Hi friends! It’s been a minute. Lent has really been Lenting and Life has really been Lifeing. Nothing to worry about! I’ve been stewing on some more substantial posts, but in the meantime, I wanted to share some musings that have been bubbling up in recent weeks.
This morning, I was reading Ryan Burge’s excellent, and very nerdy, newsletter, Graphs About Religion. The post, an examination of perceptions about the Confederate Flag was interesting in its own right, and I commend it to you to read in its entirety, I want to highlight a couple of sentences from his closing paragraph that crystallized a point for me that I’d like to expand upon: “Clergy are not frequently talking about the power of symbols like the Confederate Flag or the legacy of racism in the country…When they aren’t doing that, something else has to fill the void.”
This point, that when we don’t talk about something, we allow other influences to define the narrative, jumped out at me. Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the things we don’t talk about and how those things don’t go away just because we don’t talk about them… if anything, they get bigger by merit of the silence itself.
A really obvious analogy from my own life experience is the way parents do or don’t talk about sex with their adolescent children. I grew up in a household where my parents took a very pro-active and generally neutral-to-positive approach to sex. They explained to me that sex could be fun and pleasurable, but that there were risks associated with it that were important to consider, not the least of which was an unintended pregnancy, which would have a huge impact on my life trajectory. They didn’t necessarily dictate abstinence, since both of them had seen in their own lives the way that that approach had failed, but they did recommend that sex be confined to emotionally intimate relationships with high levels of trust and affection, in large part because, they argued, the experience itself would be better. The dictate they did make was that, until I got married and was ready to have children, I always, always, always use multiple methods of birth control, including a barrier method to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted infections. Alongside that dictate, though, came the assurance that they would make sure that I always had access to what I needed to follow that dictate, and that they would never, ever judge me harshly for having sex… that I could always come to them to talk about it and that they would never think less of me for being honest and straightforward about what I needed to be safe.
At the height of 2000s “purity culture,” their approach was radical and controversial. I viscerally remember a time in high school when I asked one of our football coach social studies teachers why our school didn’t teach about birth control or safe sex practices, when evidence showed that doing so radically reduced rates of teen pregnancies and STIs. In a split second, he went from totally calm to red-faced, veins popping, looming over my desk screaming, “THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS ‘SAFE SEX.’ TEACHING KIDS ABOUT SAFE SEX WOULD BE LIKE HANDING THEM A GUN AND SHOWING THEM HOW TO LOAD IT AND THEN SHOOT THEMSELVES IN THE FACE.”
While not every parent in our school district was quite so emotionally invested in abstinence-only sex ed and purity culture as that teacher, from conversations with friends and classmates, it was pretty clear that the majority of parents were closer to his point of view than my parents’ point of view. One particular friend’s parents had told her the party line of “don’t do it,” and had also made it very clear that they were not going to discuss the matter any further and that they would, absolutely, think less of her if she began having sex.
Well. Teenagers.
Looking back, it’s so crystal clear to me that this young person was at extremely high risk and needed support that neither her parents nor our community was able to give her. Culturally, we weren’t equipped. Theologically, we were not equipped. Materially, we were not equipped.
She fell madly in love, like teenagers do, with another teenager who was similarly ill equipped for healthy relationships or making safer choices, and they did what teenagers do. As her friend, I tried my darndest to fill the gap left by the adults in our lives. I was constantly handing her condoms and even tried to facilitate going to the county health department to access free birth control. The problem was there was only one clinician able to perform pelvic exams and prescribe birth control, and she was shared among several counties and only came to ours once a month. The result was that appointments to see her went several months out and if you missed your appointment, you had to wait another 3-6 months.
On the day of our appointments (we decided to go together even though I didn’t really need to go through the health department, to reduce her anxiety about the whole experience) a blizzard hit and shut down the whole county. There was no way she felt she could go to her parents for help, even though they had insurance that would cover her birth control, both because of the shame and judgment that would come of that conversation, and the likelihood that they would refuse anyway. Still, she assured me that she would talk to her parents about it.
Six months later, she was pregnant.
The legacy of the radically different approaches our parents took in talking about sex is a complicated one, especially when one adds any level of comparative judgment. That isn’t my intent here. From my perspective, no one person bears any unique level of guilt or shame for the outcomes of this story, nor am I firmly convinced that one can claim either of our stories is a purely “good” or “bad” story. I love that friend. I love that friend’s family. I can see all the ways in which both our sets of parents did the best they could with what they had, even when they made mistakes. What’s meaningful for me in discussing this story is the simple fact that not talking about something has consequences, just as readily as talking about it does.
What are we not talking about?
Often times, we avoid talking about a given subject because they’re sore spots, or points of contention. We worry about alienating people or pissing them off. These could be those topics that are aptly called “wedge issues,” but there are lots of other things we don’t talk about just because they make us uncomfortable to talk about.
A strategic choice was made by folks in The Episcopal Church when advocating for marriage equality to completely divorce the subject from sex. While I don’t doubt that choice probably did make it easier for a bunch of Episcopalians, a notoriously unsexy and uncomfortable with emotional expression bunch, to collectively decide to extend the Sacrament of Marriage to all couples regardless of their gender(s), that choice to not talk about it also had consequences.
We often struggle to talk about theological concepts that other Christians place front and center, often in ways that perpetuate death dealing theologies. Sin. Satan. Sex.
The clearest consequence of not talking about these subjects is that, as Burge said in his discussion about the Confederate Flag, “something else has to fill the void.” (emphasis added)
When we don’t talk about sin, either people keep walking around with the theology they are hearing, or they come to feel that it doesn’t matter. Neither outcome is healthy.
When we don’t talk about Satan (and by extension the way goodness can be reasonably twisted into evil), either people keep walking around with the theology they have heard, or they come to feel that it’s all mere superstition and tangible evil doesn’t truly exist or matter. Neither outcome is healthy.
When we don’t talk about sex, either people keep walking around with purity theology, or they come to take on a more laissez-faire, “anything goes as long as it’s consensual” approach endorsed by our secular culture. Neither outcome is healthy.
These aren’t the only subjects we don’t talk about that we ought to. They’re just a grab bag of the ones that have been bopping around in my head.
We need to talk about things that we don’t want to talk about.
For clergy, we have a duty to do so.
How can we equip ourselves, culturally, theologically, and materially, to do that?
I don’t have the answer to that.
What I do have is prayer… a fervent prayer that God will help us find a way to have the hard conversations, that they may be holy, filled with grace, and life giving.
Folks who know me know that I absolutely love The Great Litany… that it is my port in the storm. When the world feels too big, too chaotic, too overwhelming, it helps me to turn to God, hold all of it up to Them, and say, “This is not mine. This is yours.” Of the many intercessions we make in that long, ancient prayer, this line has been graven on my heart:
“That it may please thee to strengthen such as do stand; to comfort and help the weak-hearted; to raise up those who fall; and finally to beat down Satan under our feet,
We beseech thee to hear us, good Lord.”
We need God’s help and comfort to be courageous. We need God’s strength to stand tall in the midst of harsh winds. We need God to raise us when we fall (because we all do, at one point or another). And ultimately, it is God’s goodness, not our own power or conviction, which prevails against evil. We have our part to play, but God is the one who does the thing.
So talk about the thing. Have courage. Trust that God is there, because God is.