Queer Marriage & Why I recommend ‘Pleasure Activism’

While tucked away on a remote beach this week I finally began sitting down with adrienne maree brown’s Pleasure Activism. So far, I know have a deep desire to read all of Octavia Butler’s catalog and a deeper commitment to queer community that isn’t steeped in heteronormativity.

As I re-read Audre Lorde’s essay Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power and made my way into the chapter titled love as political resistance, I could feel the suntanned, t-shirt wearing girl of my youth in my presence. After countless therapy sessions of my beloved Queer therapist inviting me to befriend my younger self, Brown’s words had opened the door.

There were aches and pains at questions around body movement, sound, and the ways we’re taught to love in linear vibrations as opposed to an organic unfolding of love in rigorous practice with all humankind. The aches were my younger self kicking at my shin bones to bring attention to my senses, “this is why you were angry then…this is why you lied…and hid…this is where you knew you weren’t all a girl or a boy…”

Cognitively, I know this to be true. The patriarchy teaches us gender roles before our birth and places us into roles of submission or domination (if we have the white male counterparts to boast). I know that heteronormativity consumes our fibers and sticks to our bone marrow in ways our roots are not truly meant for --- but there’s a difference in cognitively knowing and embodied awareness.

This is why Brown’s book is a vital gift to me in this moment, for the vocation I am in and for my own being.

How much in our queer bodies and being do we forego pleasure? Forego self-preservation for hiding spots? Forego love that is equitable for a love that hurts for the sake of having companion?

How much in our childlike selves did we hide when our parents were suspicious of our “tomboyish behavior,” our desire to befriend all people not just White Supremacy itself, our creative habits that were our outlets and so many more examples one could write in from their child perspective.

Resistance is a grind against the norm. A norm set up by people to cultivate systems that keep in place roles, power, and greed.

And so, when I read, “we need radical honesty – learning to speak from our root systems about how we feel and what we want..” (PS, 61) from Brown’s book I about fell onto the sand from my seated position with a fuck me up adrienne expression. And then scribbled furiously in the margins:

• What the heck our MY root systems? (echo some Dr. Chanequa Walker-Barnes “who told you vibes”)

• What belongs to me and doesn’t?

• How do I continue to untangle the root systems of heteropatriarchy? Or, keep them alive?

• Am I really doing that now?

Yes, that last one stung a bit. Am I doing that now?

Here’s the queer tea:

I’m married and have been for a little over a year to the love of my present moment. But here’s what no one prepared my wife and I for:

There are no queer examples of marriage. There are no examples around us right now or a manual of how-to un-fuck the patriarchal set up of marriage – or – the idea of what monogamous love is.

What we do have is an overwhelming mountain of heteronormative/gendered behaviors of control, isolation, and anti-communal love.

When my wife and I got married in December 2019 we set up our wedding ceremony to smash this shit-show I just stated. We had a communal ceremony. We asked for accountability in how we love as a queer community. We had such high hopes of that dynamic and then the pandemic happened.

A world-wide traumatic event shattered resistance for a minute because we felt threatened and needed to build survival.

For queer folks and marginalized communities, I think, we know this reaction well. If I want to live, I must find ways to not die. And since this behavior, at least for me, has been rooted in isolation and hiding of emotions for the sake of survival – well… that’s a recipe for depression and loss.

What has resulted in many households of my friends and our own is an incredible strain on relationship.

….Well, you’re supposed to be my source of love and joy – that’s what marriage is so if we’re stuck together, it will be ok because we have each other….

If we think biblical for a moment, Genesis speaks of kin-ship or community and I’m sure that the heteronormative understanding of marriage or monogamous relationships makes space for that as much as it makes less space for community to flourish.

What if we were as fluid as Adam was?

Adam, the genderless being from the dirt - just let that sit for a moment….

I’m speaking of monogamy because I would identify at this time as a monogamous person. But I would invite a re-discovery and questioning of how we can queer monogamy, queer marriage and queer our world, honestly.

