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Dear blog readers far and wide,

You may have noticed a dearth of new material on this blog recently.  It's not for lack of wanting to post something; it's lack of time in which to sit and organize my thoughts enough to put the words out there.  This is what happens when one is immersed in Hell.   Hell Week, that is!

Tonight, the Mickee Faust Club is opening its newest queer-themed cabaret "Faust with Benefits."   As a performer, director, and producer... you can imagine I've been a bit busy this week.  Costumes, props, last minute changes, rehearsals... and all in the splendor of our un-air conditioned building in record-breaking triple digit temperatures.   All is well.  Everyone was well-hydrated, but we did have some short fuses during this period of high stress.  Still, the show is ready to go on.   And so am I.

Please stay tuned for a blog entry or two from me in the next couple days.   In the meantime, please feel free to peruse the things I've written before... and visit some of the choice blogs in the blogosphere.

And now... on with the show with the show... and away we go!!!

Whoosh! There It Is!

I enjoy Pentecost, or as we in the Anglican world like to call it Whitsunday.  It's like another Christmas, only this time we aren't in awe of a babe in the manger.  Instead, we're getting our socks knocked off with the rush of a mighty wind and tongues of fire.  In some churches, this drama gets played out in the reading of Acts 2: 1-21 with a lector beginning:

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place...

And from various parts of the church, you'll hear what comes next.  Languages, many different languages, all saying the same statement.

Und als der Tag der Pfingsten erfühlt war...
Mentre il giorno di Pentecoste stava per finire...
Quand le jour de la Pentecôte arriva ...

It's a cacophony of surround sound.  Maybe you can pick out a word or two.  But not usually.  Once those tongues start flapping, it's chaos.
Perhaps that's how it sounded in the upper room when the Holy Spirit arrived and rested on all in the place to provide them with the words they would need to speak of their belief in Christ.  But I think the words aren't what was the most important in that dramatic moment.  I think they were excited babblings of something intense happening within the breast of each of those individuals.  These yammering individuals were infused with the flames of passion that was informed by their intellect and their experience.  
We get a great example of that in Peter.  As folks witnessed this crazy scene of people talking a mile a minute, they wondered if the group of them had tossed back a few too many, accounting for this excited talk.  Peter, who I think of as the disciple who was always striving for the gold star from his teacher Jesus, finally delivers a speech in which he's not just saying the right words; he is speaking from a depth of conviction that I maintain wasn't there so much in the gospels.  He lays it out there, quoting from the prophet Joel as his "proof", that the man killed by the Romans was the Son of God.
In many respects, I see the Holy Spirit continuing to rush in to closed spaces to bust open people and make them pour forth with the truth of themselves.  I think that's what has been happening in the Church during these last several years.  How we respond to that Spirit determines if its arrival is good and joyful... or a painful and agonizing challenge.  The pain comes in the attempt to subvert the Spirit or control it and make it behave the way we want it to behave.  We want to be rational, not babbling.  We want to appear respectable, not chaotic.   We want to hide in our locked rooms because there are people out there who are ready to kill us for being who we are.  The story of Pentecost is one that says, "Sorry Charlie; God doesn't work that way!"
When the Spirit of God, which is a Spirit of Love, moves in and takes residence in our beings, the locks on the prison doors of self-hatred and self-denial and self-centeredness are broken and tossed off.  And we are released, ready or not, granted the liberation of being freed by the new advocate sent to be with us to the end of the age.  We may not have the physical person of Jesus Christ to hold our hands and break the bread at our table, but we have the Spirit which was part of him and united him with God the creator.  At Pentecost, we celebrate that Spirit's arrival to burn within us.
Where is the Spirit going to carry us?  There is no limit when we allow it to move freely.  Feel the love. Experience the passion.  And be alive and awake.

In-between

This has been quite a week of comings, goings, and doings in my life.   When I get this overscheduled, it doesn't leave time for emails, or blogging, or God.

But in those moments when I have stopped and taken the 15-20 minutes to do centering prayer, a feeling emerges in the core of my being.  I feel neither here nor there... and a bit adrift.

Now this can be a sign of just how crazy busy I've been between church volunteer activities, and PFLAG and Faust.  But I also think it's reflective of where we are in the retelling of our story as God's people.  Last week.... and we were reminded on Sunday... Jesus, who had just come back from an absolute and bloody death, again tells the disciples, "I'll be seeing ya!" and ascends into Heaven just as Elijah disappeared in the Hebrew Scriptures.   Two unnamed, unknown men appear and ask the disciples why they are looking up.  One can imagine why they were; I mean, if I'd seen the guy upon whom I had pinned all my hopes just shoot up into the sky, I'd probably be staring at the clouds, too! 

But that's not the task at hand.  Searching the sky and saying, "Where'd he go?!" isn't the next move.  The searching and the seeking for Jesus needs to be done among ourselves.  That's what I think he was driving at when he was praying to God and saying,

All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.  And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

He's been with us, died with us, and been resurrected in us: now we are to see him in the eyes of those we encounter. 

