This article originally appeared in the HOPE (DESPAIR) issue of Spit & Spirit. Learn more & get your copy

Do you ever feel foolish for having hope? Or that your hopes and dreams aren’t valid? Maybe you’re not deserving, maybe you’re being frivolous, maybe you’re unrealistic.

I know, sometimes it’s not a lack of hope that I suffer from but an abundance of hope.

Some of my foolish are hopes are for things like worldwide economic justice and peace. For the end to violence. For happy, healthy, families in all sorts of varieties. Those feel unrealistic but acceptable. I don’t think anyone is going to judge me for “hoping” for those things. Hoping for world peace is so common these days it’s almost a cliche.

Sometimes I hope for things that I know I can’t control. I hope this weather will hold out and we’ll have another mild winter in New York City. I hope that we find a cure for HIV soon. I hope the Washington football team will win another Super Bowl (and change their name too).

But what about the hopes that are more personal? Is it possible for hope to be selfish?

I hope for a long and healthy life. Heck, I hope to be even healthier next month than I am this month.

I hope to always have enough money to live comfortably—and to earn that money in ways that are enjoying and fulfilling.

I hope to live near my parents, to see them regularly, and for them to live long lives.

You know, when I was a kid I used to hope that Jesus would come back and we’d all go to heaven before anyone in my family died. Now, I don’t believe that will ever happen … but I still sorta hope it does.

I hope to learn to sing and to one day record a song. I hope to make a music video out of it.

I hope that my relationship with Peter will last a lifetime. I hope that it will always be mutually fulfilling. I hope it will be the type of relationship that always makes space for others, one that is filled with generosity.

I hope that Fr. Shay and I will be able to travel together for Queer Theology more often, will be able to spend more time physically together.

I hope to create art for myself. I hope to create art for other people.

What’s the difference between a hope, a dream, and a goal?

If you asked me before we started working on this issue, I probably would have given a more lofty, spiritual definition for hope. Something pure and wholesome. But sometimes, when I’m having sex, I hope that I’ll orgasm at the same time as my boyfriend. Can that be a hope too?

Spit & Spirit is so-named because in these pages we try to bridge the sacred and the profane. We recognize that not only is Jesus a spiritual leader, he also picked up mud and spit in it to heal a blind person. He touched lepers and forgave sin. He fed the masses and he preached about God.

Perhaps those secret dreams and goals and ambitions that I tuck away are hopes too, worthy of being discussed out in the open, worthy of being shared in a spiritual context. Perhaps even my hope to perform as a dancer, my hope to run my own business, my hope to spend more time with my family, perhaps all of that is wound up in my hope to create the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven, wound up in my hope for economic justice, wound up in reconciliation.

Howard Thurman, an author and theologian, Dean of Chapel at Howard University and Boston University, famously said,

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

It’s a quote I come back to often, one that I message to friends who need encouragement, one that I want desperately to believe in. But one that, if I’m honest, I have trouble applying to myself.

There’s still a part of me that believes those hopes and dreams that make me come alive are selfish. That they’ll somehow take away from the good available in the world. That I should have more sophisticated, more spiritual, more practical hopes.

It’s OK to hope that your father survives his struggle with cancer or that your sister gets into graduate school, or that your depression stays at bay… but somehow, still, I judge my own hopes. Hopes that I’ll make art that will move others, hopes that I’ll be physically strong, hopes my work will make an impact on lives and communities, hopes that I’ll be happy and fulfilled.

As is usually the case, I don’t have a ribbon to tie this up with. You’ll rarely find action steps in Spit & Spirit (though, as fate would have it, we do have some on pages 15 & 26 of this issue).

Instead I want to leave you with this: I want to believe we can live into a world where all of our hopes and dreams are valid and honored. So here’s my deal with you: if you’ll be gentle with mine, I’ll keep trying to share them; and I promise to be gentle with yours, if you’ll share them with me.

Learn more about the HOPE (DESPAIR) issue of Spit & Spirit

Being a part of a spiritual community is vital for growing in your relationship with God and enabling you to follow Jesus in your day to day life. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that it’s impossible to follow Jesus without being a part of some kind of community. Even cloistered hermits were/are attached to larger communities and many have a spiritual director or a confessor with whom they have regular contact.

But for many people finding an in-person spiritual community is difficult (if not impossible). Many are in places where there are no churches that are affirming of queer and transgender people. Many people are dealing with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, or other things that make getting to and investing in a spiritual community difficult. Many have been hurt by the church and aren’t ready yet to engage with another church community.