If heteronormativity cultivates behaviors of control, isolation, and anti-communal love, then queer resistance of love can cultivate behaviors of fluidity, spacial awareness, and communal love.

Perhaps, we have to be the examples of queer relationships and marriage. Perhaps, we must start here.

Brown shares that through the radical honesty of speaking from our root systems “our lives begin to align with our longings, and our lives become a building block for authentic community and ultimately a society that is built around true need and real people, not fake news and bullshit norms.” (PA, 61-62)

I placed this chapter down to look up at my wife. What a fucking hard year this has been. We talked about the lack of queer examples in marriage and the paradox that marriage presents from its roots of formation. We knew that when we pursued marriage. And now as the pandemic still looms but hope emerges with vaccines, we’re back at asking how do we queer this marriage, our bodies and beings for the relationship we desire and the community we hope for?

Here’s my scribbled list:

• Asking for needs through consent

• Seeking out care for our needs before dumping them onto a partner

• Love isn’t isolating or foregoing pleasures with other groups, activities – in this relationship love is fluid and love is seeking out pleasure in new and old ways (that is an active commitment, I think, we have to keep committing to).

• Always, always prioritizing your care

• Investing in friendships that are honest and caring outside of your marriage or relationship (if that means booking the calendar to ensure this happens – book the calendar)

• A practice of love for yourself only (daily affirmations, a lotion routine before bed, etc.)

I’m still reading Pleasure Activism. Slowly and intentionally. And, as I continue to ponder queer marriage and pleasure in my life, I am certainly adopting the terminology of practice ground.

“Let our lives be a practice ground where we’re learning to generate the abundance of love and care we, as a species, are longing for.” – adrienne maree brown, Pleasure Activism, 63

Human life can Equal more than Money & Power

In Western capitalistic society, human freedom and vocation are enmeshed to equate to the power of assertion, preservation for self and justification of oppression (Migliore, 256). There is no visibility of God’s freedom bestowed upon humanity to be in partnership for each other and with God (Barth, 80-81). What is present through blue lit screens is a mirroring of narcissism that justifies and sanctifies human life to equate to money and power. Our human freedom provided to us freely by God informs our vocation and informs the offerings of our work (Martin, 176). Thus, there is a deep need for flipping the tables of capitalism’s definition of human freedom for God’s gift of human freedom. To center this reframing, one must ask of human freedom: Is human freedom joyful? Does human freedom produce joy for the community? Is human freedom actively participating in meaningful work with God and community? Only when the answers to these reflective questions are yes in active pursuit is human freedom mirroring God’s freedom for us.

Human freedom offers an outpouring of joy (Barth, 78). A freedom that humanity has to choose, decide and act in a just direction – not in isolation but for one another. Thus, the entry point of joy is this “beyond understanding” gift of freedom to be (78). A joy that is so unmerited that humanity desires to respond with obedience to God (81). Thus, a marker of human freedom from God is to be able to respond that freedom is joyful. This joy is free from hostility but not free from life’s tribulations that may come (79). This is a distinct point to hold as human freedom offered by God is also for the entire human community.

In Genesis Sarah and Abraham’s narrowness of God’s freedom out of sorrow for their own barrenness causes unjust harm and suffering for Hagar. There is no joy within this community’s moment. God in God’s own freedom counters this unjust treatment with the gift of liberation to Hagar and freedom to name God (Martin, 174). Thus, God restores human freedom’s outward offering of joy for others to Hagar. This demonstration in Genesis is a reflection of how human freedom can respond in obedience to God. Thus, a marker of human freedom is a resounding yes to the question does it produce joy within the community.

