When you dare to be happy

Photo by David McSpadden

At Dayspring last Friday night, we entered the Great Silence after dinner, around 9pm. We kept it until 10am Sunday morning. In between, we could walk the lovely grounds, journal, read, pray, sit, eat, sleep, anything as we felt led. But we could not speak.

*

Me and silence, 2000 to present:

For a time, music was my silence, my retreat, my freedom. No words needed to explain myself, no people to explain myself to. Just me and eighty-eight keys in a small soundproof room, playing it out.

During a day of silence last fall, I breathed for the first time in a month. Then, I scribbled anger and disappointment at myself, all over my journal.

I am the awfulest person in the world at getting up in the morning. But just before dawn (especially in early spring) is my most favorite time to be silent, alone, alert.

Once on a technology fast, I experienced road rage such as I have never experienced before, until I pulled over to the side of the road to eat a peanut butter sandwich and make growling noises--yes I am that insane--since I couldn't turn on the radio to tune it out.

Silence is boring. Silence is edifying. Silence is restorative. Silence is terrifying. I crave silence and run to escape it all at once. In silence, I see God. I see beauty. I also see myself.

*

I came to Dayspring expecting something. Something angry, and difficult, and cathartic. Something with tears and a rehashing of old disappointments warring within me and (just maybe) a profound new insight that would change everything. I came in expecting that the silence would be, at its core, hard work.

So, anticipating the hours ahead, my first task when silence began was to read over every journal entry I've written since I started divinity school. It only took about 20 minutes. There weren't many, The entries there were consisted of wrangling and wrestling and anxiety and questions. Questions about how to approach my vocation, my marriage, my spiritual life, my relationships. How to process the painful things in my past.

God, I know I can't handle all of it this weekend, so please guide me to what it is you want me to wrestle with.

In the morning morning, after a deliciously fresh breakfast and a run through forested country roads, I was lying flat on my back, stretched out in the cool hallway when it struck me, clear as day, clear as the title of the weekend's program: "The Gift of Divine Time."

This weekend is not for you to wrestle. Having named the questions and anxieties last night is enough. Now, let go--not in avoidance or denial but in trust--and commend all into the hands of the Spirit. Now, simply enjoy. This silence is for you a gift.

*

Something shifts, and I am in the present.

It is a gift that I am here. The sun and the woman in the rocking chair next to me on the porch and the rain and the bed and the fresh food--all is gift.

It is a gift that I am asleep by ten.

It is a gift that I am here in community without needing to explain myself, to worry over my words. I confess I may enjoy people more when we can simply be together, no words.

It is a gift when the storm hits Saturday night, and I am sitting on the porch looking out at the lightning and the rain that has blurred my vision of the horizon and the wind that is making the trees sway violently. I startle when the first tree branch falls, but then I grin, glee splattered over my face as the wind blows the rain under the porch and against my skin. I stare down the storm until it passes, and retire for the evening.


It is a gift that I am running on these rolling hills just before breakfast. I don't want to turn around, I want to keep going, but I know my knees and I know my lack of fitness and further I know that there is more gift--scrambled eggs, fresh fruit, a cinnamon raisin bagel--all waiting for me back at the lodge.

It is a gift that I am for the first time walking a prayer labyrinth, like an interior pilgrimage toward God, and it is a gift that the spider on the porch is spinning her web, slowly, deliberately, in concentric circles, like a labyrinth.

I take in all the gifts, and somehow in taking in the gifts I feel all that is un-gift begin to unclench in me. It is not gone. There is work yet to do. But it is unraveling, and I think maybe it has even been instructive. I think maybe I am learning from this silence to be present in each step of the journey, to trust that I, even with all my noise and junk and wandering--am on a path with God.

It is a gift that I am sitting before the lily pond where the geese go for rest, and I am reading over and over Mary Oliver's "Morning Poem" (look it up) and she is telling me that notwithstanding my sometimes-leaden spirit there is "somewhere deep within you/ a beast shouting that the earth/ is exactly what it wanted" and she is challenging me to dare to be happy, to accept this as gift, to love the earth and the community and the place God has given me.

For this moment, at least, I wholeheartedly do.

*
(An appendix)

Labyrinth
You will have entered, perhaps, with joy.
On a sure path to the center.
You will wind and double back enough times you feel
you might have returned to the place you started,
as though moving backwards.
This only means you are in the thick of it.
Then one day, having relaxed into the rhythm of your steps,
perhaps without noticing it--
you will find yourself there.

