I’m not telling you this to elicit around round of “Aw, poor Anita” comments or even to worm a few more prayers out of you, though I’ll take them gratefully if you’re dispensing them. The reason I’m writing about it is because in the middle of it all I can’t help but think how fortunate I am and how good I have it. The pain I’m experiencing right now was expected pain. In choosing elective surgery I choose to go through this period of pain and this period of pain is only temporary. Next week at this time D won’t have to shadow my every step to keep me standing if I should begin to fall. I’ll be able to walk up the steps without groaning each time I lift a foot. I’ll be able to rise from the chair without it being a grand dramatic production. Every cough won’t cause me to gulp back the tears. Whenever I go through a time of temporary pain like this, I can’t help but think of those who live with chronic pain. Every night when they go to bed they do so with the understanding that the next morning they will awaken to pain, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always there. There are so many physical illnesses and diseases that include chronic pain; back pain, migraines, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer treatments, and on and on. Passing moments of pain in my own life remind me of those who live with chronic pain and I don’t know how they do it and I’m so amazed again and again by their courage, strength, and determination in learning with cope with what is so they can enjoy the best quality of life possible. And while I still have a propensity to whine over every little ache and pain and boo-boo that comes my way, remembering others who live through their physical suffering at least keeps my whining to a tolerable level for those anywhere within the sound of my voice.

I would imagine you’ve all had that same awareness; that experiencing physical pain deepens our awareness and empathy for others who are living with pain in far greater intensity and with much longer duration. Our momentary discomfort is a door and if not a door a tiny peekhole into knowing what life might be like in someone else’s world where living with pain is a constant reality. That’s the silver lining behind every cloud of suffering that comes our way because every time we suffer we connect to the pain of others and our hearts open to them. If you’ve gone through a long illness then you are better able to understand the difficulties someone suffering from illness or disease is enduring.  If you’ve walked through a brief season of depression in your life then you can immediately feel for those who live with depression. If you’ve had your heart broken even once in your life then chances are you will always be moved with tender compassion for the brokenhearted.

Over in our SisterFriends Community Forum new members often speak about the incredible support and encouragement they found there. In one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree, we have all been where each other is and in that connection of similar life experience our hearts are open to one another in a way that comes easier than if we hadn’t walked a similar path. I love being queer for this reason among so many others. I take incredible joy in knowing that God is able to turn all the pain I’ve experienced through rejection and judgment, condemnation and ridicule into pathways that open my heart to someone else and give me wisdom and understanding that I might never have found through any easier, less personal way. I’m not saying God caused the pain to occur and I never will. I’m saying that when I allow it to be so, God can take the most painful moments of my life and turn them into something that can be life-giving to another and in giving hope, support, and encouragement to another one of God’s creation, I find myself at a deeper place of healing within me to any of the ravages and remnants of pain that have held on so tightly.

All humans suffer. None are immune. No matter how good a persons life looks from the outside, there’s a world of hurt inside that skin. GLBTQ Christians share a particular brand of suffering known by others who have been rejected by the church, by their family, by their friends. We know the pain of being stereotyped and marginalized. We know the frustration of being misunderstood and unheard. We know all this and ultimately it becomes our decision whether these encounters with pain and suffering will be the thing that tears us apart, causing us to live our lives as victims or if  it will be the grist for what empowers us to become agents of healing and peace in the lives of others. What we do with the pain that has come to us is where our power lies and with God’s help the blessing of that pain can be far greater than it’s suffering.

Suffering and joy teach us, if we allow them, how to make the leap of empathy, which transports us into the soul and heart of another person. ln those transparent moments we know other people’s joys and sorrows, and we care about their concerns as if they were our own.  – Fritz Williams

Today’s post is part of a larger initiative of more than 50 bloggers, all sharing their thoughts on how to “bride the gap” between people on the topic of faith and sexuality.  You can find the links of other bloggers participating in this undertaking at Bridging the Gap, an outreach of New Directions Ministries of Canada. In the near future I will be providing a review of their interactive DVD resource, Bridging the Gap: Conversations on Befriending Our Gay Neighbors (clips available here), along with a blog interview with Wendy VanderWal Gritter, the National Director of New Directions.

Okay. That was the very official sounding introductory blurb. Now let me just talk to you who follow this blog regularly for a minute; those of you who feel fairly banged up and battered emotionally and spiritually by some within the church over the issue of homosexuality. You know where I stand on the issue of homosexuality. I’m a lesbian who is happily married to the finest of women and I’m a Christian who is committed heart, soul, and mind to God through Christ Jesus. Though today’s blog is part of a bigger project and in participating we’ve been encouraged to not defend a particular position I could never in good conscious hold back from sharing up front that a personal relationship with God is available to all who seek God; gay, straight, bisexual, transgendered, queer, same-sex attracted or confused. I have to go through this little bit first on the off-chance that someone would chance upon this blog today for the first time in desperate need of hearing that God loves them just as they are. Here’s a word from my heart to yours free of agenda or hidden motive. The word is this; be assured that right now in this very moment God loves you. You always have been and you always will be, and there is nothing you can do or become that will make you more or less worthy of that love. You are God’s beloved, precious and cherished in His sight. Please hear that and take it in as deep as you can allow it.

After having said all that for the one person who might stumble across this blog today, this post isn’t about being a gay Christian. Neither is this post about ex-gay ministries or gay-affirming congregations or about the issue of homosexuality within the church today. It’s not even about differing opinions on faith and sexuality or the Bible and homosexuality but instead it’s about how we are to embody honor and respect in our conversations and relationships with those with whom we may disagree on the topic of homosexuality.

Let me be clear about something. To possess a willingness to enter into a conversation with someone else means having a shared commitment to listen to them as much as having them listen to you and we all know fully well there are those on both sides of the gap who have no interest in conversation but instead are given only to diatribes that wound and destroy. I would suggest that for the time being we put those folks to the side; not that we forget about them, or write them off as impossible but instead we begin by turning our attention and energy to one another; to those on the other side of the gap who are equally committed as we are to meeting in the middle; not in the sense of compromising our convictions but in the sense of approaching the other from a place of compassion and grace that says, “Despite our differences you are my brother, you are my sister. Know me and let me know you.” When we who share that same commitment can find a way to come together in Christ then together we can reach out to the edges, to those stuck in their agendas and deafened by their own rhetoric and through our unified spirit and in the Spirit’s power and love draw them in.

