Over the weekend, my partner and I were doing some cleaning out of things that never quite got cleaned out when we moved. You know what I mean. There are the couple of boxes where you just dumped everything when you had no clue what box it should go in. There's the stuff kept for sentimental reasons that, in the right mindset, can be called junk and tossed.
And then there are the clothes.
Like many, many people, I own a range of clothing sizes. Let's not talk about the weight range they encompass, please. There's the lose 10 pounds box, and the lose 20 pounds box, stepping down quite a way. There's the dream box with about five articles of clothing in it from that three months I was that size. If I hadn't gotten the flu, I'm pretty sure I'd have never been that small.
When we moved, we took many boxes to Goodwill. Unpacking in the new place still made it clear how very, very many clothes I own. We pulled out all the clothes boxes over the weekend, and I gleaned two more IKEA bags to get out of our spare bedroom.
Some of the clothes were more worn out than I'd remembered. Some were more out of style than I remembered. Three of the items were tossed because I'd been sexually harassed while wearing them. Wait, on second thought, maybe I should count it as four. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Me, Too on the blog for the local conference of the United Church of Christ, especially naming how rampant sexual harassment is in the church. For some women, Me, Too is triggering, bringing up many terrible and traumatic memories. For others, like me, it has erased some of the guilt and shame. Let's be honest, it's not just Me, Too. It's years of conversation about the harassment women experience just for existing.
My partner was in the room when I pulled out the gray striped sweater I had been wearing for the worst incident. A married pastor later told me how attractive I was when wearing that sweater, along with plenty of other inappropriate things. I turned to my partner, "This was the shirt I was wearing when I was sexually harassed. I should get rid of it, right?" I asked. Of course he said yes. If the memory clings after five, six, maybe even seven years, that seems the better thing to do. It's become clearer after the fact that incident was worse than I knew at the time.
I also got rid of the pink shirt I was wearing when a young man struggling with his life made unwanted sexual advances. I was in the back parking lot of the church, doing something or other for the church where I was a youth and children's minister. He'd been attending on and off for a few weeks. In a space where I've always been told I should be exceptionally nice and welcome, I had no idea how to stop him. It was church, so being rude was not an option--at least not then.
I long ago got rid of the skirt I was wearing when a seminary classmate ran his hand up my thigh and wouldn't stop when I told him to. I so love the dress I was wearing when he thought it appropriate to toss small objects between my breasts that I kept that. This time, I got rid of the not so liked dress where he did the same. I also got rid of the shirt I was wearing the day he made it clear he wanted to do all of those things.
The "What Were You Wearing" exhibit pops into my mind as I reflect on these clothes. Maybe these clothes matter so much because I've been told they do--as if clothing invites a certain kind of touch. It might be my particular sort of memory, too, that I can picture each incident with alarming clarity.
As more and more stories about sexual harassment and assault surface, there seems to be a glimmer of hope that the tide is changing. I have this deep, abiding hope that the church, groaning with age and girth, moves, too. After all, complicity is one of the church's greatest sins in many things, including harassment of women.
I don't have much to say in the way of Jesus things about this particular topic, so here's what I do know. As a pastor, I hold people's secrets and their confidences. I use two words with intention. Confidences are things that need to be held--often until they're ready to be revealed. The most joyous of those confidences are about pregnancies, still too tenuous to be shared with many. Secrets, though, are darker, more sinister. They are the things that must not be spoken because of guilt and shame. They carry great weight and it seems there is nothing that can relieve that weight.
Totally out of context and not well-exegeted at all, I still think of this passage whenever I learn a new secret, "Nothing is hidden that won't be revealed, and nothing is secret that won't be brought out into the open. Therefore, whatever you have said in the darkness will be heard in the light, and whatever you have whispered in rooms deep inside the house will be announced from the rooftops." (Luke 12:2-3)
It's an alarming promise if there's a secret you desperately want kept.
It's an amazing promise if the Reign of God means the guilt and shame around those secrets dissipates so that they can be spoken aloud.
For everyone who can say, "Me, too," may their secrets be turned to justice.
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