Reflection: The Voices that Came Before

Liddy Grantland '20, reflects on how her experience working on the #MyVoiceMyBody project shaped her preaching at Duke Chapel as the 2020 student preacher. 

It’s 10:45 am on Sunday, February 23th, 2020. I’m in the wood-paned office of the Dean of Duke Chapel. And I’m crying. 

I have been here before. As researchers of the Duke Chapel sermon archive, my team and I spent time in this office with Dean Luke Powery. He showed us the art on the walls, the meaning behind the objects with which he surrounded himself in this space, as we talked about our task in studying the Chapel’s sermon archive. And as a Chapel intern, I’d shown this space many preachers, with many important letters in front of their names and accolades in their biographies. I offered water, pointed to the bathroom, gave them time to ready themselves to preach.

I looked around at this space I’d grown to know, and I remembered the voices of the people who belonged here: Dean Powery and guest preachers I’d heard during my time at Duke, yes, but also the Deans dating back to the Chapel’s opening, the preachers who left their voices in the archive, in this space. I recalled transcribing those old, old sermons: pausing and listening hard and pausing again, trying to discern meaning from old, crackly records.

I recalled that people of color were barred from this space until just a few years before my parents were born--the not-distant past. I recalled how few women and queer and trans people’s voices were allowed to fill this space. I recalled how the voices of these prophets and poets and preachers were mighty, mighty echoes in the archive, astonishing me with their courage and hope in the face of violence and pain. And I realized that they probably stood where I was standing at 10:45 a.m. 

Half an hour later, I would be preaching in Duke Chapel. My voice would fill that cavernous room, would be in the archive forever. And I was afraid. Who was I to speak in this place?

So I did what I often do when I’m overwhelmed: phoned a friend. Janie’s voice filled my ears, reminding me that she, too, had stood here as the Student Preacher, just a year ago. I don’t remember what she said, but her voice echoed to me the voices of all of the people who had made it possible for me to be there: my Chapel research team, my community of mentors and friends and family, and all of those prophets and poets and preachers who’d stood where I was standing, who’d filled this space with their voices before me, even though they were afraid.

At 10:50, I walked to the Narthex alone, because I knew the way. My hands were shaky, my stomach in knots, my eyes probably a little puffy. 

But I knew that when it came time to step up to that pulpit, I would speak. I would speak because countless voices before me spoke my presence there into existence. I would speak because I learned: I belonged there.