Poetic Justice

On the Overturning of Roe v. Wade

I am grieving. I am angry.

This morning, the Supreme Court did what we have known it would do since we saw the leaked draft by Justice Alito: overturn Roe v. Wade, giving the power to ban abortions to the individual states. Already Missouri’s “trigger law” has gone into effect, banning all abortions except those deemed a medical emergency. (Who gets to decide what is an emergency for my body or yours?)

I am grieving. I am angry.

As a woman, I have always known that there are people who think I should not have the right to control what happens to my own body. I also know this is true for nonbinary and transgender people, who are impacted by this ruling and also made invisible by calling this a women’s rights issue. Today, those who seek to deny us bodily autonomy have won a victory, but the fight is not over.

I am grieving. I am angry.

This ruling will mean people will die. People who seek unsafe abortions from unqualified providers because they can’t access safe, legal abortions. People who do dramatic things to try to end unwanted pregnancies on their own. People who die by suicide because they were forced to carry a pregnancy to term against their will, including pregnancies that resulted from rape. People who die from ectopic pregnancies or miscarriages because the medical procedure that would save them is considered an abortion. People who die carrying non-viable pregnancies to term. People who die because the pregnancy they cannot end requires them to stop life-saving medical treatment like chemotherapy.

I am grieving. I am angry.

Tonight, I will be at a vigil for reproductive freedom. It is not my first. It will not be my last. In college, I worked as a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. In my 20s I worked for an employer who would have fired me if he had known that. In my 30s I was one of a group of silent counter-protestors outside a Planned Parenthood clinic when a local Christian college gave students academic credit for protesting at the clinic with offensive, graphic anti-abortion signs. In my 40s I became a minister and preached about the right to bodily autonomy for all people.  And now, in my 50s, I am mourning the loss of a nationwide right to abortion access that has existed for nearly my whole life.

I am grieving. I am angry.

This is not just about abortion, though that would be enough cause for grief and anger. It is also about opening the door to rolling back a wide range of human rights, including but not limited to marriage equality and other LGBTQIA+ rights.

I am grieving. I am angry.

As a queer woman, I have always known that there are people who believe that my wife and I are sinners. They believe our love is an abomination. I am here to say that it is a blessing. Today, those who seek to invalidate queer love have won a victory, but the fight is not over.

I am grieving. I am angry.

I am not, however, surprised. The so-called “religious right” (which makes a mockery of all I understand to be the teachings of Jesus and other spiritual leaders across many religions) has been working toward this since Roe v. Wade was first ruled on in 1973, when I was two years old. My bodily autonomy has been targeted for nearly my whole life--it has just become more obvious and more successful in recent years. It was the Trump Republican administration that made today possible by appointing justices to the Supreme Court who claimed that they saw Roe v. Wade as established precedent, while winking at the Republicans who knew they would overturn it if given the opportunity. With a conservative majority on the court, they were able to ensure that such an opportunity arose as quickly as possible.

I am grieving. I am angry.

I am not, however, paralyzed by this grief and anger. Tonight in my city and many others, there will be a vigil to mourn. Tomorrow is for strategizing--and indeed, some of us have been strategizing for a long time now, as we saw this coming. This is not the end of our work for reproductive freedom for all people.

Allow yourself to grieve. Allow yourself to be filled with what one ministerial colleague today called “holy rage.” Then channel that grief and rage into action. Vote for pro-choice candidates and tell them you want legislation at all levels of government to protect abortion access. Connect with local organizations that support abortion access, whether you live in a state where abortion access has been or will soon be curtailed, or in a state that will soon be receiving people from neighboring or far-away states who have to cross state lines to obtain the healthcare that they deserve.

We are grieving. We are angry. We are powerful. We will not give up.

It Has Been a Year

Wow, it has been a year.

I mean that in two ways: it has been a hell of a year...and because of that, it has been nearly a year since my last post.

Pandemic. Election. Insurrection. Those are just the first three things to come to mind.

The last time I posted, I was dealing with a possible case of COVID-19. Now, I've had my first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and am beginning to see some light at the end of the tunnel. Between then and now, I've been doing what so many of us have, just taking things a day at a time and doing my best to stay healthy in all ways, not just safe from catching COVID-19. In my case, that includes juggling a full-time ministry with a congregation (all online since last March), parenting a teenager who is now a senior in high school and supporting him through the college application and acceptance process, being part of a loving marriage, staying connected with family members who live far away, and preparing for a job change effective July 1. (More about that in another post soon!)

There have been many times this year when something has happened and I've thought, "I should blog about that," but honestly, just not had the bandwidth to do it. Not because the event wasn't worthy--there have been so many social justice related topics in this last year--but because I was overwhelmed, as many of us are. Call it pandemic brain fog, call it fatigue, call it collective trauma...all are accurate.

So instead of blogging, I have scaled back in the last year to using my personal social media presence to raise issues and center voices that are often marginalized. I have especially focused on sharing BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) voices, and voices of transgender people, as these are two groups who have borne much of the brunt of injustice historically, and in the previous administration, and also experience disproportionate impacts from the pandemic.

