Lifting Me Up

From Douglas Hallward-Dreimeier, an attorney whose arguments helped sway the Supreme Court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage in 2015:  

“On the day of the argument, there was a moment in the courtroom when all of a sudden I felt, in a way that I never have in any other argument, the weight of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of couples, and their families and friends, and I sort of seized up… And I had to go through a process.  The process that I went through was thinking: no, it’s not those individuals and their wants and lives weighing on me.  It’s all those peoples’ hopes and prayers and wishes lifting me up.  And I actually thought of two former ministers from Westmoreland… who I knew were out on the steps of the Supreme Court praying for me.  Knowing that they and so many others were lifting me up and holding me up in their prayers was critical to my ability to get up and to make the argument that morning.

Many times during the course of my involvement in the fight for marriage equality, I came back to a poem that I had once heard, by Edwin Markham. It’s entitled, “Outwitted.”  

He drew a circle and shut me out.  Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.  

But love and I had the wit to win.  We drew a circle that took him in.

For too long, our society has drawn lines and circles that shut out LGBTQ people, treating them as heretics, rebels, as things to flout.  In my re-imagining of Markham’s poem, God is love, and God and we, though faith, had the wit to win.  And we did so, as God would have it, by drawing the circle wide, to embrace all God’s children.” 

– Excerpts of a sermon given at Rock Spring Congregational UCC on 7/16/17. Hallward-Dreimeier, worships at Westmoreland United Church of Christ and is managing partner of Ropes & Gray’s DC office and leads the firm’s appellate and Supreme Court practice.

Are you inspired to take action but need encouragement and support to do it regularly?  Start an "Inspiring for Action" group  with a few friends or like-minded people.    Consult the "How To" page for more info.