February 24, 2010
Peace Lutheran is the church were D and I are members. Following our horrific nightmare of a departure from another church in another denomination the pastor and congregation of Peace welcomed us with open, healing arms. Though ordained in another denomination, they honored me by recognizing my heart and commitment as a pastor and have continually received me as such. Each Sunday we worship in the sanctuary where we were married eight years ago this coming Spring and listen to the Good News preached by the pastor who joyfully declared us wife and wife on that most precious of days in our life together. Peace Lutheran is also the congregation that supports this ministry in prayer and conviction and affirms YOU in your humanity and as an equal member in the family of God.
My point being that Peace Lutheran is a wonderful place, a sacred and safe refuge for D and I and for so many others who have stumbled into this house of worship filled with genuinely good and imperfect people and heavily influenced by some of the finest Swedes you’ll ever meet this side of the fjords.
I wish you could all just show up one Sunday morning, worship with us, and feel their welcome….but if you ever all decide to turn up in mass, all I ask is that you give me a heads-up. I need to be sure there are enough cookies for the hospitality hour.
D and I originally went to Peace for a couple years when we first got together and then were away for about four years while I fulfilled my ordination requirements. When we returned, Peace was different. The pews once full on Sunday mornings were now only occupied by a few dozen dear and familiar faces. The entire clergy and support staff had been reduced to the pastor and the office administrator. The choir that had once filled the three rows near the glossy black grand piano could now barely fill a standard-sized station wagon. The diverse array of outreach ministries and community involvement that Peace had been known for in the area had largely been set aside or abandoned because of limitations of budget and bodies. The Sunday School Hour, including their amazing children’s program was no more.
In our absence, this thriving congregation had confronted one of those agonizingly painful times that occurs in any number of churches where humans are involved. Life in the church got messy and uncertain. Conflicting stories developed. A few families left. Feelings were hurt and spirits wounded. And those who remained, who had faithfully endured the fire, showed the exhaustion and battle scars of their collective dark night of the soul. Though D and I were depleted from what we had just experienced at another congregation, we wept for Peace and we worried about their future, now our future with them.
But as Walter Bruggemann wrote in his Lenten prayer, through loss comes gain, through death comes new life.
Battle scars are healing. Weary souls are being restored. The rows of once sparsely-filled pews are being filled again; filled with joy and life and thankfulness, and with a people living out their individual commitment to the Gospel of Christ through being an inclusive, justice-minded, creation-conscious community in and to the world. In financial difficult times we’ve just accomplished an amazing feat together. Last Sunday morning we gathered outside in the rain around a round red charcoal grill and burned our mortgage papers, celebrating that with no debt remaining, we can look ahead to investing ourselves and our resources toward ministries that will reach beyond our walls. Last Sunday was also the first time in nearly five years our children gathered before worship in their new Sunday School classrooms. Tonight over bowls of steaming soup and warm bread we’ll gather for Soup and Sacrament, our weekly Lenten meal and meditation. Yes. Peace is breathing deep again and breathing with life that’s extending beyond our four walls to embrace the world. Once a month the sanctuary is over-flowing on Sunday nights with our Jazz at Peace series that brings people in from all over the Bay area. Neighbors to Peace come with dogs, cats, lizards, ponies and bugs in tow to our annual Festival of the Animals and every fall Peace hosts Holy Convergence, a spectacular interfaith worship service and afternoon that brings together Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Bahia and every seeking soul.
There’s so much more happening at Peace these days but most of all what’s happening is the unfolding of hope long unrealized. There were days I wondered. I wondered if Peace would survive. I wondered if these dear people who had been through so much and been through it with so much dignity could hold on a little longer.
I wondered, but I don’t know why I did when in my own life every loss has led to gain and every death has brought the dawn of new life. There are times I get so stuck in the sorrow and suffering of the Lenten seasons of my life that I forget it’s not the destination where I’ll reside forever but instead it’s merely a moment on the path, a path that always and unfailingly leads to yet another Easter morning and to resurrection and new life.
Today your spirit might be empty from all the loss and death is a veil separating you from life but your spirit will be filled and the veil will be lifted. And if you can’t believe that for yourself today, if you can’t believe it for God, then I and all the others who have already walked that road and caught a glimpse of what lies ahead will believe it for you until you can. You can and you will. Just wait and see.