I remember feeling like I had no place to go. I was closeted and living at home with my mom. I had to be careful what I had mailed to the house and my mom asked me where I was going every time I left the house. I didn’t want to have to lie to her and I felt like I had to be careful who I was seen with out in the community. I also had to be careful which books I was seen reading. This is before e-readers made it easier to disguise your books and before high speed internet made connecting across the miles easier. That isolation really impacted my spiritual life negatively and kept me from growing and from being spiritually healthy.

But what can you do? How do you create spiritual community when you are physically isolated? I have a number of ideas that I’ll share. Feel free to use these as a jumping off point to explore other ways to connect. A lot of these ideas rely on having the internet but even if you can only get to the library once a week to use their internet you can still use most of these ideas.

Find ways to learn and engage.

Yes, this is still a private practice, but you’ll be encountering wisdom from other people. Listen to sermon podcasts online from affirming churches (most have sermons in podast form on iTunes, others just post them on their website, either way many churches make things available either in audio, video, and/or transcript form).

Tune in to a church that livestreams their services.

You can watch from your home, but participate. While watching sing along to the song/hymns, say the responses out loud, participate as much as you can so it feels like you are a part of the community.

Reach out to the churches that you are listening to.

Send an email to the pastor and introduce yourself. Let them know you are listening in and would like to be a part of the community from afar. Ask if you can contact them sometimes. Most pastors will be happy to hear from you and engage with you in this way.

Give money to the community you’re listening in on if you can.

Not just because they need it (even though they do) but because giving money makes you feel invested and connected to the community.

Find an accountability buddy that you can connect with.

This is how Brian and I originally became close. We had been friendly and known each other for a while but it was when we set up an intentional weekly check-in that our relationship really deepened and grew. Find someone who is likeminded (maybe someone who is also isolated) and set something up. Read a book together or a book of the Bible and then check in once a week to discuss it. Send each other emails with prayers requests and new insights you’re learning. Pray for one another. You can do this via Skype or email or the phone; whatever feels comfortable and works for both of you.

Join groups on Facebook and participate in discussion.

Follow people on twitter who can provide support and encouragement.

Build time into your daily schedule to be intentional about your spirituality and to seek out ways to connect.

Even if there are no affirming churches in your area you might be able to find affirming people. Try to find someone you can trust that you can meet with regularly for discussion and prayer. Who knows, maybe a new, affirming church will be the result of your initial meetings!

Plan to go on a retreat or to a conference once a year or every other year.

This isn’t for everyone, but if you can make it work, a retreat or conference is a great way to connect with likeminded people and will allow you to build relationships that can continue even when you are back home.

Now let’s hear from you:

Are you (or have you been) isolated? What did you do to connect? What do you still struggle with? Maybe we can even set up some connections between people looking for buddies in the comments.

Photo by carf

I remember the moment the first crack appeared. I was a freshman at the University of Southern California and had chosen “Reading Scripture as a Skeptic and Believer” to fulfill one of my general education requirements.

We were talking about the exodus from Egypt and our professor matter of factly said, “The exodus from Egypt didn’t really happen, not historically.” But in addition to being my professor, he was also a rabbi and a man of deep personal faith.

There’s the historical truth of what did or did happen thousands of years ago in the Egyptian desert and of that we can be reasonably certain. There’s no mention of a mass exodus of slaves in any Egyptian writing, there’s no archeological evidence to suggest an entire nation had setup camp for decades. It just didn’t happen.

But then there’s the Truth of it.

That, as an orthodox rabbi told my gay friend over a Passover seder, “With a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, God will schlep you out of your own personal Egypt.” That God is forever on the side of the disposed and disenfranchised. That God will free the slaves even if it means sending plagues to the oppressors. That when you’ve hit the end of the road, when an army has you up against a wall (or a river), God will make a way. That the impossible is possible.

I didn’t like that. My faith had been built upon the understanding that the Bible was not just a religious text but a historical one as well. I was told that men had one less rib than women because God had taken one of Adam’s to make Eve. I was taught that Noah’s ark was grounded upon on a mountain in Turkey (but that the “Muslim government” wouldn’t let excavators in [which, obviously overlooks that Islam has the story of Noah and the flood as well…])

I wondered, if the Bible isn’t true then why should I believe it and how can I be a Christian?

It took me years to ask the question: are my beliefs about truth true?

