The Empty Closet

Jerusalem passageway, 1981 -crg

Approaching Easter, I found myself in a kind of Holy Saturday malaise—you know, that dreary interim when Jesus is in the tomb, and all is lost. I read again the narratives around the empty tomb, the resurrection stories, one Gospel each day. I wanted to encounter the risen Christ. Lord, I believe, help my unbelief!

Then it occurred to me that I was looking for a literal resurrection, like Thomas demanding to see the prints of the nails in Jesus' hands and feel the wound in his side. In truth, the stories that most appeal to me are the mystical ones, like the Emmaus disciples experiencing Jesus in the kerygma of “opening scriptures” and the sacrament of breaking bread.

The literal miracle I was overlooking was what came out of that empty tomb: a new faith and spiritual community that would attract much of humanity and change the world; a fresh understanding of God and, to take it personally, a fresh understanding of myself. “God brought us to life with Christ,” in the words of Ephesians 2:5 (NJB). I recognized the resurrection of Jesus in countless others, thanks to his passion and compassion.

Coming out of the closet helped me better grasp resurrection. I know how differently life and God and the world are experienced when free of confinement, restriction, and hiddenness. Everything is new and seen/felt/heard/smelled/tasted as if for the first time. It’s wonderful and terrifying, uplifting and burdensome. It calls for an entirely different way of being, acting, speaking, and loving.

It entails both freedom and responsibility. Its heights and depths make one soar and sink at the same time. It helps one focus and broaden all at once. Suddenly, when first coming out, I was in the “rapids” of my life excursion, exhilarating and frightening, both limiting and opening possibilities, tearing me away from safer shores and hurling me toward the unknown. “Thar be dragons thar,” I feared.

In my 1998 book Coming Out as Sacrament, I used “coming out” as a hermeneutic for biblical interpretation. One reviewer groused about my introducing yet another hermeneutic, or lens, through which to view scripture, but I believe “the more the merrier,” the greater the opportunity for diverse populations to understand and apply the spiritual wisdom of the Bible to their own lives and the lives of their communities.

I boldly asserted that the Bible was God’s coming out story.  After all, in Christian tradition, self-revelation is how we know God. From the burning bush to Jesus of Nazareth to the Holy Spirit, all awareness and knowledge of God comes at divine initiative. I suggested God came out of the closet of heaven to dwell with us and even dwell within us.

The empty tomb may be viewed as a kind of empty closet. “Do not hold on to me!” Jesus told the weeping Mary in another one of those mystical resurrection stories. “Do not hold onto me!” each of us says to peers and colleagues as Jesus calls us from confining beliefs, practices, prejudices, perspectives, and expectations.

Jesus goes before us into Galilee, or any region or culture or community or vocation or workplace or movement in which we live and move and have our being, if only we have eyes to see and hearts to feel. With his dearly beloved Lazarus, he challenges us, “Come out!”

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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.  

It's a Wonderful Life

This morning I’m up early as last week’s post, Wade’s Mezuzah, is being published, distributed, and hopefully read by subscribers. Shortly I will begin my weekly promotion of its link on organizational pages on Facebook as well as my own.

But I awoke to the thought of writing this post, and the memories here told brought tears to my eyes as I am reminded again what a wonderful life I have had. I know I will “crash” later, having been up later than usual last night attending a musical outside Atlanta with friends. Wade is out of town for work, so my schedule is mine this morning.

I mentioned the religious artifacts in our home, and I’ve decided to briefly tell the stories of those I mentioned. Their stories are what make them sacramentals, material objects conveying spiritual meaning.

The Latin American altar cloth upon which my laptop rests I purchased when I began leading retreats on Henri Nouwen as a way to deal with my grief at his death. It represents his love and service to Latin America, and its multicolored stripes are reminiscent of the rainbow flag that Henri never got to wave for himself.

The Sacred Heart sacramental was a gift from Ed McGee, who accompanied the worship and directed the Sunday choir during the annual gay and bisexual Christian men’s retreat we led at Kirkridge. With a mischievous wink, he gave it to me because I inquired of him, a Roman Catholic who loved to play for Presbyterian congregations, about the tradition of the Sacred Heart.

Ganesha was sent to me one Christmas by my Mormon nephew, my sister’s second son, knowing my penchant for things religious and my challenge for things computer.

