The book links are offered
for your convenience; I receive no compensation from providers.
We
each have our own “nativity story.”
Mine
is that it was a difficult birth, a prolonged labor, my mother turned blue, my
father told the doctor she needed oxygen, I was born feet first, my legs were
crooked and doctors wanted to put braces on them, but my mother resisted,
choosing another therapy: massaging my legs. My Aunt Blanche loved to tell the
story of carrying me wrapped in a blanket from the car, having just come from
the hospital, and uncovering my head, expecting to find me sound asleep, but
instead, found my eyes wide open in wonder, and my head bobbing every which way
to see as much as I could see. Dad enjoyed recounting rocking me a very long
time while I stubbornly refused to go to sleep. Decades later, after I had
chosen to enter the ministry, my mother explained that she had dedicated me to
God’s service in the womb, thus my name, “Christopher,” which means
“Christ-bearer.”
In
truth, we each have multiple nativity stories: family-oriented, as above, but
also spiritual, sexual, social, vocational, and so on. I believe it’s important
that we first, remember them, and second, tell them. Much of my work has been
about coaxing and coaching people in telling their stories, usually as a
volunteer. I told my own complex
“nativity” or coming out story in my first book, Uncommon Calling.
At
our mutual friend Janie Spahr’s suggestion, Mary Ann Woodruff approached me
earlier this year to read and possibly write the foreword to her memoir, The Last of the Good Girls: Shedding Convention, Coming Out Whole. I was so much in awe of her book’s literary
qualities, I couldn’t imagine writing a foreword that could do it justice, so I
kept it short, beginning:
“This
engaging, heartfelt memoir quotes Judith Barrington from a 1993 poetry
workshop: ‘The poet’s job is to write the truth. And then write the truth below
the truth.’ That is precisely what Mary Ann Woodruff has done in often lyrical
prose and occasional poetry. She did it first with her life, discovering truth
under truth, and now with this remarkable book. A life well-lived deserves a
story well-told such as this.”
Woodruff’s
prose and poetry rises to the occasion of her remarkable life of self-discovery
and growing confidence in herself as daughter, wife, mother, Christian,
consultant, writer, feminist, and lover. I am looking forward to meeting her
face-to-face when, by coincidence, I speak at her church in Seattle this January.
The
day I am writing this I am looking forward to meeting another astounding author
at a coffee shop in adjacent Decatur. Yesterday I finished reading Connie Tuttle’s as yet unpublished memoir, A Gracious Heresy, and I was taken by the sometimes non-traditional
trajectory of her spirituality and calling as a Christian minister, one that
her denomination, seminary, and presbytery found challenging. Her writing too
is of a captivating literary quality. She intentionally made me laugh, angry at
other times as I realized our shared experience of a church that is still largely
unwelcoming of LGBT clergy, and yet ultimately hopeful about our shared intent
to make the church a better place for all.
She
is the founding pastor of Circle of Grace Community Church (soon to celebrate
its 20th anniversary) that my friend Erin Swenson used to attend on
Sunday evenings. Erin too has written a remarkable memoir of her transition as a transgender Presbyterian minister, If
Anybody Asks You Who I Am… I served as Erin’s writing coach, meeting
regularly as she finished chapter after chapter to consult, but mostly to
encourage. Her book is another literary masterpiece that has not yet found a
publisher.
From
an Assembly of God perspective, Randy Eddy-McCain sent me a manuscript of his
own memoir growing up in Arkansas, And God Save Judy Garland: A Gay Christian’s Journey. Well written, edited by Peggy Campolo and now recommended by Jay
Bakker, it tells his own “nativity” story discovering his sexuality in the
evangelical world. At the behest of
those who’ve read it, he has successfully raised funding on Kickstarter to
publish and publicize this needed addition to LGBT Christian storytelling.
My
friend Joe Cobb and his former wife, Leigh Ann Taylor, remind people that
“coming out” is not just for individuals in Our Family Outing: A Memoir of Coming Out and Coming Through. Taking turns
writing their story as a family, the reader better understands what a loving
marriage is all about and how spouses and children have their own nativity
stories.
R.
Z. Halleson reminds us that the nativity story of another can be told by a
writer like her who is attentive, compassionate, and detail-oriented in her
novel Ambiguous, based on a true
story of three airmen in the 50s and 60s coming to terms with sexuality. Years
ago, Ruth asked me to advise her on the manuscript, and the book was finally
published this year.
My
former partner, Mark King, has written his own nativity story about coming out
of addiction and coping with HIV in A Place Like This: A Memoir. I
encouraged him to write it and served as his first reader, but was surprised
nonetheless to have him dedicate the book to me, long after our relationship
ended. It’s a very good read, disturbingly honest, touchingly poignant, and often
laugh-out-loud funny.
Finally,
I am grateful to be included in professor Patrick Cheng’s Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology, an accessible
round-up of LGBT theologians, and R. W.
Holmen’s carefully researched and well-written story of the LGBT Christian
nativity and movement within five mainstream Protestant denominations, soon to
be released, Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism.
These
weeks of Advent need not be just about the nativity of Jesus, but all the
nativities of the Spirit his story has inspired, including your own.
Related posts:
Progressive Christian
Reflections is an authorized
Emerging Ministry of MCC. Click here to discover how you may support this ministry. Thank you!
Copyright © 2013 by
Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of
author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. Check out past posts in the right
rail on the blogsite. Consider using a post or quotes in personal reflection,
worship, newsletters, and classes, referencing the blog address when possible: http://chrisglaser.blogspot.com.
