Words Matter

Some reflections on the power of words (and some dread about the Inauguration)

Dear friends,

I’m writing from a coffee shop in my neighborhood this Saturday afternoon because for some reason my cat Trudi always knows when I’m not doing “work work”—that is, the kind of work I get paid for from 9-5, the kind that enables me to buy her treats. So she insists on sitting on my lap and getting cuddles whenever I sit down to write.

Trudi, the cat who does not care about my vocation as a writer.

I adopted Trudi in Mexico—she was meowing and wandering the rooftops when she was 4-months-old, and none of the neighbors claimed her, so I did. She’s a very sweet and cuddly kitty that reminds of what it’s like to have a toddler (though much less labor intensive).

When I brought her to the US, I had to do the usual paperwork of health certificates and vaccination cards, so she is fully “legal.” But my colleagues in Mexico like to joke that under the new Trump administration she’s going to be deported. She won’t, of course. That’s the joke. My cat has more rights than human beings who have built a life here in the U.S.

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Words, Words, Words

When you live in the D.C. area, it’s impossible not to be conscious of the government—it’s literally all around you in the form of stately buildings, barricades (since the Oklahoma City bombing), and the odd car with diplomatic plates driving in front of you. So I am hyper aware of the inauguration that will take place on Monday. It’s going to be a bitterly cold day, in more ways than one. Even Trudi isn’t trying to escape out the front door these days

Trump has said a lot about his deportation plan. Many people I know are hoping it’s all bluster and bravado for the sake of the many immigrants they know. I hope so, too, but I also believe that even the words are harmful.

The first chapter I wrote of Beyond Welcome was about words—how much they matter. In light of the many ugly words that will come from the White House, I want to share an excerpt of that chapter with you.

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Words Matter (Chapter 3)

“As a lover of language, I have always been fascinated by the description of Jesus as a word. When I was a young Christian, the whole concept seemed curious and a bit confusing—the idea that a feathery light word could become flesh seemed incomprehensible. How could that be?

In the prologue to the Gospel of John, the writer says that the Word was in the beginning and became flesh and dwelt among us (1:1–14). “Jesus is the incarnation of God’s own word, the embodiment of God’s glory, truth, and will, and way to life with God,” says Dr. Marianne Meye Thompson. Many of us were taught that the Bible itself is the Word of God, but John’s Gospel opens with a clarion declaration: Jesus is the Word of God, and his arrival in the world is no afterthought; Jesus was present with God from the beginning of creation. In Greek, Jesus would have been called the logos of God. Logos is defined not only as the outward expression of thoughts in speech but also as inward thoughts. And for the Stoic philosophers of John’s day, the logos was the rational principle that caused the natural creation to grow.

Words as Sticks and Stones

I remember an elementary school teacher training all of us to say, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” She was, I am sure, overwhelmed by tattling little kids complaining of name-calling and wanted to give us an easy way to respond that would leave her out of it. And “sticks and stones” might have helped when someone called you a “ball hog” during recess or said the lunch packed by your immigrant mom smelled yucky. Those words were airy, light, and easy to cast away.

Overall, I found “sticks and stones” to be . . . unsatisfactory. It did not soothe my injured soul when a classmate said I had “icky brown skin” or make me feel better when another said, “Go back to your country!” These words were powerful; I did not recover from them easily. Sometimes I still feel their weight and sting. They reminded me that I am “the other”—a perpetual outsider.

Photo by Alexandra on Unsplash

Looking back on those events, I recognize that had I been more aware, it would have been easy to understand that words had power: those words spoken to me in childhood lingered and wounded my own heart for years.

There are so many terrible words in our world, and they shape our realities.

The Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano recognizes this truth in his poem “The Nobodies.” He describes the way Spanish conquistadores and colonizers used carefully chosen words to dehumanize and devalue the indigenous peoples of the Americas, the nobodies . . .

Who don’t speak languages, but dialects.

Who don’t have religions, but superstitions.

The colonial settlers understood that it is much easier to enslave and kill those whom you do not recognize as human; it was no challenge to extinguish a subhuman life. Lesser peoples are unworthy of attention and human compassion. It is acceptable to place walls and barriers between us and them, to keep them and their subhuman lives out of ours, to exterminate them if we deem it necessary for our own protection.

Sadly, this seemed to be the understanding of the terrorist responsible for the shooting in El Paso in August 2019 that took the lives of twenty-three people and injured twenty-three others. The shooter said he feared the “Hispanic invasion” of Texas, reflecting the racist language used by former US president Trump, who baselessly used the word “invasion” to describe the humanitarian crisis at the US-Mexico border at least two dozen times. Rather than seeing the humanity he shares with Mexican-Americans and other Latinx people, many of whom are brown skinned, the shooter saw an invasion, a threat to himself and the survival of his own.

Words have power, and there is little doubt in my mind that the former president’s xenophobic language influenced this man; violent rhetoric has violent consequences. Former president Donald Trump referred to immigrants and other people as animals, rapists, and criminals and has characterized us as “an infestation.” When I think of an infestation, I think of vermin, disgusting creatures like lice, cockroaches, bed bugs, and rats—creatures that are nonhuman, creatures no one cares about when they die, creatures we want to die. Applying that horrifying language to human beings all but ensures our rejection of them, our feeling threatened by them, and our seeking to annihilate them. That is the terrible way that words can have destructive power.

