us as we take one step today to right this wrong,
to stand for these women,
to hear their stories and bear witness to their power,
to feel their presence and confess their present reality.
God, be with us in our struggle to make sure everyone is known,
to show even the long forgotten their inherent worth and dignity.
Bless us, God, with ever opening and softening hearts
as we remember the women.
Amen.
We will never know the names of these unnamed women in the Bible – those are lost to history. But there are names of women who have touched our lives that should not be forgotten. They are mothers, and aunts, and cousins. They are teachers, and counselors, and neighbors. They are activists, and preachers, and thinkers. We have all been touched by the lives of incredible women, without whom our own stories would not progress. Let us celebrate and name those women – let us turn this tomb of unnamed women into a space of remembering women and their names.
Folks are invited to write these names on stickers we pass out, and place them on the tomb. Meanwhile, the beat changes from heartbeat to an Afro-Caribbean rhythm.
As people gather, Ranwa leads us in Israel Naughton’s “I Am Not Forgotten”
I recently studied American Theological Liberalism with Gary Dorrien, and was quite taken by a chapter (from Dorrien’s The Making of American Liberal Theology, Volume 1) on the social gospelers. As I read the chapter, I found myself saying “amen” to Walter Rauschenbusch’s understanding of Christianity, that Jesus’s message was that the personal and the political cannot be separated if we are to see the kingdom manifest ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ I was impressed that Walter could find his way out from under the abusive thumb of his father and find the joy and hope preached earlier by Bushnell – the very hope that seems truly absent in the orthodoxy of the elder Rauschenbusch.
And I found myself thinking this is remarkably familiar territory – I have never read Rauschenbusch or other social gospelers before, yet I had read these ideas, with a different spin. The light dawned when I arrived on the pages discussing the Federal Council of Churches. I knew from other study that Unitarian John Holmes and Universalist Clarence Skinner also wrote on the social gospel… yet they were absent. Mild curiosity turned to earnest consideration as I learned that the Unitarians and the Universalists were omitted from the Federal Council of Churches, all the while being frontrunners on the social gospel.[1] So I wondered: why might that be?
As it turns out, both Holmes and Skinner were critics of Rauschenbusch and the social gospel promoted within the Federal Council. So I turned to the more familiar of the writings, Skinner’s Social Implications of Universalism, for answers.
Written in 1914 while serving as Professor of Applied Christianity at the Crane Theological School of Tufts College, Social Implications begins with a flat indictment:
The fact is that the traditional Protestant Church is dying, dying hard with colors flying and battling heroically, but nevertheless dying. The theology upon which it is built is dying; the individualism which called it into being is dying; the social order which it expressed is dying. Why should it not also die? (pg 1)
Indeed, Skinner is going after orthodoxy; he spills pages of ink arguing against the “religions of authority…who render stupid obedience to the established social order” (pg 9). He notes with derision that the traditional churches have been “so feeble” in social action because of “inertia inherited from the medieval ages when humanity lacked social dynamic” (pg 42). He argues that given the new age, “only those theologies which frankly and persistently align themselves with the world, and openly champion its potential goodness, can logically enter the great reformation of the twentieth century” (pg 48).
And it is there where Skinner shifts his attention from only skewering the orthodoxy to also calling out the liberal church. Any theology that sees salvation as coming “by escaping from a world which is inherently unsavable” – even in part, as Rauschenbusch promotes – is “individualistic, anti-social, medieval faith” (pg 49). He suggests that because of the emphasis on the death of Jesus, the church has inherited vicarious atonement which “has no social dynamic in it” (pg 55) – and that it is the social dynamic that is the actual ministry and religion of Jesus. “No dogmatic theologies about Jesus ever saved any one in society or out of society” he writes (pg 57), wondering why personal salvation should be necessary if the core of Jesus’s teachings are about social salvation. Instead of salvation being found in a statement of belief, a rite or sacrament, salvation, and Christianity itself, is “life lived in the open in the midst of the push and pull of social forces, and thus implies and demands a social context” (pg 59).
Skinner continues his arguments against the liberal church (particularly the hopeful theology of Bushnell that many social gospelers found attractive) in his section on “Hell and Salvation;” on the plus side, “liberal theology has successfully driven these nightmares [of a wrathful God and a brimstone hell] from the minds of enlightened men” (pg 63). Yet he thinks they have whitewashed the story, doing away with “moral accountability”; rather, the ideas of heaven and hell essential elements of religion. He makes this clear: “Universalism has not abolished the idea of hell. It has humanized and socialized it” (pg 63, emphasis his).
It is because of the hell on earth, then, that salvation is purely a social act as well; Skinner argues that “there is no royal road to salvation…it is as much subject to the natural law of cause and effect as is punishment” (65). Old ideas of heaven and hell are anti-social; thus, the need for personal salvation is anathema to the real salvation: saving ourselves in the here and now.
Skinner’s book is of course, largely an argument for Universalism, suggesting that its long history of social consciousness, open arms, and trust in a loving God will one day be at the center of a unified church. He believes that others will come around when they realize the truth of Universalism and let the medieval faith fall away completely. And obviously, that has yet to occur, if ever.
But the Universalists wanted to be at the table with the other social gospelers; that they and the Unitarians were sidelined left these two humanity-centered denominations to flounder and eventually find themselves. As Unitarian Universalists, we work alongside modern social gospelers, gently reminding them that we’ve been here for a long time – and welcome to the party.
There is a moment
In every undertaking
There is a moment
When everything is still… too still.
There is a moment
When nothing, nothing, NOTHING comes…
When the mind is frozen.
It is a scary moment
It is a frustrating moment
It is a moment where you doubt every part of yourself
Why can’t I do this?
What is wrong with me?
How am I supposed to write this
Sing this
Speak this
Perform this?
I have nothing interesting to say.
I have nothing new to say.
I have nothing to say.
There is a moment when all hope seems lost
And the very thing you knew about your self
That you have something to say
And a way to say it
That very thing you knew about yourself has
Vanished.
Writer’s block.
The mind isn’t so much a complex organ of thought and deed but rather a frozen tundra of grey matter.
But then…
There is a moment.
A spark.
And another.
And another…
…a spark ignites a flame.
There is a moment
When the frozen tundra of the mind begins to thaw…
Quickly.
And suddenly you are on fire.
You race for your laptop
Notebook
Guitar
Floor space
Piano
Sketch pad
You can’t write, draw, move, play,
sing fast enough for all the ideas coming.
There is a blessed, welcome moment
When you have been ignited
By the flame of creativity.
There is a moment
When you are stimulated
And your perspective shifts
And your mind-body-spirit explodes
And you are left standing
In the wake of what has been revealed.
THE ART OF MEANING 