what i want is to be blessed
what i want is a cloak of air
the light entering my lungs
my love entering my body
the blessing descending
like the sky
sliding down the spectrum
what i want is to be
aware of the spaces between stars, to breathe
continuously the sources of sky,
a veined sail moving,
my love never setting
foot to the dark
anvil of earth
Those words were written by a poet named Pat Lowther. She was a Canadian, she lived and taught in British Columbia. But her story is also tragic—she died all too young at the age of 40 and was the victim of domestic violence. And this week—especially this week—that makes her story all the more poignant, all the more difficult to share. It was after her death that her daughters discovered a number of unfinished poems and published them in tribute to their mother. And what a blessing that her words live on here all these years later in the piece our women’s choir offered.
What is it that we want from life?
What is it that gives meaning to life?
Those are big questions, ones we aren’t asked every day, maybe ever. And they are important questions. They are questions that get to the heart of things—how it is we live our lives.
What I want is to be blessed, to be aware of the spaces between stars, to breathe continuously the sources of sky.
It can be difficult to step away from the daily events of our lives and of the world to ask such questions. That seemed especially difficult to do this week, at least it was for me, as the country was focused on the events in Washington and the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Brent Kavanaugh before the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the midst of the circus that is our political process here were two very different voices, two very different life experiences.
Every chance that I got I found myself checking in on the hearings. I felt this push and pull when it came to watching. Part of me wanted to watch and part of me didn’t. And yet I found it hard to focus on anything else. It has felt like this is some kind of pivotal time in the life of our country. These days it is hard to escape the bitter partisanship in our country, the tribalism that seems to supercede much of anything else. The way people so easily get dehumanized.
And yet in the midst of all that I was stuck by the way Dr. Ford showed up and was honest, the way she didn’t seem to have an agenda other than to tell her story, her experience of assault many years ago. The courage it must have taken for her to do that. I was struck how even those who were against her from the start found her to be credible.
And I was also struck by Kavanaugh’s anger and how it was Ok for him—and some of the other white men up there—to voice their rage and anger, their victimhood. And to note that we still aren’t at a point where it would be ok for Blasey Ford or other women to voice their anger in the same way. That privilege is still reserved for just a few. And what a contrast it was.
We can’t know how all of this will turn out in the days and weeks ahead. Will this time be seen as some kind of turning point for the #MeToo movement or another reminder of just how far we—and when I say we i mean we as a country—still have to go when it comes to women who have been victims?
No we can’t know what the immediate and the longer term consequences of all this will be.
But I do want to acknowledge just how difficult the events of this week have been difficult, most of all for those who have experienced sexual violence in so many forms and who experience a kind of retraumatizing experience every time it comes up again. What I know is that we are first of all called to bear witness to what is before us.
To say to those who have been abused, we believe you. We believe you.
Last winter the women on the staff offered a powerful worship service telling their own stories of #MeToo. And it was important for all of us—women, men, however we identify—to hear the stories and to bear witness. That work continues beginning this week as groups of women come together to hopefully make space to continue on a healing path together. The men, too, are doing their work. They are working on a half day worship exploring what this means for men on the last Saturday in October.
But what I think we have learned and continue to learn is the power of witness. What we learned then is the power of telling stories. What we learned then is how important it is for us as a religious community to make space for those stories, those experiences, however hard that may be. And not only the stories of abuse but also the stories of healing, of courage, of anger.
And I think that that all begins with bearing witness.
Now what does that mean? To witness is to see something, to recognize something, to report what is before us. We witness an incident of some kind and report what we know.
And bearing witness, I think that makes it something more—like bearing weight, bearing pain. Bearing witness often involves difficulty, inconvenience, even risk. Bearing witness is a kind of spiritual task, a kind of spiritual call that is placed before us.
Why would anyone take that on? In bearing witness we recognize not only what is before us but how our lives are connected, how what we are seeing or hearing matters. It is all about the naming and the recognizing and a decision to be in solidarity with those who are oppressed with those who are telling their stories.
We are asked to notice—to pay attention. To the words spoken, to those who are given respect—or not given respect. To pay attention to how we are responding—or not responding.
This is a kind of witnessing that is about recognizing what is in front of us, perhaps in its many layers. That asks us to recognize how women have been overlooked by the patriarchy for millennia, and our queer and trans siblings too. And how people of color have been oppressed by white supremacy culture and to recognize how that hurts all of us in the process.
It might come in the form of bearing witness to ayslees being unfairly detained by our government.
And this week it means that it is especially important to pay attention to the stories of women who have experienced violence and who have found the courage to come forward to tell their stories, sometimes at great cost. It means to notice and recognize courage. To notice strength.
Now for those of us in privileged positions, it takes more looking, it takes more paying attention, it takes more understanding. It takes more listening and seeing and believing. It means making space for those voices that haven’t been heard to be heard.
Our responsibility, I think, is to recognize and to see our lives as connected to those who might be there in a witness chair, or with those who are detained—to put their voices first.
It is important to notice too, what it stirs inside of us. Does it bring up our own pains, maybe the times when we have been the victims? Does it stir in us awareness of our own privilege, an awareness of when we have caught a break when others haven’t been? Does it stir in us fear about telling our own stories? Will we be believed? Does it stir our own call to respond?
