The Feast Day of Saint Paulette

     I can't speak for anyone else but I go through life with a sense of wonderment. The twists and turns of life, what brings you to a certain spot, how our lives intertwine all seem a mystery to me. I have often noted how blessed I am at how things have worked out, appreciating the fine details of my life. What role has kismet played? Kharma? Luck? Blessed by God? I can see myself as if I were a child, filled with awe and amazement at life and how it unfolds for us.

      Yesterday I went to a service for the first feast day of Saint Paulette.  Paulette was an Episcopal Priest and the wife of a fine gentleman that I had the pleasure of working with for many years. Here I found myself at this service, on what now seemed to be our very small island because it turns out I knew so many people in the church. Many had played roles in my own life. In fact, Mother Paulette herself had not only attended my Ordination celebration but was quite active in the LGBT community in the those early years of the so called "gay plague" and long before it was fashionable or acceptable for a church person to be ministering to people with AIDS.  I would be remiss not to note though, AIDS seems exactly the kind of disease and the LGBTQ community is exactly the kind of people I know Jesus would reach out to and minister to but I digress.

        In the sermon offered by an old friend of Paulette's, it was noted how beautiful she was as an individual. It was noted that it was not true that she could walk on water. Paulette's talents, generosity and journey were all noted in detail as were some of her faults lets say or perhaps more annoying gifts would be a better way to put it.

          I came away really knowing who Saint Paulette was, a human fully alive. I knew I had been blessed in knowing her. I came away with that sense of awe again in how her life had intertwined with mine. Paulette's life had touched so many people that had touched me as well. I got to thinking how her love had perhaps been doing double duty, affecting my life in ways I never had known or realized. How blessed am I?  How blessed are we all.

        As with many things in life, I had gone to this celebration of Paulette for one reason, to support a man that I worked with and his family. I came away with that same old sense of awe and an ever growing sense of thankfulness.  I came away gifted in a wholly unexpected way.

        I give pause to think of Frank Capra's, It's a Wonderful Life and hum A Different Corner with George Michael ringing in my head.  We go through life so blind and trying to control all the things that happen to us. We plan, God laughs my mother-in-law would say. How often do we really let go and let life unfold before us? How often do we realize the intense and awesome mystery of life that God lays out before us, meeting our one true love, offering us gifts that we never would have received had we not been at a given place at a given time.

        I think all the goodness and gifts of our life are not accidents, not kismet, not kharma or even good luck. There are all examples of God reaching out to us through each other. Can we open our eye's to see these gifts as they unfold before us? When we accept God's love and share that love, fully alive, we are instruments of God, we are clay in her hands. In so doing we become saints like Paulette who so willingly and thoroughly offered her whole being to God. Paulette is a Saint and yesterday was her feast day.

   

Real gay pride

     As a gay man who tries to integrate and celebrate my life with God and Holy Scripture, I am keenly aware of the 'clobber passages' used as weapons and judgments against me and my community. I heard a new one recently, at least to me, about what is so wrong with "those gays". Pride. Perhaps quoting Proverbs (11:2; 16:15) or James 4:10.

     I could easily point in a timely fashion to Donald Trump who is currently at the height of his self inflating, ego centric campaign to crown himself kingpin of the USA. The point is to me is this:  What is the source of one's pride and what do we derive from it? I'd say that pride in our own accomplishments is arrogant, short sighted and plain out fool hearty.

     If we can take pride in anything, it is who we are as children of God. Even then, it cannot be that it is through our own graces that we have achieved anything. Pride is the acknowledgement of who we were created to be and to whatever extent degree possibly for us, how we cooperated with what God created each of us to be.

     In reading 1 Cor. 12:7-11 it would seem prideful arrogance to say or believe that 'my gift' is better than your gift. It would be heresy and sinful to think someone elses' gift of being is not needed or wanted or shouldn't be appreciated.

     As to pride in being gay, it is not pride in some specific action that makes one gay. That is no more a valid argument or opinion than taking pride in being heterosexual by marking notches on your bedpost for how many women you've robbed of their virginity or how many times you've cheated on your spouse.

     So then, what is there to be so prideful of in being gay? Acknowledging who you are as created specifically by God seems to merit some kind of pride. It exalts God. Celebrating who you are and who you are called to be merits some pride. Being the best gay person you can be, loving someone with genuine Godly love and celebrating the gifts afforded to you by God seems a reason for pride.

     When a person is given a desire and talent to be a pianist or a violinist, we can take a certain amount of pride in acknowledging that gift or talent, a God given talent and cooperating with it.

     Overall, perhaps it is more sinful to have the arrogance to have us interpret or determine God's intent so that it fits our own personal agenda. Perhaps the false pride that our position is thee correct and only valid opinion that counts is not really holy at all.

