While I was picking blackberries on my way home from Tsawwassen Commons, a man on a bicycle passed me on the path and exclaimed, “You’re stealing from the birds!” He sounded quite serious, though he must have been joking because there are thousands and thousands of blackberries on those bushes. I called back cheerfully, “I don’t think so!” He was too far down the path for me to say, instead, “The birds get the best ones — the ones out of reach!” or “These crazy thorn-covered branches protect their own!” As happens frequently, afterwards I think of better things I might have said.

I ambled along the trail and filled up the yogurt container I carry in my little backpack since there are blackberry bushes bursting with berries in many of the places I happen to walk, but after I’d mulled a more clever answer to the bicycle man, I was thinking about whether to respond further to certain situations of which I’m aware — situations of harm done and subsequent pain — and if I did, how? I was thinking of a pastor friend’s blog post about his awful experience with denominational authorities, and authorities in the same denomination recently censoring an anthology of women’s stories I edited, and the collapse of a beloved congregation with grief in its wake, and it seemed something further must be done about these situations, though not regarding the beliefs involved as much as the behaviour contained within them. In a panic to control belief, I thought, all manner of bad actions had been done, had been justified, and were sliding into the past now without accountability.

…thinking about whether to respond further… and if I did, how?

Many years ago, when it was the wisdom-book of the day, I read Steven Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People. One of his insights, which continues to help me, was the relationship of concern and influence. Covey pictured our concerns as a circle. Inside that circle is a smaller circle labelled influence. In other words, my concerns are often much bigger than my influence upon those concerns. What I take from this insight/diagram is to look at my concerns and, in my inevitable desire to effect some change, consider carefully what influence I can possibly, realistically, bring to them.

So as I was filling up my container, trying not to get snagged by out-reaching branches, which I swear leap forward if one is anywhere in close proximity, I wondered how much influence I had left, if any. I’d spoken up in several ways in the above scenarios and also worked on a small committee that organized a petition for redress for the pastor friend, which unfortunately yielded little besides pieties and excuses. Was there any point, I wondered, in telling a story much on my mind these days — the story of the time when I worked at the denominational magazine in 2004 and all the staff were women and a leader friend told us of a recent Board of Faith and Life meeting in which a board member unleashed a rant about us, using the worst labels he could think of, it seemed, without quite calling us Beelzebub? We laughed it off and went back to work but what hurt was the stunned silence he told us had followed, no one speaking up in our defence, the chair then carrying on with the meeting.

The story had a happy ending, however, because some weeks later our friend, perhaps bothered in retrospect by his own silence, told us he’d rallied his fellow board members and they’d given the ranter an ultimatum: withdraw the remarks or resign. Apparently said ranter did the former, and while it’s possible he didn’t change his mind about us, a line about charitable behaviour had been established and our friend and his colleagues had used their influence to establish it.

…a line about charitable behaviour had been established, and our friend and his colleagues had used their influence to establish it. 

Would there be any point indeed, I wondered, to tell such a story? The story, in essence, seems a model and a plea to those who have influence where I have none, folks like pastors and seminary professors and colleagues of the denomination’s pinnacle leaders, who, as far as I know, though I don’t know for certain, have been mostly silent on these matters. Was there any hope of persuading them to prioritize behaviour, of persuading them that the health of their denomination is surely their concern, of pleading that they rally and declare that these harming actions must be withdrawn or somehow addressed or we no longer have confidence in the leaders responsible?

I reached home, and still had no answer about whether I had a wee edge of influence left to touch my concerns or rouse the influence of others or whether a simple story and plea would be like shouting after a bicycle man already out of earshot. I saw the half-finished jigsaw puzzle on the coffee table and thought of the enjoyable slow rhythm required for its completion; the patience of many pieces and a steady process of finding the one by one. Maybe, I thought, it’s a puzzle piece I’ll place when I find the spot it fits.

Or maybe I’ve already placed it.