Refugee vs. Immigrant

Words can cause harm in more subtle ways too. In the fall of 2019, I spoke at a conference in Toronto facilitated by a network of North American Christians who share a common desire to see the church care for those who have been forcibly displaced. Over dinner one night, a few of us Americans and our Canadian hosts discussed the plight of undocumented and economic immigrants in the United States. Bewildered, one of our Canadian friends asked, “Sorry, but can you explain what an ‘undocumented’ immigrant is? And an ‘economic’ immigrant?”

We explained some of the most prevalent categories for immigrants in need that the United States identifies: asylee, asylum seeker, undocumented immigrant, economic immigrant, immigrant under temporary protected status, DACA recipient, and refugee. Our hosts nodded their understanding, and one replied flatly, “In Canada, we only have refugees and refugee claimants. Most often, we call them newcomers.” The conversation moved on.

I have often thought back to that exchange. All the headlines in the US discuss immigrants and the immigrant crisis at the southern borderlands. Refugees flee a place because their lives are at risk. The legal definition of a refugee person is one who flees their country due to persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution due to their race, nationality, religion, political opinion, or membership in a particular social group. Refugees are literally running from persecution, violence, or the threat of death. It matters very much whether we call people “immigrants” or “refugees,” whether we think they are coming because they might have a better life here in North America or because it is the only way they will have any life at all. Canadians do not make all the distinctions we do. Their words acknowledge the desperate need of their neighbors and their responsibility to care for them.

Here in the US we prefer to differentiate. You can with a clean conscience tell an immigrant, particularly an economic immigrant who just wants better opportunities for work or education, to go away: “Sorry, go find a better life in some other place.” But when you tell a refugee to go away, you are sending them to an almost certain death. In 1939, before World War II, a ship called the St. Louis left Europe loaded with Jewish refugees, and they were turned away by the United States, Canada, and Cuba. The refugees on board were forced to return to France, since they found no port that would welcome them. Two-hundred and fifty-four of the passengers on board died in concentration camps, approximately half of those who had sought refuge in the Americas. Many more of them suffered internment in the camps but survived.

This is what happens when you tell refugees to go away: they suffer, and they die.

We don’t like thinking about that, so we change our language, calling these same people “immigrants” or, worse yet, “illegals”—nameless, faceless immigrants without the legal right to be in the United States. Never mind that “illegal” is an adjective and not a noun—it allows us to reduce a human being to their legal status, thereby absolving ourselves of all responsibility for our neighbors in need. We prioritize processes, laws, and the words that keep us from seeing ourselves in our neighbors, because then we can do what we want but still live with ourselves. Our language has the power to remove humanity; when we reduce a person to a single characteristic of their experience, like legal status or even whether or not they are immigrants, we take away from the image of God in them. For this reason, my friend Sandy Ovalle always says “refugee person” or “immigrant person.” Though she knows it is redundant, she says it reminds her that these are multifaceted and complex human beings in front of her, who are more than their status or their experience of migration.

When I bring up the subject of words and the clear difference in connotation and meaning between a migrant and a refugee, someone will often ask if perhaps I am making too much of words. Perhaps this is not so serious. After all, these are just words—not words that dehumanize or incite violence. Is it possible that these tiny, seemingly insignificant choices do not matter? We all know what we mean, so aren’t the specific words we use irrelevant?

Writer and immigrant Phuc Tran addresses this dilemma in his memoir, Sigh, Gone: “Do we want words to be powerful or powerless? We can’t have it both ways. If we want them to be powerful, we have to act and speak accordingly, handling our words with the fastidious faith that they can do immeasurable good or irreparable harm. But if we want to say whatever we want—if we want to loose whatever words fly into our minds—then we render words powerless, ineffectual, and meaningless.” Indeed, if words have power, if they can shape our realities, then we must be careful how we handle them. After all, the Word took on flesh! The Word that is Jesus came to dwell among us (John 1:14). If we long for words like “justice,” “equality,” “peace,” and “harmony” to take flesh in our world, then we must be cautious with all words, not just the ones that are clearly harmful. Indeed, if we are Jesus’s representatives on earth, representatives of the Word, then these beautiful words can take on flesh through us. Those of us who carry his name have chosen to take on the responsibility of taking great care with our words and actions.

In church circles, I frequently hear words about refugees and other immigrants that are meant to be positive, to signify solidarity, care, and concern. These include phrases like “welcome the stranger,” “we welcome refugees,” “stand with the vulnerable,” “be a voice for the voiceless,” “we’re glad you’re our neighbor,” and “care for the least of these.” While I appreciate the heart and intention of these words, I often wonder about their impact. The dominant church culture’s best efforts continue to highlight their own kindness and openness to “the other”—they still center their own posture.

