I noticed a tattoo on Elizabeth’s wrist while having breakfast at our weekend retreat at Laity Lodge. When I asked her about it, she revealed a wisdom that is usually found only in people well beyond her years.
Elizabeth is the leader of our Narrative Change Project, a small cohort of diverse men and women who are committed to social justice, learning, and making a difference in the world. She is an exceptional young woman with a gravitas and transparency of soul, balanced with a fun-loving attitude and infectious smile, who turned a group of strangers into a team over a weekend.
She told me that her tattoo was in Arabic and meant Shame and Shamelessness. Of course, that led me to the next question: Why did you tattoo Shame and Shamelessness in Arabic on your wrist?
Her response to that question revealed the depths of her soul and her caring for others.
She explained that she had a daily practice of writing a word on the back of her hand. She would go through the day thinking about that word and occasionally engaging in conversation with others about the word.
I’ll digress for a moment, before I tell you the rest of the story, to ask you how often you go through your day thinking about a word. Words have meaning. They have an impact. Are we too careless in our use of words? Do our words become cliches?
Elizabeth said that she realized that the most frequent words that she selected were Shame and Shamelessness. Why were these words important to her?
She watched Muslim women in our country face the prejudice and rejection that, unfortunately, are too common in our culture when we’re faced with people who are not like us.
They reacted with shame initially, but she watched them turn that shame into shamelessness as they owned who they were and faced the culture with loving defiance. This is who I am, and you will not define me.
Is there a word that is so meaningful to you that you would tattoo it on your body? I used to hang out with Harley bikers. Many of them had the Harley Davidson logo tattooed on their arms. The words we use define who we are - at least to others. When we tattoo a word on our body, it reveals to the world who we are and maybe, why we’re here.
In the foreword to Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, Kathleen Norris closes with this quote:
“How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conguerors have been: how gloriously different the saints.”
Am I saying that Elizabeth is a saint? No. I am saying that it’s gloriously different to be around people who think deeply about their place in the world and how they can make it better.
beautiful! she sounds pretty close to a saint to me!