     Maybe reading Scripture with an open mind and heart would be a better call to Christian action than clobbering people. And maybe opening our eyes to the diversity of God's created world would serve us, and more importantly, serve our creator better than making rash, self serving judgments of others that we simply do not yet understand.

   

A second chance

     Did you ever hear the expression, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me?

     The feeling of being hurt, betrayed, judged, wronged or abused leaves a rather fowl taste in ones mouth. Our initial reaction is a judgment, perhaps anger against the perpetrator.  Some might even opt for revenge. We know that this is not an acceptable reaction. Christians are called to offer the other cheek. Most faiths see the merit and wisdom of forgiveness if only because hate is so self destructive and self consuming.

     Then there are the mistakes we make. Lord knows out of ignorance, stupidity, arrogance or whatever, we make an abundance of mistakes. We make bad decisions, selfish decisions. We are easily swayed to the merits of bad behavior.  At this point we are on the receiving end of someone else's judgment, dislike or as I said, hate.

      In love and honesty, as much as I could understand at the time, I married as a young man and began to raise a family. I was graced with two wonderful children, my wards, my joy, an opportunity to mold, love and show them the joys and love of living and hopefully my faith. Actually our faith as I was not really a solo act.  It was not until I was 50 as you may know that I came to the realization that I am gay. This after years of spiritual direction, therapy and prayer.  Needless to say this was a tumultuous time in my life and by extension for my wife , children and anyone who knew me.

       While there was no malice aforethought, no intentions to deceive or no grand design of obfuscation, I found myself on the receiving end of a great amount of judgment, shunning, hate and just plain anger. I can understand that to an extent. I have often said that I can not really expect everyone to understand overnight what basically took me 50 years to discern.  But what does this really have to do with our reading today from Acts?

       It is all about second chances my friend.  I loved the reflection in the Episcopal Cafe today. There are times on whatever side of judgment you seem to be on that bare no resemblance to what we are called to believe. Whether it is turning the other cheek or Jesus' admonition to forgive '70 times 7',  the challenge and opportunity for second chances often seem slim in the reality of our daily lives.

     The act of coming out was a grand second chance for me. I was also graced by God to have met a man who offered me the opportunity to love and be loved, yet another second chance.  While one church abandoned me for 'attempting to marry another gentleman' , another church opened it's arms and embraced me wholly.  These last few years too have been milestones.  A new knee,  the discovery of an almost certainly fatal "widow maker" of an aneurysm,  surviving a perforated appendix, all point to second chances in my own life. I am graced to realize that these second chances have been offered to me. What do I do with that realization?  What did the Apostles do with the concept of second chances?      

     So we are offered second chances in life and it is up to us make the most of them. We need to be thankful for them and we need to offer them to others. As much as we can appreciate second chances that are offered to us, we need to make them available to others in any way we can. That might be by a simple acceptance of an I'm sorry with actual forgiveness. It might be as formidable as offering a leg up to someone in need on any kind of level.

     All I can say for me, for now, is to say thank you heavenly Father and thank you for the people you have placed in my life. Thank you for second chances.

Acts 9:26-27

When he [Paul] had come to Jerusalem, he attempted to join the disciples; and they were all afraid of him, for they did not believe that he was a disciple. 27But Barnabas took him, brought him to the apostles, and described for them how on the road he had seen the Lord, who had spoken to him, and how in Damascus he had spoken boldly in the name of Jesus. 

Of letters and langauge

     Letters seem like such an elegant way to correspond. Long before e-mail and the simple but miraculous telephone, people used flourished words and language to convey thoughts, news, love and concern. These are the things that provoked some thought this morning as I read from Galatians.

      I once found a cache of old letters that my mother had saved. In reading some of them I could not help but notice the exquisite penmanship and the thoughts conveyed so elegantly with words that seem almost abandoned today.  Communication today seems relegated to emojis and sound bytes. Hidden in these letters was an excellent lesson involving words. There had been a mention of thanks in this particular letter, a notation of a birthday gathering which apparently was great fun. 'There was coke and everyone was so gay'. One might think Granny was a coke fiend and that in spite of being a lesbian, she managed to create a wonderful family for us. Only the latter is true however, we have a wonderful family. There was no cocaine (coke) and being gay was a notation of happiness, perhaps giddiness and a genuine good time.

       Such is a lesson taken from a mere 100 years ago when words we use now can convey such a different meaning than it had such a short time ago.  One needs to look at the historical context of the letter writer. The times and phrases can mete out radically different meanings than we suppose. We need to step back with our minds eye.

