May 20

Some final musings on the GSCR

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Before too much time passes, I wanted to offer a few more comments and thoughts on the Generous Spaciousness Conference Retreat I attended 10 May through 13 May.  In particular, I want to reflect more on one of my reasons for going and what I found out:

Generous Spaciousness offers a possible alternative [for living peaceably with Christian friends and family members] to those choices [hiding parts of who I am or limiting how much time I spend with certain people], and it’s an alternative that I want to place hope in.  Going to the retreat was, in many ways, an attempt to gauge how much hope I should allow myself to put in Generous Spaciousness.

At the retreat, I found a great deal of welcome and a willingness to walk with me no matter where I was in my own journey.  I found that people were seeking to make Generous Spaciousness as open as they possibly could.  In fact, I remember another member of my community group turning to me at the breakfast table and asking me if I had found the even very generous or spacious, given the fact that I followed a completely different faith tradition.  It suggested to me that he was considering how his spaces could be more welcoming, even beyond the bounds and dimensions of human sexuality.

I’ll also note that while many people commented on my bravery for attending the event, I found my fellow community group member’s choice to ask that question pretty brave in itself.  It takes a certain amount of vulnerability to ask another person if they perceive you and your comrades as welcoming and hospitable as you perceive yourself to be.

For the record, by and large, the answer to that question was a resounding yes on my part.  Oh there were a few things here and there, mainly what seemed to be a couple assumptions about people who land outside the Christian faith.  But I saw these as mostly minor things, the sort of thing that would be resolved by further dialogue.  What was far more important to me was the desire to have that dialogue and how many seemed open to allowing that dialogue to challenge them.  I think this was most likely due to the fact that I was dealing with people who have experienced what it’s like to be misunderstood and seen inaccurately (a la validity prisms and straw men) by others and have combined that experience with their capacity for empathy, creating a desire to better understand those they themselves and lose their own preconceived notions along the way.

Of course, this raises the question of how well other people — including the people who are in my life on a more regular basis — would do.  After all, the retreat was full of a self-selected sample of people who wanted — and in many cases — likely needed Generous Spaciousness.  It may still be a long time before Generous Spaciousness gains traction with a less intentional gathering of people.  I have high hopes that it will gain that traction in time, however.

May 19

Memories: Being a ham

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Today’s going to be just another light glimpse into my past.  I hope you enjoy the lightness of it all, dear readers.

Growing up, I enjoyed acting.  I was in just about every production my Sunday school or church production did, mostly Easter and Christmas pageants.  When  I made it to high school, I was excited to join drama club.

I wouldn’t say that I was ever Hollywood material.  Certainly not Broadway material.  However, I felt I did well enough, especially for my little corner of rural Pennsylvania.  I remember when i was in eighth or ninth grade and the drama club was planning on doing a fun little play called “Agatha Christie Made Me Do It.”  (See synopsis here.)  We were sitting through try-outs and the role of Waldo the butler was still up for grabs.  One of the upperclassmen suggested that maybe I should try out for the part.  The club adviser — who also acted as the director — said she just couldn’t see me in the part and couldn’t imagine me doing it.

As I’ve mentioned before, I love a good challenge.  So I snatched a copy of the script, found a scene in which Waldo played a prominent part, strolled onto the stage, and gave my audition.  I got the part instantly.  In fact, by the second week of rehearsals, our adviser had taken back her original assessment, but admitted that I played the part so convincingly that she half expected a British accent to start rolling off my tongue every time I took the stage.  (Alas, I wasn’t that good of an actor.)

We never made it to show-time, unfortunately.  Due to various issues, the production got canceled.  It’s a shame too, as I think that was my best role ever.  Though I did go on to take a speaking part in a musical a couple years later, which gave myself and all my classmates the chance to discover that I do an amazingly good imitation of Fred Rogers.  (“You know what?  You’re a wonderful person.  There’s no one else in this whole world just like you.  You’re special.  Very, very special.”)  Then where was the year that our new drama advisor proved how quickly I could pick up a part when she approached me a week before showtime because one of her actors had become ill and there was no understudy.  (The original actor recovered in time to play the role.)

