Can I Get a Witness?
Originally Published by Good Faith Media on January 25, 2023
A friend and I decided to be radical risk takers, making our way to a movie theater to catch whatever film was showing next after we arrived.
As luck would have it, we walked into a movie called “Devotion” – the true story of Jesse Brown, the first Black aviator in U.S. naval history and his enduring friendship with fellow fighter pilot Tom Hudner.
Jesse and Tom served together during the Korean War, a time when the U.S. was especially fractured and when international politics shifted their jobs and their lives almost on a whim.
These men were part of a team of pilots who helped turn the tide in the most brutal battle in the Korean War, and their heroic sacrifices ultimately made them the Navy’s most celebrated wingmen.
Themes of facing down racism, changing powerful systems, and what life really means run through the story, and you should definitely see the movie. But there was one scene that I found particularly impactful; I can’t find a clip online, so I’ll try to recount it as best I can.
Tom, the young white fighter pilot, comes to his lieutenant commander’s office deeply upset.
The team is being asked to learn how to operate complicated new machinery, to undertake death-defying missions, to face down colleagues and a country unhappy with the war, to confront racism in their own ranks, and Tom was watching up close the suffering of his friend Jesse.
Tom asks his lieutenant commander: “What’s the point? Why do we go to war? Is our work making any difference? Can we actually change … anything?”
Lieutenant Commander Caveli looks at Tom and says (my paraphrase): “Men have been at war since the beginning of time. Wars start and they end, then they start again. Over and over, we hurt one another. I don’t know if wars accomplish anything, and I can’t tell you if your work will make a difference. What I can tell you is this: that being there for someone who is facing down an unjust system; having enough courage to go the extra mile for a friend; never, ever leaving him when he needs you … that’s what matters. And that’s what changes the world.”
I believe that scene resonated with me because caring for a congregation or even living in the broken world all around us does cost us dearly, and I can say with 100% certainty that were it not for my people, I’d likely be dead.
Those who are not pastors may find the loneliness of the work a surprise. After all, a pastor is constantly in on the pulse of an entire community – relationships galore! Which is true – kind of.
What’s hard to see from outside is the deep longing for vulnerability and the deep fear of showing your true self, which could easily cost you your job if manipulated by the right group of people.
And there are the secrets you hold for everyone – peoples’ grief and pain, disappointment and despair, the parts of themselves that you see in times of crisis, but not many others know about because it still seems important to a lot of people to show up at church looking shiny and extra-spiritual.
These become a burden under which one can easily stumble and fall after staring unflinchingly at human suffering and loneliness for so long.
And then there’s the actual work, which I believe many people understand consists of one hour a week leading worship and not much else. I did not know when I went to seminary that significant parts of my work week would regularly include moving furniture, cleaning out long-neglected closets and unstopping toilets in the hallway restroom.
And I know that my job is not the only lonely one out there; yours probably is, too.
The only way I’ve found to survive my work and my life is to collect “my people,” and I learned this from a very wise spiritual director with whom I worked for 12 years.
No matter what crisis, uncertainty, question or pain I brought to her office, she would regularly remind me that I had the resources to make my way through. “I know, because I am a witness to your life,” she’d say.
“I am a witness to your life.” This meant to me: I have a person who affirms my bumbling efforts to gather courage to face down an unjust system; someone I can call if I feel the crisis around me threatening to overwhelm; a stable, rooted touchpoint who sees me, the good and bad, and tells me the truth about my life even when I don’t want to hear it. A witness to my life.
Recently, I was talking with a colleague, another pastor, who shared some deep personal and professional pain he was living through. As I listened, I mentioned offhand, “Well, these are the moments when we most need our people.”
“I don’t have any people,” he said.
An urgency rose up in me, and I said: “Well, you’d better get some. Life’s too hard without them.”
I agree with Commander Caveli in that scene from “Devotion.” The only way to make a difference in the world – a real difference – is to show up for the people in your life and to keep your head above water by collecting and tending to “your people,” witnesses to your life.
Who are the people who will show up when you need them, who have the commitment to walk with you through life’s worst moments?
Find them, tend those relationships, witness their lives as they witness yours. Because it’s those friendships that can truly help us change the world.
By Amy Butler