Bishop Marian Edgar Budde first came into my awareness on US Inauguration Day 2025 when her sermon at theWashington National Cathedral in Washington, DC, caught international attention. First, I was captured by her plea for compassion, then by the combination of gentleness and conviction that I heard in her tone and saw in her demeanour. I did some internet research, and the more I learned, the more respect I gained for her.
Then, to my delight, I l discovered she had authored a book, published in 2023, as a follow-up to an earlier experience of speaking truth to power, following the death of George Floyd in June 2020. Her book is entitled, How We Learn to Be Brave.
The reminder that courage is something we learn and grow into resonates deeply with me. Not only do I love my comfort zone, but I have had long experience with anxiety throughout my adult life. It takes effort for me to step beyond familiar edges, and I need to be reminded that it is something I practice, rather than something I innately do.
Bishop Budde writes, “This book is about the 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.”
She points out that these great, decisive moments are often followed by “the entirely predictable and emotionally unsettling experience of emptiness when the decisive moment passes”, and that cultivating the hidden virtue of perseverance is what holds us steady.
Deciding to Go is often a dramatic and visible moment in our experience, where we choose to leave one place or way of being ourselves, and move into another. Deciding to Stay is much quieter and less visible, when “we choose to go deeper into the commitments we’ve made”. Deciding to Start is when we take our first steps toward a vision we hold that may take years to realize. This requires the courage to accept that this is a long journey that may or may not bring us the result we hope for, and yet recognizing that every small effort we make is worthwhile.
One of my favourite chapters is “Accepting What You Do Not Choose”. This particularly resonates with me in this period of my life where I am being asked to step up to some big challenges that I have not chosen, and yet are what are before me. It helps to be reminded that there is courage in truly accepting, which includes being compassionate toward all the feelings that arise in me, including “this isn’t what I want”.
“Acceptance remains among the hardest things asked of us,” she writes. “The price is always high, but in the face of what we would never choose and cannot change, it provides a way forward … In our willingness to stay engaged, God know that we’re all in. Our capacity to love will grow, and through us, God will work quiet miracles that keep hope alive, even in troubling times.”
In her chapter on “Stepping up to the Plate”, she explores the times when we are presented with opportunities to make a difference. Sometimes we feel ready for them, and sometimes we do not. “Stepping up to the plate when you aren’t ready is the price of beginning. It’s what you must do, time and again, when moving toward something important and becoming the person who is able to do or accomplish what is currently beyond your ability.” She goes on to talk about how such acts of courage don’t always turn out the way we hope. As she puts it, “You show up, take your place, step up to the plate, and swing and miss, and miss, and miss—until one day you make contact.”
The rest of the chapter talks about her own experiences of failure, some of them very public and far-reaching, and how she made her way through the resulting emotional turmoil. Her transparency about these moments (and months) gives her words about courage the weight of authenticity.
She also addresses the inevitable letdown after our decisive moments, “the often-fragile emotional state that awaits on the other side of courage.” This can look like either full-on retreat from engagement, or overconfidence, a state that can cause us to trip over our own feet, as it were, and experience a very visible moment of failure. “We need to be honest with ourselves and others when we make a mistake or are brought your knees,” she writes. “It’s a way of living and leading with an undefended heart, truly open to others and with a spine strong enough to withstand the experience, learn from it and carry on.”
Rev. Budde’s writing style is relatable and easy to read, with an abundance of stories from Scripture, history and her own personal experience to illustrate or emphasize her points. Even her references to Biblical stories and to God as a guiding presence in her life are gentle and without dogmatism. Most signifiant to me, she doesn’t shy away from naming the times when, with the best of intentions, she has gotten things very wrong, and reveals the work she had to do to repair relationships as a result. By the time I finished the book, I felt like she was someone with whom I would like to have coffee and further conversation.
I have returned to this book more than once when I need to be reminded of my own bravery and the work it takes to continue to cultivate it. These words continue to resonate—“We do not chose where are are in the human story, only how we live in the time we are given.”
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