This is a tough one for a lot of people.  The idea that a piece of bread and a portion of wine and water can be transformed into something Divine, something that is more, is a hard concept because it goes contrary to what we know as materialistic and scientific facts.   We tend to want to assert that this is simply a ritual, simply an act that uses substances to symbolically represent how we are now closer to God, through the symbolic presence of the Eucharist being Jesus.  The bread being His body and the wine and water being His blood.

Things don’t transform like that except in fairy tales.  Its the same principle as Santa Claus, the tooth fairy.  Its a delusion that is performed as a means of asserting the validity of another delusion.

But things do transform.  Seeds become plants.  Plants become food.  The process that allows this to occur is measured by hypothesis that are observable in repeatable conditions.  Scientific principles require an act of faith every time they are observed: faith that the results will be predictable, and the same.

People transform, sometimes so radically and so improbably that the people around them hardly are able to believe it.  A few years ago, I was so gripped by anxiety and depression that the people closest to me did not believe that I was going to be able to pull myself out of it.  And yet, almost overnight, my depression and anxiety were shrunk to manageable proportions.

So is it unreasonable to believe that the Eucharist, the bread and wine, is the actual physical presence of Jesus Christ?

Of course its not unreasonable to believe this!

We exist in a society that is full of flash and bang.  When something quiet approaches us, it’s hard to be able to hear, or to even listen continually because we are taught to be impatient.  If it’s not something that can be tangible or explained in 30 seconds, it must not be real–not because it can’t be explained or be tangible in less than 30 seconds, but because we don’t have the patience to wait, to think, to reason.

The Eucharist teaches us to be patient.  It teaches us to listen, to be silent, to be comfortable with the uncomfortableness of that silence.  It teaches us to go inward, to be mindful of God’s presence within us.  It links us through time and space to every single Christian celebration of the Lord’s Supper, draws us to the upper room the night before the crucifixion, and links us directly to Christ not only in history, but in the present.

Reverence for the Eucharist is reverence not only for tradition, it is reverence for the actual presence:  Jesus is present in the bread and wine–Jesus is present within us when we consume the bread and wine.  But more importantly, Jesus is present in every other human being that we meet on the face of the planet; including  people we would hope with all out hearts to not find Him in!  So the political leaders who drive us crazy, the activists who might be too far right or left on the scale of politically correct for our tastes, the atheist and the agnostic, the ultra poor and the ultra rich:  Christ is there.

For me, as a Eucharistic Catholic, this means that I’m currently only able to receive the sacraments when I travel to Toronto.  It was brought up recently by a colleague that it shouldn’t be a problem to receive sacraments in a Roman Catholic church:  the problem I have with that is this.  In 99.9% of all Roman Catholic instances, being an actively queer person isn’t copacetic with Roman Catholic dogmatic belief.  For me to receive sacraments in a Roman Catholic setting would require me to effectively be receiving the body and blood while not being in a state of grace (meaning, not being in the best condition spiritually/mentally/emotionally to receive the body and blood of Jesus Christ).  In order for me to receive the sacrament in full honesty, in full communion, it’s got to be in a setting where I’m open about who and what I am.

But this then opens up the question:  What’s the Divine attitude towards people who are queer?  And can one be sufficiently reverent towards the Eucharist while being fully engaged in queer culture?

I think this is a great topic for a future blog post.  Stay tuned.

*This is part of a series of a year long journey through the book, “Franciscan Virtues Through the Year“. If you’d like more information on Old/Independent Catholicism, or would like more information on my denomination, or feel called to a vocation, click here!

 

This is part of a series of a year long journey through the book, “Franciscan Virtues Through the Year“. If you’d like more information on Old/Independent Catholicism, or would like more information on my denomination, or feel called to a vocation, click here!

This is a tough one for me today because I’m trying to assimilate some hard things that were said specifically about a production here in town, but more generally, speak to how trans people are treated by society and by the queer “community”.

The reflection, in part, includes a passage from Hebrews which reads: Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who is promised is faithful.  And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” (Hb, 10:23-25)

Something I’ve been working over in my head as part of developing a retreat for Pride this year is how we can draw from our experiences, the experiences that in part help to identify us, can make us more empathic to those around us.  Our experiences may be different, but the emotions hold a kind of solidarity that we can use to expand our perceptions and shake off the cobwebs that resting in privilege creates.  After I had read the letter (which you can find here), I had to take a look at the script I was working with and ask myself, is this something people want to hear, is this something people would find encouraging, is this enough?

This is where the idea of encouragement comes along.

When I started to try to learn about privilege, what privilege was, what it meant to me not only as someone who is part of a system that includes me as privileged, but also as someone who in the same mouthful excludes me, I had and still have a hard time with simple things like pronouns, with trying to identify with what it must be like to be trans, especially when we live in a ‘community’ that locally (and I suspect universally) still has a long way to go in terms of embracing everyone within it.  There are many of us in the ‘community’ that are trying very hard to be inclusive and considerate of everyone, and sometimes we fall short.  But it’s important to remember that we’re trying.

