A Comfort Dream

Good neighbors!

As last week’s post published at 5 a.m. last Wednesday, I was awaking from what I would call a comfort dream. A beautiful Southern California day found me walking a favored walk, along the steep cliffs that line the coast in Santa Monica, overlooking the beach far below. It was here and on the sands below that I occasionally sorted out life as a young man—not to say I resolved everything or anything, but it gave me a place to walk and run, think and pray. Now living in Atlanta, this is the West Coast feature that I miss the most.

It was the place I began to reconcile my sexuality and my spirituality, my love of nature and my love of God. My first book, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Man’s Struggle to Serve the Church, described it as a welcoming and gracious sanctuary for all of me in a way the church was not yet. 

Harper & Row changed the subtitle I had, A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church because the publisher feared that in those “early days” of the movement “gay Christian” might sound like an oxymoron! After four printings, the book was passed on to Westminster / John Knox Press, which accepted the original subtitle.

In the dream I enjoyed something along the Santa Monica business strip that was not and is not there: a several level store called Pickwick’s, a beloved old Hollywood bookstore where I used to enjoy browsing and buying books to read. I still have Pickwick bookmarks, which were inserted in every book I purchased there. I was introduced to Charles Dickens’s Pickwick Papers in high school. It was among the countless books that encouraged my own writing vocation.

I forget who it was who said this—a writer, no doubt—that heaven should be a beach with a big library. I would add at least a wine bar, and there was a bar near the gay beach in Santa Monica, the S. S. Friendship, once frequented by writer Christopher Isherwood and his partner, artist Don Bachardy, who lived up Chautauqua Canyon, named no doubt for the adult education and social movement in the U.S. in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

So, in my dream, I was essentially in heaven. I believe it was Gertrude Stein who said of readers, “They have no need of heaven, for they have had books.”

Anyway, in the midst of our pandemic and the stress of the U.S. election process, my dream offered much needed comfort. That it came just as my last post was published seemed somehow auspicious. In that post I wrote of the integrity of science and religion, of nature and spirituality: calling us to remember we’re all in this together as inheritors of billions of years of evolution from the Big Bang to the common wealth and the common responsibility we share.

As if an incarnational exclamation point on this scientific and spiritual truth, Friday afternoon close friends/neighbors/members of Ormewood Church “res-erected” Wade’s and my mailbox after being dashed to the ground by falling trees a few weeks back, an urban version of rural barn-raising followed by socially-distanced wine on our deck.

In the meantime, Vicki, our mail carrier, had kindly walked the mail to us on our front porch or to the mailbox’s temporary location leaning against a Japanese maple that survived the earlier onslaught.

Photo by Cathie McBeth.

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

Love that Does Not Die

Early Sunday morning before Christmas I learned that my first long term partner had died. It took me by surprise and grabbed me in the gut. I wanted to talk to somebody about it, but I didn’t think anyone could understand. So I’m talking about it with you, the reader of this blog. Some of you have followed my life not only during part or all of  the nine years I’ve been writing this blog, but in the decades since my first book was published in 1988 and before, in the multiple columns I wrote for several periodicals and newsletters.

It was to that first book that I returned to remember “John,” one who saw me through some of my roughest times as a candidate for ordination in the Presbyterian Church. I first wrote of him recounting my first Presbyterian General Assembly in Baltimore in 1976 as a gay activist:

My loneliness grew from having completed the fulfilling ministry internship at the Christian Association [of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia] the week before. I had not only said goodbye to a number of friends at term’s end, but I had also broken off a relationship with a man whom I will call John, a name that means “The Lord is gracious.” … *

John, a graduate student, had sought me out for a relationship. His presence in the months that followed comforted me… While he respected and admired my commitment to the church, he was not similarly inclined, and this limited the depth of the relationship for me. On the other hand, though severely closeted, John at least was not inhibited by the church.

At the close of the spring semester he completed his studies and returned to his home in California, where he intended to become a millionaire in his chosen career, a priority I did not share. Unblinded by passion, we made a mutual and rational decision to bring our relationship to a close, since I would only briefly be in California before returning to New Haven for my final year of seminary.

But something happened as I drove him to the airport: he cried. I had never witnessed his poker face display emotion. I was moved, and fell in love with him for the first time. He was vulnerable, capable of an intimacy never before revealed. Then he was gone. Lost love frequently prompts me to write, so I wrote him a poem. I did not know it would rekindle our love, but I hoped that it would.  –Uncommon Calling, p 143.

