Although it is a bright, balmy summer day, my heart is frozen. I'm wrapped up in a blanket and have to remind myself to breathe. It is a challenging time to be an empath and more challenging still to live with a commitment to keep my heart open and exposed even in this social tsunami America is weathering. I'm not sure why my raw, battered heart feels frozen - over stimulation? Deep grief? Emotional overload? I wonder...
NPR plays in the background. I listen. More analysis that doesn't fit easily in my brain. I listen to men talking about why today's Supreme Court decision is to be celebrated. One former governor describes the motives of women who seek abortions and I wonder why, in my 40+ years of ministry, I've never met a woman with those motives. I suspect that she is a mirage - like the black welfare mother - created to support a bias. Instead of a mirage I see the faces of women I've ministered to over the years, making hard, heartbreaking choices that they concluded were the best of the difficult options for them and their families. I see the face of a young professional woman who recently told me that she and her husband were planning on having another child, but she is terrified that, should she have difficulties with the pregnancy, she would not get adequate care. I shudder as I think about her fear. And then I remember that once again, access to choice in reproductive healthcare will be determined by where you live and how much money you have. The social gap gets wider, and once again poor women will suffer the most.
Once again, instead of never again. What happened to never again?
Yesterday I listened to some men explaining why the best way to control gun violence is through more guns. I've heard this many time before, and the argument never makes sense to me. I hate guns. In my view, they have no place in a civilized society. Weapons of war are for the battlefield, not for the classroom. Or church. Or library. Or shopping mall. I hated "open carry" when I lived in Idaho. And now the Supreme Court has spoken about guns. The Ohio Legislature and Governor have again spoken about guns. Again I shudder, and wrap up tightly in my blanket, knowing in my heart that these new rulings that lessen restrictions around guns will do nothing to limit gun violence. And I hate that knowledge (and recognize that I used the word hate more times in this last paragraph than in anything I've written during the last six months).
I am so weary of the endless and pointless gun debates. Gun violence will only be lessened when Americans confess and repent of their idolatry of guns and the power guns represent.
I write this knowing that my views are my own - I am not writing on behalf of my church or its leadership. And even as I write this, I know that some friends and colleagues are celebrating both of these Supreme Court Decisions. They suffered each time gun use was limited and women's reproductive health choice was affirmed. Now they rejoice while I weep.
But I will not deny my tears.
I worry about how often I've heard God invoked today. People thanking God for today's decision - urging women who do not agree with this decision to pray. I shudder as one community within Christianity asserts itself again as the faith of the nation. Many Jewish colleagues are horrified today, as within Reform Judaism, life begins at birth, not conception, and they feel that their religious rights will be ignored. Buddhist colleagues, too. Although I serve within a progressive Christian denomination that has long stood for choice in women's reproductive health, so many non-church people think of Christianity as only being the religious right. We are all painted with the same brush.
I went to the virtual UCC Service of Lament this evening to seek comfort. I saw many colleagues who I respect. I heard many words. It has been a day of words. And more words. And while I agreed with many of the words spoken, the experience left me cold. And my heart remained frozen. No comfort.
Perhaps there is no comfort to be had today.
I have embraced the Benedictine middle way most of my adult life and have worked to be a peacemaker -a builder of bridges. I live in a nation that routinely blows up every bridge and no longer considers the middle ground to be aspirational. The polarization that breaks my heart only gets deeper and deeper - and both sides get more entrenched and continue this seemingly endless cultural war of attrition. And the call for renewed warfare went out today. A righteous war. A holy war. A war for freedom. A war to defend the rights of women.
But as the mothers in Ukraine and the mothers in Russia tell us, the name we give to our war means little when we're standing in the cemetery.
I do not know how to be a peacemaker in this season of the endless culture wars.
I don't know how to be me in 2022.
I wrap the blanket around me. It feels like winter. I sip my tea and ponder the unbelievable reality that my granddaughter will have fewer rights and protections than I had. I grieve how my generation has let her down. I worry that this new lens used by the majority in the Supremes for interpreting the Constitution may have serious consequences not only for my granddaughter, but for her brother, and their dads, and all the wonderful families that do not carry the Religious Right Seal of Approval. Their rights need to be defended, as do the rights of women to have autonomy over their bodies and reproductive health care. But how do you defend and protect these rights and wage peace in a time of culture war?
The peacemaker in me will pray for grace and insight tomorrow.
Today, I grieve.
And lament.
Without apology.
