"What have you done today to make you feel proud?" --Heather Small
"You can take away my job, my vocation, my marriage, my home, and my life, but you can't take away my pride." --C. W.
I.
"I'm on my way, can't stop me now. And you can do the same." Pride may be one of the seven deadly sins, but frankly, there are a lot of deadly sins that are not counted among these seven sins, such as hate, fear, and pity.
I say, let's redefine these deadly sins. What have you done today to make you feel proud?
To say I'm fan of Showtime's series "Queer as Folk" is an understatement. When my friend, David, a fellow Minnesotan and a life mentor, first lent me his recorded episodes on VHS tapes back in New York City more than 10 years ago, I knew I loved this rag-tag bunch of metro-homosexuals. It is sexy, edgy, real, funny, semi-pornographic at times, but that is the reality of our lives. No apologies, no regrets.
Just now, I finished watching the series finale (the last scene is in the link to the above quotation), which ended with the song above--"What have you done today to make you feel proud?" Not "make me feel proud." Not "make God feel proud." Not "make your parents, your teachers, your employers feel proud." But you. The very you who is reading this sentence right now, and who is typing it. Because feeling proud is something new every day, like God's manna from heaven, something not just to re-live, or re-make, but something that comes up as a requirement for us to live as flourishing, loving, proud, and fierce human beings.
II.
I've taken a few weeks' sabbatical on this series of writing 15 reflections on 15 years of being out. In the meantime, I visited the scene of my coming out, my alma mater, Lawrence University. I hadn't been there in nearly 10 years, and many people have come and gone since then. Many buildings are new, many people are new, but as I approached college avenue and rode past Main Hall, the cobwebs fell from my eyes, and I saw the place that was so formative in my life--not just my intellectual life, but my emotional life, and the life that I found worth fighting for after so many years of fear.
Every corner of this university, especially the Conservatory of music, had a memory, or many memories. The friends I made, the friends I lost, the people I loved, hated, the people I passed who have themselves passed on to another dimension, those places that are now silent, that used to be the center of activity. "Mozzi sticks!!!" I could hear one saucy Union kitchen lady yelling as I waited for one of the dearest friends in my life that I haven't talked to now in 10 years. Now, silent, a closed door, like that friendship feels.
But pride is on the other side, waiting to open the door.
I wasn't exactly proud of myself when I got to college at age 18. My parents were proud of me, and for that I'm both grateful and fortunate. The pathway to 18 and beyond is filled with so many possible wrecking points, that in some ways I think it is a miracle that as many people make it to that one, lone spot as do. But the hardest times do not pass when one makes the first forays out onto one's "own."
It's coming to own one's own that can present some of the tightest spots of our lives. And the road there is lined with those who have made it only part of the way, not because of their own faults, but because others made the road so damned impassable. But the road is not *necessarily* impassable. There are angels who can help you get through, if you can open your eyes when they are most tightly closed and see.
And we need to help those angels along, and to be those angels of our better natures.
III.
I put writing this entry off because in many ways it is the hardest one to write. The time I've taken getting here mirrors the time I've taken getting to any place in my life where I can be proud both of who I am, as well as what I've done.
It's hardest, sometimes, to cut oneself some slack, let alone others. In fact, I think we often treat ourselves with harshness that would make us go to the mat for our friends and loved ones if we saw them being treated the same way that we sometimes treat ourselves.
So pride is not such an easy thing, for a number of reasons, for a number of people. Being told you're worthless, scum, lowest of the low, perverted, wrong, abnormal, sick, damned, and a whole host of other horrible things, seems to sink in with some time, and sinks us. A lot of people who are not themselves LGBTQ have experienced this kind of soul-murder. So why does so much of the animus come to those of us who are LGBTQ?
Because, I sense, we expose the beauty and diversity that is each person's in this life, that so many are afraid will give them such fulfillment, that it will literally blow their minds.
People are diverse, they're not of one mind, they know themselves often much better than they are known, in short, people are not on one standard track of being recognized, comfortable, productive, and beneficent to themselves first, as well as to others.
And the LGBTQ community, as far as we are a community, is the exemplar of this diversity. While our sexuality, "lifestyles," and the choices that we make to live more fabulously every day make us part of who we are, we live, each of us, being "repairers of the breach," reconcilers, and living those lives away from the quiet desperation that makes people die a death much worse than that of the body: the death of their spirits in their limited time in this life.
IV.
Those who wish to say that our relationships, that our lives, in all their color, do not count as much as theirs, miss one of the greatest gifts of this brief life: that life does not all have to be the same, and that we have agency in making of our lives what God would, I don't just think but am certain, want us to make of our lives: as absolutely much as we can.
Many of those who couch their opposition under the name of the God of all life, look at gay pride parades and festivals as the exemplars of our shame: leather daddies, open sexuality, sodomites laughing and parading their difference through the streets, people who are one step away from taking us all down the fast road to hell.
Well, I have a message for these purveyors of doom: those who fear the rainbow are bound to be crushed by it. Not crushed by the triumph of "fag enablers," but by their very own, human, and misguided fear. And that makes me pity them, although I know that fear as well as they do.
I remember my first pride well, in the summer of 1998 in New York City. It was the first time in my life that, for just a few hours, in a small part of the world, I felt like everyone in the world was LGBT or Q, where nobody had to explain anything about what I had felt all my life, where I could feel, even if briefly, the home that is so common to so many people, where I came home from a lifelong exile. And that feeling is not something to fear, but to celebrate.
This pride is the pride that we take in our own lives, in our own feelings, in the exultation that each of us and a human being can feel in our humanity, not in the humanity that is imposed upon us, but in what we ourselves know is our truth.
V.
Pity, not humility, is the antithesis of pride.
I know pity well--I'm prone to self-pity, one of my deepest flaws. Self-pity, in feeling that I have not made enough of my life, that I have not attained my calling as a minister of the Word of God, that I have not sustained a long-term relationship or marriage, that I have not yet peaked in the arc of my living, afflicts me as it does many, and seeks to quash the beauty that my life can, and often does, have and has to give. This feeling of self-pity almost kept me from going back to Lawrence, the goal of which was to celebrate the awesome life and contribution of one of the most fabulous Lawrentians ever, our late archivist, Carol Butts.
I am eternally glad that I opposed the poisoned source from which these impediments derived, to avert what would have been a true pity: missing out on this fabulous celebration and reunion.
I was proud that day that we gathered Carol's family, friends, and colleagues, to celebrate her memory and contributions, as she has so long deserves. I only wish she could have been there with us to enjoy a well-deserved honor.
Now, this is hard to say, but I think it is the truth: LGBTQ people are often trained more in pity than we are in pride. We are made the victims of people who cannot accept the truths of their own lives, let alone the lives of others, and we cry out altogether too often in the pain that others inflict on us, and that we inflict on ourselves. But we also shout from the rooftops, and within the halls of power, that God indeed does love us in equal measure, that we are human in equal measure, and that our relationships are equal, not because we fight for them to be, but because they just are.
I had the chance to be proud for a while last week, in the midst of fighting against a vote by the Minnesota State Legislature to hand off for the people to decide what rights we should all have under the law. I am grateful to Rep. Debra Kiel, freshman representative of district 1B, my home district, for hearing me out. I hope truly that she thinks and prays about what I had to say to her.
The most important thing I had to tell her was this: We are equal in our humanity, and we are equal in our baptisms (those of us who are Christian), but we are not equal under the law, and the law is very important, and something that our representatives, such as herself, have in their hands.
Hundreds who protested this anti-gay constitutional amendment made me proud, standing, singing, and shouting for our rights at the very door of power. Organizations like OutFront Minnesota, Project 515, and the new Minnesotans United for All Families, are all helping to gather the power of our communities around making justice for all families a reality in Minnesota.
A few Republican representatives made me especially proud, most notably Rep. John Kriesel, whose experience in the war in Iraq, and particularly serving with a gay soldier who was killed, made him see that this anti-gay amendment must be opposed at all costs. (His speech is here.) He said "I'm proud of this, because this is the right thing to do." And he was absolutely right.
My parents, each in writing their representatives, made me proud as well, just one of many times.
VI.
Pride is not just doing what you're told. Pride is knowing that you are worth more than others say you are, that your worth is from a source beyond yourself, beyond your own family and community, beyond your own accomplishments, from a source that reaches out to all of humanity, the wonderful and the awful, that for those of us who believe reaches to God and comes from God.
