Dancing Queen

Dancing Jesus icon.

Okay, I can’t get it out of my head. Dancing Queen. This past week, Wade and I watched some escapist fare to overcome the world’s angst over the pandemic, the murders of black people, and who is in the White House. We watched both versions of Mamma Mia! on two consecutive nights. And I listened to my CD of Abba as I did my blog business last Wednesday.

That day’s post quoted my spiritual mentor Henri Nouwen about the U.S. Civil Rights Movement: “It seemed as if nobody could party better than these oppressed people.” That’s true of LGBTIQ people as well. Henri had a taste of that when I once took him to a popular West Hollywood disco, Studio One.

In the middle of marchers dancing during an apartheid protest in South Africa, Anglican Bishop Desmond Tutu was asked by a news reporter why dancing was so important. Tutu continued his dancing, gave the reporter a puzzled expression, pleading, “We’ve just got to dance.”

Wade and I watched the fa-bu-lous Global Pride 2020 24-hour marathon this past Saturday that often moved me to tears of joy and gratitude, as well as grief and pain for those who never lived to see it. (An aside I can’t resist: a gay friend of mine had to keep re-taping a McDonald’s commercial because he kept putting too much emphasis on the word “fa-bu-lous”!)

I still remember when I thought I was the only one.

And I remember an early Pride festival in my home city of Los Angeles. Friday night, at the entrance, fundamentalist Christians had positioned themselves with damning signs, including “TURN OR BURN!” which the band just inside the festival fence mocked by playing “Burn, Baby, Burn!” from Saturday Night Fever.

Another aside from “the old days”: MCC founder and Pride activist Rev. Troy Perry liked to explain that fundamentalism was an ideological “ism” that included nothing “mental” and nothing “fun.”

It was the Saturday of a subsequent Pride festival that a friend and church member brought his ten-year-old son along. When I arrived, I noticed the dance tent was crowded with a circle of attendees watching a couple dance in the middle of the tent, clapping their approval to the beat of the music. As I approached, I realized it was my friend’s very white little boy dancing extraordinarily well with a very tall black man. I kidded my friend, “Your son has fulfilled your fantasy of having the eyes of everyone on the dance floor riveted by your dancing skills!” When the father died of AIDS years later, I probably told that story in his eulogy.

I have often taken my emotions into my dancing, whether expressing joy or grief. That’s true of many of us in the Queer movement. My first long-term boyfriend and I used to dance till we were sweaty and shirtless.

A friend who died of AIDS a few years after graduation from Columbia Theological Seminary here in the Atlanta area had a rather traditional Presbyterian memorial service. But at the end, to our delight, he had requested the postlude, “Dancing Queen.” We left with a smile on our lips.

Thanks be to God for all the dancing queens of our lives!

I will be leading a virtual, at-home retreat open to the public for Columbia Seminary’s Spiritual Formation Program September 17-19, 2020 entitled An Open Receptive Place: Henri Nouwen’s Spirituality. You are invited!

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Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

"I Can't Breathe!"

George Floyd portrait in a front yard on our street.

In thanksgiving for the life, artistry, and audacious activism of Larry Kramer, who saved countless lives, possibly my own.

An unrecorded Eighth Last Word of Jesus on the cross as his body sagged, cutting off his airflow, was “I can’t breathe!”

Doesn’t matter if this is true, because his spirit is surely in the last breath of any who suffer at the hands (or knee) of the powers that be. “I can’t breathe” has become the protest not only of individuals but of a movement intent on justice for all.

And now it also encompasses the respiratory suffering of millions at the hands of a virus and care-less leaders, even as caregivers give everything they have to relieve suffering and save lives.

Only in one difficult period of my life did I suffer a series of panic attacks in which I thought, “I can’t breathe.” But it gave me an inkling of what desperation that feeling entails. I can understand the resulting urges to violence and the sentiment expressed in the words of the 1975 Hollywood film prophet, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Or in the Holocaust rejoinder, “Never again!” And in the AIDS pandemic, “Silence=Death.”

In relation to the novel coronavirus pandemic, I’ve followed the science of the virus and the treatment of COVID-19 as well as the sometimes-harrowing personal experiences of those infected. When I pray about this, I can’t bring myself to pray for special protections for me and Wade and our families and friends. I pray for the whole human family: for deliverance, for a treatment, a cure, a vaccine.

On a recent routine visit, my Physician Assistant asked me where I was getting my information about it all and he was relieved to hear me say, “NPR, PBS and The New York Times.” Whether facing a pandemic or a presidential election, where we get our news matters.

Intriguing to me is how central breath is to managing and hopefully overcoming the havoc the virus wreaks in our bodies. Breath is central biblically and spiritually as well. Breath and Spirit represent life and soulfulness. God breathed life into the first human creature. Jesus breathed on his disciples Holy Spirit. The Spirit breathed resurrection into the early Christian movement, and then its subsequent reformations, including that of progressive Christianity.

And breath is helping me get through this period. Using the words Jesus used on a storm at sea, I breathe in thinking “Peace” and breathe out thinking “Be still,” inhaling the peace of God and exhaling the “demons” that wrack my well-being.

