All of Me

                          Gail S. Bernstein, Ph.D.

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     "...All of me has been invited. I have not had to leave one inch of
     my existence outside the door to come to this Feast."

                              Sawnie E. Morris

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   When we are different in a way that is devalued by the world we live
   in, we learn to compartmentalize. We learn where we are safe, whether
   from physical assault or from verbal condemnation, and where we are
   not safe. We learn where we are not allowed to be visible, and where
   we are not allowed to be at all. It may be okay to be out at work but
   not at church. It may be safe to come out to a friend but not to the
   boss.

   If we feel excluded, Ellen Goodman observed recently, we count where
   and how often we appear and work to correct that omission. Her point
   was that when we are included, we stop counting. She reminded us how
   we used to attend to whether Italians or Jews or Catholics were
   elected or appointed to high positions in our government. We rarely do
   that anymore.

   That is my goal. I want to be included. I want to be able to stop
   counting. I want all of me to be included. The scientist and the
   lover, the psychologist and the baker, the Jew and the writer, the
   graying middle-aged woman, the teacher, the lesbian. Jewell Gomez
   wrote of Audre Lorde, that her "genius resided in her insistence on
   bringing her whole self to whatever she was doing." That is what I
   want to do, to bring my whole self to whatever I do.

   I heard Romanovsky and Phillips sing earlier this year. One of their
   encores was a song that has been part of my life for a long time. I
   must have been in my teens the first time I heard it. It was a
   rallying cry, a call to arms, for the generation that came of age
   under the shadow of Viet Nam. While I cared about the war and the
   young men who were at risk, there was a way in which I was not
   completely engaged, not emotionally drawn by the cause. I realize now,
   hindsight being the clear form of vision it is, that no matter where
   you stood on the issue, women were excluded from the important arenas.
   We were not eligible for the draft. We did not play a decision-making
   role in the debate about the war, not in government and not in the
   anti-war movement. Coming out as a lesbian led me to an even greater
   appreciation of how much my country excludes me, an exclusion
   highlighted and underlined by the passage of Amendment 2 in Colorado
   and the debate about whether I should be allowed to serve in our
   military.

   The good news, of course, is that many people in this country are no
   longer willing to be excluded, whether for gender, race, disability or
   sexual orientation; no longer willing to let others make decisions for
   us. When I first heard the song Romanovsky and Phillips sang, I was
   unformed, unaware of who I was. I had a sense that the world needed
   changing, but I lacked clarity about why change was important for me.
   I lacked clarity about how I fit in to a social change movement. I
   hardly remember that unformed young woman anymore. She's become a
   woman who knows who she is, and knows she wants to live in a world
   where all of her is invited.

   So, when they sang that night in January, when we sang along,

"Come senators, congressmen,
Please heed the call,
Don't stand in the doorways,
Don't block up the hall,"

   I saw Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms being replaced by the likes of
   Barbara Mikulski, Carol Mosely Brown, and Pat Schroeder. When we sang:

"The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last"


   I saw Phyliss Schafly and Ronald Reagan being replaced by the likes of
   Harvey Milk and Gerry Studds and Roberta Achtenberg. When we sang:

"Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend a hand"

   I was engaged in it in a way Dylan never dreamed of, in a way I didn't
   know then that I needed. When we sang:

"The times they are a-changing,"

   It was not just for my straight friends. It was not just for the men
   in the room. It was for me. It was with hope for the day that I can
   stop counting because I am included, hope for the day that all of me
   is invited to the feast.

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                        Gail S. Bernstein, Ph.D.

       We give special thanks to our sponsor, the Alliance



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