I leaned against the trunk of my car, and checked my text messages. I was waiting for a fellow organizer to pick me up so we could test walk the route of the Nashville Gaza Ceasefire Pilgrimage. After attending church that morning, I’d headed out to my car where I’d stashed a small backpack with snacks and water, my walking shoes, and a sun shirt. To save myself the trouble of having to change clothes in the church bathroom, I’d worn a clean pair of hiking pants with a crisp button-up white shirt and dress shoes to church and passed muster in a sea of people dressed in varying degrees of dressiness. A technical smartwool tanktop under the button-up shirt allowed me to simply swap shirts and shoes at the trunk of my car and be ready to walk almost nine urban miles that morning and afternoon.
I finished ten minutes before my ride arrived and as it was pretty, sitting in my car to wait for her never occurred to me. I chatted with a friend who was going into the next service, and then checked my phone again.
A man walked by headed into the church and he paused and surveyed me for a moment. He was vaguely familiar, but the church I attend is quite large and therefore I can’t possibly know everyone there.
“Good morning,” he said. “We have coffee over there if you want some.”
“Thanks,” I replied, bemused, and he continued on into church.
Before the 8:45 service each Sunday, our congregation provides coffee and breakfast to unhoused folks in the city, many of whom show up wearing backpacks. And despite it being the wrong time of day, it seems this fellow assumed I was one of the unhoused instead of a five-year member of the congregation that he attended.
I had another ten minutes or so to ponder his sentence and the brief use of “we.”
“We” is a very interesting word. When someone uses “we” and it includes me in a group I want to be included in, it can give me a warm, fuzzy feeling of satisfaction. But “we” can also be the coldest word available when I find myself outside the “we” that is arrayed together whether a benign alliance of the “they’s” or an antagonistic one, it doesn’t matter so much as the fact that I am “I” and they are “we.”
I would wager every one of you reading this has found themselves on the outside of a “we” statement at some point or another. And while there are certainly groups of “we” that I don’t want anything to do with, finding myself assumed to be on the outside of the “we” of my own church gave me pause.
I’m Episcopalian in the south and many churches that bear that name are predominately white unless they are an historic black Episcopal church of which we have two in our diocese of thirty-five churches or so. I’m forty-four and mostly still brown-haired, so I pass for something younger than middle age making me quite young by Episcopal standards. The church is comprised of the upper middle-class to the downright wealthy, income brackets beyond where my family is placed, and for a while I felt outside the “we” based on “class” alone. But other than my casual clothes in that moment, there was nothing to betray my class one way or the other, rather I think it was just that I was standing apart from the group getting coffee and was wearing a backpack and this person made a snap decision about me.
He invited me to have a cup of coffee, but didn’t offer to walk me over to get some, something that would have been helpful if I had indeed been down on my luck and intimidated by the number of people outside standing around, chatting by the coffee cart. He invited me to help myself to coffee, but didn’t invite me to the next service. He barely paused walking, body language hesitant, but not inviting of any further conversation. “We have coffee.”
If I, a white woman who has attended that church for over five years can so easily find myself on the outside of the “we” what does that mean to others a few steps more removed from the general makeup of the congregation? If all it took was changing my shirt to change social location, what does that imply about the barriers for others?
Words matter. Perhaps it is hard to see in this little story that has no real lasting significance, but the line between “we” and “them” is one that literal wars are fought over. The distinguishing features between “we” and “them” lead folks to condone everything from bad domestic policies from healthcare and livable wages to excusing and condoning genocide and war crimes. Words have great power and who we include and who we exclude when we say “we” can have the power of life and death.
How do we use “we” in our lives? Who does that one simple pronoun include and who does it exclude? What are instances where you have been surprised by suddenly finding yourself outside the “we”?
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If you’re in the Nashville or Middle Tennessee area or Southern KY or Northern Alabama or anywhere nearby, come out and join us on Saturday!
