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.  

Opening Pandora's Box - Part One

With Ginny and Davie Davidson at the 1978 San Diego General Assembly. 

Virginia West Davidson ably chaired the Presbyterian 

Task Force on Homosexuality and Ordination (1976-1978).*

In honor of Pride month, this is the second of four posts adapted from a Meekhof Lecture I gave at Newport Presbyterian Church in Bellevue (WA), January 11, 2014, regarding the meaning of the LGBT movement for the broader church.

When I served as the only openly gay member of the former United Presbyterian Church’s Task Force on Homosexuality and Ordination in the late 1970s, many people testifying during our four regional hearings expressed their fear of homosexuality by appealing to the example of a Greek myth. They were afraid that homosexuality would “open a Pandora’s box.”

You might remember the Pandora of Greek mythology who opened a jar, which Erasmus mistakenly translated later in Latin as “box.” She opened the jar or box simply out of curiosity, unwittingly unleashing all the evils and ills of the world.

You could say it’s another misogynistic blaming of a woman for all of our troubles, like what happened to Eve when she ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Pandora was also considered the first woman in Greek mythology. What is forgotten in the popularization of this myth is that the jar also contained Hope, and Hope did not escape but was preserved in that jar.

So what were the evils and ills and demons that came out of the particular Pandora ’s Box of homosexuality? In the view of many at the time, their name is Legion, but I will round them to eight in number, as eight on its side represents infinity!

Rather than describe them as demons, evils, or ills, I prefer to refer to them as challenges the church faced. In Part One of “Opening Pandora’s Box” I list four of these; in Part Two, the remaining four. The final post will reflect on the Hope for the church’s reformation that remains in Pandora’s jar.

Our first challenge as a church was xenophobia. That’s the umbrella concern that plagues most of us: fear of the stranger. In Christian tradition, the stranger is the very person we are to greet, to welcome, to offer hospitality, to visit, to provide for, as in “the least of these.”

“All are welcome” has become the church’s marketing catch phrase, but in a workshop on church inclusiveness, those attending were able to come up with a list of more than 40 categories of persons they would prefer not to have sitting next to them in the pew!

Our second challenge as a church was inertia, the tendency of an object following a certain trajectory to continue moving in that direction or, if not moving, to remain at that point. A huge amount of energy must be expended to change an object’s course or position, what our tradition calls metanoia, repentance, an about face, a transformation, a Pentecost, a Reformation.

The church had difficulty even imagining ourselves wrong when it came to homosexuality, let alone change our collective mind.

 

Our third challenge was what theologian Carter Heyward named erotophobia. Despite the body-affirming myths of creation, incarnation, and resurrection, historic and contemporary Christianity has had “issues” with the body, with sensuality, with sexuality, with our earthliness.

Can sexuality be a good created by God for pleasure and relationship, or must it always be tethered to procreation and marriage between a man and a woman? Could we even talk about sexuality within the church—isn’t sexuality in opposition to spirituality?

When a possible change to the denomination’s Book of Order would have added the line “Governing bodies may ordain church officers regardless of sexual orientation,” my then presbytery voted a tie—and I couldn’t help but see God’s sense of humor when that tie was 69 to 69.

But the moderator of the meeting felt compelled to cast a tie-breaking vote, and after showing much discomfort, voted against the amendment because, he said revealingly, of three little letters at its heart: S-E-X!

Our fourth challenge, particularly for those of us who were Calvinists, was pleasure. Can pleasure itself be a good created by God for our delight? I wanted to title my first book of meditations “Biblical Pleasures,” because it contained reflections on biblical quotes. But the very term “pleasure” was considered spiritually suspect.

In a book of prayers entitled Coming Out to God, I wrote of prayer-making as pleasurable, and before publication I was asked to justify this notion, as apparently “pleasure” is automatically associated with Hedonism, the pursuit of pleasure at all costs, and associated with the body—which is seen somehow in opposition to the spirit. 

Body theologian James B. Nelson scandalized the church by declaring that “pleasure is the strongest argument for the existence of God.” In the first congregation I served after seminary there was a church member, a gay chef, who, when offering grace before a meal, would give thanks to God for putting nerve endings in all the right places!

Each of these alone—xenophobia, inertia, erotophobia, and suspicion of pleasure—was barrier enough to prevent the welcome of LGBT Christians in the church, yet there are four others to be described in the next post.

The hope that remains in Pandora’s Box is that each of these challenges will contribute to the reformation of the church.