I did not hear from him at the time, but later learned he carried that poem in his briefcase for a month before responding, favorably. I returned for a visit with my family in California before my final year at Yale Divinity School, and we renewed our relationship, despite the distance to come.

After graduation in May of 1977, I returned to California to accept a position as Director of the Lazarus Project, a first-of-its-kind ministry of a mainline denomination intended to reconcile the church and the LGBT community. Because I was “under care” as a candidate for ordination in a neighboring presbytery, I was required to seek its permission to “labor outside its bounds” to accept the call, permission denied me during an unusually well-attended summer meeting.

A church leader remarked to me afterward that the presbytery was so hostile to me, “They wouldn’t let you clerk in a grocery store!” I was devastated. … I phoned John from the meeting, barely able to speak, embarrassed by my church family’s treatment, crying that these who did not know me personally could be so angry with me. Stunned and hurting with me, John comforted me as best he could.  Uncommon Calling, p 166.

So that I could accept the position in the neighboring presbytery, a special meeting was called to consider my transfer as a candidate for ordination to that presbytery.

This time my lover, John, was present for moral support. Fears had been expressed that the presbytery might defeat my transfer out of sheer vindictiveness. After an hour’s debate in which hostile questions surfaced, such as whether I were repentant enough to be transferred, the vote was taken.

Because of voting irregularities at the earlier meeting, a written ballot was requested. The stated clerk, appointing neutral people to count ballots, pointed at John (not knowing his relationship to me) as a potential volunteer. “And you—who are you?” the clerk asked. John, caught off guard, stuttered, “I’m not a member of this church!”

“Then you ought to be fair,” came the clerk’s mischievous rejoinder, breaking the gathering’s tension with laughter. Later, John told me, in tabulating the ballots, he seemed to open all the negative ones!  Uncommon Calling, p 167.

I “won” that vote, given permission to transfer, but, though it had approved the mission and ministry of the Lazarus Project, the receiving presbytery delayed a vote on receiving me until after the denomination had decided on the question of ordaining openly gay and lesbian clergy the following year, in May of 1978. The denomination rejected such ordination and in June, the presbytery considered my transfer and rejected it. Unintentionally ironic, the presbytery then asked me to pray!

After the prayer I walked down the center aisle of the church to the narthex, followed by a few supporters, mostly women, who offered me tearful hugs outside the sanctuary. There my grateful eyes saw John. He had hurried from work to the evening meeting, hurried so fast he had been stopped for a speeding ticket, at which time, flustered by the delay, he had locked his keys in the car!

But he’d arrived in time for much of the debate, and he was there for me. He gave me a hug, and we drove home. Entering my apartment, the phone rang, an elder from a Baltimore church calling to hear how things had gone. I could hardly bear his sobs on the phone as I told him. Then came the task of informing my parents. I phoned them the news, and they too cried, hurt and angry that the church could reject me. 

And then John offered me the love the church denied.

Uncommon Calling, p 205-206.

I cry even now as I copy this from my first book, hurt by the rejection, moved by John’s love, grieved at John’s death. We remained friends for nearly two decades, but lost touch for a variety of reasons after my move to Atlanta, though I continued to pray for him and his partner. His love then, our love then, remain forever.

In loving memory of Tom Halliday.

*He puzzled why I would use a pseudonym for him in my book, and I explained because he was not openly gay then. He appeared again as Tom in my book The Final Deadline, pp 38-39, 42.

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Copyright © 1988 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.

Risking the Brokenness of the Body, Part 2

The chapel at Mount Calvary Retreat House overlooking Santa Barbara

When I was finishing my first book, Uncommon Calling, I took my typewriter and my manuscript to Mount Calvary for two weeks. Here I worked on the final chapter, recounting the painful defeat of efforts to obtain ordination of gays and lesbians in my denomination and describing the meaning of that defeat for me.

As I wrote, I found deeply buried grief and pain and anger resurrected within me. Also, the knowledge that I had yet to find a publisher for my book haunted me. I wondered if anyone even wanted to hear my story. I took my many feelings into my prayer life during my working retreat, praying for understanding, for resolution, and for healing from these overpowering and painful feelings.

I began to look more intently at the crucifixes on the walls in Mount Calvary, especially the one carved of wood in the chapel. Monasticism has deeply influenced my spiritual life, but I had formerly maintained a Reformed dislike for the contemplation of Christ’s suffering on the cross. Those who contemplate it are likely to duplicate it, it had seemed to me. And I offered hearty Protestant applause to those who avoided crosses and lived “Easter lives,” or, better yet, to those who took action that removed the crosses of others so that they might live out the resurrection.

