NCC Service Slides March 22, 2026
To begin our celebration of Women’s History Month today, I have a quote from Rob Reiner, who said something about the disparity between men and women that I find amusing but admittedly believe to be an overstatement. Probably.
Rob said, “Women, the way I see it, are very evolved people. They’re more mature, they’re more aware of their feelings, in touch with their feelings. They’re connected to things that matter more in life. They know what’s important. Men basically run around like idiots until we meet somebody who can show us that those things are important.” Again, probably an overstatement. 🙂
You may recall a famous line from his film A Few Good Men. Tom Cruise’s character, the prosecutor in a tense courtroom scene, demands ‘I want the truth!” to the character played by Jack Nicholson, who responds, “You can’t handle the truth!”
Today we’re going to be hearing about the lives of a few good women…women who demanded the truth and did what it took to bring it forth.
It’s fitting that this, the fifth Sunday of Lent, was once known as Passion Sunday. Fitting, given the passion that burned within each of them.
We’ll begin with Susan Brownmiller. Of this trailblazing author it was once said “Susan Brownmiller asked us to rethink everything we thought we knew.”
She was the feminist writer of the 1975 book Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, which re-shaped the entire perception we had had of sexual assault.
She did this by re-defining it as a crime of power and violence instead of an act of passion.
Consequently, rape-crisis centers and self-defense classes, the concept of rape within marriage – current commonplace things – emerged. Bystanding witnesses were no longer required, and people’s sexual history became legally irrelevant.
Born into a world that tried to silence discussion of sexual violence, Brownmiller spent her life ending that silence. The world she left was fundamentally changed.
The question What was she wearing? became Why did he commit the assault?
thanks to her book, which was ranked one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.
There is another woman whose life we celebrate because of her work regarding the victimization of women.
Gil Won-ok was one of the last South Korean survivors of sexual slavery for Japan’s World War II troops. Afterward, she tirelessly campaigned to bring international attention to the suffering of thousands of victims like her.
She accused Japan’s government of refusing to take legal responsibility and offer compensation to the victims, euphemistically known as “comfort women.”
Inspired by her leadership, about 240 South Korean women came forward to report their painful past as comfort women.
Gil fiercely criticized Japan to her dying days. Can you imagine the fortitude it took to be a trailblazing activist until her death at age 96?
The last woman we celebrate today was also a trailblazing activist. While her focus wasn’t gender-specific, it was species-specific. She was into chimps.
That person is none other than Jane Goodall.
For years now, if you were to ask me who, in my opinion, is a living saint, I’d say Jane Goodall.
It’s because, from what I could see from afar, she seemed to get It. Capital I…It. She seemed to see through all the distractions of this world, to understand and be in step with Divine creation.
She speaks about others being saintlike in her Spiritual Journey book by saying…
A life lived in the service of humanity, a love and respect for all living things – wthose attributes are the essence of being saintlike.
Right, Jane…which is why I ascribe this lofty designation onto you!
Ironically, Jan wrote a poem about saints, likening them to being on the bridge between God and earth. She writes it as if she’s talking about someone else.
She entitled it Only They Can Whisper Songs of Hope. (pg. 200-202).
Here are snippets that underscore the spiritual life of this sojourner:
Jane tells the story of the time she was on a book tour in the States, at a hotel having a quiet moment in the lobby when a bellboy came up, introduced himself, and shared that he was concerned about how to believe in evolution while also believing in God.
They found a set of back stairs where they sat for a half hour, and she shared her thoughts about the efficacy of evolution AND her belief in God. But then she went on to say to this young man:
It honestly doesn’t matter how we humans got to be the way we are. What matters, and matters desperately, is our future development. Are we going to go on destroying God’s creation, fighting each other, hurting the other creatures of the planet?
The bellboy went back to his duties, much more settled in his new understanding.
On another occasion, while lying on her back looking up into the darkening sky, she was contemplating the devotion people have to science (especially since she, a researcher, had become famous from her scientific data on chimpanzees).
In those moments she thought: How sad it would be if we humans ultimately were to lose all sense of mystery and awe. If our left brains were utterly dominant over the right so that logic and reason triumphed over intuition and absolutely alienated us from our innermost being, from our hearts and souls.
