Is Nothing Sacred???

I had a friend who used to say that whenever someone said something that embarrassed her. Sometimes we’d do it on purpose just to see her turn red and sink into her chair.

I’ve been thinking about her lately as I watch the almost circus-like spectacle that is going on over birth control and women’s rights. We’ve all latched on to our own particular limb of the discussion which is threatening to rip the whole apart.

Thanks to my old friend, I think I understand what Rick Santorum and his ilk are trying to say. However, in their “I’m right, you’re wrong” style, they are doing a lousy job of communicating it to others, except for those who already happen to agree with them.

Indeed, very little is sacred anymore. Anything is available to us anytime. We wait for nothing. We want for nothing. To describe it in simplistic terms, my peers and I sometimes talk about how we long for the days when we had to wait all year long for “The Wizard of Oz” to be on TV. It only showed once, at a specific time on a specific day and if you weren’t there to watch it, you missed it until next year. Now, we can own the movie and watch it anytime we want. Where’s the anticipation in that?

We’ve become addicted to gratuitous pleasure. We can even watch pornography any time of the day or night without bearing the shame of renting a salacious video at the store. We’ve come to see sex as a throwaway guilty pleasure rather than the incredible process it is for the creation of life.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not a crazy pro-lifer or anything but I wonder if we shouldn’t pay more attention to this subject. I may step on some toes by not being able to completely explain myself here, but I’m trying to look at the larger issue rather than get mired in the minutia.

What message are we sending to our kids about the honor it is to create and raise children? Where is the line between sexual prudishness and basic common sense about how we discipline ourselves to restrain our most basic instincts until we are emotionally prepared to deal with their consequences? When did we give up on the idea that “no means no” — but in case I change my mind I’m protected? And why is all this about religion?? Isn’t this a human issue? Isn’t this an issue of basic respect, not just for each other but for the life that our actions might create?

We need to be having better conversations, where women are invited to the discussion about how birth control affects their lives and where gay people can sit down with those who don’t understand and have a clear discussion about what the real issue actually is rather than what others think it is. All of us are so much more than what we do in bed. Why does the discussion always seem to devolve to that?

We need to figure out how to rediscover a sense of the sacred, not just in a religious sense, but in a human sense, so that we don’t continue demeaning one of our greatest sources of meaning by turning it into nothing more than a stress release.

I hope that each of us will find enough meaning and sacredness in our own lives that we trust that there is a reason we are asked to wait….

Are You There God? It’s Me, Ellen

What has happened to us?

Why are we so filled with fear and anger toward each other?

When did we stop seeing our common humanity and begin seeing only the aspects of others that fill us with rage?

Mutilated puppies, angry fathers publicly shaming their kids for all the world to see, children taking their own lives in front of their classmates — these images are scrolling down the screen of my awareness and hardly a one contains a message of love that isn’t skewed through the lens of despair.

What have we done? WHO HAVE WE BECOME???

I try, God, really I do, to be honest and loving and courageous and forgiving, but I fall short. And in my falling short, I become angry because I expect more of myself on your behalf. Yet, there are people who tell me it doesn’t matter. Because of what I am, I will never be acceptable in your eyes but it will be acceptable for them, even admirable, to deny all that I do in my effort to please you. They even think they are ordained to metaphorically stone others like me in the public square and brag about it to their buddies, saying that you told them it was okay.

I probably don’t need to tell you, but rhetorically, do you realize just how many of your children have given up trying to know you because they’ve been told they are not acceptable in your eyes? The grown up versions of those children who might have reconsidered have turned away because they hear people spew hate toward them for loving others, including (place name of marginalized group here)________. And there are those who loudly profess their love for you then shoot an inanimate object full of holes because they don’t know how to express their love, your love, to their own children and yours.

And do you know why I fight for a woman’s right to choose? Because I’ve seen what this life can do to those who don’t feel loved and I don’t want to see another person come into this world without a chance to find happiness. I don’t want to see another puppy’s face burned off by acid because someone who was so bereft of love could only feel pleasure by causing someone else pain.

But you know who suffers most in the end? You do, God, and the others you’ve put here to be taken care of by the rest of us. Those who self-righteously place a disconnect between me and you not only affect my relationship with you but the relationships of those who see beyond what I am to who I am. Maybe they’re going to hell with me but at least they were the ones who stepped forward in that public square and challenged others to cast the first stone. I hope you’ll remember that when they’re standing before you.

We think we do no harm when we make a joke that gets laughs about someone whose life “is a good example of why her parents should have used birth control”. We think that when our child humiliates us publicly online that it is acceptable to respond in kind, threatening the child’s life, if only as a lesson. Yeah, yeah, I know you told Abraham to burn his son Isaac on a pyre and then said “just kidding”, so maybe that guy was justified in his mind. Sometimes I don’t get your sense of humor at all.