Reviewing and editing my manuscript, my book seemed to me to be filled with crosses for myself and others. I had enjoyed my life, my ministry, and even the church. Why did the cross overshadow my joy? Perhaps I had avoided contemplating crucifixes because I had witnessed too many crucifixions of lesbian and gay Christians in the church.

During one morning’s Eucharist, as Christ’s body was broken and Christ’s blood was spilled again, I looked toward the figure of Jesus on the cross above the sacrament. What I witnessed at that moment may prove offensive to some: instead of simply seeing a limp and lifeless body, I saw One who was relaxed. The goodness of the crucifixion dawned on me. Jesus surrendered his will to God’s. He trusted God.

I thought of my own spiritual need to relax, trust God, to be loving rather than controlling. If God can make sense out of Jesus’ suffering and render him the victor, then gay Christians may take hope that our suffering is not in vain. We can fulfill our prophetic ministry, no matter what others may do to us. Our crucifixion is their last resort, not God’s.

Every closet and every church needs a crucifix. It’s time for lesbian and gay Christians to contemplate Christ’s suffering, for it reminds us that God suffers with us. It’s time for Protestants to get those bodies back on our pretty, empty crosses, for it will link us to the suffering of those who are being crucified today. It’s time for all Christians to take seriously that the church as the Body of Christ must continually risk the brokenness of that body to do what is right.

I believe that Jesus on the cross calls lesbian and gay Christians to risk the brokenness of our bodies, in order to fulfill a prophetic ministry with the church. I believe that Jesus on the cross calls the church to risk the brokenness of its body to fulfill its pastoral ministry with gays and lesbians. Our Christian faith assures us that, no matter how difficult it will be, fulfilling these calls leads to resurrection.

This and last week’s posts are excerpts from the chapter “Risking the Brokenness of the Body” from my 1990 book Come Home! Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians, published by Harper & Row, with added chapters in its 1998 Second Edition, published by Chi Rho Press. These excerpts fit well the themes of the present season of Lent. Today, of course, I would add transgender, intersex, and bisexual people.

West Hollywood Presbyterian Church on retreat at Mount Calvary Retreat House
(See if you can find me!)

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Copyright © 1990, 1998 and 2019 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved.

You Made My Life!

The tree outside my window.

If the autumn breeze outside my window continues, most of the golden and yellow leaves will fall from our tree in the backyard by the end of the morning I write this. I kind of know how it feels, as my red hair thins and greys.

I had quite another post planned and halfway written for today, but I received such an overwhelming response to my Facebook post about “officially” retiring last Thursday that I feel compelled to write of it. I wrote: 

I officially retired today as an MCC clergyperson, though I will continue writing my blog, “Progressive Christian Reflections.” I would be open to leaving retirement if I had another opportunity to serve in ministry. Thanks be to God for Metropolitan Community Churches’ belief in my ministry when my home denomination of the Presbyterian Church USA lacked faith. Still love Presbyterians, but I am grateful for MCC’s welcome. God is good. 

To be honest, nothing much will change. I’m just letting go of the “formal” side of ministry, the forms to be completed each year and the continuing education requirement and the annual clergy renewal fee. I am told I can still write my blog under MCC auspices, preach and celebrate sacraments, lead weddings and funerals, visit hospitals and prisons, and keep the “Rev” which is important to me, having spent most of my life without it. (My brother once commented that I seemed as busy in retirement as when I was gainfully employed!)

Having seen my name in print multiple times, the late writer and editor James Solheim once kidded me, “Has ‘M.Div.’ become part of your name now?” I explained I used it as my only credential, since I was not a “Rev.” And now I still use it because so many clergy use “Rev” who have no seminary degree. I also often identify myself as a graduate of Yale Divinity School simply to let people know I am a progressive Christian!

I joked with Wade last Thursday about our evening meal being my “retirement dinner,” and though there will be no such formality, I am grateful for my “legacy tour,” given opportunities to reflect on the meaning of my life and the LGBT Christian movement, including That All May Freely Serve’s “Rock Stars and Prophets” at Stony Point, New York; Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center’s “Celebration of LGBTQ Lives” in Pennsylvania; and the ecumenical “Rolling the Stone Away” gathering in St. Louis. These were reunions of saints I am grateful to know and to join in celebrating the progress we’ve made in our churches and our culture.

Yet I confess ambivalence about my diminishing role. I write this not to gain your sympathy, but rather to say I understand you who have experienced, are experiencing, and will experience something similar. I have taken comfort in the anonymous “Prayer of an Aging Jesuit” in a book edited by Michael Harter, SJ: Hearts on Fire: Praying with Jesuits. It reads in part: 

Help me to see that my community does me no wrong

when gradually it takes from me my duties;

when it no longer seems to seek my views.

