Provoking love: A Holy Week Reflection

“And by a perversion of Justice he was taken away…” - Isaiah 53:8, NRSV

On the evening before Christ was arrested and taken before a council to determine his fate, he ate with the people. Jesus knew that his “antics,” as deemed by those in imperial authority, would lead to a culminating moment; a rupture for a better world. At least, that is what Jesus was told and instructed to do. We know from the biblical text that Jesus’ fear and uncertainty didn’t leave him as the son of God. He kneeled in the garden and pleaded for God to take this rupture moment away from him Luke 22:32, NRSV). In fact, we also know from scripture that the grief was so palpable in anticipation of the unknown the disciples were weighed down by their grief into a deep sleep (Luke 22:45-53).

Can you imagine not knowing the future injustices potentially coming because of the efforts toward liberation?

History shows us, and even physics, that with every action there is a consequence - or more usefully named - a reaction.

Last night, on Maundy Thursday, I couldn’t help but see a correlation between Jesus’ meal with the disciples and those within and outside the Tennessee state house as Rep. Justin Pearson, Rep. Justin Jones, and Rep. Gloria Johnson faced expulsion from the house for protesting alongside their constituents after yet another mass shooting.

The youth of Tennessee were in groves outside of the chamber standing, sitting, laying down for over 10 hours in support of their elected lawmakers and to send a message: we will not forget this. What would Jesus have felt if such a crowd existed at his arrest, court appearance, and death? Is this the hope of Jesus’ journey to the cross and resurrection thereafter?

Perhaps the hope of this lenten journey to Easter is as the people of God we would chose not to pick up the burden of suffering, but instead, the reality of our created kin-ship to one another and say, “the people united can never be defeated!”

What we witnessed in Tennessee last night was a visible display of racism’s entrenched grip on the roots of this nation (formed by and through enslavement) and systemic oppression to undermine true democractic process - or more importantly - freedom. Rep. Gloria woke up today still a house rep, while her two Black colleagues did not.

The youth gathered chanted and rallied for the entire process yesterday evening. And held a press conference post expulsions. They will not forget this moment and they will not let us. They are seeking liberation and they are provoking us to love in faith and action.

Hebrews 16: 24-25 says, “And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.”

The provocation of love is here amongst us and that is the hope of our somber walk to Easter Sunday that I hold near. I believe we witnessed democracy die last night in Tennessee, but the youth of this moment will resurrect it.

The question is will we walk with them?

We All Need Tenderness

Tenderness Journals | Installment One Tenderness & Possibility

When I first heard Kathleen M. O’Conner speak on Jospeh’s novella through a trauma lens, I lost it. I was a first-year seminarian in Old Testament navigating a call without a church shepherding me spiritually or financially and found great solace in Joseph’s estrangement from family, culture, and home.  I had been forced into the pit, just as Joseph had by his brothers, and mocked for even thinking ministry was possible for this queer trans non-binary human. 

Raised in the church from babe to now, I’ve witnessed a focus on biblical narratives for the shiny and joyful moments that make us feel good on the inside. And a shying away from any of the parts that don’t have “good” endings or make us feel doubt.

When you think of Joseph from the Bible do you think of the pit he was thrown into and the enslavement he faced or do you think of the coat of many colors?

For this Baptist raised babe, I’d answer coat of many colors - which I now view as a moment of family acceptance tainted by a father siding with homophobia out of systemic pull to follow the normative.

O’Conner’s tender voice and compassion as she re-told the Jospeh novella unfurled me. 

She spoke of Joseph’s love for his family even after transformation from clothing to stature in society. He still longed for connection and tender care from the very family who sent him away. He still spoke of them tenderly even when he could have chosen violence. 

As the novella closes, Joseph teaches us what tenderness offers us - space, choice, and tender love that reaches inward and then outward.

As he wrestles his own PTSD from family estrangement, Jospeh offers tenderness to himself first and his family second. He doesn’t run back to his homestead after discovering their presence. He sends his brothers on that journey. They too need to discover this tenderness along their journey. He doesn’t strip his transformation of clothing, stature, culture, and being. He remains his transformed self, but offers land and food to his family when they come before him on his own terms. 

Is there any other queer desire than this type of reunion? Or, middle ground meeting on our terms?

We all need a little bit of tenderness especially in this blue holiday season. Tenderness to love our queer being for all its blessedness. To offer tender boundaries in what we cannot control and toward our being of which is tender from abandonment. 

Tenderness is a resource for the liminal space we journey through when the living-death that life deals is at play. The ebb and flow of life requires we stay tender, so that we may stay here. And the truth is we need to stay. We need each other in chosen family and as the fabric of what makes up this world’s possibility and joy. 

Tenderness is the bridge that carries us toward possibility. 