Lots of words, some not helpful. Photo by Nitish Meena on Unsplash

Grammatically speaking, immigrants and refugees are the objects in the above phrases, not the subjects; in other words, we receive the action of those belonging to the dominant church culture but we do not take action ourselves. Very subtly, these words remove humanity from people because they reduce us immigrants to a single characteristic of our experience. While seeming positive, these words have the insidious effect of widening the distance between all of us, between immigrants and the dominant church culture: the more these words become part of everyday vocabulary in the church, the more they inform the imaginations of the dominant church culture and take away from the complex image bearers of God who stand before them.

It is noteworthy that in Matthew 25 Jesus does not command his followers to be kind to those in need. In a complete reversal of expectations, Jesus takes on the very identities of those most marginalized in the ancient world of the first century: “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matt. 25:35–36). Jesus quite literally sees himself in the poorest and most forgotten people of his time. They are not objects of his charity or hospitality—they are him! He commends those who care for him vicariously through the care of others, because the Jesus they worship is the same Jesus they care for in their neighbors in need.

Biblical scholar Anna Case-Winters says, “We need not worry about the timing of the ‘second coming.’ Christ is already in our midst now and comes to us again and again—unexpectedly—in the form of the person in need. Our response to ‘the least of these’ is our response to the judge of all the nations.” I wonder how advocacy and activism of the dominant church culture might be transformed if they saw themselves in those who live on the margins of society. Rather than flinging a coin to a person experiencing homelessness on the street, they would see their very selves in the need of this neighbor without a home. Rather than feeling pity at media images of refugees in a camp, they would see their own families in the plight of displaced people. Rather than visiting people in immigration detention or prison out of a sense of duty, they would feel their own isolation in the loneliness of their incarcerated neighbors. How would this change their language? Their sense of social responsibility? Their awareness that they are their neighbor in need?

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Be well, friends. As this administration is coming into power, I am receiving more requests to speak about immigration. Maybe I’ll end up in your neck of the woods. Speak kindly to each other.

Cheers,

Karen

At Home in My Country

or why I'm glad to be back in the U.S. despite Trump's re-election

In August, I returned to the U.S. from a year and half living in Mexico City. Two months later, the Dodgers won the World Series. And then a week later, horror of horrors, the U.S. elected a populist demagogue…

…again.

Enjoyed the Dodgers’ WS win for 5 minutes before the election destroyed me. Photo by Mat Weller on Unsplash

Lots of people have asked me if I regret coming back, especially those who are themselves now looking to live abroad. Given that Trump has promised to deport immigrants, even naturalized ones like me, and has laid the blame for every negative thing happening in the U.S. at the feet of immigrants, it does, indeed, seem like really inopportune timing.

Truthfully, I came back for a few reasons—some of which I can’t share in a public forum like this one—but I don’t regret it, even with Trump’s election. If I learned anything living abroad this time, not as a teacher or a Christian service worker or as a student, it’s that I’m a U.S. American. I feel most at home here (now in the D.C. area), and all my stuff is here. My family is mostly here in the U.S., and I’ve attained most of my education and all my work experience here. I am most comfortable and most fluent in American English. This is where I’ve made my home since I was 9-years-old. I’ve been naturalized to this place.

Being Naturalized

In her beautiful book Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer describes what naturalization means:

Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you, as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit. To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground. Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities. To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters, to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.

I’ve written so much about immigration in my short writing career, and the theme that has come up for me over and over again is that the question of immigration is ultimately one of belonging. Where do I belong? Where do my people and I belong? Living in liminal space is fine and dandy if you’re speaking metaphorically, but it’s not so great literally. Frankly, it sucks. Because we all want to belong somewhere.

My time living in Mexico taught me that this is my home, right here among the red people of the voting map who supported a man who called Latines like me criminals, rapists, pet eaters, and garbage…just because we are immigrants. Fortunately, I do live in a blue state.

The Mestiza Guadalupe?

Earlier this year, my friend Sarah came to visit me in Mexico City, and we visited the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. The only other time I’d been to the Basilica was when another friend visited and wanted to attend mass there, which I reluctantly agreed to do. It’s an interesting structure, but it’s far from where I lived, and it’s always crowded (so much so that there are actual moving walkways in front of the altar, so you don’t just stand there and gawk like an awkward tourist).

A mosaic of the famous image of the indigenous Our Lady of Guadalupe in CDMX. Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash

The first time I attended I listened to a priest talk about Guadalupe, the appearance of Mary in the Americas but as an indigenous, brown-skinned woman who speaks Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. Those are the basic facts about Our Lady of Guadalupe and what has made her beloved and revered in many Latin American countries…

…except the priest didn’t speak of her that way. Instead, he spoke of her as the mestiza virgin Mary. It might not sound like it, but there is a big difference between being mestiza and being indigenous.

A mestizo is a person of mixed race descent, especially indigenous and European. In that priest’s estimation, Guadalupe was not indigenous, but mestiza…like him. This was news to me, and yet it’s not that surprising since most of us want to create the divine in our own image.

Many of us Latines in the U.S. don’t like the term mestizo/a because it has a racist history—it was created to distance us from our indigenous roots. Many Latines want to be associated with Europeans and not with indigenous people who are seen as less civilized, less sophisticated, and, let’s just put it bluntly, less human. To be a mestizo is to be half-human and, thus, more acceptable. That’s the connotation of the word mestizo, no matter its actual definition in the dictionary.