The reality is that not blogging about those issues is an example of my own privilege as a cisgender white woman.

I can't change anything about the last year, including my own responses to it, but I can change my habits starting now. So while I will continue to be gentle with myself about the amount of work (paid and otherwise) I can do in any given day or week, I am also recommitting to more frequent blogging.

For now, today, that means saying the name Daunte Wright--the latest young black man killed by law enforcement. He was 20 years old. His girlfriend was with him, and his mother was on the phone, when he was killed. He leaves behind a son who is not quite two years old. It's horrifying, and at the same time I don't think we can legitimately claim any genuine surprise at this, because this is the pattern we know to be real in the United States. It will keep happening unless we change the system.

Re-entering blogging at this moment also means acknowledging the string of recent mass shootings. It was in the context of one of those that I first saw a social media post that said, "When we said we wanted to go back to normal, this isn't what we meant."

I've also seen social media posts with message like this one (shared by Glenda Rider):

 

[Image description for screen readers: hand-written on a sheet of paper, "Nothing should go back to normal. Normal wasn't working. If we go back to the way things were, we will have lost the lesson. May we rise up and do better."]

This is true in so many areas: racial justice, LGBTQ+ justice, disability justice, healthcare access, environmental justice, immigration...the list goes on.

Both mass shootings and police killings of young black men are, tragically, part of the "normal" of our society. The systems of power and privilege that prioritize "gun rights" and "law enforcement" over lives, especially black and brown lives, will not change unless we, the people, change it.

Here are just a few of the other lessons we shouldn't lose from this last year-plus:

1. Different ways of working are possible. People with disabilities (and some others) have been asking for accommodations for years and being denied, and have now seen that when it's the general population that needs alternative ways to work, suddenly we find a way.
2. We can live more lightly on the earth.
3. We are learning who the truly essential workers are, and that they are often the most underpaid. We can choose to change that.
4. Relationship and care of ourselves and our communities is more important than most of the tasks we usually think are our top priorities.
5. Identity and social location have enormous impact on quality of life, and on the ability to stay alive. We can choose to focus on those who are most vulnerable, instead of those who are already secure.

May we rise up and do better. Amen.

Testing, Finally, And Still No Definitive Answer

Just over a month ago, I was diagnosed with a possible case of COVID-19. After a little more than two weeks of symptoms including fever, headache, coughing, and fatigue, I started to improve, and soon only the cough remained. I wasn't too worried about that--a lingering cough is normal for me whenever I get something respiratory, ever since I had pneumonia in the summer of 2014.

After a reprieve of only about a week, my fever and other symptoms returned on Easter Sunday, April 12. This time the symptoms included mild shortness of breath, which I did not have the previous time. After a few days of that, my partner convinced me to call the doctor's office again. This time, a phone assessment led to more.

On Thursday, April 16th, I got a chest x-ray. The experience was surreal: I drove to the hospital, but instead of following the usual route through the main entrance, to registration, and then to radiology, I was instructed to drive to the emergency room entrance and call from my car when I arrived, and to wear a mask. When I called from the parking lot, I was directed to the ambulance bay, where there were signs for "COVID-19 Chest X-Ray/Testing" and a few parking spots. I parked, and two hospital staff members in full personal protective equipment (PPE) came out to meet me. I was quickly ushered through a side door into a very small room in which everything was draped in clear plastic except for the chair where I could set down my car keys and coat. The chest x-ray was taken, and I was ushered back out. I think the entire process took maybe two minutes, not counting the time I spent wiping my coat and keys and hands with a disinfecting wipe before entering my car. When I got home, I changed into clothes I had placed in the laundry room before leaving, and put everything I wore to the hospital into the wash, as part of my effort to protect other members of my family.

The x-ray results, which I got later that day, showed that I have viral pneumonia. An x-ray can't tell what kind of virus is causing the pneumonia, so the next day (Friday, April 17th), I was tested for both Influenza A and B and COVID-19, and told to follow all the same isolation precautions as before (including remaining apart from my family members within our home). The same day, I was notified that the flu test was negative for both A and B. Less than an hour ago, after a three-day wait, I learned that the COVID-19 test was also negative, but that it is not considered conclusive because there is a high "false negative" rate--as high as 30% depending on the test used.

The bottom line is that whether or not this is COVID-19, I have viral pneumonia and am taking some time off work to rest and recover. My symptoms have not changed significantly in the nine days since the 12th, and my hope is that with full rest, I will begin to improve soon.

But I won't get to stop being careful after that, or be less worried, as some optimists have suggested to me. First, I may not have had COVID-19; and second, even if I have had it (which seems fairly likely), there's not enough evidence yet to support an assumption that those who have been sick now have immunity from it. Even if I personally had immunity, I couldn't risk being a carrier and bringing it home to my family, or out to anyone else I would be in contact with.