Where? A rock, on which is laid a feather, a stone,
some broken pottery.
It is not, perhaps, what you expected to find here.
You find yourself looking outward, at all that impelled you.
From the rock, it appears beautiful.
You want to run to it.

Wait.
Close your eyes, breathe in gratitude.
For waves of green. For each bird
chronicling your journey.
Each stone leading your path.

Then, a moment after it has been too long,
you will begin the slow journey out, which is
perhaps the most important part.
And when having made your final turn,
you find in your pocket the tiny shard
of pottery, you will understand that you
must turn toward the center
again.

Packing my bags

Photo by Natasha Mileshina

I am going to be late for my flight to Ethiopia. I am standing in the hallway, bags in hand. The others are not ready, so I follow them into their rooms, nagging. "Let's go, let's go," I say. "We're going to miss the flight if we don't leave soon."

I am not entirely sure why I am going to Ethiopia. I haven't thought beyond making the flight.

We reach the airport, make it in the terminal, but my friends are lagging behind, and I press them again. "We need to get to the gate!"

A man passing by brushes my suitcase, and it falls open. There is nothing inside. I've forgotten to pack.

I run back home at saber-speed. I begin throwing clothes in the suitcase. More shoes, and sandals. It will be hot there. I might need a sweater or two. I empty my underwear drawer into the suitcase. My passport! Where is my passport? I am pretty sure I will be too late, I have already missed the flight, but I have to try. I keep dashing around, filling my bag. I don't have time to think if there is something else I've forgotten. This haphazard job will have to do.

*

My alarm goes off. For a moment I'm disoriented, frenzied. Then I breathe out, relief.

There's no flight to catch, no journey, no empty suitcase. Only eggs to cook and teeth to brush and a moment to sit still on the front porch, welcoming the day.

*

This is something of a recurring dream for me: rushing to catch a bus or train or plane, running into some essential obstacle.

The empty suitcase stays with me all day. I am rushing to get to seminary in two months, and maybe in all the commotion, my bags have not been packed. Maybe I do not have the experience or gifts or skills necessary for this. Maybe I have concentrated so much on getting to seminary that I don't remember why I'm going. Maybe I'm trying to cobble a cohesive theology and a vision and a plan together last-minute, without time to breathe it in, think it through.

I have had so long to prepare. For two years I have been looking ahead to this, standing in the doorway, ready to move. But I have not picked a track, a denomination. If I don't get it all figured out within a few months, I may not finish on time. I may not be eligible for a job when I graduate.

This is something of a recurring fear for me: wanting to have it all figured out lest I miss the boat, miss my chance to have an impact, to live fully into my gifts.

But there is no flight to catch at all. It is more of a long walk. God's love and guidance are available always, unscheduled, no security lines or last call for boarding. Mercy is new every morning, and life's callings are found on a winding path, not through a narrow door at the end of a straight terminal. In the journey we are all on, we pack as we go.

It is true, I am not prepared. I am not supposed to be. I am only supposed to be open, moldable, listening to the spirit, and willing. It is true, this summer as I embark, I am receiving a healthy blast of humility. I have also stepped intentionally into the good, challenging work of reflection. I am reaching down to a depth in myself that I haven't explored for months. I am remembering wisdom and yearnings that have been dormant for some time. I am refining, being refined.

I know I am called to witness to the great Love I have known in Jesus Christ. I know I am called to learn in the Duke community. If I am seeking to live and grow into these paths, it is enough for now. I may not know exactly where I will be arriving in three years--but the truth is I won't be arriving at all, only continuing to walk and live and learn and listen.

So there is no way I can be late.

A journey, part 5: Jesus in Africa

This is part 5 of a story in five parts. Catch up here:
Part 1: Waiting for a sign
Part 2: A sinking feeling
Part 3: April showers
Part 4: Whispers and campfires

January of my junior year, I boarded a plane with thirteen other students bound for East Africa for five months. On the plane, I sat next to another student, John, who I’d met the day before. He was confident, friendly, attractive.

The first week in Tanzania, we sat through orientations, braved local minibuses, and went to a church together. I learned that his parents had been missionaries in Kenya. He read the Bible on the roof of the hostel in the mornings and spoke naturally about his faith. He took homeless people out to lunch and winced at stories of aggressive missionaries in Africa. He seemed the kind of strong, intelligent, and compassionate believer I needed in my life.

At night in the hostel, while the others watched a movie, John and I sat on the roof to catch the breeze.

We’d known each other less than a week. How did it even come up?