And I believe it’s the reason so many Latines are drawn to Trump and his xenophobic rhetoric—aligning with whiteness even against their own people.

On our drive home from the Basilica, the tour guide, an educated Mexican woman who runs her own business, started telling me about all the issues she has with all the immigrants in Mexico. There are migrants from the U.S., Canada, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Colombia, Russia to name just a few.

“Would you believe some restaurants aren’t serving spicy salsas to accommodate these people?” She was incredulous and especially emphasized “these people.”

I nodded but asked, “But isn’t that a business decision made by the owner of the restaurant? How are the immigrants to blame for that?”

She then clarified that she’s not xenophobic, but she’s concerned about the way immigrants are changing Mexican culture—they’re just not assimilating. At this point, I’m annoyed and tired, so I get salty.

“You sound just like Trump,” I said. And we were quiet the rest of the ride.

And the truth is that she does. And so did a lot of Mexicans I met in the city. Even the woman who cleaned my apartment weekly had issues with all the Haitians in her neighborhood, though she grudgingly acknowledged that they are hard workers and are doing the work nobody else wants to do. I let her know that the way she speaks about Haitians: unwanted but hard working—is the way many Americans regard Mexican immigrants in the U.S. She seemed unfazed by that information.

Xenophobic Immigrants

Maybe it’s not that surprising to you that there are Mexicans who also don’t want immigrants in their country. But did you know that there are immigrants who also don’t like other immigrants? I call it the “shut the door behind me” phenomenon because nobody is more anti-immigrant than an immigrant with legal status.

No one is more anti-immigrant than an immigrant with legal status.

Because of the lure of white supremacy (hey, maybe I can become a secondary white person and escape the hardship of being othered and discriminated against), which comes with the pressure to assimilate, many immigrants, particularly those who have been in the country a long time and have permanent residency and/or came the “legal” way, strongly oppose welcoming immigration policies. I want to be clear that that this is a survival strategy. As I said earlier, we all have the need to belong, and all immigrants have historically suffered the pressure to abandon their own people, language, and culture and assimilate. This was the “melting pot” mentality that was promoted forever.

A friend of mine says that white supremacy is a helluva drug. Indeed. Nobody wants to suffer or feel like they don’t belong, and assimilation is an insidious form of white supremacy because you don’t even realize you’re assimilating not just to language and culture but to systems of oppression, even your own oppression.

Home

All of that said, I’m glad to be back because this is my country as much as it is Trump’s and his supporters. And because you really can’t escape xenophobia no matter where you go. It’s a human problem not a uniquely American one. The truth is that the whole world has become less welcoming to immigrants, not just the U.S. But this is where I happen to be living.

So I’m staying.

And there will be a lot of work to do to care for immigrants in the coming administration. Trump is no longer focused on building a wall at the southern border to keep immigrants out—now he is focused on a mass deportation plan that will be devasting to immigrants and their families if it comes to pass. The writer Rebecca Solnit puts it this way:

They want you to feel powerless and surrender and let them trample everything and you are not going to let them. You are not giving up, and neither am I. The fact that we cannot save everything does not mean we cannot save anything, and everything we can save is worth saving.

There will be work to do for all of us. Someone shared these affirmations on Instagram, and they have become my daily affirmations to maintain a glimmer of hope.

I will do what is in my power to care for my immigrant neighbors and to work for the country that I want. Because it’s my country, too.

How are you doing in the aftermath of the election? I hope you’re taking good care of yourself and finding ways to keep that flicker of hope burning.

Home is not where you are born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease.

—Naguib Mahfouz

Forgiveness and Non-Apology Apologies

What's required for reconciliation?

When I was a college student and new to the faith, I read a spiritual memoir by Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch woman who, along with her father and sister, hid Jewish people in their home during the Holocaust; they were eventually discovered, separated, and she and her sister Betsie were sent to Ravensbrück Concentration Camp. In her book The Hiding Place (read the excerpt here), she details an encounter in Munich after World War II. She’s speaking at a church and recognizes one of the guards from Ravensbrück approaching her after her sermon on God’s forgiveness. He does not recognize her nor does he remember Betsie, who died in the camp. He tells her that he was a guard in the camp where she was held…

“But since that time,” he went on, “I have become a Christian. I know that God has forgiven me for the cruel things I did there, but I would like to hear it from your lips as well. Fräulein”–again the hand came out–“will you forgive me?”

And I stood there–I whose sins had every day to be forgiven–and could not. Betsie had died in that place–could he erase her slow terrible death simply for the asking?

Like you’re probably doing right now, I have wondered over the years what I would have done in her place. In those moments when I struggled to forgive or simply couldn’t, I would think back on this story and feel a deep sense of shame because I knew I would not have been able to forgive him—those simple words could not erase my sister’s “slow terrible death.” But since the book is a favorite of evangelicals, you might have guessed that she, of course, does forgive him and shake his hand. It’s a powerful moment in the memoir and seems to have been the right decision for her.

Photo by Ben Wicks Joseph forgiving his brothers, depicted in Ely Cathedral, UK

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Not So Sorry

I used to feel bad about that conclusion, about my hypothetical inability to forgive him. In fact I’m confessing it to you for the first time. I felt bad…until I read

Kaya Oakes

’s stellar new book, Not So Sorry: Abusers, False Apologies, and the Limits of Forgiveness. This book challenged and freed me in so many ways!

