|
How We Learn to be Brave
For those who aren’t able to make it to Portland on Thursday evening, October 8, to hear Bishop Mariann Budde speak at the Merrill Auditorium, I heartily recommend that you read her newest book, How We Learn to Be Brave.
Most of us probably first became aware of Mariann Budde, the Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC, when she preached at the Interfaith Prayer Service for Unity at the National Cathedral on January 21, 2025, the day after Donald Trump returned to the White House as our 47th president. Writing about her sermon after the service, Mariann Budde wrote, “In choosing to speak to the necessary foundations of national unity, which include honoring the inherent dignity of every human being, speaking the truth, and humility born of self-awareness, I sought to address, as respectfully as I could, what was not being acknowledged: that the rising culture of contempt has normalized degrading, dehumanizing, and often violent speech, and threatens to destroy us as a nation. Moreover, millions of people are simply not included in the ascendent vision of America. I appealed to the president to have mercy on those in our country who had every reason to be terrified.”
Many of us who heard Bishop Mariann Budde speak that day (Mariann addressing her words directly to the president and to those in political power in our country), were moved by her testimony; by her fierce and gentle way of speaking the challenging message of the Gospel, by her welcoming invitation to those gathered for the service that day to participate in God’s reign of compassion, justice, and peace, and by her bravery as she, a Christian pastor, dared preach the transformational and liberating Gospel of love, inclusion and justice to those who held the highest offices in our country. (Minutes after her sermon there were calls by those in power to have Mariann Budde removed from her position as Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, to have her imprisoned, and to have her deported.)
While many of us know Mariann Budde from that pivotal moment on January 21, 2025, marveling at her bravery and holding her up as a kind of modern day saint, imbued with gifts and qualities denied to the rest of us, she dispels that notion in her book How we Learn to Be Brave, insisting that being brave in moments when we are called to be brave is something we learn how to do, something we prepare for over time, something practiced over the long haul in community with others.
As Mariann Budde writes, “The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self-awareness, attentiveness, and the willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. Most of life is lived in smaller acts of faithfulness. Only then can we cultivate the hidden virtue of perseverance to keep going when the going gets hard.”
To sum up what Mariann Budde is hoping people will take from her book, she writes, “Heroic possibilities lie within each of us – the inexplicable, unmerited experience of God’s power working through us is real, and we all matter in the realization of all that is good and noble and true. We can learn to be brave.”
As we approach our national elections on November 3 and wonder how we might respond as Christians to whatever transpires in the aftermath of that day, I think it would be helpful for anyone who is interested to read Mariann Budde’s book "How We Learn to Be Brave" and to gather with others for a conversation about it. And so I am proposing that we gather at St. Brendan for a potluck supper at 5:00 on Thursday, November 12, for the purpose of eating together, praying together, and talking about Mariann’s book. (You can order copies of her book through Blue Hill Books, which would be a fine way of supporting a local bookstore. And I would ask that participants read the book before the gathering on the 12th so the conversation can be as fruitful as possible.)
These are tenuous and frightening times. But Mariann Budde invites us to remember a bit of dialogue from “The Lord of the Rings,” as Gandolf exhorts Frodo to have courage… In this particular exchange, Frodo is despairing over the job he has been given to take a magic ring and to throw it into a fiery volcano known as Mordor before the dark lord Sauron can get it and use it for his evil schemes…
As Frodo despairs over what he is being asked to do, he says, “I wish the ring had never come to me… I wish this had never happened,” To which Gandolf replies, “So do all who live in such times. But while we cannot choose the times we live in, we can choose how to respond in the times we are given.”
Frodo finally agrees to take the ring even as he says he “does not know the way.” And Gandolf assures him, saying, “There are other forces at work in this world, Frodo, besides the will of evil.”
Mariann Budde assures us of the same, saying that as a Christian “Giving up hope is not an option.” So with hope and in hope let us learn how to be brave. It’s a process. Let’s learn together. In the name and in the way of Jesus.
| 
