CHANGING OUR PERSPECTIVE ON RACISM

Rev. Kit Ketcham

January 17, 2021

The past couple of years have been tumultuous, not just because of the pandemic and its lockdowns, social distancing, and the politicization of national health, but because we as a global society are having to come to terms with a previously unseen and evil force:  the white supremacy which lies like a deadening blanket over our relationships with our fellow human beings of color.

Like many of you, no doubt, I have been doing a lot of reading about white fragility, white supremacy, institutional racism, and looking at myself and my own history of growing up in a world of racial privilege that I didn’t even notice, most of the time.

One of the books I read was Isabel Wilkerson’s CASTE:  the origins of our discontents.  Wilkerson’s personal experiences, her scholarship, and her knack of telling stories and making connections with our painful American history gave me a picture of an embedded poison in our heritage that has come to a head with political and social events of recent decades.

Her book starts with an analogy, one you may not have heard before.  

In the summer of 2016, in the Siberian tundra, an abnormal heat wave caused the tundra to warm up to the point where something unusual began to happen.  A strange pathogen sickened and killed hundreds of human beings and animals.  It was discovered to be the anthrax pathogen which had killed herds of reindeer decades earlier, carcasses buried in the permafrost since WWII and now surfacing unexpectedly to cause havoc as the pathogen awakened in the heat.  It seeped into the grazing lands and infected reindeer and herders who raised and relied upon those animals for sustenance.

Wilkerson writes:  “The anthrax, like the reactivation of the human pathogens of hatred and tribalism in this evolving century, had never died.  It lay in wait, sleeping, until extreme circumstances brought it to the surface and back to life.”

That same year, 2016, in the USA, two candidates vied for the office of POTUS, one a no-nonsense woman with decades of experience and highly qualified, the other an impetuous billionaire, reality TV star, prone to insulting anyone unlike himself, who had never held public office.

During the campaign, these polar opposites displayed opposite campaign tactics as well.  The billionaire boasted about his sexual assaults, mocked the disabled, encouraged violence, declared FAKE NEWS to be endemic in the media, and had his supporters shouting “Lock her up” at every rally.

On the other side of the aisle, the woman candidate could hardly get a word in edgewise when, at debates, the billionaire loomed over her as she spoke, as if threatening her from behind her podium.  And despite her obvious qualifications, she was a woman and therefore the billionaire’s target.

After the election, won by probably the least qualified candidate in US history, anger and fear for our democracy arose in large pockets of resistance across the land:  the Women’s March movement, Black Lives Matter, and several others, and we as a nation began to see how deeply divided our citizenry is.

During the past four years, my concern and disgust toward the situation which was developing as the president of the US wreaked havoc drove me to read what I could about both the person in the White House and the motives which seemed to be driving him.

We have known for a long time that systematic, institutional racism infects our culture deeply.  But what does it look like in other parts of the world?  Isabel Wilkerson’s book CASTE addressed that topic and as I read it, I could see that it was bigger than US history.  It did not start with slavery in our country but was a logical progression in a worldview which regarded certain classes of people to be less than human.

Wilkerson discusses three major caste systems throughout the book:  India, Nazi Germany, and America.  There are differences, of course, but there are many similarities.  Did you know, for example, that the Nazis actually studied America’s segregation practices and Jim Crow laws in their run-up to Jewish persecution and execution?

She describes 8 pillars of the Caste system, ancient principles upon which a caste system is constructed, beliefs that were at one time or another deep within the culture and collective subconscious of most every inhabitant.  That’s how caste develops and functions.  These foundational concepts have arisen from Wilkerson’s study of the ancient principles underlying the parallels, overlap, and commonalities of three major caste hierarchies.

As I describe them, I hope you’ll think about where you have seen or experienced these pillars at work in our American life, as well as in other societies you may be familiar with.

The first of these principles is “Divine Will and the Laws of Nature”

Religious legends have been told for centuries about how the gods or god created a hierarchy of human beings---in Hinduism, for example, the Brahmin is the head, the mouth, the philosopher, priest, the one nearest the gods;  and then downwards, level by bodily level,  according  each part of the human body to a certain social role. 

 The Brahmin is the head, and the feet are the servants which bear the burden, and they are at the bottom.  Yet not quite at the bottom, for there are the Untouchables, now called Dalits, who pollute with their very shadow, the Outcastes.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine yourself born into a caste level that is unchangeable, controls who you may marry, causes you to fear the possibility of pollution from a lower caste person or, if you are a lower caste person, the fear of being accused and punished for offenses of pollution.  

Imagine that you are limited to certain kinds of work and education, that you are vulnerable to oppression in health care, that terror and cruelty, both psychological and physical, are used to control you.  Imagine that you are always to be part of the inherently superior caste and always to assume that members of a lower caste are stereotypically dangerous criminals or dishonest in their financial dealings.

I’m sure that most of us can see how these levels of caste appear in human life, not just in Hinduism and Nazi Germany, but in American life.

Even though here in the US, we don’t openly label the levels of hierarchy, they still shape our expectations and behavior, in some of us more than others. 

The second pillar of caste is Heritability: the mechanism by which a member of a caste can never escape that caste level.  Born a Brahmin, always a Brahmin.  Born a Rockefeller, always a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or a Roosevelt.  Born a Black, always a Black no matter how educated or talented. Even with a Harvard education, Barack Obama was still Black and, by many, considered to be lower caste.

The third pillar of caste is Control of Marriage and Mating:  that a member of the upper level must marry or mate with another member of the upper level. Certain people are not allowed to marry or mate, no matter what their level status, even if they’re white----as in same sex relationships.  Blacks and whites must not marry or mate.  I remember the reaction I got from family members when I revealed that my first serious love was a Black man whom I had met in our religious tradition, American Baptist.

The fourth pillar of caste is Purity versus Pollution:  the need to be pure of blood, not polluted by blood from a lower caste person.  Even a drop of Black blood meant a person was black.  Earlier in the 20^th century, Jews and Blacks were forbidden to use certain pools and beaches and whites would not enter water that had touched black skin.  And segregation, of course, meant exclusion of the polluting caste. Over the centuries, the dominant caste has taken extreme measures to protect its sanctity from the perceived taint of the lower castes.

