Faith Works 1-20-18

Faith Works 1-20-18

Jeff Gill

 

A personal & pastoral thought on #MeToo
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I have no #MeToo story to tell.

 

What I do carry with me is thirty-plus years of sitting, as a pastor, with women in their seventies, eighties, and nineties, in hospitals and nursing homes and living rooms, listening. Hearing story after story after story of being the girl from the country, from a farm, from a constrained circumstance of some sort, and being asked to come to town and be a maid, a companion for an older person, an employee, a boarder. I would guess these stories in my hearing began with a starting point around 1915, rattling down through the decades with peaks in the Great Depression, during World War II, and shortly after war's end and soldiers' return.

 

The stories I'm thinking of almost without exception involved men long dead, which I suspect has much to do with the fact that I've heard relatively few from women closer to my age, about men more recently and who may well be alive. The accounts shared with me by the dying or fearful-of-dying, the post-surgical recovering and the newly moved into nursing care, in moods always reflective and rarely bitter, but often punctuated with anger that never lasted long, were about how they were "taken advantage of" as the phrase usually is applied.

 

To my ears, the words "raped" and "molested" often came to mind, but the circumlocutions and roundabout phrasings clearly had at least a mental familiarity -- as for their spokenness, I usually had the impression this was the first time the story had been told aloud, though I would have no way of knowing for sure.

 

They were usually teens, sometimes in their twenties; it was often the man of the house itself, not a stranger, not a tradesman. Hints and indications would set the scene of daytime at work on nighttime intrusions, but the stories were almost always told me in a spirit of "you can't be too careful," or "this is how I learned to not trust appearances" and of course "sweet words can hide bitter thoughts."

 

I watch the rolling wave of revelations from media, celebrity, religion, politics; I talk to my son about how surprising some names are, and how unsurprising others sound, but if everyone knew, then how could they . . . ?

 

And I think about those stories, told from a perspective of decades past, but with a hint always of how some things aren't as easy to get away with for men, but in general . . . rarely did anyone ask me to do anything in response, and almost always they asked for my confidence, confessing the sins of others though they were. I've granted it almost without exception because there's no one to charge, no score to settle, usually not even any family member to ask for confirmation or apology for not believing them (and rarely had they told a soul at the time). What I think they wanted me to know was how hard women have had it, and a sense from me that I would work to prevent such things in the future if I could.

 

In too many of the stories, there was a marriage not long after the imposition. Not all, but often. Those men, always long deceased themselves, would have their apologies made for them by their victim, later their wife, but still in some way that girl wanting to hear their own forgiveness, to have any fault relieved from their part. But if I was too harsh in my condemnation of the perpetrator, I'd quickly hear a defense (call it a rationalization, but clearly the years had made the story complicated in their own minds) and a request to understand "him."

 

I have no #MeToo story to tell. And the ones I've been more directly engaged in more recently are not mine to tell, some with more justice in the outcomes than others. Like any parish pastor, I have developed a healthy sense of just how complicated life is. But I know that my willingness to believe "her" story and understand "her" hesitations and anxieties -- that's been shaped by the stories I've been entrusted with. They came to me from women now passed on, but those stories in my mind are daily reminders to me that this is a vast and widespread cultural and social and historic problem which we have much to repent for, and a long way yet to go.

 

They too, have a story for this present moment, if only to say it's not a recent issue, just a new willingness to talk more openly about what never should have been a young woman's "guilty" secret.

 

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; as a minister he hears many stories, only some of which can be shared. Tell him what story you'd like told at knapsack77@gmail.com or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.