So here I am, like that guy’s daughter firing off a screed against her dad online just to see if I’ll get some response from you. I’ll have to hope that you are a better father than he is.

Are you sure you’re there, God? I’m really starting to wonder….

With This Ring….

When I was a little girl, my dad used to “pimp me out” as a flower girl in various weddings he performed for members of his congregation.

During one such ceremony, I am told that I walked over to the kneeling bench and lay down on it, sucking my thumb. I guess I wasn’t terribly impressed by the goings on, nor with the dress they made me wear. Already, I knew that marriage wasn’t something I wanted to mess with.

Wearing a stupid dress... again.

So here I am today, dozens of years later and I’m still unimpressed with this wedding day that “all little girls dream of”. Really?? This little girl apparently didn’t get the memo.

Washington State is set to become the 7th state in the union to “approve” same-sex unions, also known as Marriage Equality. The Senate has passed it and the House is expected to, sending it on to the Governor whose blessing set this all in motion. One state at a time…. ho-hum.

On the one hand, this is cause for celebration. Marriage confers on legally betrothed couples something like 1,136 rights that are unique to their union. Don’t ask me what they are. Most married people don’t even know. However, these rights are only recognized in the state where the marriage was legally performed or in a small handful of other states that have agreed to recognize those rights.

On the other hand, the rate of divorce among heterosexual married people across all demographics is approximately 50%, and even higher in communities that profess it to be a covenant with God. Oh, the irony….

As a minister, my dad would counsel young couples when they got married, asking of them “What does marriage mean to you?” Though I never actually heard any of the answers to these questions, I can well imagine them: “…through sickness and in health, forsaking all others, blah-blah-blah….”

But what DOES marriage mean?

Does it mean “what’s mine is yours because I feel as one with you” or “what’s yours is mine because you owe me if you screw up”.

Does it mean that I want to make sure that anything I ever do for you will come back to me tenfold when we get divorced?

Does it mean that I am buying my right to have sex with you whenever I want even though I may not necessary be saying that I will have sex ONLY with you?

Call me cynical, but I don’t think marriage has much meaning because the sense of common purpose has gone out of it. It was once a legal contract to ensure that a wife and children would be provided for because they had no other rights. It made sure that a man’s “stuff” stayed in the family. As those rights changed it became a commitment to creating a deep and lasting relationship that exists for a higher purpose beyond personal satisfaction. But then even that seemed to get lost. “With this ring” has too often turned into “with this noose”.

Marriage has come to be about stuff again. My stuff is your stuff but if you don’t like my stuff, you can stuff it. My stuff is more important than your stuff. And if you screw up, whether I like your stuff or not, your stuff is mine!

So do I believe in marriage equality? Yes, but not if the bar we’re holding up is no higher than the one that already exists in too many people’s minds. “If it doesn’t work out, we’ll just get divorced.”

If marriage is seen only as a legal commitment, a way to insist that society honor our rights to each other’s stuff, then it’s meaningless. It has to be about more than that.

So really….. What DOES marriage mean?

Angry John or Forgiving Jesus?

Yesterday I almost had a melt-down in a Southern Baptist church in Tampa, FL. I’ve visited this church in the past and never before felt the urge to stand up and scream, but yesterday I did. My emotions boiled and bubbled.

I carry my father’s opinions about religion with me nearly 20 years after his death. He was an old-fashioned guy, not so much as a preacher, but as a human being. He had certain opinions about things, and since he wouldn’t have taken well to being called judgmental, we didn’t push it. In the 1970s he would clutch his head when either “Jesus Christ Superstar” or “Godspell” would play on the hi-fi (which they often did in a house full of teenagers raised on the Beatles and The Rolling Stones). Yesterday, he would have clutched his chest and fallen to the ground if he’d seen the electric guitars and drum set blaring away on the altar with their “Praise” music. I clutched my own chest in Dad’s stead.

I hadn’t been to church in a while before yesterday. We went to hear a friend of ours speak about a mission trip to Southeast Asia where she is serving as a nurse practitioner to the local impoverished people. She’s been over there for about a year of her 3-5 year commitment.

The recounting was wonderful and amazing. I was proud of her for doing it but as I listened to her describe her work,  I felt worse and worse for NOT having done such a thing myself. She was serving the world and I had chickened out on my own spiritual journey and ended up in another relationship in suburban Florida.