The fifth pillar of caste is Occupational Hierarchy:  a division of labor depending on one’s place in the caste hierarchy.  The drudge work went to those who were considered to be of low intelligence and skill---the slave in early American history, as an example.  

A Southern politician declared this central doctrine from the floor of the US Senate in March 1858:  “In all social systems, there must be a class to do the menial duties, to perform the drudgery of life,” said Senator James Henry Hammond of South Carolina. “That is a class requiring but a low order of intellect and but little skill.  Its requisites are vigor, docility, fidelity, such a class you must have---it constitutes the very mudsill of society.”

The sixth pillar of caste is Dehumanization and Stigma:  Black people and Jewish people in history have been used for medical and social experimentation, treated cruelly deliberately because they were not considered human and couldn’t feel pain the way real people felt pain.  This treatment was documented in Nazi concentration camps and in literature that came out of the slavery days in America. Brown children in cages at the Mexican border, torn from their parents, is another more recent example.

To dehumanize another human being is not merely to declare that someone is not human, and it does not happen by accident.  It is a process, a programming.  It takes energy and reinforcement to deny what is self-evident in another member of one’s own species.

The seventh pillar of caste is Terror as Enforcement and Cruelty for Control:  violence and terror, both physical and psychological, have been used to control and prevent resistance.

A quote from p. 151 of Wilkerson’s book:  “Jews in Nazi controlled Europe, African-Americans in the antebellum and Jim Crow South, and Dalits in India were all at the mercy of people who had been fed a diet of contempt and hate for them, and had incentive to try to prove their superiority by joining in or acquiescing to cruelties against (their) fellow humans.”

Black and Brown and Jewish people live with a constant concern that they may become targets for those who have terror and cruelty to the Other embedded in themselves by this assumption.

The eighth pillar of caste is Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority:  people are forced into roles that are stereotypical of their caste level.  There is an assumption embedded in this pillar that Blacks are dangerous criminals and violent, that Jews are sly and money-grubbing, that Brown people are lazy or stupid.

One teaching technique for elementary students has been the division in the classroom by eye color, designating the blue-eyed children, for example, as less deserving and the brown eyed children as more deserving.  Privileges and treats were doled out according to eye color and after lunch, the designation was changed---blue eyed children were the deserving group and brown-eyed kids were less deserving.  

It was a dramatic way of showing the ways physical appearance can be stigmatizing and it was maybe too effective, as children reported the abuse and name-calling they experienced when they were the less-deserving kids and the more deserving children were observed relishing their opportunity to abuse and harass the others.  This technique, of course, varies in its success, depending on the skill and empathy of the teacher!

Imagine the training that Black and Brown and Jewish parents must give their kids, the warnings about staying in line, not disobeying the limitations of their caste, and at the same time, encouraging them to get education, to strive for excellence, without fear and always knowing that fear for their children is part of the equation.

What training did our parents give us?  My well-meaning parents gave me the standard lessons for girls:  don’t date certain boys, keep your knees together, keep the doors locked on the car, that sort of thing---pretty mild compared to what Black parents, for example, have to teach their children.

The world has changed, yes, and perhaps things are a bit better than they were in the 50’s and 60’s in America, but when the attempted coup by angry Trump supporters occurred 10 days ago, it became clear that we are still fighting the battle to establish in this country a multi-racial, multi-cultural democracy.

We are further realizing that this has never been successfully achieved in our history.  It is a shining goal, an ambition we may not have considered possible in the past but now see as essential, if democracy is to survive and prosper in our nation.

I read a blog weekly by an organization led by Darren Walker, its president.  On January 7, he wrote this, which I will read in closing:

I have long believed that inequality is the greatest threat to justice—and, the corollary, that white supremacy is the greatest threat to democracy. But what has become clear during recent weeks—and all the more apparent yesterday—is that the converse is also true: Democracy is the greatest threat to white supremacy.

As the inimitable, incisive Isabel Wilkerson Tweeted in real time, “we have seen caste in action.”

I, too, cannot see yesterday’s insurrection as anything other than the latest chapter in a long, dispiriting, exhausting history. And yet, from this very same history, I also—perhaps, paradoxically—draw hope.

I’m hopeful because, from our founding contradiction, we have emerged a freer, fairer nation. All too slowly, all too unevenly, all too imperfectly—and at far too high a cost—we, the people, have struggled to root out the strand of white supremacy in our country’s DNA.

Our founding aspirations were just that: aspirations. It’s been the work of generations—from Frederick Douglass and Fannie Lou Hamer to Harriet Tubman and Bayard Rustin—to realize these aspirations. And while much remains to be done, and undone, I believe we can emerge—and are emerging—a more unified, more equal, more just, more American America.

Yes, the ideal of democracy is the greatest threat to the ideology of white supremacy; neither can long endure in the presence of the other. That is why today—and every day—we must renew our commitment to protect our democratic values and institutions from all enemies, foreign and domestic, especially those falsely disguised as patriots.

Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer, followed by our closing song.

BENEDICTION:  Our worship service, our time of shaping worth together, is ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering what we have heard today and looking for the evil traces of caste in the situations we observe and read about.  May we be vigilant in eliminating those caste expectations from our lives and may we continue to do all we can to make the world a safer place for our blossoming multicultural, multiracial democracy.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

The Birth of Ms. Kitty

When I was married, we had an old VW bus in which we traversed Colorado and parts west and east.  My husband loved the idea of communicating with the semi drivers who plied the interstates, so he bought a CB radio for the bus and we all decided on our CB "handles". 

I think Larry was Silver Bullet, our son Mike was the Midnight Bullet (I could be wrong---maybe he'll correct me), and I, riffing on the old Gunsmoke TV show, decided I would be Ms. Kitty.  This moniker was a slight dig at my husband who once complained that the term "Ms." meant manuscript.  You might be able to tell he was an English major.

In any case, after we split up amicably, we shared the bus and the boy, and I entered a whole new stage of life.  My mother had suggested I look into joining Mensa as a way of making new friends.  I hadn't given much thought to the early years when my being a brainiac in high school had invited some of those hated nicknames, but she persisted and I took the IQ test and qualified for Mensahood.

