Progressive Wednesday

What’s in Carey Mack’s Pocket?: A Book

This week, I happen to have a book in my pocket. The title of the book? A Feminist Ethic of Risk by Sharon Welch. Don't go running and screaming for the hills (or the dales, for that matter) because it has the word “feminist– in it. I want you to know that this book, and the theology that it espouses, changed my life.

You see, once upon a time, in a city called Chicago, I participated in a program called Clinical Pastoral Education, in which one spends about half the time serving as a chaplain and the other half of the time reflecting, in various ways, about the experiences that you have. It is a great education. One of the things I loved was the diversity in our group — I was the only Lutheran and there were two Unitarian-Universalist pastoral candidates.

That summer, I struggled heartily with my sexual orientation and other ways in which I knew, for sure, that I rubbed the larger church the wrong way. Moreover, one of the things that I learned that summer was that, in those moments when I found myself faced with enormous challenges, I froze. I found myself faced with issues about which I felt great passion, injustices about which I cared deeply.

And there I would be, like Ralphie in the flick A Christmas Story, who finally gets to see Santa at the department store and cannot remember for the life of him what he wanted for Christmas. As you might recall, the irony is that Ralphie has been obsessed with the Red Rider BB gun, but he and Santa settle on a football and Santa kicks Ralphie down the exit slide. Then comes the great moment when Ralphie gathers up his courage and, using his rubber boots, stops himself, and shouts, “I want an official Red Ryder carbine-action two-hundred shot range model air rifle with a compass in the stock– ¦– Santa and the elves respond by telling Ralphie that he'll shoot his eye out, but Ralphie persists.

A Feminist Ethic of Risk looks into the face of the giant evils of our world, of which there are many. It posits that we assume we have two choices — “isolationist– or “interventionist– — not dealing with the injustices of the world or doing it in a violent, domineering, overassertive way. A Feminist Ethic of Risk offers a third way, a way that has become more and more important in how I deal with my relationships with other people.

I am very imperfect. At the same time, I realized, in reading that book, and in lots of other situations, that an ethic of risk is exactly that. It is an ethic — a way of being in the world, and a good way of being at that. I read it as something that I have to do because of my religious commitments, although some days I want to do it, but the truth is that I need to do it. And it is risky, indeed. Hopefully . . . (Hopefully? Yes. Hopefully) you know what I am talking about. Loving someone means risking a broken heart.

I think that Dietrich Bonhoeffer (a pastor/professor who was executed for his part in a plot to kill Hitler) said it well: “There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself.–

That is the feminist ethic of risk in a nutshell. We must dare love and peace and justice. This is true in our personal lives, and it is true in our corporate lives. The anniversary of Bloody Sunday was eleven days ago. Sharon Welch writes: “The memories evoked by [Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.] are indeed dangerous. They endanger the continued acceptance of racial injustice as they propel people to courageous acts of resistance. Similarly, memories of defiance and victory become dangerous as they serve as the spur to further action and critique, an ennobling reminder of the good that can be attained by ordinary people.–

Motivated by the idea that they needed be in the world in an equal way (an ethic), men and women marched several blocks from Selma to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were met with, among other things, bull whips (that's the risk part) and were beaten. People died. Those folks had no idea of the outcome of their actions, except a dream (following dreams, that is risky too, because there are not any ironclad guarantees that you will ever see it happen) — some people call that moral imagination.

Groups of women have done it. Today, I am thinking about the people who marched from Selma to the bridge. Today, their risks inspire me. I am inspired, straight woman that I am, to take some risks of my own. Because, according to my higher power, that is what I need to do.