So. Here we are. We’re standing here on this side, they’re standing over there on that side, and the place we want to come together is in the middle where Christ is calling us to meet one another. How do we do it? I mean really. How do we take that first step in their direction when we’re all too aware of the risk involved, the all too familiar risk of being rejected and ridiculed, of having words of hate targeted at us, of being patronized and stereotyped or judged and condemned? How about this as a starting off point? How about casting our vision toward the people on the other side of the gap and seeing that for them there’s no less risk than there is for us. We’re all making ourselves vulnerable to one another, willing to risk being hurt by the other for the hope that a community of mutual love and respect can be born and nurtured up among us. As Christians we follow Christ who led by his love for God and the other was forever crossing bridges at incredible risk and had he not take that risk time and again, the blind would never have healed, the leper never restored to community, and the outcast and sinners would have forever been left alone at the table. It makes me wonder what healing and reconciliation we’re preventing in the lives of ourselves and others by hesitating in stepping forward, let alone what incredible glimpses of the invisible kingdom could be seen by all the world were we to step forward with open hearts and hands. Risking all for this moment to lose nothing in the end.

And for me, there’s one basic truth underlying what I just wrote that I keep coming back to every time I’m not sure if I want to bother to keep trying or to reach out again or to stay in the conversation. It’s just this; that what we have in common with one another is more than what divides us. Okay. I got it. They think homosexuality is a sin and that same-sex relationships aren’t God’s ideal for humanity while they think we’re being intolerant and exclusionary in who we welcome and don’t welcome into the church. I’m not minimizing the harm in either position but really folks, for the greater good, that being God’s glory, and the witness of Christ’s church in the world, could we let all that go and focus instead on what we share together? How about these for a start?

1. We’re all human. At least on our good days.

2. We’re all created and loved by God.

3. we’re all of equal worth and value.

4. We’re all equally flawed and messy.

5. We all desire to do what’s right before God.

And then 6 through 10,000 would cover the gambit from we all want to be loved and to love, to none of us want to be seated next to a screaming baby on an international flight. Make your own list by looking at your fears and joys, at your greatest desires and expectations and then attributing them to the other; that one over there on the other side near the edge of the bridge. If I can look across the gap and see him or her as God’s very own, then I stand of chance of being part of what God so longs to do among us; that we would let go of all our judgments of the other and of our need to be right and for them to be wrong, and just allow God to be God, extending Divine compassion and mercy as equally in their lives as God has shown time and again in mine.

I don’t know. Maybe I missed the point of what this whole synchroblog on “Bridging the Gap” was intended to be about, but then again, i’m still trying to figure out what “synchroblog” means anyway.

I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and to add to the insightful observations of St. Kermit of Sesame, “It ain’t easy being green….or queer.”

We’ve been blasted so long and hard in political and religious circles that despite our determination to stay the course; confronting ignorance with education, lies with truth, and hate with love, sometimes the collective toil becomes too much and we feel that urge to do to them what they done did to us.

I’m no different and I take no pleasure in admitting that. When the lies escalate into the ridiculous, when the hypocrisy becomes all too apparent and opposing voices turn mean-spirited and cruel, a place in me rises up that wants to strike back. But I don’t. Not because I don’t feel like it, not because I don’t want to, and certainly not because I’m at any shortage of snarky sarcastic stab ‘em in the ribs comebacks.

There are more than ample reasons for taking the high ground in the debate. Gay civil rights groups warn that we risk hurting our cause by losing our growing public support when we give in to our emotions and react from raw places of hurt and rage. We know all too well that it’s the mean-spirited back at you words and actions that take center stage in the media’s lens rather than the reasoned and passionate words of justice and equality and the responsible daily actions of millions of GLBTQ Americans from sea to shining sea.

Justice advocacy organizations remind us of the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and Ghandi and the call to create social change through peacemaking and justice through non-violent resistence.

Another reason to avoid adopting the strategies of our opposition is one we all know inherently to be true, and that is if we engage in the same behavior, attitudes and actions of those who oppose us; if we make generalizations about all of them, reduce cogent public discourse to verbal playground fist fights, and disrespect the human worth and dignity of the other, then we’ve become no different, and if we’re no different than the more extreme of our opposition then any victories we achieve toward full justice and equality will be outweighed by what we’ve lost in the end. Ourselves.

True. All true. Everyone of these independent of the others is more than enough reason to remain calm, cool, and collected in the face of injustice and intolerance, but can I ask you to hang around one minute longer for one final reason that compels me above all the rest to choose to be different? Do you have your note paper and pen within reach? I’ll wait while you go get them. Top kitchen drawer under the phone. Just above the dish cloth drawer.

Okay, now that you’re ready, here it is.

Jesus.

For those of us standing within the Christian faith what other reason do we need but this? Now, I know it sounds like Sunday School 101 to say Jesus is the reason, (or like the beginning of a painfully clichéd religious Christmas card) but seriously, there are times when despite the validity of all the other reasons, this is the only one that holds my mouth in check, my blogging fingers at bay and my heart softened to those who attack me and by me, I mean us.

When a segment of Christ’s body sets boundaries around a table that never belonged to them in the first place, when my gay brothers and lesbian sisters spend years of their lives questioning their worth as children of God because of the harsh condemnation erroneously spoken by some Christians in Christ’s name, and when two little boys come home at the end of a school day and hang themselves by dinnertime for having been called “gay,” because some faith-based organizations and religious leaders have attached and repeatedly reinforced shame and disgust to the term nearly everything in me wants to go primal and hit, punch, and scream at those who would do such things and then dare to sleep peacefully at night. Armed only with strategic reasons in my back pocket for choosing to do things another way I’d scratch out eyeballs and let those sharp-tongued comebacks that flit through my brain out for public airing. But I don’t and not because I’m a good person. Oh please, don’t give me that kind of credit because it would be completely misplaced and undeserved.

