Be who you are

Acts 19:11-20

         Everything was going along so well. After decades of prayer, pleadings for wholeness and peace,  joy in service, love of family, I was being ordained. Not something I had particularly aspired to. In fact, some parts of service I actually approached with a bit of fear. But I felt the calling and I would be loath to turn my back on God who has been so good to me. God had been there for all the great moments of my life and God had been there with me for the hardest times as well.

          A funny thing happened though. Those things that I approached with trepidation? They brought great joy. I was clearly called to service. Someone who really knew me once said that Ordination was merely a recognition of who I am, how I lived my life and the service I had offered for so many years. Not a reward but recognition, a confirmation.

           Ironically, the life of service and love that I was called to was in direct conflict with something else that was just as intimate a part of me as service. It need not be a conflict but according to the Church which was so basic a part of me since my youth, it was. I was gay and the internal conflict after my ordination roiled in me in a way I was unfamiliar with. I was unable to calm the conflict with prayer and I was loath to figure out what was at the root of such anxiety and confusion.  If the passage for today has any correlation to what I am writing, this is the general area where I run out naked and wounded. There was no malice in my offer to serve, it truly is foundational to me. My love of God and recognition of his love for me is etched in my soul. Yet, the conflict within me seemed to grow like a tsunami. A friend suggested therapy was clearly what was needed and my Spiritual director agreed and had several recommendations. I hold my therapist in very high regard.

          Not unlike spiritual direction,  therapy is something that holds value only if you are an active and honest participant. The journey was long and difficult. What emerged from the cocoon was not a naked and wounded player of religion like the seven sons of Sceva.  I emerged a whole person. I emerged more integrated than I had ever been before. I willingly left the church in respect for their rules and their beliefs all the while knowing the respect and love of God in being able to finally say after 50 years that I was gay, gay, gay, gay, gay. Hindsight makes me laugh that I did not know this. I also am amused that no one else did either. I suppose it is irrelevant.  I left 'the house' not naked and wounded but clothed in the love of God and far less wounded than I had ever been.  If I am wounded at all, it is the betrayal of the inability to integrate the holiness of my sexuality and the service that the Roman Catholic church offers. Others seem to do it but only with a bifurcated personality and a lack of self respect for who they really are. Many do it it, I could not. I have that self respect and I know that God loves me as I am.

          The lessen for today is no matter how long, how hard it may be to acknowledge who you are you must do so. Many things in life can obscure your true path, your true identity, but if you fail to be who you are even in the face of God, perhaps especially in the face of God, you will wind up running naked and wounded from wherever you are and whomever you are. God loves you more than anyone else possibly could and God loves you as you are. As He (She) created you. Respect that.

God did extraordinary miracles through Paul, so that when the handkerchiefs or aprons that had touched his skin were brought to the sick, their diseases left them, and the evil spirits came out of them. Then some itinerant Jewish exorcists tried to use the name of the Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying, ‘I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims.’ Seven sons of a Jewish high priest named Sceva were doing this. But the evil spirit said to them in reply, ‘Jesus I know, and Paul I know; but who are you?’ Then the man with the evil spirit leapt on them, mastered them all, and so overpowered them that they fled out of the house naked and wounded. When this became known to all residents of Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, everyone was awestruck; and the name of the Lord Jesus was praised. Also many of those who became believers confessed and disclosed their practices. A number of those who practised magic collected their books and burned them publicly; when the value of these books was calculated, it was found to come to fifty thousand silver coins. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.