The embracing clay Muslim men in kaftans was brought to me from Egypt by my friend, Bob Lodwick, the U.S. Presbyterian representative to European churches, when he filled in for Ben Weir in the Middle East after Ben was abducted and held captive. Bob also brought me one of the plates inscribed with a verse from the Quran hanging in another room. He provided the Lazarus Project with a supply of St. Lazarus icons from Cyprus to adorn our Lazarus awards. He and Hedy hosted George Lynch and me when we visited the offices of the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

The ceramic tile from Israel with Shalom in Hebrew was brought from Jerusalem by Vicki Goldish and Vicki Dakil, a lesbian couple. Vicki-1 (as we sometimes designated them!) was Jewish and Vicki-2 was a Christian of Lebanese descent. They had a tree planted in Israel in tribute to my father when he died. Both succumbed to cancer at early ages.

The Christ Pantocrator was given me by a congregant when I was ordained by MCC in 2005. The origin of the African goddess is a mystery to me. Perhaps that’s as it should be! 

The Balinese mask was a gift from my first longtime boyfriend, pseudonymously referred to as “John” in my first book, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church. He was my loving “redeemer” after I was dropped as a candidate for ordination by the Presbytery of the Pacific in May of 1978 after the Presbyterian ban on ordination of LGBT people was put in place. We are no longer in touch, but I fondly remember his touch.

The papyrus scene of Pharaoh being judged—his heart weighed on a scale opposite a feather—was something I acquired on a Fordham religious studies tour of the Middle East. Judgment came if his heart weighed heavier than that feather.

The Tree of Life across the room I acquired in Katmandu on another religious studies tour, and it was woven in Cashmere, the disputed territory between Pakistan and India. I used it as a symbolic banner during a Christian season when I served as interim pastor of Christ Covenant MCC in Decatur, Georgia.

Something I didn’t mention last week, but on the opposite wall hangs a water color of the cliffs of Moher in Ireland, painted in retirement by the pastor who became my first Presbyterian mentor and pastor, James King Morse. I hoped for him a long life by telling him I wanted him to preach at my ordination!

I’ve saved for last the other plate I mentioned with a Quran quote—rather, the shallow bowl pictured above—because it entails one of my favorite stories. A transgender Muslim friend from Pakistan translated the phrases on both plates for me once, but the sticky notes with their translations have since fallen off. I acquired it in the Orthodox section of Jerusalem, Mea Shearim, on the religious studies tour of the Middle East.

Our leader was Byron Shafer, who, besides being a professor and one-time head of the religious studies department of Fordham University, served as primary author of the report of the Presbyterian task force on homosexuality, on which I served. He took a few of us on the trip to his favorite tiny shop.

We entered and found nothing on its shelves. The old, wizened proprietor greeted us warmly, inviting us to sit, and offered us tea. He started boiling the water as we chatted about our trip and eventually, after serving us tea, he began pulling items from behind an apron on the lip of a shelf, one by one. This made each artifact seem special, unlike the many shops with shelves crowded with merchandise. I just had to have one, it was so memorable.

So I splurged $40—a lot of money to me then—to purchase a now 160-year-old copper bowl covered in tin from Persia, now Iran, etched with a verse from the Quran, I think meaning, “God is great.”

As I look back, that gentle old man is an image of God, pulling out of his stores one beautiful thing after another, offering it to us to admire and possibly hold on to as we sip tea together, conversing. Einstein once said the reason for time is so everything doesn’t happen all at once.

It’s a wonderful life. God is great!

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

Pilgrim's Progress

Hindu pilgrims, India

My third-grade teacher at my Christian school, Mrs. Olive Sandvig, was innovative, teaching us things like how to churn cream into butter, and inviting us to listen occasionally to stories on the radio, helping us, the first television generation, learn the power of words without pictures.

For a while, during quiet time, she read to us from Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan’s metaphorical tale of Christian’s pilgrimage to the Celestial City. Though Christian met with dangers and challenges and temptations, the spoken words had a calming influence on me, and to this day, I can place myself at my classroom desk with my head laid down, eyes closed, imagining the trip.