What really got to me was that this woman that people were anointing with praise and admiration had been in a relationship with another woman before leaving on her journey. For a couple of years the two had been involved in the musical life of this church but took great pains to not let anyone know that they were a couple since the Southern Baptists vehemently condemn homosexual relationships. Each time I entered the church to witness one of their performances, I felt the tearing sensation of hypocrisy in my chest and had difficulty enjoying the concert.

Christianity for me has never been about condemning other Christians, but in light of the various marriage amendments that have been again declaring homosexuals abominations and sinners worthy of death, I don’t know what to do. My anger is constantly seething just below the surface.

After a difficult night of trying to reconcile my reaction, this morning I read in the Hope for Peace and Justice newsletter the following from Rev. Mike Piazza:

Matthew 11:1-19

In chapter 4, following the Baptism of Jesus, John the Baptist is arrested by Herod and thrown into prison. At his baptism, John declares Jesus to be the one sent from God with a “winnowing fork” in his hand. Apparently, he now is having second thoughts. John sends his disciples to ask, “Are you the One, or should we be looking for another?”

I know how John feels, don’t you? I mean, I love Jesus, but when I’m in trouble or pain or distress he seems altogether too passive for me. John had read all the Hebrew prophets’ predictions of the messiah, and he fully expected someone who would vigorously sort the wheat from the chaff. John came breathing fire and warning, “Just wait until the Messiah gets here … ”

Then Jesus comes along suggesting that we needed to forgive our enemies, turn the other cheek, and go the extra mile. In answer to John’s question, Jesus tells his disciples to go back and tell him what they have seen and heard:

Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me.

Jesus describes the work he is doing, and ends by saying “blessed are those who aren’t offended” by this vision of the messiah. I don’t think he meant John so much as all of those who are offended by a messiah who brings peace rather than a sword. The ancient Jews certainly were not the only religious people to believe that the “enemies” of God would be punished and the “friends” of God rewarded. They were not the last who thought that the good news was for the rich, powerful and successful, not the poor to whom Jesus came.

John isn’t the last person who thought Jesus ought to be more judgmental, vengeful and just. Even now, Jesus is used to uphold our prejudices and to reinforce our righteous anger. Like John, few of us really want to be a disciple of a healing liberator who is on the side of the poor. We keep looking for another, or making Jesus into another type of messiah that better suits our needs.

That was God speaking directly to my anger. For me, Christianity has always been about the teachings of Jesus. While all that preceded his coming is important, it was the birth of Jesus that was supposed to have changed us all from legalistic judges of each other to forgiving believers in a power greater than ourselves. I failed miserably in my own mission yesterday.

Last night as I looked at my reaction to this situation, I was so humiliated by how I had treated others. I saw how hypocritical I was being. As I stood there stewing about the rock music on the altar I was ashamed that I had not evolved to embrace this new means of worship, had not left behind the grand organ music I was brought up on in the Congregational Church. Even as a musician, I could not appreciate the intent of these fellow musicians to create a new pathway to God. And my missionary friend had put aside her own selfish needs to travel halfway around the world to serve like the true Jesus in an area that would sooner have her killed for her beliefs, yet she could not stand up in this church in a civilized country and declare her love for another woman without the same fear.

I was not a Christian yesterday. I was John the Baptist, there in the church he started, insisting with righteous anger that someone DO something about this situation instead of allowing the love of Jesus to gently take me into his arms and comfort me. I was a tantrum-throwing zealot of my own mission instead of an innocent child.

I am neither a good Christian nor a good gay person some days. All I know is that lately it feels as though the twain shall never meet. Maybe I am living my mission by being here in this place, at this time, but today I am an angry John the Baptist and all I can do is pray that tomorrow I will be a forgiving Jesus…

A Light in the Darkness in Tampa Bay

“Inasmuch as a marriage is the legal union of one man and one woman as husband and wife, no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized.”

It’s much later the same day and I’m back from the Vote NO on 2 rally in Tampa. I am energized in a way that I haven’t been in a long time. Thank you, all of you enlightened politicians and clergy people in the Tampa Bay area!

I found out how easy it is to get drawn in to the empty rhetoric of the Christian right who seem to have forgotten that the most basic tenet of Christianity is love. ”This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you” – John 15:12. See? I can quote the Bible too, in 20 different versions with the help of the Internet.

Today, I witnessed love. People of all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, coming together to affirm their love for each other and for the sake of others who cannot stand free in the open air because their lives are still hidden, by necessity.

A few people from the UCC I attend in Tampa stood without fear, holding up signs proclaiming the injustice of this amendment to the families who were emerging from the Lowry Park Zoo. I’m not sure how many they drew into our occasion, but they made it clear that change was in the air.