Just because my youth pastor told me something when I was thirteen, doesn’t make it true. Just because he told me that the Bible describes historical events rather than teaching moral (or preaching political) messages, doesn’t mean it’s true. Maybe the Bible doesn’t intend to be a history book. I mean, if it did, why would it offer two contradictory versions of creation in the first two chapters! Maybe, just maybe, the Bible is asking and answering bigger questions.

In fact, most of conservative Christian beliefs are only around 200 years old!

I often say “I’m glad that I’m queer because otherwise I might be a sexist, transphobic, classist asshat” — that being queer put that first crack in an oppressive worldview. It’s sorta true: I took that class, yes, to fulfill a general education requirement and, yes, because I was a Christian and interested in studying religion more but also, yes, because I wanted desperately to find in that class some assurance that I was ok.

For me, being queer prompted me to register for that class which struck the first crack, Fr. Shay shares sometimes about the moment when his conservative Christian college uninvited a not-quite-conservative-enough Christian band from performing.

When I was on the Equality Ride, a mother shared that she was withdrawing her son from an evangelical college after he witnessed his school arrest other young adults for coming on campus to talk about the Bible.

My friend, and Centurion’s Guild founder, Logan Mehl-Laituri had his own “crystallization of conscience” when he realized that he could no longer engage in armed combat as a member of the US military, instead asking to return to Iraq with his unit unarmed.

The cracks appear for each of us in different places, at different times, and triggered by different events.

I remember when I first heard the CRACK! At first I tried to pretend it wasn’t there, then I tried to cover it up, then I tried to fix it. I couldn’t. The crack got bigger and started to spread. And it was utterly terrifying. Contraception. Women’s place in the church. Social services. The eternal fate of the world’s billions of non-Christians. What about the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven? Crack. Crack. Crack.

For as proudly, unabashedly, radically queer as I am today, when I was 18 and a freshman at the University of Southern California, this is not the future I wanted for myself. I wanted to fit in at Campus Crusade for Christ, I wanted a place at the conservative church in Bel Air that all the pretty white kids on campus drove out to every Sunday, I wanted my crush on the girl in my acting class to grow into a relationship so I could ignore and hide all the crushes I’d ever had on guys.

And then once I realized that “the gay” thing had to give, I wanted everything else to stay the same. Maybe I could keep all of my evangelical beliefs, my Republican/libertarian political leanings, my complete cluelessness about the reality of gender, my ignorant benefit from living in a racist society.

I could go to gay clubs on Friday night and church on Sunday mornings and buy an HRC bumper sticker and one day get married to another gay Christian and raise good Christian kids in the suburbs and everything would be fine.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Except for that crack that I just couldn’t ignore. If they were wrong about about me, maybe they were wrong about other people too. If Jesus challenged us that the law could be summed up in loving God with all your heart and loving your neighbor as yourself, I had to set about how to love—how to really love—my neighbor. To do that, I had to know and understand (as best I could) them. I had to have relationships with them.

And once I began to know my neighbors, the crack exploded and I had no choice but to tear it all down.

When LGBT people come out, we step into the unknown. For many, it is a daring (and potentially dangerous) act of faith.

Coming out has been my single greatest act of faith. It was greater than choosing to move across the country for college, greater than quitting my job at a television network and taking a 50% pay cut to work for The Simple Way. Coming out was a greater act of faith than when I turned my life over to Jesus and accepted Him as my personal Lord and savior.

I grew up attending an Evangelical Presbyterian Church. My parents met in high school on a bus to YoungLife camp. Our closest family friends were from church, or YoungLife, or otherwise deeply committed Christians. Of course we had friends who were non-religious or ob- served other religions (or practiced Christianity differently), but they were the exceptions that proved the rule.

My conversion experience was simple and brief.

Mr. McKinnon, my 6th grade Sunday school teacher, assigned us homework each week. One week, one of the questions asked if we had accepted Jesus into our hearts. My answer was no, I had not. The following week, he asked if I would stay behind class and we talked about my answer. I hadn’t accepted Jesus as my personal Lord and savior not because I was opposed—the moment had simply never arose. He asked if I wanted to, I said yes (I actually probably said “Sure”). That night, or maybe a few nights later, I laid in bed and asked God/ Jesus into my heart. And with that, it was done.

I don’t mean to understate my conversion ex- perience; it would go on to define my adolescence and young adulthood. Youth group was my central social activity throughout middle and high school and friends from church were among my closest and most steady. My evan- gelical Chrisitian faith led me to bring friends to church and camp for evangelism, inspired me to serve on work crew for YoungLife in high school and Summer Staff in college, it took me to the Czech Republic for a service project building playgrounds (and playing soccer and wall ball with neighborhood kids).

