TMI Time

OK, time to vent. Once a month, or sometimes twice depending on the full moon and my cycle, my closeted “Empath” escapes her confinement. She’s been sitting in darkness for several weeks, suffocating on the pain and injustice that fills her vision. This morning she woke up gasping for air and light and hope and with the need to cry aloud.

There is a cloud and buzzing around within it are many elements—each sufficient agony unto itself and yet not to be taken alone but rather in connection to every other existing element which comprises the whole. There is all the disillusionment, disappointment, and pain around General Convention’s B033 resolution; there is the pain that is being expressed everywhere about NY’s ban on same sex marriage.

I read about it on blogs. I saw it last night on TV while watching “In The Life.” I see it in my own life as I grapple with the grief of losing my church family and friends because they hold their self-affirmed righteousness in higher regard than Christ’s mandate to love. I have set a goal for myself to learn to really listen to those who disagree and even hate me. I desire to become the kind of person who can remain calm in the midst of heated discussion and can return a loving and compassionate word to one that is angry, condemning, and hate filled. (Good luck with that!) I will need much practice and infinite grace.

I watched “In The Life” last night and listened to the voices that oppose gay rights. They did it with such smug self-satisfied certainty that I could feel my stomach turn and my blood boil. I kept thinking, “I should turn it off. This is not good for me.” But I couldn’t turn it off. I watched with the same magnetic horror that kept me glued to the TV after 9/11.

Melodramatic, you think? Not in the least. If anything it is an understatement of how I would describe the depth of my feelings. People, my people, are proclaiming hate and are smearing God’s name. I am embarrassed, even ashamed, to be called by the same name as these “christians.”

I read this morning on someone’s blog that their partner no longer wears their grandmother’s heirloom cross because they feel so betrayed by the agenda of prejudice and injustice of these “christian conservatives” that rejoice in another’s oppression. I wanted to scream, rend my garments, and pour ashes upon my head. When I read on another blog about the response of a militant conservative church in Dallas to the events of General Convention, I had the same reaction and thought I would be sick—literally. Someone I deeply loved goes to that church and my depth of horror that that person could go along with and even justify such a violation of Christ’s love feels like something akin to rape.

This is the language my heart employs to express its distress—words of violence and destruction. I will not copy the arrogance of my brothers and sisters by proclaiming certainties, but I will say that my heart suspects that God is weeping.

The voices of hatred, misunderstanding, injustice, and oppression are very loud right now. But I’m hearing other voices out there, too. Voices filled with love, compassion, long-suffering, and faith that are proclaiming hope and calling us to courage. My highest hope is that I will be one of them.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program.