RHE
I don’t think you’d like to be called a saint, so I’ll try my hardest not to.
You shirked the labels of “saint” or “prophet”, saying those were for other people, not you. In an interview with the Liturgists, you said your work wasn’t costly enough to be considered saintly or prophetic. Some might argue that only goes to show your humility, but there’s a certain honesty to it that I respect. Joanne Rogers has spoken at length about how she dislikes the “sainthood” of Fred Rogers because she feels as though it partly exists to make Fred an unattainable ideal, when in fact the point should be that his kindness is attainable. I think you would agree with this interpretation—that you always wanted your actions to hold others accountable to a braver, kinder way of being in the world.
When I was 20 years old, I wrote a blog post about yoga pants that went viral-ish. In it, I cited a blog post you wrote about how modesty isn’t actually about sexuality but about wealth. I received email upon email from girls my age, in college like me, finding permission to let their bodies take up space. I also received countless vitriolic emails from angry 40-something mothers who blamed me for the sexual sins of their sons. Whenever I was figuring out how to respond to each one, I would ask myself, “What would Rachel do?”
Even though I don’t consider you a prophet or a saint, I do talk to you sometimes. I have no idea if you can hear me, but when God feels too distant or abstract, I talk to you instead. Sometimes I hear your voice in my head when a friend of mine told you about something I wrote for my university newspaper and you joyfully declared, “Woman of valor!” I have wept over that declaration many times in the years since.
Your work has marked my faith shifts at every step of the way—your blog posts jump-started my deconstruction, and Searching for Sunday helped me make the shift to some kind of spiritual hope again. Your words have always grounded me, given me clarity and footing, a vision of what kind of person I wanted to be.
A few years ago at the Festival of Faith & Music at Calvin College, Dr. David Dark said, “We all have a council of elders, a cloud of witnesses who leads us. Who are yours?” The first name that came to my mind was you.
I miss you all the time. A new bookstore opened in my town last August, and they put your newest book at the top of the must-read shelf. I took one look at your little book sitting up there in the seat of honor, and grief rolled through me all over again.
In a few months, everyone will reflect on an entire year without you. After this, people will slowly start to forget. But I haven’t forgotten you. In fact, I am stubbornly determined to not forget you. I’ve never been so determined to not forget a person. There’s a cloud of us that will always remember you, who will lend your books to friends, a cloud of people following in your footsteps who want to do you proud.