The only reason I have any trace of compassion and love for those who dismiss our faith as GLBTQ Christians, who spread misinformation about us and work tirelessly to prevent us from participating in the same basic rights they enjoy everyday is because I know every person who hates “my sin”, detests “my lifestyle”, and rejects my faith is themselves, a child of God; loved with the same unconditional love and enveloped in the same extravagant grace that has been lavished on me. We are all God’s beloved or none of us are and God’s mercy reaches out to cover all of us or it leaves everyone of us exposed and without safe shelter in divine grace. This is more than theory or theology. It’s a fact that I can’t get away from no matter how hard I might want to try, and in responding to it as a fact I must be committed to holding everyone I encounter with honor and respect; not because I have to but because Grace compels me to desire it even more than my flesh desires retaliation and revenge.

My faith doesn’t demand I invite my adversary to dinner or require I submit to their scorn while silencing the truth that resides within me. My faith only invites me to recognize my enemies deeper identity in God, and that when I respond I do so in a way that regards them with the dignity befitting them even if they haven’t yet arrived at a place where they can return the same to me.

I don’t live in this place with any consistency. There are days when screams of outrage and frustration have bounced off the interior walls of my heart as well as the inside walls of our home, but I’m trying each day to live into what my heart knows, and if our faith means anything at all, if God’s grace has ever really come to us and entered into our souls, if Christ’s saving power has truly saved us from ourselves, then no other choice remains for us but to commit ourselves to the daunting, but not impossible call to “love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.”

For the few of you who follow my rather sporadic blog, Fasting for a Change, you know that for the past ten weeks I’ve been on a liquid fast. Let me run that by you again. For 70 days I have consumed nothing beyond water, the occasional skim milk latte, and 5 protein supplement drinks a day. Nothing else. No. Thing.

With one exception. Every Sunday I have one bite of bread and a sip of wine. The pastor knows I’m fasting and communion is my only ‘meal’  so the pastor and I have a deal off the books, that being I get a slightly larger hunk of bread slipped into my open waiting palm than the rest of the food-consuming parishioners. I regret to report that despite my earnest petitions I’ve yet to negotiate a deal where the sacrament of communion has been expanded to include butter and jam though there’s a good chance I’ll eventually wear him down. I can be relentless, a skill that was honed as the baby of my family.

Here’s the thing. This past Sunday, for whatever reason, that one morsel of bread knocked me out. What I mean to say is it was the most deliciously sweet and satisfying bite of bread I’ve ever eaten. I was so happy I nearly cried and no, I’m not exaggerating. I almost wept because of the sweet doughy taste and the simple joy of having something in my mouth I could actually chew instead of drink. And believe it or not, that one bite of bread has stayed with me all week. I find satisfaction in remembering it even as I look ahead to the next bite of bread that will be pressed into my palm this coming Sunday. Communion has always been the highlight of my spiritual life. No matter what condition I am when I walk to the table, no matter how much spiritual hunger gnaws within me, the symbolic reminder of the love, grace, and mercy of God through Christ held within the loaf and cup is more than enough to fill me body, soul, and spirit. In seasons of spiritual drought and despair the bread and cup have been my lifeline and carried me through.

As I drove home on Sunday with the lingering sweet memory of my experience at the table my thoughts turned to those queer folks who are dying of spiritual and emotional starvation from living in a world filled with violence and harassment directed at sexual minorities, savage beatings and killing of transgendered men and women, the physical and sexual assaults of gay men and lesbians, the criminalization and persecution of homosexuality worldwide, and the relentless political and religious opposition toward any steps toward full equality and protection for GLBTQ people. Not a single day passes in the life of a queer youth or adult that’s completely free from encountering homophobic rhetoric and actions that deplete and starve the soul. Combine all this with what’s happening in their personal lives at any moment. Countless GLBTQ people have lost relationship with their families, some have been abandoned by their closest friends, and others have lost custody of young children on the prejudicial whim of a family court judge. GLBTQ Christians, Jews and Muslims have been rejected and kicked out of their faith communities and gay clergy have been removed from their pulpits and defrocked from ministry. Queer youth and transgendered youth have been disowned by their parents and send out into the world to fend for themselves or sent against their will to places promising to get the gay in them cured.

Right now someone is starving for a word of hope. They long for an oasis in a wasteland of homophobia and intolerance. They’re famished for just a morsel of understanding and a sip of compassion. As I write these words and you read them someone is so wounded and broken by all they’ve seen, heard, and suffered in their life that they don’t know how much more they can endure. They’re depleted and feel as though they’ve reached the end.

But here we are. You and I. We have been given the chance to be the bread and cup for those who are starving. Each of our lives are a bite of bread from the loaf and a drop of wine from the cup. We come out of the closet. We proclaim God’s love loudly. We live our lives boldly. We affirm our wholeness joyfully. We refuse to settle for the scraps on the floor. And each time we do, each time we speak and hope and dream and work and pray and dance and march and sing and advocate and love we become that one sweet taste of bread, that one delicious sip of wine that gives another person enough strength to take up to another day. Never minimize the power of your faith and life to rescue someone else from despair. Never pass up on the chance to offer encourgment and hope. Resist the urge to minimize the impact of your story. Declare truth and justice in those places that welcome it and especially those that don’t. In the day to day of life, just live fully into who you are fed of the One who loves you more than words can ever say.

Let your life be the banquet of God.

Be the bread. Be the cup.

Feed the hungry.

I’m hoping the first few days of the new year are going just as good for you. Seriously, I do. And if not, if the year has already felt like a bust, then hang in there my friend. God is faithful and will see you through to the other side. In the meantime reach out to someone you trust and share what’s going on in your life so others can have a chance to give you the support and encouragement you need and deserve. You are loved. You are the beloved. Redemption can be found in any circumstance when our hope is in the One who redeems all things. If I’m lyin’ I’m dyin’.

