True Colors of Faith: Violet

A voice cries out:
‘In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord,
make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be lifted up,
and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level,
and the rough places a plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,
and all people shall see it together,
for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.’ --Isaiah 40: 3-5

This passage from Isaiah is often heard in our liturgical calendar during Advent, a season in the Episcopal Church where it's customary for the clergy to be in purple stoles (although in my recent experience they are opting for blue, and using purple during Lent).
Regardless, these are words that have become imprinted on my brain and, like the vine, are a source inside me, especially when the winds of change begin blowing at near-hurricane force. I think of the upcoming consecration in Los Angeles of Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool and, in my heart, I know that means that a valley has been lifted up and a mountain made low. Things really are changing in the Episcopal Church... no matter what any individual bishop or priest may want to believe.
This change, I will call it a "purple change" (or violet, or lavender), is not without pain to some. But then, in my own experience, I think that the Holy Spirit doesn't always push lightly. Sometimes a gentle nudge here, and then sometimes a full body slam. Or blindness inflicted on the road to Damascus. And yet, the mantra that is repeated from one end of the Scriptures to the other is "do not fear":


Get you up to a high mountain,
O Zion, herald of good tidings;
lift up your voice with strength,
O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings,
lift it up, do not fear;
say to the cities of Judah,
‘Here is your God!’--Isaiah 40:9


Here is the God who will gather all the lambs and lead the mother sheep. And not to be slaughtered by the enemies of Love. The roaring lion does go on the prowl looking for the lamb that has wandered away from the flock. The wolf will dress up in the clothing of a sheep in an effort to deceive and devour the flock that was to be tended. All the more reason for us to place our belief not in people, but to remember that it is God who has given all things. In this God have I trusted. In this God am I tested. And in this God, have I known the realness of God's unconditional and multi-colored Love. May you know it in your life, too.

True Colors of Faith: Blue

Everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go
Well I don't think so
But I'm gonna take a look around it though
Blue, I love you

I've mentioned before that I often have hymns running as the background sound track to my life. It isn't quite as frequent as it once was, but it is often there, and making itself known. But when I started thinking about the color blue, "Come, Labor On" had to give way to one of my favorite divas of the Sixties and Seventies fame: Joni Mitchell and her song, "Blue".



The searching of the self does involve a lot of blue. At least it has for me. When I receive massage, blue is often the color that predominates the kaleidoscope visions that I have. And the blue has spoken to me as a representation of whatever might be melancholy in my life. Or it has been the insight into one of my own core issues: communication. Odd, maybe, to think that someone who was a public radio reporter for as long as I was would have trouble with communication. It's not that I have trouble as much as it is the tendancy in the past to have my fifth chakra, the throat chakra, close down and prevent me from speaking my truth.

Speaking one's truth is never, ever easy. Because too often, the hearer isn't interested in "the truth". How many times have you answered the question, "How are you?" with a smile and "Oh, fine."? Secretly, though, you are anything but fine. Maybe you're angry, or frustrated, or nervous, or just tired. Regardless, "fine" ain't what you are, and yet that's how you've answered the question. Often times, I think we say "Fine" because we don't want to have to explain the rest.

But to those of us who are LGBT, how many times did we answer questions about our lives where we deliberately hid the truth? Or how many times did we see the truth of ourselves right before our eyes, and deliberately shoved it under to prevent dealing with it? And at what personal cost to ourselves and our friends and family?
How many times did we or do we continue to answer that we're "fine"?

The prophets in the Old Testament are great teachers to us of what it takes to speak your truth... or rather... the truth of God. The story of Nathan dressing down King David for setting up the death of Uriah so he could have his wife Bathsheba to himself comes to mind. It takes some guts to tell the King, the handsome King, that he's been a no-good philandering jackass (OK, that's not how Nathan said it, but he might have done it that way if he lived today). Many of the prophets, worried about how to speak, found that God gifted them by putting the words in their mouths.

