Learning to Recognize Courage
It is challenging–I was going to say interesting, but no, it is challenging–to explore the theme of courage in a month that encompasses both National Coming Out Day and Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Challenging to read piece after pieces in the SoulMatters resource packet defining courage, urging courage, as indeed my colleagues and I often preach.
Preparing this sermon I read these words:
"You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you cannot have both," from Brené Brown.
And these from Mary Annaise Heglar: "We don’t have to be pollyannish, or fatalistic. We can just be human. We can be messy, imperfect, contradictory, broken. We can recognize the difference between hopelessness and helplessness. Because what if we’ve been doing the equation backward? What if hope isn’t what leads to action? What if courage is what leads to action and hope is what comes next?"
And even these other words, from Audre Lorde, who wrote one of our readings this morning:
"Next time, ask: What's the worst that will happen? Then push yourself a little further than you dare. Once you start to speak, people will yell at you. They will interrupt you, put you down and suggest it's personal. And the world won't end. And the speaking will get easier and easier. And you will find you have fallen in love with your own vision, which you may never have realized you had. And you will lose some friends and lovers and realize you don't miss them. And new ones will find you and cherish you... And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking it."
I read them all and grimaced a bit and my heart said, ‘yes, but’. These and other resources from SoulMatters aren’t wrong but aren’t the whole truth either. They miss the part of the truth that says, sometimes courage isn’t a choice–or rather that sometimes what convention might call lack of courage is in fact the courageous choice.
This past Tuesday dozens of my friends from just about every segment of my life posted coming out stories and greetings on social media. Stories of coming out several times, to successively wider circles of friends, family, acquaintances, business associates. Stories with happy endings–sometimes decades later, sometimes immediately. Bittersweet stories. Stories accompanied by invitations for others to come out, too, but always, every single one, cautious invitations. Over and over again my friends and colleagues and classmates and I said in different words but with the same message: "Come out on this day devoted to coming out, or when the time is right and full and safe for you. For your coming out. For your story. No one else’s."
My own coming out was so non-eventful that I sometimes think I did it wrong or missed a few steps or something. But it could have been otherwise, even for me, a white, cisgender, Unitarian Universalist. And my rights could still be stripped away at not much more than a moment’s notice, it seems. Everyone who has come out–as gay, lesbian, bi, trans, queer, intersex, non-binary–everyone who has come out knows it is a dangerous step to take.
Yes, it may become incrementally safer with each coming out of another individual, until at last it will no longer be dangerous. But that liberatory day is far distant. Beyond the reaches of our vision, even as corporate Pride threatens to obscure Pride’s origins, even as safe/tame gay and lesbian stories are told in mainstream media. Right now, in this moment of history, in late 2022, there is still no getting around the fact that for many people, the more courageous choice is to not come out–despite the hundreds of welcoming voices claiming the water is fine and the sunshine warm and the freedom worth the risk. Despite the thousands of well-intentioned but uninformed voices claiming it is no longer a big deal.
In many situations, and I can’t begin to name them all–all the family situations, all the business situations, all the cultural or religious situations–in many situations, the courageous action is to say now it’s not the time for me to come out. Sometimes the more courageous choice is to know oneself deeply, to accept and embrace and cherish all of whom one is, and still refuse to share that whole self beyond a very small, very safe, very trusted circle. Choosing safety does not mean renouncing courage.
Similarly, for people living lives in which intimate partner violence is a daily possibility if not actual occurrence, the courageous choice may not be leaving, at least not on anyone else’s timeline. Because intimate partner violence is about control and power and those dynamics shift when the survivor leaves or tries to leave the situation, the days and weeks after leaving can be the most dangerous time for a survivor. The choice between comfort and courage is not as clear-cut as it might seem. Leaving takes courage. Staying takes courage. And to those looking on from outside the situation, either one can look like anything other than courage. But that determination is not ours to make.
October, with National Coming Out Day, and National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and here in Savannah Pride weekend (which we’ll hear more about the couple weeks), not to mention Halloween, October invites us to begin to recognize that courage wears many faces, many disguises, speaks many different languages and takes many different shapes. Recognizing it in ourselves and in others requires open hearts and open minds and practice.
As Nigel discovered in our story this morning, sometimes we can access our courage in the presence of parents and others who love us (and it doesn’t hurt to practice on the moon, or stuffed animals or the mirror or stranger on the bus you’re never going to see again). As Anne Sexton reminds us, sometimes courage wears the guise of small things–a baby’s first step, or a parent allowing their child to cross the street alone. And sometimes it is indistinguishable from love. As Mary Oliver observes, sometimes it appears as ears closed against bad advice. And sometimes as the action necessary for saving one’s own life. Audre Lorde concurs, declaring sometimes it takes the form of the bold and reckless survival of those never meant to survive. Sometimes courage looks like resignation or cowardice. Sometimes, if we look carefully we find courage under the disguise of an outwardly short-sighted or misguided career decision. If we listen carefully, we might hear courage in the sound of a term of endearment on the lips of someone who previously has been hurt by those who should have loved and protected them.
It is challenging to speak of courage around National Coming Out Day, in the midst of National Domestic Violence Awareness Month only because we want our examples of desirable qualities–such as courage–to be writ large, printed in brightly colored graphics, simplified into catchy lyrics or bumper sticker slogans. But no human quality, no experience or action that makes life life–precious and holy and dynamic and worth the heartache of living–none of it can be contained that way. There is courage in coming out. And in not coming out. There is courage in daily survival of intimate partner or familial violence. There is courage in the person sitting in the pew in front of you, behind you, beside you. There is courage in you. Let us commit ourselves to the practice of recognizing it, with open hearts and open minds. Amen.