Oakes explores everything from the abuses and coverups of Catholic clergy to the #metoo movement to the Mother Emanuel Church shooting in Charleston, SC where a white supremacist murdered 9 Black church members. She discusses the pressure to forgive that victims and survivors experience, particularly in situations where the morally right thing to do might be not to forgive. Considering that perpetrators are sometimes not repentant nor are they making amends, as in the case of the white supremacist who entered the Mother Emanuel church with the intent to kill and has never once expressed remorse nor extended an apology to the families of his victims.

Oakes also discusses those who do extend apologies, often self-serving apologies, that aren’t followed by true repentance and reparations to the victim. In the case of Corrie Ten Boom, no empty apology would return her sister to her, and I don’t recall if the guard truly repented and sought to repair the harm he did. A more recent example is Pope Francis’ recent apology for homophobic remarks he made in a closed-door meeting; his apology, given through the Vatican press office, said that he never intended to offend or express himself in homophobic terms and he apologizes to those who were offended. That’s what I call a non-apology apology—instead of truly asking for forgiveness and focusing on the impact of your actions, you focus on your own intent and offer a general “I’m sorry” to the atmosphere and hope it lands well. Never mind the way your homophobic comments harm Catholic Christians who are part of the LGBTQ+ community.

I also think of the people I know who were hurt in Protestant churches—who were not offered apologies nor repair, who were kicked out of leadership or asked to leave, who lost their entire community and were called “divisive” and “disobedient” as they were pushed out the door for calling attention to abuses in leadership or to vulnerable people in their faith community who were experiencing abuse or exploitation. People like

Shannan Martin

and

Jenai Auman

who’ve written about these experiences and the fallout and pain they’re still experiencing as a result. Not to mention the fact that the churches and leaders that harmed them continue with the same abuses they called out. Are these churches and leaders owed a reconciliation when they are not seeking one nor seeking change? This is not to say that people can’t forgive of their own free will, but they should not be pressured to do so and to seek reconciliation.

Though her book is not expressly Christian but appeals to a more broad audience, Oakes also explores the way different faith traditions, including Christianity, speak about forgiveness and what’s required to receive it—you may not be surprised to learn that we’re not following these teachings as much as our own interpretation of them within our own cultures.

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Evangelical Penance

A while ago I ran into the image you see below:

Image Credit: Jana Greene

You can’t imagine how much I cringed! There’s so much for me to be sorry for…participating in and promoting purity culture, pushing my LGBTQ+ siblings to the margins of church and ministry life, perpetuating a soft patriarchy but a very harmful one nonetheless, and participating and encouraging participation in churches and ministries that, at best, centered male-dominated, European Christianity, and at worst, were just plain racist and misogynistic. Truth be told, there are probably even more harmful things I’ve engaged in that don’t come to mind at the moment. In fact, if I could change the image above, I would edit it to say “I’m sorry for what I said and did when I was an evangelical.”

On this side of an evolving faith, it has been difficult to reckon with who I was. For a time, I went to the opposite extreme of liberal faith, which mostly resulted in being very judgmental of people who are still a part of conservative evangelical churches, just like I used to be. This journey to the other side was facilitated by the election of Donald Trump and the support he received from evangelicals, including many people I used to call friends.

The one thing that has nagged at me through it all is that I remember so many sermons, Sunday School classes, Bible studies, small groups, and conferences where we talked about forgiveness. Not just the spiritual benefits of forgiveness (your heavenly Father won’t forgive you if you don’t forgive—that probably means you go to hell if you don’t forgive!), but the emotional and psychological benefits of letting go of resentment, bitterness, anger (even righteous anger) and any other socially-undesirable emotions. I’ve heard that people who forgive, even what seems to many of us unforgiveable, live longer, report more satisfaction with life, and have better relationships. I don’t know if this is true, but it sounds true. And even so, I have still struggled with to apply the many teachings on forgiveness I’ve heard over the years, both to forgive myself for having caused harm. This is another topic that Oakes explores in this book—how do you forgive yourself?

In case you can’t tell, I strongly recommend this book to you! I spent many hours this past month thinking about it and examining my own life in light of it. I know it will challenge you, too.

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I think many of you might know that I’m back in the US. I’ll be moving into my new place in Silver Spring, Maryland, just outside Washington DC tomorrow (probably when you receive this letter!). I’m grateful to be back and will write more on that later. Be well and enjoy the lovely autumn whose arrival is imminent.

Cheers,

Karen

Spill the Tea!

Can gossip ever be a force for the common good?

I had just finished co-facilitating a workshop at a large Christian conference when a friend approached me to talk about something serious. She referenced the handouts my co-facilitator and I had distributed and pointed to a name in the “great books to read on this subject” page. She let me know that man, one of the writers of the books we referenced who was a well known Christian leader, was a sexual predator, and he particularly preyed on women of color in vulnerable situations.

Before she left, she asked us to share this information with other women cautiously, keeping it under the radar. Her point, she said, was to keep other women of color safe and informed, not to expose herself to the wrath of powerful men. We agreed and removed his name from future handouts, not wanting to promote the work of a man harming women.