But while the ramifications of that decision were great, the moment of decision was calm and the consideration I gave it minimal.

My decision to come out was anything but.

Though I began to realize my attractions to other guys at around “that time when boys and girls begin to notice each other,” it wasn’t un- til two months before my 19th birthday that I told my friends and a month after that I told my parents.

Before coming out, I played out every possible scenario. How would my parents react? How would my friends react? What next… would I date? Would I ever be sexually active? How would I continue as a Christian? What would my employment opportunities be like?

What is the fate of my eternal soul?

I wanted to “have it all figured out” before coming out. To have a neat and tidy package to present to myself and to the world that said, “This is who I am, this is what I believe, and this is how I will operate within the world.”

That’s not how it happened. Instead, a time came when I knew that I could wait no longer.

My friend Logan Mehl-Laituri describes the moment that he knew he could no longer en- gage in violent combat within the US Armed Forces as a “crystallization of conscience.” I felt a similar “crystallization of conscience” — a moment when I knew that I could no longer remain silent about the reality of my life and spirit. I didn’t have all the answers, I didn’t know exactly how this truth would play out or what the future would hold, but I did know that I must act.

I remember the moment so clearly: an attraction between myself and a new friend that I met through high school friends. We were together at a mutual friend’s house watching a movie. We sat next to each other. And then, slowly, our fingers and hands began to inch together. I was approaching the point of no return. Eventually, they touched; then inter- locked. We held hands for the remainder of the movie and it was like I had been born again.

That night, after our friends had fallen asleep on couches and the floor, we shared our first kiss. The next day, I (belatedly) admitted out loud to him that I’m attracted to men. That night, I met up with my friend Jennifer and told her in person. The next day I told my other best friend, Amy. Slowly at first and then picking up pace, I told friends and they told others, and then I was out.
In hindsight, it seems so easy. Just say it:

“I’m gay”

“I like guys”

“I’m bisexual”

“I’m not actually a girl, I’m a guy” “I like girls”

“I need to change my body”

Whatever it might be for you.

But in that moment, it felt like the entire world was on the line — and it was.
Before coming out, I had to deal with the pos- sibility that my parents would be furious or embarrassed or remorseful. Would they kick me out? (doubtful) Would they continue to pay for my college education? (Probably, but not certain) Would I be welcome back at my church? (unlikely) Would I ever be welcome in a church again? (unclear)

Luke 14:26 quotes Jesus as saying,

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters- -yes, even his own life–he cannot be my disciple.

As I prepared to come out, I had to grapple with the reality that I might lose it all… every- thing I had known and loved and trusted and held dear.
But I had to do it.

I had to do it because I knew that there was something unshakeably true about my sexual orientation. And though I didn’t have the doc- trine or the theological precepts or the Biblical talking points nailed down yet, I also knew— knew in the core of my being—that that part of me was good, beloved, intentional, purposed.

Coming out was a risk, an act of faith. In fact, it was possibly my first real act of faith. And the lesson I learned from that experience contin- ues to inform my life and faith to this day.

Anything worth doing is worth losing everything for.

When you really believe something, it changes everything

This article was originally published in Issue 1 FAITH (DOUBT) of Spit & Spirit. You can get the whole issue for free here.

My middle school youth group leader Dave O’Connell asked, “If you believe something but it doesn’t change your life, do you really believe it?” Ever since, that question has anchored my beliefs to my actions.

In middle school, I believed that Jesus had died to pay for my sins, to save me from the punishment and torture of hell. I believed that anyone who didn’t accept him into their heart and turn their life over to him would suffer an eternity of torment. And so, with that belief firmly intact, I set about witnessing to as many friends as I could.

I invited them to youth group, summer camp, the fun church activities, and even Bible study and Sunday school. I didn’t want anything bad to happen to them. I wanted them to be saved too.

As I grew older, I became more and more aware of my attraction to other guys and felt more and more out of place at my church. Still, in eleventh grade when I fell in love with my best friend, I didn’t hesitate to invite him to YoungLife camp. He, surprisingly, agreed to come.

Over the week at camp, he accepted Jesus into his heart and turned his life over to Christ. He also made new friends from our school at camp and over the rest of the summer, our friendship drifted.

I remember thinking that even though YoungLife camp triggered the beginning of the end of our friendship, if I had to do it again, I would still invite him. I loved and cared for him that much — enough to lose him to save him.

