In all the client counseling I have done of late, and in my own life, what has become most clear to me is the way in which Queer people especially (all people, though, to some degree) have been forced to build emotional shells and suits of armor to protect ourselves from abuse, rejection, and simple alienation in a world that is sex-negative and predominantly homophobic.

We all protect our vulnerability. That is of course necessary. However, we can lose our ability to distinguish between moments of genuine threat and neutral time, time when we are unthreatened. In fact we stop looking to see if the threat has abated. In those times we remain in our defensive posture.

When self-protection takes the form of addictive behavior – meaning some form of out-of-control self-medication to stop the pain – it is known in the 12-step world that you can't recover until you stop using or acting out. All the possibility for spiritual growth lies on the other side of not drinking, not using, not acting out. Recovery (spiritual growth) starts with chemical or behavioral sobriety.

Even if we're not caught in classically addictive behavior, self-defensive postures can become habitual. We fend off any possible engagement that involves our being or feeling vulnerable. At that point, we're frozen in time. We stop growing in that moment, and we won't grow again until we thaw out and soften up.

I'm not saying there aren't threats out there in the world. If we are without armor we certainly risk being hurt. If we stay perpetually frozen, though, we risk a sort of emotional “freezer burn.” We won't just stay fixed in ice; our spirits actually suffer more damage. If we dare to be warm, we again become open to God's healing.

My prayer: May we know that it is safe to be soft. May we not fear tripping up or falling down. May we remember, we have more to gain by being vulnerable than we do by being perpetually self-protective. May we know that God is with us and that we need not fear.

In a recent Boston Herald interview MIT baseball player Sean Karson talked about the experience of coming out to his teammates. He said,

I have never been myself up until very recently,” he said. “Everything’s been just sort of cold and calculated. I’ve been in this fortress, I guess, and haven’t let my emotions out at all.“I worried that I had no emotions, that I didn’t feel much about anything. It was really weird.”

In my mind, what Sean describes is the difference between being alive and being the walking dead.

We all protect ourselves in the world, we all cover up some of our vulnerabilities. We have to. We can't go emotionally naked through the world any more than we survive in a blizzard or in the desert without clothes. What Sean Karson illuminates is the irreplaceable blessing of self-revelation, though. When we closet ourselves, when we “cover” our identities too drastically, we build fortresses around our hearts and our souls.

These fortresses keep us from our fellow human beings and from God. Because if we have no emotions, neither human nor Divine love will register with us.

Sean Karson mostly received immensely positive feedback from his teammates. “They came up and gave me high fives and said they’d have my back and everything,” he said. “It was so supportive, it was ridiculous.” Others said "how much they respected [him], but that they needed to collect their thoughts first."

The trade-off, though, is so clear, and our world is changing. Even in a context like male, competitive team sports, where coming out is still revolutionary, the blessings of courage outweigh the risks. The revolution of revelation brings on more revelation. Sean's revelation of self sparked the revelation of his teammates' compassion and love. Think what this will mean for the next athlete who hasn't dared to speak out, and the next, and the next.

Blessed is God who blessed humanity with life and with the capacity to love.

Our Greatest Fear —Marianne Williamson

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.

Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small does not serve the world.

There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other

people won't feel insecure around you.

We were born to make manifest the glory of
God that is within us.

It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone.

And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other people
permission to do the same.

As we are liberated from our own fear,
Our presence automatically liberates others.

— Return to Love by Marianne Williamson, Harper Collins, 1992

I heard this at midnight on New Year's Eve in a community of men who love men. I appreciated it first for its immediate message and second for what I see as the subsequent spiritual challenge it presents to us. Williamson is right, all of us, Queer people especially, have a need to recognize the Godly in ourselves. We need to shine our authentic light and claim our deserved place in the world.

To do this is an act of both evolution and revolution. Our individual selves and our community require this evolution. Our new presence in the world will cause or constitute revolution, an unmistakable shake-up of the established, conforming order of society. When we become our full selves and proclaim God's blessing of our true selves, we will shake up our own souls and shake up the world.

Our growth presents a challenge to the world around us. Then it tosses another challenge back onto our shoulders: How do we grow with grace?

I think of how children learn to inhabit and maneuver in their new bodies? Adolescents are clumsy, clutzy, of necessity as they grow. It's hard to learn to be big with grace.

That's our challenge as we grow in spiritual and individual stature. We're going to be personally and individually clutzy. Initially we won't see the boundaries we cross, the toes we step on, the way to be full and large without being unkind and uncoordinated. I personally want to keep this challenge in mind as the new year begins. The world in 2013 profoundly needs our evolution and revolution. It also needs our generosity and our consideration. Godly revolution requires prayer for our own good and for the good of the world.

My prayer for us all: May we grow with courage and grow with grace as this new year begins.