When O’Connor finished her lecture that day I was a blubbering tender crying mess. I remember vividly apologizing every other word for crying as I thanked her for her scholarship. If I could go back to that moment now, I would not apologize for crying. I’d thank her for unlocking the tenderness needed to cry and find new meaning in Joseph as my fellow queer sibling in transit. 

My hope for us queer siblings and allies alike is that we find ways to unfurl with tenderness. Our very lives and beings depend on this bridge to freedom.

Rachael Ward is currently writing on tenderness as a source for liberation and rest. They are a minister @ Middle Church, NY & Faith UCC, PA. Rachael identifies as an Activist of Care, Tender Human, and uses they/them pronouns.

Trans Liberation in a post roe v. wade world

In a post Roe v. Wade world, transgender individuals’ healthcare and reproduction rights have incurred a death-dealing blow. Roe V. Wade's dismantling has created a ripple effect of anti-trans laws that cripple an already undeserving healthcare system and violently stigmatized ethos toward transgender people. Through a virtue ethic lens in conversation with queer theorist bodily autonomy, this paper will unearth how the American healthcare system is ill equipped to serve transgender persons. By this unearthing, this paper will call in need for communal care and organizing for public policy within church structures that advocate for transgender healthcare, access to reproduction care and spiritual care that uniquely speaks to the trans experience. 

How did we get here?

White evangelicalism has its roots buried deep into the systems that spent decades organizing to dismantle Roe V. Wade. In order to discuss reproductive rights, one must name the bodily autonomy of a human’s right to birth and protection is bound by racism. The birth of the Christian right in the 19th Century and its foundation of the Moral Majority, mobilized and formed organizations taking up morally based political causes and lobbying on their behalf in Washington. These “moral” issues were centered in maintaining white supremacy as the dictator over all other bodies. If one moral issue could be won, then white supremacy’s power could grow and become a mainstream viewpoint. This is why such a strong wave of anti-trans laws are being implemented. The door has been opened for other ways to restrict bodily autonomy that threatens the Christian Right’s particular moral framework. 

This telos for the Christian Right, as Anthea Butler shares, comes from post-Civil War era efforts to form the Religion of the Lost Cause. The ethos of the reconstruction era movement was to preserve what was being destroyed for the sake of white supremacy and the Church, who played host and continues to play host to its modern day movements - silently, submissively and loudly. America has been at war with its foundation through the unjust systems that do not serve Americans fairly - healthcare being one. 

Abortion in America: Do you really want to know the roots?

Reproductive justice is an intersectional justice issue. Reproductive rights are tied to economic security, health care access, class, race, gender and basic human rights. Denial of bodily autonomy within the womb of birthing siblings creates a direct impact to their physical and economic well being. Abortion isn’t new to America. And, as shared above, racism and control of bodily autonomy hosts deep roots of hypocrisy to its legal undoing. 

Andrea Ritchie, co-founder of Interrupting Criminalization, shares in Saving Our Own Lives the connective pieces of abortion to reproductive rights to the war on bodily autonomy of transgender individuals.

“Immediately after the proclamation of emancipation, Black women just left white homes in droves, where they had been forced to care for  white people’s children, engage in reproductive labor for other people and were severely limited in their ability to use their reproductive labor in the way they wanted to, for their own families, or their own lives…they were subject to systemic structural sexual violence that sought complete control of their sexual and reproductive autonomy through forced parenting and abortions. Following legal end of slavery, criminalization facilitated continued control of Black women’s reproductive capacity and autonomy.”

For Ritchie, this argument over whether abortion and reproductive healthcare is justice oriented is the wrong question. The key question and action is disrupting the system’s harm and looking toward liberatory harm reduction. This lens is a theory of justice rooted in queer liberation, which is indeed for all of us.

Liberatory Harm Reduction: A theory of Justice

Gustavo Gutiérrez shares that a justice-based society is created by a feet-on-the ground anchored in the realities of the disenfranchised. “More than ever, it is time to remember that God has given to all humanity what is necessary for its sustenance.” With this in mind, Liberatory Harm Reduction goes to the margins and demands new ways of being. Instead of continuing to respond to crisis, to trauma, to violence, to harm, Liberatory Harm Reduction pulls out the roots of harm and plants something new. Its virtue is rooted in action using real-life strategies to reduce the negative health, legal, and social consequences that result from stigmatized life experiences. Liberatory Harm Reduction believes in total body autonomy and communal care for autonomy.

Without Liberatory Harm Reduction in view, transgender individuals have been and will continue to be erased from this argument over reproductive healthcare. This does not have to be the case. Contrary to belief, the Bible has a lot to say about bodily autonomy.