In this context, I think encouragement is not only an active thing that one individual does, but it’s only possible with internalization, with assessment, with honest acknowledgment that maybe, just maybe, things aren’t balanced and we’re benefiting from that imbalance.  This isn’t to say that any and all efforts aren’t important, but the reality is this:  I know of at least two incidents in the Regina community where trans people were treated inappropriately by members of the queer ‘community’.

Encouragement begins by saying to our trans siblings:  You’re right.

Our community has failed you because some of us have forgotten what it was like to be the parishioners of Sacred Heart Church in Atlanta, Georgia who were refused the sacraments because they were queer, parishioners who remained at the alter rail until the end of service in protest, 23 years before Stonewall.

Some of us have forgotten what it was like to have to walk Albert Street wearing masks because we could be identified, fired, arrested for standing up for our basic human rights, for wanting to be proud, for wanting a parade.  Some of us have forgotten what it was like to have to walk the halls of the Saskatchewan Legislature, to sit in the public gallery, to watch as every NDP MLA wore a pride pin EXCEPT for then Premier Roy Romanow, who’s government refused to declare LGBT Pride across Saskatchewan for one day.

We’ve  forgotten you because some of us have become complacent in what we have achieved,  and in that achievement, we’ve created an atmosphere of privilege that is exactly the same as the one we have fought against.

Some of us have forgotten that queer spaces are supposed to be inclusive to the entire tapestry of communities that unites us.  We’ve forgotten to speak up when we hear people being abusive, treating us the way we were once treated ourselves.

Some of us have forgotten what it’s like to be stalked, to be hunted, to be bashed.  We’ve lost touch with the fear, the anxiety, the stress of having to stand in a shower, trying to wash the smell of urine away that was only moments ago inside water balloons that were thrown, the word “faggot” that was heard along side laughter, that wondering if I had been too gay, too open, if I was still safe to walk home.  We’ve lost touch with the connection to the violence that still lives, still plagues our trans siblings.

If we’re going to call ourselves a ‘community’, we have to engage:  we have to constantly consider how to love and encourage one another, how to proceed with good works, how to reconcile, to listen, to allow ourselves to be heard, and to respect the stories we hear.  The day is here.  Our trans siblings have waited long enough.  It’s time to be the family we purport to be, it’s time to find the commonality in our communities that unites us, and act on it.

We can’t encourage unless we’re prepared to admit we’ve caused harm, inadvertently or otherwise.  We can’t encourage if we’re still willing to walk together, but on different sides of the street.

When we are able to think back to when we were marginalized, when we were in the emotions of being marginalized, we enter into the beginning of understanding the walk of the person on the other side of the street.  It then becomes our responsibility to cross over.  If we wait, we risk loosing the opportunity for reconciliation, an opportunity to strengthen each other by working towards a new way of thinking, a way that acknowledges privilege not as something entitled by where you were born, but by virtue that you were born a human being with diverse talents, flaws, and an innate entitlement to respect regardless of the condition of the shell your spirit is contained in.

How do you do it?

Smile.  Say hello to people.  Say hello to people you wouldn’t normally say hello to.  Challenge people when you hear something that’s not consistent with how you would be treated or thought of yourself.  Recognize when you’re taking part in a system that is marginalizing another person for your own benefit.  Love people, even and especially the people that make you angry, that push you into corners, that want you to be something different or challenge your ideas or your beliefs.  Give those people the opportunity to be who they are and watch, listen, engage with your heart but not your mouth.

Encourage people with your actions more than your words.  Be consistent with your actions, especially if it means doing something you’re afraid to do.

It’s OK to be a coward!  It’s OK to be afraid!  It’s OK to be scared of change.

Change anyway.  Change if it’s the right thing to do.

 

This is part of a series of a year long journey through the book, “Franciscan Virtues Through the Year“. If you’d like more information on Old/Independent Catholicism, or would like more information on my denomination, or feel called to a vocation, click here!

A few weeks ago, a podcast that I subscribed to dealt with a passage from 1 Corinthians that goes something like this:

For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

I listened to the commentary about how this was a slightly uncomfortable passage of scripture because it conveyed the idea that Paul was ‘recruiting’ and taking on the roles of so many different groups of people to find converts.  It wasn’t until I saw it in this context today that I realized just how profound Paul’s words are.  Paul isn’t acting in a subversive under cover manner, he’s trying in his own experience to relate to people in other communities to try and bridge the gap, try and create dialogue.

Empathy is a challenging virtue for us because it forces us to delve deeper into personal experiences that we may not want to relate to.  In order to really understand how someone else feels, where someone else comes from, their walk, their life, we have to first approach how we create those barriers that keep us from interacting with people who are different.

