On being ostracized

       For whatever reason the passage today has my mind returning to the fact that I left the Roman Church. As Clergy I had my 'license' to preach suspended and was subsequently laicized.  I was divorced and subsequently, the marriage was annulled.  I did all of this cooperatively if not simply passively and left the church explicitly because I could not maintain a relationship with a church of God that doctrinally labelled people like myself as "intrinsically disordered". So I am out in several senses of the word. I do know many who share far less common doctrinal beliefs than I do, are gay and still remain within the church.  

      I have had a lifelong fascination and penchant for those who are ostracized or 'out' of the mainstream. From my elderly neighbor with Cerebral Palsy to the beautiful mixed racial community that I grew up in. I was quite the q-ball as the best man at my Haitian best friends' wedding.  This fascination may have been because there was some innate sense within myself that I too was an outsider. It took me until the age of 50 until I realized I am gay. Outsider, indeed.  I have often been fascinated by the concept of being ostracized. It can take many forms of course but it is based somewhat on the notion that even though one is being 'kicked out' there is still an amount of honour or respect so that the person getting the boot will comply. If you take away a person's drivers license for DWI, what is really restraining the person from physically getting in a car and driving again? How many stories have you heard of a horrific accident only to find out that the person had their license revoked 17 times or 30 times? 

         Turning back to religion, what prevents a divorced and remarried Catholic from entering church, worshiping and presenting themselves at the Communion line?  There is no tell tale mark on their head for the Priest to note and then refuse the Sacrament is there?  I know of divorced and remarried people who profess to be Roman Catholic and are active participants in their parish.  No one needs to know facts when you move in or start arriving for Mass. A Priest I know once told me about 'unspoken knowns'.  The church sort of knows your gay but you are not promiscuous or in their face so it is ignored. Still, the church labels those people as intrinsically disordered. For me there is a matter of self respect and dignity for the person God created me to be.  There is a twisted bifurcation that allows a person to worship as second rate while also somehow accepting the fact that God herself created them as 'top shelf'. 

       These are all musings of course for people that seem to accept a half hearted if not condemned  status. People who are on the outside while they are in. I don't put DWI in the same category as faithful or gay people who are created that way in dignity and diversity by God.  I am merely looking at people who are ostracized and marginalized and ask, why?  How do we move forward if not in love and acceptance?  If there is any question we have about nature, the nature of things or contradictory Scripture passages, how do we move forward except in love?  Love is not doctrinal. Love is not  categorized. Love is full, inclusive and has wide, open arms. That is the love of God. That is what we are aiming for in life.

Luke 19:41-48

 As he came near and saw the city, he wept over it, saying, ‘If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.’

 Then he entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling things there; and he said, ‘It is written,
“My house shall be a house of prayer”;
   but you have made it a den of robbers.’

 Every day he was teaching in the temple. The chief priests, the scribes, and the leaders of the people kept looking for a way to kill him; but they did not find anything they could do, for all the people were spellbound by what they heard.