*I searched through hundreds of my photos but failed to find one I have of the task force that demonstrates it was multi-racial, gender-balanced, and of a variety of ages.

I urge you to make a donation to and/or attend these once-in-a-lifetime ingatherings of LGBT saints and allies:

Rolling the Stone Away

Oct 31-Nov 2, 2017

St. Louis Airport Marriott

40th Celebration of LGBTQ Lives at Kirkridge

Sept 8-10, 2017

Kirkridge Retreat & Study Center

The LGBT Religious Archives Network updated my bio on its site earlier this year:

https://www.lgbtran.org/Profile.aspx?ID=4

To 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.  

Saturday Night Massacre

Our dog chewed on Henri's words.

Recent events in the United States regarding President Trump’s firing of F.B.I. Director James Comey have prompted comparisons to the so-called “Saturday night massacre” in the fall of 1973, when then-President Nixon ordered the firing of the special prosecutor of the Watergate affair, prompting the resignation of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general rather than comply. A newly-appointed acting attorney general then fired Archibald Cox.

That weekend I was taking a personal retreat at Mercy Center along the Long Island Sound. One of the Sisters of Mercy that ran the place confided to me that she thought the only thing left for Nixon to do was commit suicide.

I was there because I had just arranged and hosted the first openly gay speaker at Yale Divinity School: the Rev. Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Churches. It was the most “out” thing I had done as I became the first openly gay activist on the campus.

The student body president had fought to prevent Troy’s appearance, telling me that “It’s time we remembered that most of the student body here are white, male, and straight,” apparently also miffed that women and racial minorities were getting attention.

I was warned by others that attendance at the lecture would be slight; as it happened, the large Common Room was packed. Henri Nouwen was the only faculty member I could identify at the gathering, and, as I recall, he asked the most penetrating question. Rev. Perry seemed to please his audience with his genuine faith and passion, as well as his sense of humor.

My book, Uncommon Calling, described my feelings arranging the visit as being like birth pains, and I was exhausted. As a student in Henri’s course (whose lectures became the book Reaching Out), we had been encouraged to take personal retreats, and so I opted for one that weekend at Mercy Center. That fall had been spectacularly colorful in New England: bright blue skies contrasted with the vivid autumn colors of the leaves just beginning to descend from the trees. I could hear the gentle lapping of the Sound on the shore.

It happened that Henri was also spending the weekend there, preparing a sermon, one of a series of three for the university’s Battell Chapel. He gave me the manuscript and asked me to take a look at it, offering feedback. I was thrilled to do so. Henri frequently sought advice from others on his writings, including his students.

When we met to discuss the sermon, we were outside, and as I recall, sitting on big boulders, but this could be my memory playing tricks on me. A comment I made to Henri found its way into what became the book, Out of Solitude: 

A student from California who had to leave many of his good friends behind to come to school at the faraway east coast recently said to me: “It was hard to depart; but if the good-bye is not painful, the hello cannot be joyful either.” And so his sadness of September became his joy at Christmas time. 

Tears are in my eyes as I write this sentence, because to quote the book accurately, I have opened my mother’s copy and saw for the first time that she had written beside the text, “Chris was the student.”

Quite a different “Saturday night massacre” occurred when our dog Calvin ate much of my copy of the book, apparently jealous I was spending so much time with Henri’s books as I prepared my first retreat on his life and writings after his death in 1996.

It was in our conversation about the sermon that I asked Henri what he thought of Troy’s talk. Hesitant to be critical, he finally said that he was looking for something more—how Troy’s spirituality strengthened his resolve to affirm his sexuality. It didn't occur to me that Henri’s wish for more might be personal.

But it did tell me that my own spirituality had to “come out” alongside my sexuality, and that is why my talks to advance the inclusion of LGBT people over the past 40+ years have always included spiritual dimensions. I’ve gone so far as to write that spirituality is the final frontier of intimacy, and that the failure of the church to be inclusive of LGBT people was a spiritual rather than sexual problem.

Beginning next Wednesday, I will be offering four posts during Pride month (June) speculating on what the LGBT movement in the church meant, for God’s sake!

I’ve joked that if the church had not been so concerned with my sexuality, it might have been more troubled (or perhaps more blessed) by my interest in progressive theology and contemplative spirituality!  I sometimes feel as if I’m trying to make up for lost time writing this blog.

It is said that at the height (or depth) of the Watergate affair, Nixon prevailed on Henry Kissinger to kneel with him in prayer. Such a humbling posture could make for better leaders as well as better activists.

View from Mercy Center, October 1973.

To 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.