This kind of pride feeds our lives and gives them meaning. It's not a sin. The hate that challenges who we are, that hate is a deadly sin, literally. And that is what Jesus came on this earth to oppose.
We hit the mat for a moment when the MN State Legislature passed this sorry bill (a.k.a. SF 1308 and HF 1615). But we are not going to stay down.
We're going to kick such ass on this anti-marriage amendment. Not because we're going to be louder, tougher, and more determined than those who oppose our relationships, but because we're simply going to love them more than they hate us.
We are going to love their scared selves into a place of salvation.
Jesus is not going to come down from the sky to save them from us, but, rather, Jesus is going to work through us to redeem them, until there is no more "us" and "them," but only "we."
And that's something to be proud of.
Showing posts with label liberation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label liberation. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
15 for 15 VI: The First Time, or I'm Finally Out!
The day had to come.
Earlier that day, I was agonizing, as I did every day, over the guy I was in love with but didn't, or couldn't, tell. When he told me that he was in love with another guy, I told him how I felt about him, and there it was.
Out.
Finally.
I.
But the one to whom I am out and whom I love loves another. I want to laugh and cry and vomit.
--May 6, 1996
Those were the hardest years of my life, so far, both preceding and following that statement.
Since that time, I've come to think that emotional puberty, which happens around age 20, is harder than physical puberty. I went into a cocoon, psychologically, and to some degree physically as well.
Like many young men of that age, I grew out my hair, on my face as well as on my head. I actually had hair to grow out back then.
Along with this growth of hair around me, I continued growing barriers around myself psychologically to keep people out. I became so good at it, that by age 21, I could say that I hadn't kept any friends consistently since I was a kid, and although I made friends in college, it would be some time before I worked on those friendships at all. Mostly, I was insecure, overly-competitive, and didn't want anyone to know I was gay.
It all ended that night.
II.
My view of the world has changed so drastically, I can't. This is the night I have been waiting for for so long...
I knew after that night that something more than my sexuality had come out. I had come out, started to destroy the cocoon of secrecy that I'd built around myself with hundreds or thousands of "saves," putting my mind to work several moves ahead of where a conversation might be going so that I would not have to answer certain questions or lie.
The piano had been my adolescent lover, and the eccentric pianist Glenn Gould had been my "virtual" lover, long before the idea of virtual had come to my mind. I was safely hidden behind an intellectual exterior in which I could be busy thinking about things, or practicing the piano. I became enveloped in the works of Ayn Rand, who, from her physical and emotional grave, egged me on to be different and alone. Being an individual was the most important thing to me, so much so that when I went to college, I wanted to do an "individualized major," which at the time was kooky, although has caught on since.
Through all of the nights that I had gone to sleep for 10 years wondering if I was hopelessly lost, or if I was "the only one," I knew in those moments, on that night 15 years ago, that I was never going to be the only one again.
The first time I came out was like returning from a long, lonely exile in a foreign land, whose customs I sort of knew, and whose language I spoke with great difficulty because I kept tripping over the words, but whose food I didn't enjoy, and whose oppressive culture I could not wait to escape.
This feeling of exile, of not being welcomed in your homeland, is perhaps common to a lot of people for a lot of reasons. People can challenge this feeling only in the company of those who are "like" them, or perhaps in books, movies, other media, or characters of their own making. But it's not the same as connecting in person, with real, live people whom you know are enough like you so that you don't have to mouth a barely familiar language that everyone else seems to know fluently.
My whole perspective on the world changed, because that night I no longer had to think in terms of dynamic equivalence, translating the lives of others, and particularly the loves of others, into something that made sense to me in my own mind and deeply felt experience. My world changed that night because it finally became my world.
III.
I'm so confused and elated and nervous and sick and ecstatic. Sleep seems light years away.
A million feelings went through my mind and heart all at once, so powerful that I felt like I was going to go insane or literally explode, internally combust, go up in the flames of gay fabulosity before I knew what those even could be.
I felt, in that moment, that I had crossed over a threshold of experience that I thought I would never cross, and entered a world I could only sense existed, but had been there all the time. And what I wanted felt further out of reach than ever, because my feelings were not returned.
Feelings are a funny thing--substantial, but not quantifiable; ephemeral, but lasting; they are the ultimate paradox.
And feelings seem to give us permission to act in any way that we wish. I did that, and was not proud of how my feelings affected the object of those feelings. Objectifying another, especially one about whom we feel strongly, seems impossible to avoid, but in the cold light of long reflection, I would have acted quite differently. At that time, though, I simply could not. One learns not to repeat certain mistakes, even though some of those mistakes seem to fall into a pattern of action that, no matter how many times one tries to reason his or her way out of them, seems to keep coming back the same way. It is almost like an addiction, and the effects can perhaps be just as harmful.
Still, I came to value those feelings only by finally experiencing them, and putting them out there in the world. If they are returned, that is somehow a bonus, but there is no way in which one can or should force another person to feel what one does not feel.
Being forced into feeling what one does not feel is precisely the aim of the closet. It is not only a place of privacy and safety, but it is a place that often compels people to feel that that is the only place in which they can be safe. And that is not right.
IV.
Many first times have come since that one those many years ago: first lovers, first boyfriends, first poems, first culinary delights, first times being without a home, being on my own and unsure of what to do next, first trips to Europe and Africa, first times walking the streets of Paris and New York and San Francisco, dreamlike places that I never thought I'd be, but that have come to define my personality and my life in ways similar to this lived sexual orientation.
First times are indeed very special, even if they aren't anything special in and of themselves. I remember the first time I changed a headlight on a car, the feeling of accomplishment that I had, and the feeling of empowerment. First times can, but do not always, empower us to try for higher levels of experience, and make us realize that what never seemed possible actually is something we just haven't tried yet. Of course, that doesn't go for everything. Like eating liver.
Tonight, I celebrated these many years of being out, and all the gifts and challenges that have come with it, at the lovely Nicollet Island Inn restaurant in Minneapolis. Here was one of the fabulous courses with which my table was adorned:
For we are called to the great feast, to the Gospel feast, to the feast of honesty and integrity that adds all of the flavor to life. Facing one's areas of pain and struggle honestly, and for a long time, can yield much greater treasures that can be bought and paid for with money.
And you are always welcome at my feast.
Friday, May 6, 2011
15-for-15 V: Who I Am, or Identity, Equality, and Value
I know who I am. More or less.
I.
It's easy to say that sexuality is just a small part of our lives, that it's not "who we are." It's also easy to say that sexuality is our entire life, that it's all we are.
When I say that I am gay, and thereby oppose the words that headline the first entry in this series, I equate myself with my sexual orientation, I own that part of myself, and I use it to define myself. I am Chris, but saying that is not quite the same way of defining self, because "Chris" doesn't have a definition in itself.
Saying "I am cold," similarly, describes a passing state or feeling. "I am rich," or "I am poor," too, might get at something true for a while, which shapes who we are and how we are, but these descriptors are not necessarily identity characteristics. Our "net worth" does not come in how much money we have in the bank the day before the stock market crashes and wipes out our assets.
Yet people debate the extent to which sexuality is a passing phase, essential to our beings or a choice, or a product of our doing.
I think that sexuality is a very big part of our lives, because it affects how we relate to ourselves, others, our society, religions, and to every huge factor in our lives. Sexuality goes far beyond those with whom one has sex, far beyond one's private domain, and indeed beyond one's "personal preferences" or "lifestyle choice." The term "lifestyle choice," in fact, has always been both nebulous and insulting, highlighting an ornamental, act-based idea of sexuality that somehow people might chose out of boredom with the "normal" way of life. It doesn't get at such a large part of what I think is connoted by the term "sexual identity"--the source of one's passions.
What "turns you on"? What "floats your boat"? What gets your blood pumping, and what paints your sky? What brings a flush to your cheek, or a spring to your step? Sexuality is in our blood, and blood is thicker than water. The sinoatrial node might physically produce the electrical force behind the beating of our hearts, but sexuality is the metaphoric animating principle behind that and every aspect of our creative lives.
Sexuality goes a long way beyond T & A. (Especially if you're gay.)
II. Defined by Difference? Enlivened by Equality?
Being different gives a person the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about things that people who are not different probably don't think much about. Some might take exception with my use of the term "different." But when you're defined in ways that lead to a different set of rules for how you can live your life, you're different.
Difference, in the case of sexual identity, means that you do not necessarily follow the life patterns and roles that are set in place for you when you're born. The consequence of that difference is that society sets out for you the same expectations, but a different set of rules.
