More Than Expected

Portrait of President Barack Obama.

On Friday afternoon, I needed out of here.

Introverts need time alone to recharge and be ready to do the next extroverted thing on the agenda. And my off-the-scale introversion has been tested mightily in this new seminary environment. So I looked up the bus and Metro schedule, grabbed my SmarTrip card, and headed into Washington, DC, to the National Portrait Gallery...one of the items on my "to do" list for this time in Alexandria.

And I was blown away. 

It wasn't just observing the work of artists who, in some cases, did some very interesting brush strokes to create a person's likeness (the Bill Clinton portrait was a psychedelic experience!). But as I moved along the wall and took in the story of the presidents we have had in this country, I was catching glimpses of just how complicated, messy, unjust, and painful the struggle has been to keep together a country like ours. Truthfully, we invaded a land that was already occupied...not unlike some of stories from the Hebrew Scriptures...and set up camp and pushed others off into a wilderness that we would then claim another century later. And we did this on the backs of others brought here against their will. Some were not so keen on that idea of slavery, and then they met with fierce opposition that disrupted their presidencies. And then there were wars. And economic depressions. And corruption and largess. 

But then there was a video playing in an alcove. It was clips of speeches saved by the History channel. And there were the accomplishments: the ADA. The reunification of East and West Germany. And....marriage equality.

To stop and listen to Barack Obama's speech before a crowd of weeping LGBTQ+ activists and couples holding rainbow flags brought me back instantly to the rush of feelings I experienced both when the noxious Amendment Two passed in Florida...on the same night that Florida helped to elect Barack Obama as our president in 2008...to the incredible sense of a weight lifted from my shoulders when we were able to get our marriage license on January 6, 2015. I wept as I contemplated how even the presidents I did not admire still managed to perform the role of leader...and for more than just their own kind.

As Reagan bellowed, "Mr. Gorbachev: tear down this wall!" another museum visitor looked at me and shook his head.

"And now Trump wants to build walls."

Once upon a time, we did have presidents of the United States.

There was a line to see the portrait of Barack Obama by Kehinde Wiley. The artwork felt so vibrant and full of life with all the green foliage surrounding the seated Obama looking out at the viewer. But even more than the portrait itself was the excitement of those lining up to have a posed picture with the portrait. All ages and mostly African-Americans wanting to be standing just at his feet...make sure to get my good side poses...young children with their parents looking wide-eyed and in awe of a man who looked more like them than I do.

"He served TWO terms?" I heard them ask. "Did anyone else get to serve two terms?"

It was sweet to watch and to listen, and even the Smithsonian worker was grinning as she kept an eye on the line.

First Lady Michelle Obama's portrait resides on the next floor up and she is in a room with artists' portraits, Broadway and pop music stars, and another Wiley portrait of Notorious B.I.G. There was no line for Mrs. Obama's portrait, and so my moment with this painting felt more private. I examined the ease of her pose, the grace of her dress, and I gave thanks for her strength and composure and her endurance of eight years of public life in the face of some extremely hateful and racist commentary on her and her husband. And I cried once again.

Once upon a time, we did have First Ladies who cared.

The rest of my tour took me past legends of classical and jazz music, sports, and movies. The bust of Chuck Jones, Warner Brothers animator, delighted me. All his characters surrounded him helping to chisel away at his features.

As I left I gave thanks not only for the opportunity to have access to such a treasure of art work, but for the experience of moving through history and realizing that we have faced and been through so much as a people...and we still press on...even when it seemed like an impossible task. And I was reminded of what I remember reading in a Henri Nouwen book that, to put it into my own words, we minister out of our own brokenness and wounded souls. Those wounds, like the wounds inflicted on Jesus' body on the cross, are our place of healing that we bring to the world we encounter.

Thanks be to God for the artists who helped me to have that learning experience.

Roman Catholic Slip Ups

Last week was a terrible week for the queer performance artist, Tim Miller.

Miller, who has done several solo shows and conducts workshops for aspiring artists interested in self-narrative, was scheduled for a week-long residency at Villanova University in Philadelphia.  But the Roman Catholic college through the president's office rescinded the offer to the critically-acclaimed and provocative performance artist.  In a demonstration of double-speak, the university talked about Villanova being a "welcoming and inclusive" campus as they were saying, "No" to the Miller workshop.   No worries; four other colleges in the area have banded together to host Miller, so that the students from Villanova as well as their own campuses may benefit from his knowledge and skills.

Last week, I also heard something highly troublesome to me about the local Roman Catholic high school.  Apparently, it is not uncommon for the administration of the school to send a note home to the parents requesting permission for their student to leave campus on a field trip to the state Capitol.   Not to watch democracy in its very messy action through floor debates in either chamber.  No: the students were being taken out of school to protest abortion on the anniversary of the famous abortion rights case, Roe v. Wade.

