By Jim Heffernan
It’s Women’s History month, and I want to profile a woman of today and review her best selling book.
We might never had heard of Marian Budde if Donald Trump had not decided to have a photo-op on June 1, 2020 in front of her church. Marshalls needed to drive away demonstrators with tear gas before the President posed for the cameras with an upside-down bible.
Bishop Budde’s reply was, “Let me be clear: the president just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the ]udeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches in my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. Everything he has said and done is to inflame violence. We need moral leadership, and he’s done everything to divide us.”
She has been praised for her bravery in that moment and in her sermon during this year’s inauguration when she implored the President to “show mercy to the people who were scared.” Trump was not pleased.
The book is divided into seven chapters and centered around life’s decision points; “deciding to go”, “deciding to stay”, “deciding to start”, “accepting”, “stepping up to the plate”, “letdowns”, and “perseverance”.
I was expecting the book to be primarily about her, but I think the majority is about others who have been influences and examples to her. They include Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King Jr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Thurgood Marshall, figures from the Bible from Abraham to Esther to Jesus, and other priests and rabbis who have touched her life.
This excerpt from the introduction captures the spirit of the book and the qualities we all need in these times:
“I am convinced that we all have the capacity to live within a narrative of great adventure, no matter our life circumstances. 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 willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. It is also a profoundly spiritual experience, one in which we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and guided, somehow, by a larger Spirit at work in the world and in us. Decisive moments make believers out of everyone, for no matter what name we give to it, the inexplicable, unmerited experience of a power greater than our own working through us is real. The audacious truth is that we matter in the realization of all that is good and noble and true. I want to expand our notion of what constitutes a decisive moment, for they come in many forms and require a wide range of decisions, equally decisive yet different in their energy and outcome.”
I want to be among the coalition of the faithful. I want to be among those working for the change we need now.” That’s the decision with which I need to align my life every day.”
I’ll leave you with her definition of courage from page 184:
Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future. To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences. To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
Available Cloud and Leaf Bookstore, Manzanita and Tillamook County Library 202 Pages, (15 Ack. and notes) Published 5/23/2023
As always, discussion welcome at codger817@gmail.com
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