I am, I said

With all respect to Neil Diamond, not to mention God, what magnificent words! Easter words.

In the Old Testament, it is God, in defining God’s self, who says, “I AM” or I AM THAT I AM. How did those words, along with so many others in our scriptural readings, become twisted into statements of ultimate, all-pervasive, dominant and dominating, male power? I dutifully did my Wikipedia search of meanings and interpretations and sources, but then, as a humble layperson, simply tried to look at the words themselves without the baggage. To me, they seem to affirm, mightily and forcefully, the infusion of holy “being” into all of us, into all the genders of all the creatures on earth and beyond, into all that lives and grows and is. Furthermore, the statement does not say “I WAS” or “I WILL BE”. All time is encompassed in the “I AM”. It is Easter, new being and Being, sacred affirmation, perpetually happening in all of our lives.

If God (Spirit, force of goodness, whatever you deem as worthy of the name) can so affirm us, it is triply (per the Trinity) hard to see that affirmation withheld by others. Poet, author, Adrienne Rich, expresses the heartbreak beautifully: “When someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked into a mirror and saw nothing.” Suddenly, disconcertingly, there is no “I am,” nor, I would argue, “I AM”. 

I talk about this because it happens every time, in small ways, in big ways, when women (and others) are excluded from church ministry and leadership. And I talk of it today and in light of Old Testament “I AM” and New Testament Easter because I want us to absorb how terribly deep this rejection penetrates. I’ve heard so many people say, ‘Well, women’s ordination is just not my issue,’ or ‘There are so many more compelling problems in the world to put time and effort into.’ Yet this issue is more than just frustrating or unjust or marginally annoying. It is profound. It is an issue for all of us and worth putting passionate time and effort into because it goes to the core of part of humanity’s being and, therefore, Being. Think of over half of the world’s people wanting to express that Being and not even acknowledged as existing, not even seen, just not there.

Adrienne Rich again has words to send us forth with hope (It is, after all, Eastertime.): “Yet you know you exist and others like you, that this is a game with mirrors. It takes some strength of soul–and not just individual strength, but collective understanding–to resist this void, this nonbeing, into which we are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.”