As I got acquainted with other nerds (whose chief attraction was that they thought I was funny--not funny-looking or weird, but that they laughed at my jokes), I discovered that when they heard the nickname Ms. Kitty, they loved it! 

All these new friends immediately recognized the updating of Amanda Blake, the Miss Kitty of Gunsmoke and the apparent paramour of Sheriff Matt Dillon.  I became Ms. Kitty of Denver Mile High Mensa.  Not exactly a saloon, but we did spend a certain amount of time on bar stools after meetings and at TGIFs.

Ms. Kitty became a persona for me, over time, a persona that had to be set aside during my ministry studies and the 20 years I spent in ministry.  I was essentially celibate for those 25 years and continue with that approach to new friends, being the "A" in the sexual minority alphabet, where, in my case, it stands for both Ally and asexual.  I'm past caring about having a sexual partner.  I just want friends who laugh at my jokes.

What's in a Name?

When, in 1958, I came home from high school Baptist summer camp having decided to change my nickname from Betsy (from Elizabeth) to Kit (from nothing other than it was alliterative with my surname Ketcham) and announced this to my family, I blithely thought they had taken it in stride, a phase in the life of their eldest daughter who was beginning to show signs of flying the coop.

But the truth was that I was sick of being Betsy.  Betsy sounded so immature, a pigtailed persona with pimples.  Betsy Ketcham was too easy a name to turn into semi-insulting taunts:  Ketchup, Ketchy Belchum, Betsy Wetsy, Catgut, Ketcham and Kissum, and the like.

I had learned from my dad not to rise to the bait but to laugh off the slurs rather than to get mad or hurt.  He had learned this trick as a teenager who was 6'6", 140 pounds soaking wet, and teased unmercifully as a result.  So I coped, but when I went to college, I had made up my mind:  my family could still call me Betsy, but to everyone else, I was going to be Kit.

This transition was hard on my parents, who loved the name Elizabeth and had bestowed the nickname Betsy at birth.  They still called me Betsy, even in public where my fellow college chums could hear, and my sister was miffed because I had a lot of nicknames at my disposal, like Beth and Liza, and wasn't using them.  She didn't see what was so bad about Lizzie, but I did, and I wasn't going there either.  She had a very normal name with few nickname alternatives and she was peeved that she had very little to work with.

My brother had been given a difficult name himself, named for my father and our maternal grandfather, both of these names a mouthful and always requiring an explanation, both of their origin and how to spell them.  He has grown into his difficult name and wears it proudly these days, as far as I can tell.

Now, as an adult about to achieve my 78th birthday, I have been Kit for 61 years.  Kit, of course, has its own set of take-offs:  Kit Karson, Kitty, Kitsy, and the inevitable question arises---is your real name Kathleen?  I didn't really avoid much unnecessary attention by becoming Kit.  I still, in some circles, enjoy the moniker "Ms. Kitty", as you'll see from the name of my blog.

Missing Real Contact with Friends

It struck me this morning in the middle of my 7th week of quarantine that what is getting me down these days is the lack of real contact with friends.  Yes, there's Facebook and email and Messenger and the phone, but there's no hugging, no coffees or lunches together, no singing together, no long conversations marked by laughter or tears, no cooking for guests, none of the deep normal pleasures of friendships both longtime and new.

As an extrovert with introvert tendencies, I can attest that I love the quietness, the solitude, the time to work on projects uninterrupted, the occasional sit-down at a distance with somebody equally wary about safe distance.  All these are important parts of my quarantined life and I am grateful.

But since I retired, I've had the chance to meet new friends, friends I'm not professionally connected to, friends who bring newness into my life, friends to sing with, to let down my hair with, to allow to know me more deeply than most others, to be my real self with, not the professional persona of ministry.

These (mostly women) friends have been the greatest gifts of retirement for me and I have loved the time spent with them over a glass of wine or cup of coffee, a meal, a jam session, a walk, a conversation that frequently erupted into gales of laughter, a chance to hug and be hugged, a sense of being nourished by a friendship.  Not joined at the hip but ready to meet and replenish the wells of responsible living that are easily drained down by our obligations.

Most of my friendships seem to be online or on-phone these days and I am longing for the day when I can see friends face to face, hug them, laugh with them out loud instead of with emojis.  I'm not planning to resist the rest of the quarantine but I sure will celebrate it when it comes.

Friends are clearly a lifeline for me, especially with family members far away.  This experience has made me so aware of my friendships and how important they are.  I am grateful.

Murder on the Riverwalk?

MURDER ON THE RIVERWALK?

Kit Ketcham

August 2018

         It started out innocently enough a few months ago, I swear.  I’d been hooked on the idea of a murder since my Gearhart days, wondering if it was worth the effort, worth the expense, worth the public condemnation, worth the possible repercussions, as I’d heard warnings of all of these.

         You won’t be able to quit, they told me.  You’ll get dependent on the thrill.  You’ll spend your hard-earned pennies on setting the stage, wooing the victims, arranging the set-up and following through.  Once you set things in motion, you have to continue, mindful of the enemies you may make and the friends you may lose.  And the victim may seek revenge.

         My early attempts in Gearhart were spotty and unsatisfying.  The set-up proved to be illusory, too hard to get the target to cooperate, and once I did get a feeble effort underway, I ended up moving to Astoria and having to bunch the whole deal.

         But I moved to Alderbrook in Astoria, to a spot near enough to the Riverwalk that it might be possible to pull off a murder without attracting too much attention.  So I brooded and I watched and I listened, familiarizing myself with my new environment, its challenges and its advantages.

         There’s lots of open space in the natural area, lots of trees, plenty of cover, and, early in the morning, not too many intruders on my intended territory.  The path seemed a perfect surface—easily picked clean of other debris, easy to spot the lure of the bait from the alders and willows, where my intended prey seemed to lurk.

         So I began to set the trap.  Each morning I’d fill a baggie full of bait, stuffing it in a pocket on the other side of the doggie biscuits I always carry.  If I saw an intended target, I’d make a great show of turning around and flinging my mysterious lures in the air, making sure that my motions would be easily spotted and the bait clearly visible on the path.

