Bumpy flight / bumpy life

Had a great time in Canada this last weekend, even if I didn’t get to see Mars!

Funny thought on the plane last night. It was rainy and overcast which made for a 30-minute delay. By the time we were flying into the Big Apple airport it was dark and cloudy with zero visibility. Then the turbulence started. Drama queen that I am, I started to contemplate my mortality. A very humbling experience, especially if anyone other than God had heard my inner monologue! Of course I immediately related what I was experiencing to the journey of faith. It is scary when things are bumpy, you are completely powerless, you are being asked to trust in someone/Someone you can’t see, and your vision is completely obscured. It was this last part that was the most disconcerting for me. Somehow in my mind the bumpiness was going to be less frightening when I could look out the window and see the ground. There was something truly awful about looking out and seeing nothing.

So often I look out and can’t see and am tempted to despair. That’s why living alone on an island or being a hermit up on a mountain (did I mention I’m an introvert!) just will not work. To be human is to need and to give eyesight and perspective one to another. I can’t see over the hill but you’ve been there and can tell me about it. My mom gives me this gift when she tells me how things look from further on down the road. A priest who also happens to be a psychotherapist gave me perspective last week about the situation at my old church. Every time someone entrusts me with her/his story, I walk away strengthened and challenged. Maybe it can give me the courage to tell my own.

This post is already too long, but in the interest of not being cryptic I’ll tell a little bit of my story. When I began the process of discernment about becoming a priest I was at a very conservative church. I had not come out to myself let alone anybody else. When I finally did, I had to go to my priest and tell him. That in itself is a long story, but the end result is that he helped me transition to a new parish where I could be myself and continue pursuing my call. Here’s what continues to be hard: the man believes in my call, is committed to seeing a collar around my neck, has said that I deserve to be with a beautiful woman to share my life with, wants to know when I fall in love, and at the same time says to me that he believes homosexuality is incompatible with scripture. He believes this so much so that he has taken his parish out of The Episcopal Church, finding he has more in common with someone like a certain Nigerian bishop who was instrumental in passing legislature in his own country that criminalizes who and what I am.

To say that I feel hurt and betrayed would be an understatement.

Right now the challenge is to cry and be vulnerable instead of lashing out in anger. Anger is oh so much easier! On the upside though, I can say that I’ve been here before and it led to a place that was more right than I could have imagined.