Through human freedom, humanity is called to be co-workers of liberation not co-workers of self (Migliore, 257). This co-work is “a costly service,” but the offering of God’s freedom bestowed upon us is of higher value than what we as humanity “give up” (257). We are not in this active life alone – we have a God who is for us and thus we are called in our unmerited freedom to be for each other and in partnership with God (Martin, 170-171). God’s freedom mirrored to us in our gifted human freedom calls forth meaningful work that restores “moral harmony in the universe” (Martin, 176). God and Hagar’s co-working partnership fueled by God’s freedom and the human freedom Hagar is “meant to have” subverts oppression (Martin, 174; Barth, 75). Human freedom actively participating in meaningful work with God and community lives in our response as Christians in our daily activities – whether that be for pay or for particular vocation – it is our moral responsibility to ensure the human community is flourishing (Martin, 176; Migliore, 257). Thus, a marker of human freedom from God is to be able to respond that freedom participates in meaningful flourishing with God and world.

God calls us into work that brings out our desires; our joy (Eccles 3:22, NRSV). God calls us inward from Genesis to be stewards with our human freedom (Gen. 1-2, NRSV). It is up to our humanity to genuinely choose joy. To choose joy for each other and to choose joy in active participation with God and the world for flourishing. Our human freedom calls us into a Christian ministry of liberation where we act “justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God” (Micah 6:8, NRSV). Human freedom is joy for the sake of all.

Responding to Grace With our active “How”

Theology II Essay: How are we saved by grace? | March 2021

If we know to be true that Christ bestows on us the Spirit and God justifies and sanctifies us with creator and humanity, then the “how” of being saved by grace could very well end with this statement (Migliore, 246-247). As a journalist in my past profession, the word “how” would signify an exchange; a response to why a thing is the way it is. And so there lies why we as Christians cannot end with the truth of God’s free gift – we must respond with our active “how” (247). This version of “saved by grace” that cliff hangs without our “how” is cheap and continues to allow humanity to function “as is” without true justification of behaviors that harm (Bonhoeffer, 460-461). The wounded walk the earth still crying for God while the justified continue to act in un-sanctified manners with a hollow understanding of grace. To know our “how,” we must bear witness and act toward the suffering misuse of grace. Utilizing Far Eastern understanding of pain - Han - as a vehicle to see and act for the suffering, allows humanity access to the freedom God’s grace offers from systems and complacency within our faith (Park, 10). Han encourages ongoing repentance and continued calling to live into Christ’s likeness for true transformative grace to take hold (89-90; Cannon, 148).

God’s liberating grace is a signifier that we are “somebodies” (Migliore, 249). Cheap grace leaves room for norms and systems to stay in place. Such systems as White Supremacy which thrives in the cracks of cheap grace. Bonhoeffer sarcastically writes, “the Christian should live the same way the world does” on the humanly freedom cheap grace awards (460). It’s “how” is for the sake of self. The grace of God is for the sake of all. Cheap grace lives in the white privilege of capitol raiders who get only a slap on the wrist, while our black siblings die in the streets – victims of whiteness’s sin.

In order to interrogate our “how,” we must interrogate our cheap grace. And by our, I mean humanity. And for myself, I mean whiteness. Whiteness exudes privilege. In our apologies, we are forgiven by black and brown colleagues. But, in our apologies is there a true awareness of the pain our whiteness causes? If we are living in a lens of cheap grace, then the answer is no. Our apologies are hollow attempts to keep things stable and moving onward. Han requires the privileged to reconcile their complacency for true justification and through Han the oppressed experience salvation anew (Park, 13). Bringing awareness to the oppressor’s participation in Han makes space for metanoia to take hold by the Spirit bestowed through God’s free grace (89). Forgiveness from the oppressed then also becomes a mutual exchange of grace. Thus, making way for repentance to be an ongoing action toward transformative grace.

Transformative grace is the true manifestation of God’s liberating grace. Transformative grace calls us to disband systems of power and view our neighbors with Christlike love (Cannon 148). Transformative grace calls us inward and outward through justification and sanctification by God’s resounding yes to our being (Migliore, 250).

Our “how” we are saved by grace is in this truth: We are a yes to God. We are asked to be in community with one another to live in constant state of repentance and reconciliation that is not hollow or ignorant of the Han this world experiences (Park, 90). It is by this version of costly grace that we hide our treasures within the field, share our wealth, and God’s liberating grace with all through love for neighbor and world (461). Yes, we are saved by grace through Christ’s life, death, and resurrection and the Spirit’s offering to our being through God’s love for us. And our “how” rests in our crosses that we pick up and never place down for the love of God, for neighbor and the healing of this wounded world (Migliore, 256).