         The problem was that other people like to use the Riverwalk as well, so I had to conceal my murderous impulses and often make polite conversation with runners, bikers, dog walkers, and the occasional derelict sleeping on the Lewis and Clark bench.  So efforts were again spotty, with all the interruptions, but it was so clear that there was a population hungry for opportunities to group up and take chances on a mysterious snack from my hands.

         And then suddenly my potential victims did not show up at the accustomed time.  No raucous greetings, no swish of garb, no noisy thank you’s, no chatter amongst themselves.  What had happened?  Did the weather keep them away?  Had they sensed a threat?  I did see them in the distance, nearer the water, but not a one approached me and my baggie.

         They had posed for a photo earlier in the week.  I was eager to see that enthusiastic crowd again.  Was I being shunned?  How many individuals does it take to create a murder?

         Would 15 do it?  How about 25?  You be the judge.  Was there a murder on the Riverwalk

Post-College Musical Memories Part III.

After college graduation in May 1963, I spent the summer at the American Baptist Assembly grounds in Green Lake, WI, as an ice cream shop clerk, immediately gaining back all the weight I'd lost just before my senior year.

That summer, musically, was kind of like Baptist summer camp, with songfests weekly around a campfire, a little choir drummed up by the music director, and a review of a lot of Sunday School songs dressed up by the changed voices of the boys who were once sopranos and had, over time, become tenors and basses.

I'd been urged to come by a sort-of boyfriend who was part of a musical quartet invited to provide worship service music.  The romance cooled shortly after we arrived at Green Lake, but the music continued in staff housing and in theatrical productions.  And it took on a distinctive social-justice flavor. 

The South was tumultuous in the summer of 1963 and the issues of voting rights for black people, unions for blue collar workers, and women's reproductive rights were part of our cultural milieu, even far far north of the Southern states.  And the songs of social upheaval were what we sang around the campfires and after hours.

At the end of the summer, I returned to my parents' home in small town Washington, as I had no job prospects, and attempted to get back in step with conservative theologies and hymnody.  But I had learned enough about more progressive hymn writers and modern theologies of freedom that I craved music other than what we always had sung in my dad's churches.

I accepted the invitation to lead the junior choir, where I could make my own choices about songs to teach them and felt daring as I chose less traditional Christmas and Easter songs for them to sing.  Not that "I wonder as I wander" is particularly daring in itself, but it does push the envelope a bit, though it was irresistible to even the most hidebound mama in the congregation when her angelic Ruthie sang the plaintive verses in a sweet, pure soprano.

A job came along and I let someone else lead the junior choir, as I explored the new freedom of living away from home for a full year, living in the Columbia River Gorge in a tiny apartment and serving a small WA county's welfare recipients.  No music, except for records, but I did join the Columbia Record Club where you could select several records for a dollar and just pay postage.

I remember that I discovered the Swingle Singers, Norman Luboff Choir, Robert Shaw Chorale, and played and replayed the two albums our college choir had recorded during my years at Linfield.  But there wasn't much radio reception in Stevenson WA, just upriver from Bonneville Dam, so it was records or nothing until I went either to Portland (downriver) or back up to Goldendale (upriver) where reception was better.

After 18 months of serving welfare recipients in the very backwoods of rural Washington, I had a chance to move to Denver CO to be a program worker at the Denver Christian Center, and that will be a story for another day.

Love Medicine

In the May 2020 edition of Discover Magazine, I ran across an article entitled “Love Medicine” by Jeffrey Rediger, which quotes Barbara Fredrickson, a psychologist at the U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.  Dr. Fredrickson has been involved in research on the link between the vagus nerve and social connections for more than 20 years, and what she’s learned from her studies is that what keeps us strong and healthy mentally is small moments of positive interaction, which she dubbed “a sort of falling in love” with the people who surround you on a day-to-day basis.  That means everyone, from your spouse and children, to the barista you’re getting to know at your corner coffee shop.

Fredrickson believes that culturally, we underestimate these fleeting moments.  To her, love is a series of “micro moments of positivity resonance” that we experience, over and over again, as we go through life.  We may have one of these interactions with a stranger at a bus stop or a million of them over the course of a lifetime with the person we marry.  

Rediger goes on to muse about an interaction he’d had soon after his interview with Fredrickson, with an older woman who was pushing a baby in a stroller as Rediger hurried toward his office.  He joined her in walking and afterwards he recognized that in that fleeting conversation, filled with laughter and friendly talk, he’d experienced a moment of real bonding with someone and exercised his vagus nerve in the process.

I was so struck by this article that I looked back at what gives me great pleasure and a sense of being right with the world.  I’m a single woman with a couple of good love experiences with a mate but with no partner or love interest in my life at present.  In fact, I’d go so far as to call myself asexual, not interested sexually or romantically in any person, male or female.  I’m happy with my celibate life and do not feel deprived by it.

And I realized that my life is enriched and made delightfully pleasant by the moments I have talking with others at the grocery store or over coffee or on the Riverwalk, the times when I extend myself to greet another person and warmly receive them into a kind of friendship, if only on the Riverwalk or over the salsa at Freddies or admiring someone’s dog or a color they’re wearing.  In fact, I go out of my way to make those connections.  And when I come home and look back, it is those moments that help me realize my own place in the universe and how I maintain it.

Incidentally, the vagus nerve is worth reading about.  Look it up.

Musical Memory Lane Part II

Let me regress to high school years briefly, for this was a period in my life where I began to realize that I could sing, could carry a tune accurately, stay on pitch, and read the alto part mostly successfully. So I joined the high school choir which introduced me to some show tunes (even though I hadn't seen the movies!), classical religious choral music, and choral renditions of folk tunes and other non-Baptist hymnody.

So I wasn't musically illiterate when I headed off to college at Linfield, a historically Baptist college but moderately liberal in its outlook on life, with historical rather than literal studies on religious topics.

Two of the first things I did at Linfield were to join a sorority and, second semester, to audition for the a cappella choir.  The sorority was local, not national, but it offered opportunities for socializing and projects with other young women.  Phi Beta Mu was a good place for me to make new friends and the choir an entirely new musical experience.