When I was spiritual leader of Atlanta’s Midtown Spiritual Community, a congregation that had left the Unity denomination because it was “too Christian,” I appreciated the challenge of talking about spirituality in a more generic way. I still had much to learn. Once I spoke of the need to move and to travel in order to grow spiritually—in essence, the need for pilgrimage, and I was taken to task by my dear friend Linda Pogue, who explained that a neighbor in her English village had never gone anywhere all his life, yet she knew of few as spiritually mature as he! For some of us, our only necessary pilgrimage is through time.

Due to economic limitations, my own pilgrimages these days are mostly limited to my imagination and my morning walks. But I have travelled widely when my circumstances permitted it.

During my first decade of ministry at a Presbyterian Church, I was expected to take study leaves, and I travelled on two Fordham University religious studies tours led by Byron Shafer: one to Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel; the other to India, Sri Lanka, and Nepal.

Though we were visiting sacred sites of the world’s religions, these were not billed as “pilgrimages,” but I approached them as if they were. My personal text for the first trip was The Bible, and for the second was Gandhi: Selected Writings.

Given last week’s post on “Altars in the World,” blog readers may not be surprised that the open, natural places I encountered felt more “spiritual” to me than the closed, box-like structures (as beautiful as they are) that housed religious meaning.

Though early one morning I walked the Stations of the Cross alone along Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa, what spoke more to me were the green pastures beside the Sea of Galilee, the great rivers of the Nile and of the Ganges, the Egyptian wilderness devoid of any visible plant life, the gnarled trees of Gethsemane, the everflowing sea of faces throughout India, the wild-elephant-populated jungles of Sri Lanka, the Himalayas as seen from Nepal, and the colors of the stone of Petra in Jordan, which I’ve written about earlier.

Given my predilection for open spaces, I found that the retaining wall that served as the Jerusalem Temple’s base, known now as the Western Wall, is a fitting place for prayer and contemplation all by itself, without reconstructing the temple.

And, in New Delhi, serendipitously stumbling alone upon the garden where Mahatma Gandhi was martyred gave me the opportunity to give in to my spiritual emotions un-self-consciously.

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Rage to Ecstasy: Praying the Psalms

Prayers at the Western Wall, Jerusalem, 1981.

If I were to send into space one item that would explain the human experience to other civilizations, it would be the Psalms. They would serve as warning and explanation and exaltation of our capabilities.

Cross us, and we will dash your little ones against the rocks. Exile us, and we will nonetheless try to sing God’s song in foreign territory. Wow us, and our spirits and words will soar in thanksgiving and praise.

An agnostic boyfriend wanted to better understand my religious devotion, so I suggested that we read a psalm each day on our own, conferring occasionally. Soon into the exercise, he good-naturedly but definitively expressed dismay at the texts. He said something like, “I expected a more uplifting experience, but there’s a lot of vengeance and wrath.”

A retired church member whose lifelong partner died was about to go on his first trip without him. I suggested we pray the psalms together, one each day, as he travelled. Afterward, he said he felt less alone, knowing I was praying the psalms with him.

That’s a gift of the Psalms, that praying them, we feel less alone. Those who wrote the psalms were imperfect, much like us. They didn’t know everything, but they had feelings about everything. And, like us, they had multiple situations and events to have feelings about, some good, even great, some bad, even evil. They reflect the human range of experiences and emotions.

They are like us, but perhaps unlike us, they are willing to express even their uglier aspects. They are not pretending to “have it all together.” They are willing to offer their broken spirits to God, to one another, to us. They are the original 12 Step meeting, the first confessors, the first monastics using prayer as a place of transformation.

As much as they, like us, might pray that God will “fix” things, they understand repeatedly their need to hope in God, to trust in God, to witness the beauty and wonder of creation, from the heavens to the earth. And they give us wonderful images and metaphors for God: a good shepherd, a mother’s lap, the rising sun of justice.

For centuries, monastic communities have prayed the psalms during their daily multiple prayer services. My first real taste of that was visiting the Episcopal Order of the Holy Cross at their Mt. Calvary Retreat House in the foothills above Santa Barbara, California. Over the years of my occasional retreats there, I found peace joining them in the reciting or chanting of the psalms. The brief silence between each line gave the words a chance to sink in, as one might pause after any line of poetry. And saying or chanting the words myself and with others gave the psalms an altogether different resonance than reading them silently on my own.

