Isaiah 40:28-31; Luke 2:41-52
Girls be strong! We can kick a goal, run a marathon.
Hike up a mountain, do you want to come along? Girls be strong!
Last Thursday night, Fran and I were invited to a concert at our friends Matia and David’s house in Wayland. I vaguely recognized the name of the musician—Betsy Rose—as a folk singer I used to listen to back when I was in school. Now in her 60’s, Betsy tends to perform in small, intimate settings like this one. She has devoted her musical career to writing and singing for a Buddhist meditation center, teaching mindfulness through music to children, and expressing her passion for justice.
It was a great concert, personal, inspiring, and fun. Many of the folks gathered in the room were also musicians; we leapt in to sing along wherever we could. Betsy’s songs had stories behind them, which she shared freely in this relaxed setting.
I especially took note of the story behind the “Girls Be Strong” song. Betsy wrote it in preparation for a nine-month musical pilgrimage she would make around the world. The original song has five additional verses to accompany the one you just heard me sing:
Girls be smart! At chemistry, poetry, math and art.
Good with our minds; good with our hearts. Girls be smart!Girls stand tall! Stand up for yourself; Stand up for you all.
We can help each other when we take a fall. Girls stand tall!Girls can cry! You don’t have to bottle it up inside.
We can laugh so hard it can split the sky. Girls can cry!Girls can fly! Got the wind and the wings and the open sky.
Don’t know what you can do until you try. Girls can fly!Girls be strong! If you know what I mean you can sing along.
Girls be making up a brand new song. Girls be strong!
Betsy Rose wrote the song and then brought it to the Cornell School in Albany, California, where she regularly led music. She asked a chorus of girls to sing it for a video she was making. Interspersed between the verses she recorded messages from four boys, students in that school who originally came from India, the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Northern California. The boys offered words of encouragement and support for the girls they knew would eventually see the video.
Betsy took the completed video with her on her globe-trotting tour. She shared it with girls in places where poverty, tradition, childhood marriage and rigid gender roles are barriers to their education. She worked with girls in those communities to write their own verses.
At the Fairyland School in Kathmandu, Nepal, an area still struggling to recover from a devastating earthquake, the girls wrote about courage:
Girls are brave! We’ve got a lot to do, got a world to save.
We know we can do it; that’s how we’re made. Girls are brave!
Across town, at the Shushila Art Center, girls living in stark poverty dared to dream:
Girls have dreams! We can share our talent like a shining beam.
We can make a difference ‘cause we’re all a team. Girls have dreams!
In Naivasha, Kenya, a beautiful area known for its production of flowers and also for the brutally hot working conditions in the greenhouses, in a nation that’s politically and ethnically divided, the girls sang about unity:
Girls unite! We will come together; we will bring the light!
Our dreams are not beyond our sight. Girls unite!
And in Liberia, a nation just beginning to recover from a brutal civil war, girls at the Totota Village focused on perseverance:
Girls won’t quit! We’ll be nurses, singers; we’ll be president.
Business woman, surgeon, pastor and friend. Girls won’t quit!
As I listened to Betsy Rose’s story and heard her sing this collaboratively-written song—especially the verse about flying—I found myself thinking about little Amelia Elaina Jones, whom we just baptized.
A few weeks ago, when I met with Brandon and Kim and Amelia, I asked them why they selected Amelia for their daughter’s first name. Initially, they told me, they just liked it. They especially liked that it evokes memories of Amelia Earhart—a strong, courageous woman who dared to fly, who broke down barriers and took risks. The name reminded them of the long history of strong women in both of their families. They read up on Amelia and found that it means “industrious and striving” in Latin and “defender” in Teutonic. Girls be strong. Girls are brave. Girls can fly. Girls stand tall. Amelia, this song is for you!
One of the things I love about this song, with its many verses, is the way it celebrates that strength is a multi-faceted quality. Strength is not about denying your feelings, powering through, pretending to be self-sufficient. Strength is about using our minds and our hearts. It’s about daring to try even if you don’t know you will succeed. It’s about crying and laughing, about helping each other up, about standing tall after a fall. It’s about dreaming, about working together, about sharing our light.
I also love the way the song evolved, with each group of girls working together to name what strength means for them in their culture and then using creative gifts to add their unique perspective to the song.
I especially love the four boys in the video, who understand that strength is not a zero-sum game. They know that encouraging girls around the world to claim their strength makes a better world for boys as well. Perhaps those four boys need to start their own video project, their own song to help boys in our culture navigate the conflicting and sometimes dangerous messages they get about what it means to be strong.
The words we use and the songs we sing make a difference. It matters that Amelia’s name evokes the memory of a courageous dreamer, for when her parents tell her the story of Amelia Earhart she’ll have a special way to claim her own courage and dreams. It matters when we sing about being strong and smart, about crying and laughing, for whatever we sing we come to know in a deeper way.
Naming and singing, though, only go so far. It takes a whole lot more to help a child claim and develop true strength, in all its dimensions. How do we help? Our scriptures give us a starting point.
Our reading from Luke’s gospel is often used to suggest that Jesus was an unusual child. As a story about parents raising a child, though, it speaks universal truths. Mary and Joseph were doing all the right things. They took their son to the temple to participate in ancient rituals that connected them to God, to community, to their history. They were part of a larger group, trusting a network of family and friend to support them and their son. Still their son went missing. He needed something else, his own unique connection with their shared faith. They journeyed back to the temple and found him. They didn’t fully understand, and still they recognized that somehow, like the girls in Betsy Rose’s video, their son Jesus was singing a brand new song.
As Amelia grows, her parents will do all the things they know to help her grow strong. They will pray with her, sing to her, surround her with strong women and strong men–family and friends and church community who have promised to nurture and care for her. And at some point–or probably at multiple points along the way–they will discover that, in order for Amelia to grow into her potential, she needs something they hadn’t thought of. They might not understand it; still they will walk with her down paths they have never traveled before, and even, with fear and trembling, let her go exploring on her own. They will rejoice in the unique definition of strength Amelia will find for herself. They will listen in wonder to the new song Amelia will write–the verse she will teach us all to sing.
Betsy Rose’s song is all about trusting in our own potential. If we believe in ourselves, the song suggests, if we work together, if we persevere, we can do anything! Our Hebrew Bible lesson reminds us that this is true only if we recognize the source of our strength. On our own, even youths will faint and be weary. The young will fall exhausted. On our own, strength is a facade, a thin veneer of willpower that cannot sustain us through the challenges of life.
Our strength comes from God. Our strength comes from God whom we know through the stories of our faith, God who gives us guidance through commandments and prophets and through Jesus. Our strength comes from God, whose love we experience through our love for one another. Our strength comes from God, who inspires us to awe when we climb a mountain or watch an eagle fly. Our strength comes from God, a spirit deep within us.
The promises we make today are not promises to take Amelia to the gym so her muscles are strong. They are not promises to send her on Outward Bound programs to discover her capacity to survive. They are not even promises to give her flying lessons when she decides she wants to be just like her namesake. What we promise today is even more important. We promise to teach her those stories of our faith. We promise to to love her so deeply that when we tell her God loves her she knows what that means. We promise to point to the eagle and the tree and the bug and share with her our awe. We promise to help her find that Sacred Spirit deep within her.
Then she–and her mom and dad and grandparents and godparents and aunts and uncles and cousins and all her friends at church–will mount up with wings like eagles, and we will fly higher even than Amelia Earhart!
We can fly! Got the wind and the wings and the open sky.
Don’t know what you can do until you try. We can fly!
Amen.