Case in point is how people here in the Trans community are often mistreated, or treated with less than the same dignity and respect that other members of other communities are treated.  A recent event comes to mind about how a trans person was harassed in our local bar.  When a complaint was made, the staff simply served another drink to the individual who mistreated the trans person.  Other incidents I’ve been made aware of include people singling out trans people as not being full members of the community, or not being able to be full participants in things like the feminist movement.

When we consider moments in our lives where we were marginalized because of how we identified, we begin to take the first steps into what empathy is about.  Knowing what it feels like to be marginalized is one thing:  actually stepping into the line of fire where you have to interact with that marginalized individual is something else.  We have very comfortable buffers that keep our uncomfortable moments at bay:  texting, social media, social norms, personal standards, and our fears; all of these things act to preserve the integrity of our prejudice, the integrity of those things which keep us safe.  True empathy requires being and behaving in an uncomfortable manner to cross the space between what we are comfortable doing and what the right thing to do is.

In my own experience, empathy had to begin when I tried to find reconciliation between that part of myself that was called to fulfill my religious vocation, and that part of myself that knew in doing so I had to find a way to honour my queer vocation as well.  For many people, these two things are completely incompatible and to try and reconcile them is nothing more than a dishonouring of millennia of established tradition.  Right now, the majority of that anxiety and fear hasn’t manifested in any actual interactions, but the possibility of it has created a condition of fear in my being that makes it important for me to find situations where I can challenge that fear, where I can ‘cross the road’ from where I’m safe to where I might encounter other people.

But most importantly, empathy is something that has to be developed, nurtured, and taught if we as a community of communities are going to move forward.  We have to begin to move past a way of conducting our activism and advocacy that doesn’t include the fear or the need to find blame.  We as queer people have a unique perspective on what it’s like to be afraid because of who we are.  Rather than buy into the fear that protects us, it’s our responsibility to take the bold steps to apply this to our fellow communities, and the greater human family.  The hardest application is to the people who literally hate.  In their hate, we have to look within ourselves and find common ground, a common beginning that will surely look like being afraid of loosing something, or being left behind, or being less valued.  It is a generational project that has to begin with a mature, courageous people.  It has to begin with stepping into a role of stopping gossip when it happens, of asking questions that help to diversify our experiences, of listening when we communicate rather than trying to talk over people.

 

 

 

 

This is part of a series of a year long journey through the book, “Franciscan Virtues Through the Year“. If you’d like more information on Old/Independent Catholicism, or would like more information on my denomination, or feel called to a vocation, click here!

It’s not a coincidence that the virtue of Eagerness should fall on the same week as the beginning of Lent.

And eagerness is definitely a quality that most gardeners need.  It’s only the 14th of February but already I’m hauling out the seed catalogues and thinking about what I’m going to order this year, what I’m going to start indoors this year, and how I can do my planting inside in such a way that the seedlings won’t all croak.  See, when we bought the house I figured that the east exposure in the kitchen would be good for starting seeds.  And most plants do OK there–once I figured out that the vent under the table was drying things out very quickly, and baking what wasn’t getting watered.  Last year I lost all my seedlings because I was too eager to start without really thinking things through.

Eagerness as a virtue is different from that impulse to dive into something and just not think about the repercussions.  In my personal life, there’s an eagerness that is ever present to see my boyfriend, to spend time with him, to enjoy his company and allow our relationship to grow.  It’s a desire to encounter Dan as a complete being, and watch as my own being is reflected back while I’m with him.

The same kind of experience happens when I enter into a prayer experience.  When I’m

praying the office, or doing Centering Prayer, there’s a calm connection that happens that makes me eager to want to re-enter into those times.  It’s a strange sort of thing really, a kind of intimate relationship with something so big that it’s hard to fully describe or understand.

Lent being what Lent is, a time of penance and connection, a time of ‘entering into the wilderness’ as Jesus did after His baptism, there is an eagerness to enjoy that feast of the spirit that engages when you fast.   The challenge does come–its not simply eagerly choosing to do something and enter into that experience without issue.  The challenge is to allow the eagerness of the entering-in to overcome the feelings of anxiety, of frustration.

Eagerness is ecstasy that has not fully blossomed; its a seed that needs nurturing, that contains the joy of knowing a flower will eventually blossom.

This is part of a series of a year long journey through the book, “Franciscan Virtues Through the Year“.  If you’d like more information on Old/Independent Catholicism, or would like more information on my denomination, or feel called to a vocation, click here!

Yesterday, I received a text message from a brother Franciscan who is a year ahead of me in his four year vows.  He’s decided that after a period of discernment he needs to renounce his vows.

This shook me up a little bit.   Not just because we’re a very small group of Franciscans and any loss is huge, but because in some ways it was a kind of shake up for my own vocational choice.  Why have I taken this particular course of action, when I could’ve just been a very religious person without any formal congregation?