Last week I read a moving message from one of my Facebook friends, a black mother who was glad she had given her teenage son “the Talk” that so many of our black friends and colleagues have had to give their children about appearing non-threatening. He was pulled over for what turned out to be a minor infraction, so he had taken everything out of his pockets, put his driver’s license in one hand and his car registration in the other, and placed both hands on the steering wheel where the approaching officer could see them. The officer turned out to be friendly, but her son had been shaken by the encounter. I’m sure he had to catch his breath when it was all over, as did his mother upon hearing of the experience.

I wept to read this. With many others, I responded with a brief word of support and gratitude.

I believe Jesus wept too.

Also in our Georgia neighborhood. 

Recent posts that offer hope during our pandemic:

Where Is Everybody?

Creating Space

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Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. 

This Is Not My First Pandemic

An auspicious day to write this post: Good Friday, 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Good Friday is when Christians remember that God suffers with us, as we recount the story of the betrayal, denial, and abandonment of Jesus, the injustice and indifference of the powers that be, the agony of suffering and death.

As you know, this is not my first pandemic. For most if not all of you, it is not your first pandemic either. AIDS is still with us, and has been for decades, though the more privileged among us have access to prevention and treatment.

Unlike the coronavirus of COVID-19, HIV is not casually or easily transmitted, but before that was known—even after that was known—those living with HIV were avoided and excluded and judged, given disposable paper plates and plastic cups at dinner parties if invited at all, refused touch and medical and pastoral care and governmental attention.

I hear many echoes of the AIDS pandemic in the present one. Calling it “the Chinese virus” reminds me of the first name for AIDS: Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, G.R.I.D., extending AIDS fear and prejudice and hate crimes to the whole queer community.  At one point it was related to Haitians because of an outbreak there. Or understood as a “foreign” disease because it may have evolved from monkeys and chimpanzees in Africa.

Even by the LGBTQ community, it was often considered the disease of those who lived in “the fast lane” of the gay world, and of those—regardless of sexual orientation—who were promiscuous or drug abusers.

Only when the infection appeared among those with hemophilia or who had blood transfusions did the public consider there might be “innocent victims.” The first major HIV/AIDS bill passed by the U.S. was named for an Indiana teenager with hemophilia, clearly such an innocent, but one who also had done his share of activism.

The public discussion about quarantines reminds me of the desire to quarantine those living with HIV/AIDS, even when it was known that HIV was not transmitted casually. Decades after the causes of transmission were known, a fundamentalist Christian friend of mine told me insistently, as if on some kind of moral high ground above the science, “I don’t believe it can’t be transmitted casually.”

The current admonition “be safe” reminds me of the AIDS admonition to “play safe.” Condoms and dental dams and sexual distancing were our version of face masks and social distancing. Both viruses can be carried and transmitted before symptoms occur, and it’s disconcerting in either crisis to see those who are not sick behaving as if they cannot pass it on to others, particularly the more vulnerable health-wise. 

Of course, the other difference between the retrovirus that causes AIDS and the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is that the first was almost always fatal. And because in the public view it was affecting and infecting already undesirable/immoral/inferior citizens, there was little sense of urgency within the general population for finding treatments or cures. The then U.S. president resisted even using the name of the pandemic. 

But those of us in the thick of it were frequently attending funerals, memorials, and “celebrations of life” of lovers and friends, neighbors and colleagues whose lives were cut short—often very short—by the inattention and indifference of the larger “society.” 

Thanks be to God for the political activism of groups like ACT-UP and the community centers created largely by LGBTQ people to serve PWA’s that eventually influenced a more compassionate response, thanks in part to the media willing to report their stories. Also helpful was when the Christian community began to recognize that “The Church has AIDS.” 

An extremely familiar parallel is how minority and poorer communities have been disproportionately affected by each health crisis. The latest pandemic is revealing the medical vulnerability of people of color, especially those who live on limited incomes.

An unpublished futuristic novel I wrote in 1992 entitled The Cure: A Post-AIDS Love Story explained that my imagined medically-developed multipart curative treatment for AIDS—which included an ingredient newly discovered in the part of the world most endangered by climate change—worked better on white males than people of color and women.

I quoted The Plague by Albert Camus about his protagonist doctor’s conclusion at the end of the book. I offer this now in thanksgiving for the first responders, health care workers and caregivers risking infection in the present pandemic:

Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.

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Copyright © 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

In Praise of Praise

A neighbor's daffodils

A friendly email exchange with a regular reader of this blog about last week’s reference to “How Great Thou Art” prompts me to share again this post about praise music from 2012. 

Attending the Sunday evening praise service of MCC San Francisco, my partner turned to me and said, “For this service, you’re gonna need a lot more rhythm!” I had just moved there to serve as interim pastor, and the clapping and swaying and emotional singing had not been a regular feature of my worship experience.

A visit to the service a year earlier had alienated me. “What if I’m in pain when I come to the service?” I judgmentally thought, “I wouldn’t fit in with all these happy people.”