Linfield's a cappella choir was directed by a well-known Oregon conductor and musician, Dr. Robert Zimmerman who also directed the Portland symphony and chorale.  He was an exacting director, always helping us learn the skills of musicality ("you're sharp!  you're flat!" were shouted out as necessary during rehearsals) and performance (we memorized everything, we were schooled in walking onto risers, exiting the stage without stumbling, looking professional on stage, etc.).

And we sang the most beautiful religious and secular music I'd ever heard:  classics like the Faure' Requiem, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Peaceable Kingdom, Gershwin selections, show tunes, even some pop oldies that met Zim's critical standards.

We had fun, we traveled on fall and spring tours, singing nightly in Baptist churches all up and down the Pacific Northwest, romances sprang up in the chartered bus seats between the singers and the instrumentalists, our bus driven by a genial, chubby man we called Lefty, whose musical contribution was his effort to convince us that he could sing fugues.  

We sang regularly at major college occasions like graduation, welcoming new students, and Parents' Weekend.  There was status in being in the choir.  We rehearsed two or three times a week for two hours and were granted the privilege of coming to supper in the Commons late on those days because we were similar to the famous Linfield Wildcats in terms of cachet.  I was in heaven, never having had that sort of public approval in my young life!

Musical Memory Lane, Part 1

It's been fun to review (or to use the cool-kids' word "curate") my musical life, from as far back as I can remember it, which would mean starting when I was quite young---about 4 or 5.  The songs and music I heard and learned at that time were straight out of Baptist Sunday School curriculum:  Jesus Loves Me, of course, and others with a Jesus-theme.

We kids attended Sunday School first and then sat with our mother during the regular, upstairs service, participating in all the small rituals of Baptist worship (very low-church and homely), including all the old hymns, many of them rather blood-drenched in their theology but others reverent or energetic and easy to sing.

So I grew up on "Washed in the Blood" for one (fun to sing with its repetitive chorus and "warshed in the blood" rhythmically bellowed out by those of us destined to grow up with dark senses of humor and to forsake blood sacrifice theology forever) and "Wonderful Grace of Jesus", also rhythmically fun to sing and belt out its forgiveness and sunny attitude toward sin.

But a few years into my life, suddenly there appeared in our living room a turntable and a set of children's records that had nothing to do with religion and everything to do with international music, including classical themes like "Peter and the Wolf".  I suspect that our mother was the instigator of that shift in our musical tastes, with her college education and teaching experience.  I still remember some of those tunes ("There's a boat from Bahia, Bahia" and "Grand Canyon Suite" morsels) which opened me up to a wider range of musical experience.

At age 9, I moved, with our family, out to northeastern Oregon, where we kids had our first experience with public school and a public school music program:  "Happy Wanderer", "Walloping Window Blind" and the like, sung gustily by 5th and 6th graders to the accompaniment of the old upright piano played by our music/PE teacher Mrs. Lewis.

Before too many more years, I was swept up in 50's teenage culture, with Pat Boone crooning "Friendly Persuasion" over the local airwaves and "Earth Angel" the favorite request song of my friends.

High school days brought a lot of pop music---Bill Haley and the Comets, Elvis the Pelvis, and others like them.  Rock and Roll hit the charts and worried the Baptists and others concerned about "modernism" in religion and in the cultural life of small town America.

In Athena, we were not "allowed" (by community norms) to attend movies, go to dances, or play cards.  We were the Preacher's Kids who had to set a different standard of teenage behavior, so my sister and I were careful about what music we told our folks we liked.

I kinda liked Johnny Cash and "I Walk the Line" which hinted at illicit behavior but didn't elaborate.  Of course, this was at the time of my life when I had just barely realized how babies were actually made.  I was smart, but not that smart.

Having started to learn piano at about age 8, I had the advantage early in life of reading music, which has served me well all my life.  It is a skill that goes beyond simple sight-reading of new music and led me into inventing my own sense of harmony and of music theory (some of which actually worked but was all seat-of-the-pants).

College years changed my tastes again.  More on that later.

All the Paid Jobs I've Had in the Past 65 years.

1,  Babysitting, 25 cents per hour
2.  Pea truck driver, 85 cents per
3.  Wheat trick driver, 1.00 per
4.  Harvest timekeeper, 1.00 per
5.  Retail clerk, JCP
6.  Row boss/bus driver, strawberries and beans
7.  Receptionist, hometown newspaper
8.  Soda jerk
9.  Welfare worker
10. Missionary
11. Office staff
12. Kelly Girl
13. Spanish teacher
13. School counselor
15. Office staff
16. Minister

Coming Out of the Religion Closet

COMING OUT OF THE RELIGION CLOSET

Rev. Kit Ketcham

Since I retired and have had time to think about more than the next deadline I faced as a minister, and since my religious journey over time has been a concern to my family members, and since I have come to see how deeply embedded in me is my Christian upbringing, I have done some important thinking about my religious life and how the changes in me have come about.  Let me set the scene a bit.

From birth through high school, ages 0-17, I was pretty much your Baptist preacher’s kid and youth.  My baptism at age 6 was meaningful to me and as I grew up, I was pretty sure I wanted to have a career serving God as I understood God at the time.

My college years at Linfield were revelatory, as I met other Christians from a diversity of backgrounds.  I loved my two required religion classes:  Life of Jesus and Basic Christian Thought.  Both gave me understandings of Jesus’ teachings and of the history of Christianity that I had not come across in Sunday School.

The summer after graduation, 1963, I served as a staff member at the American Baptist Assembly grounds in Green Lake, WI, where I encountered Christian preachers and leaders with an even broader understanding of Christianity and a Christian’s mission in the world.  Intellectual scholars like Harvey Cox and Howard Moody were among them, preaching ideas that I had not ever heard from the preachers of my youth, powerful speakers whose message was inspiring and focused on social justice and civil rights.

When I returned to Goldendale, where my family now lived, I got a job in the local WA Dept of Public Assistance, serving Old Age and Family recipients of welfare.  It was my first real glimpse of poverty.

It was hard living in Goldendale under my parents’ roof and being the preacher’s daughter again, but I had no real choice.  Being back in my father’s church and trying to respect his beliefs while hanging onto my own expanded consciousness and knowledge of a bigger Christian message than the one of supernatural events and discomfort with such issues as evolution.