A Queer Eye for Bodily Autonomy 

Invisibility is no stranger to the queer experience. Invisibility is at the forefront of Mark 5:25-34. The vulnerable child who’s name we do not know and is only referred to as “Jairus’ daughter.” Jarius’ partner disappears within the clause of 5:40. They too, are without name, agency or relational presence. I can’t help but think of trans parents who’s birthing risk is already high from lack of access to sound health care and their identity erased by a culture that cannot call them by their names and pronouns while in care. This vulnerable child has zero agency. And here juxtaposed with this vulnerable child, is our trans parent (5:25-34). They too have no name, but they do have agency (5:27) and a voice (5:28) that demand their healing. In fact, our trans parent is the first (woman) character in the Gospel to speak (even if it was just to God). And in their defiance of social order, they reach out and touch Jesus for healing. Demanding through action their birth right to health care and autonomy. 

Jesus (vv. 27- 28, 30-31) sees healing through tender touch as more important than state sanctioned death of the trans parent. Jesus’ subversion in being deemed “ritually unclean” has less to do with the body of our trans parent and more to do with state sanctioned laws. A woman’s menstrual status would classify her as ritually, not morally, unclean. “Ritual,” I argue, equates to modern day state sanctioned laws and not a moral view that deems transgender healthcare as impure. Ritual (state sanctioned laws) equates to the oppression and manipulation of human bodies. Michel Foucault, a queer theorist, states, “the soul is the prison of the body.” Jesus’ touching of our trans parent re-embodies the soul of queer and trans individuals to their bodies and corrects pervasively death-dealing ideologies of their existence and the rights to the bodies and choice. 

Arguments against & for transgender reproductive health care

Transgender people continue to be deemed invisible in our modern context. Trans siblings experience high rates of discrimination in health care. Twenty-eight percent report facing harassment in medical settings, 19% report being refused medical care due to their identity and 50% report postponing preventive care which encompasses reproductive health care. Because of these discriminations, transgender individuals have alarming suicide rates. The Christian right calls those in favor of trans health care TERFS and considers trans children to be misgendered demons. Flordia's “Don’t Say Gay” bill holds the argument that children cannot be whoever they want to be - or more so, it’s inappropriate for a child to not be male or female.

Returning to Abundance: Communal Care

“Everyone deserves care that honors the dignity and sovereignty of our bodies and our kin.” - Susan Raffo

Returning to abundance means to center our justice ethic lens from a euro-centric scarcity hetro-normative patriarchal view toward a kin-ship truth that our bodies are our own and denial of anyone’s body is denial of the Imago Dei. 

Congregations can re-posture themselves away from complicity of harm and practice harm reduction polices and strategies for the betterment of its transgender members and the community. The telos of this practice and advocacy begins with asking: 1.) How can we make sure that transgender humans involved in situations of harm are being taken care of as much as they can be? 2.) How are we demonstrating grace in action? 3.) Is our care relational and in solidarity of the particularities of transgender people? 4.) Are we committed to bodily autonomy that seeks flourishing and choice in the pulpit, in the public square and within our buildings? 5.) How can our buildings become community hubs for harm reductive care? 

The church’s response to transgender oppression can be that of Christ in Mark 5. State law does not override God’s creation of unique bodies and choice to those bodies’ experiences. The church can be a care place and in doing so a voice in a sea of hatred. 

Cite: Rachael Ward, they/them (@queerinfaith)

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Bibliography

Butler, Anthea D. White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2021. 

Carter, Warren, and Sarah Tanzer. Mark. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 2019. 

Diaz, Jaclyn. “Florida's Governor Signs Controversial Law Opponents Dubbed 'Don't Say Gay'.” NPR. NPR, March 28, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/03/28/1089221657/dont-say-gay-florida-desantis. 

Feasting on the Gospels--Mark: A Feasting on the Word Commentary. S.l.: WESTMINSTER JOHN KNOX, 2014. 

Foucault, Michel. Surveiller Et Punir: Naissance De La Prison. Paris: Gallimard, 2015. 

HASSAN, SHIRA. Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. S.l.: HAYMARKET BOOKS, 2022. 

Knauss, Stefanie, and Mendoza-Álvarez Carlos. Queer Theologies: Becoming the Queer Body of Christ. London: SCM Press, 2019. 

RAFFO, SUSAN. Liberated to the Bone: Histories. Bodies. Futures. S.l.: AK PRESS, 2022. 

Rathjen, Reese. “New Analysis Shows Startling Levels of Discrimination against Black Transgender People.” National LGBTQ Task Force, September 16, 2011. https://www.thetaskforce.org/new-analysis-shows-startling-levels-of-discrimination-against-black-transgender-people/. 

Vulnerability and Resilience: Body and Liberating Theologies. S.l.: FORTRESS ACADEMIC, 2021. 

Our Present Rupture: Good Friday

Today is Good Friday. A day marked by state sanctioned violence of the Roman empire and the United States. Another black man was murdered - not on a cross - but by a version of it that worships crucifixions. This kind of cross drips with supremacist notions of privilege. His name: Patrick Lyoya.