Rid me of my pride in all the “wisdom” I have learned.

Rid me of the illusion that I am indispensable.  …

And please, Lord, let me still be useful,

contributing to the world my optimism,

adding my prayers to the joyful fervor and courage

of those who now take their turn at the helm. …

Let my leaving the field of action be simple and natural—

Like a glowing, cheerful sunset.

Lord, forgive me if only now in my tranquility

I begin to know how much you love me,

how much you’ve helped me.  …   

Many of you who have written or said kind words to me, either about my books or my blog or my ministry, have received the response, “You made my day!” I’ve written elsewhere that it’s a shame we often save our “eulogies” or “good words” to honor those who have passed. Wouldn’t it be better if we shared them now? I have been the beneficiary, like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, of, in a sense, attending my own memorial when I receive such words.

In the final conversation of “Rolling the Stone Away,” titled “Into the Third Millennium,” More Light Presbyterian executive director Alex McNeill told of shelving books in his home church library when he “stumbled upon Chris Glaser’s book. So I stole it and never returned it—sorry, future generations!  I read Uncommon Calling all the way through, took notes and wrote in my diary about it. It gave me a sense of possibilities, of not being alone.”

I was stunned, my eyes welling with tears. Alex then met lesbian evangelist Rev. Janie Spahr on one of her (what I call) “missionary journeys.” The effect of these encounters was transforming for Alex.

The effect of Alex’s words was transforming for me too. He not only “made my day,” he, in a sense, “made my life.”

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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.  

What the World Needs Now Is Grace (Sweet Grace)

Wildflowers in the Swiss Alps, 1973.

Oh, isn’t that sweet? Chris is getting sentimental in his latter years, you might be thinking, out of touch with reality, pining nostalgically for an ideal world of lovingkindness. Next he’ll be composing rhymes for Hallmark cards.

But grace is countercultural, haven’t you noticed? Watch, read, listen, or click the news and you will find much that is ungracious. As a cure and balance, I’ve been paying attention to stories that don’t make it above the fold of the newspaper (for those who remember such a reference), are not “trending” or on the bestseller list:

+A doctor walking twenty blocks through rain to see her 91-year-old Filipina-American patient hours before she died, and the daughters who cared for her.

+A book about Darwin’s understanding that beauty and artful behavior, not just natural selection, influenced the shaping of species. And females had much to say in the process!

+How three friends worked together to prove that upside-down jellyfish sleep, indicating a brain is not required for slumber. (I think not having a brain would help!)

+A columnist’s pilgrimage to the Vatican and a pope who cares about refugees, immigrants, climate change, war and peace.

+Admiration for an unsung Civil Rights activist from the 50s, Rev. Joseph De Laine, involved in Brown v Board of Education.

+Understanding how feminism has positively affected the future direction of philosophy.

+Artists who make a statement with their artwork shortly before they die.

I wanted to title my first book about seeking ordination in the church as an openly gay man, A Profile in Grace. I was tentative about it, though, because it could imply that grace was something I had achieved or was gifted on my own, when my intent was that I, like everyone else, live and love and work by God’s grace. Harper & Row, its first publisher, preferred a title that suggested the story line, and my friend Scott Rogo suggested Uncommon Calling.

But God’s grace is what called me out of the closet and into that uncommon calling, a lifelong ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community, and more broadly, between sexuality and spirituality.

Grace is tough and truthful and transformative and liberating. It requires strength and honesty and change and freedom. When I have encountered or beheld or experienced or witnessed God’s grace, I have become better, happier, more helpful, and more gracious. Grace begets grace.

We may all be profiles in grace. It is in the glory of God’s grace that each of us discovers who we are created and called to be.

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The Call to Celibacy

St. Bernard Abbey Church

Cullman, Alabama

 During a week's visit in 2014.

I distinguish between the “gift” of celibacy and the “call” to celibacy, which I will come to later in this post.

The gift of celibacy is a debatable proposition. Is someone “blessed” with that gift or simply avoiding intimate relationships? Is it a rejection of God’s gift of sexuality and more broadly sensuality and embodiment, or a prioritizing of one’s energy and involvement and commitment?

The occasion for these musings is my morning prayer time reading of the recently released Love, Henri: Letters on the Spiritual Life by Henri J. M. Nouwen. Alongside his deeply profound spiritual insights and occasional religious bromides are the idiosyncrasies of a confounding personality.

