Jane Grovijahn
Homage that Hurts
Ripped.
Slit.
Robbed.
Ragged.
Now exhausted by words
poured out empty,
into ordinary endings
of an elegy sung in silence.
I am becoming a war memorial,
where others
preach forgiveness.
Dr. Jane Grovijahn is a published theologian and trauma scholar. She does theology from a place of pain and possibility (is female in social imaginary of misogyny, is queer in place of Christian nationalism that denies her sacred birthright, is sexual abuse survivor in world that normalizes gender-based violences directed especially at female+ persons). She knows well the holiness of how to navigate a body dredged by others. Restless within tombs of other’s making, she now resides in sturdy structures of delight built from those places within us often hardest to relish but bursting with unpredictable pleasures. Here the power of wounds continues to surprise her with its call to community, rising into collective, riotous rites of repair.