“How dare you treat me this way! Can’t you see I’m suffering?” These were the words Dr Donna Hicks used to describe what underlay the emotion on both sides in many unresolved disputes. As a conflict resolution specialist, she found treating ourselves and others with dignity was of primary importance before communication could even begin.
In my own life, I have become more aware of how I have not always treated myself and others with dignity and of the cost of not doing so. It has been an eye-opener for me to witness how often I can slide into contempt. It is not necessarily outright aggression but an inability at times to give others a listening ear. Fear is the driving force behind this. The Dignity-Contempt Index, a project of Unite is useful in that it highlights where I may be on this continuum. Am I self-righteously seeing myself on the side of ‘good’ or am I able to see myself in every human being?
When we seek power over others, we may be hiding a deep sense of shame. We pass this on from one generation to the next. Embracing our vulnerability and that of others with kindness and compassion may be what we need to do before we enter any debate or conversation even about women’s ordination.
As women, we do need to recognize our suffering. It is real! Maybe reading aloud a lament psalm as a community is a way of expressing the pain in our hearts. We can even be a little bit self-righteous because we know that Love understands but we are not projecting onto others that they do not also feel this way.
“Long enough have I been dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for fighting.” (Psalm 120: 6-7).
We are reminded in Psalm 44 that we cannot save ourselves in our fight for justice:
“For they did not gain possession of the land by their own sword,
Nor did their own arm save them;
But it was Your right hand, Your arm, and the light of Your countenance
Because You favoured them.”
There is a letting go involved here. We can’t force solutions. How many times have I fallen on my face in my attempts to fix a situation? It often has only gotten worse because I have been unable to suffer and let the pain be until it moved through my body or until I could begin again to hope, to walk humbly, and to wonder what Creative Love was doing and ask that I participate in it. Jewish theologian Abraham Heschel is said to have prayed, “I did not ask for success…I asked for wonder, and he gave it to me.”
Thinking of the upcoming LCANZ Synod, we can also pray to power, Psalm 122: 7, “May peace reign in your walls, in your palaces, peace!” We are praying dare I say, for our enemies. I do not like to think of our enemies as individual people but as a systemic darkness in us all, that does not acknowledge the suffering of others and the dignity we have as the body of Christ. “For love of the house of the Lord I will ask for your good” (Psalm 122: 9).