"We’re so much more than these wretched vessels that we sprint or swagger or lurch or limp around in, some of them sturdy, some of them not, some of them objects of ardor, some of them magnets for pity. We should make peace with them and remain conscious of that, especially at this particular hinge of the calendar, when we compose a litany of promises about the better selves ahead, foolishly defining those selves in terms of what’s measurable from the outside, instead of what glimmers within."


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/25/opinion/bruni-these-wretched-vessels.html?ref=opinion

It is so obvious and has probably been said before, but I heard from a counseling client today wisdom that floored me, took my breath away in its simplicity and strength. His words: 

"Dear God, please help me listen to, and not look at, my body." 
- John D.

I think everything I might ever want to teach the world is contained in that perfect prayer.

Why is it perfect?

It addresses God personally and with affection. God is not distant, God is near and dear.

It is rooted in the sensual experience of being human, the senses of sight and hearing.

It reflects the essential importance of imagination and metaphor in understanding the world we live in and the lives we live. “Listening to the body” is both real and impossible. We must grasp and lift the burdens that limit our imaginations so that we may free that truth from our cynicism. It is possible to listen to our bodies.

The prayer acknowledges how looking can impede listening. It doesn't disparage vision, but it teaches that vision is often the short circuit, the path of easiest access and least resistance, that deprives us of the self-knowledge that sensitive listening provides.

Implied also is how looking at bodies is a common experience and, as a result, problematic. I look at my body, I look at other bodies, I look at other people looking at me, and I get lost in the house of mirrors. All that looking, and I stop seeing me, I see only what I think other people see.

Listening, on the other hand, is personal, individual, tells us so much more. As a yogi, as a body healer, I've learned (even if I forget sometimes!) that I gain much more wisdom about my body by listening to it than I do by looking at it. Great body workers don't succeed by looking at bodies, they listen with their hands.

Finally the prayer makes clear, this isn't easy. We need God's help in this, because there is so much in our lives – good and bad – that makes this a challenge. Ignoring irrelevant issues of telescopes and microphones, This is true: Looking is easy, and we can do it from a distance. Listening is hard, and we need to be up close to accomplish it.

To listen to our bodies we must inhabit them. God, please make that possible today.

Coming out has been a lifelong process from being "outed" abusively at middle school, to coming out to my parents in middle school, to going to college with the vow never again to tell anyone I was straight, to picking up a guy at the Halloween dance at my brother's college and having to let my brother know the next day so he heard it from me first, to staying out all night on dates when home on vacation from college, to bringing home boyfriends from college, to being still too nervous at college to interview Quentin Crisp for the Yale Daily News because my father would read it and disapprove, to co-leading the first Gay-Straight dialogue at Yale, to living with boyfriends, to holding hands with men in public, to being intimidated by drunken homophobes then learning to not be intimidated by them, to being a hotline and outreach volunteer for GMHC, to being arrested in an Act Up protest, to applying to rabbinical school with tons of "Gay" and zero "Jewish" on my resume, to coming out to residents at the nursing home where I interned as a chaplain, to being an intern at NYC's LGBTQ synagogue, to using the word Queer from the pulpit at my non-LGBTQ congregations, to leading Body Electric retreats, to teaching sacred sexuality at Nehirim and Easton Mountain retreats and finally letting Easton put my face and name on the website, to earning my certificate in Sexuality and Religion at Pacific School of Religion, to creating a profession and a practice called Queer Spiritual Counseling, to falling in love with amazing men and trusting my heart, to seeing the last few important things about which I am not "out" and knowing that I will take care of them eventually, to believing that God created me as I am, so Queer, so non-conforming, to knowing that living out my identity is the best thing I can offer to the world, to being in love with a truly breathtaking man and being grateful for this moment.

Act I: When Good Religion Goes Bad

Some of my perspective on the tragedy that befell Tyler Clementi and his family comes from my years directing plays and operas.

When we think about the damage caused by Queerphobic religion, mostly we think about children, whose sense of self is so undermined before they grow to have a clearer sense of perspective that they ultimately see dying as better than living as Queer. When we run to save lives, we rescue children first, but the extraordinary interview with Jane Clementi, mother of Queer teen suicide Tyler Clementi, teaches us that we are wrong if we think only children need rescue from Queerphobia.

The influence of religion in life is intentionally all-pervasive. Religion often teaches how parents and children should relate to one another. Queerphobic religion not only turns children of every age against themselves, it turns parents against children, can turn children against their coming-out parents, and put loving parents at war against their own parental instincts.

The story of the Clementi family as told in the New York Times article gives evidence of really bad guidance from their church.

Act II: Prejudice vs. Compassion

At the time Tyler sat down to tell his parents he was gay, she believed that homosexuality was a sin, as her evangelical church taught. She said she was not ready to tell friends, protecting her son — and herself — from what would surely be the harsh judgments of others.