Sharing that thought with the former pastor, the Rev. Jim Mitulski (one of the world’s finest preachers), he corrected, “We started that service to give voice to all of our feelings facing the AIDS crisis in the Castro.” He explained it was the old gospel songs and Taize style chants that expressed the range of their emotions, from lament and longing to hope and faith. One might compare the similar range of the Psalms.

I’ve just finished reading a book by a progressive Christian who expresses many insights I cherish, but who suggests we praise to “flatter” God to get what we want. That may be true for some, but not for me, and not for most, I would say.

Rather, we praise to be uplifted into God’s realm, to feel and to be embraced by something larger than ourselves—spiritual community, planet earth, the cosmos and all that is within it. The expanding universe calls for our own expansion. Spiritual ecstasy, like sexual ecstasy, gets us out of our selves, literally “out of stasis,” out of the status quo.

Just like prayer, praise is the place, not of God’s transformation, but of our own! To paraphrase the spiritual, “It’s not you but me, O Lord, standing in the need of praise.” In her book, Suffering, the late German theologian Dorothee Sölle affirms that collective “lament, petition, expressions of hope” empower those who suffer to address wrongs, comparing workers’ protests to liturgies, particularly the Psalms.

I come from traditions—both Baptist and Presbyterian—suspicious of the charismatic expressions of worship. Even the simple act of lifting our hands and faces upward—ironically, the praying posture of the Jews and Christians of biblical times—seemed indecorous in our more somber and earnest worship.

There is “bad” praise music, of course—uninspired, unpoetic, musically dull, and theologically untenable for progressive Christians. But even the theologically questionable ones, if inspired and poetic and musically interesting, may be fun to sing. Just don’t take them literally (just like scripture!).

I introduced a new song with just the right theology at an annual Kirkridge men’s retreat I co-led, but when we faltered at its difficulty, someone started singing “Jesus Loves Me,” and it became the reprise of the weekend.

My preference is for Gregorian chants, and songs and chants from Taize and Iona, and John Michael Talbot songs, as well as spirituals, sambas, salsas, and freedom songs. But I also still hum and sing the old gospel songs and staid hymns as well. Just ask our dog, Hobbes.

I was invited to be among the contributors to Ashes to Rainbows: A Queer Lenten Devotional that includes meditations for Ash Wednesday, the Sundays of Lent, and the days of Holy Week. Go to: https://justiceunbound.org/queerlent/

Related post: The Sound of Eden

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I will be co-leading “Beside Still Waters: A Contemplative Retreat” with Debra Weir April 27-May 1, 2020 at Sacred Heart Monastery in Cullman, Alabama. It is open to the public, and some limited scholarships are available. Three readable texts are recommended to prepare but are not required to have been read by opening day. Here is the link: https://app.certain.com/profile/form/index.cfm?PKformID=0x3039640abcd

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. I welcome the use of Progressive Christian Reflections as contemporary readings in worship, discussion starters, or other non-profit purposes.  My hope is that you will also browse the archive (right column on the site) to use previous reflections in your daily or occasional meditation.

Caring for You

South African sunset last August. Photo by Wade Jones.

This past Sunday afternoon I was invited by St. Julian's Episcopal Church in Douglasville, Georgia, to lead a session on “Care for the Caregiver” as part of a long series supporting lay people in ministry. I was a little overwhelmed by the detailed content I was given to present in an hour’s time. The night of the day I began preparing I of course had a dream of leading the event, and I feared running out of time, though in the dream I had a whole day to work with, not just one hour! But my sleeping brain (or should I credit Holy Spirit?) gave me an idea how to approach the challenge.

Part of the challenge was that the small group attending had either been part of a centering prayer group for years or were enrolled in an Episcopal Church multiple year program about faith and ministry fundamentals, or both! In my dream I said to them, “I am stepping into a river that has flowed a thousand years,” meaning their combined experience, and added, “I have more to learn from you than you from me.”

Yet we are all part of a two-thousand-year-old movement initiated by followers of Jesus who were so good—so kind, compassionate, and hospitable—that others wanted to be like them. And here I refer to Elaine Pagel’s Beyond Belief, in which she affirms that this evangelism by attraction is how the first “Christians” inspired converts.

I realized “care for the caregiver” is what this blog has always been about. I wanted to equip progressive Christians, who are not only care-givers but justice-seekers, with what I had been given to sustain my activism: a prayer life, contemplative ways of undergirding, strengthening, inspiring, and (perhaps most vitally) sustaining a ministry of compassion and care.

The course was trying to impart the wisdom of Saint Benedict, who saw spiritual community as the stabilizing foundation of a ladder to rise to great heights, to touch the face of God as well as that of other creatures through work, study, and prayer, with order, balance, and moderation.

So, still in my dream and then after as I woke in the dark to reflect on it, I began coming up with questions to solicit the wisdom and experience of the group. The members of their Community of Hope are the ones who will be there for years after my “splash in the pan” appearance—best to help them remember that and for me to recognize I am their beneficiary not their benefactor.

I’ve decided to share with you some of what I shared with them.