So, essentially, this test result changes nothing at all about the precautions I need to take for myself and others. My instructions from the doctor are the same instructions people are given who test positive.

My biggest worry about the test having such a high rate of false negatives, however, has nothing to do with my own current illness or even my susceptibility in the future. My biggest worry is that many people will trust the negative results, and that this will only contribute to the loud voices calling for us to "re-open the economy" and that as a result we, as a nation, will stop taking physical distancing measures too soon.

Evidence from other countries (as well as history from our own country in the 1918 flu pandemic) shows what happens when protective measures are relaxed too soon: the virus surges.

Even without officials relaxing those measures, protestors who ignore stay-at-home orders and congregate to demand the end of such orders put the population at risk.

This is not a game. It is not a political hoax perpetrated by liberals to try to make the current administration look bad. (They're doing a fine job of that on their own, but that's another topic for another day.) It is a potentially lethal virus, and it spreads when we are in close contact with others. Unless we take it seriously we will continue to see the number of confirmed cases (and the number of unconfirmed but still real cases), and the number of hospitalizations and deaths, climb.

Just before the chest x-ray

 

Untested, but "Suspected"

Six days ago, I posted that I was among the many, many people left wondering, "Is it a cold, or is it COVID-19?" due to the extreme shortage of both tests and protective gear for the medical personnel performing the tests.

Today, my ninth day of symptoms that include fever, headache, coughing, and fatigue, I called my doctor's office to check back in. The nurse who spoke with me asked a lot of questions, and based on my answers I have now been categorized as a "suspected case" of COVID-19.

This will not be confirmed by a lab test, because tests are still being reserved for those who are significantly more sick than I am, and for health-care workers. While I lament the shortage of both tests and protective gear for medical personnel all across our country, I support saving the tests we do have for those who need them most.

The diagnosis is not test-based but is official/formal in that it came from medical staff, not guesswork on my own part or something I read online. The nurse told me, for example, that if I get worse and need to call 9-1-1 or go to the hospital, I should tell them I have a suspected case.

Despite the frustration of this necessarily tentative diagnosis, there is some good news. 

My symptoms remain mostly unchanged, possibly even showing some slight improvement. My fever has not gotten quite as high in the last couple of days as it was earlier in the illness, and has been staying low for more of the day than it was.

The nurse said that it is unlikely at this point that I will get worse, assuming I continue to take care of myself and am not re-exposed. It is not unusual for people with initially mild cases to suddenly get worse around the seven-day mark, and I am now two days past that.

The recovery period is anywhere from two to six weeks; mild cases like mine usually resolve closer to the two-week end of that range. I have to remain in isolation until it has been both seven days since my symptom onset (already true) and three days after recovery, which is defined as the point at which my fever goes away without any medication and my respiratory symptoms improve. That could be either longer or shorter than the more general fourteen-day isolation everyone should follow if they have any cold-like symptoms or believe they have been exposed, but do not have a diagnosis.

My state's governor, like several others, has enacted a “stay at home” order effective at midnight tonight, lasting until at least May 4th. That means my personal mandatory isolation does not significantly impact how I am living, except for some frustrating impacts upon our family. My partner and I share homes in two states because of our work, and are currently self-isolating in different places. We will be apart longer than we have been in over two years. My son is in the house with me, and we have to maintain safe distance from each other and take other precautions such as frequent hand-washing. He will have to stay isolated from everyone outside our home until fourteen days after my recovery date, because he could be an asymptomatic carrier.

This illness is not affecting my ability to work, though I am being careful to follow all medical orders for how to take good care of myself: lots of rest, lots of fluids, and Tylenol as needed for the fever and headache. I am still conducting my ministry in all the same ways I have been since we suspended in-person activities at the church I serve two weeks ago, several days before my symptoms began.

Despite the frustration of not having a confirmed diagnosis, the tentative one does provide a bit more clarity about my situation, and affirms that the protective measures I have been taking (even with my immediate family) were and are the right thing to do.

This is a perfect illustration of why we should all practice physical distancing while remaining connected in other, safer ways. Almost none of us will be formally diagnosed unless access to testing radically changes, and yet many of us are quite likely to have the virus--some without any symptoms at all, but still contagious. The only way to get an official diagnosis in many places right now is to be either a healthcare or emergency services worker, or to be sick enough to be hospitalized. I cannot stress enough that "untested" or "not officially diagnosed" does not mean "doesn't have the virus."

Please do all you can to protect yourselves and others. Take this seriously. A few parting reminders along those lines:

• Get your medical advice, and your information about how to help flatten the curve of infection rates, from the experts--by which I do not mean politicians at press conferences. If you watch the White House press briefings, it's Dr. Fauci you should take most seriously, not the current occupant of the Oval Office. Check the CDC, the WHO, and your state health departments as starting points for detailed, accurate information driven by science rather than politics or personal profit.
• Stay home, unless you are an essential worker. As many others have said, don't act like you are trying not to get COVID-19--act like you already have it and are trying not to spread it.
• Practice safe distancing and other preventive measures like washing hands often and thoroughly and using hand sanitizer.
• Don't assume that physical distancing means social and emotional isolation. Reach out to the people in your lives, especially those who live alone. If you have a therapist or other member of your care team who is crucial to your well-being, find out if they are accessible by phone or internet--many more are than just a few weeks ago.
• Find sources of support. Many faith communities and other organizations now have more robust online presences than they did a short while ago.

