the one you were talking about (we are the other)

This post is part of a synchroblog over at http://www.shelovesmagazine.com called “We are the other”

As Austin Channing, the instigator of this beautiful series reminds us, there is power in sharing stories of ways in which we’ve felt profoundly “other”. She writes:

These experiences are not mine alone. And that’s why it’s so important to listen to the voices at the margins.

Because our experiences are not just isolated moments when the world turned upside down in our individual lives. They speak to a larger narrative of trauma being experienced around our identities, our bodies, our personhood. These stories remind us that the trauma continues until we succeed in becoming radically inclusive people of God.

This is a shard of my story, based on a phrase that never fails to make me feel “other” . May it be strength to those who feel just as other as I sometimes do, and hope to those who fear the other in their midst.

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i don’t believe in women pastors, you said

sometimes a whisper, sometimes a gaze, sometimes a shout

sometimes you said it to me, but it seemed louder when you said it to her

sometimes. sometimes you said it with silence

and so, if that is the path i would travel, either i’m a disservice to my gender or to my calling

and this idea stands between us as people

you see, when you say, “i don’t believe women should be pastors”
you’ve said it about the carpenters among us as well, remember. and about the intentionally single, the musicians, those who are friends with men, the designers, the leaders, the feminists, the academics. you’ve said that based on the way were born, this is what we should not be.
what i hear, even as I realize that maybe you don’t know you’re talking about me
even though i know you think you’re articulating an idea and defending a position, a tradition, an opinion

what i hear, in those moments, is that you don’t believe in me. that you look at who I am and the truth that cries from every tendon to be shared and somehow see that which must not be.

something that is so other, so foreign, so terrifying to you that it must be drowned out, argued against
something you are willing to drag out in the public square and debate and make decisions about
because it is so far outside the realm of your comprehended experience
that it is a fear and challenge to your own personhood

fear.
somehow, you learned to be afraid of the day i might arrive
that i might bring challenge to the world you’d dreamed of bequeathing.

so you fortified yourself against the idea of me before we ever met
forgetting in the ease of your generalizations and positions
that behind every position is a person

for it is far easier to fear the mystery in the other
than it is to love the precise oddity of the neighbor

and as i learned from you

feeling the weight of how foreign i was to you
and how incomprehensible you had become to me

I began to fear myself

and so i kept the other in me as far away from you as i could, and only showed you what felt same, expected, safe

because i’m the one you were talking about

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