       This lesson is never more true or important than with Holy Scripture. I often note the inclusiveness, love and generosity of Jesus in curing the Roman Centurions'  'pais'. What is a pais? How was that word translated and retranslated and interpreted and re-interpreted with a specific agenda and hopefully some amount of linguistic skills. Pais, at the time, was easily and acceptably a junior same sex lover.  A pais was a loved member of the Centurions household. Not a prostitute. Not a slave. He was a younger lover.  Is that how you learned it to be translated?  What up tight religious agenda was used to whitewash the word 'pais'?  

        How often are we mislead by letters and language, misused and guided by an agenda?  Care needs to be taken. In today's world of google, texting and emojis we can easily lament the loss of elegance in writing letters to one another or the speed of snail-mail. But what google and modern technology can counter with is the speed and thoroughness with which we can research and study scripture and what it can offer us with relative ease. Resources formerly known only to scholars are at our finger tips. Scriptural study and knowledge is not just the domain of a few lofty religious men and women.

           We can lament the lack of letters but we should learn the true meanings of words and always emulate the love, inclusiveness and purity of Jesus' love above all, no matter what Scripture appears to say 

Galatians 4:12-20

Friends, I beg you, become as I am, for I also have become as you are. You have done me no wrong. You know that it was because of a physical infirmity that I first announced the gospel to you; though my condition put you to the test, you did not scorn or despise me, but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus. What has become of the goodwill you felt? For I testify that, had it been possible, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? They make much of you, but for no good purpose; they want to exclude you, so that you may make much of them. It is good to be made much of for a good purpose at all times, and not only when I am present with you.My little children, for whom I am again in the pain of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, I wish I were present with you now and could change my tone, for I am perplexed about you.

The center of the Universe

          Let's face it, literalism of any kind can cause really big problems.  Lack of understanding, lack of education and not using the brains the good God gave us has caused incredible evil. One need only look at some of religious fanatics in the middle east and around the world. The United States has been no stranger to literal fanatics either.

          When speaking against biblical literalism I have always noted how God speaks to us in ways we can understand - at a given point in human history.  The ancients would be have absolutely no comprehension of particle physics for example. The ancients fully believed that we lived under a dome as described in Genesis.  I mention this today because it is the day in the church's calendar when we honour the holy men of Kepler and Copernicus.  They delivered such seemingly wild and anti-establishment ideas from their intellect and reason. It is shocking that the state of education in the United Sates still yields a good number of people that still believe that the Earth is the center of the universe.  Yes, a mind is a terrible thing to waste!

          The larger issue though is things that we fail to comprehend and so we make it into an evil. How often does this happen? Well in Jesus' time when someone was blind or lame as in today's passage, people would ask whose fault was it? The sin of the person or the sin of the parents? Is this not ridiculous. Would we believe that today?  Moving forward in history though, when you'd think we might be more enlightened. How many nuns would force children to be right handed because being left handed was 'of the devil'. How ignorant.  The list goes on.  What did people say about black people that they simply did not understand or whom they had never experienced before. We still have not emerged fully from the shadow of this racial nightmare.

            Today so many of the right wingnuts who thrive on literalism have been railing against the LGBTQ community. They misquote, cherry pick and take passages in the most literal terms  and far out of context to boot. The ignorance of mankind is sadly not new.

            While Jesus did not speak one or the other about being gay ( maybe because the term would not be invented for another 1800 years? ), he did heal the Centurion's male lover, "pais".  What we should know about Jesus though is that he embraced his humanity.  As God created us, we are inquisitive, capable of learning and thirsty for knowledge of Him and His universe.  When we observe the world, learn and use our brains we are less likely to be arrogant, rude, mean spirited and ignorant. 

         It is astounding that the church, and by that I mean the Roman Church, has stood so firmly against all sorts of education, advancement and learning.  How was Galileo treated? When was he pardoned? Try 1992 !  Like I said, astounding.

         Education, learning and embracing knowledge is a key to our humanity, a key to being fully human and what God created us to be.  If we are on some scale higher than other animals, we will not reach our God given potential by acting like  things that we do not understand are evil, of the devil or some kind of voo-doo. 

Matthew 12:22-32

Then they brought to him a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see. All the crowds were amazed and said, ‘Can this be the Son of David?’ But when the Pharisees heard it, they said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the ruler of the demons, that this fellow casts out the demons.’ ²He knew what they were thinking and said to them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand. If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your own exorcists cast them out? Therefore they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you. Or how can one enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property, without first tying up the strong man? Then indeed the house can be plundered. Whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters. Therefore I tell you, people will be forgiven for every sin and blasphemy, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come.

Gay - be; You - be; it - be, just be.