Posted in Church, Holidays and Special Times 
4 Comments »
February 24, 2010
.
Loss is Indeed Our Gain
The pushing and shoving of the world is endless.
…..We are pushed and shoved.
…..And we do our fair share of pushing and shoving
……….in our great anxiety.
And in the middle of that
……….you have set down your beloved suffering son
……….who was like a sheep lead to slaughter
……….who opened not his mouth.
….We seem not able,
….so we ask you to create the spaces in our life
….where we may ponder his suffering
….and your summons for us to suffer with him,
….suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to newness of life.
So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,
….when we are driven to denial -
……..not to notice the suffering,
……..not to engage it,
……..not to acknowledge it.
So be that way of truth among us
….that we should not deceive ourselves.
That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain.
We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live.
Amen.
- Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann
So here’s the question for your own self-reflection and then if you will, to share with us….
Has loss been your gain, and if so, what did you gain?
Okay, that’s technically two questions. Indulge me.
Posted in Holidays and Special Times 3 Comments »
February 11, 2010
How long will grown men and women in this world keep drawing in their coloring books an image of God that makes them sad? – Meister Eckhart
I’m not a big fan of coloring books for children, the ones with the thick black outlines with the white space between them that all but demands where the child will color and what color they will use. There’s no room for the preschool artist to create and dream. A bold outline of a pony filling the page leaves no space for the child who imagines space ships and dragons to bring them to life on paper. The excited new owner of a freshly-opened green and yellow 64 count box of crayons is discouraged from taking all those amazing shades of purple and blue out for a test run when the perfectly shaped stemmed apple limits their choice to red and green. Give a kid a coloring book and you know what you’re going to get but give them a blank sheet of paper and a box of still-pointy crayons and anything is possible. The greatest treasures I’ve been given over the years have come from children, made of cheap recycled newsprint and adorned with drawings of a smiling Jesus with big buck teeth, a wax colored masterpiece of me holding the stick figure hand of the artist who drew it, and pile upon pile of papers covered in rainbows, floating hearts, and sun rays breaking through billowing clouds outlined in cotton candy pink or denim blue. Forget the Guggenheim in New York and the Uffizi in Florence. The most stunning works of art in all the world are hanging just down the street on your neighbor’s refrigerator.
For some of us our faith began as a coloring book we were given as children, pages already imprinted with lines that told us who God was and all that God wanted and expected and demanded of us. Sure, God is love but God also requires. Don’t forget that God loves you just as you are but don’t forget that God also wants you to change. Oh yes, God loves everyone equally but at the same time God consigns that a large number of these everyone’s will spend eternity in hell’s torment.
Leave this space blank. Fill in this space here. Stay inside the lines. Use this color because no other color will do; every other color is wrong. You might as well trade in your box of 64-count crayons for one black crayon and one white crayon; those two over-used crayon nubs at the bottom of the box. No other colors need apply.
When you go through life with a coloring book filled with bold simple static outlines of God there’s no reason to imagine a God beyond the lines. There’s no motivation to dream of something outside and beyond the cardstock cover, and even when we break free and dare to imagine a God who lives and breathes and loves outside the lines, the lines are still there, etched even deeper in our hearts than on the printed page. It would be easier to erase the permanent ink lines printed in a child’s coloring book than it would be to erase the images of God that have followed us, and often haunted us, through our lives. A God of conditions and expectations, a black-robed judge who swings a mean gavel, an unpredictable God of contradictions who demanded the full-scale annihilation of the heathen while providing a means of salvation for all creation.
There are few things more tragically poignant to me than when someone is haunted by their image of God; when the very thought of God passing through their mind causes them fear and sadness or to be hit with nauseating icy bouts of guilt and shame; when talk of God’s love makes them feel as though they are the sole exception from receiving such a thing. I hear it all the time. All the time. I want to believe what you’re saying. I want to believe God loves me. I want to believe God delights in me. I want to believe that who I am is who God has created me to be. But I can’t. I’m afraid God is judging me. I’m afraid of failing God. I’m afraid of what God will do. I’m afraid of going to hell.
That unidentified sound you just heard in the distance was God’s heart breaking accented by my gut wrenching.