This did not happen to Jane, and is made exceedingly clear in this next story.
Her beloved husband had died, and for healing she had gone back to the forests of Gombe, her soulful home with the chimps. She recalls…
One day, among all the days, I remember most of all. It was May 1981. And I’d finally made it to Gombe after a 6-week tour in America. I was exhausted and longed for the peace of the forest.
It was early in the morning, and I was off, climbing steep slopes to find and be with my chimpanzee friends. In the faint light of the moon it wasn’t difficult to find my way. It was utterly peaceful. How healing it was being back, by myself with the chimpanzees and their forest. As I sat there reflecting, I had been only partly aware of the approach of a storm. It must have been an hour before the downpour began to ease.
Back down the mountain I climbed, arriving at a ridge overlooking the lake. A pale, watery sun had appeared and its light caught the raindrops so that the world seemed hung with diamonds.
Lost in awe at the beauty around me, I must have slipped into a state of heightened awareness. It’s hard – impossibly, really – to put into words the moment of truth that suddenly came upon me then. It seemed to me that ‘self’ was utterly absent; I and the chimpanzees, the earth and trees and air, seemed to merge, to become one with the spirit power of life itself. The air was filled with a feathered symphony, the evensong of birds. I heard new frequencies in their music and also in the singing insects’ voices – notes so high and sweet I was amazed. Never had I been so intensely aware of the shape, the color of the individual leaves, the varied patterns of the veins that made each one unique.
And then, suddenly a sound from Fifi the chimp brought me back as though awakening from a vivid dream. I was back in the everyday world again, cold and still wet from the rainstorm, but intensely alive.
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In her writing, Jane goes on to say that there are many windows through which we humans seek to find meaning, including through science. And that the work she had done with the chimpanzees helped us to better understand their, and our, behavior…our place in the natural world.
Then she gets to the point, saying that there are other windows we can look through, windows gazed through by holy people, founders of great world religions, as they searched for purpose and meaning…
not only in the wondrous beauty of the world, but also in its darkness and ugliness, contemplating the truths they saw, not only with their minds, but with their hearts and souls too. (Jesus in the desert for 40 days comes to mind).
About that watershed afternoon, Jane recalled, It had been as though an unseen hand had drawn back a curtain, and for the briefest moment, I had seen through such a window and had known timelessness and quiet ecstasy…a revelation that would be with me the rest of my life.
Hearing this story brings to mind a similar experience I had on the shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto. I lived a block from the water, where there were large flat rocks at water’s edge.
During this period, some 15 years ago, I would go down to those rocks in the middle of the night to be with God.
On this one occasion an unseen hand drew back the same curtain and in those few moments I was shown the pain of the world, and was asked by an internal voice not my own if I would make my life’s work to ease the world’s pain.
As with Jane, it’s impossible to articulate this experience, but a sense of oneness with world’s people and their pain was at the core…there was no separation, no barriers between myself and Divinity and all of humanity.
And then the moments passed, and I was back on the rock with the soft waves gently lapping the rock beneath me, the stars overhead, the night’s last streetcar on Queen St. gliding on its rails in the distance.
I was back in ‘regular realm’ but forever changed by this glimpse of the infinite.
Of all the blessings I’ve received in my lifetime – motherhood, having a loving partner, physical health and general well-being, the privilege of serving in ministry – they all have their place behind, and encapsulated within, the blessing of those moments.
______
So, today you’ve heard the stories of some women…stories of change – working to bring about external change for the better, openness that led to being deepened internally.
While the sharing of these stories is about them to a degree – a celebration of what they tirelessly worked to achieve in their lifetime – the stories shared this morning are more about you.
More specifically, what you’ll do with them.
How are you and your path impacted by the example of their fortitude and openness, and willingness to not only lean into their external and internal worlds, but then to take another step to share it.
It’s like another trailblazer, Mary Oliver, said…Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
All of this morning’s women died last year, leaving us with the gifts born of their having done just that.
What we personally do with the gift of their stories to enhance the living out/the writing of our own is for each of us to decide.
As the mic will now be passed to you, I look forward to hearing how you are impacted by their lives.
First though, I’ll leave you with a short video of Jane talking about the next chapter of her story.
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