To be A Human Fully Embodied

Theology II Essay on what it means to be a human fully embodied - Feb 2021

To be a human fully embodied is a commitment to the known and unknown (Tonstad, 71). It is an ever-evolving journey to transcend “ways to be” prescribed by sociopolitical systems (Tonstad, 66;68) and to take ownership of our ancestors, our present moments, and the hope of the future ahead (Copeland, 17; 20). To be a human fully embodied is to deny the normative rights over our bodies and ways of becoming (Tonstad, 69). The embodiment of one human cultivates radical freedom and offers a communal ripple effect for humankind (Copeland, 8). To be a human fully embodied, then, means radical freedom to flourish as we become in our lives and in relationship with creator.

Before we’re born into the world, ideologies about nature and culture prescribe normative expectations and classifications for our personhood (Tonstad, 54). At various levels of privilege, the human body enters the world disembodied. I wonder what kind of pain that brings our creator who desires so much more for our being. These normative expectations, in my queer experience, are heavily binary, disruptive to the discovery of how God uniquely creates us, and fracturing to the ability to see we are indeed kin to one another (55). A part of queer embodiment is unveiling the privileges and unstable nature of these binaries (56). Transcending these prescribed notions of how to be in the world makes way for radical freedom, perhaps seeing the world more for what it is, and being called toward an embodiment that returns power back to the people and the body (58;68). To be a human fully embodied, then, is to seek freedom unattached to societal hierarchy or normative prescriptions.

As long as racial, gender, and sexual bias are embodied as the sole source of order, then a disembodiment transcends over humanity’s lived experiences. The notion of Audre Lorde’s infamous words of “no one is free until all our free” applies here and applies to the ever-evolving journey of embodiment. Copeland speaks to witnessing concrete bodies and experiences that help us interrogate the “dynamic unfolding of created spirit in the struggle to exercise freedom in history and society” (8). If we as humans in search of embodiment make room for such witnessing, we reverse disembodiment. We work together toward the truthful embodiment of our privileges, existence, and cultivate a practice of leaning into embodiment work not just for the moment, but for life (17; 20). To be a human fully embodied, then, is to lean into the uncomfortable, to train the “eye to see” and remain open (17).

Embodiment has a direct correlation to our Christian task of desire and longing for communal relationships with each other and the divine. To be a human fully embodied is to be a human always seeking, longing, and desiring to know it’s being and to know God. Embodiment is not a destination it is “rising and ebbing moments of presence and absence between humanity and divinity” (Hillgardner, 157). This yearning fuels the devotion of transcending norms, a commitment to interrogation of self and world, and freedom to flourish (159). The world is widened, the self is explored, and the human working toward full embodiment is sent outward to live in relationship to others and the divine more authentically (165). To be a human fully embodied means a practice of never relinquishing the desire to be radically free as creator intended for each of us (Gen. 1:26-31).

With longing, our desire for embodiment is not lost in translation. Instead, it is pursued with openness to engage one another and God. Through this pursuit comes radical freedom. We as humans can live a more flourish-filled embodied life with each other and the creator. This is true embodiment radical freedom to become with kin and our creator.

Darkness Is no Void

Image by Jez Timms

“Let that day be darkness! …

Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the blackness of the day terrify it.

That night—let thick darkness seize it! …” (Job 3, NRSV)

Darkness is not a void or an experience to be ignored. As we lean into the longest day of darkness, biblically speaking, Job resonates with me. When Job endures hardship after hardship, we do not find him tucked away in a cave waiting for winter to pass. Job does not ignore the darkness. Job stands frostbitten and naked in winter’s snare ready to share his loss and grief. What he encounters are close friends attempting to silence his darkness.

