Don’t Complain about the Umpire

During the Blue Jays’ heyday this fall, a friend of mine—normally not interested in baseball—shared a piece of advice she had received about how to contribute meaningfully to the cultural conversation unfolding: “don’t complain about the umpire.” There is nothing interesting, in other words, about rehashing what injustices were wrought against our team that brought about any one of their game defeats. There are better things to talk about.

It reminds me of something similar, and surprising, that my daughter said to me upon the release of Taylor Swift’s new album this fall as we began our deep dive into exegeting the cultural anxieties and obsessions that her work always stirs up for fans and haters alike: “Let’s just avoid the conversation about how she’s treated differently because she’s a woman.” It was a surprising statement. I don’t know anyone better than my daughter at articulating the feminist call to fight for equality and dignity for all people. Being able to see and name the differences in how people are treated because of gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, or any other signifier, is a foundational step in then calling for justice. But what she was saying was insightful: there are a lot of other interesting things to say about this stellar singer-songwriter and wildly successful superstar.

Complaining about injustice in baseball might feel fun and cathartic, and many people would be of the opinion that someone with Taylor Swift’s privilege has nothing to complain about, even if she is a woman, but there was something in both of these comments that felt relevant to me in another way. I have spent the past few years down the rabbit hole of reading and writing about the English Reformation, and particularly about the role of Queen Anne Boleyn in driving and shaping the English church in its break from Rome. (There will be much more on that topic to come.) I knew that the impact of Anne’s religious vision and conviction had been widely overlooked in favour of more obvious tropes for talking about controversial and powerful women (saddled with labels like “whore,” “witch,” and “seductress”). What was revelatory, though, was learning about the other powerful and visionary women by whom she was formed to be her own person of impact. Furthermore, what became clear was that for every woman who ended up on our narrative margins as having made an undeniable contribution to the changing of history, there were thousands more whose names were never recorded who were agitating, opining, influencing, and making their voices and contributions known in undeniable and substantial ways. The most interesting stories about Anne Boleyn and the English Reformation turned out to be the stories of women helping women, of women’s voices infiltrating and shaping the course of history, whether we want to see it or not, of a total dismantling of the fiction that it’s only ever been the guys who have done things like form and lead our church.

Jesus wasn’t one to spend a lot of time on calling out injustice either. He was too busy bearing witness to God’s kingdom, to showing what the world can look like when all are fed and all are valued, to paying attention to the voices of people who don’t need to be unmuzzled—they already have something to say—but we certainly do need to do a better job of learning to listen. It’s not to say that the stories of disenfranchisement and oppression weren’t happening and didn’t need challenging. But also, Jesus was masterful at seeing the strength, faithfulness, wisdom, leadership and beauty of people whose offerings are there, whether we like it or not. And isn’t the world so much more blessed when we have the wherewithal to receive those offerings?

I’m not prepared to abandon the usefulness of intelligent conversations about the ways in which injustice against whole groups gets visibly enacted in how people get treated and talked about. But I’m glad for the reminder that there are also astonishing and compelling stories happening right before our eyes. What we need is to learn to see and listen differently. There is a lot to lament about whose contributions have been lost, and there is a lot to be learned about whose contributions were significant and impactful, if we could just start paying attention.