WE WERE MADE FOR THESE TIMES: the slow power of NO
Rev. Kit Ketcham, January 21, 2017
Women’s March, Astoria OR
Our emphasis
today is on the positive, what we want to achieve despite the challenges of our
current national situation. But the
words of Clarissa Pinkola Estes , “we were made for these times” resonated with
me and got me to thinking about just HOW we were made for these times.
We have indeed been training for
these times all our lives, from the moment we discovered the power of the word
NO, at age 2. As we grew older and
faced challenges we did not choose, we said NO over and over again. As teenagers, we used NO to separate from our
parents, well-meaning as they may have been.
We have said
NO to countless useless wars and our NOs have resounded down the halls of
academia during VietNam, in the streets during the Gulf and Afghanistan and Iraq
wars. And some of us are old enough to
have said NO to Hitler and his Nazis.
We have said
NO to offshore drilling, fracking, desecration of sacred land, and misuse of
our waters and our beautiful natural lands.
We have said
NO to mistreatment of women, children, and men.
NO to sexual violence. NO to
illegal drugs and cigarettes. We have
said NO to unjust laws. We said NO to
HIV/AIDS and homophobia and transphobia.
We have said NO over and over again to gun and sexual violence.
Sometimes our NOs seemed to fall on
deaf ears, but every NO we said in an effort to maintain human rights, dignity
and justice for all, and to stop offenses against the land fell upon those ears
that could hear, opened pathways of YES as more came to join us in our cause.
And the more
times we said NO, the more YESES we heard from other people who felt the same
way and came to join us.
The Power of
NO is a slow-moving power, whether we’re two years old, rebellious teenagers
aching to be independent, or protestors in the streets. It takes time for NO to become visible, to
take shape in our national consciousness.
And here we
are, saying NO once again, because we have learned that NO has power, that NO
brings change, that NO may take longer than we wish to bear fruit, but it does
bear fruit.
We have
chipped away with our NOs steadily and determinedly at the world’s and our
nation’s problems, even though sometimes the way was dark and many delays
occurred. In the process, we have turned
many NOs into YESes.
For every
time we stand up and voice our concerns and our hopes, we turn NO into
YES. We watch the foundations of
oppression begin to crumble and fall, as NOs turn into YESes as the light dawns
in human consciousness.
We can do this. We were made for these times, we have honed
our voices and our skills and our resolve.
And the world and our nation are watching. YES!
Let me hear you say it: YES! YES!
YES!
