Paula Barker Datsko

Dear friends in Christ,

Our Gospel lesson today recounts the story of a man born blind whom Jesus enabled to see.  While one might assume that a person receiving sight would bring joy to all, that is not what happened. Some of his neighbors refused to believe that such a miracle had happened.  Maybe their conviction that the man’s blindness was God’s punishment made them blind to the redeeming work of God in their midst. The light shines in the darkness, and the one born blind is the only one able to see and believe. Yet he was ostracized from his community.

While contemplating this lesson, I began humming a song that had been a means of grace for me many years ago.  It is a song that I learned in the autumn of 1974 when I went with some seminary classmates to the first eucharist celebrated by the women who had been “irregularly ordained” as Episcopal priests. We sang with joy during the communion and learned only later that, while we were singing, a man had dug his nails into the back of the hands of a female priest serving the chalice and growled at her, “May you burn in hell.” Light shines in the darkness, yet who sees? Who believes?  What dark shadows try to prevail?

Those were challenging days to be women called to ordained ministry. Some of the stories we can tell from that time are amusing; others aren’t. Many, like the one above, have strands of joy and anguish intertwined.  Here is a song that carried us through.

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened.
Sometimes I wish I could no longer see
All of the pain, the hurt and the longing
Of my sisters and me as we try to be free.

Sometimes I wish my eyes hadn’t been opened
But now that they have, I’m determined to see
That somehow my sisters and I will be one day
The free people we were created to be.

God’s grace is what enables us to see the light breaking into our world wherever shadows oppress.  And God’s grace is what empowers us to live into the transformative processes that change our world by changing us.  This is how the redemptive power of God’s glory shines-- in the distant past, the recent past, and now.

In your life, when have you experienced your eyes being opened?  What challenges did that present for you and for others around you?  What was the joy, where was the pain?  From your perspective now, where was God at work?  Is that work finished, or might God still be calling you to live into a vision that you even now see and believe?

With prayers for blessings in our new year,

Mtr Paula