I’ve lamented my way through my time at Yale Divinity School, crying out in both pain and gratitude because I am surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses and because my grandparents were not there to see me receive my Master of Divinity. I am becoming more fluent in the language of lament, learning its hollow vowels, complex conjugations, and myriad metaphors. And I thank God that God’s still patiently listening for my voice, even when I don’t really want to talk.
Many male clergy routinely disrespect women, including fellow clergy, through words, actions, and thoughts. None of this is by coincidence or happenstance, nor does it happen in isolation—it is both by design and a perpetual product of society’s, including the church’s, refusal not just to explicitly acknowledge sexism and misogyny but far more critically, to do the dire work of repenting and addressing these ills in ways that do not require women to “to do the work.”
The things that cause kids to die in this country – hate crimes, suicide, racism, neglect, abuse, hunger, war, gun violence – were no different in Langston Hughes’ day than they are now, and they ought to spur us not just to act but to move. What movements ought we to be crafting to love and protect children?