Thinking on blue, think of how God could use a few more in the world communicating the message that this Love is for real. And it really, truly is free... and it really, truly, absolutely includes all comers... no matter their race, gender, creed, religion, or sexual orientation. And then speak your truth!

True Colors of Faith: Green

Give us all a reverence for the earth as your own creation,
that we may use its resources rightly in the service of others
and to your honor and glory. --Prayers of the People, BCP, pg. 387

For me, it seems pretty easy to direct my intention and attention on the color green to be a reminder of all the living things that are around us in our environment. And with Tallahassee in full-bloom, green is very much alive!

The prayer I quoted at the opening is one that grabs me every time we use it in Church. I always have an image of garbage cans, and compost heaps as I meditate on what the prayer is saying, and how I try to remember not to put things into the trash that are better sent to recycling, or back into the earth itself. I credit my years living on the goat farm in Gainesville for making me hypersensitive to the needs of the planet, and everyone and everything that shares this place with me.

Green is the color of the fourth chakra, the heart, which given its connections to the earth seems logical. If we are, as we say "dust and to dust we shall return", then it would seem we have a strong connection to the ground on which we walk. It also is the term we use for things that are "new" as in this person starting a new job is "pretty green." In that sense, I see it as the patron color of all "beginners". This includes those people who are beginning to discover their true identity and accept their "otherness". So for any of you who are just coming out, this "Green" is for you.

"Coming out" is often met with some pain as well as pleasure. For those who find their true identity as one of God's gay children, it's a whole lot easier than for those who come to it later in life who are emerging after being locked in a closet for decades. At any age, there is often the uncertainties of how 'the world' is going to respond. For many, it has not been positive. Churches and other religious institutions have been particularly ugly, and some remain so.

However, the Holy Spirit... or as Wiccans might say "The Magick"... is afoot, and will not be denied. And as such, God's love is not going to die but will spread and will pump the greeness of the heart to the ends of the earth, and continues to plant that seed of unconditional Love into the souls of many. This, to me, is the pleasure part of "coming out". Acceptance of one's true sexual identity... no matter what it is... and the acceptance that this discovery is part of the workings of God to free you from a prison of fear, deceit, and hurt.

Go green! Not just for the environment outside, but the environment inside.

True Colors of Faith: Yellow

I was struggling with what to say about Yellow until I spent yesterday morning at the chapel in Morning Prayer. And then it hit me that yellow has many associations that resonate, including its place in Eastern thought as the color of the third chakra, or solar plexus, making yellow an important color in the spectrum. The seat of your soul is in the solar plexus. A swift blow just below the diaphragm can kill a person.

In thinking on associations I have had with this color... I have thought about it as the ultimate Yin-Yang color. It can mean friendship, solidarity and courage... or it can be used to describe sickness and cowardice. Those dynamics definitely dwell in many faith communities... sometimes within a single individual. Those in the Episcopal, and now the Lutheran Church, know how yellow the individuals can be... either out of the extension of friendship to those who have been persecuted and marginalized by the Church... or out of fear that to be inclusive will somehow jeopardize the Church. They forget that "the Church" is the Body of Christ, and the Body of Christ has many members. MANY members.

In today's assigned Gospel, Jesus is with his disciples and gives them the new commandment to love one another, and that to do so, to lay down's one life for one's friends is one of the greatest things a friend can do for another friend. And he goes on to say...

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

I don't know if the whole group of them turned yellow in that moment... and if they did, it was again both out of courage to be friends with Jesus... and out of cowardice of being identified as a friend of Jesus in a world that punished those who proclaimed Christ the Messiah. As my mentor is wont to say, "The both/and".

Any one of us can live into our yellow tendancies to either be a friend or a coward. Any one of us can step out of our closets to be in solidarity and friendship with Love, or continue to hide ourselves out of fear of the cost that might be incurred by living into that Love. I hope our yellow is the one of friendship.