Why would I choose a faith walk that would put me under scrutiny by Roman Catholics, Christians, Queer peoples, just about anyone in fact?  Right now I’m taking part in a weekly centering prayer group that meets in an old convent chapel.  The majority of people who participate I’m convinced are Roman Catholic.  I’ve spoken about my experience as a Catholic, but haven’t specified that I’m a member of an Independent Catholic congregation.

Why not?

The skill of discernment is a process of learning how to filter out the voices in our heads that are attached to our fears, our desires, our passions, our lusts, our prejudices, our ideas; in filtering those voices out we become more accustomed to what the voice of God sounds like.  We become more accustomed to what the sound of silence is like, we get comfort from knowing that sometimes we ask questions that don’t have immediate answers, or sometimes have answers that aren’t what we want to hear.

Discernment is about going into the garden, asking God whole heartedly for what we hope for, what we desire, in full acceptance of the fact that our desires may be contrary to what the will of God for us is going to be.  It’s about assessing our gifts and talents, our flaws and our failings, and asking:  Where am I best going to be of use?  What is the message I’m supposed to share?  What am I supposed to learn?  Where do you want me to go?

I’m working up a script right now for a retreat that I want to put on for the Queer community here in Regina over Pride, and potentially for an international Queer activist conference being held in Saskatoon in October.  I have no idea how this will go over.  I have no idea if anyone will come, if anyone will want to hear what I have to say, if people will come and hear what I have to say and disagree with what I have to say.  But in my process of discernment, I’ve come to realize that God wants me to do this.  And, as has happened in the past, maybe do this to an empty room.  Putting one’s self out there sometimes means doing so, and waiting, and nothing happens.  It’s a reality!

And this vocation, in this particular denomination, in this particular fashion, is difficult.  We are a community spread all over the world that keeps in touch via e-mail, Skype, conference calls, telephone calls, and we meet a few times a year.  But in many ways we are united only in our prayer lives that happen twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year.

Listening to voice, for the voice of God is a process that takes time, takes commitment, and ultimately is a complete act of surrender that has to be done over and over and over and over again.  It is a discipline like any other that asks us to be still, to be silent, but also to be active and constantly as a servant who doesn’t know what time his master will be returning from the wedding feast.

I’m sad that my brother Franciscan has made the choice that he has, but at the same time I accept that in his leaving, there is something being show, a lesson to be learned, a truth to be understood.  We each have to find our own way, in our own way.  It’s not up to us to chase, or coheres, or preach.  It’s up to us to live our vocation, to discern how, and to use words only when necessary.  Our lives have been so wrapped up in challenging, in interacting, we’ve forgotten  that what is more important is the why rather than the how we challenge and how we interact.

 

 

 

 

 

I’m stepping away from the Franciscan virtues reflection series for a day so that I can participate in Queer Theology’s Synchroblog 2018! So what the heck is a ‘synchroblog’?    Today a bunch of us from all over are blogging on the theme of what our queerness calls us to be and do in the world.  Once those blogs are assembled, they’re all shared right here! So once you’ve finished reading this, go check out what some of the other people have to say.  And as always, if you’re interested in finding out more information about my particular church or the Independent Catholic Church movement, click here.

I’ve always had the certain knowledge that I was different, that I was queer.  It’s something I like to refer to as a basic belief that’s existed in my mind as an innate idea, like the idea that God exists, and the idea that I was called to holy orders.  For a long time I thought those ideas were at odds with each other, that in order to best serve God I would have to accept my queerness as a celibate and attempt to repress those feelings.  In my teens, I began a long search to try and find a spiritual path that would accept my queerness and allow me to practice some kind of an aesthetic life.  I began with Buddhism, practiced Zen, wandered through paganism and the New Age movement, passed through the First Nations spiritual traditions of the Cree, Saulteaux, and Lakota (having met amazing elders and very kind people along the way); but through all those practices I always had a sense of being unsettled, a feeling that somehow I was just passing through and I wasn’t finished with my journey.  One night, I found myself lying in bed, looking at the ceiling, returning to the Lord’s prayer and slowly returning to my Christian roots.

At that point in time, I had resolved that if I was going to live as a queer man and practice as a Catholic, the only way that I could do it was in secret, in private, as an unbaptized, faithful who’s only real hope was at the worst hell, and at best purgatory.  If I was good enough, I would make it to purgatory and the suffering wouldn’t be for ever.

I know, not a very happy outlook.

Lucky for me, something changed.  I decided in my early 40’s that I would look for some kind of a religious community that would accept me and allow me  access.  I stumbled upon a religious community in upstate New York and contacted the superior, Father Bob Johnnene, who directed me to Archbishop Roger LaRade with the Eucharistic Catholic Church in Toronto.  Through talking with him, I was able to discern that I was in fact being called to the Franciscan life in the Eucharistic Catholic Church.  I flew to Toronto in June last year, was baptized, confirmed, received holy orders, and was admitted into the Franciscans of the Annunciation.  Everything that has happened since has been a door opening into a new direction and a new opportunity.  I’m constantly feeling affirmed in my choice:  I feel like I’m not unsettled anymore.  I feel like I’m home.