All I can think to do is offer you one small suggestion to consider and it goes like this….if your image of God causes you to fear, if the idea of God looking on you makes you feel like a failure, or if there’s even the smallest hint of a doubt that you are being tenderly held this very minute in the love of God, then please, just consider trading in that old battered coloring book you’ve been carting around all your life for a blank canvas and a bottomless multi-tiered box of crayons. Close your eyes. Dream of how big love really is when conceived and held in the heart of God. Imagine a God who dances in delight at the sound of your name. Envision the God of Christ; a gentle shepherd, a compassionate father, a woman giddy at having found her one lost coin. Try to put a picture to unconditional love, unending mercy, and the wonder of divine grace.
And once you see the picture, every a blurry shadow of it, grab a crayon and draw….and draw….and draw.
Oh, in case I failed to mention, the black crayon and white crayon are missing from your box. I took them and you can’t have them back. Ever.
Posted in Periodic Reflections on the Love of God 12 Comments »
February 2, 2010
I understand the perfect love of God imperfectly.
I’m setting down two basic truths here. One, that the love of God is perfect love, and two, that I will never be able to comprehend such love.
By perfect love, I mean perrrrrrfect. A love that’s flawless, incomparable, and most excellent in all the world and all creation. A love that’s the fullest manifestation of any and all love that has ever and ever will be. A love that can never be matched, replicated, or surpassed. I appreciated that in one thesaurus it offered an alternate to the word perfect with the phrase something that is too good to be true. God’s perfect love is too good to be true but here’s the real kicker….it is true.
And still I struggle to understand it. Even with my heart and eyes wide open to receiving the truth of the perfect love of God I, like everyone else including you, see through a glass darkly, because I view the love of God through eyes filmed over by a lifetime of human experiences of love that even in their most awesome, breathless, magnificence, are merely a sliver of a shadow of all that is held within the perfect love of God. Barely a reflection. Less than a full bite.
I’m one of the fortunate ones. I’ve been extravagantly loved most of my life. My grandparents loved me. My parents loved me. My siblings loved me back when I was their annoying baby sister and continue to love me now that I’m their annoying middle-aged baby sister. I’ve had dear friends at every turn in my life who’ve loved me and the children I taught and learned from over the past 30 years have spoiled me with love. And then there’s my beautiful angel of a wife who loves me in a way I can barely believe after ten years of being drenched in it.
And the love I’ve been given has been more than a love of feelings expressed in gushy words but a love of commitment lived out in action. Even when our worlds collided over my sexual orientation my parents continued to demonstrate the deepest of love toward me. Even though my siblings and I have gone through the ringer with one another and our love has been laced with mutual irritation and frustration, love has carried us through so that even at our worst moments we could rest assured that the others had our back. The little kiddos who loved me decades ago when I was their Teacher Anita have continued to love me long into their adulthood, a love so kind and generous I’m rattled by it. And though I’m a high maintenance girl who at times can be as cantankerous and moody as a grizzly bear roused from sleep during mid-hibernation, my wife’s love continues without so much as a hiccup.
So here’s all I’m saying. I know what it is to love and be loved and yet despite the heaping mountain of love I’ve been graced to receive, all the love I’ve known, even the greatest of it, has been less than perfect love, and for no other reason than whenever people are in the equation so too is imperfection. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the beast…or more precisely, it’s in the nature of our beings. Even in the purest expressions of human love our personality flaws and egos occasionally stumble onto the scene. We become irritable and impatient with someone we love because they dare to see things another way than we do. We can love someone with every fiber of our being and still get angry at them when they fail to see and acknowledge our way is always the best way. We hurt those we love without ever intending to but still we do because we’re human and fallible. Self-centeredness at times trumps selflessness. Pride takes humility to the mat and scores a point. I’ve been loved like crazy all my life and I’m as grateful as grateful can be and yet love has let me down time and again and I know just as certainly that everyone I’ve loved has been let down by me whether they be my family, my friends, or my wife. Certainly more than once. Probably more than twice.
So here I am, an imperfect being, loving and being loved imperfectly while at the same time longing to lay hold of a more full understanding of the perfect love of God. And it’s not such an easy thing to do because every time I try to comprehend God’s love I have to slog through the collective experiences of love, both radiant and tarnished that have filled my life and those experiences become a filter through which I catch a foggy glimpse of the love of God.