After high school, I quit acting.  When I went to college, things changed.  We had a drama department, and most of the drama majors fought over the parts — and were incredible actors by virtue of the fact that they were actually going to school for it.  I figured that a simple computer science major who just used to do high school and church stuff was no match in that competition.  Some part of me wishes I had tried just once though, just to see what would’ve happened.

May 18

Missing my Precious

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Precious gazing up at daddy lovingly.

“I love my daddy!”

[Content Note:  Brief mentions of depression.]

In a few hours, I’ll be heading down to my parents’ house to spend the night and collect my little darling, Precious.  I sent her to stay with her grandparents almost two weeks ago while I was traveling to Canada.  I’ll be happy to bring her back home with me, as my place seems too quiet without her.  I’ve already started mistaking a lump of wadded up sheets for her laying next to me or thinking I heard her meowing at different intervals.

I think that having her around also tends to make me feel better about myself and not fall into depression so easily.  I remember the first time I moved out of my parents’ home — in the late 1990′s.  At that time, I had my cat, Strype.  However, I left him at my parents’ house as the apartment I moved into did not allow for pets.  Also, Strype was such an old cat, I wasn’t sure I wanted to make him leave my parents home or his litter-mate, who had been a part of his whole life.  As a result, that apartment was dull and quiet and left me feeling quite lonely.  (Granted the massive things I was dealing with at that point in my life didn’t help, either.)

When I moved to Rochester, though, I knew I needed to bring Precious with me.  Part of that was due to the fact that although I’ve always had a good relationship with my other cats, Precious and I seem to share a sort of bond I’ve never experienced before.  I’ve never had a cat before that is as clingy as she can be.  (She’ll spend the next few days giving me the stink-eye every time I head for the door, as if to say, “You already disappeared for several days, Bub!  Where do you think you’re going now???”)  So when I moved up here, I made a point of making sure I found a place where I could have a cat.  That and having washer and drier hookups were my two major non-negotiable items.

May 17

Heads up!

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This is just a note to let you know that the blog may become inaccessible for a while this weekend.  I have finally decided to migrate the blog from MovableType to WordPress.  This will hopefully address a few problems:

1.  It will hopefully get rid of a lot of the spambots that constantly (thousands of times per day) hit my commenting script.
2.  It will hopefully resolve some of the issues people have trying to comment here.
3.  It will let me get some newer features, as I’m running a pretty old version of MovableType and attempts to upgrade to newer versions have failed abysmally in the future.
4.  I’ll be able to leave pingbacks on WordPress blogs I link to.
5.  I’ve used WordPress and decided I just like it better.  (Okay, not really a problem, but hey.)

I’ve been hesitant to do this, but I discovered there’s a new site out there called tp2wp.com that streamlines the migration process.  And while it costs $50, I figure that resolving the above issue is worth it.

To support this, I will be disabling all comments and trackbacks on this blog in a few minutes (relative to this blog’s posting time) to “freeze” the database.

From your standpoint, the way this plays out should look like this:
1.  You may see the blog as it currently is, but will be unable to comment.
2.  You may then see nothing.  Or a blank blog.
3.  You will (hopefully) eventually see this blog, but with a different cosmetic appearance.  Hopefully, there will be a brief post from me announcing that the migration was a complete success and it’s back to business as usual.

As an aside, I will be doing a full backup of the site’s static pages and other files (e.g. images).  If something goes horribly wrong (or I just get frustrated before I work through the dozens of minor gotchas the migration site forgot to mention), I should be able to restore the MT version of this blog.  In that case, rather than step #3 above, expect to see a blog post from me muttering and cussing.

At any rate, wish me luck and I’ll hopefully catch you on the flip side!

May 17

About that Tim Keller quote (Part 2)

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Yesterday, I blogged about the following statement by Tim Keller:

If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ . . . you’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.

In that post, I talked about the quote from the perspective of seeing the fear that seemed to motivate and permeate it.  Today, I want to talk about it from the perspective of seeing the privilege that seems to motivate and permeate it.  Because if I may be honest — and I’ll try to do so as graciously as I know how — I find something deeply ironic about an evangelical minister objecting to the fact that other people might be asking him to change the way he thinks or even “kick his faith out the door.”

