Meet Bishop Budde. Last Year She Wrote a Book on Learning to Be Brave and This Week She Showed the World Her Courage
We all want to be brave when it counts—to be the one who steps up, leans in, and does the right thing when it matters most. We want to bring our best selves when we’re called upon, to speak with clarity and conviction in a pivotal situation.
This book is about those decisive moments when we are called to act with courage and, much to our own amazement, we do.
Although the more dramatic moments seem to catch us by surprise, looking through the wider lens of our lives, we can see that the acts of bravery that astonish even us are not isolated events. In this book, I examine life through that wider lens in hope that you, reader, will realize that you have all the raw material you need to live with courage and purpose in your decisive moments, and all the moments that precede and follow them.
Decisive moments are marking events. They stand out in our memory and are what others often remember about us. We feel a rush of adrenaline, making us acutely aware of what’s happening. We feel alive— so much so that the rest of our lives can feel dull and uninspired by comparison. Yet decisive moments are almost always preceded by seasons of preparation, and they are followed by an equally important season of alignment, in which we learn to live according to what the decisive moments revealed, clarified, or set in motion. How we prepare for decisive moments determines our ability to step up to them when they come, and how we live in light of our decisive moments is, in the end, what determines their significance.
There have been many decisive moments in my life, but few as public as what happened on June 1, 2020. To be honest, I didn’t have time to think. Urged on by horrified church colleagues who were watching the president walk to St. John’s Church on live television and lighting up my phone with texts, I managed to find my voice and speak.
The president’s actions touched a societal nerve, as did my speaking out against them. It seemed to others that I was being very brave. In truth, it felt more like being summoned to take my place alongside others who were being brave. Something had to be said, not just about that presidential moment, but the moment we were in as a nation, mourning the murder of George Floyd, watching crowds pour into the streets in cities across the nation, and facing yet again the need for racial reckoning. Because of my position, I had an opportunity to speak and be heard.
The capacity to respond in such a moment doesn’t drop from the sky, nor is its significance measured by a week’s worth of media coverage. Moments like these are preceded by seasons of preparation, practice, and intention, of making countless daily decisions that determine our capacity to be brave when called upon or when we’re summoned not of our own choosing. Its ultimate significance is determined by how we live after the moment passes.
The more personally decisive moment for me in that dramatic week took place a few days after President Trump’s infamous photo-op. I was back on what is now called Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of St. John’s Church, listening to the words of the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II. Bishop Barber is cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, a broad- based effort to mobilize low- income people of all races and their allies to create a more just society. Bishop Barber looked out on the wonderfully multiracial, intergenerational crowd gathered that Sunday afternoon and said, “Do not let anyone tell you that this is the first time people of different races, classes, and educational backgrounds have come together to fight for a common cause. It has always been such a coalition of the faithful that has brought about change in this country— Black, white, and brown; rich and poor; young and old. Everyone is needed; everyone has a part to play and an offering to make.”2
As he spoke, the weight I had been carrying all week fell off my shoulders, and in that moment, I knew my place in the larger struggle for justice. I heard myself say to God and to the universe, “I want to be among the coalition of the faithful. I want to be among those working for the change we need now.” That’s the decision with which I need to align my life every day. It wasn’t a new thought for me, but I felt it in a new way. It won’t always burn in my heart the way it did that week, but I don’t want to forget it. Like everyone else, I need grace, courage, and perseverance to be true to my decisive moment after the passion fades.
As decisive as that week was for many of us as Americans, and a marking series of events for us as a nation, it would be a mistake to conclude that all decisive moments are as public. Indeed, most of the defining moments of life never make the news cycle. It’s critically important not to become accustomed to the spotlight of an audience in such moments and confuse the short- lived attention of others for the kind of change our decisive moments invite us to embrace. Most decisive moments are personal, some are private, yet all are the moments that shape our lives and make us the people we are and who God calls us to become.
Decisive moments involve conscious choice, impressing their importance upon us as we experience them, for we know that we’re choosing a specific path of potential consequence. In a decisive moment, no matter how we got there, we no longer see ourselves as being acted upon by the slings and arrows of fortune or fate, but as ones with agency. We’re not on autopilot; we’re not half- engaged. We are, as they say, all in, shapers of our destiny, and cocreators with God. For as the word itself suggests, in a decisive moment, we decide.
This book explores a range of decisive moments that we experience in life to better understand their significance, learn what they have to teach us, and discern how to live according to the light they provide. As a person of faith, I see God at work in these moments and every moment that precedes and follows. Drawing upon examples from my own life, from scripture, and from history and culture, I hope to underscore both the universality of these experiences and the particular call to which each one of us must respond when our decisive moments come.
I am convinced that we all have the capacity to live within a narrative of great adventure, no matter our life circumstances. The courage to be brave when it matters most requires a lifetime of small decisions that set us on a path of self- awareness, attentiveness, and willingness to risk failure for what we believe is right. It is also a profoundly spiritual experience, one in which we feel a part of something larger than ourselves and guided, somehow, by a larger Spirit at work in the world and in us. Decisive moments make believers out of everyone, for no matter what name we give to it, the inexplicable, unmerited experience of a power greater than our own working through us is real. The audacious truth is that we matter in the realization of all that is good and noble and true. I want to expand our notion of what constitutes a decisive moment, for they come in many forms and require a wide range of decisions, equally decisive yet different in their energy and outcome.
In these pages, I also pay homage to the long stretches of life when nothing decisive seems to be happening and explore what happens after a decisive moment, as we live out the implications of decisions that set us on a particular course. This includes acceptance of the entirely predictable and emotionally unsettling experience of emptiness when the decisive moment passes. This is when we learn to place the intensity of a given moment within the arc of a lifetime and trust that most of life is lived in smaller acts of faithfulness. Only then can we cultivate the hidden virtue of perseverance to keep going when the going is hard.
Every moment in life is in some way decisive, part of the one life we are given to live. Recognizing life’s ebb and flow helps us prepare for those moments when something important is on the line. “For everything there is a season,” scripture teaches us, “and a time for every matter under heaven.”3 It takes courage to accept and fully live the lives we have been given.
Mariann Edgar Budde is the bishop and spiritual leader of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., and the Washington National Cathedral. Prior to her election in 2011, she was a parish priest in Minneapolis for eighteen years. She has appeared on PBS NewsHour, Meet the Press, Good Morning America, and the Today show, among others. Bishop Budde earned her master's in divinity and doctor of ministry from Virginia Theological Seminary.
Excerpted from HOW WE LEARN TO BE BRAVE by arrangement with Avery Books, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2023, Mariann Edgar Budde
Audio excerpted courtesy of Penguin Random House Audio from HOW WE LEARN TO BE BRAVE by Mariann Edgar Budde, read by Mariann Edgar Budde. © 2023 Mariann Edgar Budde, ℗ 2023 Penguin Random House, LLC. All rights reserved.
Please note that we may receive affiliate commissions from the sales of linked products.