They say that acknowledging you have a problem is the first step toward finding the solution and that could never be more true than in acknowledging I view the perfect love of God through a glass darkly. I need to be aware of my limited vision of God’s love so that I’m always intent on looking to see beyond the windows murky shadows, to catching a vision of a love that defies my human experience, and that not only goes beyond the greatest love I’ve ever known but beyond all the combined human love that’s ever been lavished upon me.
God loves you and me with a perfect love, and yes, I know….it really is too good to be true. And yet, it is. How awesome is that?!
Posted in Periodic Reflections on the Love of God 3 Comments »
February 1, 2010
My stream of consciousness on the love of God begins. Jump into the water if you dare.
God is Love.
The love of God is at the forefront of God’s being. God doesn’t merely demonstrate love outward toward us, but the ground and substance of God’s being is Love. Love is more than an attribute of God. Love is the essence of God and all else that we know of God to be; that God is kind, forgiving, compassionate, faithful, just, patient, good, merciful, full of grace, long-suffering, powerful, and every other good, glorious, and life-affirming thing we could ever tag on God channels and flows through the love of God. How much God will forgive, how patient God will be, and how much mercy God will extend, is determined by one thing and that one thing is Divine Love.
I can never experience love in my life without there being a recipient of my love, be it a human or a thing to be loved, but the love of God as the essence of God isn’t dependent on an object to love. Should all living beings cease to be from bird to bug, from you to me, God would continue to love because God is Love.
But being Love wasn’t enough for God. Even the divine perfect love that flowed through the Godhead between Creator, Word, and Spirit wasn’t enough for the Source of All Love. Love always wants more; to feel more love; to express more love; to be more love. And so you and I were created so that God as Love could love more, and in like manner the Word of God was sent into the world to live among us; given not because we loved God but because God loved us.
Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:8-12
Knowing that God is not only loving but that God is Love is more than semantics. It’s a big deal. No longer does God’s love depend on me being or doing anything. No longer is there any chance that I can win or lose God’s love. In fact, the truth be told, while God knows me and sees me and loves me, God’s love for me has little to nothing to do with me but instead it has everything to do with who God is, and in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, God is Love.
Posted in Periodic Reflections on the Love of God 3 Comments »
January 29, 2010
For those who’ve been so faithful in following this blog, there’s no doubt you’ve noticed in recent months that my posts have been a little slower in coming. I really have struggled with this because while my desire is to blog regularly there’s been a series of challenges that have had more of an effect on me and my ability to focus on writing than I seemed able to realize or admit to myself. The last six months have included two surgical procedures that took more from me than I anticipated followed by some frustrating but thankfully not serious health issues that precipitated multiple rounds of medical tests and doctor appointments that are just now winding down. And as you know, and were so caring in your love and prayers toward me during it all, there was the death of my beautiful mom in October followed within hours by one of my brother’s being diagnosed with ALS. Through all these circumstances God has upheld me and those I love. I’ve had no shortage of support and haven’t for a moment questioned God’s faithfulness to see us all through, come what may. It’s been a challenging season in my life with moments of sorrow and grief but life continues on and joy can and has been found in every single day.
And still, I’m only just realizing how much it’s taken from me in terms of my energy and my attention. Every day I miss my mom. Every day my thoughts and prayers turn toward my brother. Every day I’m a little more physically tired than I’m use to being. And because of all these changes in my little corner of the world; the losses that have already come and the potential losses that lay ahead sooner than I would ever care to imagine, I’m finding it a little more difficult to focus on my writing and as I’ve done in the past, I only ask that you be patient with me through this time and that you continue to stay connected to SisterFriends until I can find my breath again. I think I’m getting there.
That’s one of my personal reasons why over the past couple posts I’ve moved into a blogalogue about God’s love and why I don’t plan to go in another direction any time soon. After all, when you’re weary and worn, when the past has left you brokenhearted and the future appears paved with further hardship and loss, what else is there to do but lean fully into God who is able to keep you grounded in a hope that calms all fear and a joy that surpasses all grief? (You do realize I’m not just referring to my life but yours as well, right? Okay. Just checking.) I don’t know about you but when that’s how life looks to me, then hanging out in God’s love is the only place I want to be. It’s not that pitching our tent here changes the past, makes the future any more certain, or answers all the questions that continue to cloud our hearts, but at least we know this; that when we anchor ourselves into God’s love we stand in a truth and reality that is unchangeable, absolutely certain, and unquestionable. God is Love.
