WLSU: Accepting Blessing

The teaching of the church in which I grew up was clear: Only heterosexual attraction was part of God’s plan and anything else was sinful and unnatural. Any sexual attraction or activity that strayed from heterosexuality was abhorrent to God. And anyone who was gay was questionable at best – their orientation dubbed a “lifestyle”, their very being called a choice and a bad one at that.

I believed all these things when I was 13. I was taught them as a matter of fact, so I did not question them any more than I questioned that 1+1=2.

And then my Dad told me he was gay. He sat across the dining room table in his little home in New Hampshire and he told me his story, starting in his childhood, and all the way up to the present day, 1993, just six months after he and my Mom had separated and he’d gotten in his Honda Accord and driven away from California to start the next chapter of his life. I could tell he was nervous, something I was not used to seeing. He had always been confident, sure. Here he was watching me for my reaction. He was scared he’d lose me. Scared I’d judge him. Scared I’d be done. And in all of it he knew that no matter what happened next, our relationship would not be the same.

I will not tell you that I sat there understanding everything, that it all made perfect sense to me, or that I could reconcile his story with what our church had taught me. What I can tell you is that I loved him. So much. And I did not like seeing him scared to lose me. Because I knew in my bones he would never lose me. And even at 13, even as my life and my faith were being turned upside down, I remember just wanting him to know that we would be ok. I knew we would be ok.

My dad was not my hero. He was not perfect, invincible, unassailable or saintly to me. I had a list of complaints for this very human guy. None of that mattered in that moment. I believed the story he told me. I believed him. When I say that I chose to accept him what I actually mean is that I chose to listen to him and to believe his experience as valid and true. That he had been gay as long as he could remember. That he had tried not to be. That he had prayed endlessly, tried to be straight, tried to be what he considered faithful, and that none of it had worked. That he was done trying to be anything other than who he was. And that even though he was scared of my rejection, he was going to be himself and invite me to see the truth of that.

Looking back on it, I shake my head to think of how often Christians have made telling the truth a difficult and scary prospect. How judgmental we can be, how condemning. How sure we are of what others’ lives are supposed to look like, of what their identities should be, of who and how they should love. When I am feeling idealistic, I like to imagine a world in which Christians have earned a reputation for being gracious and loving, open and thoughtful. You know, like Jesus.

But here we are in the real world, where people who love us are scared to tell us the truth of their hearts and lives because we might reject them, preach at them, misunderstand them, mistrust them, dismiss their experience, their wisdom. We Christians are so scared of being transformed by the presence of God in the person right in front of us. We are scared of accepting new people and new ideas because it means we didn’t have it quite right before, and that makes us very uncomfortable.

In your moments of discomfort with change, look for Love. I don’t mean that abstractly, but literally and practically. Look for where the love is in that moment and hold onto it. This will not rescue you from discomfort. Instead, the Love will strengthen you so that you can stay in the discomfort long enough to see how God is transforming your life through the person in front of you.

In my case I loved my Dad. So I decided to accept him for who he was. It changed my faith. It changed my understanding of who God is. It changed everything.

But that acceptance and that change would take time. It would have to work on me. When we are conditioned to think a certain way for years and years it takes us years and years to unwind it all, to re-understand ourselves and our beliefs. This is tender work filled with stumbling and uncertainty. Let me give you an example of what I mean.

It was over 20 years later and I had become a priest in the Episcopal Church. I was sitting with a clergy friend who was gay and we were talking about same-sex marriage. Same-sex marriage is now fully supported in the Episcopal Church, but that was not the case at the time. We were both in agreement that it should be. And I, thinking I was a very understanding ally, said of course same-sex marriage should be allowed, it’s no different from heterosexual marriage. And my friend who was a priest and was gay and had been partnered for many years shot back, “Of course it’s different.” This really threw me off, especially since I thought after 20 years of being accepting, that I understood, that I got it. “How is it different?”

His answer was direct and simple. Terse even. He said, “it’s two men. Or two women. Instead of a man and woman. How could it possibly be the same?” And I mumbled something about the commitment, the fidelity, the hardships, all that stuff we say and we believe. And he said, fine, ok, but don’t you see? And I confessed I didn’t. So he helped me see, which he did not have to do. But he loved me and decided to be patient and to hold on.

He said that marriage reveals to us something about who God is. That is what a sacrament does. It draws us more deeply into how God loves, and how we are transformed by that love. It shows us God’s blessing. And I thought I already believed all that but I kept listening. And then he said this: He said that a man and a woman committing to each other in this way told us something about God’s love, but two men committing to each other showed us something new and different about God’s love. And two women committing to each other showed us something else even. That they were different from each other and that this was beautiful.

And then this friend of mine looked at me and had the audacity to say this. He said, “I am a blessing. My sexuality is a blessing. It is different from yours and that is a blessing. Me being me shows this world something new about God if the world is willing to see it.”

I am a blessing.

And I began to cry sitting there at that table with that friend. I began to cry for my father. In that moment it hit me: 20+ years earlier I had said I loved my dad and I had said that I accepted him. And to some degree I had. But I had accepted him by focusing on how we were alike even though he was gay. I had accepted him by saying he is not that different. He is still ok. His love is no different from my love. Having a gay Dad is no different from having a straight Dad, I told myself. I had decided at that table in New Hampshire that my Dad’s sexuality was not a sin. But it took me over 20 years to realize that in fact it was a blessing. That his being gay blessed him, blessed me, blessed this world. His self, his life, his love was different from mine. And that difference was a blessing that would show me more of who God was if only I’d let it.

I’m writing this on what would have been my father’s 77th birthday. He was already dead when I had that conversation with my priest friend. So when I wiped my tears away I did not get to call him up and apologize and bless him and thank him for blessing me. I didn’t get to tell him that I was still learning about acceptance. I didn’t get to tell him about how love was still transforming me.

It has been 30 years since that day at the dining room table, 17 years since his death. Blessing and transformation keep working on you if you let them. Actually accepting people for who they are takes time – even when you wish it didn’t. You want to be changed in an instant, but it is more often like water shaping a rock. Love keeps you in the game even when you are uncertain and ignorant. And my love for him is not past tense. So it keeps changing me. Keeps blessing me. Eternal life.

When are you done learning about how God loves? When are you done being transformed? When have you seen enough blessing? When do you decide there’s nothing more God can show you?

I am still learning who God is. I am still learning how God loves. I am still waking up to the multitude of ways God blesses us. This kind of learning is a practice that transforms us, converts us, never leaves us alone.

If you are wrestling with how you feel or what you believe about LGBTQ+ persons, if all the initials and that plus sign make you uncomfortable, if you thought you got it but now there are new identities and new things and you’re overwhelmed or confused or even angry, start by asking yourself, “Where do I see Love in this person? Where do I see God?” You cannot go wrong when you look for Love in your neighbor.

If, like me, you think you’re an ally, ask those same questions: “Where do I see Love? Where do I see God?” In fact, keep asking those questions, because the answers will keep changing and will keep changing you. You are never done being blessed and transformed by God.

And if you are an LGBTQ+ person, I hope you will ask the same questions: “Where do I see Love in myself? Where do I see God?” Because the overwhelming majority of Christians have not helped you to see the truth that God is present within you, that you’re distinct being is a location of God’s transforming Love. But it’s true. You are a blessing. I pray for a world that is willing to see it.