“It did not change the fact that I loved my son,” she said. “I did need to think about how that would fit into my thoughts on homosexuality.”

Yet it did not occur to her that Tyler would think she did not accept him.

In my former career as a theatre director I learned that if my concept of how the production should go was frustrating most of the cast, my concept was likely wrong. When religious doctrine contradicts basic human impulses to the degree Mrs. Clementi describes and makes that many people so deeply unhappy, the doctrine is likely wrong. A rule of thumb for directors and religious leaders alike: If concept proves irreconcilable with essential humanity, change the concept.

Here's what I see in just the brief excerpt above: Tyler couldn't communicate openly with his parents. His parents couldn't communicate with their friends. Their community was primed to judge its members harshly. One doctrine, one theory -- religious Queerphobia -- created so much dysfunction and dissonance. Acceptance, instead, of the truth of God's creation of a Queer and diverse world would have generated harmony and healing energy, perhaps enough that the Clementis might not have lost their son. Acceptance and celebration of Queerness not only saves anxious youth, but rescues loving adults from tragedy, also.

Act III: What Religion-Infused Communities Can Do Well, But Often Don't

Religious institutions, traditions, and authorities can be of unmatchable benefit in the life of their communities. They don't have to be without doctrine or concept or norms and just nod “yes” to everything. They can teach. However, they must look beyond the theoretical coherency of doctrine. They have to look at the lives being led. Who are the children of their community? Who are the parents and other adults? If congregants don't fit the concept, institutional leaders (lay and professional on every level) need to ask themselves why they themselves don't accept the lives of the people they are hoping to shelter and love. And when enough people are unhappy in the same way as in the Clementis' community, it is time to sit down with leadership and discuss the tension between the theory and practice of God's will.

In the months after Tyler’s death, some of Ms. Clementi’s friends confided that they, too, had gay children. She blames religion for the shame surrounding it — in the conversation about coming out, Tyler told his mother he did not think he could be Christian and gay.

What's wrong with this picture? Everything. Why should parents have to “confide” that their children are gay? If that many parents are experiencing it, then it's a natural phenomenon, not an aberration. Why should religion be the source of shame? Religion should liberate us from shame. Why should Christianity and gayness – two core elements of Tyler's identity – have been incompatible in his mind?

It may sound strange to describe it in this way (I'll happily take feedback on how to fix this metaphor), but God isn't the director of our lives, God is merely the absent producer. I say merely, because God requires human beings to intuit and interpret the Divine will, to act out and improvise the script of life. God needs us as actors and directors, as a collaborative team, to make something just and beautiful of life. Only within the narratives of scripture is God both the omniscient author of law and the omnipotent director of action. Not in the stories we live out from day to day.

Religiously infused life should be great, uplifting art, it shouldn't be tragedy.

Blessings of compassion towards us all,

David

In a recent conversation with a Spiritual Counseling client, I made reference to the ancient and yet startling Jewish blessing for the internal functions of the body – all our internal plumbing – a blessing that traditionally is recited after going to the bathroom. The blessing begins with the words

Blessed are You, God, who created the human being in wisdom.

My client (this one happened to be literate in Hebrew) pointed out that the original text could legitimately be translated quite differently.

Blessed are You, God, who created the human being from wisdom.

I think what blew me away was the simplicity and the obvious rightness of his reading.

Not only can we perceive a wisdom in the structure of the body, but we can mine wisdom from the very tissues and fibers of it. The medium – the clay, if you will – from which we are sculpted is wisdom. We connect to that wisdom through what our bodies experience and feel. That experiential wisdom may be something we can translate into words, or it may remain inexpressible. Truth can get lost in translation. The sensation of a caress, a squeeze, an ache, or an orgasm can communicate a wisdom to our souls that no words can contain.

This reminded me of a healing session I experienced once with my friend and teacher Joe Weston. During a spiritual body work session shortly after my father died, Joe found places on my torso that were painful to the touch. I said, “Make the pain go away.” Joe replied, “You don't want the pain to go away, you want it to tell you what it knows.”

Bodies are made of wisdom. It's an obvious truth, yet it is a very Queer truth.

The acknowledgement of an authority competitive to the mind is Queer.

Recognizing the sensations and experience of the body as wisdom – that is so Queer!!!

To hold as a religious truth that the erotic body can teach the mind through its sensations is Queer.

The conforming* approach has been that the crude and ignorant body must only be lectured to and made wise by the mind. Queer God, Queer faith, Queer experience tell us different.

May we bless the Queer God who creates us from wisdom and in wisdom, and teaches us not to judge the ways in which we are wise.

* I have begun to adopt the term “conforming” in place of “straight” when describing the contrasting condition to Queer. From now on I will try to use “straight” only to mean opposite-gender attracted, which by no means precludes Queerness. In this context “conforming” means conforming to the illusion that only straightness is healthy or holy.