So why take that on? I think that’s one of the things that life is all about. I think it is about recognizing our interdependence and how what touches one life touches us all. Part of what we do as a faith community—and as individuals in this community—is to answer a call to bear witness, to pay attention to what is before us. It asks us to recognize the shared beauty in life, yes, but also to recognize the pain and hurt of the world as well. And to see in the pain of others our own pain, our own hurt.
And then to ask so what does that mean for how it is we live?
The original title for this sermon was Just as Long as I Have Breath, taken from the hymn we will sing at the end of the service this morning. It is a song we often sing at memorial services. And with our monthly theme of integrity it felt right for a sermon on how the awareness of our mortality informs our living too—it brings up the question of just how it is we choose to live knowing that we are all going to die some day.
And indeed it is events like this last week where questions like these can come up. Times that are liminal moments when there seems to be some kind of pause, some kind of shared attention to what is before us. They are times to take a collective breath, a collective pause.
Would we have the courage to speak up, even if we are terrified? Or would we stand with those who are terrified? Those who may not have a voice? Or do we take shelter in our comfort, our privilege? Do we choose to pull back from life? Those times that ask us just what are our priorities, just what is going on after all? And what does it ask of us in the way we live our lives?
Part of what I think is asked of us to make bearing witness to the world around us a kind of spiritual practice, to bring a kind of intentionality to noticing, to acting, to naming. And to see how our lives are so very much connected with all of life. And to live out of that recognition. In our doing. In our being. In our acting.
No this isn’t always easy, and yet it is how we are asked to be preset with life. And I think that is how we are sustained for the long haul. I think that is how we point ourselves in the direction of the beloved community.
We see in the lives of others our lives and we live out of that recognition, that shared humanity. And others in turn bear witness to our lives, too. And from that we live. From that we are sustained. From that we find our way to say yes to life.
This past Thursday, the day of the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, it happened that I had made an appointment to visit Riverview cemetery with one of our members. Now it was not to have a graveside service. It was to join Kate Brickey, one of our members who for years has been leading the walking tour of our church history through downtown Portland. Well Kate is planning a new tour—a tour of Riverview cemetery to visit the resting places of some of the luminaries of our church past. She asked me to join her for a walk through. Now I should say at this point that I really like cemeteries. The history, the stories, just the beauty of the place, just a chance to talk a walk among our ancestors.
At the end of the afternoon on Thursday I felt exhausted from following the hearings through the day. I felt kind of nauseous actually. Part of me wanted to go home and crawl under my covers. But the walk in the cemetery proved to be a gift on this particular afternoon. We visited the graves of several of the women who founded our church, that group that called themselves the Ladies Sewing Society and who raised the money to start this congregation through their sewing. Many of them are buried in what’s called the pioneer section of the cemetery. Most of their graves are quite modest. You wouldn’t know much of what they accomplished in their lives just passing by their graves. Kate read quietly from her script that told some of the details of their lives.
Eventually we came to the grave of Abigail Scott Duniway. As you may know she was an early suffragist here in Oregon. While she was not a member of this church she was a friend and she and Thomas Lamb Eliot, our first minister, as well as many others in the congregation, were allies in the cause of womens rights at the time.
Duniway’s journey west from Illinois was anything but easy. Her mother and baby brother died along the way. Later, when her husband was injured, Duniway needed to support her family. She eventually started a newspaper that advocated women’s rights. And she became a leading voice for women here in the northwest. But in doing things that women had not done before, in speaking her truth in ways that women were generally not allowed to do, Duniway, I can only imagine, took lots of heat.
She saw the vote for women’s sufferage defeated six times before it finally passed in 1912, just three years before she died. It was a long struggle. It was a reminder that justice can take a long time and that it takes a lot of perseverance. On Thursday afternoon her story was an important one for me to remember. I wondered just what she would make of the #MeToo movement. I wondered what stories she would have to tell. It helped me step back just a little bit from the circus out of Washington that day.
It was a reminder that the beloved community takes time and that it also takes courage and perseverance. We of course can’t know how this particular battle will end. But it was important to remember too that the beloved community is not only that which we aspire to but also the beloved community that has brought us thus far as well.
Words again of the poet:
what i want is to be blessed
what i want is a cloak of air
the light entering my lungs
my love entering my body
the blessing descending
like the sky
sliding down the spectrum
what i want is to be
aware of the spaces between stars, to breathe
continuously the sources of sky,
a veined sail moving,
my love never setting
foot to the dark
anvil of earth
What is it that each of us wants? What is it that we aspire to together? How is it that that beloved community comes into being? Bearing witness to our lives, calling us to bear witness to the lives of others, to find our way to yes.
In our living, let us never lose sight of the love that holds us, that is in us, that moves through us. May it guide us in our living, may it hold us as we bear witness. May it hold us as others bear witness to us. May it hold us—all of us—as we make mistakes, as we ask forgiveness, when we summon the courage to speak, when we take the time to listen, when we need to remember those we journey with in this life. Those who help us make real what we call the beloved community. Amen.
Will you pray with me now?
Great spirit of life and of love, we give thanks for all that is our life. In all of our days, hold us. Help us to see each day as precious, as amazing. Be with us as we bear witness to life. In its beauty and in all of its brokenness too. Sustain us as we make our way in the world. Grant us courage to live with integrity all of our days. Remind us that what touches one touches us all. Amen.
Benediction
As you go from this place, in the days and weeks ahead, remember to give yourself to love. And may that love guide you and hold you no matter what life brings. Amen.
Topics: Mutuality