Dear readers, that’s exactly what every single evangelical Christian is asking of every single person who follows a different religion or no religion at all:  “Give up your faith and what you believe and believe what I think is right instead.”  So effectively, Tim Keller is objecting to other people (allegedly) asking him to do exactly what he calls upon every Jew, Wiccan, atheist, agnostic, Buddhist, Hindu, and Santerian[1] to do without giving it a second thought.  That’s boilerplate unexamined privilege right there.

It also underlines to me the biggest problem with unexamined privilege:  It’s often the enemy of empathy.[2]  Here’s an opportunity for Tim Keller to consider how (feeling like he’s) being asked to give up something so important to him feels to him and try to imagine how those he evangelizes to might often feel the same way.  And yet, because I suspect he doesn’t even make that connection (or avoids it by insisting it’s somehow different), he’s missing out on an opportunity to (1) empathize with those he’s trying to evangelize to and (2) think about how that empathy might influence how he handles his attempts to do so.

I don’t necessarily want Tim Keller or others like him to quit sharing his beliefs or inviting others to join his faith.  However, now that he and those like him have experienced being on “the other side” of the conversation, I’d like them to let that experience and their capacity for empathy to inform their mission.

Also, it would also be nice if their empathy would help them to understand that yes, if they really want others to be open to their message, they’re almost certainly going to have to be likewise open to others’ messages.  Otherwise, they’re expecting something from others that they are unwilling to offer up to others.  And one thing I that think is near-universal if not truly universal among humans is that we tend not to like double standards.

Note:
[1] Not an exhaustive list, I assure you.  But hopefully I’ve named enough religions and non-religious people to make the point that it’s a lot of people he’s asking this of.

[2] Or maybe the lack of empathy contributes to one’s failure to examine privilege.  Personally, I suspect it may be a bit of both, not to mention a self-reinforcing cycle.

May 16

About that Tim Keller quote (Part 1)

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During her Saturday morning address, Wendy drew attention to the following statement made recently by evangelical minister Tim Keller:

If you say to everybody, ‘Anyone who thinks homosexuality is a sin is a bigot,’ . . . you’re going to have to ask them to completely disassemble the way in which they read the Bible, completely disassemble their whole approach to authority. You’re basically going to have to ask them to completely kick their faith out the door.

One of the thing I noticed about this quote was the fear involved.  Some evangelical Christians fear that if they allow themselves to question their views on same sex sexual relationships — any one of a host of other issues — they might end up losing their faith altogether.  In a lot of ways, I get that fear.  I experienced it once upon myself at times, too.

And I get it because, in some ways, I represent the realization of those fears.  I started out as a devout Christian.  When I allowed myself to rethink my views on homosexuality, it also gave me the freedom to grapple with a number of other questions.  The end result of that process, which only started with my struggle with my sexual orientation, was that I eventually chose to follow an entirely different path altogether and serve other gods.

It’s easy for someone like Tim Keller to point to me and others like me and say, “See, this is what happens when you start down that path!”  And I can understand their tendency to do that, at least to some degree.

The problem is, people like Tim Keller think that what happened to me is inevitable for anyone who starts asking those questions.  I don’t think it is.  I sat in a room with roughly fifty other people this weekend, most of whom serve as living evidence that a journey that begins by asking the tough questions and reconsidering what they’ve been taught doesn’t have to lead one down the path I took.  It’s just as likely that one could change their mind about same sex sexual relationships — or any other single topic — and go no further.  It’s just as likely that after one does all the thinking and reconsidering, one ends up back at the same conclusions they held before then.  So people like Tim Keller are fearing something that’s not inevitable.

I would like to suggest that the fear people like Tim Keller are feeling is the exact reason I think they need to rethink something about the way they do faith.  Because right now, the way they’re doing it causes them fear, and I don’t think that’s healthy for them.  So I’d personally like to see them to start asking some hard questions — and maybe not even questions about human sexuality — in an attempt to restructure and firm up their faith so they don’t have to worry about it unraveling on them so much.  In short, I’d like to see them develop a faith — and a way of doing and having faith — in which they can actually have more faith.

May 15

So why did I go?

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While at the retreat, I was fairly open about the fact that I follow another religious tradition rather than Christianity.  When people asked me if I attended a church[1], I answered that I did not and continued by saying that I follow a different spiritual tradition.  When one or two asked what my faith background, I said something like “Well, I grew up in a small American Baptist Church and attended a Full Gospel or charismatic church while going to college.  Since then, however, my spiritual journey has led me to follow another religious tradition outside of Christianity altogether.”