I'll be the first to own that sometimes those of us with this difference of sexuality, or any difference, spend too much time thinking and talking about it, and not enough time living it. That is because justice has not yet come for many of us, and because our siblings in difference around the world and on our own shores are still being mocked, beaten, assaulted, shamed into self-hatred and worse, and indeed put to violent death. We think about this difference because our world won't let us forget.
In thinking about this difference, we often talk about "equality." Frankly, the more I think of it, the more insulting the idea of asking for "equality" is.
It is insulting to argue for equality, because we are equal, and we don't ask anyone else to be equal to us. I would never look at someone and say, "Prove that you are equal to me." People who don't realize that LGBT people are fully equal in our humanity and our relationships are fully equal in their legitimacy will not do so because we say they are.
We spend so much time defending, and that leaves less time actually to live.
My leap came when I realized the value of my own feelings, at least to myself, not that they were equal, but that they were valuable.
III.
Sexuality is a value. And one person's sexuality is no more a value than another's.
Sexuality is a value in what it does to enliven and paint the skies of our lives. It is also a value in how it challenges and points out our brokenness. Everyone has a broken aspect to their sexuality. This is one of the chief reasons why same-sex attraction scares people--because thinking of it as an attraction that is fully broken, wrong, diseased, or criminal, gives people who think like that a way to avoid confronting their own brokenness.
It's hard to name all of the discrete experiences of our lives that name our sexuality in one way or another. Holding hands in the movie show, as one old song put it, is something that people without a difference would not think twice about doing, and might indeed take pleasure and gain social status by being seen "together."
One can name one's sexuality in any number of subtle ways, in a look or a few carefully placed words, in whose names one mentions casually in conversation, in pictures that adorn one's public spaces, or in the stories that we tell about important experiences in our lives that involve other people.
People who cannot be public about their sexuality find any number of ways to avoid it becoming known. My most potent memory from my high school years involved sitting in the library on a study break with some guys who began talking about how a girl was admiring another guy's ass. I interjected, without realizing that I was in danger of totally outing myself to some of the not nicer people: "Oh, she could do better." Snap!
This comment did not escape their attention. One shot back with a look on his face that I've seen a couple of other times, in dangerous situations where they see the gay within you and don't like what they see. The words exploded, "Oh yeah?? Who??!"
A breathless moment passed. It seemed like they had gotten me, and that all I had feared would now come to pass.
From out of nowhere, the word came into my head and out my mouth with as little thought as I had given when I initiated this crisis just seconds ago:
"Me."
And with that, they laughed their asses off, and I breathed an internal sigh of release. Way too close for comfort.
That's such an innocuous experience, and yet given the context of being forced to avoid saying any little thing that might "tip them off," I had just dodged what I feared would be metaphoric and literal bullets.
Just imagine all of the experiences, in all of the years, that all of those who do not want to be "found out" go through, and the weight that puts on one's shoulders.
Every experience that one might have to pass through in order to stay in the closet is an experience in which sexuality makes itself known outwardly in our lives.
Who I am, who you are, is partially defined by the weight we carry, what we do with it, and what we let it do to us.
But we are also defined by what lifts us.
And someday, hopefully within my lifetime, the widest part of our society will support the enlivening force that takes us through each day, that connects with the Holy Spirit and taps us into God, that is our muse for writing, singing, and creating beautiful things, the enlivening force that makes our relationships live, and our words take flight, that sends our rockets to the farthest reaches of physical space, and gives us the energy to dream a better world, while living with greater fulfillment in the one we have.
Who will we be then?
I.
It's easy to say that sexuality is just a small part of our lives, that it's not "who we are." It's also easy to say that sexuality is our entire life, that it's all we are.
When I say that I am gay, and thereby oppose the words that headline the first entry in this series, I equate myself with my sexual orientation, I own that part of myself, and I use it to define myself. I am Chris, but saying that is not quite the same way of defining self, because "Chris" doesn't have a definition in itself.
Saying "I am cold," similarly, describes a passing state or feeling. "I am rich," or "I am poor," too, might get at something true for a while, which shapes who we are and how we are, but these descriptors are not necessarily identity characteristics. Our "net worth" does not come in how much money we have in the bank the day before the stock market crashes and wipes out our assets.
Yet people debate the extent to which sexuality is a passing phase, essential to our beings or a choice, or a product of our doing.
I think that sexuality is a very big part of our lives, because it affects how we relate to ourselves, others, our society, religions, and to every huge factor in our lives. Sexuality goes far beyond those with whom one has sex, far beyond one's private domain, and indeed beyond one's "personal preferences" or "lifestyle choice." The term "lifestyle choice," in fact, has always been both nebulous and insulting, highlighting an ornamental, act-based idea of sexuality that somehow people might chose out of boredom with the "normal" way of life. It doesn't get at such a large part of what I think is connoted by the term "sexual identity"--the source of one's passions.
What "turns you on"? What "floats your boat"? What gets your blood pumping, and what paints your sky? What brings a flush to your cheek, or a spring to your step? Sexuality is in our blood, and blood is thicker than water. The sinoatrial node might physically produce the electrical force behind the beating of our hearts, but sexuality is the metaphoric animating principle behind that and every aspect of our creative lives.
Sexuality goes a long way beyond T & A. (Especially if you're gay.)
II. Defined by Difference? Enlivened by Equality?
Being different gives a person the opportunity to spend a lot of time thinking about things that people who are not different probably don't think much about. Some might take exception with my use of the term "different." But when you're defined in ways that lead to a different set of rules for how you can live your life, you're different.
Difference, in the case of sexual identity, means that you do not necessarily follow the life patterns and roles that are set in place for you when you're born. The consequence of that difference is that society sets out for you the same expectations, but a different set of rules.
I'll be the first to own that sometimes those of us with this difference of sexuality, or any difference, spend too much time thinking and talking about it, and not enough time living it. That is because justice has not yet come for many of us, and because our siblings in difference around the world and on our own shores are still being mocked, beaten, assaulted, shamed into self-hatred and worse, and indeed put to violent death. We think about this difference because our world won't let us forget.
In thinking about this difference, we often talk about "equality." Frankly, the more I think of it, the more insulting the idea of asking for "equality" is.
It is insulting to argue for equality, because we are equal, and we don't ask anyone else to be equal to us. I would never look at someone and say, "Prove that you are equal to me." People who don't realize that LGBT people are fully equal in our humanity and our relationships are fully equal in their legitimacy will not do so because we say they are.
We spend so much time defending, and that leaves less time actually to live.
My leap came when I realized the value of my own feelings, at least to myself, not that they were equal, but that they were valuable.
III.
Sexuality is a value. And one person's sexuality is no more a value than another's.
Sexuality is a value in what it does to enliven and paint the skies of our lives. It is also a value in how it challenges and points out our brokenness. Everyone has a broken aspect to their sexuality. This is one of the chief reasons why same-sex attraction scares people--because thinking of it as an attraction that is fully broken, wrong, diseased, or criminal, gives people who think like that a way to avoid confronting their own brokenness.
It's hard to name all of the discrete experiences of our lives that name our sexuality in one way or another. Holding hands in the movie show, as one old song put it, is something that people without a difference would not think twice about doing, and might indeed take pleasure and gain social status by being seen "together."
One can name one's sexuality in any number of subtle ways, in a look or a few carefully placed words, in whose names one mentions casually in conversation, in pictures that adorn one's public spaces, or in the stories that we tell about important experiences in our lives that involve other people.
People who cannot be public about their sexuality find any number of ways to avoid it becoming known. My most potent memory from my high school years involved sitting in the library on a study break with some guys who began talking about how a girl was admiring another guy's ass. I interjected, without realizing that I was in danger of totally outing myself to some of the not nicer people: "Oh, she could do better." Snap!
This comment did not escape their attention. One shot back with a look on his face that I've seen a couple of other times, in dangerous situations where they see the gay within you and don't like what they see. The words exploded, "Oh yeah?? Who??!"
A breathless moment passed. It seemed like they had gotten me, and that all I had feared would now come to pass.
From out of nowhere, the word came into my head and out my mouth with as little thought as I had given when I initiated this crisis just seconds ago:
"Me."
And with that, they laughed their asses off, and I breathed an internal sigh of release. Way too close for comfort.
That's such an innocuous experience, and yet given the context of being forced to avoid saying any little thing that might "tip them off," I had just dodged what I feared would be metaphoric and literal bullets.
