02/07/2024 0 Comments
From the Vicar: What Difference does Difference make?
From the Vicar: What Difference does Difference make?
# From The... - Letters to the Congregation
From the Vicar: What Difference does Difference make?
Dear Ones of St. Columba's,
This year, for the first time since I was a teenager, I took two weeks of vacation in a row. In some ways this is an odd year to do that - after all I couldn't do much traveling and Andrew was not able to take time off at all because of his work at the hospital and it's necessity in our current times. In other ways this is exactly the year and the time to bring into alignment what I believe about work/life balance and what I actually practice. After all in the formal Letter of Agreement I signed back in 2014 when I came to be your vicar I am required to take 4 weeks of vacation per year, and it is "strongly suggested" that I take two in a row.
My time away was needed, and it was good. I was on "stay-cation" for most of it, doing day hikes with the girls on some of Andrew's work days and just resting and homemaking on other days. I baked and gardened and I gave myself permission to read and read, as much as I wanted. Most of the texts I chose to read during this two week period were written by Black women. I chose this because I want to do a better job of listening to people whose experiences of our culture, government, and systems of power are different than my own. It was invigorating and sometimes difficult reading, and required a lot of processing and writing and praying through.
In a now famous essay entitled Mapping the Margins in which she coined the term "Intersectionality," feminist theorist Kimberly Crenshaw asks this question: "What difference does difference make?" This is the heart of her essay - why does it matter why people are different? What does being a woman and not a man matter? What does being Black and not white matter? What does being a Black woman and not a white woman matter? Her answer, and the answer of many Black, Indigenous, and POC women who think and write deeply on these subjects is that it matters a lot when it comes to survival, quality of life, and the ability to experience personal agency and freedom.
This past Wednesday I pulled into our church parking lot for the first time in just over two weeks. All over the lawn were signs placed there on my last Sunday before vacation, signs reading "Black Lives Matter," and "God loves Black Lives," and many other such messages that were carried by our youth and those supporting them during our pop-up protest. It was a wonderful thing to come home to, here, a tangible reminder that this community of faith does not ignore difference and has begun a journey together to try to understand and live with the realities of intersectionality that Kimberly Crenshaw first birthed into language decades ago.
We aren't going to fix everything with a pop-up protest. But we are beginning to work together to recognize, value, and listen to the different experiences of members of our community who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. We are beginning to work to equip those of us who are white to understand our own lineages, and to develop the language and skill to listen well, to learn from what we hear and respond in ways that help instead of harm.
I'm glad to be back, to be with you in this work and to walk this road together. I hope that you, too, find ways to rest, re-create and be still as we move from summer into fall. I pray that as we "gear up" for whatever is to come as the weather cools and the days darken that we will hold each other in prayer, grace, and hope. And that we will value the differences among us, and work together toward a world where we can truly listen to each other's difference.
with grace and hope,
Alissa
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