         Can we be still enough to just be?  I confess that most often I am only content when I am moving along. Not too fast, not crazy busy, but also not too slow. I don't want to be bored.  I know I am capable of listening. I know I can take time  to sit and be. Does it have to be the Triduum to do so? Does it have to be some special occasion for me to just sit and observe, to try and be one with nature, to be one with God? Can I sit and be who God made me to be, a gay man, a happy soul, a loving, comforting, caring soul? Can, can, we do any of these things and just be?

          All too often we get lost in the cacophony of the world whizzing around us.  We take an active part in the insanity that we so often complain of. Our hearts long for unity, purpose and calm. Today's passage from  Sirach offers us some wisdom. 

          Yesterday we took some time to bicycle around a small section of our island.  We eschewed the gym in favor of a more wholesome, natural form of exercise.  Just getting out smelling the fields, the freshly tilled soil, the animals, the sweet fragrances of spring.  Still I felt the need to pause further. I pulled off the road to see bursts of red fronds among the tall grasses of the field. Take time to smell the roses? Take time to see God bursting forth, nature being what it so easily just IS.

           I gives me pause to think of what I am missing when I even casually cruise by in a car as I did just the day before when on a relaxing drive with my husband, hypermiling away in our latest wheels. So casual a ride and yet so much still missed. 

           I learned long ago the expression "knowing what, one knows not, is in a sense , omniscience".  What is it I do not know? Do I even search for the unknown or do I busy myself all day long placating myself with a mere slowing down. Can I stop and just be. Rest. Relax. Just be.

           Can I contemplate God, myself and just existence and love. What more is there, really?

        Sirach 42:15-45

I will now call to mind the works of the Lord,

   and will declare what I have seen.

By the word of the Lord his works are made;

   and all his creatures do his will. 

The sun looks down on everything with its light,

   and the work of the Lord is full of his glory. 

The Lord has not empowered even his holy ones

   to recount all his marvellous works,

which the Lord the Almighty has established

   so that the universe may stand firm in his glory. 

He searches out the abyss and the human heart;

   he understands their innermost secrets.

For the Most High knows all that may be known;

   he sees from of old the things that are to come. 

He discloses what has been and what is to be,

   and he reveals the traces of hidden things. 

No thought escapes him,

   and nothing is hidden from him. 

He has set in order the splendours of his wisdom;

   he is from all eternity one and the same.

Nothing can be added or taken away,

   and he needs no one to be his counsellor. 

How desirable are all his works,

   and how sparkling they are to see!

All these things live and remain for ever;

   each creature is preserved to meet a particular need. 

All things come in pairs, one opposite to the other,

   and he has made nothing incomplete. 

Each supplements the virtues of the other.

   Who could ever tire of seeing his glory? 

Every little bit of queer

            It must have been a science fiction tale but the idea of the Earth as a jail came up.  The earth was a dumping ground for all the misfits. All the groups that couldn't get along with their own kind were sent to our magnificent blue orb. Yes the earth was all the same because it consisted of a set of peoples that were all different.  The outcasts. The misfits. The queer ones.

           I've been letting that term roll around in my head lately. Queer folk, not Queer As Folk, that interesting TV series (2000-2005).  We had discussed this at length in our gay spirituality group some years back too, we are all queer. Queer. QUEER. No longer a term of degradation but a term of pride. Now a days it might be easily noted that it is a term of recognition of the differences we all have. We are all queer in one way or another, all different with exetricities, personal habits, talents, history, genetic makeup, orientation(s). I suppose there is no limit to what makes each one of us queer.  We may have ideas based on so called societal 'norms' but it really extends in every aspect of our being.

          This week has seen several friends and acquaintances having to deal with family illnesses and parental death.  Every person handles it differently. One is introverted and silent, walling off everyone concerned. Effectively walling off help in the process. Someone dealing with the fact that his Mom died on Mothers day morning. This is a guy whom I consider a brother. And while I know he is not a biologic brother we now share the death of our mothers on auspicious days, mine having died on my birthday ( followed by my brother on the same day several years later).  I could try to play one upmanship couldn't I ?  In our differences though, he black, me white, he young, me old, etc., etc., there is an opportunity for love and support. I could use my queerness and my similarities to hold him in my heart, if not my arms, to show my caring and concern and not leave someone out in the cold focusing on the differences between us. 

           I do believe we are all queer,  now more than ever. I also believe we have similarities that should never be dismissed. We are all human. We are all children of God. We are all called to help each other while recognizing and yes, celebrating our differences. Could we argue which color of the rainbow is best?  I may like blue but lets celebrate the entire rainbow and all our queerness. Can our queerness be used to celebrate and support rather than separate and segregate?

                               

Ezekiel 36:22-27

Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I will remove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I will put my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful to observe my ordinances.