In my recent New Year’s Resolutions post I listed a couple general commitments I had for the year; pursuing a more healthy lifestyle, turning up the volume on the love and grace of God, translating the Leaning Tower of Post-its into a book, centering my spiritual life in the God known through the Jesus of the Gospels, and cleaning the cat litter box everyday. On the last one, I’ve already failed. Miserably. My most sincere apologies to my Beloved who knows better than anyone that I’m a work in progress.

But it’s not the cat litter box I wanted to blog about today, despite the disappointment this might cause some of you. Instead I want to explain a little more about what I meant when I said

I resolve to know the God of Jesus more intimately by directing all my Scripture reading, meditation, and study in 2009 on the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) exclusively, with the exception of occasional forays into the Psalms because there are days when a girl just needs a Psalm to carry her through. No Pentateuch, Prophets, or Paul. Just Jesus. All year long.

A book I ordered from Amazon arrived yesterday; a book I bought for no other reason than the title grabbed me. I’d never heard of the book before Amazon recommended it to me personally and I don’t know anything about the authors. I can’t even guarantee it won’t eventually end up among the pile of books I’ve never read that only serve to dupe those who gaze upon my crammed bookshelves of my profound spiritual depth and intellect. That false illusion alone is worth the cost of packing and shipping.

The book is entitled “More of Jesus, Less Religion: Moving from Rules to Relationship.” Whether it’s a great book, a mediocre book, or a painfully miserable read doesn’t matter to me.  It’s the title that ultimately set me back $10.39 plus shipping and handling.

Without  knowing it most of my faith journey has been spent traveling the wide path of Religion but I’m done. I’m so over all the trappings of religion I can’t even tell you, so I’m taking the fork in the road. The one just up there on the left. Do you see it? There use to be a trail sign at the fork but it was torn down so many times that nothing remains of it aside from a few wood splinters scattered around among the ground cover. Folks keep knocking the sign down so others who follow them will stay on the same old path meandering to the right. The only thing the people following them don’t know is that if they keep following the wider path on the right they’re eventually going to end up right back here all over again. You see, the path to the right takes them in a circle. Nothing will ever change on that path. The view will always be the same. Same trees. Same brook. Same jumble of scrubs and stumps. The only thing that will ever change if they stay on the path long enough their feet will eventually stumble into the well-worn rut made by countless other travelers. Those grooves have worn so deeply into the ground that they serve to guide the traveler’s foot steps so that in time they’ll even learn to walk and stay on course with their eyes shut tight.

I spent the first half of my life on that road and never considered leaving it because I didn’t know there were any other paths. It’s not that I didn’t know about the fork in the road. I was just led to believe that because everyone I loved and admired was on the same path it was the only right one and I should stay there too. So I followed the trail without questioning and sometimes I closed my eyes as I walked, not only because the ruts guided my steps but because what was on the side of the road often became too painful to see and impossible to explain. The tall shadowing trees that lined the well-worn path were the same, season in and season out, but occasionally near one of those trees, buried under the decaying damp forest undergrowth I could make out distant human shapes and hear the sound of weeping coming from their direction. In the beginning others walking in front of me seeing what I saw would say, “Keep walking. Don’t feel sorry for them. They tripped and stumbled off the road and are the only ones to blame,” and other times those behind me would lean forward whispering in my ear, “Keep walking. You’re just imagining things. Nothing is really there. Just pay attention and stay on the trail.” And so I did. With my feet held firm in the ruts guiding embrace I keep moving ahead, most often with my eyes closed to what was all around me; to the wounded souls and damaged lives lurking in the shadows of the familiar towering trees just off the perimeter of the trail.

And then something happened. I tripped and nearly fell but before I tumbled to the ground I righted myself and continued on, only now instead of following along in the foot wide rut I was walking outside of it on the loose soil covering the rest of the trail. My stumbling and near fall had forced me out of the worn-down narrow rut and I would have stepped back down inside it where I’d been before but none of the others there would make space for me to enter back in. As time passed I saw a few people hesitate, slowly their step as if they intended to let me in until the one walking behind them nudged them on while saying “Keep your eyes on the path and don’t slow down. You’re only imagining things. No one is really there.”

Ever since coming out as a lesbian I’ve been walking, more or less, on the same path but outside of the rut where I’ve had more freedom to move and wander in the wide open space of the trail’s width. I would never have thought to leave that familiar path but a problem appeared when I stepped outside the guiding groove. I had to walk with my eyes and ears open and what I ended up seeing was the path’s direction was determined, not by the Spirit of God but by organized religion, institutionalized church and a packaged brand of American Christianity that most days seems to have abandoned Jesus’ teachings for ones of their own design. And it’s a path littered on both sides with those who have been brokenhearted, damaged and disillusioned by the path and those who travel it with the most earnest zeal. I’m no longer able to turn my eyes from seeing and my heart from believing all the wounded lives and harm done in the shadow of the trees. I weep to consider it all and I know I’m not weeping alone.

So this is my year to walk a new path, to take the fork in the road; not away from God but away from name – brand Christianity, a Christianity that has become a distraction and obstacle to experiencing an authentic encounter with God and engaging in a life of radical grace and love that was and remains the watermark of the earthly life of Jesus, the Son of God.

During this year I’m choosing to no longer self-identify as a Christian but as a follower of Jesus. Before the early Christians were known as Christians they were called the People of the Way. This year I want to experience more of God by following Jesus’ Way alone. I’m tired of a God formed in the factory of theological academia and religious dogma. I want to discover with fresh eyes and a new heart the God of Jesus. I want to deepen my relationship with Jesus’ Abba God, to fall into the deep waters of the Spirit and come out renewed and changed. This means that for this year, while I will continue as always to honor the Bible in its entirety as sacred to my life and faith, I will limit all my reading, study and reflection on the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke and on those historical and contemporary theologians who hold the Gospel central to their teaching. And finally, this year I will continue to love and serve the congregation where I am, not because of the denomination they belong to but because of who they are as individuals and a community. My commitment will be to a gathering of people of faith rather than to the Church with a capital C.

