Friday Tea: Not everything that is faced can be changed...
...but nothing can be changed until it is faced.
I’m looking forward to reading Talia Lavin’s new book, Wild faith: how the Christian right is taking over America because I participated in Lavin’s corporal punishment research back in 2021. It’s a gut-churning topic, but one that cannot be ignored.
“What the writer is always trying to do is utilize the particular in order to reveal something much larger and heavier than any particular can be,” wrote James Baldwin in 1962. “Our particulars are not very attractive…but we must use them. They will not go away because we pretend that they are not there.”
And then Baldwin’s famous line: “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
We’re facing a truckful of ugly things in the United States, but I’d like to commend one brave podcast by my friend and fellow advocate, Fr. Chris Marchand. For the last six months, Chris has been broadcasting the stories of abuse survivors from the Anglican Church in North America on The Wall of Silence. The stories are heavy but important. If you can’t handle listening to multiple episodes right now, consider going over to Apple Podcasts and giving the show a positive rating to balance the one-star reviews from the flying monkeys.
If, on the other hand, the state of the country has you in constant panic mode and you’re surviving on episodes of GBBO, I’ll leave you with this joke from my first-grader:
”Mom! Do you know what happens when Prue puts her hands in the water for too long? They get pruny. Get it? Prue-ny?”