But that winter I learned of a class being taught at the First Baptist church of Yakima and I braved Satus Pass at the snowiest time of year, several weeks in a row to attend the class for about 6 weeks, wanting to be among fellow seekers for something beyond conservative Christian belief.

At the very last class, I met a young man who was a minister with the American Baptists working with juvenile offenders in outdoors settings, but he also knew about job opportunities in Christian Centers across the nation.  He was charming and helpful (and cute) and helped me contact the director of the Christian Center program.  I applied and was offered a job in Denver and started in the fall of 1965.

At the Denver Christian Center, located in the inner city area of Denver, I taught a small preschool class, had after-school programs for elementary and junior high school kids, and a monthly teen canteen at night.  I was thrilled to be active in this way, working with inner city kids and their families.

The director of the DCC was the Rev. George Turner, who had marched with Martin Luther King Jr in Selma, just a couple of months before I arrived in Denver.  My co-worker Lydia Ortiz and I became fast friends.  We socialized after work, helped with the tiny Baptist congregation that met in the DCC building on Sundays, and visited families in the housing projects together.

Around Thanksgiving of that first year at the DCC, I went home to Goldendale for a visit and was invited by my dad to speak at church on Sunday.  I was eager to tell them what I was doing, how the Center worked, who we served, and at the end, I opened it up for questions.  The last question, just before the closing hymn, came from a man at the back of the sanctuary, who raised his hand and asked “how many souls have you saved for Christ?”

I was stunned.  Humanitarian aid, not evangelism, was the mission of the DCC and I tried to explain, but I don’t think I convinced him, and as I left the building that day, I said to myself, “I don’t think I’m that kind of Christian anymore, if I ever have been.”  And that question became the theme of my life for years after that day.

During the year and a half I worked there, before it became a United Way agency, Lydia and I decided to attend a Young Democrats meeting in a restaurant in downtown Denver, and it was there I met the man I came to love and marry in late 1966, a year later.

The Christian Center experiences and my marriage to Larry, who was a Unitarian, were transformative.  Moving to Denver and marrying a man from a very different faith were giant steps away from family ties and loyalties, which was very painful for my whole family and also for me.  

Moving to Denver also provided me with a much larger world than I had known before and an introduction to urban Baptist and Unitarian churches.  During my time at the DCC, I had joined the nearby Calvary Baptist church, which later disappointed me greatly by moving from the inner city to the suburbs. That seemed like a desertion of the innercity community and I was deeply bothered by their move.

The Baptists were the founders of the DCC but those Denver congregations didn’t seem very interested in helping out with our programming.  It was the Unitarian ladies’ auxiliary that provided cookies and lemonade and extra hands for my preschool kids, and this discrepancy was not lost on me:  the Unitarians were interested in social justice work; the local Baptists were not.

This was the era of the Vietnam War when churches were leery of taking political stands, no matter how justified, and Larry and I joined protesters in downtown Denver to shout slogans and oppose the war.  Again, the Unitarians were visible.  The mainline churches were not.

Another experience convinced me.  Larry and I had a chance to go through the first iteration of the Colorado Outward Bound school for teachers, another transformative experience, for sure!

As part of that six weeks course, we spent a weekend on the streets of Denver and on Sunday morning, I decided to attend church in my grubby disheveled attire.  I went to Denver’s First Baptist church, wondering what the reception would be, but I might as well have been invisible.  No eye contact, no friendly greeting, nothing.  One more disappointment from the Baptists.

So Larry and I began attending UU churches in Denver and after our son was born in 1972, we joined Jefferson Unitarian Church in Golden, CO, and began to learn more about UUism.

The chief attraction for me about UUism has always been the involvement in social justice work, something that had gone missing in mainline Christianity.  I missed the stories and songs of my Christian upbringing, but I relished the intellectual content of the UU sermons I heard.  I liked the lack of emphasis on supernatural events which seemed to be the core of much of the theology of mainline churches. 
 I liked the emphasis on reason in religious thought and the acceptance of scientific evidence, particularly for the theory of evolution.

Hopping now from the 70’s to the 80’s and on into the 90’s---Larry and I were just occasional attendees of UU services until Mike was old enough to attend Sunday School and then we joined JUC.  But our marriage was bumpy at best and in 1980 we divorced.

I ended up being the one who got “custody” of the church, at least at that time, and I became much more active, singing in the choir, attending singles events, working with the social justice projects underway in this activist church.

In 1992, I was a member of the Committee on Ministry, a group which examined the various ministries of this 500 member congregation and evaluates their effectiveness, as an aid to the senior minister.  And that year, as a member of the committee, I helped to lead the Homecoming Service, which was always the 2^nd Sunday of September.

Asked to give a brief homily in the service (presumably because as a Junior high teacher and counselor who did cafeteria duty with a bullhorn, I was accustomed to speaking to herds of cats and getting them to listen to me!) I got up in the pulpit that morning, spoke about the past year, the challenges and the joys, got a few laughs, saw a few tears, and sat down again in the choir.

Our minister went to the pulpit and, into the mic and in front of all those people, he said “Kit, you missed your calling---you ought to be a minister.”

It was like a lightning bolt.  My life changed at that moment. 

Four years of seminary, plus a summer of chaplaincy internship in a trauma hospital and a yearlong internship in a Colorado UU congregation flew by and in the spring of 1999, I graduated with a Master’s of Divinity and was ordained by JUC and my internship congregation, the UU Fellowship of Boulder CO.

I wanted to relocate to the PNW where I’d grown up and applied for a fulltime position at a newly formed congregation in Portland, Wy’east UU Congregation, which was a spinoff from the large downtown Unitarian church.

At a luncheon with the board of the congregation, I was grilled on my background, how I would serve the congregation, what I would like to do as their minister, when a woman on the committee, after listening to my answer to a question, turned to me and said with glee, “I knew it, you’re a believer!”

Now, she had told me earlier that she was an affirmed atheist, so I inferred (accurately, as it turned out) that she meant I held to religious beliefs that she had discarded and was judging me, perhaps jokingly, as being on a different team, somehow.