Elizabeth Dias writes, “Winter is a primal time of death and loss, and a time for grief. It reminds us that darkness, not only light, is part of the recurring rhythm of what it means to be human.”

For Job, I wonder, if what it mean to be human in his moments of loss was to claim the darkness. Job yelled, he expressed pain, and relentlessly defended his darkness. It isn’t until the conclusion of the book of Job that God and Job get to have a real heart-to-heart. I wonder if Job’s story would have been different if there weren’t so many individuals trying to pull him from a cyclical rhythm of life?

What if we allowed each other to be human in our human moments and feel the depths of every hue? And what if, instead of chastising as Job’s friends did to hurry up and find the light, we stayed and brought the hand warmers while we wait.

Winter is here and we will need each other in new ways this season. Let us not be fooled. Darkness is no void. It is a teacher and a part of being human lives here, too.

Blessed longest day of Darkness to you.

Suffering & Evil: It’s Time to re-Think Classical Doctrine

Theo Essay, Dec, 2020 | What Do You Believe About God’s Relationship to Suffering and Evil?

Casey Goodson Jr. was walking into his house when Columbus Ohio police officers shot him three times in the back. Casey was holding a sandwich. He had just gotten off work. His crime was “looking” like another suspect. He died on the scene. Wisel’s response to being asked “Where is God now?” after watching the body of a young boy swing from a ceiling feels fitting for this larger question of God’s relationship to suffering and evil. “Here he is...He is hanging here on this gallows…” (Migliore, 125). To answer the question of suffering and evil, we must look to what we’ve been told and then carefully survey the active moments around us. Only with this tension of past and present, do I think we really get a place to discern what kind of relationship God actively participates in.

Classical doctrine of providence erases the marginalized community’s experience with its problematic offering of God permitting unjust events like Casey’s death this week (Migliore, 126). I wonder if doctrines of atonement which amplify suffering have benefited from such positions as the suffering of the world “teaches us humility to receive adversity from God’s hand even though we cannot understand the reason” (Migliore, 127). Such theological views of God, especially that of divine punishment (Migliore, 128), directly correlate to Black death. “Well if he had his hood off…” “If he had not looked the part…” “If he had not run…” This version of God in relationship to suffering and evil – this God which uses (his) power to wield punishment and humble us with adversity is a white God of capitalism and patriarchy that I cannot agree to. In fact, such hate speech that comes from “God willed it” ideology leads me and others to protest and hope for progress. This is where I find God in relationship with suffering and evil – in the streets with the people and their pain.

When Black Lives Matter took the streets this summer that was protest and a quarrel with human creatures and God (Migliore, 132). The countless amounts of people in the streets were there to protest silence and inaction and where was God…in the triage centers made of neighbors and nurses… on top of the CNN sign in downtown Atlanta as a Black Lives Matter flag waved furiously before protestors…in Seattle when a black man ran to a car where a white man was trying to run over protestors and so he was shot instead of the crowd being bulldozed over. Because of these protests there was progress and process of changing laws and telling the truth of black death.

In Genesis, God protests in a unique way. First God desires to send a flood and so it was, but after this flood God shifts the plan: “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth...as long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease” (Genesis 9:21-22, NRSV). God moves from protesting humankind’s heart to a more persuasive than coercive position in relationship. God promises the seasons and puts God’s heart on the line for potentially more grief (Genesis 6:6, NRSV). God is responsible for evil indirectly and hopeful for good to emerge in the world and thus sharing in our suffering (Migliore, 166).

Who brings us this kind of relationship of God – one that is co-agent and co-sufferer – one that shows us the way of the flesh that can be for neighbor? Jesus’ life and “resurrection lived into by the Holy Spirit, empowers us to work within the tight spaces” of the world’s trauma of suffering to “bring life from death” (Carter, Journal). God’s relationship to suffering and evil is co-sufferer, co-griever, co-neighbor, co-partner in rebuilding, co-hope for human creatures to choose good. When we see God in relationship this way, our answer to where is God can be less in isolation and wonderment of where God is in the first place.