How do you care for yourselves? I asked. I explained not to judge any self-care methods, just be honest. As an example, I listed my own self-care practices: morning prayer and reading, of course, running and weightlifting, healthy diet and a good night’s sleep—all admirable, but also, watching old Frasier and Murder, She Wrote episodes and comfort food and chips and wine.

Do you have difficulty saying “no”? A denominational church leader came to me for regular spiritual guidance for a season and I advised her to tape “I can say ‘no’” to her office phone. A book entitled Ministry Burnout points out that often it seems to take as much emotional and spiritual energy to tell someone “No, I cannot do that” than it takes to just do it! But, as Jesus sensed healing energy going out from him when the woman with a hemorrhage touched him, anything we do may deplete our energy and effectiveness, so focus and boundaries are needed.

Do you trust your spiritual community? What I meant by that is do you believe in the variety of gifts you’ve identified in one another as you’ve come to know each other? I invited them to speak about those gifts, and I was moved by their readily offered affirmations.

I explained the “joke” in the first church I served after seminary was that, if you identify a need the church should address, you take the lead in that ministry! After all, you are the church! That’s how we started our jail ministry for gay inmates, our outreaches to homeless gay youths, our sack lunch program for the homeless.

Identifying our own gifts, strengths, and weaknesses and inviting others in our spiritual community to identify theirs, we better know when to refer to meet an expressed need or how to best assign and offer assistance. None of us have to be everything to everyone.

What is your motivation? The curriculum provided an exercise to help us sort “sympathy” from “empathy,” listing distinctions that, to me at least, were too clever and convenient, suggesting the first was controlling and the second detached. Somewhere in between is the word I would use: compassion, which means “suffering with,” and compassionate has been applied to both the Buddha and Jesus who respectively represent detached mindfulness and sacrificial love.

Compassion requires attentiveness and listening. Henri Nouwen gave the example of an incident from his early years in ministry when he gave beds to a family that had been sleeping several to a bed. Upon his next visit he discovered they had sold the extra beds and gave a party for all their friends. What they needed was a celebration, not more “things.”

When I worked with first-time AIDS volunteers and workers in the early years of the pandemic, I invited them to consider the values motivating them and identify their “spiritual community,” encouraging them to be creative in discerning the latter. One woman had the “aha” that her women’s tennis group was her spiritual community. Over the years they had been there for one another through births, divorces, deaths, jobs, unemployment, illness, and emotional ups and downs. I suggested that their values and their spiritual communities would help sustain them in this new work.

What are your boundaries and limits? Recently, working with someone with mental health and addiction issues, I am cognizant of how narrow the line between compassion and enabling can be. This is where a spiritual community and/or a spiritual director can come to the rescue. The curriculum on care advised ministering in pairs, consulting each other, and gaining input and support from the larger group.

Do you trust healing is possible? Healing and growth and fruitfulness seem to me built into the very nature of things. As Henri Nouwen once wrote, if you keep digging up a seed to see if it’s germinating, it never will grow. A physical therapist told me that wounds heal from the inside out. A massage therapist friend begins each session invisibly making the sign of the cross over the client’s body before applying his healing touch.

During the commissioning service of a trainer of hospice workers, she was to be given a charge by two clergy. The first minister went on and on and I have no recollection of what he said. The second minister cut to the chase. She said, the people whom hospice workers serve want to know two things: Am I alone? And am I loved? I believe that’s true of all who need care.

I recommended the best book on care I’ve read, How Can I Help? by Ram Dass and Paul Gorman. The authors’ presentation of first person narratives from care-givers and care-receivers from around the world suggest that the least patronizing and most satisfying care is experienced as mutually beneficial.

As an example of that, something I didn’t mention in my recent reflection on my mother-in-law’s passing was that, like other times we enjoyed talking, we continued to “talk” with each other in her final days when she rarely spoke at all. I brought reading material when visiting, but didn’t even look at it, I was so taken with simply watching her.  

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by reader donations. To support this blog: https://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

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Copyright © 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

A Prayer for Holy Week

Michael Christman illustration for Coming Out to God.

You washed our feet, Jesus.

At first we objected,

but you made it clear that to be part of you

we need first to receive your gifts

and serve others the same way.

You gave us bread and wine, Jesus.

We took it for granted,

not realizing what it meant to you,

how it meant flesh and blood,

unity with you and with one another

and salvation for the world.

You said we would betray and deny you, Jesus.

“Not me!” we each cried,

but we all did

in our own way,

leaving you to face your destiny alone.

You asked us to pray with you, Jesus.

We fell asleep

and missed sharing your anguish,

not being compassionate to the Compassionate;

then they took you from us.

You continue to love us, Jesus.

We object, we take it for granted,

we betray and deny you,

and sleep

instead of pray.

Forgive us, Jesus,

for we know not what we do.

From Coming Out to God (Day 52) by Chris Glaser, 1991, Westminster John Knox Press.

Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians and Gay Men, Their Families and Friends was dedicated to those I knew who were living with or had lived with HIV/AIDS and became especially popular in the HIV/AIDS community. A friend who was an artist, who subsequently succumbed to AIDS, provided the cover design and the interior illustrations for the book. I love that his name was “Christ-man”: Michael Christman.

A related reading for Easter: Resurrection Today, Part Two

Your donations are my ministry’s only means of support:

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Be sure to scroll down to the donate link below its description. Or mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, payable to UFMCC and designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Transforming Negatives to Positives

Bill Silver with his cat in his New York City 

rooftop garden, which he cultivated. 

I believe I took this picture in the late 70's or early 80's.

In honor of Pride month, this is the final of four posts adapted from a Meekhof Lecture I gave at Newport Presbyterian Church in Bellevue (WA), January 11, 2014, regarding the meaning of the LGBT movement for the broader church. Next week, a postscript to this series: “Sexually Active and Spiritually Active.”

When Union Theological seminarian Bill Silver came out as gay, sending celebrative birth announcements to all of his friends, and New York City Presbytery asked the 1976 Baltimore General Assembly for “definitive guidance” as to how to handle his candidacy for ordination to the Presbyterian ministry, they opened this Pandora’s jar of challenges: xenophobia, inertia, erotophobia, pleasure, progressive interpretations of scripture, gender dysphoria, ordination, and marriage.

Yet I believe that all of these challenges have proved blessings for the church. They have given a sometimes dysfunctional church an opportunity to talk about needful things: our fear of being inclusive, our resistance to change, our discomfort with embodiment and sexuality, our mixed feelings about pleasure, our differing interpretations of scripture, our gender dysphoria, and what ordination and marriage mean to us.

One challenge that was not in that initial Pandora’s Box that the church feared was HIV and AIDS, which highlighted our fears of disease and death. In its fear of homosexuality with its attendant challenges, too many in the church thought of AIDS either as God’s punishment or as a natural, even deserving curbing of what they considered unnatural.

What AIDS did—and I would quickly add my belief, not by divine plan—what AIDS did was reveal the heartlessness of too many but not all Christians, as well as the compassion of many, many lesbians and gay men, who came to the aid of the sick and dying of all kinds, and the failure of both government and society to care for marginalized or undervalued citizens.

AIDS also opened church doors for many to come out as LGBT or as families, friends, and allies of the LGBT community. Only as the church realized it too had AIDS did it recognize, in Mother Teresa’s phrase, “Christ in a distressing disguise.”

So what is the Hope left in Pandora’s jar? I have no idea what Pandora’s Hope might be, but I have many ideas about “the Hope to which God has called us,” in the words of the apostle Paul, and the Hope to which Jesus called us in the Gospel of John, “that we may be one,” even as he is one with God and with us, as well as his promise of Holy Spirit as Paraclete: an advocate for victims, for the marginalized, for the undervalued.

A couple of verses in the first chapter of Paul’s epistle to the Romans got overused over the past four decades as a weapon to resist and reject same-gender loving people. If only we had concentrated on the rest of Paul’s letter, which celebrates God’s grace revealed by Jesus.

Jesus said that what comes out of a person’s heart is what is spiritually significant, spending his time with religious outcasts, challenging the religious authorities who excluded them, sending his spirit upon the Church at Pentecost, a Spirit that spoke in the languages of strangers, a Spirit that would baptize unjudaized Gentiles into a community that grew spiritually and numerically by incorporating more and more diversity throughout the past two millennia.

“Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus,” the apostle Paul thus affirmed in Romans. “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.”

In his book, Care of the Soul, Thomas Moore says that everything we experience, good and bad, shapes our souls. I believe this is another way of saying “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to God’s purpose.” We have a context in which to make sense of all that we experience. One context is our relationship with God. Another context is God’s purpose, as we know it through the teachings of Jesus.

One of The New Yorker magazine’s quips once quoted a title of a hymn in The Presbyterian Hymnal followed by a reference to its meter: “God Is Working His Purpose Out” on one line, and on the next, Purpose Irregular. The magazine’s wry comment was, “How true.”

So how do we understand God’s purpose opening Pandora’s jar, unleashing the challenges of the church dealing with homosexuality? What might God’s purpose be in revealing our xenophobia, inertia, erotophobia, suspicion of pleasure, resistance to progressive biblical views, gender dysphoria, and defensive and exclusive attitudes about ordination and marriage?

In the days when most film processing meant transforming negatives to photographs, Henri Nouwen used the metaphor for the spiritual life as transforming negatives to positives. Thus our fear of the stranger may be transformed by another Pentecost embracing diversity and “the least of these.” A vision of God’s Spirit in LGBT people may overcome our resistance to change, causing us to welcome the progress of the inbreaking kingdom or commonwealth of God.

Sexuality and pleasure may be opportunities to refresh our belief in creation, incarnation, and resurrection. Progressive interpretations of scripture will lead us to the truth beneath the truths, the Word (with a capital “W”) within the words. Overcoming our gender dysphoria will liberate us from restrictive gender expectations. And lastly, we may finally let go of our defensive and exclusive postures regarding ordination and marriage, enabling more people to enter either or both of these blessed estates.