There’s a story from the life of Saint Francis about how he met a leper on the road one day.  This is a particular favourite of mine as it was the story I used the first time I spoke publicly about my vocation.  In the time in which he lived, leprosy was a disease who’s only treatment was complete and total isolation from the community in which the infected individual lived.  It consumed one’s body and, after suffering disfigurement, caused death.  It was painful, dirty, smelly, and uncomfortable.  Francis was terrified of lepers.  If a leper approached him on the road, he would cross to the other side of the road, cover his mouth and nose, and look the other way until he had passed by.

But Francis, in his pursuit of spiritual perfection, came to realize that to rely on the labels, the preconceived ideas of how people were better or worse than others, he was in fact moving himself further away from Christ’s presence in his life.  In order to be closer to Christ, he needed to transcend the labels and the emotions associated with those labels.

So after he’d resolved to move beyond these preconceptions, the opportunity arose to put principle into practice.  As he was riding his horse down the road, a leper approached from the other direction.  But this time, rather than avoid the leper, Francis dismounted from the horse, crossed over to the other side of the road, put a coin into the diseased, disfigured hands of the leper, and then kissed them before returning to the horse.  After remounting his horse, he looked back to see the leper had disappeared.  Some accounts say he believed this to be a sign that the leper had indeed been Christ come to test him.

As queer people, and as Christians,  we are called to embrace the leper.  We who have known so well what it is to be a people oppressed by cultural norms, by words, by names, by ideas; we have all experienced the pain represented in the figure of the leper.  This not only calls us, but it demands from us that in all of our interactions that we grant the dignity and respect due to ever human being, even and especially if those people are in a state of appearing not to deserve this respect.  To not do so transforms us into Francis, the youth who would cross the street, cover his face, avert his eyes from the suffering he saw in an attempt to deny that he too suffers as the leper suffers.  We are called to dismount from the comfort of ideas and conceptions, cross the street through our fear and literally embrace those who embody our fears.

To do any less removes us from that condition which allows us to truly experience the Divine.  But even more importantly, our queerness forces us to realize that our fears, especially when it comes to embracing those individuals who we are most afraid, must be embraced.  Otherwise, we are putting ourselves back into the closet.

Queerness calls us to live a life of evolving realization about our identity that isn’t different from any other human beings who have to live this way.  But it is a gift which permits us to innately understand the importance of acceptance, of unconditional love, and the challenge of practicing that love even in the face of that which frightens us the most.  To practice love doesn’t mean accepting behaviour that demeans or oppresses us.  Rather, it teaches us that our responses to these types of behaviours have to be radically different from what we have learned in the past.  If we react with hate to hate, we play a game who’s outcome is that two individuals pass each other on either side of a road and none interact.

Granted, the idea of serving a sandwich and a cup of coffee to someone holding a sign that says “God Hates Fags” seems redundant and repugnant to many people.  But what happens when that person holding that sign is confronted by that kindness?  What happens to the leper when they are confronted by the kindness of someone wanting to simply be closer to God, someone offering charity, kindness, love?

I’m not certain this kind of approach would work in the face of the kinds of armed struggle that appear, or in the amplitude of violence that has surfaced the last few years. But I do hypothesize that the reason it has escalated to the degree it has because this kindness hasn’t been afforded to either party.   Our queerness calls us, commands us to be more fully empathetic to our brothers and sisters in our community, and our families outside of those communities.  This is a difficult kindness that has to be offered to those people who we would hate, or fear, or avoid.  It will hurt sometimes, it will be uncomfortable most of the time, and we will be faced with that voice inside that says “I don’t want to do it” because of a hundred reasons.

It’s at those times that we, like Francis, have to draw on the life of Christ.  From the first day of His ministry, He knew that every miracle, every sermon, every person He touched,  every smile He gave, every step He took was one step closer to His passion and death.  And even in the face of that immense suffering, that immense pain and anguish, He still performed the miracles, still spoke the words, still touched the faces because the love was that great.

It’s something as simple as not gossiping, and shutting gossip down when it happens in a polite way; as offering a glass of water to someone who looks like they need it, or respecting someone’s right to a view that may be contrary to everything we believe and think to be true.  The religious who would hold Scriptural references over us to prove we are sinful, the person who holds a sign that derides us, the person who challenges us to see the stereotypes we have by the stereotypes the hold up in our faces:  these are the lepers who we too were, these are the people who suffer as we suffered.  These are the people we have to find some way to love, some way to show kindness.  Because if we don’t, we’re not better than they are.  We are all the same in our illness.  We are all the same in our choice to live better lives that are driven by love, not by hate.

