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!

You may support this blog by clicking here. Please scroll down to the donate link below its description. Thank you!

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

Transgender Tweet

I had another post halfway prepared for today, but an image came to mind I could not dismiss in the face of President Trump’s tweet on banning transgender people in the United States military, a means of communication that seemed to trivialize both the armed services as well as transgender people.

Many years ago I was attending a men’s retreat led by Franciscan author Richard Rohr on the campgrounds of Ghost Ranch in New Mexico.  Rohr’s theme was the need for men to be initiated into manhood to avoid our sometimes loutish and confused and even violent behavior as adults.

If, as in some other cultures, men were taught how to be men through ritual and education from their elders, guidance about what it means to be a man could diminish the bluster, bullying, and aggressive ways that men today use to claim our manhood. For Rohr and the hundreds of men gathered from all parts of the world, it’s never too late for such initiation.

Richard attracts men who are justice-oriented and seeking to deepen their Christian spirituality. As a gay man, I found them either non-homophobic or self-consciously working on their homophobia and heterosexism, as well as their sexism. A few were gay themselves.

So when one young man followed me out of the initial gathering at the retreat, wanting to talk, I assumed I was going to hear yet another story of a gay Christian trying to live his faith and his identity. We had gone around in that first meeting introducing ourselves, and I had mentioned my ministry as a gay Christian.

Instead, here in the midst of a gathering of men learning to be men, and Christian men, he explained that he believed he was transgender and hoped to talk with me about it. I can still picture his face, modest and almost apologetic in asking my time and counsel.  I was moved by his situation, training for Catholic priesthood, and hope that he had, as I like to pray, “the best possible outcome.”

The truth is, in my wide travels as a gay Christian activist, I have met many more self-identified transgender people than bisexual people—a surprise to me, because I have always assumed there are many more bisexual people along the sexuality continuum than there are gays and lesbians.  Beyond just listening to their stories and showing my support, I have been able to suggest transgender resources and mentors.

I once wrote a kind of initiation rite for LGBT Christians entitled “Coming Out: A Witness to the Resurrection.” Males are not alone in needing a ritual to affirm their identities.

Some years earlier, at an LGBT retreat, also at Ghost Ranch, one retreatant told me the story of coming upon a garbage can on the grounds emitting wild sounds. He almost did nothing, so afraid of what might jump out if he were to look inside. As it turned out, he was able to free a frenzied squirrel that had fallen into the can and could not escape without help.

What a metaphor for coming out! Someone inside us may feel trapped by the confines of our bodies or our cultures or our faith communities. We may emit wild noises in our panic to be who we are; others may be afraid to come near to help.

Tweets coming from the White House are scary and mean, demeaning and hateful. The person inside might have benefited from an initiation rite that taught him that being a man does not need to entail aggression, brutality, greed, lust, winning at any cost—or even winning.

Right now, though, he sounds like a squirrel raging in his own garbage.

Related post: An Extraordinary Friendship

Helpful curriculum for congregations: Gender Identity and Our Faith Communities

The Coming Out ritual is in chapter seven of Coming Out as Sacrament.

Please 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.