For my benefit and I hope and pray for yours as well, I’m going to be spend the next week or more blogging a series of random reflections on the love of God. That’s all they’re going to be too, just random reflections. They’ll be concise (if you can believe that any where within me lays the ability to be concise), in no particular order and with no particular structure. Just your basic stream of consciousness kind of ruminations. Care to join me? I hope so. I really do.
May this modern translation by Daniel Ladinsky of an ancient poem by Kabir get your own ruminations ruminating.
WHAT KIND OF GOD?
What kind of God would He be
if He did not hear the
bangles ring on
an ant’s
wrist
as they move the earth
in their sweet
dance?
And what kind of God would He be
if a leaf’s prayer was not as precious to creation
as the prayer His own son sang
from the glorious depth
of his soul -
for us.
And what kind of God would He be
if the vote of millions in this world could sway Him
to change the divine
law of
love
that speaks so clearly with compassion’s elegant tongue,
saying, eternally saying:
all are forgiven – moreover, dears,
no one has ever been found
guilty.
What
kind of God would He be
if He did not count the blinks
of your
eyes
and is in absolute awe of their movements?
What a God – what a God we
have.
Posted in Anita, SisterFriends 6 Comments »
January 22, 2010
My apologies, yet again, for the two week drought between posts caused by a major time commitment to family along with my highly developed artistry at procrastination.
That’s how I think we should begin 2010; by letting go of investing all our time, energy, and attention toward reconciling our sexuality or opposing the churches condemnation of homosexuality or fighting a world that seems set at odds against equality for all people, and that we instead lose ourselves to the bigger spiritual questions of God that in the end will be what leads us each to places of peace and assurance in all the other matters of life that concern us. – Anita Cadonau-Huseby in Turning Our Questions to Questions of God
I know. There’s something a little weird about someone who quotes themselves but then again that’s only slightly weirder than someone referring to themselves as someone as though they’re talking about someone other than themselves. Did you follow that? Me either. I say we give up on making a seamless transition from the last post to this one and just jump in with both feet and hopefully the rest will follow.
As Christians first and then as queer second, we spend a whole lot of our time and energy tied up in knots about God’s opinion of us. What does God think of me? Is God disappointed in me? Am I pleasing to God? Is God irked at me? Am I in big trouble? Is God grinning or grimacing in my direction? Am I doing enough, giving enough, serving enough, sacrificing enough? The church is full of folks caught up in a mindset that they need to be doing more of one thing or less of another thing to be holy and righteous enough to earn God’s favor. You don’t have to be queer to struggle with those questions. We just have a whole other scope of questions to wonder about. Is being queer and accepting that truth about my life an offense to God? Does God delight in the love I share with my partner or is God sickened by it? Does God hate me? If God disapproves of me being gay will God send me to hell? Has God allowed me to have cancer because I’m a lesbian?
I’m not making up those questions off the top of my head for dramatic effect. These questions are just a sampling of questions that have been sent to me over the years from GLBTQ men, women, and youth who are in spiritual and emotional agony, trying so hard to do the right thing and to be the right people to please the God they so deeply love. And fear. Not with our God is an awesome God reverential fear but fear as in scared to death and shaking in their boots fear. Waiting, just waiting for God to strike them down, punish them, cast them aside, wipe God’s holy hands of them, and turn God’s equally holy backside on them. And is it any wonder given how the church in God’s name has done it to them over and over again?
But returning to the questions people are struggling with, including the questions you carry in your own heart, there seems to me to be an implied assumption in all of them that lies just under the surface of the words, and that assumption is this; that the answer to every question hinges on the human side of things. In other words, the action of God is nothing more than a response to our actions or attractions. Whatever God will do is ordained by me. However God will respond is in my power to control. These questions that in content are primarily concerned with God’s potential response to us are questions that seem to rest entirely on the human action in the equation. If I do this, will God hate me? If I am this, will God be disappointed? If I, if I, if I….will God, will God, will God? The outcome to every question is entirely dependent on God’s response to our behavior, our sexual orientation, our failings, our righteousness, and our sin but I’m here to argue that nothing could be farther from the truth.