Just imagine all of the experiences, in all of the years, that all of those who do not want to be "found out" go through, and the weight that puts on one's shoulders.
Every experience that one might have to pass through in order to stay in the closet is an experience in which sexuality makes itself known outwardly in our lives.
Who I am, who you are, is partially defined by the weight we carry, what we do with it, and what we let it do to us.
But we are also defined by what lifts us.
And someday, hopefully within my lifetime, the widest part of our society will support the enlivening force that takes us through each day, that connects with the Holy Spirit and taps us into God, that is our muse for writing, singing, and creating beautiful things, the enlivening force that makes our relationships live, and our words take flight, that sends our rockets to the farthest reaches of physical space, and gives us the energy to dream a better world, while living with greater fulfillment in the one we have.
Who will we be then?
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
15-for-15 IV: Gaining My Religion
"God hasn't brought you this far just to let you go now."
--Loretta Hernton
I.
Somehow, I got dragged back into church after foreswearing it for Aristotle.
It was going to be so neat and tidy: Let God be whatever God was supposed to be, which I supposed wasn't much, pray when I really needed something somehow expecting that would work, and stay in my rational mind as well as I possibly could. That was my "lifestyle choice" for a good long time. Looking back now, I mouthed the words of atheism, but my heart wasn't in it. It was like me trying to be heterosexual.
This is not to say that atheists, agnostics, humanists, and persons of dozens, if not hundreds, of world religions do not have a heart, and, indeed more of a heart than I. But I could never have come to the religious belief I have without being openly gay. Indeed, some of the most "Christian" people I know, and some of the better theologians, are atheists, and some of the beastliest things I've seen and heard have been done in the name of Jesus.
I've always been a doubter and a sceptic when it comes to faith. Indeed, faith without doubt is like pig iron; it is brittle, and breaks at the least trial. Doubt to faith is like the carbon that turns iron into steel, making it strong and pliable enough to shift without easily falling down.
II,
In college, I never felt like the church was any place for me to be. After I left home, I left the church as well, as many young people do, except to earn some money playing organ or piano for services here and there.
My family attended a Methodist church quite faithfully, each Sunday, so it was a part of my upbringing. In fact, I've not lived a day without being baptized, as I was baptized the very day I was born. It was a lifestyle choice, yes, first made by my parents, and then myself. But I never wanted to be a part of the "Christians" that I saw at college, because I knew that their company was no place for the likes of me. But "my religion" has become far more than a casual choice or accident of birth.
Strangely enough, in coming to understand the part of myself that had to come out of the closet, especially in the context of what really mattered in my life and in the universe from my vantage point, I couldn't escape the many elements that had affected my life through religion. Yet, even though I am certain I never went to a church service in which the pastor or priest said that homosexuals were going to hell, somehow I got that message through the air, or the airwaves, because enough other people were saying it: God condemns gays. I know that to be a lie, in some cases very carefully manufactured for maximal political effect, but it was a lie that helped keep me in the closet.
My first summer in New York, where I have lived 5 years of my adult life, I recall a subway evangelist (there were many) approach me on the uptown platform of the A train at 42nd Street. He said to me, "Do you have Jesus?" I answered, and can still clearly see and feel what I felt when I said it, "I already know I'm going to hell."
That frame of mind, however, is not where I would stay.
III.
As someone who went through seminary, I learned how to tell my "faith journey" while standing on one leg, like Ayn Rand claimed she could do and recite her whole philosophy (which I'm sure she could). And not only did I go to one seminary, but two: Yale Divinity School/Institute of Sacred Music for my "Masters of Divinity," a title to this day that makes me laugh with images of donning leather and picking up a whip to recite the Word of the Lord, and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, which granted me a CATS, a Certificate of Advanced Theological Studies, which sounds like something between a pet and a medical procedure. Altogether, I became a Master of Divine Cats who could whip out a faith journey narrative like last-minute pancakes for unannounced company.
My path was somewhat untraditional, lacking a particular influential mentor, but common as well to others who went to seminary. I was raised in the church, left the church, left God, found out that I hadn't left God, got peppered with dreams and "coincidences" that forced me to think about God, as well as felt an increasing desire to know more about religion, to experience more, to become a pastor, at which I would have laughed when I was in college, and, after a time, to go to seminary.
I first came back to the church in Harlem, at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church on the corner of 145th and Convent Avenue. There was a big pink cross up in front, and a fiery preacher, Minister Grant, who along with the choirs made the Word of God come vibrantly to life. They let me use their piano to practice as I hadn't one of my own at the time, and it helped get me in the door on a Sunday morning when I wasn't doing anything else in particular. Piano of God #1.
Later, after I moved north of Harlem, I found the Lutheran church down the street from where I lived while looking for a piano to play. Piano of God #2. Something seemed to be at work to unite the place where my heart resided during my teenage years, in music, and where it was starting to find itself more and more, in a wider place within my being.
My interest in Greek, my undergraduate major, led me to pick up a Bible for the first time in years when I was shopping at the Chelsea Salvation Army in New York one Saturday afternoon. The teller gave it to me, saying, "We don't sell Bibles; just take it." The beautiful Greek characters brought the Scriptures to my mind fresh and alive, and made me want to know and experience more.
When I picked up that volume and looked at the title page, I saw the name of Bruce Metzger, who had led the committee that edited that Bible from the Greek manuscripts. Since he was still living in Princeton, where he taught for many years, I resolved to go and meet him. This desire led me to my first experience at a seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary. Before that visit, I hadn't even much of an idea what seminary was.
A dream during my visit to that seminary convinced me that I must go to seminary, but not yet, so soon after coming back to the church. I later learned that I dreamt a verse from the Book of Jonah (also found in Psalm 42):
and the flood was round about me;
all thy waves and thy billows
passed over me. (Jonah 2:3; RSV)
I passed through the overwhelming flood in that dream, which I had seen Fantasia-style, in the 3rd person, encapsulated safely in a gleaming crystal case. The waves rolled a mile over my head, but I was safe, as the waves all went over me. I woke feeling as though I had been washed deeply, like in a steam bath but without the sweat. It was as though I had been baptized again. It was if I had been Jonah, running from God, and right into the belly of a whale.
In these formative years, I learned to appreciate the energy and deep commitment of those in the National Baptist tradition at Convent Avenue. I also spent time with extremely conservative Mennonites; formed a small Bible study in which I translated the Greek version of the week's Gospel passage, complete with long footnotes describing theological concepts; took several courses at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian's Center for Christian Studies; discovered writing poetry there through a course on Modern Poetry and the Book of Hours; celebrated communion every day at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on my lunch breaks; and hung out at Union Theological Seminary, all while starting to worship at a Lutheran Church.
Perhaps most powerfully, every morning in New York, I would also shut my eyes and pray on the A train on the way to work, envisioning myself encapsulated in a ball of light. Everyone in the train was part of that prayer, wishing them peace, healing, and love. It was the only time in my life I can say my prayers were regular and absolutely transformative. Not so after seminary.
IV.
Religion in America seems often to chase LGBT people away with dreadful visions of a tortured afterlife based on our particular "sin" in this life. I believe instead that these religious voices are simply making for a tortured life for us here on earth, and have nothing to do with the possible afterlife.
Shortly after my denomination, the ELCA, voted to allow open and partnered LGBT people to serve as ordained clergy in 2009, a series of articles popped up on the LGBT news-blog Queerty.com written by Lutherans about the changes voted in, which many in the church had been working hard to get enacted for many years.
Given the voices of hatred towards LGBT people from people calling themselves "Christian," it is no wonder to me why many would be forced away from the church, indeed run screamin. Personally, after the last several years of waiting for a church and wondering if this vocation to the ministry will ever pan out, or if I will just look like I was aimlessly drifting for 10 years, I can genuinely empathize with the feeling that churches can seem at best irrelevant and at worst actively, vocally, and indeed politically harmful, even deadly in their narrow and rigid messages of wide sin and narrow salvation.
So why go back to a religion that has spent so much energy on actively opposing me and millions of LGBT people?
Because God bewitched me, "jokester that she is," as one of my clergy acquaintances says.
V.
The brain in me that worked so hard to keep me in the closet for my first 10 years of knowing I was attracted to my same sex, which worked so hard on problems of philosophy, music theory, and politics, which reached out to the farthest reaches of the universe and tried to reach beyond, to the other side of the universe into whatever might be beyond, and that dismissed the possible reality of God, ended up taking a back seat to my gut and to my heart after I came out.
