We All Need Tenderness
Tenderness Journals | Installment One Tenderness & Possibility
When I first heard Kathleen M. O’Conner speak on Jospeh’s novella through a trauma lens, I lost it. I was a first-year seminarian in Old Testament navigating a call without a church shepherding me spiritually or financially and found great solace in Joseph’s estrangement from family, culture, and home. I had been forced into the pit, just as Joseph had by his brothers, and mocked for even thinking ministry was possible for this queer trans non-binary human.
Raised in the church from babe to now, I’ve witnessed a focus on biblical narratives for the shiny and joyful moments that make us feel good on the inside. And a shying away from any of the parts that don’t have “good” endings or make us feel doubt.
When you think of Joseph from the Bible do you think of the pit he was thrown into and the enslavement he faced or do you think of the coat of many colors?
For this Baptist raised babe, I’d answer coat of many colors - which I now view as a moment of family acceptance tainted by a father siding with homophobia out of systemic pull to follow the normative.
O’Conner’s tender voice and compassion as she re-told the Jospeh novella unfurled me.
She spoke of Joseph’s love for his family even after transformation from clothing to stature in society. He still longed for connection and tender care from the very family who sent him away. He still spoke of them tenderly even when he could have chosen violence.
As the novella closes, Joseph teaches us what tenderness offers us - space, choice, and tender love that reaches inward and then outward.
As he wrestles his own PTSD from family estrangement, Jospeh offers tenderness to himself first and his family second. He doesn’t run back to his homestead after discovering their presence. He sends his brothers on that journey. They too need to discover this tenderness along their journey. He doesn’t strip his transformation of clothing, stature, culture, and being. He remains his transformed self, but offers land and food to his family when they come before him on his own terms.
Is there any other queer desire than this type of reunion? Or, middle ground meeting on our terms?
We all need a little bit of tenderness especially in this blue holiday season. Tenderness to love our queer being for all its blessedness. To offer tender boundaries in what we cannot control and toward our being of which is tender from abandonment.
Tenderness is a resource for the liminal space we journey through when the living-death that life deals is at play. The ebb and flow of life requires we stay tender, so that we may stay here. And the truth is we need to stay. We need each other in chosen family and as the fabric of what makes up this world’s possibility and joy.
Tenderness is the bridge that carries us toward possibility.
When O’Connor finished her lecture that day I was a blubbering tender crying mess. I remember vividly apologizing every other word for crying as I thanked her for her scholarship. If I could go back to that moment now, I would not apologize for crying. I’d thank her for unlocking the tenderness needed to cry and find new meaning in Joseph as my fellow queer sibling in transit.
My hope for us queer siblings and allies alike is that we find ways to unfurl with tenderness. Our very lives and beings depend on this bridge to freedom.
Rachael Ward is currently writing on tenderness as a source for liberation and rest. They are a minister @ Middle Church, NY & Faith UCC, PA. Rachael identifies as an Activist of Care, Tender Human, and uses they/them pronouns.