A child wanting to surprise their parent by setting the breakfast table accidentally spills a bottle of milk on the kitchen floor. Their parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and wipes up the milk with a paper towel while assuring the child that accidents happen. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and slaps the child across the face and calls the child a clumsy fool. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and laughs. Or screams. Or comforts. Or rages. Or hugs the child. Or hits the child. There could be a thousand different parental responses to spilled milk on the floor and all of them would hinge solely on the character and virtue, or the lack there of, of the parent. The child who spilled the milk has no say in the parent’s response. The parent will do as the parent will do independent of the child.
We are the child. God is the parent. Whether we drop the milk bottle or carry it to the table without spilling so much as a smidge matters little to how our heavenly parent will respond to us because God’s relationship to us and how God chooses to respond to us is held singularly within the character of who God is.
That’s all I’m saying and even as I say it I know it’s too simple for some to believe. For whatever reason we need things to be more complicated, and if I’m sounding too abstract then I offer as evidence what we’ve done with the Good News. We’ve spent 2000 years tangling it’s simple message of divine love (not to be confused with it’s easy message) in doctrines, dogma, theologies, and bullet point statements of belief suitable for framing in the church narthex.
Here’s what I can tell you after 53 years of walking, stumbling, and crawling along the path of Christian faith. God will be God. God will do as God will do. God will be who God will be. And to that end, God isn’t waiting on my next move to give or withhold love to me. God isn’t watching over my actions, words, and thoughts today to decide whether tomorrow God will bless or curse, reject or accept me. No. Today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow God is acting out of the core of God’s being toward me and toward all people and at God’s core is Love. God is Love and that one truth alone determines everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Every question, every answer, every decision, and every eternity are held up in this one thing; that God is many things but above it all and through it all, God is Love.
We’ve all probably said it a thousand times. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love.
We’ve committed scripture passages to memory that affirm it. We’ve sung hymns and songs about it. We might even adhere it on a bumper sticker to the back end of our car or default to it when we can think of nothing else to say to someone in need of comfort and hope, but now I think it’s time we really talk about what it means.
God is Love.
Chill on that for a couple days then swing back over this way.
Posted in Love and Grace 13 Comments »
January 7, 2010
Today while reading through some old emails I’ve saved from the past few months I got to thinking, maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong, or at least from the wrong angle. Below all the questions people ask about the Bible and homosexuality and the struggle to reconcile being gay and Christian is something more even fundamental and that’s what we believe about God. What if God hates homosexuality like they say? Will God send me to hell for loving another woman? I’m scared to death that God has cut me off. Maybe God is asking that I sacrifice my happiness to follow Him. If God doesn’t want me to be gay why doesn’t He help me change? If being gay is so wrong, why did God let this happen to me when all I ever did was love Him?
Maybe in this new year those of us who continue to be caught in the struggle need to put aside grappling with the six passages that are used by some within the church to condemn homosexuality and stop trying to answer to the arguments that they can’t be Christian and queer. Maybe for a season we need to let go of the religious prohibitions against homosexuality that’s entrenched within everyone of us who have spent any portion of our lives within the conservative end of the church and instead shift our attention to God and nothing about God.
- Who is God to me?
- How would I describe God to someone else?
- What is the nature of God? What are the virtues of God? What are the outstanding characteristics of God?
- What gets God out of bed in the morning?
- What is the focus of God’s day?
- What does God think about me?
- What does God want for me?
- What does God think about and desire for those who are set against me?
- How does God desire to engage in relationship with me?
- What is the heart of God for all creation?
In other words, put aside all our questions about being gay for the moment and turn our attention to questions about God because as we gain clarity in our understanding of God I believe we’ll find resolution to the other questions that have our hearts tied up in knots. We can become so focused on the central issues of our lives that we lose sight of the relationship of our lives, that being our relationship with God and our understanding of God’s relationship to and with us.
All I’m doing is asking you to think thoughtfully about what your personal theology of God is, because theology (beliefs about God) is in the end a very personal thing. While our early theology was shaped by what we’d been taught to believe and what we’d witnessed within the lives of our families or our churches, as we grow into the maturity of our own faith and gain our spiritual independence it becomes necessary that we define our faith in God for ourselves because this and this alone is what will guide us through our lives. How we “hear” God and how we experience the Spirit’s “leading” are merely extensions of what it is we already believe about the heart of God for us, for all humanity, and all creation in the core of our being.