I also think he's recognizing the transition he's going through.  He will be entering into a state of being in-between the physical, tangible, temporal world and the world that is eternal and exists all around us... even if just beyond what we see and "know" to be true.
It's also a transition time for disciples and by extension us as we retell this story.  We've been put in this weird place of waiting for the "Now what?"  It is a place that anyone who has ever experienced a transition should be familiar with.  When you are out of work, or when you've just completed school, you go into this odd state of wondering and questioning.  Sometimes and for some people this is exhilirating, but for others it causes dread.  For me, it feels like the familiar music of life has been put on pause and in its place I'm hearing just a single steady drone of one note held down on a keyboard. 
The "Now what?" will get answered in the form of a mighty gush of wind that fills the upper room with tongues of fire and people babbling in the native tongues of all the nations imaginable at the time.  That's how it happens in the story.  How it happens in this real life?  I think that depends on each of us.  When the Spirit fills us and lights us internally on fire, where do we go with that?  
For me, it can be seen in my determined doggedness to remain present and alive.   My presence and life speak volumes for the rest of who I am and the labels that get attached so people can understand who I am. 

Lesbian.
Episcopalian.
Massage therapist.
Blogger.
Activist.

All of those labels apply.  But the real essence of my "who" is just the fact that I am.  My I am is infused with I AM because that's what I believe with every intake of breath.  And the breath, to me, is the symbol of the Spirit.

Double Dose of Death Leaves Huge Hole

Van Lewis was a determined, gentle and odd character on the landscape of Tallahassee politics.   I remember that he and his mother, Clifton, were perennial attendees of every city commission meeting I covered as a cub reporter for public radio.  They were there mostly to talk about historic preservation.   Van tried to join the ranks of the Commission... twice.   He never won the popular vote, but he won the hearts of many who appreciated his candor and his unabashed willingness to speak his mind.  When you interviewed him, you had to respect the fact that he not only was Van, but was Ahunahana.  He believed he was the spirit of a Seminole Indian chief.  As a reporter, I figured it was better to go along than to have an argument over these credentials.

His parents were among the few white supporters of equal rights for blacks in Tallahassee during the Civil Rights Movement and bus boycotts in the 1950s and 60s.   His mother was loved by young teen-aged and college boys struggling to make it on the music scene.  My old boss told me Clifton made a place for punk bands to rehearse in a warehouse space when others didn't want anything to do with guys with lopsided hair cuts and leather high-laced boots.  She saw it as artistic expression, and she was all for it.  And that's the stock from which came Van, a tireless advocate against circumcision.

 I came across this video of Van talking about his crusade to end the practice at one of the local hospitals.  It's interesting to hear this guy, with ties to old money Tallahassee with Lewis State Bank, talk about how he and his brother were arrested for simply walking up and down a public sidewalk with protest signs in 1970.  Van died Monday after living for four-months with pancreatic cancer.   He was 68.  Among his last words, the newspaper reports, he wrote out this message on a white dry erase board:

"Maybe God's main work with me is done. My body stops. I don't. I'll try to do my job. I'll let God take care of God's."

Not even 24-hours later, another longtime activist and advocate for neighborhoods was killed in a car accident on West Pensacola Street.   I interviewed Edwina Stephens years ago when I was still the lowest person on the totem pole at WFSU.  But in that one interview, I saw why people were drawn to listen to her.  She was passionate about protecting neighborhoods and the environment.  She didn't need to be in political office; her's was more the role of the prophet, speaking truth to power at every turn and doing so in a way that was a loud thunder without the ligtening show.  Her presence on the southside was huge, and her absence will be felt.  

In thinking about the loss of these two individuals, I am reminded of the real privilege that I enjoyed as a reporter in that I spent time in conversation with people who had something to say that was worth listening to and sharing with the public.  Yes, I also spent countless hours being mired in the crap at the Capitol, and that stuck to me like barnacles on a boat.   But Van in his eccentric, off-beat and loveable ways made following and reporting on the news more fun.  Edwina made her words matter.   Both of them left their indelible mark on me, and I feel richer for having been privileged to share their stories with the public radio audience.

Into your hands, dear God, come the souls of Van and Edwina.  May light perpetual shine upon them and may they ever increase in your presence.   Amen.  

Don't Question Me, Child!

Another fictional conversation with our blithering and beleagured character Bishop Yellow Belly and the smart as a whip upstart, Miss Young Person.

