A Fitting End of the Year Statement

From today's Daily Office, there was one line that seemed to jump off the page from the Third Letter of John:

Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good. Whoever does good is from God; whoever does evil has not seen God.--3 John: 11

This exhortation seems the most fitting statement for where I am in my thinking at the close of 2009. This has year has sped by, and in the process, there have been some ups and downs and big bumps in the road. In reflecting on all-things-queer, I remember how deeply stung I felt about the results of the November 2008 election, especially how supposed friends in the straight community could not understand the depth and breadth of pain Florida LGBT people were feeling. My "otherness" had been made very clear... and I entered the year with bitter anger, resentment and feeling numb on some level. What a set up for Lent when I realized that the "thing" I needed to work on was my hardness of heart. And, just as it always seems to happen with me, I served as a Eucharistic Minister the Thursday after Ash Wednesday... and there in the Prayers of the People at the top of page 391:

For this congregation... that we may be delivered from
hardness of heart, and show forth your glory in all that we
do, we pray to you, O Lord.

I can say with certainty that I did not do well with this Lenten discipline because I could not shake that feeling that my "otherness" was being used against me and my fellow "others".

But if there is one thing I think I'm learning about God it's that God doesn't restrict God's work to a season, and won't be held hostage by our human attempts to keep God locked into "seasons". And so this summer, this glorious summer, I was encouraged in Tim Miller's performance workshop to explore my felt "otherness" of queer Christian by pulling the narration of my story out of my body through physical movement, as opposed to simply writing like a mad woman at a computer. The short monologue I developed feels like the seedling for a much bigger piece... if I will make the time to let the sun shine on it and help it to grow.

God also ended the winter season of discontent by blowing life into the actions of our General Convention in Anaheim. Because of the passage of D025 and C056, LGBT Episcopalians could rejoice and be glad in the thought that our "otherness" would not ban our queer priests from becoming bishops, and in those places with marriage equality, Episcopal bishops were now free to develop and work with clergy on rites that could celebrate a same-sex marriage. Hallelujah!

Sadly, winter hangs on in the South in ways that it doesn't normally in nature. And yet, even with bishops in our region stamping their feet and declaring that "nothing has changed", I am deeply aware that things are changing, and no amount of human intervention is going to stop it from changing. Because the good shepherd is aware that one of the sheep was allowed... even encouraged... to wander away from the flock, and the shepherd is not going to stop searching for that sheep, and will brave the wolves and the lions to keep calling out to the lost and lonely one that was told by the liars to go away. And with the election of more and more bishops in this country who recognize that Christ died for ALL people, the icicles are starting to drip.

Of course, there is still Uganda. Burundi. Rwanda. Malawi. Nigeria. The Anglican Covenant. Maine. New York. New Jersey. California. Yes, all of these are painful. All of them have felt like set backs. But there was also Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, Argentina, Mexico City, Washington, DC and State. In those moments when I pause and look at the creche set up on our mantle piece, or the Advent and Christmas candles beside it, I am reminded that nothing about God is necessarily easy. That wasn't the promise. The promise was that God has come, and will be with us always no matter what the circumstances. The light will pierce the darkness, and it prevails with each of us carrying that light inside us out into the world.

Beloved, do not imitate what is evil but imitate what is good.

Happy New Year!