Why do we do what we do, think what we think, and feel what we feel? When I was younger, I thought that we human beings functioned best when we did not let our emotions get involved, but used as pure of reason as we could, unclouded by the irrational heart. But when my heart and mind connected, which I strongly feel was not until after I came out for the first time to other people, I dropped my insistence on pure reason, and learned I was a gut sort of person.
The heart has its own knowledge, the brain its own, the gut as well, the soul another, close to the spirit. If all lie in separate containers all the time, and do not converse, they can grow lonely, proud, and dictatorial, as each of us becomes without the benefit of kind and challenging human interaction, hearing various points of view, and feeling closely how our opinions affect the lives of others.
God works through our minds, but surpasses the bounds of reason. Sexuality, as well, cannot be the sole concern of one organ over another.
In coming out, I set myself on a path to connect with God in a way that never would have happened if I'd attempted to make sense of life with whatever share of reason I was given between my ears and behind my eyes.
And that path is not over yet. God hasn't brought me this far just to let me go now.
--Loretta Hernton
I.
Somehow, I got dragged back into church after foreswearing it for Aristotle.
It was going to be so neat and tidy: Let God be whatever God was supposed to be, which I supposed wasn't much, pray when I really needed something somehow expecting that would work, and stay in my rational mind as well as I possibly could. That was my "lifestyle choice" for a good long time. Looking back now, I mouthed the words of atheism, but my heart wasn't in it. It was like me trying to be heterosexual.
This is not to say that atheists, agnostics, humanists, and persons of dozens, if not hundreds, of world religions do not have a heart, and, indeed more of a heart than I. But I could never have come to the religious belief I have without being openly gay. Indeed, some of the most "Christian" people I know, and some of the better theologians, are atheists, and some of the beastliest things I've seen and heard have been done in the name of Jesus.
I've always been a doubter and a sceptic when it comes to faith. Indeed, faith without doubt is like pig iron; it is brittle, and breaks at the least trial. Doubt to faith is like the carbon that turns iron into steel, making it strong and pliable enough to shift without easily falling down.
II,
In college, I never felt like the church was any place for me to be. After I left home, I left the church as well, as many young people do, except to earn some money playing organ or piano for services here and there.
My family attended a Methodist church quite faithfully, each Sunday, so it was a part of my upbringing. In fact, I've not lived a day without being baptized, as I was baptized the very day I was born. It was a lifestyle choice, yes, first made by my parents, and then myself. But I never wanted to be a part of the "Christians" that I saw at college, because I knew that their company was no place for the likes of me. But "my religion" has become far more than a casual choice or accident of birth.
Strangely enough, in coming to understand the part of myself that had to come out of the closet, especially in the context of what really mattered in my life and in the universe from my vantage point, I couldn't escape the many elements that had affected my life through religion. Yet, even though I am certain I never went to a church service in which the pastor or priest said that homosexuals were going to hell, somehow I got that message through the air, or the airwaves, because enough other people were saying it: God condemns gays. I know that to be a lie, in some cases very carefully manufactured for maximal political effect, but it was a lie that helped keep me in the closet.
My first summer in New York, where I have lived 5 years of my adult life, I recall a subway evangelist (there were many) approach me on the uptown platform of the A train at 42nd Street. He said to me, "Do you have Jesus?" I answered, and can still clearly see and feel what I felt when I said it, "I already know I'm going to hell."
That frame of mind, however, is not where I would stay.
III.
As someone who went through seminary, I learned how to tell my "faith journey" while standing on one leg, like Ayn Rand claimed she could do and recite her whole philosophy (which I'm sure she could). And not only did I go to one seminary, but two: Yale Divinity School/Institute of Sacred Music for my "Masters of Divinity," a title to this day that makes me laugh with images of donning leather and picking up a whip to recite the Word of the Lord, and Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, which granted me a CATS, a Certificate of Advanced Theological Studies, which sounds like something between a pet and a medical procedure. Altogether, I became a Master of Divine Cats who could whip out a faith journey narrative like last-minute pancakes for unannounced company.
My path was somewhat untraditional, lacking a particular influential mentor, but common as well to others who went to seminary. I was raised in the church, left the church, left God, found out that I hadn't left God, got peppered with dreams and "coincidences" that forced me to think about God, as well as felt an increasing desire to know more about religion, to experience more, to become a pastor, at which I would have laughed when I was in college, and, after a time, to go to seminary.
I first came back to the church in Harlem, at the Convent Avenue Baptist Church on the corner of 145th and Convent Avenue. There was a big pink cross up in front, and a fiery preacher, Minister Grant, who along with the choirs made the Word of God come vibrantly to life. They let me use their piano to practice as I hadn't one of my own at the time, and it helped get me in the door on a Sunday morning when I wasn't doing anything else in particular. Piano of God #1.
Later, after I moved north of Harlem, I found the Lutheran church down the street from where I lived while looking for a piano to play. Piano of God #2. Something seemed to be at work to unite the place where my heart resided during my teenage years, in music, and where it was starting to find itself more and more, in a wider place within my being.
My interest in Greek, my undergraduate major, led me to pick up a Bible for the first time in years when I was shopping at the Chelsea Salvation Army in New York one Saturday afternoon. The teller gave it to me, saying, "We don't sell Bibles; just take it." The beautiful Greek characters brought the Scriptures to my mind fresh and alive, and made me want to know and experience more.
When I picked up that volume and looked at the title page, I saw the name of Bruce Metzger, who had led the committee that edited that Bible from the Greek manuscripts. Since he was still living in Princeton, where he taught for many years, I resolved to go and meet him. This desire led me to my first experience at a seminary, Princeton Theological Seminary. Before that visit, I hadn't even much of an idea what seminary was.
A dream during my visit to that seminary convinced me that I must go to seminary, but not yet, so soon after coming back to the church. I later learned that I dreamt a verse from the Book of Jonah (also found in Psalm 42):
and the flood was round about me;
all thy waves and thy billows
passed over me. (Jonah 2:3; RSV)
I passed through the overwhelming flood in that dream, which I had seen Fantasia-style, in the 3rd person, encapsulated safely in a gleaming crystal case. The waves rolled a mile over my head, but I was safe, as the waves all went over me. I woke feeling as though I had been washed deeply, like in a steam bath but without the sweat. It was as though I had been baptized again. It was if I had been Jonah, running from God, and right into the belly of a whale.
In these formative years, I learned to appreciate the energy and deep commitment of those in the National Baptist tradition at Convent Avenue. I also spent time with extremely conservative Mennonites; formed a small Bible study in which I translated the Greek version of the week's Gospel passage, complete with long footnotes describing theological concepts; took several courses at Fifth Avenue Presbyterian's Center for Christian Studies; discovered writing poetry there through a course on Modern Poetry and the Book of Hours; celebrated communion every day at St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church on my lunch breaks; and hung out at Union Theological Seminary, all while starting to worship at a Lutheran Church.
Perhaps most powerfully, every morning in New York, I would also shut my eyes and pray on the A train on the way to work, envisioning myself encapsulated in a ball of light. Everyone in the train was part of that prayer, wishing them peace, healing, and love. It was the only time in my life I can say my prayers were regular and absolutely transformative. Not so after seminary.
IV.
Religion in America seems often to chase LGBT people away with dreadful visions of a tortured afterlife based on our particular "sin" in this life. I believe instead that these religious voices are simply making for a tortured life for us here on earth, and have nothing to do with the possible afterlife.
Shortly after my denomination, the ELCA, voted to allow open and partnered LGBT people to serve as ordained clergy in 2009, a series of articles popped up on the LGBT news-blog Queerty.com written by Lutherans about the changes voted in, which many in the church had been working hard to get enacted for many years.
Given the voices of hatred towards LGBT people from people calling themselves "Christian," it is no wonder to me why many would be forced away from the church, indeed run screamin. Personally, after the last several years of waiting for a church and wondering if this vocation to the ministry will ever pan out, or if I will just look like I was aimlessly drifting for 10 years, I can genuinely empathize with the feeling that churches can seem at best irrelevant and at worst actively, vocally, and indeed politically harmful, even deadly in their narrow and rigid messages of wide sin and narrow salvation.
So why go back to a religion that has spent so much energy on actively opposing me and millions of LGBT people?
Because God bewitched me, "jokester that she is," as one of my clergy acquaintances says.
V.