I am quick to say that almost anyone’s personality, especially my own, can be considered idiosyncratic and confounding. But reading my friend Henri’s letters reminded me of how frustrating a correspondent and friend he could be!

From the beginning of the book, I missed the context of the letters, being one-sided. This is understandable, given the problem of permissions to use his correspondents’ letters. Editorially this is handled as well as it can be by italicized introductions, yet the larger picture will only be gained by researchers who read both sides of the correspondence.

But I can immediately give examples by referring to the three letters written to me, only the first of which is introduced by both my first and last name, a compassionate letter about the scourge of AIDS in my community (Dec. 20, 1985; p 113).

The last letter is also a kindly letter, but one that refers to the “busyness” of my and my then partner’s life, him as a professional HIV/AIDS activist, and me as a writer, editor, and LGBT Christian activist. “Thanks for telling me about your busy lives. Please slow down a little so that you can be more creative,” he writes (Dec. 26, 1995; p 337).

This is sweet, and speaks really to his own needs, as is revealed in the letter. But the context is his repeated challenge to me to give details of our lives in my letters, and so I did just that, only to be unnecessarily chastened to slow down! But this is a minor and petty concern.

What really troubled me was his letter of Oct. 22, 1986 (p 137) toward the middle of the book in which I seem to be questioning his celibacy and using him as a “good connection” to read a manuscript, which happened to be my first book, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Man’s Struggle to Serve the Church (on a later edition given its original subtitle, A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church—the first publisher thought “gay Christian” would sound like an oxymoron at the time!).

I wrote two letters in response, but only mailed the second, less angry one, though both are in the Nouwen archives, to which I donated our correspondence at their request a few years ago.

Henri never helped me publish a manuscript, nor wrote any intros or blurbs for my books, nor did I ask him to do so.  I had sent him a copy of my manuscript because, as I say, he was always asking about my inner life, how I came to my choices, especially about affirming my sexuality in the context of my spirituality.

Subsequently I asked permission to dedicate one of my devotional books to him, as I felt he had contributed so much to my spiritual life, but he declined, describing the Vatican’s watchful eye, and only after his death was I bold enough to dedicate a later book to him, ironically (given his closeted ways), Coming Out as Sacrament.

Later he did give me advice about the content of my first book, suggesting readers would be more interested in my story than the story of the church dealing with homosexuality. I chose rather to tell both stories, as I considered my story only an instance of the church’s discernment process.

More troubling was the question of celibacy raised in his letter. I do believe there are those who truly have the gift of celibacy, and I support those who choose it as a spiritual discipline for a time or a lifetime. But my conversation with Henri around celibacy was about my Protestant view that professional ministers do best when their most intimate personal, emotional, even spiritual needs are met in marriage (and I include in this any intimate relationship) and family—otherwise they can sometimes look for that among the people they serve, crossing professional boundaries with personal needs, even demands.

For Roman Catholics, that’s partly why those with religious vocation congregate in religious communities, to meet those needs. But diocesan priests, of which Henri was one, can be at a loss for that kind of support. That’s why, I believe, Henri chose to spend the last ten years of his life in the L’Arche community in Toronto.

But there, the intensity documented in the book between Henri and his patient but straight friend Nathan is an instance of this. I had also experienced this intensity, and I kept my distance because that was not how I viewed our friendship. This is why Henri is distressed in the letter written to me in 1986.

Henri, so taken with his own needs in the letter, does not respond to the reason I had written to him, to tell him I had made the painful decision that it was time for me to resign as Director of the Lazarus Project, a ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community, a position I had held for nearly ten years. At the time, he was one of only three people I confided in about that decision.

We all stumble through life, we all overlook others’ needs in favor of our own from time to time, and I have wondered about my own inclination to write of this.  I loved and still love Henri, and am grateful for all that he was and is. I am still learning from him, as I am still learning from my parents and all my teachers, and I am grateful. And I am finding that, as I continue to read Love, Henri, his spiritual acumen deepened toward the end of his life.

In my view, Henri had less the “gift” of celibacy than the “call” to celibacy. He strongly believed in his calling as a Roman Catholic priest, and celibacy for that tradition comes with the territory, as tough as that can be.  He rightly bristled at the notion of a correspondent that he had not prayed hard enough for healing to “re-orient” his sexuality (Oct. 11, 1988; p 188)!

It would be good if the Roman church could adopt ancient Celtic practice or contemporary Orthodox and Protestant practices of allowing both marriage and celibacy in the professional ministry.