“Truly, I tell you, today you’ll be with me in paradise.”

This week in my intro to New Testament class, we’ve continued our discussions about my favorite / least favorite epistle Paul. And I can’t shake something we learned together a few weeks prior that continues to rattle me on this Good Friday. 

The origin of the word church derives a meaning connected to an imperialistic nature of a ruling over. Throughout centuries we’ve arrived at the gathering word of ecclesia - the assembly of believers. But the origin of church as a word is haunting and as a called minister, I have to deal with that truth and lean into telling it honestly.  

Paul was a Roman citizen. He lived and operated within the political system and framing of Rome’s rule. He saw the persecution that befell the Jesus movement and strived to marry a new order that allowed early christians to live into their faith without death befalling them. 

I can relate to Paul. As a queer kicked out of church space for decades, I too, do not want to succumb to death. I, too, want to see my community - our communities - thrive. It’s tempting to utilize the structures of systems to gain fast access. And, I think in many ways this is what Paul did. He got a fast pass in the Roman game of monopoly for the early church. 

But, here’s the truth: we all die. And if our faith teaches us that life comes after this death. Then death in the face of subverting the Empire is better than succumbing to the Empire's ways of being. 

In Romans 13:1-7, Paul does something crucial to the makeup of the church and our democracy today (whatever we might label that now). Paul marries the state and the church to each other through obedience to authority’s law. 

Paul takes the fast pass for survival of his present moment and sadly, I think, paved the way for Christian supremacy to form. I don’t think this was Paul’s intention. I do believe Paul loved the church, God, Christ and the Spirit that moves us. 

We can learn from Paul here. - especially on this Good Friday. 

We get to make a choice in this present rupture of our world. Do we take a fast pass to comfort? Or do we lean in to subvert Empire? Do we build our churches from the money of the Empire or do we forge a way for the people to gather in tents of holy fabric? 

Paul’s declaration to work with the government can be reformed. To work with the government can be to subvert the work of the government. This means calling out the work that is oppressing and killing the most marginalized in our communities. This means asking what is of greater value to us: our church buildings or the kin-dom of God’s people (this means - all people)? This means calling for systems of violence to be de-funded, dis-banded, and evaluated by outside parties that can see to true safety. This means voting and uplifting voices dialed down when they should be dialed up. This means living as Christ did to turn the world upside down for a more just world.

This is indeed a rupturing moment and Good Friday places us at the body of Christ in front of the physical ruptures of his body and his spirit. 

My sibling Paul we cannot serve or work within the authority that oppresses and kills our Rabbi Jesus - that shoots a black man dead - that passes legislation that endangers trans kids - that claims control over another’s body.

Let us thirst for justice and subversion of christian supremacy.

Sojourn to Christian Faith

Essay Written for United Church of Christ on “Sojourn of your Christian Faith”

Indigenous children will hear from their community an important truth in their childhood – a truth that is believed to be embodied as they come from the womb: you are born with all you will need for your entire lifetime. From the moment of birth, it is the responsibility of the village elders to remind and retell this truth to the future generation…all the wisdom you will encounter is known to you already (Trauma Stewardship).

When creator took the dirt of their creation to make the adamah, I think of this indigenous truth…God created in us all the wisdom will need for our lifetime. The truth of our Imago Dei in God’s image is within us. It is a knowing that is unexplainable from words and yet we try. The desire to be known and stay in knowing with God drives, I think, our pursuit of God. 

I was raised in a small rural farming town where every mainline church wrapped the downtown square. My father and mother are both educators and musically inclined. From an early age my awe at the universe around me would often come out in the forms of creativity or the desire to run barefoot through the plains of my dad’s friend’s farmland. There, on red clay hills, I would find indigenous pottery of the Seminole and Creek communities and a few fields over I would find pioneer settlements artifacts. My curiosity for their survival and why we tell stories the way we do about humanity started on this farmland standing on that red clay. 

Both my parents were southern Baptists and so that made me one in their eyes. I was in church as young as I can remember asking a lot of questions about humanity, difference, why white people couldn’t hang out with black people, God, faith, Jesus and how to love people well. And, I was often, the odd number out on these types of questions. I found solace in the Good Samaritan parable and Jesus who gave refuge to all. Sometimes asking hard questions wasn’t popular but needed. 

My southern Baptist upbringing would tout Easter as our high point and I would always leave wondering about Good Friday and the Saturday before. “What did God feel” - was often my wonderment as a child. I never questioned inside my personhood that God wasn’t real. I just knew. It is the Imago Dei; the wisdom we are born with that provided that comfort. 