That’s how I think we should begin 2010; by letting go of investing all our time, energy, and attention toward reconciling our sexuality or opposing the churches condemnation of homosexuality or fighting a world that seems set at odds against equality for all people, and that we instead lose ourselves to the bigger spiritual questions of God that in the end will be what leads us each to places of peace and assurance in all the other matters of life that concern us.
Posted in Theology 17 Comments »
December 29, 2009
All in all this wasn’t the best of years for GLBTQ and justice-minded folks. There was Rick Warren at the Presidential Inauguration in January, this summer’s hubbub around Carrie Prejean’s statement concerning same-sex marriage at the Miss USA Pageant, the horrific consideration of a Kill the Gays Bill in Uganda in recent weeks, and the dire lack of any real movement toward the fulfillment of the promises made to GLBTQ voters by the current presidency when our votes were being courted. And around each of these news stories was the proliferation of even more heated debate on the validity of our relationships and our lives.
But then again, it wasn’t the worst of years either. While the passing of Prop 8 in 2008 overturned gay marriage in California, in the Spring of 2009 the existing 14,000 same-sex marriages were upheld as legally valid by the California Supreme Court. This was the year that Vermont and Iowa joined Massachusetts and Connecticut in granting marriage equality to gay couples, and as late as yesterday, a gay male couple were legally married in Argentina. In November of this year California Governor Schwarzenegger signed AB 2567 making May 22, Harvey Milk Day, a state day of recognition, and in December Rev. Mary D. Glasspool became the second openly gay bishop in the Anglican fellowship of the Episcopal Church. And throughout this year while the debate on homosexuality in religious and political circles continues, more and more congregations across the nation added their voices in taking an affirming stance toward the lives, relationships, and ministries of their GLBTQ brothers and sisters.
All across our world there were big and small victories and big and small defeats in the area of gay rights. Three steps forward, two steps back but slowly, ever so slowly we move ahead toward equality and justice for all people.
Speaking personally, 2009 was a hard year for me. It was always be the year I remember first as the year my mom died. It was also the year I said goodbye to Marianne, a friend who lived with, and then died from cancer with more grace than I could ever hope to muster on my best day on earth. I spent nearly a quarter of this year recovery from surgeries, had a few personal disappointments, and in recent weeks have grieved the diagnosis of ALS given to a loved one of mine.
But there were good moments too. In 2009 I watched, howbeit from a distance, my godson sprout like a green bean. I reconnected with old friends. My mom and I had a few tender mother-daughter conversations I’ll hold in my heart forever. My marriage to my beloved was declared valid by the California Supreme Court and we enjoyed the ninth year of the honeymoon phase of our relationship. This was also the year I reached the lifelong goal of reaching a healthy normal-range weight and okay, in keeping with that it was also the year I was able to slip on a pair of size eight jeans without holding my breath.
How about you? While some of us have navigated through this past year with relative ease fueled on by occasions of great joy and celebration, for others it was a brutal year; the personal losses too many to add up and the suffering too great to measure. 2009 has been as gentle as a lamb for some of us and as tough as a lion for others.
But whether you’re sadly waving farewell to 2009 or welcoming 2010 in with a sigh of relief and a swipe across your forehead, here we are. Still standing. Standing together with one another and surrounded in the mercy, compassion, and consolation of God, the One who knows us best and loves us most. However hard this year was for you, you made it. You have arrived at the end of a really rough year in your life and because you’re still here, that in and of itself is a monumental victory; a joyous celebration of your courage and resilience, and of God’s faithfulness to hold you through the darkest nights and the most torrential storms. God was faithful and so were you.
I pray that if 2009 was a year of loss and sorrow for you that 2010 would be a year of restoration and joy. I pray good things for you. I pray moments of delight and laughter for you. I pray truly good people surround you. I pray peace. I pray love. I pray that you find healing, wholeness, comfort, companionship, or whatever it is that is your deepest longing and need. I pray all this believing that God is not only able to perform a good work within you but that God desires and will settle for nothing less for you. These will be the prayers spoken on my lips and carried in my heart as 2009 turns into our yesterday and 2010 becomes our today. I look forward to the coming year, to see what God will do in us and through us, and that we would be open to saying yes to God’s call, wherever it might lead.