The Presbyterian Church, where I spent most of my professional life eking out a non-ordainable living, confused celibacy and chastity, demanding the latter of LGBT people. But chastity is “purity of purpose,” and that is a good spiritual discipline both within marriage and as a single person.

I have learned as much about myself, others, and God in my sexual community as I have learned in my spiritual community. I have needed both to learn compassion, that which ultimately unites us, I believe, to God.

Related Post: Henri’s Wound with a View

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Stranger in My Office

Gary Nixon & Mel White

Photo courtesy of Sean Hiller, Press Telegram.

I continue a series of personal reflections on the LGBT Christian movement that is posting each Wednesday of June, Pride Month, extended to the first week of July, given my post on Orlando. For those unfamiliar with this blog, be assured that I will return to other topics next month!

Yes, the title is a play on the title of Rev. Mel White’s “coming out” book, Stranger at the Gate, which changed so many lives and landed him on 60 Minutes.

But when he came into my church office claiming to ghostwrite for many of the major evangelical Christian celebrities, I have to admit my first thought was that here was another gay man with delusions of grandeur. Only they weren’t delusions.

He told me of his work almost confessionally, but he did not seek absolution so much as understanding and conversation as to his next steps. He believed his work moderated the tone of what each wrote about homosexuality. His subsequent memoir also explained that at least a couple of those who breathed fire upon LGBT people did so disingenuously, to raise money and their media profile. Several knew they had gay people on their staffs and valued their work.

I also learned the truth about at least some ghostwriting. An “author” might give Mel a few pages of notes about an intended book and let him run with it. Mel did the heavy-lifting, but the “author” got the glory and the bigger check. He did well, but not so well that when sent a first class airplane ticket he wouldn’t cash it in and fly economy to better support his family.

This was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. He and his partner Gary Nixon had visited West Hollywood Presbyterian Church, where I served from 1977 to 1987 as founding director of the Lazarus Project, a ministry of reconciliation between the church and the LGBT community. It was toward the end of my tenure that we met, and my then partner, George Lynch, and I became friends with Mel and Gary.

We liked hanging out with them because both included George in our conversations. George and I had endured the irritating habit of people addressing me rather than him, given my various roles, though he had more education in religion and a longer commitment to the Presbyterian Church! (He had been “outed” on his way to ordination in the “southern stream,” the Presbyterian Church, U.S., in which he had been born and raised.)

I have been blessed with partners who were always more computer savvy than me, and it was George and Mel I thanked in the acknowledgments for bringing me into the computer age with my second book, Come Home: Reclaiming Spirituality and Community as Gay Men and Lesbians. Mel lent me his old computer, which worked fine until the ninth chapter, which kept disappearing before my eyes, forcing me three times to write it again one long evening! The next day I went to a discount store and bought my first computer.

But I’m getting ahead of the story. I typed my first book, Uncommon Calling, on an IBM Selectric Mel had given me, and showed the manuscript to Henri Nouwen, who because of his closeted state could offer advice but no publishing connections, and to Mel White, who liked the book and gave it to his wife, Lyla, to read. She “loved” the book and took me to a fancy lunch to celebrate, as she was an acquisitions editor for Harper & Row’s religion division in San Francisco.

Lyla passed it on to them with a high recommendation for publishing it, but the manuscript was summarily returned to me rather than to her, not the protocol, by what Mel and Lyla surmised was a homophobic and closeted homosexual editor. Six months of trying other publishing houses made me so frustrated I submitted it again to Harper & Row, explaining it had been declined but asking it to be reconsidered, and got a favorable reply from editor Jan Johnson, who had not seen it when it came through the house earlier. She had just edited John Fortunato’s AIDS: The Spiritual Dilemma.

Mel made a huge splash when his own book appeared in 1994, becoming a media sensation, including the stint on 60 Minutes, which ended with the interviewer asking the inane “magic pill” question: “If there were a magic pill that you could take to make you straight, would you?”

After the interview, I called Mel in Texas to congratulate him. He asked me if I thought he had lost fellow LGBT activists in saying “yes” to the magic pill question.  I said absolutely not, that it was a stupid question anyway, and that he had replied honestly, which is all that is required of us.

A few years later, I was a guest in Mel and Gary’s home in Laguna, California, when both of us were speaking to an LGBT Christian conference in that seaside town. Mel received word that a huge shipment from India had arrived: everything Mahatma Gandhi had ever written. It was the beginning of Soul Force, the latest chapter in Mel White’s life.