More of Jesus. Less Religion. That’s all I’m talking about. That’s all I want. What about you? Are you huddled wounded under the shadow of a towering tree?  Are you tired of following the same road but too fearful to leave it?  Care to join me in turning left at the fork or have you already ventured down the road of Jesus’ Way?

Since President-Elect Obama selected Warren to give the invocation prayer at the Inauguration, Warren’s been picked apart like a 10 pound holiday turkey at a family gathering of 300 kinfolk. Like you I’ve read a slew of commentaries, blogs, and op-eds from the most compassionate to the most snarky and in the end I stand shoulder to shoulder with Bishop Gene Robinson:

I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table, but we’re not talking about a discussion, we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.

I don’t have much more to say beyond what Robinson has said about Warren’s participation in the Inauguration. I’m disappointed by Obama’s choice but I’m over it. Life goes on and I’m not going to allow Warren’s presence or prayer rob me of the hope for change that lies before us in a new year and a new presidency.

But looking beyond the invocation debate, I continue to watch Warren as a pastor and Christian and as I do I’m coming to a renewed commitment of how it is that I want to live out my own life in the world as I watch his life play out under the media spotlight. Admittedly the teachable moments have been centered around what I consider to be Warren’s mistakes rather than his strengths but to be fair I have a library annex of life lessons gleaned from my own mistakes, and with the reality of my failings laid out before me I’m more earnest than snide when I say Rick Warren is teaching me.

In the days prior to Christmas Rick Warren had several highly publicized encounters with queer folk. On December 21 Warren had a 30 minute phone conversation and then a face to face meeting with Melissa Etheridge. Melissa recounts her time with Warren in an Open Letter to The Huffington Post, as does her wife, Tammy Lynn Michael, on her blog at Hollywood Farm Girl. On that same evening during a gathering of the Muslim Public Affairs Council Warren referred to his earlier encounter with Etheridge by saying he was a long time fan of hers and that he “loved gays.”

On the following day Warren visited Out of the Closet, a West Hollywood thrift store that helps fund programs offered by AIDS Heathcare Foundation. He browsed through the store, purchasing ten books including copies of two of his own, stopped to talk with the openly gay store manager, Erol Sarabi, and pose for a photo with his arm draped around Sarabi’s shoulder.  The story was originally released on the TMZ blog.

There’s nothing in either of these two highly publicized encounters to suggest Warren was anything but warm, friendly, and genuine in his demeanor and conversations. Clearly he wooed Melissa and that’s all fine and good. The problem for me was that when I heard of these events I was propelled back to a story I’d read only days earlier by Jeff Lutes in a post contributed to The Bilerico Project entitled “That Weird Hug from Rick Warren.” If you’re too tired from the holidays to follow the link, here’s an abbreviated summary of Jeff’s story. As abbreviated as is within my verbosity to provide that is.

Jeff Lutes first began making arrangements in December 2007 to meet Rick Warren on Father’s Day in June, 2008. According to Jeff, the Executive Director of Soulforce, it was agreed in a series of phone conversations with Warren’s chief of staff that Warren and his wife, along with several other members of his staff and their families would join in a meal after worship that day to talk together about how they might find ways to move beyond differences and look to what they shared in common as parents and people of faith. This was to be part of a series of conversations with evangelical leaders as part of Soulforce’s American Family Outing 2008 project.

Months passed. One week prior to the meeting an article appears in Newsweek mentioning the upcoming meeting between Soul Force families and Rick Warren. In the end Warren’s people informed Jeff that Warren would be unable to meet with them while at the same time Warren himself posted a comment on Get Religion:

(You) were correct in assuming Newsweek quoted a Soul Force press release headline that was 100% false. We did not invite this group and I will not be meeting with them. They invited themselves to draw attention to their cross country publicity stunt.

My staff has already told them that neither my wife nor I will meet with them for any discussion or debate. This weekend, both Kay and I are receiving awards from two different universities so we’ll be out of town! Also, it’s Father’s Day and I’m spending the holiday with my children and grandchildren, as are all my staff.

In the end Warren preached on Father’s Day at a satellite church to Saddleback and agreed to sit down and meet for 10-15 minutes after worship with Jeff Lutes and his family. Following the conclusion of the worship service, Jeff, along with his family stood in the church waiting for their meeting with Warren. According to Jeff the meeting went something like this:

Eventually, I heard Warren call out my name. As I turned to greet him, he hugged me, my partner, and our three children . . . and then walked away. No conversation. Minimal eye contact. Just an awkward hug and he was gone.

I can’t help but hold these three separate encounters with Warren side by side. Whether or not Warren originally agreed to meet with Jeff Lutes and the folks from Soulforce and then reneged on the arrangements or the accuracy of Warren’s statements in his comment on Get Religion is a secondary concern to me. What caught my attention is that in his own words Warren refused to meet with the group from Soulforce because it was a meeting intended as nothing more than a publicity stunt. I’m familiar with the work of Soulforce and just as I believe their intention was to create an opportunity for a genuine dialogue between gay and straight families of faith, I would imagine they were also hoping to gain a certain amount of media mileage and there’s nothing wrong with that. Media attention is critical to any non-profit organization yet Warren mentions it in such a way as to suggest their motives were less than genuine and that they only intended to use him for their own purpose.

In his meeting with Melissa Etheridge and then browsing through a thrift store in queer WeHo how was Warren doing anything different than what he accused Soulforce of attempting to do to him? Both occasions, however genuine Warren may or may not have been in participating in them, were used by Warren for his benefit. He didn’t hesitate to mention his conversation with Melissa at a large public event or to pose for a photograph with his arm draped around the gay manager of the thrift shop. These events and people were used for his own purpose and so the very thing he accused of Soulforce he in turn seems to have done to others.