In praying the psalms, if we can’t identify with a particular mood or condition in the words, we might consider those in the world who are experiencing that mood or condition, praying with them or on their behalf. That makes the psalms at least one more way in which we realize we are not alone.

At the risk of offering a mere tautology: that the psalms are directed at the self and others and God makes them a resource of reflection and contemplation: an opportunity for dialogue with ourselves, with others, and with God.

The psalm that got me through my toughest times is the psalm divided between Psalm 42 and 43 that begins, “As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God.” The psalmist was prevented from going to God’s house, perhaps by illness, but the longing presented reminded many of us in the LGBT community of the church’s exclusion.

More than once I have prayed with the psalmist, “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within me” and “Restore to me the joy of thy salvation.”

And, during an extreme and extended period of multiple griefs, Psalm 73 spoke of my experience: 

My heart grew embittered,

my affections dried up,

I was stupid and uncomprehending,

a clumsy animal in your presence.

Even so, I stayed in your presence,

you grasped me by the right hand;

you will guide me with advice,

and will draw me in the wake of your glory. 

Psalm 73:21-24 (NJB)

“Even so, I stayed in your presence” became my mantra and my discipline that year, else I would have been lost.

My favorite psalm for contemplation when leading a retreat is 131, whose key mantra is, “I hold myself in quiet and silence, like a little child in its mother’s arms” (NJB).

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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.  

Stand Your Ground: Ferguson, Washington, Jerusalem

Possibly not even residents of Ferguson, Missouri fully comprehend what’s happened there in recent months after the shooting death of Michael Brown by Officer Darren Wilson.  Wilson was not indicted by a grand jury last week, prompting protests and rioting not only there, but in other cities, including my own, Atlanta, where black and white seem to work together better than in any city in which I’ve lived.

A CNN commentator complained about the extended “whine” of the Ferguson district attorney regarding initial reports by social media and the media in general, but I do think social media as well as the internet can enable a virtual lynch mob to form opinions without a full and accurate story, not to speak of due process. We love that when it topples despotic dictators, but we should be concerned when it may bias either a judicial outcome or public opinion, especially when sparking violence.

I have found it difficult to talk about these events even with people who share my political views, so strong are our opinions.

So I want to talk about the larger problem when it comes to conversation about this and all contentious issues. “Stand your ground” laws that permit use of violence to protect ourselves are simply outward signs of an inner, spiritual problem. “Standing up for yourself” has now become  “stand your ground” when it comes to any issue, as if the ground you’re standing on is first, yours, and second, high holy ground.

When I believe the ground belongs to me and mine, when I consider mine the high moral ground, or even worse, holy ground, there is little room for listening to the concerns of another. This could apply not only to our conversations about Ferguson, but also about Washington and Jerusalem and every other place of conflict.

Forgive me for once again citing NPR, but a recent study reveals that people fail to “hear” opposing views because they doubt their opponent is basing their opinion on positive motivations.

Adequate incentive is required to begin to see another’s perspective: in the study, a financial incentive did the trick! I believe a spiritual incentive could as well. As Jesus said, go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, give your cloak as well as your coat, love your enemies and pray for those who oppose you.

What also interferes is that we defensively fear the other is assigning negative motivations to us.

When you’re standing your ground, it’s hard to share, and find common ground.

I personally experienced this recently while discussing a New York Times article about police experts speculating if Officer Wilson could have performed his duties in such a way to create a different outcome. On ABC News Wilson unequivocally rejected that anything he might have done could have avoided the tragedy. Now, in our litigious and “gotcha” culture, I understand that self-doubt and uncertainty become indicators of guilt or malfeasance, but if I had done something that ended in someone’s death—no matter the circumstances—I would have been wracked with guilt and doubt, wondering what I could have done to avoid or prevent that.

But trying to tell this to a friend came across as minimizing Michael Brown’s bullying and threatening behavior and maligning Darren Wilson, which I did not intend.

Both Brown and Wilson could be said to “stand their ground.” Republicans and Democrats, Israelis and Palestinians do the same. And it begets either stalemate or tragedy.

The day I write this I felt encouraged by another Times story by Manny Fernandez and Brent McDonald about someone trying to bridge the gap in Ferguson. Lt. Jerry Lohr, who manages the security of the Ferguson police headquarters, wears no riot gear and carries no baton. He treats protestors like people, saying “please” and “thank you.”