St. Francis was gifted by the stigmata, the wounds that emulate the wounds of Christ.  I believe one reason this happened was because he was so able to embrace those who lived in hate and derision so well, and from a place of complete love.  We won’t necessarily be able to emulate this in our own lives, but luckily for us we don’t have to be perfect.  We just need to try.  That’s all.  And when we are brought into doubt about our place in creation, a place that is part of God’s creation, all you need do is to go out into the night, look up at the stars, and consider the vastness of the stars that you see.  Consider the vastness of the stars that you don’t see that are part of one galaxy that is one of as many galaxies as the stars you can see and the stars that you can not.  A God who could create the majesty of that, a majesty that borders (or perhaps even excels) the infinite knew what He was doing when He made us queer.  It might not be in Scripture in a way that you can tangibly hold onto, but it’s in His works, in the diversity of His works.  Trust in that diversity.  Trust in that place you have in that diversity.  And Love.  Love every day, every way that you can, as best you can.

 

 

I’ve been practicing Centering Prayer now for just a little over a year.  So when detachment came up, my first impulse was to write about how focal detachment is to the practice of Centering Prayer.  The idea is to, while sitting quietly, to enter into a period of interior silence.  This silence isn’t supposed to be a blank mind!  More, it’s about allowing your brain to function in the same way that your heart functions, your lungs function, your kidney functions.  Hearts pump, lungs process air, kidneys purify the blood, and brains think.  You detach from your thoughts and allow the silence of your spirit to exist in the same place that God exists.  It’s a quiet prayerful period, a communion.

And in practicing Centering Prayer, what I’ve noticed is that when I slipped from a twice a day routine to a once a day routine, to a once a day except for the week-end routine, I had a harder time detaching from arguments, from attitudes, from emotions.  When I walked away from the practice because I didn’t have the time for the practice, my ability to become involved with worldly concerns increased and my ability to remain in a spiritually fueled attitude decreased.  Which translates into more fights, more arguments, an easier way of slipping into totally useless social media debates!

As a gardener (let’s bring this to the garden right?), you plant seeds with the faith that they will eventually produce and contribute to the function of your garden.  Because the hermitage garden is designed to not only produce fruits of the earth but a space of fruitfulness for contemplation and prayer, I’m even more reliant on the successful propagation of flowers, plants, and the wild grasses and herbs that crop up all throughout the space.  When weather happens, and boy does it happen in Saskatchewan, everything that you saw growing tall, strong, and potentially beautiful in blooms and glory can be mowed down to nothing.  You have to have faith, and that having faith, is a form of detachment.

With the season of Lent approaching, I can’t help but think of Jesus’s entire life, a life of service, a life of miracles, a life that gave people absolute joy and absolute hope, and a life wherein at every moment was the looming of Good Friday.  Every miracle, every moment of ministry was shrouded by that moment, that knowing the sound of a hammer pounding into wood, that every cut and sliver, every ache and pain, a foreshadow of scourging, of thorns, of heavy weight pressing down on the shoulder that had been scoured, of the long suffering agony that was about to happen.  And even in knowing that, knowing the pain that was coming, Jesus pushed through.  He detached.

Detachment isn’t about pretending something isn’t going to happen.  It’s knowing something is going to happen, knowing something *is* happening, and carrying forward with what you know to be the right thing *anyway*.  It’s something that requires hard practice, and people stumble!  I stumble regularly!  I know that I’m supposed to live the model that St. Francis gave us, and yet I have days where I indulge myself in physical pleasure, or indulge myself in self pity, or excessive drama, or gossip.

But of all these things, the hardest thing to detach from is the idea that our suffering gives us entitlement.  We’ve come to know pain in the LGBTQI community, but the fear I have is that in being activists, we may become attached to that pain as a way of empowering ourselves.  When we do this, when we choose that route, we actually end up in the same place of uninformed righteousness that we have been struggling against.  We have to move beyond the modality we have come from and move instead into a modality of forgiveness and acceptance that will frighten us!  Because transcending identity is frightening!  Letting go of those things which have empowered and limited, even crippled us spiritually for so long is a supreme act of faith that I think a lot of people will have trouble doing, or just outright not do because it is easier to hold onto the anger.

Poverty is an act of detachment from an idea of ownership of things and of emotions.  It is a hard, hard thing that requires practice every waking moment.  Lent isn’t so much then a time of letting go as much as it is an engagement with those things we treasure so much that may in fact get in the way of our touching the ethereal.  When you think about abstaining during Lent, think of it less about what you’re giving up and instead about what it is that gets in the way of being a better person.

(If you’re more interested in exploring ideas of faith within a faith community, have questions, or want to explore more ideas around faith, Queerness, and spiritual practice, check out my church’s web page here.)

 

 

 

The hardest trial for most of us, especially those of us in religious life, is road rage.  Especially when we are so knowledgeable about the rules of the road.  How could anyone cross a yellow line to turn over the lane of oncoming traffic to get into the gas station!  You know, traffic would run so much smother if people would just stop swerving around cars wanting to turn left at an intersection:  why are they being so bleepity bleep inpatient!

