Tag Archives: Love

Life Is Short – an Easter Benediction

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At the end of our worship time together, a closing prayer as we leave to return from the sanctuary of our thoughts and our prayers, and go out into the bright world, to do all the works that have been prepared for us to do:

Priest:

Life is short.
And we do not have much time
to gladden the hearts of those
who travel the way with us.
So,
be swift to love,
make haste to be kind,
and may God’s blessing,
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
be with you,
and remain with you always.
 - Amen
Let us go forth in the name of Christ. (Alleluia! Alleluia!)
The People together say:
Thanks be go God! (Alleluia! Alleluia!)
(During the season of Easter, the People say Alleluia! twice as show above. During all other seasons except Lent, it is said once. During Lent, it is omitted.)

Show Me The Suffering – a meditation by Cesar Chavez

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Show me the suffering of the most miserable;
So I will know my people’s plight.

Free me to pray for others;
For you are present in every person.

Help me take responsibility for my own life
so that I can feel free at last.

Grant me courage to serve others;
For in service there is true life.

Give me honesty and patience
so that I can work with other workers.

Bring forth song and celebration
so that the Spirit will be alive among us.

Let the Spirit flourish and grow
so that we will never tire of the struggle.

Let us remember those who have died for justice:
For they have given us life.

Help us love even those who hate us,
so we can change the world.

– Cesar Chavez

 

 

Inappropriate Prayers – Losing elections mixed with sacred words

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The older I get, the less I like elections. They get longer every time. They get nastier. They do more to split up friends and families than any other scourge that I know. And this one was different: it was worse.

I caught myself being the victim.

It’s not easy for me to look back and say “this is how it was last time,” because memories over time will cloud and skip the forgettable details, and then fill in with the details we wish had been, until it all seems real. So I can’t look back and try to “remember” how much less anguished this was the last time. I can’t remember the truth.

This time, the morning after election results, I checked into social media and found that some of my oldest friends were very angry, though I’m not completely sure what they were angry at.  And in that moment of rage, words boiled forth that may have been campaign rhetoric and stump speeches the day before, now, post-election, were personal insults that seemed directed at me. They sounded directed at our people.

In that mosh pit of raw feelings I remember in particular a few people who prefaced their comments with “God help us…” or “God have mercy on us…” in both cases, for what the country – or the state – had just done. My brain reads that very emotional, hyper-dramatic statement as meaning, “it just doesn’t get any worse than this, and now only God can see us clear.”

This line became particularly annoying in a statement ca. 2003 when Robert Duncan (then Episcopal Bishop of Pittsburgh) asked for this same divine intervention as he thought we were “a broken people” because of the Episcopal Church’s decision to ordain a gay bishop. I was outraged by this solemn, doom-filled line delivered like a hanging judge in a Saturday afternoon black and white B-western movie.

“You will hang by the neck until you are dead, and may God Almighty have mercy on your soul.”

Is this what was going on? Had some of my friends turned into hanging judges over night while I slept? Was an election result so damaging to the country and its people that only God can save us now?

The answer is – of course – yes. (Keep reading.)

First, in times of great trial when all we want to do is throw our hands up and walk away and cry, the only way to get the blame out of our system is to throw it at God. “There is nothing more that I can do in this situation, so if God can’t get us out of this, I guess we’re hosed.” By venting frustration in terms of “God have mercy on us all,” you have over-stated the obvious because if one has this spiritual belief, then God always has mercy on us, always forgives us, always lets us get our crying fit out of us, and helps us to move forward.

Second, to pull away from the super-dramatized feelings of a situation, seeking the mercy and forgiveness of God is part of the daily motion of prayer and contemplation, whether we are aware of it or not.

Before communion (Eucharist) Christians ask for mercy and forgiveness as well as spiritual peace. This is one of the strongest moments of the approach in prayer to God before partaking in communion:

Oh, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
Oh, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
Oh, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world,
Grant us thy peace.