And let's not forget that those on the right of the political spectrum have been launching a war on women!   Not that this is solely the doing of the Roman Catholic Church, but certainly the church has been squealing loudly over the demand that their health institutions and RC employers shouldn't have to provide contraception to women.  Goes against the teachings of the church, you see.

That would be the church that is on TV recruiting and reaching out to its disaffected population and imploring them to return to the church "that Jesus started." 

Wow.

So often,  I find myself in conversation with people who are bitter about religion, or at least the institution of religion (i.e. the church).   Often, the grumbling person is someone who was raised Roman Catholic.  Women in particular tend to be more bitter toward their Roman Catholic upbringing.  Sadly, they've reached a conclusion that all churches are the same,  all are hypocritical, and all can--in a phrase--Go to Hell!

I understand this anger.  Certainly, I have felt it at times in my own experience of the bumbling, stumbling, sometimes tactless treatment I have found in the Episcopal Church, too.  To the Episcopal Church's credit, however, I see an institution that has shown an ability to recognize when it's about to slam face first into the ground, and makes an attempt to break its fall before it bloodies its nose too badly.   They know they've made mistakes.  They know they haven't always lived up to expectations.  And most are willing to make an effort to improve.  I don't see that from the Roman Church.  And it seems that with the advent of more conservative forces moving into the Vatican, there's more digging in the heels and sticking to positions that the crafters of Vatican II had hoped to move beyond in an effort toward ecumenical harmony.

I feel sorry for those in Roman Catholicism in this country, especially the ones who have had to leave their church because its dogma drains them of all spiritual life.  I am saddened that some have stretched this to a rejection of God.  After all, if they have been raised with the belief that Jesus Christ himself founded this church, then where do they turn from there?

One day, I hope there will be a change in Roman Catholicism and that they will have another revolutionary growth spurt like Vatican II.  I'm just not sure I will be alive to see it.  Meanwhile... if you're an RC interested in a liturgical church,  you might look for the ones with that shield and the Welcome sign out in front....

Hallelujah for the Artists!

We give thanks to you, O Lord, for the vision and skill of Albrecht Dürer, Matthias Grünewald and Lucas Cranach the Elder whose artistic depictions helped the peoples of their age understand the full suffering and glory of your incarnate Son; and we pray that their work may strengthen our faith in Jesus Christ and the mystery of the Holy Trinity; for you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.


At the noon day Eucharist, we celebrated the lives of three Germans of the Renaissance period. Dürer, Grünewald, and Cranach the Elder, painted and created woodcuts that captured images of Christ and some of the icons of church history such as Martin Luther during a time of enormous change happening with the Protestant Reformation in Europe.  Their works, especially the woodcuts and copperplates, allowed for mass reproductions for a populace hungry for art.

But these are not the only artists who ever tried to share their faith through their works.  As mentioned in the homily, there are many people who have used art to express the gifts God has given them.   I think again of the stunning beauty of hearing Haydn's piece "The Creation" and its electrifying introduction of a blast of sound at the line "Let there be light!" ("God is in the Art")    That musical moment stands out for me as such an amazing attempt by an artist to capture what he was experiencing in his head and his heart as he tried to give a glimpse of God's work through his own work.

Artists, both those who perform and those who create with their hands the images in their heads, reflect back a perception of the world as they see it that informs, provokes, inspires, and entertains our own imaginations.  Their contributions, especially when illustrating God,  is a form of prayer that works on a level transcending the headiness of corporate church.    Thanks be to God we have people of such creative energy to be among the mitochondria in the Body of Christ!

Awake the State!

We came, we sang, we wore Groucho Marx noses!

The Mickee Faust Club was part of the evening Awake the State rally, singing a song I wrote ten years ago on the tune of "Anatevka" from "Fiddler on the Roof".

Tallahassee, Tallahassee

Underwaged, overworked Tallahassee

Where Jimbo Fisher is a star!

Tallahassee, Tallahassee;

Intimate, obstinate Tallahassee

Where no one ever goes too far.

Soon I'll be a number in the jobless line

Searching for all those old friends of mine

From Tallahassee...

I belong in Tallahassee!
Governor: Fuck* yourself! Tallahassee.

Dear little city, little town of mine.

*for the purposes of this performance, we blew a raspberry and flipped him the bird.

Our performance was met with laughter and applause. The noses, which we wore in an effort to protect those state employees in the troupe who are feeling particularly vulnerable at this time, added another layer of the message: folks are having to put on a mask in order to remain employed in this state government town.

