"THANKS FOR STRONG WOMEN"

“ A YEAR LATER – THANKS FOR STRONG WOMEN”

            After last week’s blog, one of my friends reminded me that the Women’s March was part of and a sign of the growing resistance to Trumpian America, and I must agree.   I am grateful for all the women political candidates who are emerging in this election cycle, and let’s hope that we have the good sense to organize and turn out the votes for them, including Georgia’s own Stacey Abrams, who is running for governor.  If elected, she would be the nation’s first African-American woman governor.  She spoke at Oakhurst several times during my tenure there, and I was blessed to have her speak at my retirement celebration. 

            The women political candidates are wonderful, and the education of us all on equity and justice for women must go much deeper.  The MeToo campaign, and the horrors of Larry Nassar, allowed by the US Gymnasitcs Committee and Michigan State, remind us that there is deep resistance to the empowerment of women, and indeed that the fear and hatred of women is deep in patriarchal culture.  And, let us all be reminded that we indeed live and breathe in patriarchal culture, just as we  live and breathe in racist culture.  One of my FaceBook friends posted a sentence uttered by Donald Trump at the “anti-life” rally over the weekend, in which he seemed to misspeak, a frequent habit of his.  He said:  “Right now in a number of states, the law allows a baby to be born from his or her mother’s womb in the ninth month.  It is wrong.  It has to change.” 

            At first, it was humorous to me, but then it turned chilling.  I don’t think that it was a misspeak so much as it was a glimpse deep into his anti-women, bedrock patriarchal thinking.  Trump wants to take away agency from women, whether it is birthing babies or not birthing babies or choosing not to get pregnant or to be pregnant. A quote right out of Margaret Atwood’s  “The Handmaid's Tale.”   And, of course, women would not be allowed to have any kind of power or agency in Trump World.  He was elected in order to make it clear to everyone that white males have been ordained to run and control the world.

            So, it is a time of continuing resistance, and I am grateful to the women and men who are working and marching and speaking out and organizing so that the ideas of equity and justice and reparations can be put back on the table.  I have been fortunate to have had strong women around me all of my life, and they have educated me and challenged me and called me to see my humanity not as rooted in domination but rather in partnership and equity and community.  My mother, Mary Stroupe, raised me as a single mother in the 1940-50’s, and I am ever grateful to her for the role modeling of a woman who refused to be defined by men.  She certainly had the power of patriarchy in her, but she worked against it in so many ways. 

            My spouse and life partner, Caroline Leach, was a feminist in the early days of the 1960’s and 1970’s.   She was the 21^st woman to be ordained as a pastor in the former PCUS, the Southern Presbyterian Church.  In those days, women had to fight, fight , fight for those kinds of steps, and I have been greatly blessed to have been educated by her in so many ways.  When she graduated from seminary, no church would consider calling her as a pastor or associate pastor. Thanks to Rev. Woody McKay, she was called as an associate campus minister at Georgia Tech, which as usual, was ahead of the church on this.  Women students were coming into Georgia Tech, and Caroline was called to help them find their way in the maze of patriarchy.

In our first pastorate in Norfolk, Virginia, she would be a founding member of the first shelter for battered women (as they were called then) in Norfolk. 

            Our daughter Susan has proved to be a strong advocate for equity and justice for all, especially for women.  In the plays that she has written and those that she has directed, women are seen and heard as agents and creators.  I vividly remember her thesis play for her MFA at Towson.  It was entitled “The Book of Lilith, the Gospel of Eve.”  In it an exiled Lilith returned to the Garden to seek to help instruct Eve in how to survive with integrity in the patriarchal world.  More recently she directed “Harry and the Thief,” by Sigrid Gilmer, in which Harriet Tubman is portrayed as a real woman with many complexities and struggles in the intersecting worlds of patriarchy and racism.  She continues to educate me and so many others!

            Our daughter-in-law, Erin Graham, is a member of the East Lansing School Board, and is an outspoken advocate for rights for girls and women.  She and our son David have made a formidable pair in raising two great daughters and in teaching them to expect to be treated as equals in a world dominated by patriarchy. 

            So, this is how the resistance works – being found by those who believe in and who seek to live in equity and justice, surrounding ourselves with those friends and prophets who call us into our deeper selves, and beginning to find the glorious freedom of the children of God.  I want to say so much more about this, but I’ve run out of space, so I will return to this soon, and certainly in March in Women’s History Month.  Next up is Black History Month, and I will begin with the essence of the modern idea of intersectionality, the great and prophetic Ida B. Wells.