Not surprisingly, more than a few people asked me what led me to attend the conference, given it’s Christian focus.  Just to be clear, they were all glad I was there (and not just because it meant a chance to convert me).  Instead, it was pretty clear to me that they seemed to operating under a sense of wonder at my choice.  I think the leader of my community group, Jason, gave voice to that sense of wonder when he commented that he wasn’t sure he’d be brave enough to attend the conference if had been in my shoes.

To be honest, I asked myself the same question several times before the conference and even a few times during it.  “Why am I doing this?”

First and foremost, I went because I wanted to meet Wendy.  I had been talking to her for quite some time online[2] and had come to admire her and appreciate her friendship.  As a result I’ve often wanted to meet her for a long time.  In fact, I kept telling myself that if I ever found myself going up to Toronto and had the time in my schedule to support it, I’d contact her and ask her if she had the time to meet someplace for a cup of coffee.  So when the conference came up and she asked me if I’d like to attend, I took that as my opportunity.[3]

Another reason I went is because I wanted to see firsthand how (and how well) Generous Spaciousness worked in person and in a community.  I knew Wendy did a great job (at least online, and I had plenty of reason to believe she was no different in person) at embodying Generous Spaciousness herself, but I also feel it’s easier for one person to do that, especially when they’re dealing with people on a more one-on-one basis.  I was curious to see how Generous Spaciousness fared in an environment that involved multiple people, each with their own views, needs, and understandings.  (Short answer:  It works quite well.)

You see Generous Spaciousness represents hope to me, a hope that I most desperately want.  As I told a number of people at the retreat, I’ve made my peace with the faith of my past and the fact that my journey has taken me down other roads, roads my old faith communities would find strange and possibly more than a little terrifying.  Where I struggle, however, is dealing with the members of my old faith communities, especially those who I am still in relationship with and wish to remain in relationship with.  My parents, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews are all Christian.[4]  I have friends with whom I have a long history who are Christian, and there are times when I struggle with how to live peacefully with them in a way that still allows me to be authentic when I’m with them.

Sadly, right now, that sometimes means limiting the time I spend with some of those people.  That’s not a solution I particularly like.  Sometimes, it means hiding parts of myself when around some of those people — thereby sacrificing my own sense of authenticity to some degree. That is not even a solution and I loathe that choice even more.

Generous Spaciousness offers a possible alternative to those choices, and it’s an alternative that I want to place hope in.  Going to the retreat was, in many ways, an attempt to gauge how much hope I should allow myself to put in Generous Spaciousness.

Notes:
[1]  Come to think of it, I don’t think anyone asked me what church I attended, but rather if I attended one.  I find that interesting now that I’m thinking about it.  I suspect (thought can’t be sure) that even among LGBT people who maintain their Christian faith, it’s common to walk away from faith communities for a period.

[2] I participated in the Bridging the Gap Synchroblog back in June of 2009.  I think I started reading the BTG blog a month or two before that, though a quick scan of the post titles from back then didn’t help me narrow it down any better.  But I can say for certain that I’ve known her via online interactions for nearly four years, perhaps slightly longer than that.

[3] I’ll admit that before I signed up, I asked her if she was sure it was a good idea.

[4] For many of these people, my sexual orientation and my choice of how to respond to it is a bit of a sticking point.  My religious choices are a sticking point for all of them.

May 14

Walking the labyrinth at the retreat

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11-Circuit-Labyrinth.jpgWhen I found out that Crieff Hills had a labyrinth, I got excited.  I’m fascinated by labyrinths, so I knew I’d have to seek it out and walk it at some point.  So when another attendee asked if anyone else wanted to go check out the labyrinth (he also mentioned checking out the amphitheater, but that didn’t hold as big a pull for me), I jumped at the chance.

