The Day the Women of EDS Gave Up Their Voices

We, the women students at the Episcopal Divinity School, came here for a variety of reasons. Some came to follow in the footsteps of Suzanne Hiatt and take part in the community she helped midwife. Others came to experience a new vision of the Christ through the eyes of Carter Heywood or to hear again the story of the Body of Christ living and working in the world as shared by Joanna Dewey. Some of us came to be part of this amazing experiment – to be part of something that mattered and to have our voices matter as well. Word spread from person to person across the Church and the world and in the end, this place become irresistible to us. We left behind jobs, careers, families, relationships – things that mattered most to us – to come here and to become something. Something we did not think we could become any other place. No matter what attracted us to come here, we shared a common calling – a call to come, to experience, to dream, and especially to hear the word in this new and exciting way.

What we found when we arrived is difficult to explain. What we found within ourselves almost defies words. We arrived when Suzanne was a blessed memory, when Carter and Joanna were retired to warmer parts, and when the voices of women had become significantly softer. We embraced the community’s commitment to serve and advance God's mission of justice, compassion, and reconciliation. We struggled to understand the school's dedication to God's transforming mission that challenges us to become an anti-racist and multi-cultural community, embodying diversity and seeking constructive change. For many of us, the weight of our privilege hung as an albatross around our necks and weighted our every action or word. In time, it became easier to be silent than to risk exposure, mistake, misunderstanding, or the appearance of bigotry.

Finally, one Monday morning brought us together with the white men robustly debating, and the people of color happily engaged in discussion, and the white women huddled together in a corner. We sat knee to knee leaning inward and struggled to hear as each woman took her turn at answering the questions of the day. What is globalization? What would our role in it be? These were heavy questions for a Monday morning. As I struggled to hear our responses, I was struck by our voices – their tentative quality, our struggle to find words for what effected our lives every day, and our inability to see for ourselves a role in how we would bring about change in the world.

I was struck by the smallness of our vision. We might try to buy different products, or eat different foods. We might write letters or boycott mammoth retailers. We could change the coffee we use at fellowship hour at church. We committed ourselves to work within our families and we proposed ways to work within our parishes. More than anything else, we listened as the men-folk beside us engaged in heated debate and we envied the effusive din of the people of color.

When one woman dared to address our meekness and our lack of command of the topic, we griped about the volume of the men and wondered about the seriousness of the people of color. We got frustrated. We gave dirty looks. We nudged our chairs closer together until we were huddled together so closely that we seemed to be collapsing in on ourselves. We did many things, but we did not say a word beyond our little circle.

Called together again, the groups formed a larger circle and one young woman dared to address the dynamics that had hampered our dialogue. She was young and earnest, but the weight of the mantle of authority did not yet sit comfortably on her shoulders. Her feelings of being drowned out were rebuffed by the men’s group. “Are you mad at us for talking too loudly or are you mad at yourself for not asking us to be quiet?” The men expressed no remorse for their actions, and did not hesitate to use the age old weapon of blame the victim to turn the responsibility back on the women. In the bat of an eye, our right to speak or to be heard was something for which we should have asked permission. It ended there. Or did it?

We came here to live out the Gospel values of justice, compassion, and reconciliation; to liberate institutions and people from the grip of all forms of oppression; and to lead the Church and society with courage and compassion in an ever-changing world. How can we do that while we remain chained to our own history of oppression because of our gender? How will we overcome without becoming overpowering ourselves? How will we learn to speak the truth in love?

Where are the words to say how far our world has strayed from God’s vision for us? How will we voice the error of our ways? What will bring our communities to repentance and amendment of life?
We have twisted and reshaped God’s vision for us. In our society, on television, in sports arena, probably even in our boardrooms, we have not heeded the admonitions of the prophets to change our lives. When a basketball player makes a fabulous showy play, leaving his teammates and the opposition in the dust, we yell, “You are the man!” When one closes the deal or makes a big sale, “You are the man!” is the acclamation. A four year old boy scores a soccer goal, so fathers and coaches dole out high fives and tell the toddler, “You are the man!”

In 2 Samuel 12, Nathan shares with David the story of a privileged man who takes advantage of one less than himself:

1 The LORD sent Nathan to David. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.
4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."
5 David burned with anger against the man and said to Nathan, "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to die! 6 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."
7 Then Nathan said to David, "You are the man!

Called to ministry in a church long seeped in the traditions of a male-only clergy, many women have spent hours hoping, praying, learning, training, and honing our skills to someday be the rector, or the priest, or the figurative “man.” How can we become what we are called to be, without taking on the qualities against we have worked so hard?

We need to remember that Nathan’s words are not an acclamation, but a condemnation. The rich and those in power have an obligation to protect and defend those who have less and those who are weaker. Without that minimal commitment to decency there is no justice, there lives in us no compassion, and there will never be true reconciliation.

The women who sat together huddled in that circle, may use our economic clout and choose to buy our consumer goods differently, and we may joust against retail windmills, but we have not as yet used our most potent weapon – the word of God. The words we believe in our hearts, the words we pray, and the words we speak to each other when we are huddled together in a set apart place need to be preached in strong voices.

11 Now what I am demanding of us today is not too difficult for us
or beyond our reach.
12 It is not up in heaven, so that we have to ask,
"Who will ascend into heaven to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"
13 Nor is it beyond the sea, so that we have to ask,
"Who will cross the sea to get it and proclaim it to us so we may obey it?"
14 No, the word is very near us;
it is in our mouths and in our hearts so we may obey it.

To the words of the Deuteronomistic historian, I would add that the words are there not only for us to obey, but to proclaim. We need to make a choice about how the Word will be preached and how the Gospel can be made known on our watch. We can either remain huddled together awaiting the crumbs that fall from the table at the President’s tea, or we can stand up and preach the words that are already within us.

1In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God,
and the Word was God.
2He was in the beginning with God.
3All things came into being through him,
and without him not one thing came into being.
What has come into being 4in him was life,
and the life was the light of all people.
5The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness did not overcome it.