Given that our finest times with Mel and Gary were often along the shore in Laguna, it pleases me to have a happy ending to this post. They now live in Long Beach near George Lynch and his spouse, Louie Tamantini, meeting for dinners and together attending last fall’s Pride celebration in Palm Springs. I only wish I could’ve joined them!

That All May Freely Serve recently made available a video of my personal account of the movement (11 minutes).

Earlier posts in this series:

Out of the Closets and into the Kingdom

Don’t You Want Me?

Guess Who Came to Dinner?

Love between Women

Nobody Doesn’t Like Janie Spahr

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!

Photo copyright © 2008 by Sean Hiller.

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

Communion of Sweet Rolls and Coffee

I first recorded the experience that follows in a letter to the late Bill Silver during the summer following our (with many others) successful lobbying efforts to persuade the 1976 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church to set up a task force on homosexuality and ordination. Bill and I had become great friends in the process.

This became my favorite passage in my first book, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church, which is not just my story but the story of many, as well as the story of the Presbyterian Church dealing with the issues involved. Published in 1988, the book had four printings with Harper & Row, and an updated 1996 version with photos had two printings through Westminster John Knox Press, totaling more than 20,000 copies.

It was Bill Silver’s candidacy for ordination that prompted New York City Presbytery’s request for “definitive guidance” on the ordination of “avowed, practicing homosexuals.” I too was an openly gay candidate for ordination in another presbytery, and had just completed a year’s internship in campus ministry, working with LGBT people for the Christian Association of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

In July 1976, before moving from Philadelphia, I took my car for servicing and, as usual, waited for it in a nearby café. During a prolonged breakfast, I wrote of my experience to that point as a gay minister. At this relatively early time in my ministry, I already found myself describing a feeling that a primal scream lay buried within me—a scream that expressed the cumulative pain and birth as described to me by hundreds of gay sisters and brothers. I felt like their vessel, a vessel of their feelings, their stories, their hopes and fears entrusted to my care; and I felt as if I would burst if I did not write out their feelings.

The café waitress was unusually gregarious and solicitous, equally generous with coffee and conversation. She picked up an ongoing conversation with a regular customer, evidently begun when he was last in, about methods to avoid crib death.  She had a new grandson to worry about.

Now they turned to discussing an article in the paper about women as priests: she said “Why not?” but he was opposed. She spoke her mind plainly, without fear, as one might in a friendship of trust, in which the parties agree to disagree. She had already learned my intended profession, so she shouted over to me, “Hey Rev, what do you think of women priests?” I said I agreed with her, that women should be priests.

She brought me more coffee as a reward and whispered about her other customer, “He don’t like women, that’s his problem. Two divorces and can’t find anyone to marry him. Not surprising!” She said this matter-of-factly, not meanly.

Even more compassionately she added, “Y’know, the other girls warned me he didn’t tip when I started to work here, but I decided to be just real friendly with him, take some time to talk with him. I figured he was lonely. That’s what’s wrong with most people today—just plain lonely, just need somebody to talk to. Well, I’ve worked him up to a 50 cent tip! D’you know, he’s a shrink? People pay to talk to him, and he comes in and talks to me for free! Ain’t it funny?” The coffee fell a little over the brim of my full cup.

Noticing I was writing, and with my left hand, she exclaimed, “I was left-handed too, growing up. But the nuns made me write with my right hand. I’m sure that’s why I’ve been a nervous person ever since! When my kids were old enough to go to school, I went down and told those nuns that if any of them were left-handed, to leave ‘em be. I wasn’t gonna let the same thing happen to my kids as happened to me! Honestly, I think you got to be a genius to be left-handed in a right-handed world.” With that she returned to her post behind the counter.

I was stunned. I believed she was speaking about much more than which hand I wrote with. I looked down at what I had written about others who had been forced “to write with their right hand” in a sense, the anxiety and suffering church and society’s coercion had caused countless gay people. I believe the waitress intuited far more about me than I had disclosed.

I felt deeply moved by her unqualified affirmation. I smiled in gratitude toward this minister who dispensed wisdom and insight as readily as coffee and sweet rolls. Her counter was at once pulpit and communion table, an integration of word and sacrament. The church needed ministers like her. The commonwealth of God had come near.

Copyright © 1988 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit distribution with attribution of author and book title. Other rights reserved.

For more on the LGBT movement in five mainstream Protestant denominations, check out R. W. Holmen’s comprehensive Queer Clergy: A History of Gay and Lesbian Ministry in American Protestantism. For Holmen’s account of some of my personal involvement, please click here.

Those concerned for Israelis and Palestinians in the current crisis might want to read my earlier post: Peace in Jerusalem. Despite what I wrote then, I have resumed following Israel and Palestine’s struggles with dismay and grief.