“You’ve been reading the Bible in the mornings?” he asked.

“Yeah. The book of Job.”

“Not the easiest book to get through.”

“I read Jeremiah last summer,” I said. “That was rough.”

“How so?” John had a casual, inviting manner. The sky was clear.

“God is pretty wrathful,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if I believed in him for a while.”

I smacked a mosquito on my leg. God, please don’t let me get malaria. Had I said too much? I barely knew him.

“Me neither,” he said. “My faith really took a beating last year.”

Really? Him too?

We slid easily into the stories: I had to write a paper about Nietzsche. I had to break off a relationship.  I stayed up late talking to my roommate about big questions. Somehow every time we answered each other, “Me too.”

In between classes at the university and volunteering in Dar es Salaam, John and I studied on the roof of the Swahili building. He read me a passage from St. Thomas Aquinas. I asked him more about his doubts. We sat in silence, alternating between Swahili flash cards and prayer journals. Hoping, both, to experience God again.

In the afternoons I went running with another American student, Emily. It was too hot and dusty to last longer than twenty minutes. We stretched afterwards, outside her host mom’s apartment.

“Sometime,” she said, “I want to talk to you and John more about your faith. You guys have something that seems genuine.”

Together, Emily and I read part of the gospel of Mark, the earliest account of Jesus’ life. I discovered again, with her, that Jesus was brilliant. It was refreshing, to hear from someone on the outside that belief could be worthwhile.

This is what it means to say Tanzania. Freedom from college Bible studies where I felt I had to fit a mold. The colors of the fabric they waved in the churches. That John had doubted too. Leaving behind the friends who had unknowingly hurt me by caring not enough, or too much. That Emily saw something real in my faith.

God was coming alive again.

In April, John and I traveled to northwestern Tanzania, and on Easter morning we woke to stand under an acacia tree. The Maasai people trickled in and joined us, their plaid shukas tied across their bodies, white and colored beads dangling from the egg-sized holes in their ears. We gathered to celebrate the victory of Jesus over death.

By 10:30 a.m., they began to sing, nasal and high, and the music encircled me like a wind. The joy of the Lord was in their voices. They sang out under an acacia tree, the rolling highlands of the Maasai steppe all around: “Etupiwuo Yesu!” Jesus has risen from the dead! I watched them jumping and joined in, pushing myself as high as I could, making up my own syllables to the verses I didn’t understand in their tribal language rather than remain silent in this assembly of saints. Gazing at the rolling green hills and blue sky around me, I felt as though joy and earth and God’s spirit building up in me would burst out of me, into the mountains.

This is how we know that he lives in us: we know it by the Spirit he gave us.

During the service, we went down to the river and eleven-year-old Sipironi was baptized. That evening over a plate of roasted goat, I heard Sipironi’s story. A year earlier, crippled by a sudden sickness and unable to eat, he’d been sent from hospital to hospital without diagnosis, a medical mystery. One morning the missionaries left him in the house to run errands. When they came back in the afternoon, he was walking. “Jesus told me to stand up,” he said.

The sky that night was big enough to hold the impossibility of it all. The stars were so many I fell to the ground in awe. Biting ants crawled into my pants and John stood laughing as I wiggled around, yelping and brushing them off my waist and dancing back to the porch for safety.

Etupiwuo Yesu! Jesus is risen.

A journey, part 4: Whispers and campfires

This is part 4 of a story in five parts. Catch up here:
Part 1: Waiting for a sign
Part 2: A sinking feeling
Part 3: April showers

Photo by Doug Beckers

Quemahoning was the kind of camp Professor Stansell might have mocked as too evangelical. It was here at age ten my counselor told me I better say an official prayer to “accept Jesus” into my heart to be sure I was going to heaven. It was here at age fifteen I experienced a community of high-schoolers who weren’t afraid to lie under the stars and ask big questions of God and of themselves.

My first week back, I took twelve-year-old Bailey to play ping-pong. I asked about her family. When she didn’t say much, I launched into the easy diatribe I thought I was supposed to share: “God loves you so much; there is nothing you can do to separate yourself from that love.” The words, like a dented ping-pong ball, didn’t bounce. They landed flat at my feet and I saw that I still didn’t believe them.

I picked my way that summer through the ponderous book of Jeremiah—full of prophecies of sin and destruction—holding my grudge against God for being confusing and wrathful (if he was even real). I woke in the mornings and stared at the sun coming up over the lake. I asked God, why?