A reporter from the Orlando Sentinel asked me why I was out protesting on this opening day of the state legislative session. And I told him the truth. I have friends who are scared, and clients in my massage practice who are anxious about their futures. I knew they were not going to be standing up for themselves, and since I can, I did. I gave up all my other activities I would have been doing today for the sole purpose of standing by the road, holding some signs and waving to motorists. And as I said in my earlier post, I did this with joy. My signs, seen here, were meant to evoke the ire of those who voted for the high-speed rail amendment nine years ago... and to call upon a hero to save us from the Dark Lord Voldemort who has bought himself a state.

One person remarked, "It's gonna take more than Harry Potter to save us!"

True.

Protesting Obnoxious Protestors

This counter-protest of the Westboro Baptist Church outside the Twitter headquarters in San Francisco is hilarious and very much in the tradition of Tallahassee's Mickee Faust Club. We, at Faust, have often joked about standing at one of our busy intersections and holding up protest signs of randomness as a joke. You can read more about this mockery of the morons HERE.

Thanks to Phoebe for passing this along!

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!

God is in the Art

What?
OK... shut down your left brain for a moment, and simply sit with that statement. And when you're ready, you can start reading this entry again.

"God is in the art". I didn't think about it that way until the conclusion of my highly-cultured weekend. Friday, as noted, I was running the lights and sound on a thesis project which examined a society that exists within our own societies. Saturday, I took myself out to the Tallahassee Film Festival showing of "Purple State of Mind", a movie featuring two former college roommates... one an ex-journalist and the other a religion and film professor at a California seminary. The film is about their exchanges and discussions about faith, belief... and the lack of belief on the part of the ex-journalist. It was fascinating! And finally, I was in awe listening to the Tallahassee Community Chorus perform Haydn's "The Creation". It was as if this was the period placed at the end of a very active sentence. The sentence being "God is in the art".

Now I don't think God resides in art. But I do think God inspires artists to deliver a message about God to the masses. The music of Haydn's "The Creation", to me, is an amazing score to the first stories in Genesis. Let there be light... and--SHAZAM-- the sound of it was breathtaking, and apparently did wow its first audiences so much in Vienna that the singers and orchestra had to hold for the applause before continuing! The bass instruments being featured for the creation of the sea creatures, the flutes being featured in the creation of the birds of the air... it was really very cool. And I thought, "Haydn really took this text to heart when he composed this piece!" And, if one believes that God is the inspiration for the myths in Genesis, then by extension, God is the inspiration behind this work.

I do think God is certainly working his purpose out through the conversations and debates between John Marks, formerly of 60 minutes and U.S. News and World Report, and his friend, Craig Dettweiler, a religion professor and filmmaker at Fuller Theological Seminary. Watching this movie, I was struck with how Marks, who comes up with lots of reasons for why he lost his faith and he can't buy into God, is still talking and challenging his friend who came to believe in God and Jesus in college and has been deepening his faith ever since. I had a chance to talk to both men after the film (they were there as part of the Festival, as well as public speaking engagements at St. John's). Marks had been assigned to cover the Balkans War back in the 1990s... and it was there that he finally closed the book on God in his life. I told him that I was a former journalist myself and had witnessed an execution in the electric chair. And I found myself doing the opposite of what he did. He gave up on a notion of God; I found myself desperate to find God and seek forgiveness. And then we shared the difficulty a gay person encounters in THAT quest when you have a church and the people of God standing in your way!
Interestingly, Dettweiler... who had apparently at one time believed that God "doesn't like artists because they ask too many questions", has become a film artist, a believer in Christ... and annoys his friend in the movie because he answers Marks' questions WITH questions. Dettweiler shared with me that he's become an Episcopalian... and I laughed and said, "Oh, well no wonder you answer all of John's questions with questions!"

Even Josh Potter's play has the markings of a piece of work that has God speaking through it. There is the argument between the interviewer and the AIDS nurse over judgment... and not wanting judgment from a gay man on the behaviors of the interview subjects, but simply the opinion of a medical expert. And then there is listening to the interviewees. What they say, what their motivations are for "bug chasing" are as individualistic as the people themselves. But as a person who heard this play a half-dozen times last week as we prepared for the performance, I was left with feeling that we live in a wounded world when sex, and sexual enjoyment, becomes linked with fatalism. God is not absent from this world and God hasn't left these men behind. But the choices they are making are taking them further away from life and into death. And the belief that, "Once I'm infected, I'll just pop a pill, no big deal" is, to me, pure sadness.

If you can hear Haydn's "The Creation" do! Tallahasseeans have one more shot this evening to see "Purple State of Mind" at the IMAX Theatre. And if Josh's play ever gets developed and staged elsewhere, seek it out.