Married at Last!

Exchange of rings.

Wade Jones and I were married here in Atlanta by the Rev. Dr. Erin Swenson during a private ceremony last week on my 65^th birthday, a few days shy of our 15^th anniversary, a week before his 55^th birthday, and one day after the 10^th anniversary of my ordination in the Metropolitan Community Church.

Wade and I met between my 50^th and his 40^th birthday at a time I was seriously considering moving back to California. He is the reason I stayed in Atlanta.

It was a joyful occasion with family and a few friends surrounded by our parents’ official wedding pictures and photos of our beloved dogs, Calvin and Hobbes.

As Erin invited the fifteen guests to explain how they knew us, we were moved by their stories and absolute love. Then we proceeded with a brief and very traditional wedding ceremony, followed by dinner at a fine neighborhood restaurant.

But I gotta say this: marriage as an institution has never been my priority—Wade Jones is.

I felt much the same way about ordination. Ordination was not my priority, but ministry was and is—and though, like marriage, there are hundreds of benefits to either institution, ordination and marriage achieve their purposes only if they facilitate ministry and commitment.

For most of my life, I have served as a minister and a partner without the formal approval of either church or state.

And I have to admit, the long delay awaiting both ordination and marriage sobered me.

When young, either event might have been intoxicating, but waiting decades kept me mindful that those institutions (indeed, ALL institutions) are not all they are played up to be, that they don’t of themselves confer either spiritual authority or marital faithfulness.

And when my particular Christian tradition, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) finally “accepted” LGBT ordination and same-gender marriage, it did so without requiring such ordination and only changing its wording on marriage to say that it is between two people, “traditionally a man and a woman.” But that allowed a Presbyterian minister and longtime friend, Erin Swenson, to perform our ceremony.

Thank God for MCC, who has ordained and married LGBT people since its founding in 1968. The denomination’s moderator, the Rev. Dr. Nancy Wilson, preached at my ordination and Erin gave the charge in which she colloquially urged me “to dance with the one who brung you.” Ironically, I unintentionally angered a few Presbyterians for my “disloyalty” to the cause, losing work and missing opportunities, though MCC polity permits dual affiliation.

I know I may sound like the Grinch who stole marriage, but ordination and marriage are joyous and to be celebrated, not because of recognition by church or state, but because of their implicit and sacred spirit of love, service, mutuality, commitment, and community. I’ve always enjoyed that.

One of the tables of revellers, a selfie by Dee. 

Thanks to Marc Bearden and Dee de Padua for their photos.

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Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.  

A Crowd of Witnesses

Rock Stars and Prophets "Ordain" Chris Glaser

From the outside, and our need to simplify, especially in the media, key figures seem to be responsible for movements. Sometimes they are suffering scapegoats and sacrificial lambs, sometimes charismatic leaders and compassionate saints.

But from my vantage perspective of more than four decades devoted to the LGBT movement, I repeatedly realized that our movement is a collective and mutual inspiration. Perhaps that is why we have achieved relatively so much so quickly—plus the fact that we and our allies are in every family and neighborhood, every race and culture, condition and class, every vocation, business, and organization, of every political and religious stripe.

That realization was confirmed once again by last week’s ingathering of some eighty souls of the LGBT movement in the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. at the church’s conference center in Stony Point, New York. The denomination’s presbyteries have recently approved a constitutional change permitting same-gender marriage, and we had every reason to celebrate.

Thanks to the organizational skills of That All May Freely Serve’s current evangelist, Rev. Ray Bagnuolo, and a host of volunteers, a major contribution from a pastor as well as donations from others, and the enthusiastic hospitality of Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase and their staff as well as the volunteers of the center’s multi-faith community (which included a three-tiered wedding cake and the tastiest and healthiest food I’ve enjoyed at any retreat or hotel facility), Rock Stars and Prophets: Generations of Justice and Love will be remembered not only as a historic event, but one that was healing and hopeful and just plain fun. Of course TAMFS’s founding evangelist, the Rev. Janie Spahr, and its former Regional Partnership Coordinator and later Minister Coordinator, the should-be-Rev. Lisa Larges, were also responsible for the event’s success.

And I will remember it as the place of my fourth ordination, thanks to the Rev. Katie Morrison, who, along with Ray, were the first openly lesbian/gay persons to be ordained by their respective presbyteries years before the prohibition on LGBT ordination was lifted.

Rev. Laurene Lafontaine, who recently reclaimed her calling as a pastor in the Presbyterian Church, passed to Katie a beautiful, needlepoint stole created in 1993 by the late Louise Thompson for the first openly LGBT person to be ordained in the denomination. Spontaneously, Katie decided it should go to me, and she led the gathering in a blessing of my ministry with the laying on of hands.

I had approached the four-day gathering eagerly but with reservations, fearing what feelings might arise. During the planning, I urged that everyone who attended should hear from everyone there. I spoke on a panel of activists from the early days of our movement, and the next morning took my turn for a brief videotaped interview conducted by Warren Cooper, a gentle and kindly videographer. As I left the taping, involuntary tears came to my eyes.

Now, as I stumbled toward Katie, those tears returned, and I had a sense of unreality. At a time when I might feel vindication, I instead felt stunned and unworthy. I looked in Katie’s smiling face as people gathered around and laid hands on me. She then led us in a blessing. 

My first ordination was as an elder of the First Presbyterian Church of Van Nuys, California, in 1972. I had almost walked out, because the interim pastor mistakenly used the old questions for ordination that included the “infallibility” of scriptures. But I stayed, privately assenting only that the Bible served as God’s word to me, the newer version of the ordination vows.

My second ordination was a surprise, at the hands of the annual LGBT retreatants at Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center in Pennsylvania, led by the Rev. Darlene Garner, a fellow speaker, and now, three decades later, the Elder who oversees MCC’s Emerging Ministries that includes this blog! They did so because I had been dropped as a candidate for ordination by the Presbyterian Church in 1978 when its policy prohibiting the ordination of openly gay and lesbian ministers was instituted.

My third ordination came in 2005 when I served as interim pastor of Christ Covenant MCC of Decatur, Georgia. The MCC Moderator, my friend, the Rev. Nancy Wilson, gave the sermon and led the ceremony, and several of the people at last week’s gathering came from afar to participate. In giving me the charge, the Rev. Erin Swenson had encouraged me to “dance with the one who brung you,” in other words, serve faithfully within MCC, whose polity allows my dual affiliation as a Presbyterian. I was taken by surprise when the gathering offered a prolonged ovation.

As I look at the photo Believe Out Loud’s James Rowe took of my fourth ordination, I am pleased to see very little of me in the picture. Instead you see all the people around me, reaching out their hands in blessing, representing all those who have shaped my soul throughout my life, including those who have passed on.

I am grateful for such a crowd of witnesses!

Reading this New York Times article made me think of the “incandescent souls” who  help make us who we are: “A Moral Bucket List—What Kind of Adventures Produce Goodness, Rather than Build Résumés?”

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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. This year, I offer a signed gift copy of my book, Communion of Life: Meditations for the New Millennium, to each one who donates $100 or more (at once or in installments) over the course of 2015.

Copyright © 2015 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.