Weary the Road We Trod

by Tolonda Henderson

When I picked up some holiday retail work in the fall of 2000, one of my new co-workers was certain that we had met before. I did not recognize him, though, and thought he must have me confused with someone else.  This did not deter him.  I explained that I had recently cut my hair--from below the waist to about an inch long--but he remained convinced that he knew me. Over the next couple of weeks, we become good friends as we discovered that our lives intersected in a powerful way: he was an ordained gay man and I was a lesbian headed for seminary. It was not until he mentioned a large gay related church conference he had attended the previous summer, however, that it occuredto me why I looked familiar to him.  He had recognized my face from when it had been projected larger than life during WOW2000.  I was, as I put it to him, the one who got up and yelled at everybody. We had a good laught that day, both at the coincidence and at my statement.

I love to be at the center of attention, and I was all too willing and anxious to claim my fame as the one who shook up WOW2000 and led a minor coup with regards to the content of the programming.  As time passed, however, I have come to recognize at least two fundamental flaws with this attitude.  First, it is quite arrogant and self-centered. I was not the only person of color who was unrecognized, unheard and essentially unwelcome in the opening plenary; I was not the only one who took a stand and made a statement that weekend.  To pretend otherwise not only erases the experiences of others, it circumscribes and devalues the prophetic potential that welled up within me and pushed me to insist on the right to speak my mind.

It was also draining to be identified by hundreds of people as, well, "the one who got up and yelled at everybody." I cannot tell you the number of times I was stopped and thanked by white attendees throughout the remainder of the conference, or how many times I challenged these people to articulate precisely why they were grateful to me. There were some who understood the power of what I had done, the risks that I had taken to name what I had named: many people of color whom I had never met before, some anti-racist white friends. They expressed their gratitude by enveloping me in large bear hugs, closing the gap between the divine wounds in our souls. The very act of offering thanks in passing belied the lack of understanding of so many, echoing hollowly like the ovation of a crowd which sat down and continued to participate in a process I had just named as painful.

Another frustration was the fact that my life, my experience, my opinions, my advice were all considered to be fair game.  Any rest or rejuvenation I had hoped to enjoy during the conference was beyond my grasp as "Let me ask you something" became words I both expected and dreaded.

One encounter stands out in a stark contrast. I had found a quiet spot to read a book when a man came around a corner, his face taking on the all too familiar spark of recognition when he saw me. I bracedmyself for the onslaught, but all he said was "Can I intrude for a moment?" By naming his inquiry for what it was -- an intrusion -- he allowed me to retain agency over my own existence and say no. No, you may not intrude. No, you may not place me under glass and examine me as an exotic phenomenon. No, you may not interrupt my escape into the fictional world of the novel you can clearly see that I am reading.  No, no, no. I will always remember him with gratitude for his ability to respect my boundaries and to walk away with a smile -- unasked questions and all.

When I first read Chris Paige's sermon "Seeing Trees", I wanted to write her and identify myself as the one she was writing about. "That was me!" I wanted to say.  "I was the young woman who identified the racial divide on the morning of the third day." I don't often think of procrastination as God's way of working in my life, but the fact that I never got around to writing that letter gave me the opportunity to read and re-read the sermon until I came to realize that her words were not about me at all.  Would that sermon have been written if I had not been in De Kalb that summer, if I had not been filled with righteous anger and unswayable persistence, if I had not spoken my mind?  No, probably not.  But Paige did not write about the actions of Tolonda Henderson, conference-disrupter extraordinaire.  She wrote of an a young woman who was a catalyst in her own personal transformation, shifting attention from me as an individual to larger issues of racism and privilege.  By recognizing these as the proper objects of detailed scrutiny, she not only commits to doing her own work around race, she challenged me to not invite the kind of intrusion I found so frustrating and yet opened myself up for every time I identified myself as "the one."

Early August of 2000 was a watershed time in my life.  After years of resistance, I was opened to hear God call me into a life of ministry during the National Gathering of the United Church of Christ Coalition for LGBT Concerns.  God continued to work through me during WOW2000, empoering me to lean into righteous anger and demand to be heard.  In the final analysis, it is still rather exciting to know that my refusal to be silenced that weekend invited at least one person to think about what it would mean to stop being a "good white liberal Christian" and be an anti-racist ally instead. I had something to do with at least one congregation being challenged to embark on "a journey of breaking silences" to become "as well educated and outspoken about racism as it is about heterosexism."  This is the kind of journey I can walk along side as a person of color without becoming weary or overwhelmed by having to carry a burden larger than my own.  I hope to be involved with this and other similar journeys among people of faith wrestling with the evil of racism. Hopefully I can do it without yelling at anyone.