Now that AAR is over…

Last spring I rushed to the finish line to submit a proposal for the American Academy of Religion’s Death, Dying an Beyond Unit. I would have no idea that we were a month away from a pandemic shift. My work would be pushed into the online space, which for queers is a familiar one, if not braver. I spent the summer planning and hosting a conversation on queer death for over 45 attendees of all ages. It was a somber and beautiful conversation about the honest experiences of queer people’s bodies, minds, and spirits when we die in life and in death. We all created living directives together to take back, at least, the autonomy of our bodies. I definitely cried post that zoom call. Forty-five bodies had plans for their end-of-life care in the midst of a pandemic - that was justice. I think of them all a lot. I wonder if they are all still alive or if they’re decision to be brave enough to talk death that day gave them the gift of “dying well.”

In August I co-founded Bible Queery with my colleague Erin Green and we began to host a cohort of 32 queer folks from all over the world. Tonight, that cohort ends by us writing our own beatitudes. This too, feels poetic and justice-filled. Through this cohort, I met individuals who illuminated my work in real time. And, through careful conversation, I asked a participant to consider offering her narrative to the living-death doula paper.

In November, Dev (who is openly named in my paper) and I sat together intentionally to walk through the living-death doula model. Since then, Dev has started therapy and has started her own group conversations with local queer community about the model. And has shared, “this is liberating more than just myself.”

I am a non-binary queer person who’s life has been riddled with “no” and “not good enough.” Words I know so many of us queer humans and the marginalized at this table of “no” have experienced. As a queer person at this intersection of faith and personhood, I have severed parts of myself to exist inside a binary construct which took years to say “no” back to.

Yesterday I presented the living-death doula model which argues for more embodied care of queer people - a model that can be accessible to any intersection of disembodiment.

Queer people deserve better care than the cognitive offering of the biblical case for inclusion when our cognitive has been riddled with lies for years. We deserve to be seen, heard, and valued. This work is for our visibility and life-living. This research is against the binary complicit nature of the Church & human disembodiment that plaques more than just queer people, but the systems of which we live in: classism, gender, sex, capitalism, patriarchy, etc.

The living-death doula is a model for care that encompasses our lived experiences and offers room for our queer nature to break the culture or binary & disembodiment. It is a model that I wish I had when I was at the beginning of my own work. It is a model that I wish could have been alive sooner for the countless queer, trans and non-binary lives no longer here.

Yesterday I stood with Lucy Bregman, who was called the Death, Dying and Beyond Godmother of AAR, and presented my work. Michael Hebb, who is the creator of Death Over Dinner, spoke on the audacity of dying well and how that state of hope isn’t plausible without a shift in the culture of which binds us. I agree. Perhaps the audacity is in daring to hope and work toward a beloved community who does get to die well - all of us.

It was important for my presence to be at AAR yesterday. Queer people deserve to tell their stories. And I used that moment to tell many stories and asked for more representation within this unit itself. I also broadcasted my entire presentation on Instagram because public theology matters. You can view the presentation there at (@queerinfaith).

If you’re interested in reading the presentation on its interactive page, visit here.

We’re still here.

The Queer Samaritan: A moral and ethical argument for Beloved Community that disbands the Master’s tools

Essay Written for Beloved Community Ethics Course, Dec 2020

The Queer Samaritan: An Image Offering for Queer Beloved Community

Queer people throughout history have been marked with unique signifiers by society that separates them from the majority. We are a part of the community that has “backs against the wall” written into our collective human living-document. This distinction isn’t one of pride, it is quite the opposite. It’s a stain that no matter how hard we scrub our bodies, spirits, or minds we cannot remove itself from our person. For queer people of faith, there is an intersectional overlap of society’s ideals of us, the church, and our own discovery.  Like the Good Samaritan from Jesus’ parable, we are cast out from society – a mixed lot. Unlike the Good Samaritan, the Queer Samaritan, is represented by trans magical bodies and sexualities that would have not quite existed the same during Jesus antiquity. It is our queerness that leads our Samaritan ethics of care. Because within queer community there is a tight knit notion of chosen family and communal offering. We do not let a fellow queer sibling lay bloody and beaten on a roadside, we find nourishment at all costs. And in that call from our bones for our queer family, beloved community can be found and caressed forth without the master’s tools of which first oppressed us.