Be safe. Be well. Be careful.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Among the Untested

I am sick with what could be a cold, but also could be the COVID-19 coronavirus. I don't know--and almost certainly won't ever know--because I am not eligible for testing.

Wednesday, March 18: My symptoms began with a low-grade fever in the late evening. I texted my partner, who is currently in Maine--we have a home in New Hampshire and a home in Maine because we are both Unitarian Universalist ministers, serving in locations about two hours apart and across the ME/NH state line. On workdays, we are in separate homes, and on our days off we are together, alternating between the two homes. (This will be important later.) I wasn't too worried because I had no other symptoms, though COVID-19 was certainly on my mind. She wasn't either, until...

Thursday, March 19th: My symptoms expanded to include coughing, a headache, and fatigue, but not the shortness of breath common to COVID-19. Nonetheless, shortness of breath is not a universal symptom, and my symptoms were similar enough to those many have with COVID-19 that at my partner's long-distance urging I called my doctor's office mid-afternoon. That's when I learned that the practice where I am a patient has temporarily consolidated with another "to conserve resources and best serve our community" during the outbreak. My call went to voicemail.

A few hours later, after regular office hours, I received a call back from an administrative support staff member, who asked me all the predictable questions (age, symptoms, recent travel) and said a nurse would call me in the morning when the office reopened.

Friday, March 20th: No significant change in symptoms. The fatigue I had previously thought might just be from the amount of work I've done in the last two weeks was severe enough that loading the dishwasher required me to go sit down.

When the nurse called in the morning as promised, she asked more questions. Where had I traveled, and when? (Boston February 24-27, and to our apartment in Maine March 5-7.) What do I do for a living? (I'm a minister.) So, that means I interact with large numbers of people? (Yes, many of whom are medically vulnerable.) She asked me about a list of underlying medical conditions, and I shared which ones I have. I also told her that since having pneumonia in the summer of 2014, whenever I get anything respiratory I end up needing an inhaler, and let her know that I do have a non-expired inhaler in my home. After all of that, she told me that I definitely qualified for testing for COVID-19. She explained that she would need to have the doctor write an official order, and she would also have to get some paperwork from the State of New Hampshire. She said she would call back when that was done, and then the next step would be another call telling me what time to come to the Emergency Room for testing. I was instructed to come to the ambulance bay, but not to get out of my car--there is drive-up testing for those who qualify, to protect others. She said once they swabbed me, they would tell me to go home and stay there until I received the test results. I was told that would take three to nine days.

Her second call to me was, in fact, not to let me know that the paperwork was done. It was to tell me that when she spoke with the doctor she learned that under the latest CDC guidelines, I did not actually qualify for testing. She explained that treatment would be the same with or without test results--symptom management, because there is currently nothing else to do. I was told to call back if I got worse (especially any shortness of breath or increased fever), and to self-isolate for fourteen days.

Because I had told her about my partner and our two homes, she asked where my partner was now. I said she was in Maine. The nurse told me to call my partner and have her call her own doctor's office to let them know she has been exposed to someone who might or might not have COVID-19 but isn't being tested. My partner did that, and is now also required to self-isolate for fourteen days. Her fourteen days began with the last day she was exposed to me--a week ago today--so she has only a week of self-isolation to go, but she can't come here until after my fourteen days are over, twelve days from now.

My son, who lives with me, is keeping a safe distance from me. We have essentially divided the house so we each have sole access to certain rooms. The only overlap is the kitchen, and I wipe down everything I touch before he goes in there. Luckily he's seventeen and has been capable of cooking for himself for years. We text each other, send links to funny things on the Internet, and sometimes talk to each other from doorways.

Fortunately, the congregation I serve moved all of our activities, including worship, online a week ago in response to the pandemic. I will be able to continue working, so long as my symptoms do not get worse.

Saturday, March 21 (today): no change. I still have all the symptoms I had Thursday, and none have gotten significantly better or worse. Today the tasks that exhausted me include showering, and standing at the stove for 10-15 minutes to prepare my own supper.

Let me be very clear: I am not upset with any of the medical people I have interacted with (including the doctor whose answers the nurse relayed to me in her second call on Friday). They all did their jobs with professionalism and kindness, and are only following the guidance from the CDC, which is necessary given the shortage of available tests.

I am, however, furious at the so-called leader of our nation, and at all those who are complicit in his gutting of systems that could have led to our nation being better prepared for a pandemic. His inaction, and in some cases his direct actions, will cost lives...have probably already cost lives.