High school ended and over the following few years, I let go of more and more of my Evangelical beliefs. I still wanted to believe them, to hold them near me—they were comforting and familiar — but I noticed that I wasn’t living them out. I couldn’t really claim to believe in them.

BORN AGAIN (AGAIN)

“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
2 Corinthians 5:17

2 Corinthians 5:17 was one of my memory verses in sixth grade.“If anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.” I can still recite it from memory. But I didn’t really understand it, I’d never lived it.

From my evangelical perspective, being a new creation meant that I’d thrown off the shackles of Original Sin, I now had Jesus as my co-pilot and would be better equipped to make the “right” decisions, and I was pardoned for any of the bad things I’d done up until that point.

It was all very academic, some theoretical tabulation happening in Heaven. I didn’t feel like a new creation. I felt deeply emotionally and spiritually moved during worship, and especially during the talks and prayer times at camp. But my day-to-day existence was rather ordinary.

In March 2007 I was on-campus at the University of Notre Dame when a student there asked for more information about our group, Soulforce, and the activities we’d planned for our Equality Ride stop. I explained we were traveling the country starting conversations about faith, sexuality, and gender. I handed him a flyer detailing our events for the coming days.

And I was promptly confronted by security.

I was cited for trespassing, had my name and personal information recorded, was escorted from the campus, and was banned for life from any property owned by the university.

Two days later, when our bus pulled away that student, Daniel, sent me an email. He had attended all of our events after meeting me that day on campus. In his email he explained that he is gay and that our visit gave him the comfort and affirmation he needed to finally love himself. He got the courage to begin telling his friends and he returned to church for the first time in months. I was born again.

A teacher at my church in New York City describes the Christmas story this way:

When the wise men encountered Jesus, they experienced something so profound that they could not go back the way they came. Instead, they left a different way, forever changed.

My encounter with Daniel would be echoed over and over again in experiences since fully embracing myself and slowly, tentatively stepping into activism and advocacy.

At some point, I could not return the same way.

When the wise men encountered Jesus, they experienced something so profound that they could not go back the way they came. Instead, they left a different way, forever changed.

The queer experience, like the Christian faith, is an invitation to return a different way, to enter into a story bigger than oneself, and to allow the experience to transform you.

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.

I am thankful to be queer. When well-meaning Christians ask, “I mean who would CHOOSE to be gay?” as their justification for being LGBT-affirming, I bristle.

I would choose to be gay.

My experiences because of my sexual orientation profoundly shaped (and continue to shape) my life. They helped me to question my previously unquestioned beliefs. They brought me into contact with diverse people and opinions.

And, perhaps most strikingly, they guided me deeper into the Christian faith. I look back now at my middle school faith and realize that it was childish. I was so concerned with 15-minute “quiet times” each morning (that I could never manage to keep up with). I insisted that Noah’s Ark was real and that men had one less rib than women. I refused to understand evolution. And of course, I thought it was a sin to be gay.

Today, my adult faith—triggered by being queer—has transformed my life. It peels off layer after layer of the old creation.

Shame.
Arrogance. Self-righteousness. Judgement.
Prejudice.
Unexamined racial privilege. Nationalism.
Violence.
Transphobia.

Faith has the power to enact real, measurable differences in the world. But not in a magical way. Faith is powerful only when it is transformative. Only, as Dave O’Connell insisted, when it changes you.

Now, this is what I believe:

I believe that God’s love is big enough for us all. All of us, even the people I don’t like, even the people who have hurt me. Even Fred Phelps.

I believe that just as Jesus was incarnate in humanity to demonstrate the power of love, so too must I incarnate my love for others. It’s not enough to say “I love you,” I must act out that love. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even if it means I might be crucified.

I believe that God is in the margins. That just as Jesus was a homeless, itinerant peasant born to a single teenage mother in exile, God still dwells in the shadow of the Empire. That I have something to learn from a God who continues to be in my midst in the lives of those I encounter every day.

I believe that Sin is real and pernicious and evil. I see it more now than ever before—in the torture of innocents in the name of military might, in the economic injustice which causes my country to have more empty homes than homeless people, in the horrible conditions in which my electronics were produced. Sin is real and ever-present and seemingly inescapable.

I also believe — absolutely believe — that healing and reconciliation are possible because I’ve experienced them in my own life.

Today, I have been transformed into a new creation. And it’s all because I’m queer.

Thank God.

This article was originally published in Issue 1 FAITH (DOUBT) of Spit & Spirit. You can get the whole issue for free here.