General Conference 2008

Joy!

Joy comes with the dawn.  Joy comes with the rising sun.

During the Easter season, my local church has been singing a hymn that acknowledges, “weeping may come; weeping may come with the night.”  I suspect many of us can relate to that.  Who hasn’t cried themselves to sleep?  Who doesn’t remember a night (or many) where the only bedtime lullaby has been the steady leaching of wracked-out tears onto one’s own pillow? 

This is the Easter season, though, so of course there’s more…
The refrain continues, “Joy comes with the dawn.  Joy comes with the rising sun.” 

In the dawn, my pastor leaves for Forth Worth. In two days, a friend and I depart for Texas, our plane taking off on the rays of the rising sun. 
Joy.  Joy will come with that?

I like this hymn: it affirms that we may weep, and we may suffer.  This is to be expected, and probably will occur in the darkest moments of night.  Then we are told that joy will come, and not with a “but” that denigrates or erases our weeping – no, this joy comes each morning, in a dazzling flood of light…  Weeping is possible; joy is definite.  And this joy is expressed with such sweet, sweet simplicity.  It’s beautiful. 

The General Conference legislative work, the vote counting and recording, the patient waiting and the praying– all of that lies ahead of us.  Today, I remember the joy that comes each dawn.  The joy of rebirth, of reconnecting with old friends, of meeting new ones, of being a witness to the all-inclusive love of Christ, of saying it loud and saying it proud: I am gay, and Jesus loves me.  I am transgender, and Jesus loves me.  My brothers and sisters are gay, and straight; are lesbian, and bisexual - and Jesus loves us all.  We are ALL part of the body of Christ, and that is a source of deep, enduring joy!

Whether dawn finds you traveling to General Conference, praying, working, proving childcare, working, witnessing – remember, joy  – JOY! - comes with rising sun.

Love the Dog

I love dogs.  I love their loud lapping at water bowls, their incessant enthusiasm, and their unabashed enjoyment of belly scratches.  (I also love underdogs and hot dogs, but I think that’s a different topic!). 

My dad went to St. Bernard’s High School.  Their mascot was – yup, you guessed it – a St. Bernard dog.  Dad was about twice as large as I am, so I practically drown in his old clothes.  But I love wearing his high school letter jacket; the warm gray wool is a powerful shield that wards off winter winds, and the embroidered chest patch that depicts a huge, endearing St. Bernard always makes me smile. 

I love that dog.

Now, my neighbors have two cats.  Acorn’s a lot like a little brown tree nut – small, prone to falling from great heights, and almost always in danger of being trampled underfoot.  Magma’s bigger and slower.  Hard to realize she’s even moving, until it’s too late - suddenly you’re engulfed by a heavy gray mass!  And holding her is like receiving a full-body bear hug: Magma’s weight crushes you like molten rock.  She throws her weight around in a more figurative sense, too – Magma’s got attitude.

One of my neighbors took them to church for the Blessing of the Animals.  Magma can’t stand car rides – I’m sure she spent the entire 20-minute drive complaining incessantly.  Acorn’s sweet, but not the brightest gourd in the field, so she was a bit confused about where exactly she was.  But both were blessed, the unwilling and the uncertain.  And my neighbor says it was beautiful, a time when all of God’s creation was welcomed into God’s house for blessing and rejoicing.  A time when the expansiveness of God’s love was made tangible, when the companionship of beloved pets was celebrated, and people experienced – not just mentally understood – the interconnectedness of all life on God’s great green earth. 

It sounds nice, but it made me sad.  The church was happy to ritually commemorate the love and lives shared by pets and their humans, but when my neighbor finds a partner with whom to share his love and life, the United Methodist Church will close its doors to him.  My neighbor, my ardently churchy neighbor, whose heart is strangely warmed by singing centuries-old English hymns, will find those proverbially open UMC doors slammed in his face, simply because any marriage he enters into will unite him with a man. 

Myself, I’m not home enough to have a dog – or a cat.  I still dream of a day when I’ll take an early evening walk to the lake with my big, furry St. Bernard, a dog that sweetly will remind me of my late father.  I expect all three of us to have a mutual love of the water, of long and lazy summer afternoons, and of warm winter nights lounging beside a fireplace.  I also expect to take such a dog to our local UMC for a Blessing of the Animals.

Sadly, I also expect that same church to be unable to celebrate any partnership I may have with a human being.  Now, let me be clear – I am blessed to live in Boston, MA, where there are many Reconciling churches within driving distance.  Indeed, I attend one on Sunday evenings, and am discerning whether I should be more deeply involved with a second congregation that meets on Sunday mornings.  I am blessed.