One evening, all the counselors huddled in Ellen’s apartment. Someone spoke about how Jesus died for our sins on the cross, how all our failures are accounted for. This is the core tenet of Christianity and the emotional heartbeat of evangelicalism. Many of the counselors cried tears of release and joy. I sat unmoved, bored.

The next afternoon, Ellen caught my arm as the campers rushed off to activities. “How are you doing?” We sat on the benches by the lake. For the first time, I let myself be angry. I thought of sitting alone in my room in in the spring, wishing someone would stop by.  “I don’t feel like a sinner!” I told Ellen. “I don’t feel like I’ve done anything wrong that Jesus has to die for. I just feel broken.”

Ellen reached for my hand and waited a long time as we watched the leaves quiver against the still water. Finally she spoke. “That lack of love you feel,” she began, “that is sin. Christ bore that pain, too.”

*

Trying a different approach, I shared the story of my difficult year with 14-year-old girls around a campfire on our overnight biking trip. “God is big enough to handle questions,” I concluded unconvincingly, pausing to blow on the coals of the campfire and down another roasted marshmallow. “Don’t pretend you don’t have any.”

The conversation returned to beef stew and farts. As the girls trickled off to their tents, I stayed to watch the fire die down. I shone my flashlight around the campsite to make sure all the food was put away. One girl continued sitting at the fire, staring at the coals.

I looked at her. “Not tired?” I asked.

She shook her head.

I poked at the coals again, and sat down to stare at them with her. It’s a good pastime.

“How can you believe in God,” she asked me, “when you aren’t sure he’s really there?”

I was suddenly acutely aware of my the pace of my heartbeat. This was important. Without knowing it, I had been waiting for a camper to ask me this question all summer.

“I want to believe,” she said, “but I don’t know if I do. And I could just say all that stuff is true, but maybe I wouldn’t mean it.”

I stabbed at the coals. I felt the pain still raw inside me. It hurts to want faith and not have it. To feel that a personal, loving God is both the most beautiful and preposterous of notions.

“Have you read the gospels?” I asked. She shook her head. “What I’ve found,” I said, “is that Jesus is a genius. Someone I want to follow. There’s something real in those stories.”

But it was only people who wrote the Bible. When I pray it feels empty. My life isn’t exactly the best right now. I want to be independent.

Her objections were mine. As I listened to her, I was listening to myself. “I don’t think it’s something anyone can figure out for you,” I finally copped out. “We all have to find God on our own.”

My heart hurt when I said goodbye to her a few days later.

That summer, it was 14-year-olds who reminded me that honest seekers yearn for God. It was music and campfires and whispers by the lake that reminded me there is a world apart from academic criticism. That honesty and vulnerability can be met with love.

By August, I could look out over the lake and see beauty. I could fall asleep content at the community of lovely people around me. I could pray quietly, thank you.

“This is how we know that he lives in us,” the apostle John writes. “We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

My favorite part of the story happened in the beautiful land of Tanzania in East Africa.  Read about this in the final installment, Part 5.

Coming out, part 2: Getting off the fence

This piece is a continuation of a post I wrote earlier this week. It will probably help to read part 1 first. Both posts are dedicated to the brave and wonderful people who allowed me to include their stories as a part of mine. I write this in hopes that this piece of my journey will help to break down walls rather than create them.

After the summer of 2008, I was changed. I returned home with new stories in my heart and mind. Three women had been vulnerable with me. They had been honest about their struggle to reconcile their sexuality with their lives, faiths, relationships, identities.

I needed to think more on this. I followed the news and articles closely when my favorite Christian rock singer, Jennifer Knapp, came out as a lesbian. I sought more commentary and read Andrew Marin’s beautiful book Love is an Orientation. I settled comfortably and honestly onto a fence between rejecting and accepting gay marriage. It seemed more important than ever to accept gay people, love them, and believe that God could speak to them, too. But it seemed good to resist labels, to avoid taking sides. After all, Jesus often hung around with the questionable folk, and he often resisted questions that created barriers, questions that tested which side you were on (Should we pay taxes to Caesar? Is John the Baptist legit? How can we get on God’s good side? What is your stance on homosexuality?). So I determined that I didn’t really need to define my “stance.” My orientation could be love.

Meanwhile I got to know a few more folks.

When I first met Martin at church, I had no idea he was gay. I did think he was a brilliant writer, a talented musician, and way smart. I remember feeling like he didn’t fit a label—he read the Bible critically, read the news critically. When someone got off on a liberal rant he could bring us back to see the other side. He never wanted to ignore the hard things about faith, like God’s wrath or the devil.