And that was the end of our conversation on the subject. It wasn’t until a couple of years later, when news of this man’s predatory behavior broke publicly that the Christian world at large found out what a network of women of color had known for a while. Far from being a poisonous rumor mill, this was a sisterly network of care and protection. Women were cautioned and reminded to pass on the information to those who may need it most.

For much of the time I spent in Christian circles, conservative or otherwise, the above interaction would have been branded as slander or malicious gossip because we were speaking behind a man’s back—it wouldn’t have mattered if the information was true. Women, who are the main targets of admonishments against gossip, would have been silenced and discouraged from passing on such information and quoted some Bible verse about the evils of gossip and idle talk.

I once heard a pastor preach from the pulpit that Jesus charged the woman at the well in John 4 with sharing his message because he knew how much women liked to gossip, and she’d spread the message well. It was said in jest, but it was in poor taste. I suspected he was communicating some of his biases against women.

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Chisme or Gossip?

Chisme is the word for gossip in Spanish. As a writer, I find it fascinating that the word chisme in Spanish has a much different connotation from the word gossip in English. “Chisme” denotes something light and communal, generally benign. But “gossip” definitely has only negative connotations--it screams of betrayal and willful harm. In Spanish, chisme can even denote something along the lines of snooping or browsing, like I’m going to go chismosear what’s in that store over there.

a doormat announces that visitors without chisme will not be admitted.

Even so, it can be negative in Spanish as well. If a woman gets branded a chismosa, it is not a compliment, just as being known as a gossiper isn’t a compliment in English-speaking circles. I’ve rarely heard men labeled as gossipers even though the research shows that men gossip just as much as women. This is the shadow that patriarchy often casts on the bonds between women. As long as you can frame women’s interactions negatively, you can better control us and keep us from supportive relationships with one another.

However, we can’t deny that not all gossip is harmless. There’s a reason why all the world’s major monotheistic religions have stern admonishments against gossip, rumors, backstabbing, and prying—and they don’t discriminate between true and false information (which is oddly beneficial to those in power). It’s likely we all have an anecdote about the way we’ve seen gossip harm relationships, workplaces, and faith communities.

Gossip has also been used by nations to harm, discredit, and even kill human beings. Think of…

• the McCarthy witch hunts that could ruin a person and deprive them of their livelihood just by associating them with communism;

• the informants during the Soviet era who denounced their neighbors resulting in their being sent to gulags in Siberia literally to be worked to death;

• and the methodology used by repressive governments in Argentina and Chile encouraging people to reveal the identities of enemies of the state; these enemies were often “disappeared,” tortured, and murdered.

  

  Soviet-era propaganda poster warning people to keep their mouths shut.

Gossip is more universal than we would like to admit.

I don’t know anyone that considers being a gossiper anything but a character flaw, and we generally judge those who engage in gossip. Even when we ourselves engage in gossip (and we do), we think negatively of our own selves!

But is all gossip bad?

Can gossip ever be good?

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The Grapevine as a Force for Good

I first began wondering whether gossip was always a bad thing a few years ago when I heard a podcast episode of This American Life. The episode discussed the way people in Malawi relied on gossip because there were so many people infected with HIV or AIDS in their country. The grapevine was the only way that people would communicate about who was safe to date or marry, thus protecting themselves and preventing further spread of the virus. Gossip literally saved lives!

And then I remembered the times when, in a work situation, someone had warned me about a particular leader or leaders:

“Don’t cross so-and-so or you won’t advance at this organization. He’s the golden boy around here.”

“Beware of so-and so who says he values women but treats all women with paternalistic condescension.”

“So-and-so thinks he’s not a racist, but makes racist comments all the time and has never hired a person of color for his team.”

In fact, networks of information at work are a great way to be in the know about the implicit values of an organization (these are often in conflict with the stated values posted on the website for the world to see). Work gossip is a way for women and other historically marginalized people to subvert the patriarchal or racial politics of the workplace and survive in a place not designed for our thriving. Of course, the company would rather we did not discuss these things, but we always have to ask ourselves:

who benefits from our silence—those in power or those without it?

One study shows that most of us spend an hour per day gossiping, and we do it in order to make sense of the world we live in—in order to validate our feelings, foster cooperation, and better navigate situations. Far from being negative, gossip can actually be helpful. Only a small percentage of gossip is of the kind we usually think of—the-tear-people-down-out-of-spite-or-envy-kind.

Because people think only women gossip, here’s a stock photo of men gossiping.

In faith communities where we’re admonished not to gossip, it can be very helpful to know if a leader is inflexible or sexist or a narcissist or a poor communicator. It’s also good to know if the elders have an agenda that doesn’t include LGBTQ+ people in leadership even though the denomination specifically allows for it. I have visited churches because they were affirming of women’s ordination as stated on the website, only to discover that the leadership generally doesn’t support women as pastors or preachers and would never dream of calling a woman to their pulpit. Why is it considered harmful to discuss the clear biases or flaws of leaders and faith communities? This is the gossip we should all share with one another because it would protect us and, in some cases, would save us a lot of heartache.