At this moment even as the words we say or sing are “us,” more importantly, that means “me.” Before I can step forth to participate in this rite (to “commune” with God), I must find within myself grace and forgiveness. And just as important, I must forgive those around me, and seek to put forth that Christian peace into the world. Before we can so commune with God and then be sent out into the world to do “the works that he has prepared for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10), before we can rise from our prayers, we seek the mercy and forgiveness of a merciful and ever-forgiving Ywwh.

The answer to the question about “is this thing so bad that only God can save us” is Yes, because in every step and every breath, it is such that we exist because of this mercy (this love) of God. This is something that we can rejoice and be glad in when we realize that the use in this particular instance is more venting bad feelings at God than it is about getting love, finding peace, and going out to do our work.

The question I have for these “God have mercy on us” folks – once cooler heads prevail – is: Yes! Amen! God will have mercy on us as has been in the case in every second of the past and as will continue for every moment into the future. Now: given that knowledge, since you have that “salvation” (mercy, love, etc.) with you…

what do you do next?

Keep the faith!

 - Amen

Agnus Dei

A Parable of Two Parables a meditation on chicken, God, and gay marriage

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The battle is over and they have won.

The great inspiration in that phrase is that in speaking this we leave off the last two words of the sentence and forget that they have won the day.

The battle is theirs, but perhaps not the greater war.

August 1, 2012 was another one of those days in a long progression of brother against brother and father against son in a debate that should not even be a discussion or a question: one corporation’s statement about the owners’ stand on same-sex marriage, how that effects their corporate stewardship, and how it impacts the consumers who got caught up in a great cataract of hate.

Weeks before, August 1, 2012, would have been of singular importance to me because it was on August 1, 2010 that I was in the middle of my own same-sex wedding, a bright clear and cool morning in Washington, DC, of standing by a fountain in a small urban garden and remembering the wedding words that come to us in flashes: honor… love… always… will you here today witnessing this union do all that is within your power to uphold this family, nourish them, and embrace them as a living example of Christ’s love for his church?

OK so we didn’t use that last one but it is the central point of a wedding that the marriage it represents is witnessed, ordained, and upheld. And it shows us that it is a human and so-imperfect reflection of the love of God-in-Christ for us, that oh-so-perfect ideal.

As I said, that was August 1, 2010. Since then the acknowledgements and acclamations made that day have not changed and I have learned that in these past 731 days our lives continue to see that Christian example of unquestioning love as much (maybe more) on the days full of tears and anxiety and anger than on the days of laughter and good times (the ultimate fellowship.) We are as a married couple all of those things in a great full-colored spectrum of emotions and energy and coming together in peace at the end of each day, ready to stand together in the sunlight of each tomorrow.

The same is true – in theory – of Christ’s church.

Now, two years later, on August 1, 2012, I find myself quite literally standing in the middle of the battle of the most hateful and destructive part of Christianity: the great war of Us and Them. The We side has all the sanctity while the They side holds all the sin and brokenness.This is in no way different than the news of the world in 2010 but today the devil that tempted Christ on the mountain top is given a face and a name, and shadowy wings on which to fly.

The news of this story is that the chief operating officer of a closely-held corporation admitted with some glee that his company is “guilty as charged” of supporting many anti-gay hate organizations such as Exodus International the debunked “ex-gay” ministries whose leaders and former leaders can’t seem to keep themselves out of trouble with backsliding in gay bars and reverting to their old innate  “unnatural” (sic)  ways. And to the Family Research Council, the Marriage and Family Foundation, and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. The largest donation on the list is $1.1 million to the anti-gay, Marriage and Family Foundation, donations financed indirectly by purchases made in this company’s stores.

A corporation’s charitable donations are of course their choice, particularly in a company that does not have publicly traded stock. These numbers were already available for 2009 and 2010 so the conservative slant of their charity was no surprise. The president of the company simply put those donations on the front page. Under the premise that no publicity is “bad” publicity:

Jesus Sells Burgers. Would you like some fries with that?

The statement from the man  said that the company is family-owned and family-led (even married to their first wives – a generous Old Testament boast) and that they operate their company based on “Biblical principles.” He then negates his own statement by saying the company has “no agenda against anyone.”