I expressed to some of the people there the misgivings I’d been having since reading some of the blogs I’d found on the Internet. They assured me that God was still with me, guiding me as always. I won’t go so far as to call the conservative blog folks evil, but there were some suggestions in that direction.

Tonight I was walking my dog down the street after plugging my “Vote NO on 2″ sign into the ground at the edge of my driveway. In the distance I saw a couple of people with some more dogs and there was some commotion going on. As I got closer, I realized that it was a couple of my more distant neighbors, a couple of middle-aged sisters (literal, not metaphorical) who live around the block. I run into them from time to time and they are delightful people. They had seen my other dog rolling around in the road and, not recognizing her, had become concerned so they’d been checking with my neighbors to see who she was. Then I happened along…

The other day I passed by their house and saw a McCain/Palin sign in the yard. It surprised me. These two, whose parents actually live in the house, had always struck me as the loveliest spirits I’ve encountered. Sweet, gentle, sort of Nordic looking. They didn’t strike me as Republicans (am I stereotyping or what!).

We chatted on the sidewalk, comparing stories about our dogs, and I was emboldened by a glass of wine to bring up the subject of Amendment 2. As seems to be true of most of the people I’ve talked to, they had no knowledge of the amendment. It took only a sentence or two for me to get them saying “No way! Really??”

This is the tragedy of this amendment. It’s language obscures the real intent which is to permanently ban gay marriage. In other states where such measures have passed, lawsuits have flooded their legal systems, costing the taxpayers untold money (that statement is for the folks who are only concerned about finances).

As we finished our conversation with them offering to help in any way they could, I mentioned to them that I’d been making it a point to identify the angels in my life lately. There they stood, silhouetted by the street light, their blond hair glowing, and I realized that I had found two more…

Vote No on 2

Since I last wrote, I have gotten myself in a real twist.

Here in Florida, an amendment is up for a vote that will essentially take away some hard fought and won rights achieved by non-married people, by redundantly declaring marriage as between one man and one woman. This law is already on the books through the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

In exploring this issue, I have come across some virulently anti-gay blogs that have left stab wounds to my soul. Part of my pain comes from realizing just how easy I’ve had it in my life compared with many others who have had to struggle to find and maintain their sense of self. I have said many times that it is up to each of us to stand up and be recognized but that has never been difficult in my world. I have lived in some very accepting places.

But here in the south, it’s all different. Though in my own neighborhood I feel mostly welcome, all around me, and perhaps even behind the closed doors of my closest friends, it’s different. Through the blogs I’ve been reading, I realize how much easier it is for us to anonymously voice our opinions. Some people even feel that it is okay to make threats. But it is much harder for a person, without the aid of his or her “gang” to say what they believe to be true.

The Bible is being tossed around like a hot potato. I will readily admit to not being well-versed in scripture, so when I hear one being directed at me, I am forced to check into it.

And it scares me…. What if they’re right?

Gay & Christian — A Marriage?

What times we are living in!

When I came out 25 years ago, the world was a very different place. It wasn’t long after the Stonewall uprising, and the gay community was just beginning to move out of its embryonic stage and was growing up to be a viable entity. Then came the harsh reality of the adolescence of our journey — AIDS. Many have fallen in the struggle to establish a sense of integrity, and still many of us are seeking the strength of spiritual maturity that we have been denied.

My father, a minister, though kind and accepting of me and my friends, once referred to homosexuality as “delayed adolescence”. This must have been one of the theories of the day. My response to that was, because we were denied what, for us, was a normal adolescence, we were forced to start later. And because there was only an obscured path for us to follow, the going was slower as we haphazardly cut our way through the vines of prejudice and ignorance.

I don’t remember being told that homosexuality was a bad thing. It simply wasn’t talked about. Once the issue was brought forth, the discussions started. The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” rule of our culture broke open and people were forced to look at us out in the open for the first time — and many folks didn’t like it.

I stopped going to church when I came out. The United Church of Christ had never told me that I was no longer acceptable, but something inside of me said so. I began to research the various typically quoted passages that declare me “an abomination” and I became frightened. Society told me I had made the choice to be this way. I try to think back to when I consciously made that decision, and I wonder, at what point did THEY make that decision? Were they once considering being gay and decided that it would be a bad idea?

Several years ago I stumbled across the Cathedral of Hope (UCC) in Dallas, TX. They have a wonderful website as well as Daily Devotionals that speak to all of us, gay or not, and invite us back into the Christian family. But not all of us have direct access to a physical community, yet we long to.

If you come across this blog and would like to participate in discussing how we can change this, I welcome your comments.

I’m fairly certain that Jesus wouldn’t have kicked us out of HIS temple…