Clearly, there are moments when as a Franciscan I’m tarnished by my attitude.  (Or maybe it’s just an opportunity to learn patience!)

Our society has perceived rules which make it run smoother, or are at least designed in such a way as to create a smother flow.  Traffic rules make it easier for traffic to flow provided everyone follows the rules.  But when people slip from seeing rules as rules and instead perceive them as guidelines, accidents happen.

In a very similar way, we have conventions and rules in our social interactions.  You’re supposed to treat people kindly and with respect.

When I was in Toronto for the first time last June, I noticed after I left Union Station and began my walk to the convent the vast distances between people.  Sure, people were walking and driving busily at the end of a business day, but as I walked down Bay Street I couldn’t help but notice that while there were people in very expensive clothes, there were literally people peeking out from the alleys around the garbage bins, people who weren’t being noticed.  There were people in front of Union Station trying to sell things, everything from pirated music cd’s to Jesus.  And, in the pocket parks between Union and Church, there were people literally asleep on the grass wearing everything they owned.

Here in Regina, because I’m not always downtown I don’t notice if there are homeless.  But there is a guy who wheels down the alley every couple of days; he goes through the garbage bins looking for scrap, in what I suppose is his means of income.

When I hear people talking about the homeless, or the underemployed, the most common thing that I hear is:  why don’t they clean themselves up and get a job?  Their lives would be so much better if only they could get work.

I used to be of this mindset.  I used to believe that if people would just pick themselves up and dust themselves off, their lives would be so much better.  But I’m beginning to realize that people who say these things are playing by guidelines, not rules.

Because the reality, I suspect, is that if a homeless person did clean themselves up to the best of their ability, they wouldn’t be able to get a job because the rules of the road say:  don’t hire someone who will create fear in your work environment.  And in a culture of fear, especially a culture of fear no one wishes to acknowledge exists, poverty is one of the key fears we run from.

One of my pet talking points is the moment that St. Francis realized he was playing by guidelines and not rules.  Francis’ had a toxic fear of lepers.  When he would see a leper approaching from one side of the road, he would cross to the other side, cover his mouth and nose with his hand, and look the other way.  This was hit home to me during the Toronto Pride Parade.  As I stood on the sidewalk watching, streams of people walking past myself and my bishop, A homeless man looking very much like an Indian sadhu (long hair, long beard, shirtless, but in ecstatic joy and dance from the festival going on) walked one way through the crowd, and in the opposite direction a young man, well dressed, very metrosexual,  grimaced, covered his face, and looked the other way.

Francis realized that in order to be truly courteous, in order to exercise courtesy in a sacramental way, he had to play by the rules.  Which meant that courtesy had to be extended not only to the individual he felt safe with, but those who terrified him.  So, one day, when he was traveling along the road and a leper approached, he embraced his fear, accepted it, but did not allow it to control him.  He dismounted the horse, walked to the leper, gave him a coin, and kissed his hands.  This is a big thing, even for us!  Leprosy is a disease that fills the skin with “corruption” (read a polite way of saying decay, rot, filth, odour, gangrene).

To put this into perspective, consider the most filthy, disgusting, or frightening thing you can imagine.  Consider your greatest fear or phobia.  Now consider embracing that to the point that you surround yourself with it, engulf yourself with it, because this is an act that brings you closer to the Divine.  This is what Francis did.

Many of us are eager to engage with mission, or we want to go out into the world and do great things.  This in itself is not a bad thing, or an undesirable thing to do.  But in order to practice service in the spirit of Christ, we must be willing to first engage and embrace those among us who are the lepers of our locality.  We must be willing to engage and embrace the homeless, the minorities, the oppressed.  We must be willing to engage those who are crippled by the poverty of excess, the poverty of wealth, the poverty of prejudice, the poverty of privilege.  The poverty of religiosity (or modern day Pharisees and Sadducees of the religious far right and left).  

And, we must be willing to engage in the courteous act of prayer with God, engage in the courtesy of sacramental life with Jesus Christ.  Without the solid foundation of regular engagement in prayer, we are at risk of being broken by the world.  A regular holy hour, if possible in the presence of the Blessed Sacrament, that includes reading scripture or scriptural commentary, is a means of building a foundation to work with courtesy in the world.  For me, this includes centering prayer as a regular practice.  If we are not willing to follow the rules of courtesy before God first and foremost, the rest of our lives will eventually crack and crumble.  I’ve experienced this in my own life in the last few months, where a relationship with my boyfriend put my prayer practice second.  It was just a little bookmark saying, “I will come back to you, Lord.”  But the implication of doing so was so significant that I’ve had to come back to making a regular, dedicated effort to daily prayer and contemplation.

Courtesy begins with God and our relationship with God.  It transcends down into our relationships with friends and family, transcends into our attitudes towards our neighbours and colleagues, transcends finally into how we approach our fellow human beings, and the planet we live on.