And so the ugliness started flying back and forth from both sides of the argument as to whether this is indeed discrimination or hate speech, while others defend a corporation’s owners right to have whatever opinion they desire and they (the consumers) support it. This chest thumping on both sides culimated with a “support” day on Wednesday (typical night for mid-week Baptist church services) August 1 for those in agreement to show up and purchase the goods, and the bill of goods, this company has to sell.

I had completely forgotten about this prayer meeting with fries and glossed over much of the rhetoric because I have been through these protests and short-lived “boycotts” before. Coors beer. Nestle milk products (I bet you missed that one!) even anything to do with the entire state of Colorado back in a time when a single state passing anti-gay legislation was a newsworthy event. Since the mid 1990s and the Colorado boycott, the news goes more in the other direction and it becomes noticable when states do the opposite, while blatant discrimination written into states’ constitutions becomes the norm.

Then completely by happenstance we drove to our favorite frozen custard shop up the street from our house, which just happens to be right next door to a restaurant of the company in question. The room was packed. The parking lot was filled and lines of cars double-looped around the building. My only thought as we drove through all that trying to find a place to park was that here was a group of a couple of hundred people bringing out their kids and grandma and their church youth groups, in a singing celebration of how “bad” my life is, and that they support a corporation which has told them so.

That hurts.

I have never seen a Phelps family protest and if I had, I don’t think my reaction would have been the same because those mini circuses involve a very small group of brainwashed, hateful people spewing out whatever foolishness their leader has fed them from the pulpit that week. Theirs is nothing more than religion-as-photo-op, and if you stepped into the pool of deep truth inside their beliefs, you wouldn’t get your ankles wet. Their work is so stupidly bad that it is comedic. It’s very easy for anyone with a semi-rational mind to agree that the Phelps family is as with any mob of thugs and bullies, not of their right mind.

But here in this restaurant is a room full of happy singing Christian people whose specific purpose in being so tuneful this night is to stand in unity and celebrate how wrong my life – my marriage – is, and how smugly correct theirs is by pointing that out to me.

And here beginneth the lesson.

While everyone is certainly entitled to their own opinion, and even more so entitled to keep it to themselves, we must apply some Christian ethics to this situation. First and the most obvious is Christ’s parable of the mote and the beam, in Matthew 7. This is the one that you’ve likely heard a zillion times in paraphrase and is Christ’s teachings on judgmentalism. In the passage He teaches that before we are qualified to speak about the shortcomings of others, we should be aware of our own, and also teaches in one short sentence, the dangers of false allegiances:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.

“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? …” (Mtt 7:1-4)

followed by:

…“Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces.” (Mtt 7:6)

The image is quite clear: before we can be happy in pointing out our perception of “sin” in others, it behooves us to be fully aware of all the sin within ourselves. Take corrective action  first, before speaking of others. In the second parable of casting pearls before swine, we must be very studied in the people to whom we give our allegiance (and our cash.) It may be that they simply ignore our tributes (“take the money and run“) and then turn on us and quite literally tear us – both morally and physically – to shreds.

I put forth the charge here that this is what this COO has done in his statement: he has placed himself in a seat of judgement (even with the facile “but we don’t have an issue with anybody” deflection) and has pointed out by saying that they have no issue with others (like me) that they are more than happy to take my money and give some centime of it away to folks who really DO have an issue with me, and are doing everything within their power to get rid of me.

Think of this as Nazism by Proxy, looking back historically to a european example of “We don’t have a problem with the Jews; it’s just those crazy National Socialists. We didn’t put anyone in a death camp; all we did was give support to this political mob and what they did with the Jews… well … hey. All I did was vote.”

A second and more important dive into religious error I saw last night was spoken of in the parable of the sheep and the goats, again in the gospel of Matthew. In this illustration Christ makes a simple lesson of a shepherd who separates his flock into the sheep on his right side and the goats on the left. The final coming of God (the ultimate goal of the Christian faith) will be like this in that God will say to those on the right hand side, “you’ve done well, come into heaven.”

The writer gives us the striking image of:

“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in,  I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.”