Circle of Oppression

The queer Christian community of which I work is comprised of all races, gender, class, cultural identities and ethnicity. In the broader community entities and organizations who have power and hold spaces for queer Christians is largely run and represented by cis-white gay men who often embody the master’s tools and privilege to maintain a status of not-other. A colleague of mine and I have created a collective called Bible Queery. Since August we’ve been working with 35 individuals from all over the world to create brave space, community, and learning ways to fully embody our personhood without disembodiment or societal binary. For most of those gathered with us, they’ve experienced larger organizations with cis white gay men in leadership positions as eerily similar to the evangelical churches that ostracized and kicked them out in the first place.

Social Myths

For Queer people there’s an embedded idea that we are only allotted the crumbs of communal living and should accept the scraps we can obtain. There is also a myth that stems from the master’s tools and our capitalistic society that oozes into our community spaces that we only can save ourselves. There’s a survivalist mentality buried into each queer person’s identity that stems from the isolation of oppression and continues through the use of the master’s tools which first oppressed. The use of the master’s tools is driven through capitalisms pursuit of creation, hierarchal orders created by race, class, gender, and sex and power. Consumed by this myth of thriving is actually surviving and a wright of passage, the beloved queer community remains faint in the distance as the community aches and cripples itself from the inside.  

 Cultural Identity / History

My upbringing in a rural town that was deeply defined by religion and a white centered Jesus is a truth that I hold in tension with my whiteness within the spaces that I bridge with my colleague who is a non-binary latinx individual. It is imperative for me to continuously check my own privilege so as not to bring my own baggage into the spaces of which I minister and organize. My interaction with evangelical churches and non-affirming theologies and ideologies of queer people places a deep knowing of the wider pain felt by this community. What must be held carefully is to not project or overshadow any space I inhabit with my own story instead of making way for the stories that have not yet been told.

This is where the Queer Samaritan helps, not only just me, but our collective queer community.

Queer Samaritan is for Equity, Rest, Resilience and Subversion

Practical Theologian Jeanne Stevenson Moessner’s interpretation of the Good Samaritan from a feminist lens helps make way for this working metaphor of the Queer Samaritan. In her image of care the Samaritan acts out of an abundance of feminist equity where he (she / they) takes the injured to the nearest inn and continues on their journey. From a queer perspective the Queer Samaritan is for equity of the beloved community by engaging the whole community to support one another’s wounds and needs. The Queer Samaritan is for rest as one community member gives what they can and seeks the help of another. The Queer Samaritan is for resilience because they are fueled by the deep belief in the beloved communal sense of being – this man who is injured on the side of the road needs a home - a community of compassion.

Audre Lorde writes in her powerful essay the Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House that it is “learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those others identified as outside the structures in order to define and seek a world in which we can all flourish.” Lorde speaks to a beloved community model that also echoes to the queer experience and the Queer Samaritan’s reviled and unpopular existence finding common cause with the others with their backs against the wall. The Queer Samaritan takes their differences and makes them strengths by not behaving as the priest or Levite and instead stopping to love another well. The Queer Samaritan subverts the patriarchal order of being to disrupt structures to create a more unified and diverse community. And, in doing so, the Queer Samaritan doesn’t act in isolation or by the Master’s tools.

“For the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house,” Lorde writes. “They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” Lorde shares that this fact is terrifying to those who still define the master’s house as their only source of support. For the Queer Christian community to bring about genuine change I argue that we need to follow the metaphor and image of the Queer Samaritan. We need to leave the Master’s house of the evangelical upbringings we endured and begin to disband copying that atmosphere within our communal structures. Subverting the norm by taking back our power of our uniqueness, disbanding the use of the Master’s tools to gain power, and reaching out to one another in communal support will change the way we as Queer people live in this society for a healthier and genuine flourishing.