In first grade I remember waiting in the water fountain line during a break. And two classmates, as children do, randomly asked out loud if I thought God was real. And I remember my response clear as a day, “Yes.” They quickly shoveled and said, but “how do you know?” I replied while starring at the water fountain quite thirsty at this point. “Because I just do. It’s in us you know…a feeling. Like the stars are in the sky and we just know kind of feeling.” That was my first baptism of faith. Standing in the water fountain line thirsty for nourishment eager to push past my classmates I said, “yes.” And I have been saying yes to that truth ever since. 

I began to pursue that yes to God is real and love is for all of us call in high school as an active member of my youth group. When the Baptist youth group wouldn’t affirm a female (I identified as female at the time, I now identify as non-binary) leading, I went the Methodist church across the street. When the high school morning bible study needed leaders, I said yes. I attended every mission trip and fell more in love with sharing the gospel. I was in every sense on fire for Jesus.

What I knew to be true at this point of my life was that God was real, Christ lived, died, and was resurrected and would come again. But I had yet to experience the why Christianity? I had yet to experience the moment of resurrection that brings the trinitarian Christian life I live into harmony. 

Remember how I shared the indigenous teaching of memory and wisdom within our embodied self? Well, there was a piece of my personhood that had yet to be embodied and that was my sexuality and gender. This was the full circle moment back to the water fountain.

“You can’t be queer and Christian” was the water fountain conversation emerging and this time the knowing needed to be found. I needed to sit in the holiness of Saturday before Easter. I needed to view death differently as the blessing of this cycle of enteral life. I needed to be in Jesus’ sandals. I needed to lean further into who Jesus was, is, and will be. I needed to create liminal space; wider space - as far as the east and west space – separate myself from patriarchy and hierarchy to see God anew. To know the deeper depths of my make up…to source the why I would feel God say, “but you are loved” and the push to not only drink from the fountain but offer it to others as Christ did. 

My queerness brought me to the table for the first time fully embodied and suddenly the red clay wilderness grew into commitment to justice, mercy, humility and love. Jesus became a brown Palestine Jew, the outcast became the center, and the gospel lit ablaze. Christianity saved my life and calls me inward and outward to walk Jericho with those in need for the rest of my life. I can answer that call now fully embodied as God’s image knowing that God is real, the Holy Spirit guides us in joy and wisdom, and Christ is with us. 

And so, I believe in the divine dance of our faith, in Christ’s ministry which embraces the poor, captive, marginalized, forgotten, and other, the meal of which we come to the table for all, the hope from God for our humanity, and in God as incarnate who meets us in creation where we are for the quotidian moments at water foundation stations throughout our lives to remind us of our call and our purpose.  Christianity lives; this faith lives in my body, my spirit and my mind.

The Good news of not yet, but coming

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.” Listen! Your sentinels lift up their voices,
together they sing for joy; for in plain sight they see the return of the Lord to Zion. Break forth together into singing, you ruins of Jerusalem; for the Lord has comforted his people, he has redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord has bared his holy arm before the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

- Isaiah 52:7-10, NRSV

As we near the start of the third year of COVID-19, I continue to find myself haunting the Hebrew Bible text for the remnants of the people who clung to the “good news” of not yet but coming. That might just be the holding pattern of my faith in this season - not in wavering - but in liminality of the venture that is now. How do we share the good news and wait in active love?

So, with freshly pressed coffee in hand, I’m clinging to Isaiah 52 this morning. And all I can hear is the good news of not yet, but coming.

Why can we potentially take solace in the remnants of the Israelites in the Hebrew text? Why is that where I find myself roaming this Christmas eve?

Well, because dear friends we are tattered, scattered, and dismayed in similar ways. Our Jerusalem has crumbled to reveal that perhaps “our Jerusalem” wasn’t so just, fair, and equitable after all. America remains and is the land of the free for the white, economically rich, and rulers who claim victory through God but stray so far from our Christian text.

Jerusalem may lay in ruin right now, but so does our oppressive natures and made visible are the deep needs of the people.

I know, I know…this is a Christmas Eve reflection…where’s baby Jesus?

When Mary sang her song of justice at the good news of not yet but coming, she sang of the world order being turned upside down. For world order to be turned upside down, we too must begin again just as Mary did; just as Christ did in his emergence into the world.

The good news of not yet, but coming doesn’t lay in a 5-star hotel, nor does he have access to healthcare or perhaps even COVID test for his family. No, the newborn king lays in a dingy, filthy, stinky stable. Our savior’s holy arm emerges at the center of our epidemic with the people who have been forgotten.

Where is baby Jesus this Christmas eve…emerging resiliently laid bare in newborn skin for all ends of the earth to see if they so dare.

The good news of not yet, but coming can be found in our own ability to awake a new with the newborn Christ child who brings forth the good news that our remnant religious ancestors have been singing about for thousands of years.

“Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom he also created the worlds. He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of God's very being, and he sustains all things by his powerful word…” – Hebrews 1:1-14

May we reflect on the many stables of our present world who hold the needs of so many and may we be born anew in Christ and emerge into this new year embracing our likeness to one another and God so that the good news of not yet, but coming edges even closer to the just world God created and calls us to maintain.

