Word Up!

I'm loud.

I could just end this post right now.  Fact shared. Truth known.

My mother would often say to me, "do you know how your voice carries?!!??"  I often was given the task to call the family in for supper --- this fit perfectly with my skill set. I'm loud enogh it's a wonder that families miles away didn't gather around our dinner table.

Several years ago, I was at  local event for women leaders who worked in various areas in the field of health justice. We were in a medium sized room on the campus of the University of Pittsburgh.   Gathered eight at a table we were sharing responses to the opening question. I don't recall the question, yet, I do remember the woman sitting on the other side of the room who made it a point to exclaim to me, "We can hear you way over here! Do you even have an inside voice?"   The comment was not made in a laughing way. The comment was made to intimidate me, to quiet me.  It worked.

Being in this gathering of women leaders in my field, her comment had its desired impact, I was embarrassed and felt small.  The chortles and chuckles of others throughout the room added to it.  I stopped speaking.  

During a refreshment break, Andrea, my agency's former board chair, made a direct line to me and said, "Don't you EVER let anyone silence you. You're loud for a reason."   

I'd like to tell you that after Andrea's affirmation I walked over to the person who labored to silence me and told her to suck it, yet, I didn't.  I pondered.  I listened as much to myself and what was brewing inside as much as to the convdersatons happening around me.

One of the greatest and needed gifts we can give to another is to listen, to notice and give one's full attnetion to another.  We each have a story.  Whose have you listened to lately?  What did you learn?

This brief treatise came from a quote I read duing my morning quiet time. The words are wise and speak to what can be, if lived....

"Each of us is a word of God spoken only once". ~ Sister Peg Dolan

Open up.....

 

"Read me Wacky Witch..." That was my refrain the majority of the bedtimes of my early childhood. Each night my mother would ask, "What book do you want me to read?"  Without a second thought, I would say, "Wacky Witch."  My mother tried...she'd say, "How about Dr. Seuss? Pippi Longstocking?"......I was having none of that...I was defiant ---- it was going to be "Wacky Witch" or nothing.  

In these times of book banning, I am confident my bedtime read would have been placed on the discard pile.  A witch??!!!  A witch with mental illness??? Hey, the witch is wearing a red hat with a yellow crecent moon, is this a Muslim witch??!!!?

What ridiculousness......

In my opinion, foundational to the banning of anything be it books, films, goods, persons.....central to these actions are arrogance and fear on the part of those who seek to ban. 

I was tuning my spiritual attennae to answering in the affirmative my call to ministry when the film THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST hit the theaters.  No surprise there was a major reaction from several faith communities --- protests, fiery sermons, marking director Martin Scocese as demonic.  At one meeting of menacing Methodists frothing over this film, I asked if anyone had seen the movie.  Pause. No one had. Someone actually shared she was afraid to see it. How can we know and then speak to what we have not bothered to see or read or learn?

Our nation is changing. Many are clutching and clinging to what is familiar and wanting to be in the "good ol' days."  Good for whom? We've progressed in our understanding, our inclusion, our diversilty. Going back is not possible nor healthy. Growing is painful, yet necessary.

When we are afraid we constrict and close in, we defend and fend off.  Conversely, to learn is to be open, to read and seek to understand a new story, to labor to understand a new perspective.

My Methodist roots were builders of the first Sunday Schools, we are big on education, study, learning.  There are a million examples, yet one of my mother's strongest attributes was that she kept learning, she studied, she taught, she read, she reflected.  

The film, CHOCOLAT, featueres a chocolatier new to a town where the leadership wants to remain guarded and closed by seeking to place limitations on what one can eat, where one can go and who is welcomed.  On Easter Sunday, the local priest, opens his sermon with these words:  

"Why do we choose to measure our goodness as to what we give up and who we exclude?

Why? When we shold measure our goodness by what we do and who we include."

Moral compass

 My ears have been tuned into the frequent use of the metaphor "one's moral compass."  This is not a new metaphor, yet, recently I took pause to ponder it.

I worked two summers as Program Staff for the WPA Annual Conference Camping Program.  Prior to the start of the summer camping season, all program staff gathered at Wesley Woods for several days of training; instruction on the structure of the campig program and how a typical week would run were fine.  However, the majority of the training focused on outdoor skill sets in efforts to make us some kind of Wesleyan Wildnerness Scouts. I was fine with this having spent much time in the woods hiking, cooking out and camping.   

Then, the bar was raised and instruction focused on specifics such as orienteering and how to use a compass.  Seriously?  We weren't taking a group of elementary age children to the back woods where we'd need to build our own shelter, find clean water to drink, forage for berries and track, hunt and kill our own food.  Besides, my assignment was Camp Jumonville the largest of the three camps and the one often referred to as "the pavement palace."  

I paid close attention to the presentation on orienteering, that a compass is a magnet directed by the eath's poles...yadda, yadda, yadda.  Of course, this instruction was not concluded by a written test. Nope. We were asked to show our orienterring skill set by using a compass. 

We each were handed a compass and a series of coordinates and in static starts were sent out. 

After ten minutes of intense focus on my compass and following the provided coordinates, I stopped to look around.  No one....absolutely not one person...was anywhere near me. I looked further and off in the distance I saw the other counselors either gathered at the camp's chapel building (made sense the coordinates would lead there) or in various stages of soon to be arrived and with the others.

Not me. I was in the far reaches at the back of the camp, on the very border where the grabage was collected and the trash was thrown out. I was in the throw away zone.

At first, I took this as a negative and I was filled with self doubt and questioned my being selected for this job. The Program Staff interview process had over 150 applicants for 15 positions. I was in the last interview group on a long day of interviews. I knew not one person seated at the table who interviewed me. I thought it went OK, yet, also figured it was one of those "who you know" deals. Yet, I was hired. I was chosen.

At the first meeting of the Program Staff Trainig, the conference Camping Director said to us, "You may think you chose this. You may think your skills and charm put you here. I want you to know God has a reason for each of you being here."

I've remembered and held those words since they were first spoken. It was during my work as a Program Staff Camp Counselor that I receved the call to ministry. 

Thinking back on that orienteering lesson, I've come to see that my "moral compass" has always been directed to those on the margins, outside of the norm.  I am called to be with those on the edge of things, the easily labeled, the ignored, the thrown out and tossed away.