I also wondered why he was so reserved. In our writing group he always brought fiction and never seemed to want to share about his personal experiences. Then one day he brought nonfiction memoir to writing group, a heartrending story about being gay at his Christian senior prom. Growing up evangelical, he had prayed for God to take away his attraction to men. When he realized he could never fall in love with a woman, he resigned himself to celibacy. Later, after much thought, he came to reconcile his sexuality and faith. He hopes to marry one day. Whenever I have asked Martin questions about his sexuality and faith and journey, he is patient and gracious and takes the time to explain.

A couple months after Martin opened up with us, I started working at a new church, where I met a married couple named Sarah and Lara. They were one of the happiest, most in-love couples I had ever met. They seemed so affectionate and servant-hearted with each other. They had been married in a church ceremony though not “legally” because their state did not allow it. Again, they did not fit any stereotypes. Sarah was a teacher of special ed, and Lara worked for the school system in adaptive services for students with disabilities, and they liked a good concert and a date night and a long vacation like anyone else. Sarah once worked for a local Republican campaign. Sarah and Lara wished the state would recognize their marriage, and they wished they could be allowed to adopt. They would be loving, wonderful parents.

When I attended Sarah and Lara’s more progressive church, everyone probably assumed I was a supporter of gay rights. As I found excitement in my heart when DOMA was struck down and when Maryland voted to allow same-sex marriage…maybe I even started to assume it myself.

*

Last spring, I was accepted to divinity school to become a pastor, and I realized that within a few years I would have to take a public stance on the one question that really remained: Is there a place in the church for Christian same-sex marriage? and can this be supported by someone who takes the Bible seriously? So I began to read some books and articles and look closer at the Bible on this issue.

I write about stories, and memories. Not theology or politics or ideology. So this is the part where my story becomes halting. I’m not sure how to share the rest, the little pieces of different videos and articles and books and prayer and Bible study that have shaped my interpretation. Do I keep writing and try to explain it? Or do I just let the stories above speak for themselves?

By this point you realize what I’m going to say. You realize that I am “Coming Out” as a supporter of gay marriage, both politically and religiously, but more importantly, personally. And, if you’ve had the kindness to read this far, you are either shaking your head—why did it take her so long—or you are slightly frowning—this isn’t what the Bible says. Or maybe, just maybe, you are thinking, I understand. I understand the journey of slowly and honestly changing your mind on something you never really chose to think in the first place, something that was gently given to you by your culture.

So I think I want to stop there. To keep it simply what it is: a story of my journey in learning to love better.

And yes, you’re right, it took me too long, and I am sorry.

And yes, you’re right, the Bible is complex and deep and contextual and we have to read it so carefully and seriously, because it is living and holy and true. I know that you read it carefully and seriously and I understand that change is hard and I respect that. Please know that I read it carefully too. It is actually because of this Bible and this faith that I have come to this place. (If you’re interested in how I believe my position is supported, read this post with some additional thoughts and resources.)

The fence of ambiguous silence is no longer a good place for me. Today, I am Coming Out as an ally because I want to stand up for what have come to I believe is right. Because some people don’t have the choice to remain neutral and blend in everywhere. Because every day, someone on the fault lines of Christianity and the gay community is hurt. Because every day, we have the chance to take a step towards healing.

____

I would love to hear your thoughts on today’s post as well as Monday’s. Please keep comments charitable.

Coming out, part 1: The summer of '08

This post is dedicated to the brave and wonderful people who allowed me to include their stories as a part of mine. I write this in hopes that this piece of my journey will help to break down walls rather than create new ones.

Sex was a concept I picked it up slowly in elementary school, starting with the words my friends used, the movies I saw unwittingly at sleepovers of more worldly-wise friends, and the giggles whenever our fifth grade teacher said “do it.” It was in the same way that I picked up “gay”—first the language only, from my friends, usually used as a derogatory term for the boys who pierced their right ear or the girls whose hand-me-down clothes were a few styles too old. Then, slowly, that it had something to do with girls kissing girls or boys kissing boys.

My parents cornered me in about fifth grade, on a car ride home, and started telling me about menstruation and the reproductive system. When we arrived home they were just getting to the juicy part and were going to show me some diagrams in a book, so I excused myself to use the bathroom. I emerged and my mom yelled down the hall, “Don’t you want to know how the egg gets fertilized?” Embarrassed, I told them I was too busy arranging my Celine Dion and Backstreet Boys cassette tapes.