And what of the difference in the quality of meetings between Melissa Etheridge, Erol Sarabi, and Jeff Lutes? Melissa and Erol had warm and engaging conversations with Warren. We know this because they were reported on publicly by the media and the participants to the events. Jeff had nothing more than a hug given in haste. We only know this from Lutes own telling of what happened since there were no cameras in church on that day to record it and no queer icons present to draw media attention to it.

I can’t let go of this one thing; before Warren is a best-selling author or a public personality, he is a pastor, and as a pastor committed to caring for all people and for a man who repeatedly proclaims his love and commitment to gay people, why could he not have met for a few minutes with one gay couple? On that day, for the sake of a family who traveled all the way to meet with him there could have surely been time set aside and a church staff office provided where Warren could have met privately with Jeff, his spouse, and their children for a pastoral and compassionate conversation.

I don’t have any idea why things played out as they did but that doesn’t stop me from wondering about it all, and even as I wonder about things I may never know and have no power to change, I’m compelled to turn my attention away from Warren, Etheridge, Sarabi and Lutes and look deeply within my own life.  Do I treat all people with love and compassion whether enemy or friend? Do the words I speak and the actions I take reflect integrity and consistency regardless whether they’re disclosed in public or concealed in private?

Authentic. Real. Consistent. Genuine. These are words we often hear and though they might have become trite sounding in our culture they aren’t meaningless or empty aspirations;  not for anyone and even more particularly for people of faith committed to living out their lives in a way that reflects well on the Gospel message.  Like you, I want the love of God to flow through me and the life of Christ to be reflected in me. Neither will  happen unless I live my life authentically in a way that’s consistent with what I believe concerning God and God’s relationship with the world. In my transparency I risk, no, I guarantee, the failings of my humanity will be seen by all but in the end, that’s the very place where God’s grace will most shine, for in spite of my weaknesses and failings, my sin and my selfishness, God’s grace might not only be evident but flow from one such as I into the world.

I don’t know if this makes a whole lot of sense to anyone but me but it’s something that’s occupied my thoughts and prayers over these past days. Take it for what it’s worth, if it be worth anything at all to you.

A recent example can be found over at Pomomusings where Adam Cleveland Walker posted this week on “The Bible and Homosexuality: Enough with the Bible Already!“  As I write this post Adam’s has already generated 136 comments. By the time I hit the publish button on this post that number is almost guaranteed to be higher. While I appreciate both the content and the honest reflection of what Adam shared in his post, what most intrigues me are the comments that followed that highlight the common patterns among comments that such a post will likely engender. Here are a few of the categories of comments I’ve noticed and a sample of each from the comment section of Adam’s recent post.

• Comments that express agreement and appreciation.

Thanks Adam, for your thoughts and for speaking such great wisdom into a field of land-mines and charred ground. The Church needs more people to make the case for homosexuality, the case for the radical inclusivity and never-ending merciful love of Jesus. – Wesley

• Comments that express disagreement in the conclusions of the writer but appreciation for their thoughtful reflection around the issue.

While I understand and fully appreciate your point, I guess I feel like there is a false dichotomy here. For much of this post, it feels like you’re asking people to have to choose either Scripture or our experience, but not both. Can we both study and follow the Bible AND see people as just that–people, not theoretical issues? Can we hold the two in tension, doing our best to live in a way that honors the person of Christ? I would like to think I’m trying to do that in my own life. I liked when you said that “Christians need to actually live out the love and compassion that Jesus exemplified in the scriptures.” That’s my thought exactly. – Joel

• Comments that offer further information and resources, sometimes in agreement and other times in opposition to the original blog.

Presbyterians Today has recently run a series of well written articles by a fellow who studied two different churches, one for and one against ordination. He argues that both groups have in fact based their argument on this issue not on scripture but on their experience…its just that the experience of one group is that they don’t have any experience. – Jim

• Comments that respectfully disagree with the blogger’s conclusion or their method for arriving there.

Adam, over the years, I have truly enjoyed your honest thinking, creative ideas and the talented ways that you express them. [...] Thank you for the continued thought that has led to further reading, deeper conversation, and soul-searching. Truly, I appreciate the post and the heart behind it and I feel that I understand the point that you are making. [...] That said, I do not agree with the conclusion. This grieves me because I know that hurts people, which in turn, hurts me. May the GLBT community (and everyone else) not consider me an enemy but a loving friend. You are in my prayers, conversations and conscience a great deal. On a side note and as previously mentioned by the many others, this is certainly one of my favorite parts of the emergent conversation – that we can disagree and still love.

• Comments that vehemently oppose the blogger’s conclusions.
  

  This post [...] is pure propaganda. The flaws are obvious in your argument. What is known of Jesus’ words are found only in the scripture. In fact Jesus and the scriptures are inseparable. Jesus and the apostles quoted the Tanakh (Law and the Prophets to the Hebrew impaired) profusely. Jesus emphatically asserted that He came to fulfill the Law not abolish it. The scriptures are clear; homosexuality is a sin, among other sins. Jesus never tolerated any sin. He told everyone He encountered “go and sin no more” The argument against the Bible is a fast-growing cancer in what calls itself the church. Without scripture you can make the Lord be anything you would like Him to be. – Chris P.

• Comments that reject both the blogger’s views along with their faith and Christian identity.
  

  Bottom line is that God discriminates. What you describe is not Christianity at all. It is a pagan moralism and a god made in your own image. – Jason

  Adam, I appreciate your candidness in this post. I would love for you to be this open in all your writings. It would make it much easier for people to recognize that you are not a Christian or a minister of the Gospel. As it is now, you likely deceive many people, most notably yourself. – Brandon

It’s this last group of Christians, those who feel comfortable and free to reject someone else’s faith based on a particular theological perspective that makes me spiritually woozy. I find it troubling on so many levels and I don’t think that will ever change no matter how many times I witness or experience it. I can’t get use to it even though I’ve met more than a few Christians in my life whose behavior reflected little of the life of Jesus as revealed in the Gospels and been acquainted with others online who exhibit incredible disrespect, rudeness, and arrogance with anyone they disagree with theologically. Among my archived emails are those from self-identified Christians who have called me a liar, a fool, a false prophet, and a pervert. Far beyond my amazement at those who hurl names are those who write to let me know that I obviously do not love, know, worship or follow Christ. Despite the audacity of such words it would never cross my mind to verbally reject the one saying them as a member of Christ’s body; not in person and not anonymously on their blog. If it sounds like I’m saying “I’m better than they are” that’s not at all where my heart is. It’s just that after years of being the target for such comments and watching the faith of others trashed like Adam and John I’m just no closer to understanding how it is that some Christians are able to be okay with lobing  such destructive and assumptive words at anyone else.