“Allowing people to talk on a one-on-one level does a lot as far as building bridges,” he says. “They may not agree with what I’m doing, but now they at least know my name and my face. I’m human again. They realize that I’m a person. I’m not just a uniform. We have to bridge this gap. It’s not going to happen overnight. This is going to be a long-term relationship, a long-term commitment, that both sides are going to have to make.”

Preach it, brother!

Related Posts:

A Call to Civility

Wise as Serpents

A Pre-emptive Peace

Please support this blog ministry by clicking here or 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!

Progressive Christian Reflections is entirely supported by readers’ donations. It is an authorized Emerging Ministry of Metropolitan Community Churches, a denomination welcoming seekers as well as believers.

Copyright © 2014 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Peace in Jerusalem

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use in public gatherings with attribution of author and blog site.

In the 84th and final year of her life, my fundamentalist mother surprised me by saying  wistfully, “I thought I would live long enough to see Jesus return.”

I must confess to more modest goals. I thought for sure I would live long enough to see peace come to Israel.

Maybe my mother was the more realistic one!

A year or two ago I stopped reading news stories about Israel and the would-be state of Palestine when the latest hopeful peace talks stalled. After more than 45 years following events there, I was fed up with both sides.

Why did I feel I had a right to be fed up? Because of the amount of U.S. tax dollars that have gone to support that region, the political and emotional and even spiritual capital that has been wasted, all the media time spent on a relentless conflict and the additional conflicts with Arab states created for the West—not to mention all the suffering of the people there with whom I have identified, on both sides.

I was in high school when the Six Day War of 1967 occurred, 45 years ago this June. My teacher of International Relations, himself Jewish, explained that the first strike mentality of Israel was like the survival response of a man about to be pushed off a cliff. Our student body president, a young Jewish woman, cried that first day of the war. As I recall, the tears came because she felt so conflicted between her ideals and her hope for Israel. When I took her to our senior prom, I met her father, who showed me the tattooed numbers on his arm and explained his camp was liberated by Eisenhower himself, who openly cried to see the condition of the prisoners. The parents of a close friend explained divisions over Israel in the Jewish community—some thought as they did that they were Americans first, while others thought of themselves as Jewish first whose first allegiance was to Israel.

None other than the Mahatma Gandhi himself expressed reservations about the establishment of Israel, implying that it would be far better for Europeans to overcome their anti-semitism than be in the business of nation-building.

Why do I write of this now? Because in the past few days I’ve been reading and re-reading the final chapters of Isaiah, using the New Jerusalem Bible, pondering how the texts might give rise to both the Zionist desire to reclaim the land of Palestine as well as the hope of moderate Israelis who pray and work for peace.

They will rebuild the ancient ruins,

they will raise what has long lain waste,

they will restore the ruined cities,

all that has lain waste for ages past. (61:4)

No more will you be known as “Forsaken”

or your country be known as “Desolation”;

instead, you will be called “My Delight is in her”

and your country “The Wedded”… (62:4)

These are just two excerpts lauding the restoration of a Jewish nation that could instill zeal in those who apply it to the present state of Israel.

But there are other examples of what peacemakers in Israel consider Israel’s higher calling:

The nations will come to your light

and kings to your dawning brightness. (60:3)

I shall make Peace your administration

and Saving Justice your government.

Violence will no longer be heard of in your country,

nor devastation and ruin within your frontiers. (60:17c & 18a)

On a Fordham University religious studies tour of the Middle East long ago, I visited Egypt, Jordan, the West Bank, and Israel. We heard from a lot of displaced Palestinians, and saw firsthand an abandoned camp for Palestinian refugees. It was on the Sea of Galilee (actually, a lake) that we were reminded of the collusion of fundamentalist American Christians with Zionist claims, as the leader of another group on board our boat offered a prayer over the P.A. system for the full flowering of the State of Israel so that Jesus could return. This is a dangerous alliance for Israelis, because these Christians believe that when Jesus returns, Jews will be smited! 

I wished Jesus had returned in that moment to shut off the preacher’s storm of words with “Peace! Be still!”

How I wish I could live to see the day when Isaiah’s vision is fulfilled:

As a mother comforts her child,

so I shall comfort you;

you will be comforted in Jerusalem. (66:13)

And that of Jesus, weeping over Jerusalem:

“Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace.”

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