When We Fight, We Win

"When We Fight, We Win" does not mean we win every battle. It does not mean there are not heartbreaking defeats, demoralizing setbacks and sleepless nights wondering WTF. It does not mean that the principalities and powers we fight against -- racism, sexism, heterosexism, patriarchalism (just to name a few) are not deeply entrenched and wired into this beautiful and broken world which this morning feels further than ever from the Beloved Community it was created to be.

Nevertheless, we persist.

And we need icons of persistence, I give you the Philadelphia Eleven. I give you eleven women who picked themselves up off the floor when the 1973 General Convention of the Episcopal Church gut punched them by voting down the ordination of women by a wider margin than it had voted it down in 1970 and organized a resistance movement that led to their ordinations in July 1974 -- and to the regularizing of those ordinations in 1976.

Today's election results feel to me like I imagine that 1973 vote felt to them as they questioned everything they thought they knew about the church they loved and served. I know I'm not alone in questioning how to respond to this gut punch from a nation theoretically dedicated to liberty and justice for all choosing to vote instead for power and privilege for some.

Today I don't have answers.
But I do have faith.
I do have community.
I do have sisters in the struggle, brothers and non-binary siblings in the fight and the history of The Philadelphia Eleven in my heart.

When We Fight, We Win
And we have only begun to fight.
La lucha continua