I don’t understand. I don’t understand how someone can encounter the grace of God in their own life and demonstrate so little for others. I don’t understand how certain individuals can hold gay people under the fire for the Levitical prohibition of “man shall not lie with man as with a woman” while seemingly ignoring or excusing away countless admonitions to “judge not least you be judged,” “call no man a fool,” and “love your enemies and do good to them.” I don’t understand how Paul’s teaching to not associate with sinners can trump the life of Jesus who repeatedly sat at table-fellowship with sinners as well as those judged unclean (by vocation or ethnicity) by the Pharisees.

Above all else, it makes no sense to me how anyone standing within conservative evangelical Christianity can reject the faith of another when the foundational premise of being a Christian from their perspective (and mine) is established in a personal relationship with God through Christ. The language we use to fill that all out theologically will be different from believer to believer but that Christian identity begins in a personal relationship has long been the understanding of Christians from the early church on. A Christian might argue with another individual’s theological conclusions but to pass judgment on their personal relationship with God, as well as their love, heart, desire, and devotion to God isn’t within their ability to do as an outsider to the relationship. Yes, I can observe the visible fruit of a life (Galatians 5) but I will never intimately know all there is to know about a personal relationship that I’m not a part of, including that of the Divine-Human relationship.

I don’t understand and maybe I never will. Maybe it’s not even important that I do. Maybe it’s enough that what I find reprehensable behavior in another Christian, I never do, even to that one. Rather than trying to make sense of how someone standing in the Christian faith can reject the faith experience of another, I’d do far better to tend to my relationship with God and how I’ll live out my days and engage in the world as someone who stands confidently and gratefully in my identity with Christ. And when others judge me, and they will just as they’ll just you, I need to remember that it’s of no consequence. All that matters is the One who shares in a personal relationship with you and I; the only One who knows our heart and love firsthand.

Oh and by the way, over at Adam’s post, the comments have reached 145. I told you so.

===========
Adam’s post drew the rejection of some because he not only dares to state an affirming position toward GLBTQ people but suggests that there are some within the Christian community who have elevated the Bible to a thing to be worshiped. By the way, while I wouldn’t agree with Adam that the Bible needs to be put on the shelf by anyone, I would argue that the Bible isn’t the beginning, middle and ending of God’s revelation to us (which I believe is what Adam is suggesting as well). Instead I uphold the Westleyan Quadrilateral that argues the Scriptures, the traditional history of the church, human reasoning, and personal experience are four sources that lead the believer to draw theological conclusions. This method of theological reflections stands in constrast to religious fundamentalism and conservatism which elevates the Scriptures above all else and more often than rejects personal experience and human reasoning entirely as being unreliable because of human desire, will, and sin.

The “Yes on 8″ campaign continues to hide their attempt at writing discrimination into the California Constitution by arguing that continuing to allow gays and lesbians to marry is a threat to religious freedom. This is nothing less than a lie; a lie because the First Amendment has always and will always protect freedom of religious practice, and a lie because Prop 8 is a civil justice issue and not a religious issue. Since June of this year gay and lesbian Californians have been able to legally marry. Prop 8 will strip away this right. This is about justice, about equality, about fairness. It is not a religious matter.

Even so, as people of Christian faith we must speak up against Prop 8, not because it’s a religious issue, but because as believers, Prop 8, in the very action it seeks, goes against the central message of Jesus’ life and teaching; that there remains no greater command than to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself. This is our Christian calling and one we’re to follow and demonstrate in all areas of our lives; at home, in church, and in the world. Prop 8 has become for some of it’s faith-based supporters, a religious issue void of any witness of what it means to be a Christian in the world. Prop 8 has nothing to do with people loving their gay and lesbian neighbor as they love themselves for inequality and discrimination are completely void of love. Denying children the right to have their family named a family of equal worth to other children demonstrates anything but love. Being content, if not demanding, to have more rights and protections than your neighbor enjoys is never love.

Please do something today to stop Prop 8 from passing. Make a donation. If you already have, make another one. Despite the current financial crunch we all are feeling in these days, none of us that are GLBTQ or allies can afford not to give even a little more to stop Prop 8. Send emails. Call friends. Join a visibility action group on election day. And above all else, VOTE NO on Prop 8.

Okay. On to clergy leaders who can speak calmly to this issue. I lost calm along time ago.

As a person of faith I believe human beings were made for each other.  We need each other, we need to belong and we need to be loved.  At the core of our faith we experience God is Love.  After 30 years of ministry it is clear to me that we can only accept love when we are loved for who we are.  Not only does God delight in who we are but God desires to bless us with loved ones. Marriage Equality is a natural step forward when we appreciate the giftedness of each person.   Heterosexuals don’t need to be threatened by gay marriage.  The challenges and responsibilities of marriage have nothing to do with people’s sexual orientation.  It has everything to do with love and understanding.  Love makes a marriage.  Love makes a family.  – Rev. Steve Harms

The other morning I stopped by our storage unit, filled up my car with Children’s Ministry materials and drove into Oakland where I donated it all to a neighborhood church. Most of the boxes were filled with teaching resources I’d accumulated in church work prior to coming out as a lesbian. Books with game, craft, and activity ideas. Bible Story coloring books. Preschool clip-art. Bible Story cartoon videos. Bible story picture cards. Ten boxes worth. I didn’t realize until I was driving away with an empty car and a lump stuck mid-throat that what I’d just done was a big deal for me.