You are loved and beloved.
By God who gave you life.
By Christ who redeemed your life.
By the Spirit that wooed you in the beginning and that will carry you through to the end.
Know this one thing, treasure it in your heart, and it will keep you through whatever lies ahead.
Posted in Devotionals, Holidays and Special Times 15 Comments »
December 21, 2009
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, ‘Greetings, favoured one! The Lord is with you. But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be. The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.’ Mary said to the angel, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’ The angel said to her, ‘The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God. Then Mary said, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.’ Then the angel departed from her. -Luke 1
She was perplexed and wondered what sort of greeting this might be.
How can this be since I am a virgin?
Here am I, a servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.
Mary’s response to the angel’s pronouncement is an understatement on so many levels. Even before dealing with the content of what the angel is saying Mary has to take in the context; that being that an angel has shown up in her room in the middle of the night. Though I’m not a scholar of ancient history I’m going to go out on a limb and postulate that angel appearances weren’t a common occurrence in the lives of young Palestinian Jewish girls in the first century. I could be wrong but I’ll take the risk. Whether Gabriel glowed with heavenly light and feathered wings flapping or made a nondescript appearance like Earl, my preferred variety of angel, it was a moment like none other in the young girl’s life. Surprising to say the least and yet the story doesn’t go on to recount how Mary ran screaming from the room or went weak in the knees, swooning to the ground in a heap. No external reaction on her part is revealed; only that internally Mary was perplexed and wondered why the angel had addressed her as favoured one and assured her of God’s presence.
While Mary might have been baffled about it all, why was there no fear on her part? Why no running or screaming or fainting or trembling, all of which I would have done in no particular order or more likely would have done all at the same time? My best guess is because from the moment the angel appeared, despite the extra-ordinariness of what was unfolding, Mary simply accepted what was. There was nothing in her that denied the reality of what was happening or that said no to the moment. You can almost hear the gears in her mind turning over;“This isn’t a dream. This is real. There’s an angel in my room and the angel is speaking to me. Now what?”
Mary’s acceptance allowed Gabriel to get right to the point of why he had come and where he began was by offering Mary the assurance that she had found favor in the eyes of God so she would know that the news to follow wasn’t a punishment for wrongdoing or a test of her faithfulness but instead he had come to tell her that because she had found favor, because God loved her and trusted her faithfulness God had chosen her for a special calling above all others. Mary had been chosen. By God.
And with assurance given the angel went on to round out the details of God’s calling; that she Mary, a young Jewess occupying a humble station in life, born to a family of simple means, engaged to a blue-collar worker, had been chosen to give birth to Messiah, the Promised One, the Hope of her people from the infancy of their beginnings, the King who would reign over the House of Jacob forever and the One whose kingdom would have no end. The angel’s pronouncement was the fulfillment of a promise from God that her people had longed to hear and hinged their lives upon from generation to generation. The angel is revealing that the promise of God to the people of Israel was just on the horizon. The moment had come. The time was now.
And Mary’s response? Now here is the part I love. Don’t miss it. Mary may have been young, but she wasn’t stupid. She knew where babies came from and so she knew it was impossible for her to give birth since she’d never been with a man. What the angel was saying was ridiculous. It was inconceivable. It was out of the question. Nope, not her. Not now. No way. And that’s just what she could have said. “No Gabriel. What you’re saying is impossible because I’m a virgin.” Period. End of story. Yet instead of making a closed statement Mary asked the question “How can this be since I’m a virgin?” Mary didn’t say no to the impossibility of what God is revealing through Gabriel but instead she asked how it can be possible and in doing so Mary left the door open for the impossible to become possible. She left her heart open to receive the divine revelation for what in her human understanding was inconceivable.
And with her heart and ears open, she received the angel’s explanation for how it will be and answered in simple faith, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Here I am. Yes. I will accept this calling. Though I may be condemned as a sinner in violation of the law. Though I may lose face among my people. Though I may be rejected and cast out by my community. Though my parents may be ashamed. Though Joseph may abandon me. Though there will be certain pain and labor and blood. Though I will be stepping into the unknown, here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
That’s all I’m saying. Let God’s Spirit say what God would have you hear.
Posted in Christian Lesbian Identity, Holidays and Special Times, Queering the Bible 3 Comments »
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