The Modern Day Martyrs of Uganda

David Kato, Ugandan teacher and LGBT Rights activist, Feb. 13, 1964-Jan. 26, 2011

When I looked at the feast day celebration for today, I took a long pause.   This date commorates the burning and beginning of an organized effort by Ugandan King Mwanga of Buganda to wipe out Christianity.  Like many of the stories found in the Scriptures, King Mwanga was enraged that members of the royal court who Anglican and Roman Catholic missionaries had converted to Christianity refused to put loyalty to the earthly King over their fidelity to Jesus Christ.  And so on June 3rd, 1886, he had 32 young men burned to death.  He had hoped the mass killings in Buganda would scare away Christianity.  Instead, because these young men and many other martyrs went to their deaths singing hymns and offering prayers, it had an opposite effect.  It helped to spread Christianity throughout the country.  Much later, in the 1970s, the Ugandan leader Idi Amin also launched a persecution of Christians, resulting in the murder of Anglican Archbishop Janani Luwum among thousands of others.  Even that reign of terror failed to crush Christianity and today, Uganda has one of the largest Christian populations in Africa.

Unfortunately, with their majority status has come the un-Christian behavior of oppression and persecution of the LGBT people.  And with that persecution, Uganda is again seeing people martyred for their belief in the equality of all God's children.   

Take the murder earlier this year of LGBT rights activist David Kato.   In this interview with the BBC in 2010, Kato talked candidly about the situation on the ground in his country especially with the noxious Anti-Homosexuality bill lurking in the background.    Kato was brutally beaten and died on the way to the hospital in Kampala.  Witnesses at his apartment building talked of a suspicious vehicle and a "group" of people that had been in the area the day of his murder.  However, the authorities made an arrest of Enoch Sydney Nsubuga.  Prior to the arrest, leading advocates for the Anti-Homosexuality legislation including "christian" leaders Martin Ssempa and Scott Lively were spreading a story that Kato was killed in a sexual liaison that went bad because Kato refused to pay up for prostitution.   The Ambassador from Uganda to the European Parliament also supported this story as foreign leaders stepped up their demands for a more thorough investigation of Kato's murder.   It was the old trick of blaming the victim for their own murder. 

Adding to the insults was the way the Anglican Church of Uganda, known for its condemnation of LGBT people, conducted Kato's funeral.   The Church would not allow a priest to celebrate at his service; instead they sent a lay reader who took it upon himself to condemn homosexuality... with the coffin of a dead gay man and his friends and family in the room!!  Fortunately, a lesbian member of Sexual Minorities of Uganda put a stop to the travesty by seizing the microphone from this man, and Bishop Senyonjo (also in danger in his native country for being receptive to LGBT people) led the mourners to the burial site to quickly finish the service.

The Ugandan High Court has jurisdiction now over the Kato murder trial.   But I am hopeful that a higher court is acting to bring attention to the need for more love in this African nation.

People, such as David Kato, do not die for naught.   Like the Christian martyrs, Kato met death without ever denying who he was or backing down when his life was threatened.   His willingness to live his life in honesty no doubt touched others and has given them the guts to keep going.  And even if the supposedly "Christian" nation of Uganda has swallowed the poisoned pill of homophobia supplied readily by the evangelical right-wing pharmacists in the United States, I am confident that the Spirit will not allow this to be the forever situation among a people who previously had not been so whipped into a hatred of gay people. 

And so on this feast day, I pray for the full vindication and justice in the murder of David Kato and for God's Spirit of love to rise in the hearts of the people of Uganda and bring the nation into a true respect of the message that Christ delivered to the world; a love of God which becomes manifest in the love we show one another.  Amen.

Sexy, Silly and Scandalous

June is hot, steamy, and sweaty in Tallahassee.  And I'm not just talking about the weather.  I'm talking about the rehearsals and preparations for the summer cabaret show, "Faust with Benefits". 

The start of Gay Pride Month means the beginning of the Fourth Annual Queer As Faust Festival in Railroad Square.  Our theater troupe, known for original skits and songs and really bad jokes, has crafted a show that would make the beard of a bullying Archbishop fall out.   We're also bringing back Faustkateer-in-exile and longtime gay activist Rob Nixon for a photography exhibit and sharing his memories of the growth of Pride Week in the capital city back in the early 1990s.   And we'll put our queer-themed skits on local radio station V-89 FM at the end of the month!

To help us pay for all our fun, our Faust member Stacey Abbott is holding a fundraiser at her yoga studio to introduce people to "Flow Yoga" and collect some cash for Faust.

This is one of the more exciting events that Faust does.  A bunch of us who self-identify as "queer" or "gay" or "lesbian" were bemoaning the lack of gaycentric-themed events in Tallahassee during the height of Gay Pride Month.   The local gay community center had moved Pride to April, and while it is more comfortable to spend time outdoors during the more temperate early spring in Tallahassee, it felt out-of-step with the history of why we celebrate in June.  Stonewall did not happen when New York City was enjoying the cool and often rainy spring!  Hence, the Faustkateers boldly decided to brave the sizzle of a Tallahassee summer to entertain the adoring masses.

I'm in many skits in this show.  I'm an android of amazing proportions; a dancing dyke; an M2F bar patron; and a crazy character caught in a spoof of a 1980s video.  I've had more fun directing this show than I have in the past which is a good thing, and I'm hoping that the end product will delight the audience.

Or, at least, make them blush!