The Crieff Hills labyrinth (and there’s a lovely picture of it here) is one of the simplest patterns I have seen.  Unlike many medieval-style labyrinths (in Greek labyrinths, the “center” wasn’t exactly in the center perfectly circular rings), the full length of each ring is traversed once its entered, as opposed to many such labyrinths (study the image included in this post to see what I’m talking about) paths only traverse one quarter or one half of a ring before turning sending you to a different one.  This has the effect of having you walk different quarters of the labyrinth, then jumping to a completely different quarter on occasion.  The Crieff Hill’s labyrinth simply has you jumping between different rings, sometimes bringing you closer to the center, only to move you further away from it before you finally get to the center.

One of the things I like about the Crieff Hills labyrinth (and every other labyrinth I’ve had the pleasure to walk so far) is that it is marked by a stone path that lets you look out and see your progress.  It allows you to see that your ultimate distance from the center increases and decreases — almost at seemingly random intervals.  That’s what makes them a beautiful metaphor not only for spirituals journeys and life itself.  Being able to see your progress and just how meandering it is in a labyrinth can be a great comfort when you feel like your own life journey is too tangled and wonder if it’s really going to get you anywhere in the end.    (Hey Wendy, if you’re reading this, would you consider including a
labyrinth walk as part of the planned activities next year for this
reason?)

Some day, I hope to find and walk a labyrinth that has walls, thereby preventing me from seeing my progress.  I want to experience more fully the sense of getting completely lost in a labyrinth, not knowing how close (or far away) from my destination the next turn will take me.  To me, that would be another way to experience the parallels between walking a labyrinth and journeying through life.

As an aside, to date, the Crieff Hills labyrinth is the only labyrinth I’ve seen that has trees in it.  Having to duck branches to walk its winding paths was a unique and rather interesting experience.  I think it adds another layer of metaphorical meaning to the experience.

May 13

Musing from an Unbeliever[1] at the Lord’s Table

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Saturday night as Joe, Wendy, Jason, and I sat playing Stone Age, Wendy and Jason began talking about a few details for the next morning’s worship session.  In the course of the conversation, Jason asked, “Aren’t we having communion during worship tomorrow?”  Wendy confirmed and I tried to focus on the game to help distract me from the thoughts that had suddenly burst into my head — or least keep them from becoming obvious to any of my companions.  Because communion is quite possibly the one Christian ritual[2] that I struggle with participating in, though I’m not sure many people understand why that is.

In many ways, I feel blessed to be devoted to gods that are rather lenient when it comes to participating in the rites of other faiths.  Their attitude tends to be, “you have your obligations to us.  As long as what you choose to do does not interfere with or contradict those obligations, feel free to follow your conscience.

No, the discomfort I have with communion stems from the fact that I deeply respect the rites and practices of other faiths.  In the case of communion, different Christians see communion quite differently, and it’s hard to tell if the most respectful thing to do is to participate or not.

In the church where I grew up, communion was Very Serious Business.  On those Sundays in which my church served communion — it was conducted roughly once a month — the minister would read 1 Corinthians 11:23-29 without offering any commentary or explanation, then go on to tell the congregation that they should only take communion if (1) they were “saved” and (2) had made their hearts right with God.

Like I said, for some Christians, communion is Very Serious Business.  My first church was one such church.  And I know many other churches who hold the view that only Christians should participate in communion.

Rites mean something to their faith communities, and sometimes, it’s not always easy to determine what those rites mean, especially in a situation like this past weekend where people are coming from diverse Christians backgrounds, each of which may have subtle (and not so subtle) differences in how they interpret this particular rite.

So when it comes to communion, I often find myself uncomfortable with participating in the right communion of communion because I’m not sure what I’m “signing up for” or “saying” by my participation, which makes it difficult for me to really decide if I can do so honestly.  And to me, participating in a rite dishonestly is one of the biggest forms of disrespect.

In the end, I did end up participating in the rite.  Wendy had each community group — the small groups we had been divided into for the purpose of sharing and growing together — in turn and partake together.  Under those circumstances, I felt a bit better about participating.  My community group (and Wendy) for that matter knew where I stood theologically, so I didn’t feel I had to worry so much about being dishonest.

Plus, this was a group of people I had grown fond of and close to over the previous day and a half.  Sharing in that rite with them seemed like the correct — and highly desirable — thing to do.

Note:
[1] Someday, I will write a blog post in which I unpack everything I don’t like about that word and others like it.

[2] I suppose I might feel the same way about baptism if the assumption was that everyone present was going to get baptized.  In my experience, that’s not normally the case.