Way Ahead Threads: Audre Lorde on being the change you wish to see

March 11, 2009

Audre Lorde on being the change you wish to see

The thing about being a feminist is that there's always something new to set your, by which I mean my, teeth on edge.

I was looking at the Audre Lord Project in New York City and noticed in a block on the left these words:

We must be the change we wish to see in the world. Audre Lord

Hmm. Don't know about you, but I've seen that quotation attributed to Mahatma Gandhi more times than I can count. I did some searching and turned up the news that Gandhi never said it. Oh, go ahead, doubt me all you want, but then go read what the gandhitopia site says and start spreading the news. The mahatma said a lot of important things. However, when it comes to being the change we wish to see, it's all Audre Lorde all the time.

Tell everybody you know. It may seem a small thing, but our lives are woven, stitched, embroidered, engraved, delineated, written one small thing at a time, and to give credit where credit is due is no small thing at all.

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Artist Statement

In 2005, a ruling of the Judicial Council of the United Methodist Church upheld a local pastor in his decision to refuse church membership to a person because that person was/is gay. Learning of the Council's decision, I, as a matter of conscience, cut all ties* with the United Methodist Church, including the bonds of ordination.

In 2008, I started deconstructing (literally) a copy of my 2003 memoir Grace and making it into mail art. I've recently realized that tearing my book to shreds was in part an act of frustration brought on by the Judicial Council ruling, which made the book historical nonfiction rather than contemporary reality.

Everything I said in the book about love remains true. However, the things I said about the United Methodist Church's theology and polity -- how, for instance, we believe in prevenient grace and that God, rather than any individual pastor, leads and allows people into membership -- are now false.

This blog and my art are a call to the UMC to remember its heritage, mission, and ministry; to renounce its apostasy from its theological heritage; and to return to being a church rather than a country club for the supposed elite.

This blog and my art are also a shout of welcome to friends and a space of comfort and joy for the dechurched, the nonchurched, and the churched of all shapes and sizes and sexes and textures.

*except the ties of friendship with people who as a matter of conscience remain within the UMC and there work toward reformation

Way Ahead Threads

March 11, 2009

Audre Lorde on being the change you wish to see

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Fabulous Feminist Links, some of which are explicit