I am angry that I couldn't get tested, and that I know I am only one of the majority of people with symptoms who are similarly not getting tested, while whole professional sports teams and other celebrities seem to have access to testing even if they are without symptoms. Today, VP Mike Pence claimed that neither he nor Trump had been exposed to the staffer in Pence's office who has tested positive--but Pence and his wife will both be tested despite that claim and despite being asymptomatic. That choice makes a certain amount of sense given his position, but it is illustrative of the way the power dynamics in our society are impacting who gets tested.

I am certainly not alone in this. That's why I am sharing my story: not because it's special, but precisely because it isn't. I've heard worse stories from people I know. I am lucky that so far, I only feel like I have a bad cold, and in fact that may be all I have. My partner and son have no symptoms, as of this writing. I hope that will remain the case.

I originally shared versions of my story in emails: first to the governing board of the congregation I serve, and then to the congregation as a whole. Only after doing that did I post about it on Facebook, but I didn't make the post public, and I won't--partly because other people have shared their stories in the comments and it's not my right to make those stories public. However, friends began to ask permission to share the post to help people understand that this isn't a myth, it isn't a "fake news" story by the "liberal media." I gave them permission to copy and paste and share as widely as they wanted, as long as they didn't attach my name to it. I guess my instinct was to keep a low profile, not wanting to share the experience of a friend whose story was picked up by local media.

After thinking about it for a day, though, there's nothing here that's too private to share. I care more about providing an alternative narrative to those who say the testing shortages have been resolved, or were never as serious as some people claimed. People with symptoms really are not being tested, despite Trump claiming during at least one news conference that he's "not hearing that."

So. Here it is, in public form, available for sharing wherever you might encounter that kind of ridiculous claim.

The second reason I am sharing my story is to encourage you to self-isolate even if you have no symptoms. By the time you know you are sick (assuming you are not an asymptomatic carrier), you may have exposed a large number of people. For example, I serve a congregation of 120 people, the majority of whom are in high-risk categories due to age and/or medical conditions. I am very glad that I pushed for us to begin online worship last Sunday, instead of doing "just one more service" in each other's physical presence. I also visit nursing homes and hospitals and attend all kinds of meetings in the community as well as within the congregation. How many people do you interact with in a two-week period? I bet it's more than you think.

Four states so far have enacted "shelter in place" or "stay home" orders. I believe others will follow, but not soon enough. Don't wait to be told. Stay home, and know that you may be saving lives--maybe even your own or that of someone you love.

The last reason I am sharing this story is this: to remind us all how very dysfunctional our federal government is under the current administration. Some states are no better, while others are stepping into the leadership vacuum in the White House.

We deserve better.

Image from Pixabay.com

Coming Out (Again and again and...)

I wrote my first blog post about being queer in April 2015: No More Boxes, Part 1

That wasn't the first time I came out, just the first time I did it publicly. I came out first to myself, at age 40. That story is in the blog post. I came out to my parents and my closest friends a few months later, because it seemed important for them to know this major part of my identity. It was a while longer before I came out to my young son, a story that's also in the blog post. Before publishing that post, I came out to my internship supervisor and a few other trusted colleagues to determine how best to come out while serving in a congregation.

Four and a half years after that post, I'm still actively coming out, over and over again. This is necessary because we live in a society that assumes people are straight and cisgender until we either say or demonstrate otherwise.

I come out every time I mention having a partner and someone asks a question like, "Oh, what does he do for a living?" and I reply with emphasis on the pronoun, "She is a minister, too."

I come out every time I walk down the street holding my beloved's hand, and every time I kiss her in public.

I come out every time I fill in a form for my son's school and list my beloved as the first emergency contact after me, and in the blank where they ask "relationship to student" put "mother's partner." I come out every time I list her as my emergency contact on my own medical forms.

I come out every time I put a rainbow frame on my Facebook profile picture for National Coming Out Day or Pride Month or any other reason. (And there's always at least one person who reacts to that with surprise, confirming that even people who have known me for a long time haven't always "gotten the memo" about my queerness.)

I come out in hundreds of small moments, too many to list--moments in which I make a decision that I never had to make back when I thought I was straight. "Do I share that part of myself, or not?" Every time I introduce myself, whether in a cover letter or a group of people at an event, I choose whether or not to include these details: I am queer, and my beloved is another woman.

I sometimes choose not to come out, because whatever context I am in doesn't feel safe. This is a luxury I have because I apparently "look straight" (though the idea that people think you can tell someone's sexual orientation by their appearance baffles me).

On this National Coming Out Day, I am glad that I am able to be out in pretty much every part of my life--my family, my faith, the congregation I serve, the communities in which my partner and I live. I rarely have to hide that part of who I am. When I do, it is unfailingly uncomfortable, and I am relieved when I am back in a situation where I can be fully visible.

