Saturday, February 15, 2014

Wingnuts and wings of LGBTQ faith

Isaiah 52:7-10


          The Koch brothers will spend untold millions, if not billions, to promote their own agenda. Right wing religious nutjobs will make every attempt to make their beliefs the law of the land and ensure the rights of countless people who do not agree are negated and taken away. This is the energy, money and beliefs of far too many today.

           Pope Francis has taken the world by storm. While he satisfies neither left nor right (in Catholicism) he speaks basic truths and holiness that touches millions.  Simplicity, love, not beholden to ancient traditions at the expense of human love, he has a warmth that one can imagine Jesus Christ had as he walked among the crowds and preached.

               This week I will attend a monthly meeting on gay spirituality, Queer Eye for Contemporary Christianity. The discussion will be on the diversity of LGBTQ spirituality in contemporary Christianity.  As a group in society who have survived, or barely survived on the fringes and in the shadows and who have heard the message that God hates us, it is a grand opportunity to explore the opposite. The LGBTQ community is not only loved , but abundantly loved and specifically loved by God.  The love we seek and share is pure and often unfettered by some of the stigma and rules that have cursed many other believers. Rules and rubrics, self doubt and an air of guilt are part and portion of many a Christian experience. Love and sex especially has a stigma and is steeped in sin if you are straight. If you are gay, you can freely enjoy the joys of sex and loving that God created within us. Sexuality is an integral part of our being.  Integrating our sexuality and spirituality is a call back to the simplicity of God's message. The integration is properly more a putting back together of what should never have been separated.

              In our sexual freedom and in our discovery of how much we are truly loved by God, we have the distinct joy of starting anew. We can take the message of Christian love at it's basics and move forward to become holier and and more whole and complete people. We can focus less on being more successful in the worlds eyes and focus on the queer eye, an eye of love, spirituality and the extreme joy of being happy in our own skin just as God made us. From there will come peace, healing, restoration of the pure message of Christ. Our lives will be stories of a people truly blessed. I know mine is.

                      

How beautiful upon the mountains
   are the feet of the messenger who announces peace,
who brings good news,
   who announces salvation,
   who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns.’
Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
   together they sing for joy;
for in plain sight they see
   the return of the Lord to Zion. 
Break forth together into singing,
   you ruins of Jerusalem;
for the Lord has comforted his people,
   he has redeemed Jerusalem.
The Lord has bared his holy arm
   before the eyes of all the nations;
and all the ends of the earth shall see
   the salvation of our God. 

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