nineteenth sunday of ordinary time

it was a nice day for a protest, cool and fair. there were the usual waves and thumbs up.

the scary moment was where a car proceeding through the intersection southbound after stopping was very nearly t-boned by a driver with out-of state plates going WAY TOO FAST who completely failed to stop at the stop sign even though it has a flashing light on it.

but mostly i was thinking: some days i don;t really feel like taking the single most painful episode of my life and putting it out on the streetcorner. sometimes i do not feel like being in touch with that.

but it is important work, and i am in it for the long haul. i will do it, if necessary, until i am simply too old to stand with the sign.

today at the end of my time on the corner a young man came and asked if he could take my picture. and he asked about my story. and he asked if i would mind if he posted it to facebook.

by all means, do.

while it is a personal thing, i am trying to communicate something about a problem not just of the church community of the williston federated church, but a cultural norm in which the victim of an assault is blamed for the consequences of the assault.

"if you had only kept quiet about it", they tell us, "it would have been fine".

"we were ok with it until you started to talk about it", they tell us.

let me be blunt about it: when it happens to your son or your daughter or to you, the problem will begin at the point of the assault, with the bad behavior of the perpetrator and not at the point at which you or your child speak up, or even at the point where they fall apart under the strain of trying to keep it quiet.

the problem is very firmly the act of the assault and secondarily the attempt to keep it all nice and quiet, because people would be uncomfortable.

i was also thinking today about how it will feel at the end of october when the protest will be a year old, and i was thinking about how cold it will feel come thanksgiving and how lonely it will feel standing outside the church on christmas eve.

i was thinking how it will feel to be standing outside while the pastor gives that "welcome home, everybody is welcome" sermon that she aways gives on christmas. i was thinking how it will feel to look at the candle light and the expressions of goodwill and hope from out in the darkness, on the street.

seasons turn. years pass. i am not yet fifty years old. there are a lot of years in me yet.

i'll see you on the streetcorner.