We managed to get past that assumption on her part, but I made a personal vow that my mission as a UU minister would be to try to bridge that gap between progressive Christianity and rational humanistic but also pluralistic UUism.

It was hard.  In every congregation I have served, including PUUF, I have struggled to make the point, over and over again, that we are descendants of progressive Christianity.  Christians are not the enemy and we have nothing to be ashamed of in our long and mostly honorable history---except, perhaps, for the subtle dislike, rarely openly discussed but existing as an underground prejudice in congregational life, prejudice toward the Christian religion and its language of reverence.

To be fair, many UUs were wounded by a harsh fundamentalist theology as children and were looking for a safer religious home.  I can’t deny that and certainly understand a need to deal with that pain.  But it may need to be faced directly, instead of avoided.

My own Christian upbringing was gentle and loving and uncomplicated.  Nobody treated me badly or accused me of being a terrible sinner because I was female.  My parents had conservative beliefs and I heard many a sermon about heaven and hell, and the dangers of worldliness, like movies and dancing and card-playing.

But when I found Unitarian Universalism, which was so appealing with its courage to speak out on social issues and to get our hands dirty doing the actual work of changing the world, I just added our seven UU principles to my own understandings of Christianity, which boiled down to the teachings of Jesus and the simple statement of the prophet Micah in the Hebrew scriptures.

You may remember that Jesus, when asked for his take on the greatest commandment simply said, “You must love God with all your heart and soul and your neighbor as yourself”.  And Micah’s teaching was also simple: “What does God require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly in life.”

Both these teachings are simple; they reflect what we UUs know about the human world and how to be most effective in it.  Most of us no longer have a childlike concept of God; our studies in science and human history have taught us that whatever “God” is, it is not a being, not male or female, not even definable.  We each have our own concept of the power beyond human power, which many call God.

Like most UU congregations, PUUF has a strong and valuable strain of humanism as one of our theological sources.  It is a product of the Enlightenment of the 18^th century and the growing influence, over the centuries, of science in daily life and in our understandings.

But we can easily let the attractions of humanism sidetrack us from the beauty of a religious faith that appreciates its diverse roots and celebrates them all. And we can easily let some of the symbols and words of conservative Christianity sidetrack us from the wisdom of its prophets like Jesus and Micah.

And because some strands of the traditional Christianity we may have rejected in the past have become even more conservative, more punitive, more disconnected from scientific reality, we have allowed a scorn for Christianity generally to creep into our consciousness and create an atmosphere that can be unwelcoming to folks who walk through our doors, folk who use and love the ancient words of reverence.

I feel compelled to speak about this today because of my own journey from conservative Christianity to a religious faith that combines the teachings of Jesus and other ancient prophets with a 21^st century faith that is unafraid to challenge the oppression in the world. 

 I am a Christian Unitarian Universalist, just as some of you probably are.  Others of you are Humanist Unitarian Universalists, others Buddhist UUs or Jewish UUs.  In our faith tradition, we have Pagan UUs, Muslim UUs and birthright UUs, who are folks who were born into UUism and never left.  We are a faith of great diversity and widely varied backgrounds.

Starting next week, we will be meeting in a Presbyterian sanctuary, perhaps schmoozing with devout Christians at coffee hour and other social events.  We will doubtless join them in some of their social justice efforts.  We may listen to Pastor Bill Van Nostran preach on occasion.  We will become friends with progressive Christians and we will need to be aware of the subtle uneasiness that lies beneath the surface of our time together.

Progressive Christianity is a different breed of cat than fundamentalist Christianity.  It is a pretty close relative of ours, and the differences of the past which separated us need to be set aside in favor of the many commonalities we share, in terms of social justice work and a peaceful world.

We must not refuse to address this issue.  To be true to our seven principles and our six sources (which you can find in the first few pages of our hymnal), we must work toward understanding and accepting the fact that Christians are not dumb, not ignorant for loving the ancient stories, the language of reverence, and for feeling the presence of God in our daily lives.

As one of our spiritual ancestors, Francis David in the 16^th century, reminds us, “We need not think alike to love alike.”  I also kinda groove on Hard Rock star Alice Cooper’s statement: 

 “There’s nothing in Christianity that says I can’t be a rock star.  People have a very warped view of Christianity.  They think it’s all very precise and we never do wrong and we’re praying all day and we’re right-wing.  It has nothing to do with that.”

In closing, a little more meme wisdom: 

“In this congregation, it’s okay to be an atheist, it’s okay to be Christian, it’s okay to be Jewish, it’s okay to be pagan, it’s okay to be x, y, or z…

It’s not okay to shame other people for their beliefs, either publicly or behind their backs.”

For more perspective on UU theology and Christianity, I invite you to check out the latest UU World magazine, which you should have gotten in your mailbox this past week, for views on the teachings of Jesus and also of various activist movements that we as UUs embrace and support, created  by Christian leaders and supported by UU theology and our leadership.

Let’s pause for a time of silent reflection and prayer.

BENEDICTION:  Our worship service has ended, but our service to the world begins again as we leave this place.  Let us go in peace, remembering that our religious faith is multi-faceted and attracts a wide diversity of religious views.  Our values are our commonality, by which we covenant to accept each other with respect and encouragement to spiritual growth and healing. May we not be afraid to hear different languages of faith and may we bless the richness of our community in all its beauty.  Amen, Shalom, Salaam, and Blessed Be.

Remembrances

REMEMBRANCES OF MY ONGOING WORK FOR LGBTQ RIGHTS

Rev. Kit Ketcham, retired

December, 2019

The first person I ever knew to be homosexual came out to me in 1976.  She had been a close friend in college and I had lost touch with her over the years since my graduation in 1963.  But one day, when my son was 4 and we were living in Denver, I received her letter:  “I don’t know how you’ll feel about this, Kit, but I’m tired of living a lie.  I tried to commit suicide by driving off a bridge in Portland, but EMTs patched me up and I’m recovering.  I am a lesbian, I love women, and I’m sick of pretending.  Can I come visit you when I’m in Denver?”

How could I say no?  Fern had been one of my favorite people in college, funny, artistic, smart.  I wrote back that I would love to see her; we had room for her in our little house and it would be great to show her around.