I believe that everything can connect us to the love of God in Jesus, including diversity, progress, sexuality, pleasure, progressive biblical interpretations and theology, freedom from gender expectations, and the membership, ministries, and marriages of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. That is the hope to which God has called us.

And we may take comfort that the past 40 year sojourn in the wilderness of homophobia has led us to a better place, if not a Promised Land. We should not regret what has been, but rejoice at what will be.

I urge you to make a donation to and/or attend these once-in-a-lifetime ingatherings of LGBT saints and allies:

Rolling the Stone Away

Oct 31-Nov 2, 2017

St. Louis Airport Marriott

https://rollingthestoneaway.org/

40th Celebration of LGBTQ Lives at Kirkridge

Sept 8-10, 2017

Kirkridge Retreat & Conference Center

http://www.kirkridge.org/?e=event&eventId=26746&rDate=1504878949

To support this blog ministry: 

http://mccchurch.org/ministries/progressive-christian-reflections/

Be sure to scroll down to the donate link below its description.

Or mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Grunion and Grace

Photo thanks to Haris Lakisic at Grunion.org

Total quarter of a million blog visitors as of last week, not including subscribers and followers! Thank you!

With a pickup load of high school friends I traveled to a beach designated a likely site for a grunion run. Grunion are silvery fish that come ashore at this time of year along the Southern California coastline to lay and fertilize thousands of eggs (per couple!) in the sand before they catch the next wave out to sea.

Hundreds of people were gathered on that beach that night, excitedly awaiting the spectacle. Many had buckets for our catches, as I recall, though I’m not sure we intended to do anything with the fish afterward. But the grunion never showed. Maybe the noise and campfires of the partiers signaled them this was not a good place for their mating ritual.

Another group did catch one lonely grunion, however, and generously turned it over to our group so we didn’t go home empty-handed. We all piled into the back of our old pickup for the return home, not entirely disappointed, as the whole point was to spend time together as friends on the beach under a starry night.

Flash forward more than a decade. Back in California after seminary in New Haven and a campus ministry internship in Philadelphia, I was serving a ministry that challenged the church’s long held grudge against LGBT people.

Given the earnest nature of my work, I was held in balance for a while by a very funny boyfriend. Bob Barnes had joined the migration of would-be comics from the Midwest (Ohio, specifically) to try his luck at onstage improv comedy. He could make me LOL before that was a texting cliché.

For example, watching on television the flamboyant and lisping evangelist Ernest Angley lay hands on followers who announced their particular need of healing, one approached wearing a loud red plaid blazer with neon green pants. “Oh God, give me taste,” Bob  mocked.  Once, receiving Communion, the priest eyed him suspiciously. “You Catholic?” he questioned. “From cradle to grave,” Bob quipped without missing a beat. Bob’s friends, also comics, referred to me as “the Pope” because of his upbringing.

Bob also had a romantic side. We had dinner one evening at a popular seafood restaurant beside the beach on the southern end of Malibu. Afterward we walked alone along the shore as the waves crashed at our feet. We began noticing silver flashes, which at first I speculated to be plankton in the sand, a phenomenon I’d experienced before in which I could kick the sand with my foot and see phosphorescent sparks, reminiscent of Disney animation of fairy dust from a wand.

Then we realized it was grunion coming ashore, a few at first, and then by the hundreds. The crashing waves were full of them and then the beach was covered with writhing, copulating grunion as far as we could see in the moonlit night. Bob and I shared a look of absolute delight as we stood there, transfixed by this natural wonder that neither of us had ever seen and would never see again.

The last time I saw Bob was when I spoke on a college campus in Ohio, where he had returned, now living with AIDS. For our visit, he had put together an elaborate platter with a variety of cheeses and roasted vegetables, my first time eating roasted garlic. We had a wonderful visit, his easy smile and laughter, as always, uplifting my spirit. After his death I would learn from his partner that they had spent his final days in a treatment facility along the shore where they could hold each other watching the sun set over Lake Erie.

When I decided to write this post after reading a recent article on grunion, I intended to suggest that Bob and I had an experience of grace that night serendipitously happening onto grunion running ashore, contrasting it with the unsuccessful effort with my high school friends to witness such a miracle.

But as I finish this post, I realize everything mentioned was an experience of grace: my friends in youth gathered in anticipation; my opportunities participating in ministry and in a movement; the smiles and laughter that Bob gave freely and prompted easily; the remembered glowing sparks of plankton in sand; our dinner and walk and conversation along the shore as well as the silver flashes of flopping grunion; our last visit and the platter Bob so painstakingly prepared; the lover that held Bob in his final days and the sunsets they shared; and now, my memories of all of these.

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Resurrection Today - Part Two

Today’s post is adapted from the chapter, “Healing AIDS,” in my book, Come Home: Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians (Harper & Row 1990, Chi Rho Press 1998).

During one Holy Week, I found myself immersed in grief at the widespread experience of death from AIDS in our community. A close friend infected with HIV and searching for spiritual hope commented on a 1989 Newsweek survey, “If half the clergy doesn’t believe there’s an afterlife, why should we?”