The brain in me that worked so hard to keep me in the closet for my first 10 years of knowing I was attracted to my same sex, which worked so hard on problems of philosophy, music theory, and politics, which reached out to the farthest reaches of the universe and tried to reach beyond, to the other side of the universe into whatever might be beyond, and that dismissed the possible reality of God, ended up taking a back seat to my gut and to my heart after I came out.
Why do we do what we do, think what we think, and feel what we feel? When I was younger, I thought that we human beings functioned best when we did not let our emotions get involved, but used as pure of reason as we could, unclouded by the irrational heart. But when my heart and mind connected, which I strongly feel was not until after I came out for the first time to other people, I dropped my insistence on pure reason, and learned I was a gut sort of person.
The heart has its own knowledge, the brain its own, the gut as well, the soul another, close to the spirit. If all lie in separate containers all the time, and do not converse, they can grow lonely, proud, and dictatorial, as each of us becomes without the benefit of kind and challenging human interaction, hearing various points of view, and feeling closely how our opinions affect the lives of others.
God works through our minds, but surpasses the bounds of reason. Sexuality, as well, cannot be the sole concern of one organ over another.
In coming out, I set myself on a path to connect with God in a way that never would have happened if I'd attempted to make sense of life with whatever share of reason I was given between my ears and behind my eyes.
And that path is not over yet. God hasn't brought me this far just to let me go now.
Friday, April 29, 2011
15 for 15: 15 Meditations for 15 Years of Being Openly Gay
- Debbie Novotny (Sharon Gless), Queer as Folk (Showtime, 2003)
I.
I don't know whether this line, which I know from the Showtime series "Queer as Folk," is actually original to it, or quoted from elsewhere. But it is right on the money.
There are few occasions for celebrating anniversaries in our lives: marriage or relationship, sobriety, the opening of a successful business, and ordination are the ones that immediately come to my mind. As of today, I cannot celebrate any of those in my life. But there's one I can celebrate, which is coming up a week from today.
15 years ago, on May 6, 1996, I came out to another person as being gay for the first time in my life. I had come out to myself, actually admitted to myself that I was gay, only two years before. The homophobia that I had learned over my first 19 years, which came from many sources, was deeply a part of me when I wrote:
I have heretofore not revealed my most innermost thoughts and secrets, not to these pages, let alone anyone else. I'm afraid that the pages may fall into the hands of others, after I have written what I shall write and my secret will be revealed to all. For now, I will reveal it only to these pages--a large step indeed.
I have known since puberty that I am attracted to the male, and not the female, body....It is definitely not a choice that I have made--not as some homosexuals, I would choose not to be one. My attitude would bring me severe reprimands from most other homosexuals, and my inclinations would obviously bring me nothing but hardship from all of my friends and family.
...I am definitely not gay, in the strict sense of the word. I do not act faggishly.... I merely find the male body sexually attractive. ...I do not particularly want to form a true love relationship with another man. I do not want to marry another male, just as I do not want to become involved in the traditional gay causes--the psychotic activities of many of these politically active homosexuals sickens, surprises, and depresses me. --6.24.1994, 9:45pm.
To look back on these words, as I have from time to time over the years, both saddens me, that I ever felt that way, and gives me a feeling of empathy for so many who "struggle" with homosexuality, whether because they are gay or lesbian themselves, or because they oppose even the slightest positive mention of homosexuality. They also give me an imperfect empathy for others who struggle because others seek to marginalize them.
How I get from that day nearly 17 years ago, through the anniversary whose original day came some two years later, to today, is complicated, and yet it is part of the most important work I have done in my life: coming to terms with something in myself that up until 2003 in these United States, could be punishable under the law. I have come a long way personally, and attitudes across the nation have changed significantly, in these 15+ years.
Thankfully, as Dan Savage said, it gets better.
II.
I write these following meditations over the next 2 weeks to recognize this journey of my own, which is the journey of so many, even those who are not gay or lesbian, for the closet, the suffocating privacy that we impose upon ourselves because we fear what will happen if we don't do that, is the reality for many who suffer through their lives in silence.
I don't mean these meditations to be a judgment on those who do live in the closet--they must do what they must do, as I must do what I must do. If anything, I would want any invective here to go towards those who enforce the closet on others, because my guess is that many who inhabit this liminal place between being secret and being known would choose to be who they are in public, if they felt, as I did not at the time I came out to myself, that they would not incur wide wrath, loss of key relationships, jobs, homes, personal injury, and even death. Death and significant harm still comes to people who are gay and lesbian for that very fact alone.
III.
Over the next 15 days, from tonight until two Fridays for now, I will write one meditation each night on some aspect of this journey. In each case, I will not identify the others who are a part of my journey at this time by their real names.
My plan for the structure of these writings will occur as follows:
1. 15-4-15: 15 days of meditations for 15 years of being openly gay
2. Bully or It Gets Better
3. Honesty
4. Gaining My Religion
5. Who I Am
6. The First Time
7. Pride
7. Pride
8. Why I Must Be Out
9. Coming Out Everyday
10. Stereotypes: Lonely & Sad
11. Stereotypes: Promiscuity: Fuck Them All
12. Stereotypes: The Homosexual Menace
13. Self-Acceptance
14. Other-Acceptance
15. Anti-Bully or Walk Hand-in-Hand
This exploration will be framed by the experience of bullying, and working against bullying, which is ongoing work for me and for many. The way we treat others does depend to a great degree on the way in which others treat us, and in the way we treat ourselves. The crisis of anti-gay bullying is something that has become much more public in the last 6 months, but is something that goes back millennia, and something that may take more than a lifespan to repair.
My ultimate aim, besides making this experience public and, hopefully, resonant with some others, is reconciliation: self-reconcilation, other-reconciliation, and communal reconciliation. I don't know how I will accomplish some of that at this point, and some is just part of a long-term process that cannot be completed in a couple of weeks.
It is my hope that any who choose to read this will find it in some way helpful and worth reading. Even if that is not the case, it will be a helpful exercise for me, and, I hope, might inspire one or another person to undertake a similar project with themselves.
Ultimately, love, of self, others, community, and God, takes leaps as must faith, and, in the words of one of my favorite spiritual figures, Father James Huntington, "Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn."
I appreciate your company, dear reader, along the way.
Friday, April 15, 2011
My NOH8 Story on a Day of Silence or Meditation on my Namesake
Back in February, I had the chance to attend one of the most wonderful gatherings of LGBTQ people I've ever had the chance to attend: the Creating Change Conference, in Minneapolis. What made this gathering so great was that it best represented the whole "tent" of queerdom: young and old, men, women, and people who didn't cling to one binary gender, gay, lesbian, bi, and a rainbow of transgender persons, genderqueer, poly, allies, intersex persons, you name it, and persons from the group were beautifully, wonderfully represented.
Among the activities that weekend was the opportunity to become part of the "NOH8" campaign, the brainchild of young gay celebrity photographer Adam Bouska, originally in response to the Prop 8 campaign (which likewise spawned this blog), but now reaching far beyond California and the issue of anti-gay prejudice.
For a mere contribution of $40 (far from a pittance for many people, and an unfortunate bar to the full representation of people who would best represent this campaign), anyone could feel like a supermodel for justice for a few seconds, and come out with a professional portrait of their own activist selves.
At first, I didn't think I could justify this price and this indulgence, as cool as it was. But then I looked at my special shelf, and saw on it my clerical collar, gathering dust, and my Great-Grandfather's watch, a prized heirloom that my Father has let me take care of. Both of these items are very special to me, the one a signature part of my vocation to the Lutheran ministry, and the other, a prized possession of one after whom I was named. The combination of the two inspired me to have that photo taken, and to represent fully who I am to this cause for freedom and equality.
What follows is the description that I provided Adam in helping to understand the meaning behind this pose. I don't know that it will gain any kind of wider audience, and so I share it here for the few of you for whom it might be of interest. I love my vocation, and I love my Great-Grandfather, even though we could never have met. I respect his hard work and dedication to his profession, which the watch honors after 30 years of service. And I am proud of his name, Elsworth, which is my middle name and my Father's middle name, as I am of the man who gave it to me.
Love should never keep one from being honest about love; yet that is what Prop 8 does. May that proposition, in time, fall to the ground as an embarrassment to those who supported it, as much as the pride I feel in opposing it with my whole being.
"My pose for the NOH8 campaign was filled with symbolism both personal and of wider-reach. This pose represents family, time, tradition, my personal and our communal struggle for equality and justice. I wore around my neck my Great-Grandfather's watch given to him for 30 years of service in 1953. I also wore one of my clerical collars.
