the undoing of patriarchy in the life of tom jorde (1922-2011) bt cynthe garrity-bond

8/3/2019 The Undoing of Patriarchy in the Life of Tom Jorde (1922-2011) bt Cynthe Garrity-Bond

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Original Article:http://feminismandreligion.com/2011/12/12/the-undoing-of-

patriarchy-in-the-life-of-tom-jorde-1922-2011/

The Undoing of Patriarchy in the Life of TomJorde (1922-2011)

December 12, 2011

tags:death,friendship,God as male,Irenaeus,

patriarchy

byCynthie Garrity-Bond

Last week I attended the funeral of the one man,

who in my feminist musings, was able to image

the maleness of God as father, friend and

pastor. If I had thought about it, I would have

given him the T-shirt that reads, This is What a

Feminist Looks Like, but it never occurred tome until now.

A successful sales manager, Tom decided at the

age of 36, and with 6 young children, to enter

full-time ministry by enrolling in Pacific

Lutheran Seminary at the GTU (in Berkeley).

Imagine undertaking an MDIV degree with that

kind of responsibility? As the adage states, It

takes a village, and it did. Marie, Toms wife,

took charge of the kids while his four brothers

help support him until his graduation in 1965. If you want to understand the kind of family Tom and Marie raised,

think of TV families like The Waltons, or Charles and Caroline Ingles inLittle House on the Prairie and you come

close to envisioning the emotional healthiness of their family. Not to say they did not have their share of setbacksand problems, but each time I have been included in family gatherings, I am keenly aware that the integrity and

moral fiber of my friend Linda and each of her siblings is due in no small part to the partnership and love between

Tom and Marie.

I first met Tom when journeying through my divorce at the same time his daughter and my close friend Linda was

also in the early throws of her divorce. As our friendship evolved, Linda included me in family gatherings, usually

around the holidays or on one of our many road trips. Norwegian Tom and his Irish wife Marie could not be more

different from the other, which is probably why their marriage of 65 years was so successful. While both put

Martha Steward to shame as host and hostess, Marie prefers the company of a good book (now her Kindle) while

Tom absorbed the room in conversation. You wanted to be noticed by him, to be brought in to whatever meaningful

or not conversation was taking place because, when you found yourself in his presence, you felt more than

sufficient, you felt elevated and charmed by his attention. And when I did speak with him in a full room of activity,

it was as if we and we alone were engaged in the most important conversation. He zeroed in on everything Id say,

right down to every F bomb with genuine delight and interest. Never an ounce of judgment by what I had justbellowed out, just joy and wonder at the human condition.
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Tom loved people, in all capacities and in all stages of

life, in sorrow, doubt or contentment, he could read you

like a Geiger counter and respond accordingly. If you

were feeling rather uppity and self-congratulatory about

yourself or your inflated ego had momentarily lost sight

of dry land, his wit and humor would reel you back in

with a rhetorical sharpness that made you wonder how

he figured you out before you did. If he caught you

while you were experiencing lifes spin-cycle of failure

or doubt, he knew how to instill hope without probing

the impasse of your pain by his presence alone.

The synergistic timing of our initial meeting was

twofold, I was in the belly-of-the-whale over the demise

of my twenty-year marriage and I was in the beginnings

of self-discovery and possibility for my life. I had just

read Sexism and God-Talkby Rosemary Radford

Ruether, which gave voice and clarity to the cacophony

of patriarchy I had experienced in the Catholic Church.

Reading Ruether launched me into my undergrad and

graduate major of Theological Studies with a feministhermeneutics. The image of God as male with its litany

of idolatry and exclusion came easily for me, but not for

Linda. While entirely sympathetic to imaging God as

mother or the Divine Feminine, Linda can just as easily

image God as loving father, which I have to say irritated

me to no end. As a newly christened, self-identifying

feminist-theologian-in-training, I was sensitive, even Mary Daly-ish in my regard for the imposing maleness of God

to the determent of women. But how could my (healthy) friend notbe just as capable of rendering the divine in both

maleness and femaleness given the reality of her parents?

Somewhere along the timeframe of our friendship I acknowledged to Tom that if I wanted to image God in the

masculine, I need only think of the Divine or Jesus as him, and then the fists of defiance could soften. You see Tom

really did incarnate the Divine with resolute humor and acceptance of everyone he encountered. The gender of Goddissipated as the manifestation of potentiality exponentially grew in Toms presence. In our last time together, 3

weeks before his death, Tom, Marie and I sat together one last time. While weak in physical body, his wit and

humor was soundly in tack. For moments at a time I could forget the meaning of my visitwhich was to say good-

bye and thank him for healing my own father-wounds while expanding my image of the divine to include both

genders. Tired and ready to nap, we hugged each other one last time, only it took longer to let go, both physically

and metaphorically. I was losing the tangible reminder of Gods love for mejust as I am and not how I hope to be.

As I listened to each of Tom and Maries six children take part in his memorial service, I surrendered my tears of

grief for the loss of such a beautiful, fully human figure. The glory of God, reminds church father Irenaeus, is

the human being fully alive. No one I

ever met embodied this sentiment with

more gusto and truth than Tom Jorde.

And no one desired more for those he

met to also participate in life fullyalive, fully engaged.

His death was not unexpected and

more importantly, he was ready. In

their last encounter together Tom

expressed a unique sentiment to each

of his six children. To Linda he

pronounced, Its been a privilege,

which carried beyond his father-

daughter relationship to mean life, in
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all its complexity, had in fact been a privilege. Never in the shadows, Tom lived his life on blast for God and all he

knew. Life was a daring privilege or nothing at all.

Goodbye my friend, the privilege, thank God/esswas all mine.

Oh Blessed be, oh Blessed be.

Cynthie Garrity-Bond: Feminist theologian and social ethicist, is completing her doctorate at Claremont Graduate

University in women studies in religion, with a secondary focus in theology, ethics and culture. For the past two

years Cynthie has been teaching in the department of theological studies at Loyola Marymount University where she

completed both her BA and MA in Theology. Her research interests includes feminist sexual theology, historical

theology with particular emphasis on religious movements of women, agency and resistance to ecclesial authority,

embodiment, Mariology and transnational feminisms. Having recently returned from Southern Africa, Cynthie is

researching the decriminalization of prostitution from a theological perspective.

the undoing of patriarchy in the life of tom jorde (1922-2011) bt cynthe garrity-bond

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