I want to be clear, though, that being "in the closet" is not inherently wrong. If you or someone you love is closeted for safety reasons *or any other reason*, that is a valid choice. I disagree with anyone who would tell you that you "should" come out. Each of us gets to decide that, in each moment. Our identities belong to us, and we don't owe anyone that information.

We should never be outed by someone else, nor should we be pressured to come out before we're ready. (Note for straight cisgender folks: if you know someone who is LGBTQ+ and they are "out" to you, please do not assume that means they are out to everyone, and do not share that information without explicit permission from them.)

Queer beloveds (whether I've met you or not): Happy National Coming Out Day. I celebrate you, whether you are only out to yourself, or to the whole world, or anything in between. You are whole and holy and loved.

 

Grief, Five Years Out

Every October, I struggle a bit to remember the date that my father died. Not because it has dimmed in my memory, but because his dying straddled two days.

On the morning of October 3, 2014, my mother called me and said it was time to come, right away. I got in my car and drove to the airport, hoping that I could get from Colorado to Michigan in time. I did, and will be forever grateful that I was there for the last six hours of his life. We talked, we hugged, we ate ice cream, he made jokes and was fully himself as long as he was conscious. We stayed up late, and Dad slowly faded. My brother arrived after midnight, and Dad was alert enough to greet him by name. He died in the very early morning; my memory has let go of the exact time, one of many gentle gifts of forgetting.

He was the only one in the family who slept before he died...and our day didn’t end until he had been taken from the hospice center by the funeral home. For me, all of that still felt like October 3rd, though his official time of death was on the 4th.

This doesn’t matter, I suppose, except that the echoes of my grief land on a day others don’t see as the anniversary. The echoes are soft now, mere ripples, not waves that knock me off my feet. The last time I wrote about his death here was three years ago. Today feels like a milestone because it has been five years.

Not as much has changed in the last three years as did between the first and second anniversaries. The one recent thing that feels like a major loss is that he will never meet my beloved; our relationship began two and a half years after his death. He would have loved her.

At the two year mark, I wrote this:

“In the days just after Dad's death, a classmate who knew I was with Dad when he died took me aside and told me that the images of those final hours would fade with time, that they would assume their correct proportion in my memories of Dad. That has been true in the second year, for which I am deeply grateful. Today, though, the memories of October 3rd and 4th, 2014, are vivid once more. I know what to do now to put them back in perspective--I go and look at photos of Dad healthy, photos of him young and dark-haired and smiling. I put those images, the ones of how Dad looked for most of my life, back in the foreground.”

Five years out, the images of those final six hours are less vivid. I can still call them to mind, but they are blurrier, a little washed out, like old photographs. They rarely come unbidden. I no longer need to go looking for pictures of a younger, healthier Dad to help erase the painful images.  Now I do it just for the joy of seeing him.

 

Return the Children

Six years ago today, my son was among a group of 85 fifth grade students airlifted out of their outdoor education camp experience by the National Guard, after several days trapped at the camp due to severe flooding in Colorado. I still remember how scared I was during those days, and how relieved I was to see him get off the last bus of kids brought to his school from the landing site.

It still makes me cry when I see the pictures and read the stories.

From today's perspective, that experience takes on new meaning. I knew where he was the whole time, within minutes of learning of the flooding while I was at a conference in another state. I knew he was being cared for by teachers and parent chaperones I trusted. I knew he had adequate food, water, and shelter. I knew I would get him back, though I didn't known until the day of the airlift when it would happen.

So many refugee families today do not know any of those things about their children, taken from them by our government. Some of those children have died in US government custody. Others have reported many kinds of abuse at the hands of the adults to whom they have been entrusted.

In 2013, our government returned my son to me unharmed.

In 2019, I pray that we will find a way to return the stolen children to their families--but they are not unharmed. It is already too late for that.

Who Are the Terrorists Now?

The first news article I read this morning began, "Children finished their first day of school with no parents to go home to tonight. Babies and toddlers remained at daycare with no guardian to pick them up. A child vainly searched a workplace parking lot for missing parents."

My stomach churned and my eyes filled with tears. I don't understand anyone who can read those words without a sense of horror. (Let alone watch video of the traumatized children, which is also circulating in the news today.)

I remember the three times that my own child was "missing" from my point of view--all three times were due to miscommunications, and all three times I found him within an hour and he was fine, not even upset, because from his perspective nothing had been wrong. I remember the first time, when he was a preschooler, how glad I was that he was not only physically okay, but also had experienced none of the fear and panic I had felt while trying to find him. He had not been lost and alone, searching for me and becoming more and more frightened as he failed to find me--he was at a park with an adult relative who had not let me know he was going with her. I was so glad that my child had been spared the terror I had felt as I imagined all the things that could have happened to make him disappear from our campsite.