In the parable, the righteous folk were confused by this complement and asked the king, “When did we ever see you being a stranger or naked or in prison?” The answer was very easy and the most magnificent calling to Christian service:

Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.

That’s it. Just that simple. The entire core of the Christian faith curled up into one very neat little statement. As you are treating the people around you in your every-day life, so you are treating God.

So   You   Are   Treating   God.

My response to what I saw last night was that for a while, sitting there eating my frozen custard that quickly came to taste like cold cardboard was that I am the outsider, the one who was not part of the wedding feast. I was not in that room with those happy people. In fact, they were in a room being happy together for the simple  reason that I was not in that room. All of those people chose in their moments of Christian Flag Waving jingoism to ignore the direct teachings of Christ: did you feed the hungry? … did you clothe the naked? … did you visit with those who are in prison, and yes children, even in the prison of discrimination, of other-ness, of “hate the sin and love the sinner”?

Have you failed at being “guilty as charged” of showing the people around you absolute love?

Did you do all of those things for the people outside? Did you stand up for what is in fact the real Bible-based reason for any corporate body mentioning the name of Christ should use: Rescue. Care for. Feed. Love. Support. Cherish. Is it no surprise to me that so many people around the world so ardently dislike Christians and their strange beliefs that are completely disconnected from the Bible.

Jesus – it would appear – is merciful. People, in all their faults and foibles, have a lot yet to learn.

August 1, 2013 will arrive and with it the memories of this day will be back in some dusty corner along with Coors beer boycotts and Cracker Barrel sit-in protests. We will face an all-new set of worries and bothers and little mosquito bites that hurt our feelings, make us cry, or just piss us off. There has to be something that is a constant in our lives that gets us through both the summer  of pride, and also the winter of being thrown under someone’s political bus. As each one of these irritants moves from a bang on my nerves to just some forgotten grudge that I’m happy to have lost the details on, I realize we still have great constants spoken of in a marriage covenant that always will trump politics.

  • Do you love this person and do they love you?
  • Will you do    every    thing    possible   that is within your power to ensure that this love continues, through all its forms and permutations over the years?
  • Will you in your turn as a witness to that union do    every    thing   possible     that is within your power to support, uphold, and promote this marriage as the perfect example of Christ’s love for his people?

Will you try in every way possible to be the fallible, imperfect yet loving attempt at becoming the example of all that is good in life, and by doing so, move closer to God by passing that example to others?

Keep the faith.

- Amen

First, you die – a prayer for families coming out

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In the fourth season of Queer as Folk, as the audience comes to the end of our acquaintance with Uncle Vic, the Hiv-Poz former chef and patriarch of the Novatny family, someone asks his sister Debbie what it’s like to find out that your brother is HIV Positive, and that has now turned to aids.

After a moment’s pause she says “First… you die.“

 

And then from there, the resurrection story comes into our lives from the realization that we can either sit there in that lonely pit where it’s dark and cold and the walls are steep and slick, or we can rise up, move on to our next day and our next, and so on, to live the lives that all the Uncle Vics in our lives would expect us to have.

I’ve heard some few parents tell me the same
response: What did you do when you first found out your kid was gay?

First, you die.

 

It’s as if what has just been told to me – most often from a place of sharing and trust – I have allowed to become my problem… my shortcoming. No child of mine is as bad as this badness (sic) that they have just told me, and so now I take the blame, the bad feeling, all the fault, and I sit here in my dark room with it, and oh! aren’t I a stronger person for suffering mightily on behalf of my child?

And then you wake up the next day.

 

Skies didn’t fall. Planets did not careen out of their orbits. Statues to that parent’s martyrdom did not spring up on the front lawn overnight. The badness, the crushing defeat, the loss – yes that is all still there. As is the daylight of that second day. We wake up, we look down and there scattered all around on the rug are pieces of a now-broken life (our own) that seemed so perfect – so untouched – just one day before. What happened in that day? And what to do now with that jigsaw puzzle of spilled pieces all around?