But official United Methodist policy forbids the celebration of same-sex marriages, even though they are legal here in Massachusetts.  So if I can find the right person, we can share our lives and hearts with one another, can cook meals together for church potlucks, and may even spend our Sundays serving on committees and singing in the choir (I like to imagine dating a baritone, whose rich voice completely drowns out my tone-deaf hymn-mangling.  It seems the Christian thing to do, to spare others of any auditory suffering I may currently be causing).  But somehow, this dream life would be distasteful in the eyes of the church.   If I’m looking for a ritual blessing of the God-given love that buoys my everyday life, the UMC says my St. Bernard is welcome, but my Bernard is not.

As a church, how can we celebrate companionship with pets but not with people?

When reluctantly forced to name this sad state of affairs, I must admit that the UMC stance can be summed up in one stale, stark quip:

Love the dog, hate the dog owner.

But take heart, friends:  GLBT people may be excluded from the church, but apparently the hearts, minds, and doors of the United Methodist Church are open to felines.  I’m going to be nicer to Acorn and Magma, and slip them a little extra catnip every now and then.  After all, they can get a front-row seat in any United Methodist Church  - maybe they can sneak me and Bernard in!

Transgender Intro: The UMC & Gender

Decades of debate about the place of gay and lesbian people in the UMC means that most United Methodists are aware of a range of sexual orientations: gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual.  But as our church prepares to gather for General Conference, we’ll likely be talking about a kind of diversity that is much less familiar: gender diversity.  It may seem pretty commonsensical that people are either male or female, so some may be wondering: What’s all this talk about “transgender” people? 

When we say “transgender,” most people think about a person who was raised male, but knows herself to be female.  She seeks out medical treatment that makes her body better match her feminine spirit.  Similarly, there are people who are raised female, but have received medical care that enables their bodies to better match their male identity.  We often use the somewhat cold, clinical term of “transsexual” to describe such people.  But “transgender” is a term that includes a broad range of people.  What they all have in common is that they don’t meet gender stereotypes and expectations.

I am SO proud to be a member of denomination that recognized a long time ago that gender discrimination is wrong, that it runs contrary to the good news that the transformative spirit of Jesus Christ moves through all of us.  In my church, the pastor and the two lay leaders are women.  I have been touched by their ministry, by their witness to God’s redemptive love.  Sometimes they wear high heels and makeup, sometimes they watch football games – and sometimes they do both at the same time!  My point is this: 50 years ago, we granted full ordination rights to women.  We decided that stereotypes about the “proper” role and place for women were outdated, were divisive, and – most importantly – ran counter to God’s work on earth.  We decided that God does not discriminate on the basis of gender.

Now, some may say that it’s just “different” when we’re talking transgender people.

They worry about:

1. Psychological diagnoses.  It’s true that the diagnostic manual used by mental health professionals includes the technical-sounding “Gender Identity Disorder,” with which some transgender people are diagnosed. Some people worry about ministers having mental disorders.  But there is a cure for this disorder, which is receiving medical treatment that matches a person’s body with their identity.  Don’t we want our ministers with mental health issues to receive treatment? Our ministers give pastoral care to people who are dying, being abused, and living in misery every day.  We shouldn’t be surprised if they sometimes suffer from depression.  Barring people from ministry on the basis of mental health diagnoses is wrong.  It stigmatizes all people with mental health challenges, and it could needlessly force many to avoid or delay treatment for curable conditions.
2. Genetics.  Do you know your genetic code?  When the International Olympic Committee instituted mandatory genetics testing, many women – people who were raised female and identified as women – were shocked to discover they were not the XX female they assumed themselves.  Some women are XY (the “male” chromosome set), and some people are born with atypical gender sequences – XXY, XYY, etc.  It can be tempting to hold onto male-or-female, black-and-white ways of thinking.  But the truth is, God’s creation is so much more diverse than that.  Look around you – God is too creative to be restrained by our two simple categories!
3. God’s creation.  We all were created in god’s image, male and female – not one or the other.  Some of us match gender stereotypes better than others, but all of us change our bodies.  We get circumcised, we pierce ears, we have breast implants or reductions, we may have a testicle removed when diagnosed with cancer, we dye our hair, we repair cleft palates, we receive cochlear implants.  All of these body modifications change us, in bigger or lesser ways.   

God is with us.  God is transformative.  Let us not be afraid when God is doing something new amongst us.