In a church I belonged to over two decades ago, there was a man in his thirties that only pursued homeschooled adolescent girls as they were finishing high school (so there was not a legal issue to contend with). I commented on his behavior to a Sunday School teacher because I knew it was predatory, but I was shut down and scolded about gossiping.

Wait…shouldn’t behavior like his be talked about?

Shouldn’t the girls (and their parents) be aware of this man’s unsavory predilections?

Again, who is benefitting from silence? Certainly, not these young women.

This is exactly the kind of scenario where gossip would benefit the entire community.

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Tricksters for the Common Good

Some of my favorite people in the Hebrew Scriptures are the tricksters. These are usually women who prevail in some way through the use of trickery, cunning, sexuality, and deception. Because they do not have any power or position, trickery is the only way they can subvert oppressive structures and survive.

Some great examples:

• Rahab, a Canaanite sex worker, who hides the Hebrew spies in her home (quite possibly also providing them her services), and then lies to the king’s messengers to protect them. The spies likely came to her home because sex workers were privy to all kinds of gossip about the community they were seeking to conquer. Her deceitfulness, in part, results in their success and ensures her survival.

• Tamar, the daughter-in-law of the patriarch Judah, pretends to be a sex worker to deceive her father-in-law, tricking him into having sex with her and impregnating her with a son. This is the only way that she can exact justice from Judah, who did not intend to uphold the law by giving his son in marriage to her after she had been widowed by his older son.

“Judah and Tamar" by French artist Horace Vernet

Though we are often uncomfortable with their behavior, it’s notable that the Scriptures don’t condemn them, nor are they kept from accomplishing their goals through their deception. In many cases, they are seen as heroic and clever in the sacred text. The one unifying factor in their trickery, however, is that it’s done for their survival and well being in an unjust world. In other words, they never punch down and take advantage of those who are poor or marginalized, but they do punch up to oppressive systems in which they have no voice. Their actions are subversive, for certain, but they are disrupting systems that would seek to deprive them of their rights or deny them life.

On an interesting note, both the sons of Rahab and Tamar end up in the lineage of Jesus.

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I don’t believe that people like Tamar, Rahab and the many other tricksters in the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are being rewarded for bad behavior. Instead, I think we’re being shown that there are times to be shrewd, savvy, and wise.

As long as it’s for good.

What do you think, reader? I struggled to write this but would welcome your thoughts and/or feedback.

Cheers,

Karen

It's OK to Look Your Age

Some fragmented thoughts on aging from an invisible woman

When I was a college student, I went to the store to buy my sister a card for her birthday. While searching through the large selection, I came across a card that was supposed to be funny but that left me feeling unsettled and enraged. The card said that after the age of 40 women were like Antarctica–everyone knows where it is but nobody wants to go there.

I thought about Antarctica and its desolate landscapes of snow drifts, a place that is so inhospitable to human life. I was 20 at the time and didn’t understand why women would be compared to this mostly empty continent for any reason. My mother had died at age 39 and would have given anything to get to be an old señora with grandchildren. At the same time, my mom and my tías all dyed their hair and used creams like the old Oil of Olay to keep their skin looking young. 

Now as a middle-aged woman myself who is approaching her 52nd birthday, I understand a lot more about the stigma of aging for women. I’d love to think that I’m above it, but I’m not. I feel the pressure and have to work actively to resist the harmful messages of our youth-obsessed culture. As I notice my body changing, I’m tempted by the trappings of staying “forever young” (as if that were an option).

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Invisible Women

Four years ago 43-year-old Shakira and 50-year-old Jennifer Lopez performed during the halftime Super Bowl show. The show made headlines for many reasons, but definitely because many people thought they looked amazing for any age. Truly, it seemed that, for them, the hands of time had stood still ever since they were in their twenties.

Jennifer Lopez and Shakira during their performance the Super Bowl halftime show in 2020. Just looking at their shoes makes my feet hurt.

I remember watching and wondering what they did to achieve such incredible results.

Had all of JLo’s husbands kept her locked in a gym, occasionally feeding her a lettuce leaf or two?

Had Shakira discovered a fountain of liposuction?

The truth turned out to be more mundane, as Ms. Lopez shared the diet and exercise regimen she followed before that fabulous performance. Not surprisingly, it takes a lot of time, money, and effort to look that young when you’re middle-aged, but the alternative is to be Antarctica: invisible.

I joked with a couple of friends last week that if middle-aged women are truly invisible in a culture that strictly values youth, I was going to test out that theory by robbing a bank. Please don’t worry—I haven’t turned to a life of crime in my invisibility, though everyone tells me that it’s not a superpower.

Some middle-aged women find invisibility welcome—they are tired of the male gaze and its unpleasant baggage. Aging can be liberating—no more cat calls or demands to smile. You can dress how you want because no one is paying attention anyway! But others mourn the fact that nobody “sees” them anymore. I remember a former colleague, who had been considered quite the beauty in her youth, agonizing over the fact that she no longer turned heads. She, like many middle-aged women, hated the backhanded compliment that we often hear: “You look wonderful…for your age.”