The other two times, years later, he did not come home from school at the usual time, so I came home from work to an unexpectedly empty house, and had to track him down. Again, he was fine and calm, but now as I read the news stories, I imagine the reverse of those situations. I imagine him walking in the door after a day at middle school or high school, expecting me to come home from work in a couple of hours, and then becoming increasingly worried as the evening goes on with me neither arriving home nor telling him where I am. Would he know what to do? He would probably call the police at some point. That's only a possibility for him because of his citizenship status (and the lack of fear of police that is part of the privilege of his white skin). What would he do in that situation if he were an undocumented immigrant, or if I were? Who would he call? Who would take care of him, and help him find out what had happened to me?

I remember L., a seven-year-old girl I met when I was serving a congregation in Colorado. I accompanied her and her mother to an ICE appointment, with their translator. I walked into the building with them, through the metal detector, and both my white skin and my clerical collar afforded me a measure of privilege they did not have. L. was nearly silent for the drive from their home to the facility, except to say that her stomach hurt. Of course it did. She had memories of the people in this building taking her mother away for months, leaving her in the care of a kindly neighbor. I wondered at the time what would have happened to L. if there had been no such neighbor willing to take her in? (And what would I have done if on the day I was with them, ICE had again detained her mother?)

"Who will care for the children?" That is the question before us today for thousands of children separated from their families, including those whose parents were abducted by the government yesterday in Mississippi.

I use the word abducted intentionally. These people were taken, without notice or the ability to make plans for their children's safety and wellbeing, by agents of the United States government. (A few were able to make hurried phone calls begging others to take care of their children.)

I remember being a childcare worker, responsible for babies, toddlers, and preschoolers while their parents work. I have no idea what I would have done if one day, those parents failed to show up to pick up their beloved children. I suppose I would have started by calling them--and what then, when I would either be unable to reach them at all, or would somehow learn that they were in government custody indefinitely, or being deported?

I am a white citizen of the United States, and so I only have a second-hand understanding of the atrocities being perpetuated by our government against immigrants (and also against black and brown people regardless of citizenship status). Even so, I have reached an inescapable conclusion: our government is a terrorist organization. It is intentionally terrorizing individuals and families, including babies and children, to keep power and privilege in the hands of certain people, most of them cisgender, straight white men. (In other words, the people who have always held the most power in this nation.)

I have studied Holocaust literature (and the history it emerged from), and have said for more than two years that those of us in the United States need to be paying attention to the ways in which the Trump administration mirrors Hitler's regime. This morning's headlines are just one more echo of that terrible history.

Our government is putting people in concentration camps. Government agents are conducting raids and taking people away from their families. They are separating children and parents with no plans to reunite them, or even to ensure the children have their basic needs met (whether in detention themselves or left alone when parents are detained). The head of our government makes statements that inspire his followers to commit acts of violence and mass murder against people he has dehumanized in language and through policy.

If we are US citizens, this is being done in our names. We are the terrorists now.

If we are silent, we are the "everyday Germans" who pretended not to know what the Nazis were doing, or who believed it had nothing to do with them, or that there was nothing they could do about it.

When I studied the Holocaust, I also studied the rescuers, the resisters, the "righteous" who risked their own lives to save Jews and others threatened by the Nazi regime.

If you are not among the targeted, who will you be in this story? The perpetrator? The bystander? Or the resister?

Raising Our Voices

This post is a condensed version of the sermon I preached at the Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church on October 7, 2018.

*****

This has been an unusual week. A heartbreaking, gut-wrenching week. In response, I’ve done two things I rarely do. First, I changed today’s sermon topic with only a week’s notice. Second, I wrote most of my sermon while the news was on the background.

Normally I have no TV or radio on while I write. Yesterday, I was watching in a kind of vigil, waiting for the vote on Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to take place. I prayed, knowing my prayers were unlikely to be answered. Every “yes” vote made the tears flow, and those called out loudly and with obvious celebration of the imminent result made me nauseous. But every “no” vote said aloud, and every shout of “Shame” from the protestors in the gallery in response to the “yes” votes, gave me hope--not hope that the result would be what I wanted, but hope that there is a tidal wave coming, a demand for change.

One of the lines I heard a reporter say yesterday afternoon, referring to the testimony of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, was “her voice, and women’s voices, just were not validated here.”

Women’s voices just were not validated.

Ten days ago, just hours after both Dr. Ford and Brett Kavanaugh had testified, I received a call from someone close to me. She kept repeating, “No one believes these women. No one believes these women.” As she said that, she began to cry.

And then, in a pattern all too familiar to ministers and therapists and women in women-only spaces on Facebook and elsewhere, she revealed her own stories of assault and abuse, and said that no one with the power to help her believed her.

"No one believes these women." Those words are still ringing in my ears, and I am determined to refute them."

I believe those women. I believe them because I know women just like them. I believe them because like almost any woman of my age, I have experienced smaller-scale versions of the stories we are hearing in the news, and I know that it is only luck and my privilege that have kept my stories smaller scale so far.

My friend can’t tell her story safely for a whole list of reasons that are not mine to share, but believe me that they are valid. Any reason a woman does not tell her story is valid, as many of us have seen in the stories attached to #WhyIDidntReport in recent weeks.