After the letter went in the mail, I started agonizing.  Was she coming on to me?  It didn’t feel like it but I didn’t know what to think.  I’d never had a gay friend before…except, of course I had!  Not only Fern but very likely high school and college friends, friends who were, like Fern, pretending.

Fern’s short visit a few weeks later was clarifying.  She was the same person I’d known in college with the added characteristic of being more open.  I could ask her questions and be open with her as well, even daring to ask if, well, if---you know---if,

But she knew exactly what I was trying to ask and answered before I found the words: “Kit, I am not coming on to you---I don’t do that to straight friends”.  Ohh…

As a junior high school guidance counselor, I often met with students who were depressed to the point of suicidal ideation, even attempts.  Later I’d find that they had come out of the closet and I felt I had a glimpse of their despair but did not know how to ask that very personal question.

A colleague at my school came out to several of us who knew her well, clarifying her relationship with her “housemate” and eventually the school district quietly made it known that “gay was okay” as long as people were discreet.

A PFLAG presentation to an inservice for counselors opened my eyes to the sheer numbers of gay students in our district and the kind of help they needed from us as their confidants and teachers, and my office door proclaimed “Gay is Okay” here from that day on.

And yes, finally one young woman, athlete, star student, came into my office, shut the door firmly, and said, “I’m a lesbian and I’m not ashamed of that, but I don’t have anyone to talk to about it.  So you’re it.”

The aforementioned colleague had joined a Denver area mixed G/L/B/T chorus and invited us all to hear “Boys and Girls With Stories”, the musical production by David Maddox.

Listening to the stories and songs in this poignant musical drama changed my hesitation about being “out” as an ally, and I began to be very public about my support for the GLBT Community.  I realized that many of my friends and colleagues had same-sex partners, far more than I would ever have guessed.  (My so-called “gaydar” has never been very effective.)

In 1994, working with my minister at the time at Jefferson Unitarian Church in Colorado, the Rev. Robert Latham, we decided to host a small ensemble from the Harmony Chorus, the group that had offered “Boys and Girls”, at a Sunday Service, to bring up the topic of same sex relationships and bring it into the light as an important social issue that we as a congregation needed to address.

I offered a homily entitled “My Friend Fern” and the die was cast.  I was solidly an ally, no longer anxious about whether someone might think I was gay, and making sure to be a safe person to talk with about relationships.

In 1995, I applied to Iliff School of Theology, to answer my call to the ministry, and entered a milieu that was well-populated with students and faculty from a diversity of backgrounds----color, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender transition---all clearly members of the seminary community.

It was here that I realized that, though UUism had formalized its acceptance of GBLT persons and welcomed diverse candidates into ministry, many denominations were still struggling with this dilemma.  Many of my fellow students were gay or trans and they were preparing for ministry in which they might never be ordained, required by church law to take lesser roles in a church community.  

This was a clear dilemma for them and a number of my student colleagues decided not to continue with their studies or to prepare for a less valued role.  Several were still closeted, sometimes even to themselves and were afraid to come out at a UMC seminary.

During my seminary days, two experiences broadened my understandings of the LGBT world:  Clinical Pastoral Education in which I came face to face with patients in a hospital setting where their sexual orientation or gender identity was not respected, and the murder of Matthew Shepherd in the small Wyoming town of Laramie, 150 miles away.

In my first pastorate in Portland OR (Wy’east UUC), 1999, GLBT issues were in the forefront of the first election (2000) when a local homophobe, Lon Mabon, tried to get a referendum passed that would prevent GLBT issues from being discussed in Portland Public Schools.  As a former junior high school counselor, I was strongly opposed to this political stance and strenuously objected and protested publicly with members of the congregation.  This referendum was soundly defeated.

Four years later, I found myself in Seattle, ministering to two Puget Sound island congregations, Vashon Island Unitarian Fellowship and the UU Congregation of Whidbey Island, ferrying back and forth from my home base in Seattle.

Both congregations were engaged in the struggle for equal rights for sexual minorities and I had their backing as I joined the Religious Coalition for Equality, an Marriage Equality coalition based at First Baptist Church in Seattle.  

My colleague the Rev. Jon Luopa of University UU Congregation had invited me to be part of the organizing team and as such I was a member of the RCE board, an interfaith coalition which was active in supporting marriage equality legislation in Washington State.

I moved to Whidbey Island after about three years of being the “ferry godminister” for VIUF and UUCWI, and resigned from VIUF a year later, as my work with UUCWI increased and marriage equality became a major issue in WA politics.

I was a co-founder of the Whidbey Island PFLAG group, hosting meetings in the UUCWI sanctuary, offering free holy union ceremonies in our sanctuary for same-sex couples who wished to sanctify their unions, as the WA legislature debated the Marriage Equality issue.

Our Island County senator, Mary Margaret Haugen, held a town hall meeting on the island during this state-wide debate, and this open event attracted a large crowd from the GLBT community.  I decided at the last minute to speak to Senator Haugen publicly at that forum and am including a link to that two-minute plea for her to be the deciding Yes vote on the legislation coming up in the State Senate later that month. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2pD1W9uVbg

Senator Haugen graciously received my words and the applause of attendees and did demonstrate her moral courage by becoming the 25^th Senator to vote in favor of extending Marriage Equality benefits to all loving couples in Washington State, which was enacted as law later that session.  It survived a referendum vote during the next election and was roundly approved by Washington voters shortly before Marriage Equality was made the law of the land in the United States.

When I retired from UUCWI in June of 2012, I moved to the North Coast of Oregon and while ministering to the Pacific UU Fellowship in Astoria during the next several years, I performed several marriages for same-sex couples, spoke at the first PRIDE festival and, with the Fellowship, participated in PRIDE events and planning each year.  I’ve published an op-ed in the local newspaper describing my journey “From Apathy to Activism”, as I learned more about civil rights for all people

I am now 77 years old and getting a little worn around the edges but am still on my feet and staying strong with resolve for my many former students, friends, parishioners, and the host of new friends I have made over the years because of my activism with GLBT issues.

My personal motto has become “I will do what I can with what I have for as long as I have.”