Consider reading the chapter 1 Corinthians 13 , it’s very short, only 13 of the most quoted and re-written verses in the Christian canon. The author (attributed to Paul) describes all that which love is. (In this case, agape, or charitable, Christian love.) Love, that active word that we don’t want to consider today because our life, broken and hurt, shattered in pieces on the floor by this bit of news from that one we… oh, wait a minute … from the one we love. The very last thing all that darkness calls from you is an active, pull yourself up by your bootstraps word like love.

 

Love never fails.

That’s not an original thought, or pie in the sky, that’s the first verse of the chapter. As strong an acclamation as you need to get you through this day, next week, a year from now. However long it’s going to take you to come to your senses and see how busted apart your life really is not.

 

Love is Eternal.

Regardless of that over worked movie scene in which the shell-shocked child is told of the parents’ upcoming divorce by saying “mom and dad just don’t love each other any more,” real, honest love is going to last beyond getting mad, coming out, denting the car, even that divorce split. Maybe mom and dad will love each other more by being apart than when they were together. And maybe – by being invited in as a part of this gay child/friend/spouse’s life – your love will also grow.

Evidence here is another super-quote from the Bible, John 3:16 described as “the gospel in one sentence:”

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

They won’t perish: they won’t be removed forever from the one who loves them more than all others. No matter what awful things the world does, no matter how bratty we are, always demanding and never thanking…. always breaking stuff … God. So. Loved.

 

Are you the one who loves your child above all others? Everlasting, honest-to-God love?

Not everyone will have positive, wonderful or even funny coming out stories to tell. Some will break families, some will end relationships. And some will break old relationships into many jagged pieces that will then re-join more strong than before. Some will move along better because that child has spoken honestly of something that everyone already knew, and by speaking, they welcome us to know them – and love them – even more.

 

Families must grow to be strong.

That child – that beloved – has invited you to share something in their lives that is very close to their hearts, something very wonderful. Chances are they are scared- to-shaking that by telling you this good news, afraid you will react by rejecting their lives. Those scared ones fear that you will not love them any more.

God. So. Loved.

 

“At first,” Debbie said, “you die.” But you cannot stay there. Tomorrow will come whether or not you want it, and many days after. On that next day, when you are sitting in that dark, tall well with the slick sides, remember three simple words: God. So. Loved.  Decide then if you should do the same.

  • Love suffers long and it is kind.
  • Love does not envy and is not puffed up with false decoration
  • Love doesn’t behave unseemly or think evil thoughts
  • Love never fails, and endures all things

 

If you are that person who hears this news and your reaction is happiness, then God bless you, you got it right on the first try!

 

If you are that person who hears it and is afraid, just keep listening, keep asking all the questions you can bear to hear, understand the facts and not your inner fears, beginning with the fact that you have a happy person in front of you, asking you to join them in their happiness!

If you are that person feeling shattered and broken and ill-used, afraid, embarrassed, then everybody back to their own corners, reconnoiter and try again, maybe tomorrow, maybe next week. This is a family and not a sparring match. It’s no time for emotional blackmail, and no time for threats that you will certainly regret later.

 

Speak your mind about how you feel and always remember as the words come out of your mouth to this person who just seconds before you loved so deeply: God. So. Loved. Remember God’s love (and yours!), and fight to the core of your soul to keep it.

 

 

And now abides faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.
(1Cor. 13:13)

 

A Prayer for Families Coming Out

 

(the final phrase, “and so continue…” may be omitted or revised as needed.)

Lord, creator, you made each and every one of us in your likeness, embracing us in our moments of weakness and cheering us in our moments of triumph. We  thank you for giving us families – both given by you and chosen by us – and we thank you for showing your diversity of the many shades of love, a great palette that shows your compassion for us. Be with us within our families as we face all challenges, both inside and outside, that together, putting aside our own  divisions, fears, and expectations, we may continue to grow in your never-ending love for us, and so continue the work of Jesus.
- Amen

Keep the faith!

 

 

(for Ronnie B. You left us without giving us the time or the opportunity to love you even more. We miss you, bud, and guess what: we already knew. Rest easy.)