My calling is to the ordained ministry of Word and sacrament in the Lutheran church, the faith into which my Great-Grandfather was baptized on his deathbed. Yet being openly gay has prevented me from getting a church and being able to wear the collar as an ordained person.
Time, literally entangled around my neck, is therefore represented on at least 3 planes in this image: 1. The time of tradition, weighing physically and metaphorically on my vocation (as it has on many others); 2. The time (4 years) I have been waiting to become a pastor; 3. The duration of our movement for Gay and Lesbian rights, which began in America around the time that this watch was presented to my Great-Grandfather.
I never knew my Great-Grandfather, but am proud of his work and love him. I am, along with my Father, his namesake. Our middle name, Elsworth, was his only given name. Yet past, present, and future meeting in one place on this point is bittersweet. I have encapsulated this experience in the following poem:
Time Entangles Our Necks
Time entangles our necks,
breathing life and death
past years of pressured peace and silenced dreams.
Great our Grandfathers'
wishes, ambitions for
Their Unseen, a gleam
of semen stretched
through several faltered
beams of forced omission.
Faith of our fathers,
stopping still
cockblocking their sons,
frockboxing their daughters
behind a god who pressed in law
what certain ancient lawyers saw.
Faith remains, lifeglue,
more than a living,
or escape from dying,
shining too from the
eyes of the future who
know what the sins
of the past could do:
a lasting screw.
If our great grandfathers only knew.
Saturday, September 11, 2010
"Leverage the Voice of Love"
I.
What does this mean? What is the "voice of love," and how is it to be leveraged?
The need for the voice of love today is greater than ever. On this 9th anniversary of 9/11, we seem to be threatened from so many corners: terrorism, extremism, racism, homophobia, sexism, overpopulation, environmental disaster, natural disaster, and the list goes on.
And I hear: "Leverage the voice of love."
What a concept! The voice of love, which seems to have been drowned out by voices of fear and hate, needs help. It needs each of us who hear it to say that we're hearing it, and that it must be brought out from its closet of fear, from underneath its bushel, and placed where it will shine as a beacon in the night to all who live in despair.
"Leverage the voice of love." Don't let it go out. Don't let it get so quiet that it is no longer heard. Don't assume that it will speak for itself. Don't assume that it is not your voice, or that someone else will say what is in your heart to say.
The cadence catches my ear--the assonance, the meter, the symmetry. "Leverage the voice of love."
This is a call to act--and the action is one which does not take so much work or thought. It does not take a genius to be loving, or a master of divinity to realize that it is within our souls to speak at such a time that needs to hear the voice of love, reason, and grace. It only takes one to speak up and say, "I love."
II.
In particular today I am thinking about the need for this voice leveraged strongly in the Anoka/Hennepin school district area, where the suicides of 7 students, some of whom were gay or perceived to be gay or lesbian, have bereft dear people of their loved ones, much like several thousand were bereft on a 9/11 many years ago.
Tonight, I was fortunate, indeed blessed, to share the table of Tammy and Shawn Aaberg, and their sons who remain, as they and I were interviewed on the death of their son, Justin, to suicide, and to some extent the relation of his death to the Anoka/Hennepin policy of "neutrality" on matters of sexual orientation within the curriculum of the District. I brought the voice of a concerned outsider to their lives and the district, but they shared what was rending their hearts at the most personal loss anyone can experience--the loss of a child.
Their hospitality to me and the interviewer was as moving to me as their story. I, a stranger in their home, was treated as a welcomed guest. It is hospitality that was given to us freely and gracefully and lovingly as the hospitality that Jesus offers to his own.
I did not know Justin, but I would have walked through fire for him, to stop those who were tormenting him. Never underestimate the voice of love within you, and know that there are those out there who would walk through fire for you, whom you do not even know. Never forget that your voice might be the one to save a life.
The story of Justin's loss will soon be known more widely within the gay community through this interview, and in the Minneapolis/St. Paul community through a report that will be broadcast on WCCO news in the Minneapolis metropolitan area this coming Monday night (9/13/10) at 10pm. More will rise up who would walk through fire for Justin, for Tammy, Shawn, and their remaining dear sons, for every student of Anoka/Hennepin who still lives in fear and abuse and for whom despair is a daily diet, for each person who hears that God hates "their sin," which is indeed a message in the case of many that God hates them. You, dear reader, may be one to rise up.
"Leverage the voice of love."
The voice of love, that which has touched my heart through so many voices in my life, starting with my own parents and sister, through so many family, friends, teachers, mentors, ministers, and even through people I have hardly known, this is the voice that we must raise to the highest rafters of torture and pain, the voice that cuts despair, the voice that destroys terrorism by transcending it, because the power of love is stronger than the power of hate.
III.
The voice of love too is the voice that God speaks when God says, "This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well-pleased." This is the voice that God speaks to each of us, in our desolation and torment, the voice that God was quietly yet persistently speaking as Jesus, God's own son, was dying on the cross, lost, isolated, forgotten, and ashamed, in his own crucifixion.
"Leverage the voice of love."
This is the voice that my cinematic hero, Father Barry in "On the Waterfront," raised from the depths of a death ship in which one was killed for the cause of justice. Father Barry said of that death: "That is a crucifixion."
Anytime a policy takes precedence over peoples' lives, that is a crucifixion. Anytime people put their ideas over the lives of others, whether those ideas are religious or political, whether those voices are Christian, Muslim, Liberal, or Conservative, that is a crucifixion. Lives will always be more important than ideas or policies, which should only serve to protect lives and not help to end them, although sometimes lives must be lost to defend the ideas and principles of freedom that our country was founded on, that all were created equal, all.
By the account of his parents and those who knew him, Justin's was a voice of music, laughter, and love for his friends, his parents, his brothers, and many others. A voice any one of us would have been privileged to hear. A voice that none of us will hear again spoken alive in this life.
But as the voices of those who could have spoken for him in the place of his torment, in his school, were silenced, so was his. For the neutrality on sexual orientation with respect to curriculum that staff are required to follow extends far beyond what the staff may or may not say or do with respect to curriculum, and, I think, far beyond what the School Board may realize as its intended reach. The consequences of this policy impact the lives of its students.
IV.
I appreciate that the Anoka/Hennepin district has begun to take concrete measures to stop the violence against its LGBTQ students. It is to be commended on beginning to take these steps. My last blog entry elicited the response from the district that I was acting on misinformation, which could be true to some degree, but I am not mistaken about the effects of their policy, one which existed over a year ago when two teachers were called out on their torment of one of their students, based on their student's perceived (and not actual) sexual orientation.
The district paid out $25,000 a full year ago to this student because of their torment of him, but did not admit that there was a problem beyond this supposedly isolated case, and one of those teachers in fact sought compensation for being "outed" as a tormentor. My hope is that her outing did not subject her to the same treatment that she visited upon her own student.
By treating this harassment as an isolated incident and not the result of a systemic problem, caused in great part by the neutrality policy, the District enabled the harassment of others to continue, which it does to this day.
The real kicker with this policy is the sentence: "Staff are encouraged to take into consideration individual student needs and refer students to the appropriate social worker or licensed school counselor."
Although this sounds wise and professional, unfortunately conversations with social workers and counselors are subject to a higher degree of confidentiality, unless these conversations approach topics of harm to self or others, while conversations with teachers are at a lower degree of confidentiality. Teachers could inform parents of warning signs and bad experiences far ahead of the time that social workers and counselors could. This was the case with Justin, and may have been the case with many others.
As long as the policy of neutrality exists, no step the district might take will be able to topple the wall of abuse that meets many in the course of their daily lives. No action will be sufficient to allow people who are experiencing despair to reach out in trust to their teachers and speak the words that they must speak to stop the violence from happening to them.
For, let's be honest, what really is a policy that enjoins its staff to be neutral on matters of sexual orientation actually saying?
It is not telling staff or students that they cannot mention matters of heterosexual sexual orientation. Because if that were the case, they could not talk about anyone, gay or straight. Sexual orientation is a deep part of everyone, no matter the particularity of their sexual orientation.
Neutrality on "sexual orientation" is a polite euphemism for not saying anything about homosexuality.
Imagine if teachers could not mention their opposite-sex spouses, girlfriends, or boyfriends in class. Imagine if they could not display a picture or wear a ring on a prominent finger. Imagine if their sexual orientation were considered by parents as a disease that their kids could catch.
