on the joys of precision

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/mUE9IFFgUwo

I’m a contrarian.

I’ve spent a lot of energy in the last twenty years trying to become a nice contrarian, but the label reveals me. I generally find labels a demeaning tool of evil, a reductionist way of describing other miracle-humans. That said, I’m also generally happy to admit a label that suits me well. Indeed, “own your shit” reasonably captures one of my core beliefs and practices. Not sure it should go on my tombstone or hang cross-stitched in my kitchen, but still. It offers me a way forward from many a wrong-headed dead end.

Owning our faults, our choices, our bias, our ideas about self and community, feels like a solid place to begin any thought or prayer or conversation. It requires me to be precise in where I stand, how I view others, and how I attempt or fail to align my actions with the values I hold. It requires us to take ourselves seriously. What we think and believe shapes the sources we trust and the advice we give. Naming the foundation of those ideas with specificity is crucial if we hope to live well with others.

A couple asked me to talk to them about educational choices in Nashville. I begin such conversations with a clear confession of my bias. I name exactly what I care most about and describe how I tend to think about the purpose of education and the history of the endeavor here in Nashville. I don’t start there because I think my biases are particularly egregious; instead, I do so because I respect the fact that they are the ones making a new choice here. Not me. They deserve to hear my experience and to access advice, but only through a frame of my clearly stated bias. If they don’t share my way of seeing the world or my hope for how my kids will learn and participate in it, then my advice might be useless to them. That’s fair.

Precision is key when owning our stuff or amplifying what we value in our communities.

Words are handy in our desire to communicate as long as they signify in clear, consistent ways. Many words don’t anymore though, and these slippages make collaborative meaning making hard. Because we need to collaborate in this life, I’m asking us to work harder to resist lazy labels and instead to speak in ways that clarify our positions.

To be a person who is FOR faith or justice or woke-ness or life or freedom or democracy requires us to name exactly what we mean when we invoke such a label. For instance, my understanding of myself as a Christian prevented me from voting for Donald Trump. For many others, their vote for Mr. Trump was an expression of their Christian-ness. Behold the fluid nature of words.

My contrarian instincts cause me to flinch if someone asks if I’m a Christian precisely because the word signals differently to diverse audiences. Do I believe Jesus is the Son of God whose sacrifice redeems me, offering me hope as I do justice and love mercy within the context of a humble community sacrificing for others as a testament to a longer arc of hope? Yes. But the label “Christian” no longer signifies a specific orientation toward God or others. My claiming of the word could signify my adherence to patriarchy and nativist white supremacy, or it could signify my advocacy to abolish the death penalty, or it could signal that I champion the death penalty and advocate against abortion. It could mean I love capitalism and loathe welfare. Or it could mean I desire to share resources and care for the poor. The word contains multitudes, and it makes me want to reject it. Labels have always been weaponized, but now conversations are like navigating land mines.

We affirm or attack using words whose meaning is unclear, making it all but impossible to really see or know another person, let alone feel affection for them or find common ground.

 We still share a planet though. We share parks and schools and street corners and air and a government. We have to collaborate, and that means we have to keep working to communicate with others. Don’t dismiss others by labeling them, and don’t dismiss yourself by playing it safe in the vague middle. Try harder to speak with precision. Explain your advocacy or frustration in precise ways. Don’t settle for lazy labels that fail to describe the nuance for which you strive. Don’t be a victim of a process that co-opts and muddles words, but choose to precisely claim the things you value. Failing to do so keeps us less known, less appreciated, less connected. Speaking up with precise language sharpens the thinking of everyone around you. You might even find it helps you own your stuff.

Allow me a closing thought on the joys of precision. Three of our four go to a school built around the idea that kids learn best when they are safe and known in all the diversity they bring. They pursue academic excellence through social emotional learning. They experience this mostly in a practice called “Circle”, where every kid and adult gathers several times a week to check in, presenting aspects of their emotional growth, resolving differences in community, and appreciating each other. “Appreciations”, as they are known, are my favorite practice of their school community. Students affirm a specific aspect of another’s identity or behavior. “Brandi, I appreciate they way you…” The guidelines suggest the student must maintain eye contact and speak with precision both on the action or trait and on the way it impacts the speaker.

Isn’t that beautiful? Looking someone in the eye and telling her exactly why you think she is fabulous is a super power. Life is too short to stay vague. In your critiques and appreciations, be specific. Every interaction offers each of us the chance to own our shit, describe our thinking, and appreciate others with precise language. Let’s not by lazy. Let’s communicate openly, with nuance and with specificity, as we work to expand our us.

on women marching and advocating for women

In honor of this weekend’s record-breaking women’s marches, I am posting an essay I wrote last year, after marching in Nashville.  Remembering the varied reactions to the marches and their causes made me wonder—then and now—how to advocate for human flourishing in this particular American moment.  I think we all lose if we buy the lie that advocating for humans and advocating for fetuses are mutually exclusive commitments…

Last Saturday I piled into a car with a couple of 30 year olds, a new teenager, and two women my age (40ish J), and we drove downtown for our Nashville Women’s March.  Some of us had marched before, and some were nervous about their first time.  Some of us were conservative, and some of us were progressive.  Some of us knew immigrants, and some of us did not.  Some of us were prolife, and some of us were prochoice.  Some of us had nothing to hold except a hand, while others held signs attesting to the combined strength of women.  All of us were hopeful, and believed in the power of love and collaboration to spur each other to advocate for all of our civil rights.

