The Truant God

Two weeks ago I attended the eQuality Scholarship Collaborative Awards dinner in San Francisco as 16 Queer and Allied students (from high school seniors to grad students) received awards and recognition for their extraordinary accomplishments. Some of these students were introduced at the banquet by their parents, some by friends, mentors, teachers. Each of them in their speech was candid about the challenges they had faced and the support they had received. Some thanked their families, some had been disowned by their families. Some talked about the challenge of starting or reinvigorating the GSAs (Gay-Straight Alliances) at their high schools. Some were grateful to organizations like LYRIC (Lavender Youth Resource and Information Center in the Castro, SF) Some talked about coming out in high or middle school as Trans, as Gay, as child of Queer parents. Some mothers spoke with pride about their feminist sons, their trans daughters.

The evening made us all cry – these were some of the most remarkable young people of whom the Queer community could boast. The strength, determination, courage, pride, and talent of these students was an inspiration. We all had such reason to be proud of all of them.

One thing I noticed in all the speeches made: Nobody thanked God, no one thanked a single religious authority or professional. Seemingly no clergy or congregation had helped any of these stars get to where they were.

I was so proud of them and so ashamed of us. Where have our institutions been, where have our clergy been? When middle school students were disowned by their parents where had the church or synagogue communities been? As these students had mustered their courage and energies and achieved, where had God been in their lives?

A generation of poorly led religious communities, and a lack of Godspeak among the Queer communities and institutions that supported these kids has meant that we are raising our next generation without a positive experience of God or spiritual community. Not everyone in the world wants or needs God in their life or consciousness, but when none of 16 brilliant and compassionate recipients mentioned God or prayer, we have done something wrong. The aversion from Godspeak among Queer adults has drifted down to the next generation. The comfort, the poetry, the more profound perspective that can come from a consciousness of Divinity in any form was conspicuously absent from these students' lives. A connection to God could make their lives even more dynamic and powerful.

Here's my challenge and my question to my adult readers: How much do you speak about God in your daily life? How much do you impart to your ownchildren or the children you encounter? What slows you down?

I think we adults have to move through our own discomfort, our own histories of abuse, and our own shame at being religious in temperament and rediscover the beauty of God that may have been concealed from us by a bad church or abusive clergy person. God is still there, God is still sterling, and God is a gift we should bequeath to our next generation.

Prayer for Passover and Holy Week

A sweet and powerful journey to all who are celebrating Passover this week. My we feel the strong hand and outstretched arm of God reaching towards us in love and yearning.

A time of renewal and of reconnection to God for all my beloved Christian friends, colleagues, and family in this Holy Week.

May we all eagerly receive God in whatever manner God manifests Divinity in our lives, and may we bring our experience of the Holy One to each other and to the world.  

Love and blessings,
David

Update on Tuesday, March 26, 2013 at 01:49PM by Queer Spiritual Counseling

For a powerful enrichment of the narrative and imagery of Palm Sunday and Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, check out Jay Emerson Johnson's blog, "Peculiar Faith."

Soften up!

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.

Update on Sunday, March 17, 2013 at 11:39PM by Queer Spiritual Counseling

"Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?"

(Matthew 6:27, New International Version)

Save & Close

Relief, revelation, revolution. The countless blessings of coming out.

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.

Growth and Grace -- Godly Revolution in the New Year

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.

Update on Tuesday, January 1, 2013 at 08:49AM by Queer Spiritual Counseling

Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win By fearing to attempt.

Measure for Measure. Act i. Sc. 4.5  O, it is excellent To have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.           Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2.