My pastor’s sermon on Easter Sunday was the kind of sermon I would have given, the kind that I have given in the past. Humorously confessing a desire to avoid heresy and controversy, she chose not to discuss whether there was a physical or spiritual resurrection of Jesus.

Instead, she focused on the question put to Mary Magdalene as she wept in the garden of his tomb. Jesus asked her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?” Mary’s grief blinded her at first to a vision of a living Christ. I recognized the connection with my present grief that was blinding me to a living God who is “God of the living, for all live to God,” in the words of Jesus refuting those who didn’t believe in resurrection.

Though my pastor’s Easter sermon was excellent, provocative, and comforting, it did not make me celebrative that day. Who was my friend infected with HIV looking for, and whom did I seek? Someone who would tell us that God loved us, loved us eternally, gave us life eternal.

My lover and I walked along the cliffs and beach of Santa Monica that afternoon. Santa Ana winds had cleared the sky, and the air was cold and crisp, the sea blue and choppy. But, unlike previous walks in this flood of God’s natural grace, the beauty did not heal my troubled soul.

At the end of our walk, we entered a bar named the S. S. Friendship to get some warming coffee. This had once been the gay writer Christopher Isherwood’s neighborhood hangout.  Sitting down, I looked across the room at a vaguely familiar face. “John?” I said, just as he asked, “Chris?”

We had not seen each other for over five years. Typically, on seeing an old friend in our community, I thanked God to find him still alive. George and I invited him and his friend to join us. He seemed relaxed and content, and I was happy to discover that he had been with a lover for five years with whom he had bought a home. With so much death in our neighborhood, I enjoyed finding him well and happy and in a relationship.

He shared his spiritual journey. He reminded me that he had begun as a Catholic. I remembered that he had been a Lutheran shortly before joining the Presbyterian Church. Now he told us that most recently he’d been attending the Church of Religious Science.

“I got something I needed in each church, without getting involved in the garbage of each denomination,” he admitted. I envied, admired, and resented his ability to avoid the garbage, myself feeling buried in the Presbyterian refuse of committee meetings, petty bickering, and outrageous injustice toward gays and lesbians.

As I asked him about his lover, he said simply, “He died last week.” “AIDS?” I asked, astounded that even this idyllic picture could be shattered. “Yes,” he said. “He was diagnosed two years ago, and he used what time he had left to help others. It was wonderful to see. We had a good time together. I have no regrets. He died in my arms. I felt him leave his body. That’s why I’m sure I’ll see him again.”

As we later took our leave and I hugged John goodbye, I whispered in his ear, “Thank you for giving me the Easter message I needed to hear today.” I had somehow heard the gospel in a gay bar. Just as Mary had been called by name and thereby recognized the risen Christ, so I had been called by name and thereby witnessed a resurrection.

Last week’s post: Resurrection Today – Part One 

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Copyright © 2017 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Man Facing Southeast

Scene from Man Facing Southeast

Man Facing Southeast is a 1986 film from Argentina. It depicts a man who commits himself to a mental hospital, while claiming to be an extraterrestrial. Every day, he stands in the same place in the hospital yard, facing southeast, contemplating or communicating with his planet of origin.

As I write this, it suddenly occurs to me I do the same thing during my morning prayers on our deck, facing southeast while seated, contemplating and “communicating” with my point of origin, as well as yours! But this is not why I’m writing this post.

Wednesdays, after promoting my blog on 30 or so relevant organizational Facebook pages, I walk in nearby Grant Park, a walk I used to take with Hobbes. Over the past month or so, I have encountered a man standing in the same place along my path: a 30-ish African American, neatly dressed in vintage clothing, a roller bag at his side, maybe homeless, and intently gazing straight ahead. Sometimes he has something in hand, his free hand gesturing, occasionally moving his lips. Sometimes he is standing motionless and staring straight ahead. I try to acknowledge him with a simple nod or a one-word greeting as I pass, not wanting to interrupt his focus.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed he was holding a clump of pages from a Bible. He looked as if he was soundlessly mouthing words, his free hand motioning to an unseen audience, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was practicing a sermon. I wondered if he served a congregation, or if, as a modern-day Saint Francis, he was offering his words to the birds in the branches of the tall old trees before him.

This man facing northwest made me think of the movie Man Facing Southeast. I wondered if he too was in contemplation and communication with his place of origin.

I was shown the film by my friend Scott Rogo, who thought I would appreciate its spiritual intimations. To this day I have the video copy he gave me after we watched it together. Scott wrote 30 books as a parapsychologist, his interest in the paranormal initiated by an out-of-body experience in high school.

Scott and I had barely known each other then. He was in band and I was in choir in adjacent classrooms. Our first semester in college, we happened to take the same “Man’s Religions” course, and my Pollyanna spirituality seemed distasteful to his skeptically agnostic view.

A decade later, our mutual concern about the AIDS epidemic led to meeting again “as if for the first time,” learning each other was gay. He was already a published author and I was trying to complete my first book, and our shared interest in very different expressions of spirituality prompted us to meet every couple of weeks for lunch. He once visited the church I served, but felt more comfortable in the familiar surroundings of his home synagogue, though he did not attend regularly.