On today’s anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Saturday’s anniversary of Nagasaki, you may want to read my post: Acts of God and Acts of War.

Please make a tax-deductible donation to my blog ministry by clicking here. Thank you!

Progressive Christian Reflections is an unfunded 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. 

Wounded Healers

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

A month or so ago on the internet, I happened onto a recent review of my first book, Uncommon Calling: A Gay Christian’s Struggle to Serve the Church. While giving credit to my activism of forty years, the review took me to task for being “self-obsessed” and, while insisting homophobic people change their ways, failing to confess things I needed to change in myself other than my shame and lack of pride.

I understand that people do not read as carefully as they used to, but the book listing under the genre “biography” as well as the subtitle should warn readers that the book is intended to be autobiographical. I completed it 25 years ago this summer, and it came as a result of being asked to tell my story so many times that I thought I’d save everyone’s time and trouble by telling it in print.

It appeared at a time in the LGBT movement when many of us thought personal narrative was the best way to overcome heterosexism. And I was persuaded by Carl Roger’s dictum that "what is most personal is most universal," as practiced by my spiritual mentor Henri J. M. Nouwen. Nouwen believed the minister (every Christian) was, according to a rabbinic story, the wounded healer who unbinds and binds her or his wounds one at a time, so as to be ready to help others unbind and bind theirs. It could be said that each of his books on the spiritual life revealed some personal wound being dressed and addressed in the hopes of helping others with similar wounds. 

Henri once wrote that the “J. M.” in the middle of his name could stand for “Just Me.” He believed that the minister (again, every Christian) was called to live a life offered to others. The autobiography or memoir is said to have first appeared in The Confessions of Saint Augustine, and spiritual autobiography has long had a place as a means of doing theology. I lead workshops and retreats on spiritual autobiographical writing, encouraging participants to tell their stories.

But I also wanted to tell the story of one denomination (the Presbyterians) struggling with the issue of openly gay and lesbian Christians in their pews and pulpits. Recently preparing my letters from Henri for donation to his archives, I ran across his advice on an earlier version of the manuscript that I focus on myself rather than the church—that that’s what readers would want. I chose to tell both stories, because for me, I was only an example of what LGBT people were experiencing in every denomination. I dedicated the book “To gays and lesbians who struggle to keep faith,” by which I meant religious faith as well as faith in ourselves. The most frequent response I’ve gotten to the book is, “You told my story,” which is exactly why I wrote it.

As to the dismissive tone in the review about my need for conversion from shame to appropriate pride: most LGBT Christians of the era and even today will tell you that this was the most important transformation we had to make. “Out of the Closets and Into the Kingdom” was my final paper for professor Letty Russell’s Liberation Theology course.  It meant giving up self-denigrating, LGBT-denigrating, even suicidal behaviors to embrace who we are as beloved children of God, citizens of God’s commonwealth.

Throughout the book, I explain that homophobia is something we all are working on, gay and straight alike. And when I talk about the need for the church to change, I tried to put it in “we” language, as I am part of that church and its needed reformation. That I didn’t feel the need to use the book as a private little confessional was to save the reader from “too much information,” as well as to reinforce the purpose of the book: to gain acceptance for LGBT people who should not be rejected because we also sin. Toward the end of the book, I wrote, “How can I reject the church for a lack of integrity when I also struggle to more fully realize this goal? … I’ve abandoned perfection as a spiritually desirable goal. How can I then require perfection of the church?”

I am not providing the link to the review because I understand that snarky commentary is used to draw people to blogs. I notice this when I post something edgy on this blog, and I try to avoid playing to this. The comments on the review reinforced this notion—an internet lynch mob was forming, as one wrote that I must be a young person, part of the “me” generation, and another, noticing my longevity in the movement, said I was probably one of those self-absorbed boomers of the 60s. Perhaps that’s most disturbing of all, that people who have not read the book or any of my work feel entitled to form an opinion about it.

Nouwen, whose reputation grew from his early book, The Wounded Healer, came toward the end of his life to understand how people can hook us in our wounds, as he describes in The Inner Voice of Love: “People will constantly try to hook your wounded self. They will point out your needs, your character defects, your limitations and sins. That is how they attempt to dismiss what God, through you, is saying to them.”

Consider me hooked. But don’t dismiss what we might learn from all this.

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Chris will be leading a seminar, Henri Nouwen: The Wounded Healer, February 28-March 3, 2013 for the Spiritual Formation Program of Columbia Theological Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia. The public is welcome!

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