True Colors of Faith: Orange

God said, ‘This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.’ --Gen. 9: 12-16

And there you have it: proof that God loves gay people because God put a rainbow in the sky to prove he won't drown us again!

Seriously, God is love. And God's love is given freely without black-out dates, or expirations. And one can feel that love in the core of our creative and sexual beings. Which brings me to the color orange. Again, pulling from the Eastern traditions of the chakras, orange is the second chakra and governs our creative and sexual expression... or creative sexual expression. This would be the place where I see the Church falling down on the job because now we are getting into a place where, let's be honest, there has been a tremendous amount of abuse and misuse of this gift given to us by the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer. Please see all the headlines in recent weeks.
A while back, long before my wake up call, I realized, through listening and contemplating the words in the Song of Solomon, that God has gifted us with our sexuality. It doesn't matter what that sexuality is, be it straight or gay or both. God gave us the ability to be intimate with another so that we don't have to go through this world alone. And, like all things that God has given freely to us as gifts, the expectation is that we will understand that this is a special gift to us, and we are to be wise in how we use it. Looking to the apostle Paul, he notes that the commandments that pertain to do not murder, do not covet, do not steal... all fall under the commandment Christ gave to "love one another." In loving, you do not use another person as a means to an end. That's how I take the message of our sexuality as well. Like all things, we are to see the Christ in the other person, and treat them with the love, honor, dignity that God has shown us.
The first step of respecting another is learning to respect ourselves, and acceptance of ourselves for who we are. Another reason to come out of the closet. If you are living as if you are straight, you are lying to yourself and to others. If you are attempting to change yourself to be straight... when your natural attraction is to members of your own gender, you are not using the gift God gave you, and you are going to create more hurt for yourself and others in the end.
Take time to tap into the orange energy of creative sexual expression and know that this too, like all things, is God-given for our good use.

True Colors of Faith: Red

Unfortunately last night I had to forego the Interfaith service for Tallahassee's LGBT Pride Week in favor of going to my Education for Ministry class. With the events that have unfolded at St. John's, I felt it was better for me to be in class. Insert heavy sigh here.
So, I missed the presentation about our colors of faith... which took place at Temple Israel, and included Pagans and Buddhists and Christians and Jews. Don't know if there were any Muslims or not, or how many Christian groups were represented but I imagine most were what I would call "the usual suspects".
Even though I wasn't there, I know that the general theme of the evening was "True Colors" and that different faith traditions took a color and did a little reflection on said color. I loved the concept, and had toyed with offering to stand in as the representative of Tallahassee's Episcopal Churches and our all-inclusive welcome of "The Episcopal Church Welcomes You"... which today in our fair city no longer needs an asterisk. But since I wasn't there, and have free reign over this blog, I figured I would take this week to reflect on ALL the colors of the rainbow... beginning with "Red".
For those of us in the Episcopal Church, red is a special color. Red stoles and red altar decorations signifies special events in the life of the church, most notably the Day of Pentecost when the Holy Spirit blows into the upper room and settles on those present to give them tongues on fire with the word of God in every language of any hearer in the place. It is the opposite of what happens in Genesis when God smacks down the Tower of Babel and scatters the people to and fro and confuses their language. Now there is a common bond, many languages that are as universal as notes on a page of music. All are gifted with the Word.
Likewise, God is continuing this work of gifting all people and calling us to see each other fully and completely as members of the human race... connected and undivided by labels and artifical barriers. The Holy Spirit blew away the fear that kept those in the upper room huddled together, and gave them the new breath they needed to go out and be their true selves as advocates for the unconditional love of God as was expressed through Jesus Christ. We are still being called by God to come out of our closets, our rooms, our prisons of fear, and show our true selves as believers that this Love, this God, is for everybody.
It is appropriate that red is also the color for priestly ordinations and the beginning of new ministries. It is the root chakra in Eastern traditions. Red is the starting point. It is about grounding. Grounding in the Divine, and embracing the essence of that divinity planted in each of us.