And as the Christ child coos and clings to Mary for care, may we cling to the truth that God continues to bring forth comfort in dingy and impossible places for us all.

A letter to Queers Gathering at Thanksgiving Tables

Dear Queers,

It’s the day before Thanksgiving (2021) and I’m nestled in-between my in-laws cats on their back porch. There’s a list of gig work on my right and Florida Spanish moss flowing among the oaks on my left. There’s joy and also an achy feeling inside my chest today.

It’s the holidays. The seasonal reminder of how things are not the same, nostalgia is actually painfully cruel, and you’re nomadic family homemaking is always underway.

This week I had my first genuine queer friends-giving and it was soul healing. Gathering at a table of queers eating nostalgic thanksgiving food our parents would feed us as they ground their teeth around awkward “so how’s college” questions was restorative justice. Green bean casserole that night wasn’t used as a stuffing mechanism to hide feelings around the absence of partners or personhood. No, it was simply a delicious gift made by a wonderfully amazing black gay man named Brandon. (S/O Brandon).

Tomorrow I’ll gather around a table outside in the Florida sunshine to eat a meal with my wife’s family. It will be the first thanksgiving at a “family” table since my last time at my own parent’s house. It feels restorative but also tinged with grief.

There’s a book I read in my first year of seminary called “You Can Go Home Again: Reconnecting with Your Family” by Monica McGoldrick. This book wrecked me in a useful way. I read this book front to back searching for the truth of the title. I did learn how to ask new questions of my parents, how to approach the how’s and why’s of their behavior and most importantly how to lay that toxic shit down - but I never found the green light on going back home.

My wife has met my parents twice. We’ve been together six years and married almost two. The one family member who I’d give anything to be at the dinner table with tomorrow is floating among the Spanish moss. I miss my grandmother and I miss the time I can’t get back from hiding myself from her.

And, damn it, sometimes I do want to go back home. Home to the smell of fried turkey, mediocre green bean casserole and dumplings. My mouth waters just thinking of these foods. Nostalgia can be a real bitch, sometimes.

There’s no recipe to cure a broken heart and an inner child who wants desperately to go home to be fully seen. And, I think in our queer communities and with our chosen family we might need to normalize this statement. Sometimes friends it does not get better. Sometimes friends you cannot go home. And, that sucks. It is more than sucky, it is a living-death; a forever grief.

The last time I went home was in 2017. I knew that year that the woman I was with was my forever person. And that meal tasted dry and bitter. The juices of the fried turkey didn’t hit the tastebuds the same and every word out of my mouth felt like a lie to hid a big truth - my queerness.

So, today as I watch the moss sway, these cats sun bath, and the mounds of plants my grandmother would appreciate get their sun too - I’m wondering what my meal will taste like tomorrow. I’m hopeful for the juices and restoration of traditional dishes being full of more love and less hiding. And, I’m open to any moments of ache.

It’s ok to want to go home still. It’s instinctual and it’s a part of our inner child’s needs. As queers we are really good at re-developing what home means to us. So, tomorrow whatever table you gather at - allow yourself to show up as you, take moments away if needed and share your emotions if even only with your child self. Be honest about the dry seasoning of grief and savor the juices of new moments of truth.

Sincerely, a queer who misses fried turkey but loves their wife, new forming family and misses a grandmother who could not cook to save her life.

Supervised Ministry Assessment: Faith United Church of Christ

Position During Supervised Ministry: Spiritual Formation and Digital Christian Education Coordinator

During my time at Faith United Church of Christ my primary responsibilities were cultivating a virtual children’s gathering space each Sunday following service and creating weekly carry over exercises from Sunday-to-Sunday that allowed families to connect spiritually and theologically together. These activities were aimed to empower families to spend time weekly with their children sharing what they learned and heard during Sunday service as well as listen to their children share what they participated in during children’s gathering. Other responsibilities were helping to plan liturgy, preaching and pastoral care for congregants. What took most of my time and energy was preparation for Sunday gatherings – however – I can’t say that took energy from me. Everything I did for Faith was energizing and a true joy.

I’ve known Rev Jes Kast since Fall of 2019. I reached out to Jes during my freshman Fall term to ask for queer mentorship - an ask that Jes gets a lot for her positions within the UCC and as a representation of the rarity of an LGBTQ+ person in ministry. She thoughtfully responded with a creative outlet of emailing each other once per semester for my first year, which we did. During the shift of the pandemic, Jes put a call out for a seminarian position at Faith and I asked to be considered. We were on a call for over two hours sharing theology, hopes, and desires and it was quite clear that my direct message ask in the Fall of 2019 had arrive in the Summer of 2020. Jes is deeply committed to my spiritual development and pastoral growth. This entire experience with her as my mentor, pastor and friend has been life changing. There is nothing more I could have ever dreamed of from her and to God be all the glory for patience and endurance for arriving at this point in my journey.  