Later, when they were out, I snuck the book from their room and devoured it. I learned in depth about sex, masturbation, pornography, and homosexuality, those fascinatingly forbidden topics. I still remember the wording: “When a man and a woman are married, they go somewhere by themselves and start kissing and hugging…” After reading it, I went to bury my face in my teddy bear.

From the book, from church, from my community, I drew the implicit assumption that it was only between a married man and a woman that sex should occur. Implicit is what it always was; for me there was never an angry sermon about gays destroying the culture. At summer camp in high school, we had long and deep discussions about sex and dating and relationships, which did not mention but certainly assumed that everyone was straight. We now know from Facebook this was not true.

I realized my uncle was gay when I was 13, in a sudden burst of insight. My uncle's partner (his "friend" I thought) mentioned in a card that they were taking a trip for their anniversary. This was my first encounter with real live gay people. By the time I got to high school, my straight assumptions were entrenched enough that I was scared of the high school gay club, LeTsGaB. Honestly, it was less repulsion and condescension than it was discomfort. I was nerdy, quiet, and decidedly evangelical, and the gay club seemed to represent a loud and proud discussion of sexuality I was not ready to have at all. My church had never told me to hate gays, but it had certainly never told me to love them.

So in college, I made mostly evangelical friends, steered clear of yet another gay club, and mostly tried to ignore the idea. Until senior year.

*

In 2008, three women came out to me.

Kate was a college friend. One night she asked me if we could talk. She told me she felt terrible for not being honest. I had asked what she was doing over the weekend, and she said she had a training for work. Another day, she told me she was going into the city to meet some friends from her trip abroad. She was tired of lying to me. The truth was, she was bi, and dating a woman for the first time. She wanted to be out, but she was scared to tell some of our other friends for fear of judgment.

I tried to listen compassionately. I told her nothing changed about how I felt about her. But I felt it would be dishonest if I didn’t share my perspective. I asked her if she had a sense about how this new revelation about her sexuality fit with her faith. She said she felt pretty good about it. I mumbled something about how I still wasn’t sure whether or not it was okay to be gay. I told her that I wanted to be supportive, but I was trying to figure out where I stood.

We graduated a couple months later. I’ve seen her only twice since then.

A couple weeks later I arrived at my fourth and final summer as a counselor at a Christian camp. The whispered conversations of pain and trust and Jesus seem even more beautiful five years later. The last two weeks, Lana and I were counselors for Cabin 12, the oldest girls in camp. It was the clearest night of the summer and Lana and I took the girls up to the soccer field to gaze into the soul of the universe. I asked everyone to share about their relationship with God over the past year. Each girl told a story, but Emily didn’t want to talk.

“You don’t have to share,” we said, “but this is a safe place.”

She waffled. “I really don’t have anything to share.”

“Emily, it’s okay, you can say it.” One of the girls encouraged her, and she continued.

“I mean, I can’t have a relationship with God.”

I was not the only one on the field to jump in immediately. “What do you mean? Everyone can have a relationship with God!”

She took a deep breath. “I mean, I’m gay.”

That was not the explanation I was expecting, and I was silenced momentarily. The stars were bright with beauty. The other sixteen-year-old girls began to respond with acceptance and love. I was proud of them. I think Emily felt free.

When we returned to the cabin, Lana and I met on the porch, as we did every night. There were tears in her eyes as we prayed for the girls.

I sat on Emily’s bunk and we whispered into the night. She told me when she first knew, though in a way she had always known. She told me about coming out to her mom and sister, but not her dad who would be furious. She told me it was hard coming out to her girlfriends, because some of them started acting weird, like they were afraid she would be attracted to them.

I prayed for the Spirit to give me the right words, and the words that came were of God’s unconditional love.

I woke the next morning and I knew clearly that my role was simply to show grace. To let her see she could reconnect with God. To emphasize that the central message of our faith is God’s surprising, consuming, boundary-breaking love.

Lana and I went out to the porch for our morning prayer. “I knew exactly what Emily was going to say as soon as she started,” said Lana. “I knew because I’ve been there, in that exact conversation. I’ve said those exact words.” She was quiet for a while as I took in what she was saying. “And the hardest thing is that no one knows. I couldn’t work here if they knew. And I can’t talk with Emily about it because I signed a statement of beliefs.”

This time I just listened.

When it was time to pray, I prayed, thank you God for your great love, greater than our love.

 ____

Part 2 is up! I would love to hear your thoughts. Please keep comments charitable.