One of the reasons women don’t report sexual assault and other forms of violence is because we are not believed. We are violated again when we are questioned, asked to provide reliable witnesses to prove that it really happened, asked what we were wearing or what we had to drink or where we were walking.

And so our voices are silenced. Dismissed. Ignored.

And some of us have just had it, this week. We have had enough of being silenced, and we are raising our voices, and showing up in the halls of the Capitol, and on the steps of the Supreme Court, and in cities across the nation. We are holding open elevator doors and demanding to be heard, and being arrested for daring to raise our voices and tell our stories to the people making decisions that will impact us for decades.

We are done being silent. And those who must remain silent for their own safety are represented by those of us with the privilege of being able to speak publicly, as I am today.

I typed this sermon through tears, and it is entirely possible that I will preach through tears. Most of the women I know are doing whatever they are doing through tears this weekend. Here’s what I need you to know: don’t mistake our tears for weakness. They are tears of sorrow, yes, and tears of pain. But they are also tears of rage, and they are the flood with which we intend to wash away the patriarchal, misogynistic bullshit in which we are drowning right now.

Let me take a moment to say that I am fully aware that women are not the only ones being oppressed by the structures of power and privilege in this nation. Today, however, this week, in the midst of all we have been seeing and hearing around the Kavanaugh confirmation process, it is women’s voices that we need to be raising, centering, listening to. This doesn’t mean we don’t care about the voices of people of color, of people with disabilities, of immigrants, of queer and trans people, of all those whose voices are diminished in our national dialogue.

I am especially aware of the fact that this weekend is the holiday that has traditionally been celebrated as Columbus Day, but which more and more people and faith communities and cities are celebrating as Indigenous People’s Day. Indigenous voices, and especially the voices of indigenous women, are among those silenced in our culture--silenced all too often by genocide in the name of “settling” this land. In a different year, today’s whole sermon would have been honoring the indigenous people of this area, but this week, I can’t ignore what is happening.

A man who makes abuse and assault survivors flinch when we see him on the news (because we recognize that particular temperament and know its danger) was just given a lifetime appointment to our nation’s highest court.

With his influence on the court, I fully expect to be among those who will personally lose civil rights. This is not a topic I can choose to take lightly or try to wish away. This will require more than a positive outlook—it will require action. Mine. Yours. Ours.

Of course I know that the fact that we live in a patriarchal system does not mean that all men perpetrate intentional acts of oppression, physical or otherwise, against women. Men who want to support women have been asking this week, “What can I do?”

Overwhelmingly, the answers women are giving begin with two requests: Listen to us. And believe us.

Men: I hope you’re hearing the voices of women and non-binary folks in your lives telling you how you can be an ally to them. If not, ask them.

I challenge those of us with privilege in any situation to be mindful of how we use (or choose not to use) our privilege to improve things for those with less power.

I have a lot of privilege. I am white, I am cisgender, I am a citizen of the country in which I live, I was raised in an upper-middle-class family, I have three college degrees, and I am a member of the clergy. This week, though, I am first and foremost a woman--a queer woman, at that--in a country that just confirmed to the Supreme Court a man who has been credibly accused of sexual assault, a man who I believe will do everything within his power to undo Roe versus Wade and to reverse marriage equality. His confirmation will have an impact on our nation for decades to come unless he is removed by impeachment--and women and queer people are among those most likely to lose civil rights during his time on the bench.

This isn’t just about me--but it is, inescapably, about me, and about those of you who share these identities with me. And it ought to be about all of us--about how those of you not feeling directly impacted by this--those of you for whom the trauma is not shaking you to your core--are going to fight for those of us in the crosshairs of the cultural shift taking place under this administration.

Some of us warned you in 2016 that this was where we were headed. Some of us were told, even here, that we were overreacting, unnecessarily imagining the worst, letting fear make us irrational, being melodramatic. We have never been less happy to be proven right.

We are hurt. We are afraid. We are angry. What we are not is silent. Complacent. Willing to let this happen without resistance.

We need you to do more than voice support. We need you to show up.

Show up like Senator Jeff Merkley, who spent hours reading the testimonies of survivors of sexual assault to an empty Senate chamber in the early hours of yesterday morning so that they would be part of the Congressional record.

Show up like the men who blocked the street outside the Supreme Court on Friday, speaking about their responsibilities as men. One man said this: “Since it is us as men who are responsible for the trauma and pain of women, it is us as men who are responsible for starting the healing...when you hear the voices of women who are in pain, we have to take that accountability. We have to call ourselves to our higher self, and hold other people accountable.”

Put your bodies on the line voluntarily, in support of those of us whose bodies are endangered without our consent. If you can’t do that, figure out what you can do. Give financial support to an organization that supports survivors, or to one that will fight for civil rights. Show up to testify when legislation that removes civil rights is being considered. Show up. Keep showing up. Use your privilege.

We are rising, together. We are raising our voices. Are you with us?