Interpersonal Relationships

            My queerness gives me insight and possibility for accepting and celebrating the particularities of people and the particularities of who each person shows up uniquely to worship, celebrate, yell, rejoice with and alongside God. This is an asset to me pastorally and an asset to the way I do life amongst human interpersonal relationships. It also requires a sensibility of poise and posture of slowing down. This means allowing for the human beings around me who do not have this skillset to come to me with their particularities as it feels best. This also means taking into consideration daily that not everyone around me has experienced the injustice that I have that has birthed a unique liberation of being in community and in community with God. That is an ever-growing and ever-becoming area of growth in human relationship and pastoral leadership.

Vocational Clarity

            Throughout this employment at Faith UCC, I have had the humbling opportunity to hear God’s pressing on my inner child and the Spirit’s healing over my own wounds. When I first arrived at seminary in 2019, I was angry at the Church for its continued abuse on my being and my community. Although processed in many forms, seminary opens up wounds and discovers hiding places of our “stuff” (if we allow it) so that we may move around the furniture of our inner home with God for the external home we offer one another. I spent the first year of my seminary education yelling a lot with God. Yelling about harm, yelling about loss of home, yelling about what now and yelling at the past. All of it was the pruning purge of Christ asking – maybe begging – “show me where it hurts.” And so, I answered in my yelling, in my crying, in my writing, in my research – in every space outside of church. When this opportunity presented itself, I think because of this purge, I was ready to step into a pastoral role without anger or bringing my “stuff” into the external space. God said, now’s the time. I’ve learned here in this time that I am very much called to parish ministry and that I am very much called to the United Church of Christ. My whole being with every fiber feels home with the UCC and deeply loved by Faith UCC. This congregation and its pastor will love me well, guide me, nourish me and support my journey to ordination. God said, these are your people.

Theological Competence

Through this opportunity at Faith, I’ve been able to participate in preaching and liturgy in various situations. This year (2020-2021) saw the most civil unrest and climatic presidential election of my current lifetime. The most theologically significant moment for me was the prayer vigil offered by Rev Jes Kast, Rev Amy and Rev Emmy Keglar (ELUCA) and myself to hold space for those in the angst and worry of what may emerge from this year’s presidential election. We prayed. We read poetry. We sat in our bodies. We sobbed. We held each other without physical touch, and it was holy. Faith and Rev Jes Kast have deepened my own theological commitments to interfaith relationships and the human aspect of the Church showing up in the here and now of our present moments to meet God for holding.  

Professional Skills

My life’s work is a continuous social passion project of care and resource. My administration, work habits and time management skills must be on the time-bending vortex and so those are always a well-oiled machine. My practice this last year has been learning to say “no” because “yes” to me equals more life for others. I have begun with Howard Thurman’s centering down questions at the outset of each week to help temper my “yes” and hold strong to my “no.” Through Faith, I have been able to preach and continue to stretch my theological and pastoral tone in who I am as a pastor in this moment and the future.

Systemic Issues

This past year of learning has been devoted to unraveling further how whiteness has shaped my upbringing, impacts my pastoral voice, and informs racist behavior within my being. In every class from this second year of seminary, I have used essays and projects to work toward this commitment. Faith allowed me to do this work in real time with liturgies, prayer, sermons, and in conversation with Rev Jes Kast.

Learning Goals – Continued Education

            Goal wise, I feel, my main goal for this job was to be able to function pastorally openly and proudly as a non-binary human and to be given the opportunity to feel God’s presence within my call in a brave space. This was true of my experience. It was humbling, life-altering and deeply renewed my own spirit for the journey ahead. I feel deeply encouraged and blessed to have a path toward ordination with a Church that feels actively in pursuit of justice, mercy and humility before and for God. I remain deeply committed to justice work within LGBTQ+ community and death care. So, my educational experiences will be centered within that framework. I hope to secure an unconventional CPE experience that is rooted in death doula work.

            Supervisor

Rev Jes Kast is a pastor, a feminist theologian, a teacher, a mother, a spiritual guide, and a friend. I cannot imagine my ordination journey without her support, care and love. I cannot imagine doing ministry without her at Faith. Thanks be to God for sending her into my path for this here and now moment.

            Leadership

I don’t believe in hierarchal leadership. I believe in the community that is the church weaving resources for the jubilee of here and now and the heartache of our human sins. My “model” is that of Christ and the circle that draws wide and leaves no one hungry.

Pastoral Imagination

This job at Faith UCC stretched my pastoral imagination to see how much I love Christian education and sitting with youth pastorally. Children illuminate to us God’s desire for childlike imagination in our faith and living. And, I am so grateful for the ways the children of Faith challenged, strengthened, and loved one another during out time together.