He was as an early reader of my first book, giving me its title, Uncommon Calling, and encouraging me to write its hopeful epilogue, observing that throughout the book I had followed every “crucifixion” with a “resurrection,” and I should do the same with its conclusion.

I wrote about our unique friendship and his shocking murder at age 4o in my last published book, The Final Deadline: What Death Has Taught Me about Life.

So Man Facing Southeast means a lot to me.

The doctor treating its protagonist comes to question his own science, as he “recognizes his new patient’s special abilities and contagiously humanitarian outlook on life,” in the words of one reviewer.

No wonder people thought Jesus was an “extraterrestrial.”

Donations to this blog ministry may be given by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

Ormewood Park Presbyterian--R.I.P.

Howard, Michael, Mark, Chris, Peter at OPPC in 1994

I have just come from a funeral for my Presbyterian church. I’ve cried less at funerals of dear friends. Every hymn, every scripture, every memory, every familiar and unfamiliar face made me want to weep inconsolably, tugging at the proverbial heart strings. I held back, lest I terrify those around me. Blessed I was to be surrounded by longtime friends who felt much the same.

The sanctuary of Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church was packed with many generations of its membership for the final service, April 3, 2016. The only other times I’ve seen it filled was for its 100^th anniversary a few years ago and in 1994, for my then partner’s and my “Ceremony of the Heart.”

A love story always has a beginning, even with a church. When Mark King and I moved to Atlanta in 1993 for his job as executive director of AIDS Survival Project, we began looking for a church home where we could be open and honest about our relationship. We visited several welcoming congregations, but we found ourselves drawn to the small Presbyterian congregation at the corner of Woodland and Delaware. We moved to the neighborhood, Ormewood Park, largely because of the church.

The members were warm and friendly, both young and old, maybe especially the elderly. There was already a handful of gay and lesbian members and leaders of the church. It would be several years before it formally became one of the few More Light churches in the South, at Mark’s urging in a letter to its Session.

The pastor, Peter Denlea, a retired Navy bomber pilot for whom this was a second career, grappled personally with scriptures in every sermon—still a scrapper from his days as an Irish Catholic youth in Boston’s Southie neighborhood. During worship, he would invite us all to wrestle with a biblical text until it blessed us. The congregation was enjoying a renaissance.

Peter eagerly created and celebrated our “Ceremony of the Heart” with “God’s glorious gadfly” and LGBT/AIDS activist Howard Warren on October 30, 1994. My dear friend Michael Morgan served as organist. The congregation turned out in full, and that, with Mark’s family from Shreveport and our friends (many attending an AIDS conference in the city that weekend) filled the sanctuary.

When other Presbyterian pastors got wind of it, they called Peter to account, urging the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta to reprimand him and nullify our blessing, which, as then Central Presbyterian pastor Ted Wardlaw told me at the time, was “like trying to undo the ringing of a bell.” This gave Peter a chance on the floor of presbytery—like his namesake in regard to baptizing Gentiles in Acts 10 & 11—to defend his decision and us by giving a persuasive speech that prompted a resounding ovation and a refusal to press charges.

Today, as he left for his assisted living facility, where he still offers a friendly touch and ear to his neighbors, Peter—as straight as God can make a man—kissed me full on the lips in saying goodbye.

The church went on to be served by several capable pastors, but Peter was a hard act to follow. They continued his welcoming legacy by later attracting transgender members, thanks to one-time parish associate, Erin Swenson.  We were grateful that she led us in a conversation in place of a sermon on the Sunday following 9/11.

Though I liked the congregation, I began to feel that formal worship was not the best way for us to be a spiritual community. Then I was given opportunities to serve others spiritually in a way I could not serve Presbyterians. Thanks to OPPC, I stayed on the rolls as a member even as I served Atlanta’s Midtown Spiritual Community and subsequently, MCC, and now as your progressive Christian blogger!

Perhaps my grief is deepened by feelings of loss of the entire denomination, whose timid and tepid “welcome” of LGBT people is much less than hoped for in my 40+ years of activism within it. I am dissatisfied that it still protects the “conscience” of those who oppose us, those same people who refused to protect the conscience of our supporters. Prejudice and bigotry have no right of conscience in my possibly jaundiced view. (Grey Panthers founder Maggie Kuhn said that the advantage of being a “senior” is that you can say what you really think!)

Though the presbytery plans a “re-branding” of OPPC, which makes me think of branding cattle, Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church will also be a hard act to follow. Its members and leaders and pastors should be proud of its ministry and witness and service.

For me personally, the church not only celebrated that “ceremony of the heart,” but supported me through the brokenness of my heart when my relationship with Mark ended and my mother died within weeks of each other.

Churches are the repositories of memorable life events of all they’ve welcomed. That hallows them, and gives us a taste of the eternal.

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here and scrolling down to the donate link below its description or by mailing to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating “Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money order. Thank you!

Copyright © 2016 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.