Sunday, October 13, 2019

We are Always Coming Out

(See suggested links at bottom of post)

Legally marrying a couple I'd done a service of union for. Finally!

a coming out story would be
a chronicle of all the days of all my lives
it seems there is either nothing to tell,
or far too much
how can i possibly capture any of it
stop the flow
march it out in lines for all to see and know
i am always coming out
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels
i struggle and persist.
– Constance Faye (“Come Again”)

a coming out story would be
a chronicle of all the days of all my lives
We live many lives.
If we are lucky, we know this, and we grow more and more fully into the “I” that is the most whole and most evolved. We become who we are meant to be.
On this Sunday after Coming Out Day, I have had the opportunity to reflect upon some of those lives, and to accept that I have not always been who I was meant to be, to accept that even now, the age some people “retire”, I am still becoming. I am still learning.

It seems there is either nothing to tell
Or far too much.
When I was becoming aware of human sexuality, it was “last century” as my kids love to say. Pete Buttigieg, the first openly gay candidate for President, had not been born. We whispered about our two Phys Ed teachers, Miss Carson and Miss Bookner, who were, we were sure, lesbians, we made fun of the Thespian Society (I was a member so I heard the comments all the time), we wondered about effeminate boys and masculine girls. The word “queer” was just gradually beginning to be used to mean “gay” and not just “weird”.
I didn’t know anyone who was gay; or at least anyone who was openly gay. I had no books, poems, films, or music to help me understand. Naturally, I was afraid of what I didn’t know. I wasn’t openly homophobic, but I was avoidant and silent. This continued through most of my twenties, even after going to college. It seems almost bizarre to me now.
It was not until I became involved in the UU Church in Cherry Hill NJ that I met and was befriended by gay men and women, and that I volunteered to join the committee to introduce one of the first Welcoming Congregation programs. Something we talked about was that if we promoted the workshops, people would think we were ourselves gay/lesbian. Deciding I was fine with that was one of my first baby steps toward coming out: as an ally, a liberal, and an advocate.

how can i possibly capture any of it
stop the flow
march it out in lines for all to see and know

My then very young sons (the oldest is the same age as Mayor Pete) and I went to SUUSI for several summers before I entered the ministry. (Once I was a clergy person, I just couldn’t enjoy SUUSI the same way again. Nude hikes, anyone?) It was there we were befriended by a family whose kids got along great with mine. Dee Graham and Signa, her late partner, had two biological and one adopted (Black) child. To me, from a circumscribed life in South Jersey, this ought to have been shocking, but our friendship grew so naturally and so organically that it’s hard to pinpoint the moment I “changed”. What I know for sure is that it took, for me, eating, playing, relaxing and co-housing with, LGBT persons to become for real what my intellect knew was right: an outspoken ally.
None too soon.
My kids would learn never to use the word “gay” as a slur. They stood up against its use by others. Colin was actually censored by his elementary school for cross-dressing in the Halloween parade, while Casey regularly put on make-up and skirts in adulation of Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana.

i am always coming out
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels
i struggle and persist.
Since becoming a minister, I have had the opportunity to not only eat, sing, laugh, and share space with gay colleagues and congregants, I have had the opportunity to minister to lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, questioning, and gender fluid people. I have been with them at the death beds of their beloveds, done funerals for their children who died of suicide or overdose, sat with them in hospitals and hospice, in childbirth and trauma. I have performed numerous services of union and many legal weddings. It has been a privilege.
All this has been possible because UUism is a welcoming, affirming, embracing place for LGBTQI+  persons.
And I want to say that it has not only been a blessing to those people, it has enriched my life beyond measure. That is the thing: opening, embracing, loving the “other” enriches us. We are the richer, the deeper, the more profoundly human because of it.
i am always coming out
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels
i struggle and persist.
I’m still unfolding. Aren’t you? My daughter is bisexual, although I’m sure she’d reject even that label. Of late, she’s been a career woman with our dog (which she stole, but that’s another story) and her two therapy rabbits as her family. I will freely admit that it took me by surprise and that it worried me. What if? What if? What if? I knew enough about people’s struggles and pain to know what she was in for.
My former interim congregation in NJ was one of three who called a trans minister. I worried, knowing them: how would these South Jersey mostly straight UUs manage to remember to say they/them/theirs instead of “she”? Or “he”? They've done great.
i am always coming out
endlessly unfolding on an infinite number of levels
i struggle and persist.
I regret that I was homophobic and heteronormative for so long. I forgive myself, because I didn’t know, and had no means to know. I accept myself as part of this world, organically interconnected with all beings and all life, for better, and increasingly obviously for worse. As I age, my aspirations scale back but my determination remains, just more closely focused. My being here with you is an outgrowth of that. I no longer expect massive change, but I want to be a part of what can be, with what is left to us.
Here is my challenge: Who will we choose to be going forward? We have yet to becoming entirely embracing of trans and gender fluid people, people of color, of people of lower socio-economic backgrounds, of mental, emotional, and spectrum disabilities, of blue collar people who don’t read the New York Times.
But we can grow. We can learn, evolve, and reach out.
I want to be a part of what Margaret Wheatley calls Islands of Sanity. I want us to be able to honor our two great needs, for connection and for self-expression.  I’ll talk more about that next time.
Brother Thomas Merton

For now:
The mystic and scholar Thomas Merton reminds us of the futility and the promise of our work together:
What if your work achieves nothing? Thomas Merton, a writer and contemplative in the Catholic tradition, said, “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not, perhaps, results opposite to what you expect.
“As you get used to this idea of your work achieving nothing, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there, too, a great deal has to be gone through, as, gradually, you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.”


Colin & Baby Marjorie 1993


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