Episcopal Church and the United Nations

There is Enough Oil, and Light

December 6, 2020
Episcopal UN

By: Erin Morey, Diocese of Pittsburgh (Province III) / Erin Morey, Diócesis de Pittsburgh (Provincia III)

For much of the past eight years, I have worked at my local domestic violence agency. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, I found myself attending seminary full-time. When my community was ordered to shelter in place in March, my thoughts immediately turned to the women and families who are served by the shelter, as well as the staff who serve them. I contacted the shelter to see what help I could offer.

As it turned out, the agency had been planning to offer text – and chat – based helpline services. Given that people surviving intimate partner violence were now trapped with their abusers, the agency decided to rapidly move up their plans to offer this service, to help people who could not safely make phone calls a way to connect to the agency’s services. Because I already had experience working on the shelter’s hotline with survivors, they asked, would I be willing to help respond to these texts and chats?

I jumped at the chance, and am grateful to have the opportunity to serve survivors. I have seen advocates help clients craft – and use – creative safety plans to keep themselves from lethal danger. More than that, however, I have gained insight into how we are called to live our lives.

Several weeks ago, I listened to a Gospel reading, from the twenty-fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus tells a parable comparing the kingdom of God to ten bridesmaids waiting for a wedding banquet. Five of the bridesmaids are “foolish” – they come unprepared, with lamps but no oil to fuel them. So when the banquet comes, they are left scrambling to go to the store, instead of participating in the party.

This is a peculiar story. Here, we have five women with more than enough, and five with nothing. Instead of saying that the five women with more than enough ought to share, Jesus holds them up an example, and calls the women with nothing foolish. It doesn’t seem to make sense. In fact, it seems irrational and selfish. Indeed, it even seems a little sexist, the sort of Scripture that’s been historically used to justify a second-class status for women in society. When I saw that this reading was featured again, several weeks later, in the daily prayers for the Epsicopal tradition, I wondered – what does it mean?

As the COVID-19 pandemic grinds on, we, like the bridesmaids, are waiting anxiously, longer than we ever anticipated. We know that there has been a shadow pandemic of violence against women during the pandemic. We know that violence against women creates an impact that reverberates through our healthcare systems, our economies, and governments even in the best of times. How can we, as we are called to by the 2020 theme of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Based Violence, “Orange the World: Fund, Respond, Prevent, Collect”? It may seem overwhelming to think that we are expected to change everything, unless we remember that the world as we know it is not inevitable, and we already have the tools we need to make change for good.

I am reminded of an important fact in the parable of the bridesmaids it is easy to overlook: the fact that there is not enough oil at the wedding is a distraction from the fact that there is enough oil in the community for everyone’s lamp. From the outset of the story, there was plenty of oil for sale, and the bridesmaids had the resources to purchase it. This is not a story of scarcity of oil and light. This is the story of a scarcity of will, about a failure to equip resources that already existed in abundance, to light a feast that was already in progress!

This year marked the 25th anniversary of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the most progressive blueprint ever for advancing women’s rights. Like those bridesmaids, we have been waiting anxiously, looking toward the day when we see this blueprint fulfilled. It has been a long wait, indeed, and we still live in a world where routinely women die at the hand of their partners, no matter where we live.

My experience has shown me that when employers pay women less than men, women are made financially dependent on abusive partners. When law enforcement agencies fail to test the results of forensic examinations after sexual assaults, perpetrators are free to continue violence. We must stop uncritically accepting the messages we hear in our churches, our families, our workplaces, our halls of government, and our media that women’s equality is something that’s too difficult or expensive to implement. Women’s equality is not simply a nice thing to work on when we’ve made progress on other priorities. Women’s lives are a priority. There is already enough oil in this world to create the light we need. We must not let ourselves, and our leaders, be distracted from the goal of putting that oil in our lamps.

We must be creative. We are not always able to anticipate exactly when the groom will arrive at the wedding. We must adequately fund resources for those in need, to make sure that no one will be left in the dark. We must be responsive to global changes – and be ready to creatively use new technology, such as text – chat platforms to allow people in danger to silently seek the support they need. God calls us to leave old, debilitating models based on competition and scarcity behind, and instead live into the fulfillment of abundance.

There is much work we can do towards women’s equality. We can urge our elected officials to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act and end violence against all women, including Indigenous women. We can demand that our elected officials pass robust COVID relief legislation. You can share the National Domestic Violence Hotline number in your community, encouraging people to call if they or someone they love needs support. You can find your local domestic violence agency and make a donation or volunteer. You can learn more about the 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence.

It is also difficult for people in abusive relationships to safely leave those relationships. It may take years or months, and multiple attempts, even under the best of circumstances. I am reminded of the need to be patient as I walk beside survivors as I try to help them safely plan through a series of obstacles that sometimes feel hopless. I know this journey does not always have an immediate solution.

The struggle to keep ending gender-based violence on your government’s legislative agenda may sometimes feel fruitless. You may find yourself terrified for the safety of a woman returning to her abusive partner for reasons that are not clear to you. Anticipating the end of systems of hatred and violence is anxious work. But, never forget – the wedding is already planned, and the groom is coming. These systems are not inevitable. And the light that comes from all of us sharing in the new relationships of love that stand against them is worth the preparation, and the wait.

About the author: Erin Morey is currently an M.Div. student at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Previously, she served as the Director of Community Engagement and Communications for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania (where she worships). She has worked for Women’s Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh Action Against Rape, and the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network as a domestic violence and rape crisis advocate. She began her career as an attorney, serving as an Assistant Public Defender in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. Erin was a member of the Presiding Bishop’s delegation to UNCSW in 2015 and 2016.

Contact:
Ms. Lynnaia Main

Episcopal Church Representative to the United Nations

EpiscopalUN@episcopalchurch.org