Simply
writing the title makes me feel over-exposed.
Just
now walking our dog, Hobbes, I found myself contemplating my lifetime need for
God.
I
felt extremely lonely as a child. Hard to believe in a loving household of a family
of five with pets living in a small tract house with a single bathroom, sharing
a bedroom with my brother. And we were part of a loving church and Christian
school which shared our beliefs, values, and hopes. And I had so many friends
in those places and later, high school and college.
But
I had a secret about who I was so terrible I might as well have been abandoned
alone on a lifeless asteroid, with little hope for rescue.
I
was homosexual.
No
“gay” then, no “same-gender loving people.” “Queer” and “faggot” and “dyke” and
“fairy” were not words used with pride as they are by some today reclaiming
them from those who use them pejoratively. “Homophile” was in use in the 1950s,
but not in the circles I travelled.
At
first, I thought I was the only one—at the time, a common experience among “my
kind.”
Then,
my “role models” were societal stereotypes and caricatures, sick and unhealthy,
condemned and excommunicated.
On
this morning’s walk, I found myself reviewing all the clues in my writings to my
extreme loneliness. My understanding of my childhood baptism as a way of
belonging to God and Jesus and my family forever. The occasional days when I
was too lonely and depressed to go to school. My compassion for others who felt
alone. The passion with which, as part of my high school choir, I sung our
beloved principal’s favorite song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” My clinging to a college “best friend” and
later, my first boyfriend. In a brief round of therapy in seminary, the
identification of my “separation anxiety.” My most common “sexual” fantasy:
waking up with a lifelong partner. My
appreciation of Alfred North Whitehead’s quote, “Religion is what the
individual does with his own solitariness.” My gratitude for Henri Nouwen’s
teaching how the spiritual life transforms loneliness into creative solitude.
My receptiveness to process theologian Daniel Day William’s insight that we are
less afraid of not being than we are
of not belonging.
Sitting
in a car with a close lifelong friend from childhood whose former partner was
clearly dying of AIDS in the hospital before us, I asked why he hadn’t come out
to me—a gay activist by then—earlier. “What difference would it have made?” he
responded. “I would have felt less alone,” I answered. “You would have felt
less alone,” I added.
I
explained in my first book, Uncommon Calling, that as a youth, afraid of being condemned by either a minister or
a therapist, God became my minister and therapist, with whom I had hours-long
conversations. That marked the beginning of my interest in the contemplative
life. Today I might describe the relationship as anamchara, “soul friend.”
My
fear writing about this now is that some might write off God, or at least my
own experience of God, as some sort of “imaginary friend” I’ve created to get
me through rough times.
But
aren’t those times that we exclaim “Please be with me, God!” the most authentic
and least pretentious prayers? Reaching out to that which is greater, higher,
deeper, and more complete makes sense as we realize our humble circumstances in
this vast universe.
And
it isn’t as if I did this alone. Thanks be to God for those in the Bible and in
the church who discerned and learned, taught and practiced their faith, often
in dire circumstances, and passed it along to all of us.
Now
I know I’ve never walked alone.
Today’s post also
appears on Believe Out Loud.
This Sunday, March 23, I will
be speaking during the 11 a.m. worship of Ormewood Park Presbyterian Church
here in Atlanta, imagining what a “lost gospel” from the Samaritan woman at the
well might be like. I will also speak there on Easter Sunday, April 20, and Sunday, May 18.
Each Wednesday of Lent, I am
providing links for the following six days, should you wish to use this blog as
a Lenten resource for reflection.
Thursday:
Interrupted Lives
Friday: Wear Flowers in Your Hair
Saturday: Spiritual Picassos
Sunday: On the Threshold of the Church
Monday: Thanking God Anyway
Tuesday: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Progressive Christian
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