Speaking Out

Many of you know that I have recently undertaken PhD studies at Carleton - and part of my funding package includes being a teaching assistant. I had the privilege of being a TA while doing my MSW and quite enjoyed it, enough so that it was very much a part of my reason for going back to do more studies, so that I might one day teach at a university level. One of the great joys (and burdens) of being a TA is that I get to read what the students are reading in order to facilitate tutorial sections with the students. This year I am leading two seminars for Prof. Virgina Caputo's Intro to Womens Studies class. To my great pleasure, the author bell hooks* is featured in the required readings. bell hooks - for those of you who are not familiar with her work - is a black American intellectual who teaches English literature at City College of New York. To read her is a pleasure because bell is a beautiful writer and is a poet as much as an essayist or social critic. She writes with great wisdom and wit from the margins of society, and she writes about talking back.

Her name - bell hooks - is her nom de plume, and actually the name of her ancestor, a great grandmother. bell hooks writes that she chose to construct a writer identity that would challenge and subdue all impluses that might lead her away from speech into silence. She writes, "I was a young girl buying bubble gum at the corner store when I first heard the full name bell hooks. I had just 'talked back' to a grown person. Even now I can recall the surprised look, the mocking tones that informed me I must be a kin to bell hooks - a sharp-tongued woman who spoke her mind, a woman not afraid to talk back. I claimed this legacy of defiance, of will, of courage, affirming my link to female ancestors who were bold and daring in their speech."

Bartimaeus was also bold and daring in his speech. He spoke out of the crowd - calling to Jesus from the margins - and was 'sternly ordered' to be quiet. He called out even louder. He was not about to let the crowd oppress him or negate his chances of connecting with Jesus. By his talking back in spite of the crowd, he was moving himself from the passive into the active, from being an object to a subject. As bell hooks would say, "moving from silence into speech is, for the oppressed, the colonized, the exploited, and those who stand and struggle side by side, a gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. It is an act of speech, of "talking back" that is no mere gesture of empty words, it is the expression of movement from object to subject - the liberated voice." A gesture of defiance that heals. A gesture of defiance that heals, that makes new life and new growth possible. Interesting that Jesus called the gesture of defiance that heals, "faith." He said, "Go, your faith has made you well."

Talking back, this gesture of defiance speaking from the margins, says Bell, is the movement from object to subject, the liberated voice. This is a profound idea, this notion of speaking oneself from being an object to being a subject. It was an idea that inspired Bell, and it came from the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire. Freire's thoughts help bell think about the construction of an identity in resistance. Now lest we get lost in the great abstract world of thought, let me tell you that Freire was really very grounded for such a great thinker. Freire is also a great favourite of mine. I've had many occasions to read him in my social work education because he is highly regarded by social work teachers for his approach to community building and popular education. Freire eschewed the 'banking model' of teaching (you know what that is - the idea of opening up your head like a deposit box, and the teacher deposits knowledge - it's a very passive way of learning). He preferred raising critical consciousness among his students, i.e. teaching his students to 'transgress' in class by asking questions, to think outside of the box and to be radical. What's more, he does not speak of critical consciousness as an end in itself, but always joined by meaningful praxis. Praxis is action and reflection.

So we not only see Bartimaeus liberated by his defiant speech, but he joins Jesus on his journey. Critical consciousness followed by meaningful praxis. Well OK maybe I'm stretching the envelope of the gospel a little today, but my intentions are good. After listening to Garth's sermon last week I was mulling over what he said about people being more important than ideas. I remember the first time I heard him say that several years ago - I can't remember the context, but I do remember it was a meeting in the Burke Room. His remark stopped me in my tracks. I wonder how many of you were similarly affected last week? I was brought up on remarks like, "She stands by her principals," or "he never compromises on his ideals" as the highest forms of praise. I thought about what Garth said, that peeople are more important than ideas, and pondered. I said to myself yes - if we put ideas before people, we risk becoming terrorists.

Dorothy Smith, a prominent Canadian sociologist, speaks in a similar way. She says that when knowledge becomes separated from the knower, it becomes ideology. It becomes ungrounded in the reality of the everyday, and of people's lives. It becomes dis-embodied, and in a culture where we revere intellectual thought and ideas, we start to worship them. Ideology - it sounds a lot like idolatry! The knowers and their knowledge become separated from each other, and both become objects.

I think that is why I am attracted to a theology of an incarnate God. Christian theology (as I understand it) as a theory or an idea, is grounded in an understanding of a God who has intimately and personally embraced human experience. If it weren't grounded this way it would hold much less attraction for me. An incarnate God validates and sanctifies my human experience. The creator and the created know each other, and our desire for further and more intimate knowledge of each other, is the very substance of our prayer and worship, our sacred relationship. When we break that relationship - between knower and known - when our God is no longer intimate to us through some act of our own - we are in sin. Metaphorically, we are living in darkness, living in disconnectedness from God, from love, truth and justice.

So what then is the cure for this blindness? For Bartimaeus it was speaking out, finding his liberated voice. His gesture of defiance was his demonstration of faith. How often do we accept gestures of defiance as demonstrations of faith? How do we accept struggle as a sign of transformation? We can help each other. We can call back to Bartimaeus and tell him, "Take heart, get up he is calling you." And we can tell ourselves to get up and take heart at the same time, because we all need help. Freire writes, "authentic help means that all who are involved help each other mutually, growing together in the common effort to understand the reality which they seek to transform. Only through such praxis - in which those who help and those who are helping become free from the distortion in which the helper dominates the helped."

bell hooks and Freire call us to an ethics of struggle: a willingness to engage in critique, to have an open-mindedness when our ideologies are challenged to be of a generous spirit in disagreement. Is it more important to love one another than to agree with one another? Yes, I think it is. But I don't believe for a second that they are mutually exclusive. I think it's vitally important to love each other and still be able to disagree. It's essential to transformation.

We need to be able to make room to in ourselves and in our relationships for transformative disagreement. Let me add the caveat that transformative disagreement requires speaking and listening in love and respect. The liberated voice is not the voice of the dominator. Transformative disagreement is not speaking in the language of the oppressor. Transformative disagreement listens with open ears, an open heart abd an open mind. But however lovingly or fairly we try to speak our truth, these gestures of defiance that heal are not always appreciated as such. Actions of justice and words of truth can irritate people, anger people, and so time out is needed for reflection. That's what Freire calls for - critical consciousness, action and reflection. As we journey forward as a community together, struggling with change - whether it is about same-sex marriage, about redesigning our worship space, selling the parking lot or whatever we do as a community, we should do our very best to take advantage of the community building opportunities that these challenges create. Opportunities for raising critical consciousness, liberating voices, opportunities for engagement in loving transformative struggle and opportunities for reflection- emphasis on the reflection, the most easily lost ingredient in the recipe. If we are to engage in a ethic of struggle if we are to understand what Freire calls 'authentic help' we have a common goal and obligation to grow together in the spirit and as the body of Christ. It's not just about me changing you - we must change together.

Finally, actions and tongues must cease so that pilgrims on the journey may sit in silence and reflect on how our work has impacted on us and how we have impacted on the work and each other. After we speak out in defiance, we must answer Jesus' invitation and join him in building God's realm of peace and justice on earth. Let us proceed in loving, transformative disagreement - and prayerfully - so that every person may see and be seen as subjects speaking in liberated voices now and always.

Please note: bell hooks prefers her name written in lower case.