Change in using the systems that we were raised in – even if they kill us – is still hard work, messy work. This is why beloved community is needed for the foundational success of more queer lives remaining on this earth. When we act in the way of the Queer Samaritan and choose to engage with others in new ways outside of the structures of oppression, we are chipping away at the Master’s house which silences our flourishing. And, as we chip away, we are able to build new houses for a wider circle.

Tehom as Womb

Essay Written for Theology 1, God as Creator of Heaven & Earth

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 magical truth to the future generation…all the wisdom you will encounter is known to you already (Trauma Stewardship, Lipsky, 8). Heaven and Earth serve humanity, and all creatures, as their tehom (womb) reminder: God is a radical creator who created heaven and earth from the rhythms of the not quite yet to form a communal orchestra of earth’s full glory and human’s responsibility to one another, and God’s love for all of us in relationship (Migliore, 108-109; Keller, 47,49).

Heaven and Earth are tangible markers of God through the reminder of the womb of which we all come from through which grace carried and love birthed. Keller offers through a process lens that creation showcases the spirit taking on flesh and continuing to become through the genesis of God’s gracious and loving nature (Migliore, 96) of every creature and human (Keller, 52). “God is in all things; all is in God” (Keller, 52-53). A womb is not a void, yet a loving and gracious space of creation that offers life. “The creation of the world is the first of the majestic and gracious acts of (God)” (Migliore, 96). Heaven and Earth are the genesis of God’s ever-unfolding love for all that are in existence (96).

Heaven and Earth display and offer space for God’s desire of relational community to unfold (Migliore, 108-109). Keller’s offering and interpretation of tehom showcases God’s relational mysterious ways as an orchestra with rhythm and pulsing vibrations (49-50). Creation’s genesis isn’t chaos. It’s a community being built to find its harmony and God so loved the world and all creatures, that God invited us in. When God said that Adam needed a companion, perhaps it was a continued offering of just how deeply relational God is – Heaven and Earth was not enough for relationships alone, God desired a whole collective to inhabit it.

Heaven and Earth is the marker of a creator that is infinitely mysterious and radically other beyond understanding (Migliore, 104; Keller, 55). However, coming to a deeper awareness of the words we say out loud in prayer and liturgies, such as the Apostles Creed matters (Migliore, 97). I believe in God as “Creator of Heaven and Earth” because despite this infinite mystery that is of God there is before us in every hue, emotion, human face, soil and collective a marker and invitation of a God who loves us, birthed us from grace, makes infinite space for us no matter who we are and encourages us to tend to one another. Just as the indigenous elders remind their children, we too, must remind one another and repeat the truth of creation as loving, collaborative, and of God.  

Transgender day of remembrance

As Queer people we know death in a unique rational way. We know the death of our personhood whether by family, Church, nation, or stranger. We know the death of desire and the death of the physical body by the hands of violence motivated by fear, Empire, or even misguided faith.

On this Transgender Day of Remembrance, I name the violence that seeks to oust our flame– especially Black and Brown lives. And, on this day I lift up that in spite of such hatred and laws that try to bind us, we are still pushing forward to find ways to thrive. Because thriving matters too. Thriving needs to be seen more in our communities. Thriving is something we hold in our flame. Yes, queer people know death well, but we also know how-to live-in spite of and so I light my candle this day to remember those lost to hatred and to show to any queer human who needs to see – I am in spite of all things – choosing me, my family, my wife, and with deep joy choosing the belief and knowing that God indeed loves me and desires for all of our queer family to thrive.

We can take our power back with every name we say, with every narrative we tell, and with every moment we live into our queer resilient bodies, minds, and spirits.  In spite of the hatred that lives, we are still here and so the flame of our joy remains.

“Narrative is us. Narrative was before us. And narrative will be after us.”  - Queer Death Doula

Tell your story often. Honor the stories of our queer ancestors before us. And make space for the incoming stories that your life and light will make way for – amen.