Hopelessness is not an option.
We are the ones who must dare to believe that seeds of new possibilities, invisible to us now, have already been planted in the soil of our lives, and they are slowly taking root. New life will emerge from the ashes of what is lost.
Bishop Mariann Budde on moving forward in the face of contempt and choosing dignity and hope.
Yesterday a strong, amazing gay married female priest was installed as the rector at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Jacksonville, Florida. Her journey is one that should give us all hope, proving to the world the old adage of "never, never, never give up!" Her installation is extraordinary on many levels given the homophobic, misogynistic nature of the Diocese of Florida over the years. A little known fact about the Diocese is that in the 90's, the rector of Good Shepherd opened the church to a new group called Integrity USA, a pioneering grassroots advocacy organization in The Episcopal Church that worked for the full inclusion, equal access, and protection of LGBTQ+ members. Opposition to the group rose up from within the congregation led by parishioners who were prominent civic leaders and lifelong members of the church supported by the bishop of the Diocese of Florida. The rector's brother told me he had never heard people talk to another person the way these people talked to the rector. Ultimately the rector was "run out of town" and for a long time the church was in a deep decline.
For a gay married female priest to be installed as the rector at Good Shepherd should give us all hope. As Bishop Marianne Budde said recently, "Hopelessness is not an option." Below I have included a poem by Pauli Murray, Anna Pauline "Pauli" Murray, who was an American civil rights activist, women's rights activist, lawyer, Episcopal priest, and author. Drawn to the ministry, in 1977 Murray became the first black woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest, and she was among the first group of women to become priests in that church. As a lawyer, Murray argued for civil rights and women's rights. In addition to her legal and advocacy work, Murray published two well-reviewed autobiographies and a volume of poetry. Pauli also had pervasive hope, even enough to raise her out of her childhood as the granddaughter of a slave and a slave owner, and she celebrated her first Eucharist and gave her first sermon in the church where as a child she was forced to sit in the balcony because of her heritage.
Today on the cusp of election day in our country, it would serve us well to remember the women and men in recent history who NEVER gave up hope. As William Faulkner said when he received the Nobel Prize in 1950: "...man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance."
Pauli Murray
Dark Testament Verse 8
Hope is a crushed stalk
Between clenched fingers
Hope is a bird’s wing
Broken by a stone.
Hope is a word in a tuneless ditty —
A word whispered with the wind,
A dream of forty acres and a mule,
A cabin of one’s own and a moment to rest,
A name and place for one’s children
And children’s children at last . . .
Hope is a song in a weary throat.
Give me a song of hope
And a world where I can sing it.
Give me a song of faith
And a people to believe in it.
Give me a song of kindliness
And a country where I can live it.
Give me a song of hope and love
And a brown girl’s heart to hear it.
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