We gathered at Cumberland Park and rubbed elbows, hugged, chanted, disagreed, listened, cried, sang and marched together.  I was brought to tears by many of the speakers.  A beautiful black woman with a powerful voice reclaimed the words of Dr. King as she reminded us that progressive white Christian voices are the greatest hindrance to protecting the civil rights of all.  I realized I am responsible for her continued diminished thriving when I tell her to be patient, to wait for equality to come, to lower her voice and trust that things will improve with time.  King’s words, uttered with her own plea, convicted me.  As a follower of Christ I should stand with those whose very presence is treated with skepticism and disdain, just as Christ stood with the broken, came and lived among them, challenging those powers that treated them as untouchable.

An elderly Mexican American, crying through broken English, proudly claimed: “I am America.  I am part of you.  I want to stand with you as your friend and mother.  Will you take my hand?  Will you stand with me?”   She was just a woman, standing in front of thousands of people in a country that sometimes sees people from Mexico as thieves robbing us of our American dream.  She simply asked us to hear her, to see her as a woman, a mom and a grandmother.  She is an American who wants to be seen as a part of our wonderful whole, not as a brown outsider who threatens our unity.   She reminded me that when I place people in groups, when I assume the worst of others, I am ignoring the call of God to move toward outsiders, just as Christ moved toward me and called me, “daughter.”

I was stunned by a Muslim American who reminded me that powerful women provide space for those around them to be.  When I assume an oppressed woman hides under a hijab, I am helping to erase her, stripping her of agency.  This beautiful Muslim woman reminded me that she has her own voice, and asked me to stand with her, not speak for or about her in ignorance. 

“If we do not acknowledge the fear, frustration and pain of vulnerable people, are we not dismissing them?  We cannot overlook divisive and demonizing rhetoric that isolates millions in an effort to advocate for ‘life.’”

There was another voice that troubled me.  A woman advocating for a woman’s right to choose to abort her baby argued there was nothing to regret or mourn about her past abortion.  Some in the crowd cheered.  Some remained silent.  I said, “I wish she hadn’t said that.  Abortion is always awful.” As a person who believes God creates life, I am broken by abortion, and hope no woman ever has to have one.  I know that many other Christians feel so strongly about protecting fetal life that they vote solely on this issue.  They rejected the national Women’s March because it was decidedly pro-choice in its partnerships.  However, being prolife should encourage advocacy for every life diminished or threatened by societal systems.  If I had stayed home because I was afraid of being misunderstood, I would have missed the chance to support women who want to worship freely, or women who want to be physically safe from groping men, or women who want to make their own healthcare choices, or women of color who desire respect, or women who want to provide for their families when they work fulltime, or women who want to keep their children safe and their families together.  If I had stayed home because I wanted to advocate for life, I would have missed the chance to advocate for life in person, in the crowd.  I respect the agency some prolife friends exhibit in participating in this debate, in speaking up for abortion alternatives, in caring for single moms who, despite working full time, cannot support their kids because we don’t have a minimum living wage in our country.  I respect the consistency many friends exhibit when they come alongside women (before and after delivery) who cannot care for a child but carry one to term anyway.  I respect the sacrificial action these women exhibit when they foster and adopt children whose parents chose not to abort, but whose realities remain desperate. 

However, I struggle to understand my prolife friends who describe chronically poor people as lazy, irresponsible parents, while voting into office those who restrict access to birth control, defund affordable housing initiatives, reduce support for agencies who stand in the gap for poor kids, prevent access to insurance subsidies and reject the notion that a person who works full time should also live above the poverty line in our country.  If we do not acknowledge the fear, frustration and pain of these others, are we not dismissing them?  We cannot overlook divisive and demonizing rhetoric that isolates millions in an effort to advocate for “life.”  Christians should advocate for life, but I am afraid the current position defines life in the narrowest of terms.

Might we be better advocates of life if we marched (for instance) with vulnerable people, hearing their stories and affirming they belong?  Might we be better advocates of life if we fought hard to support alternatives for abortion, taking on the challenge to make sure no child is destined to grow up in a community whose opportunities have been aborted?  Might we be better advocates of life if we worked hard to prevent a situation in which a woman feels her only responsible option is to abort a child whom she has no hope of raising to flourish? 

“Powerful women provide space for those around them to be.  Remember that every woman has her own voice, and asks us to stand with her, not speak for or about her in ignorance. ”

It is messy and hard and complicated.  I get it.  But I am appalled at the way many of us (on every side) so easily dismiss hurting people we are called to love because we don’t agree with one position.  Americans worship every weekend in congregations who get things wrong.  And we stay.  And we talk. And we call each other to a better path.  Can we not try to do the same in this current arena?  If the sleeping giant of the church would wake up and enter the public sphere with curiosity and compassion instead of judgment and dismissiveness, we could help restore dignity to every life.  We could take in strangers, care for widows, protect orphans, stop abortions, and seek the peace and flourishing of our cities.  Sounds familiar, right?