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Forever Young

Scrolling through Instagram a few weeks ago, I came across this picture…

I have to tell you that I find it just a little bit annoying and frustrating that I’m supposed to aspire to look like Jennifer Lopez on the right (which pretty much requires not just all my time and energy but also hitting the genetic jackpot) and not like the great Rue McClanahan of Golden Girls fame on the left. Ms. McClanahan looks wonderful, but she also looks her age.

What’s wrong with looking your age?

Doesn’t looking our age proclaim to the world that we’re still here? That our maturity and wisdom have been hard won?

I remember reading on some social media platform about a woman who asked the doctor injecting her with Botox and lip fillers how much younger she would look after these treatments. The doctor didn’t skip a beat and replied flatly, “You won’t look younger—you’ll look like a woman your age who has had Botox injections and lip fillers.” Ouch! But also kudos to that doctor for being completely honest. I’m sure that woman looked much better than she felt, but she likely also looked like a person who is aging, and that’s exactly what she didn’t want.

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Suffering or More Suffering?

Spiritual teacher Richard Rohr says in his book Falling Upward that aging causes us to suffer because we are aware of losing the gifts of youth. We know that our bodies are changing and not for the better: joints begin to ache, recovery from injuries takes longer, our eyes need reading glasses, our hair grays, and our skin wrinkles and sags. These are the unwelcome changes that come with aging, and no matter how much exercise we do or how little we eat, we will still age.

But he stresses that resisting aging causes more suffering–because not only are we still aging, but resistance, in the form of having a younger partner or a new sports car or Botox injections or weight loss regimens or whatever we do to try to stop the hands of time, doesn’t work. We are still growing older, and we know it. And that knowledge on top of aging only increases our suffering.

Years ago, I dated a man who was almost 10 years younger than me. I wasn’t seeking a younger partner; he just happened to be the person I fell for. Our age difference was a great concern to him. In particular, he worried that what made no difference at his age 29 and my age 38 might be a big deal at 40 and 49 or 60 and 69. His only consolation (and mine) was that I didn’t look 38. Thanks to good ole’ melanin and a few extra pounds, I had no wrinkles, and most people didn’t know about our significant age difference unless we told them.

The thing is that I was still 10 years older, and that age gap would never change. We both knew this, and his anxiety quickly became my anxiety. I became preoccupied with futile attempts at recapturing my youth.

And that, my dear readers, is how I came to live the truth of Rohr’s teaching and increased my own suffering. It was a terrible time—there are few things worse than betraying yourself for the sake of keeping a relationship. I hate even to write about it because I remember all the fear and all the self-loathing that were my constant companions back then.

What I love about the wise Rohr is that he does provide an answer to ending this suffering, and the answer is simple though not easy. The key, he says, is to grieve the gifts of youth and to see and accept the many gifts of aging. The poet Robert Frost put it this way:

The afternoon knows what the morning never expected.

Afternoon Life

Ever since I read years ago that we should grieve the gifts of youth, I have wondered how to do this exactly. To be honest, I am still not sure. I still revel in the joy of no more menstrual periods, street harassment, and salon visits to dye my hair. I have found it easier to focus on some of the more abstract gifts of aging that I have experienced:

1. Identity—in my youth, I struggled so much with cultural alienation and self-imposed assimilation. These days I’m very comfortable in my brown, bicultural skin and reckon with my internalized racism.

2. Solitude—I wasted years of energy on seeking a romantic relationship without noticing the other kinds of love all around me or even stopping to ask if I was really my best self in a romantic relationship. These days, I happily spend a Friday evening exploring a new street food stand by myself and coming home to my kitties. Looking forward to turning into an old swamp witch surrounded by cats, books, and creative, interesting people. Maybe I’ll even solve mysteries in my spare time!

   

   Aforementioned swamp witch though I will be a brown, bilingual swamp witch. Image Credit: Mike Gajewski and Greg Rutkowski

3. Vocation—This was a source of angst for me for years. What should I do with my one life? Now I’ve come to understand that my vocation is as a writer, but I don’t want to do this job full-time. The reason I love it is because I have to find stolen moments, weekends, and random times to work on it, almost like I’m having an affair. I didn’t arrive at this realization till I was 43. My day job is not my vocation, but it pays the bills nicely, and I’m grateful for it.

4. Saying No—A favorite writer once said that there’s a difference between acceptance and resignation. Resignation lacks peace, tranquility, release. I’ve come to accept my aging body in the sense that I no longer dye my hair or purchase age-defying products. I’ve given up the illusion of any 51-year-old being young or growing more attractive by societal standards. I also recognize that my energy is more limited as I age and, therefore, needs to be spent more carefully, so I’ve learned to say no to people, places, and things that seek to claim my time and energy but aren’t life-giving in any way.

5. Liberation—Truth be told, when I was a young woman, I was drawn to faith because of the certainty it promised (the way it was presented to me, anyway). But patriarchal, racist, and exclusive religion did not liberate me in any way. I just exchanged old shackles for new ones. Aging has made me more open to seeking God outside of the designated spaces, and I have found real freedom and joy in faith. Aging has liberated me from the structures in which I never really fit in anyway.

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And lastly, dear readers, I embrace aging these days because the alternative to aging is not being alive at all! I hope you are well and embracing the place where life finds you right now. You look fabulous for your age.

Cheers,

Karen