Hear Rachael Ward on Queerology!

I was on Queerology! I love Matthias and I’m just so grateful we got to share time together for this deep dive, juicy and powerful conversation on being queer, facing our grief and discovering who we are post-trauma.

Rachael Ward (they/them) is a public theologian and LGBTQ activist. Currently, Rachael is pursuing a Master of Divinity and a Master of Arts in Practical Theology – pastoral care at Columbia Theological Seminary.

Rachael is the creator of the Living-Death Doula Model for Pastoral Care and cofounder of Bible Queery, a facilitation collective geared toward queer wellness and reconstruction.

Rachael lives with their wife, Chelsea, and two fur-babies in Atlanta where they focus on talking about and working around death, grief, and death doulas.

Topics Discussed:

• Upbringing: Faith did not help form identity, but kept Rachael from their identity

• What if I am gay? Shameful hiding and living a double life

• Life and Death Matters: Birth is beautiful burst of life, death is dark and terrible

• Living-Death Narratives: Grief keeps disembodied beings stuck

• What is available pastorally? Affirming theology (a.k.a. the Biblical case)

• Persistent Queer Themes: Disassociation, minimizing, and spiritual rationing

• Living-Death Directives: Start with zero expectations and consent conversations

• Steps to a Better Life: Facilitation, accessible writing, and meaningful help

Who is god in a world of religious difference?

Essay submitted for Theology II, April 2021 | Theologians mentioned: Kwok Pui-lan, Hans Kung, Jurgen Moltmann & Daniel Migliore - all required texts sourced for this essay.

Religious diversity’s implication from western society has enabled criticisms that coerce race, class, gender and cultural uniqueness to be white-washed by Christian standards (Kowk, 189). Reframing this language of religious diversity toward Kwok’s religious difference emphasizes the unique intersections of world religions (Kwok, 202-205). In reading Migliore’s types of Christian Theologies of the Religions, I found a paradoxical struggle of whiteness and power to maintain a hierarchy over the “other” (320-327). Kwok pushes theologians through paradox for coalition with the world’s different religions and cultural traditions for the sake of what God desires for us: human flourishing (208). Her post-colonial theology of religious difference calls to dismantle Christian imperialism in a mutuality that is not seeking commonality or acceptance of the status quo (Kwok, 192; Migliore, 324-326).  If God is an unequivocal yes toward all humanity, I wonder how God would feel about the decades of westernized thought that has attempted to isolate and dissect God’s creation into hierarchal towers of authority (Migliore, 324; Kwok, 193). In light of this interpretation of religious diversity, God is a white God of power and oppression of whom I do not believe in. In light of Kwok’s religious difference, God is the God of creation who calls us to bring our gifts and spirit for the wellness of all – oppressed and oppressor. And my faith in this God rests in the divine mystery of God’s grace and love for all.

At mutuality’s core - dissected from power or alternative gain - lies a genuine interest to be in relationship with another. Hans Kung and Jurgen Moltmann paint a discourse of mutuality in sharing of religious practices and values held dear to those religions (Migliore, 326). However, as genuine as their commitments are to be vulnerable for dialogue, they still are focused on the justification of Christian supremacy through betterment of their own faith through the lens of other religions (Migliore, 326). Moltmann offers that “dialogue with other faiths can be a concrete expression of Christian life formed by the gospel.” If the gospel is of a God who is self-giving love and aims for justice and peace in creation, then Christ’s life provided in the gospel makes way for religious difference taking mutuality further than how does this benefit Christianity toward a true and moral concern for all (Migliore, 326). If Christ’s life and rebuke of religious systems’ oppressive tactics is the basis and norm of Christian life, then mutuality expands outside of “church” and into other religious spaces (326-327). Mutuality becomes not about hierarchal towers or who is right or wrong within their faith practice – but human flourishing.

If God seeks for humanity to be in companionship with one another, then religion is not be disembodied and those who practice their religion are not to be disembodied (Gen. 1: 26-31; 2:18-25). Kwok has shown us western theological thought has been in the business of disembodiment by centering Christian faith through acts of colonization and evangelism (189-197). Migliore genuinely tries to move western theological thought forward, but still refers to world religions outside of Christianity as “non-Christians” (344-345).

The Tower of Babel when viewed through an interpretative lens of rebuke of power, mirrors a world of religious difference in culture, race, gender, and sex (Gen. 11: 1-9). Perhaps having one language is an assimilation of power that God does not desire for us or over us. In light of religious diversity, God is against the masking of diversity to maintain power. Who is God in this world of religious difference? Creator of all who is grace-filled and humble in our human ability to choose how we show up, how we worship, how we pray, how we dress and who we love. God in light of this world of religious difference celebrates our uniqueness and invites us to bear witness in true mutual coalition for one another and aches when we falter.