More info
We are having an informational pre-march zoom meeting on Tuesday the 26th at 7pm. We can answer all your questions there and go over what to expect and so forth. If you can't make it, we are happy to answer whatever questions by email over the next two weeks as we get closer. Just reply all and the co-organizers will receive your email and one of us will get back to you!
Register for the zoom meeting: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwrc-msqzgrGNegLCCyhsmaprB-U3A2ZIHd
Two of us walked the route last week, and we are very happy with it.
Those of you walking the whole route: We will begin at Two Rivers park in Nashville at 8:00 am on Saturday March 30th. Park in the big parking lot by Wave Country, and we will meet up to the left of the skate park. Just look for the Gaza Ceasefire Banner and palestinian flags, you won't be able to miss us. IMPORTANT: We will start walking by 8:15 am, so if for some reason you are going to be very late, simply plan to meet us at the half-way point.
Then we will walk 3.5 miles to the Riverview Pavilion area past the nature center at Shelby Bottoms park. We are not renting the pavilion but there are a lot of picnic tables and a large grassy area as well as port-a-potties in this area and it makes a good spot to stop, have a snack and meet up with those walking half the route.
Those of you walking half the route: Park at the Shelby Bottoms Nature center, then walk behind the nature center to the greenway and turn right. Walk a couple hundred yards and you will see the riverside pavilion on the left past the port-a-potties and a large grassy space with picnic tables. Those of us walking the first half of the route should be there by 10:00 am.
We will rest and have a brief liturgy at the midpoint and be underway by around 11:00 am.
Then we will walk 3.7 miles to the State Capitol where we will have a final prayer service.
Our route follows the river, which is the closest we can get to walking a coastline. We are walking over 1/4 the length of the Gaza strip which is 25 miles, and almost 1/3 of the distance between Gaza City and Rafah.
Ride Logistics:
After we have concluded, we will walk down the hill to the Bicentennial Mall where we will have at least one 15-passenger van to use as a shuttle back to our cars. We are trying to have several so the process of getting back will be faster, but there is the market house right there so you will have access to bathrooms, food, etc if it ends up being a wait.
If you can "buddy up" with 1 or more fellow pilgrims, you can leave a car at the Farmer's Market parking lot, and then drive together to Two Rivers or Shelby bottoms and reverse the process at the end and then you'll have more control over when you get back to your car.
What to Bring: Palestinian Flags, keffiyehs, signs, a bottle of water, snacks. Check the weather the day before as well and be sure you are dressed for whatever it may be! You don't have to bring anything but water and snacks as we will have flags and a banner to lead the pilgrimage with and the more people who show up the better!
So excited to walk with all of you on Saturday, March 30th!
“I wish I could still believe in God, but I can’t be a Christian anymore because of ______” Fill-in-the-blank with racism, misogyny, homophobia, toxic capitalism, and so on. I’ve had this conversation with different people almost word-for-word over and over. White American Christianity has so defined God that many people cannot separate God from the toxic theology they were taught.
But this isn’t the God I see in the Bible. The Bible shows us a God meeting people where they are and nudging them towards justice and total thriving for all: shalom. The Bible details arcs of justice and societal reform. If we understand how radical those arcs were in the context of the day, we can extend them forward into the future and figure out how to work for justice, total thriving, and societal reformation in our day.
I grew up in that first world view. Come along, and I’ll tell you the story of how I escaped, and I’ll show you a theology that I believe paints a more accurate picture: a faith for the common good where everyone thrives and no one is left out.
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Anna Elisabeth Howard writes highly caffeinated takes on shalom as a lens for everything from her front porch in Hendersonville, TN where she lives with her husband and two sons. She is a community organizer and movement chaplain with a background in youth and family ministry and is a graduate of Fuller Theological Seminary. An avid hiker and backpacker, many thoughts start somewhere in the middle of the woods, or under a waterfall. She is a regular contributer to Earth & Altar and her latest book is Inward Apocalypse: Uncovering a Faith for the Common Good.
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