On Having Voice

Joy asked: Do you really think that you do not have a voice?

My response: When it really counts, no, I don’t think that I do.

Being outspoken is not necessarily the same as having a voice. Voice is being heard and having a positive impact on a given situation. There are many barriers to voice; mostly, they are the dangers threatened to one’s own well-being: threat of personal violence or violence against one’s family, of work or housing lost, of reputation destroyed, of education denied, of deportation. The risk for some to speak is greater than for others.

You can have a voice in some spheres but not others. As a white U.S. citizen and as a human rights worker, I clearly had voice when I spoke. I saw that others heard my words and were influenced by them. As a student, or as a future church leader, it is not so clear to me that I have a voice at all.

One great difference I see in my own voice between then and now is that while I was in the Middle East, although I was surrounded by war and violence, I was so rarely the recipient of it. That is quite different from my experiences now.

I have also observed, while in the same role, you can have a voice with some and not others. How many times did I hear from classmates these past two years that I had to keep speaking, not because I was at all effective with the administration, but because my words were life-giving for those who were even more voiceless than I?

That is a difficult role to be in. Although buoyed by the encouragement and care of friends, in trying to speak my truth I found I nearly lost my life. And I have in many ways lost much of my self in these two years, in paying the price for speaking in this context, although I am now finding it coming slowly back as hope returns and some level of freedom is near.

You can be heard enough that people will try their damnedest to silence you. Then your words are having some impact, true, but is it enough? Or is it useless martyrdom?

Still there is that quote from Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they attack you, then you win.” I doubt that this is always true, but it encourages one to go on. It also indicates that once you speak, even if you are attacked, you are compelled to see it through to the end.

I think the key is to not be any more silenced than you have to be. That is, to recognize that while it may be too dangerous for you to speak in some places, there are many more where you have the power and influence to do so, and for good. Those chances and that privilege should not be wasted.

Although I may not have sufficient voice to improve my own situation as a student here and as a participant in my denomination, I still have voice to speak to many on human rights and interfaith work and the loving of one’s international enemies. I have to cultivate that. I may even have more voice than that, and I have to keep testing where the walls of silence lie. And I think I also ought to keep giving voice to pain, insofar as it becomes words of healing and encouragement for others who continue to struggle.

To do otherwise is to be yourself condemned by the voices left to die within.