As a gardener?  This makes perfect sense.  Treat the soil well, the soil will treat you well in return.  Treat the space as Sacred, and the space will in turn respect your sacred part within it.

 

“Take courage, be stouthearted, wait for the Lord!”  -Psalm 27

I’m sitting in a cafe in Moose Jaw.  Today should be a relaxing get away with my boyfriend, and right now I should be writing the blog post in a relaxed, contemplative stance.  Instead, my stomach is queasy, I feel jittery, and my anxiety level is elevated.  All of this because of a phone call I received just as we were pulling up in front of the cafe.

I went from a position of relative comfort and security to having the carpet yanked out from underneath me because something that was expressed in confidence was shared.  The trust I’d felt is gone, the security in the situation I had expected to hold onto has vanished because what I had shared was used as a form of leverage by another person.

A lot of opportunities for anxiety, a lot of opportunities for change.  A lot out of my control.

When I look at courage and the relationship I’ve had with courage in my life, I have to say in honesty that I can’t actually recall knowing courage, or seeing moments of courage, that felt confident or strong or familiar.  Courage has always been a kind of strange fog that people talk about, that people use as a form of encouragement, but in terms of the scale of emotion people feel I’m not sure it’s something that’s actually a tangible emotion.

Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen talks often in his discourses about the night when Our Lord entered into the garden, the first step of the passion.  Jesus spends much time in prayer, in contemplation, but this is the first time that we are party to an intimate moment of prayer between Jesus and God.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Sheen talks about the blood pouring from Jesus’ skin, falling on the roots of the olive trees in the garden, forming the first Rosary of Redemption.  Christ, falling on the ground in the garden in prayer, is afraid of what is to come, accepts the growing potentiality of the Passion, and still asks that it might pass.  And yet, even in that moment of fear, that moment of anxiety, He accepts that this may be his fate, that this may be will of His Father in Heaven.

I’m drawn back to my own point in the present moment, the way that I experience time; the past behind effecting how I feel, think, behave, the present that is literally a point and at the same time not, and the future before me looming like a great lake full of fish called “what if’s”.  What does courage have to do with any of this?

Courage isn’t an action that causes or is affected by change.  Courage is a condition of acceptance that includes, and must include, fear to some degree.  It isn’t a way out of being afraid, it’s a mode of behaving that attempts to scale back the emotional consequences of being afraid that we might do the right thing.  St. Francis standing in front of the bishop of Assisi must have felt some fear when, removing all his clothes, he stood naked before the Church, returning to his father all worldly possessions.   Any time anyone comes out of the closet, they have to embrace fear and move forward because the life that exists after coming out promises an improvement–or to put it another way–there cannot be an Easter Sunday without there being a Good Friday first.

I have no idea what the future holds fore me.  I know that I have dreams that include my vocation.  I’d love one day to be able to serve the LGBTQI Community as a pastor, as an advocate, as a counsellor, as a confessor.  I also know that what I want isn’t always what the Lord wants.  “Yet not as I will, but as You will.”  But in the end, it’s not I that determines the time and the place, or the method of the passion I am to undergo.  What I am left with is the reality that I must sell all that I own (let go of everything I possess emotionally), be chaste in my faith (not indulging in the passions of fear, anxiety, anger), and trust that God will steer me where I need to go (in obedience).

 

You ask for assistance. The answer sometimes comes in the form of canine diarrhea.

When we moved into the new house, we brought my father along with us because it was the right thing to do.  My father feeds my dog, but he’s also been told every time we take a trip to the vet that Sookie can’t eat any human food because it will wreck her guts.  Because she’s a pure bred, she has this… princess gut that kills gut fauna if she eats any people -type food.

Today, after a sleepless night, Sookie jumps up onto my bed.  Her butt is covered with diarrhea.  When my Dad walks into the house, I ask if he’s been feeding her again.

“Just a little chicken.”

What that actually means is yes, and I’m not going to tell you actually how much I’ve been feeding her, because you’ll get really angry if you know the truth.

Long and the short, I threw my Dad out.  I gave him until February 12 to find somewhere else to live.  I felt horrible, I felt angry, I felt frustrated.  This is not how Franciscans are supposed to behave right?  We’re supposed to be gentle, and kind, and loving, and have a long fuse, and not get frustrated to the point of screaming and shouting…

…except Boo Bear is one of the few things in my life that’s not only stable, but is completely and unconditionally forgiving.  And she’s being poisoned because someone who thinks he can bend the rules because he knows what’s better for my dog over the advice of a vet gives her a little chicken.  And a little chilli.  And a little grease.  And a little gravy.

So I have to forgive my Dad.  How does that translate into the current living arrangement?  I don’t know.  On the one hand, the right thing to do is to keep giving him shelter.  But can it be good for any of us if we’re constantly at each other’s throats because he thinks he knows best for all of us, and we all know that he’s actually hurting not just himself, but his behavior is effecting others now as well?

Prayers welcome.