This is the real meaning of "neutrality"--silence on homosexuality. And, as was said in the 80s when thousands were dying from AIDS and the government was doing far less to stop it than Anoka/Hennepin is doing to combat bullying, silence = death.
V.
"Leverage the voice of love." The phrase continues to sing in my mind's ear. Who are the voices of love in your life? What do they have to say at this time of crisis, which for many is a crisis of faith as well--faith in others, in God, and in a system that proclaims itself a protector of each of its students? How can we work together to bring these voices together, to leverage their love and the power they have to transcend hate?
We've all got work to do in getting these voices of love together, of focusing them at a problem that will not go away by mere dint of thought. At the very least, we can raise our voice, to let one other person know about what is going on in the Anoka/Hennepin school district, or in the district closer to you, to raise the voice of love that says "I do not hate you, my brother/sister," or to say "I will not burn your sacred book," or to say "I will walk through fire for you."
As another of my heroes of faith said, "Love must act as light must shine and fire must burn." Father James Otis Sargent Huntington's voice of love speaks clearly some 75 years after his death. And he is right: Love must act.
Leverage the voice of love--of your love, and of the love of all whom you know. Bring these voices together into one powerful tool of healing, that will not let terrorism, whether it be from without or within, have the final say.
For this is the time when the voices of love must come together and act.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Anoka/Hennepin: Tear Down That Wall (of Deadly Homophobia)!
In the last year, 7 young people in the Anoka/Hennepin School District have committed suicide, 3 directly related to being or being perceived as LGBTQ. The wall of silence, also known in the district as "neutrality," is creating some strange fruit hanging from the trees up there.
Because, although they say that these youth committed suicide, they were actually killed by those within their community, their schools, their churches, and in other contexts that should rather have held their tongues than spouted wounding words. It was merely a sleight of the District's hand that made it look like the young people killed themselves.
What a sleight of hand the Anoka/Hennepin School Board pulled by saying that the sexual orientation policy had to do only with curriculum, and not with bullying! As though they weren't able to see a connection between the wall of silence they created, the bullying by students, teachers, pastors, some family members, and other "concerned citizens," and the deaths that resulted.
The Anoka/Hennepin School Board had such a problem with hearing the truth about their policies in their August 23, 2010 meeting, that the recording of those proceedings was somehow glitched or lost. This was the meeting at which the mother and friends of Justin Aaberg, one of the gay youth who committed suicide in that district, spoke from their hearts about how his death affected them, and how the district is still a dangerous place for LGBTQ, and even hetero, youth.
This is a Berlin Wall moment.
The wall of homophobia that was built around these youth, the wall of hatred and bureaucratic nonsense that was built around those for whom sexual orientation was not the main factor in their deaths, must be toppled once and for all.
Anoka/Hennepin School Board, what is keeping you from saving the lives of your students? Is it the mis-named PAL, Parents Action League, which hides itself behind a wall of anonymity? Which cries about receiving hate mail, as though it has not been out to engender it? Which claims as its motto, "Education, not Indoctrination," when what is meant by indoctrination is enacting measures that will stop gay kids from killing themselves?
Anoka/Hennepin area Churches (of the variety that preach against homosexuality), is it your contention that God wants gay and lesbian kids dead? Do you believe that the heart of the Gospel is in Leviticus 20:13? Do you pride yourselves on the success of this message over that of the saving Gospel? Because the Gospel SAVES; it does not KILL.
To paraphrase Psalm 13, How Long, Anoka/Hennepin, will you lay waste to those who did you no wrong?
How long will you taunt, spit at, beat up, and terrorize young people who did nothing but get up and go to school?
How long will you preach that God is a super-terrorist, that the fulfillment of the Gospel is death of those you believe God would oppose, that Jesus was more concerned with where a person's penis was put than where a person's heart is?
How long will you justify yourselves with policies, when coffins continue to be draped in a sea of tears?
How long will you say that it is a "lifestyle choice" that leads to these deaths, when no different or discernible "lifestyle" was at the root of the hatred, terror, and brutality that actually led to these deaths?
How long will you seek your seat of power in a young man's coffin?
How long will you lose the evidence of your wrongs? (Update: video of the August 23, 2010, Anoka/Hennepin School Board Meeting, is now (9/12/10) available. See Tammy Aaberg at 15:20 here, and listen to subsequent explanation by the School Board Chair, and further testimony of abuse around the Neutrality policy.)
Consider, and answer me!
Answer for those who have fallen, and those who will continue to fall as long as your feet drag!
Answer for those families you have helped to tear apart, and those lives you have ended!
Answer for those careers you have threatened to end because your people have wanted to provide some small measure of support or solace!
Answer for those people who will hear the word "Jesus," and see a man with a gun!
Hear those, O God, who call out to you "Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep the sleep of death, and my enemy will say, 'I have prevailed.'"
Hear those, Anoka/Hennepin School District, whose voices are still crying out in pain.
Hear those who want only to live their lives in peace.
Hear those who want only to live another day, to see another sun rise.
Hear those who want only to love those who are in their hearts to love.
It is time for you to choose:
Your policies, or your people.
Your ideas, or your youth.
Your bullies, or your innocent.
Choose wisely. God is watching.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
A Repost Riff on "Bless Me Anyway"
Recently, I had the chance to watch the HBO production of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” for the first time. It made me recall our Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus experience with some of Kushner’s most powerful words. This is a reposting from 2009, which also seems apt in these days that are hopefully gathering steam to overrule all of the divisive marriage laws, after Judge Vaughn Walker's masterly decision overturning Prop 8. Here it is:
So we in the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus have been singing a wonderful new setting by Michael Shaieb of some words by Tony Kushner from his play "Angels in America," centered around the phrase "bless me anyway." This phrase has affected me since we began singing it. It makes me think about those plucky figures in the Bible, Jacob and the Syrophoenecian woman, one in the Old Testament and one in the New, one going up against Godself, and the other against Jesus himself, who demand blessing in their beings from the deity who in some way created them, yet who have been told that they do not deserve such a blessing, or must fight to get it.
My life has been one in which I have both been the grateful and lucky recipient of unconditional love, from family and friends, as well as the need for years and years and years to defend my own being, sensitive, gay, or otherwise, against various people and institutions who have told me that I am deeply and existentially wrong. But, you know, bless me anyway, right?
The following are some words that came out after thinking about this phrase, "bless me anyway." This is yet a work in progress.
To the totality of the world's rejections:
The minor rejections of saying 'no' to liver and eggs;
the major rejections, hearing you say 'no' to me.
To the 'yous' who have told me who I am,
rather than letting me figure me out for myself.
Bless me anyway.
Even if you don't consider me worth it.
Even if my skin says "liar" to you.
Even if you think my dick should not go there.
Even if the folds of my skin obliterate
the smooth straight line
that you suppose would make me beautiful.
Bless me anyway.
What does a blessing cost you?
Does a blessing cost you your life?
Your job?
Your wife?
Does a blessing cost you your country?
Your place in the world?
Bless me anyway.
For I will have worth without it,
but with it,
we can love those we were meant to love,
in the open.
We can bless the skin that contains
our bones
our life
our blood,
if not our souls.
Bless me anyway.
It costs less than a tower,
less than a bomb,
less than a college education,
less even than an egg
from which life can come.
Bless me anyway.
But blessing is powerful.
Yes, blessing costs more than money,
more than position, power,
and all the water in the world.
Bless me anyway.
Bless the water that makes me more
than a pile of dust, more
than a pile of crap, more
than a pile of me that makes you weary,
that you wish would go away
sometimes.
Bless that shit machine
that embarrasses you.
Bless that $22.95 in basic elements,
not quite enough to buy Manhattan
four hundred and fifty years ago,
but enough to pay off the sum total
of a pile of humanity.
Bless me anyway.
More than the sum total,
more than the blue of my eyes,
more than the gnarled toenails,
the middling nipples,
the less-than-perfect hairline,
the zit on my left temple.
Bless me anyway.
The Jewish part of my heritage,
obscured by name-changes.
The happy sodomite that would do me, maybe.
The D-student wannabe.
Bless me anyway,
and I will bless you too.
I will bless your assumptions,
your experiences,
your attempts to reach out,
that get caught in your throat.
I will bless your struggle to live
in a world that kills us all,
that resolves as we do,
into a pile of minerals.
However it turns out,
Anyway,
I will bless you.
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