I remember the day when I filled up all those boxes. It was a late night in 1994. I was alone in my office in the Children’s Ministry building of my church, sorting through piles of stuff I’d collected over the years. I sorted through the bookshelves, file cabinets and cupboards and gathered up everything I thought would be of use to me in the future when I would return to teaching children again.

As it turned out, the Sunday after I left that church, I was in another town, at another church, in another denomination, as an out lesbian, playing on the floor with a Sunday School classroom of three year old children. Since that first Sunday to the one coming up this weekend, I’ve been teaching children in one way or another but I’ve never used anything from those boxes. I haven’t used one children’s sermon idea or photocopied one activity page. All I’ve done is lug those boxes around with me from place to place, from garages to attics to shelves in another church office to the storage unit.

The stuff in those boxes represented a huge moment in my life. It was a time when I was, as PJ recently said, a big fish in a little pond. My theology was certain. My answers absolute. My calling clear. Brick upon brick. In the beginning, just as I thought I could hold onto these boxes of stuff and use them again on another day in another place, I thought I could salvage the wall of my theology. The mortar around homosexuality might have weakened and given way but I was committed to keeping the rest of the wall firmly in place. “Okay, they might have been wrong about homosexuality but everything else I grew up believing is right on target,” I told myself. “The rest of the wall is rock solid and sure.” And I did all that I could to shore up the remnants of my wall by clinging to all my set in stone ideas about God and what God required of us and we could in turn expect from God.

This was a problem on so many levels. Since I was no longer welcomed in church by those who had the same walls as I did, I found myself in a position to be among those other Christians, as opposed to the real Christians, which just so happened to be Christians like me. They sang unfamiliar hymns, prayed written prayers, dared to name God as He one minute and She the next, and seemed perfectly content to live with questions of faith and even more frustrating to me was their hesitance to being impressed by the spiritual truths I was so willing and ready to share. I was a little dumbfounded by it all. I felt my faith was being threatened when I found myself in a position where all other Christians didn’t unanimously believe as I believed and rather than examining the ramifications and motives behind my faith convictions, I grew increasingly defensive, adding layer upon layer of mortar over the cracks in the wall.

And that was the real problem. My wall was crumbling. Internal questions began to rumble around inside my soul on a fairly regular basis and then for reasons that remain in part a quirky mystery I applied for and gained admission to Pacific School of Religion, a seminary more liberal than the average bear and the theological conflict was amped up off the charts. Why did I make that choice? Maybe because somewhere in me I knew the time had come to examine my theology in a setting where I couldn’t hide behind the familiar easy answers but would be forced to abandon what no longer worked while learning to articulate with clarity and reason what remained true. I hungered for this to happen and was terrified by it at the same time.

And the wall went down one brick at a time. Slowly. Painfully. And then something unexpected happened. The process I feared became an adventure in faith that thrilled me. The more bricks that tumbled, the more God was freed to be more of God; more holy and just, more wild and passionate. In ways only those who’ve been there can understand, I fell in love with God all over again in the most incredibly real and head over heels kind of way.

I gave up those boxes of stuff the other day because they weren’t of use to me any more. I hauled them around from place to place for 14 years until I was finally able to let them go. And 14 years ago my wall of faith began to crumble and give way. In the years that followed I continued to gather up the old bricks as they fell, trying now and again to stick them back in place, to assure myself that yes, that brick remains and yes, that one still fits in its place.

And then there was 9-11.
And Darfur.
And Luther’s Commentary on Galatians.
And Philip Gulley’s “If Grace is True: Why God Will Save Every Person.”
And Micah 6:8.
And meaningful conversations of faith with Muslims and Jews and Buddhists.
And disillusionment with the church.
And the social gospel.
And process theology.
And the stories of the oppressed.
And God’s grace upon grace upon grace.

Rattle, rattle, shake, shake. No matter how hard I tried or how much I wanted to go back to the way it once once, God and the world made it impossible for me to restore my wall of faith to its original design.  For others it’s the death of a child, the end of a marriage before “death do us part,” memories of abuse, an unjust war, a medical diagnosis, a heart shattered in pieces, the inability to reconcile an omnipotent loving God in a world of suffering. These are the kinds of things that knock into our walls of absolutes and cause us to look long and hard at what we believe, that challenge us to let go of what no longer works and to hold on to what remains true.

I don’t need another theological wall to believe that God is and God loves but neither does that mean I don’t have any bricks or that I lack in theological convictions. Trust me, I have piles and piles of bricks. I just don’t have them locked in place with mortar like they once were, and if I have a wall of faith at all, it’s a wall constructed of Lego bricks. You put them together, you pull them apart, you try the red brick over here and then move it it over there. You pull out the green brick and replace it with the blue one. The Lego wall can be rebuilt a thousand times over and every time the pieces snap in place and fit together just as I believe all our theological bits and pieces should fit together well; joining together into a faith that’s consistent and holds together even as it remains flexible, able to give and expand, to be disassembled and built back up again. The wall changes form, the bricks come and go, but the foundation set in the love and grace of God known through Jesus remains. And that’s what Christianity is all about, being in a personal relationship with God grounded solely in grace freely given. Everything else has been added on and none of it is essential to a life held in Christ.

Sometimes we need to be reminded of that.  We just need to grab a sledge hammer, bust down the walls, clear away the rubble, let the dust settle and look once again at the glorious foundation; a foundation that we can never be driven from and that will never weaken and crumble under our feet. We stand on the grace of God and that foundation determines everything.

After years of Sunday School, children’s church, Sunday morning worship, Sunday night worship, Wednesday night prayer meetings, Vacation Bible School, summer church camp, youth group revivals, mission trips, and Bible College, I had a rock-solid theology. I knew what I believed about God, Jesus, the world, sin, salvation, heaven and hell, and okay, let’s just call it how it was; I knew what I believed about everything. Without exception. I had an answer for every spiritual, theological, and moral question thrown at me and even if I’d never considered the question before it was asked, I could pretty much pull an answer out of my hip pocket, and should the answer given fell miles short of the question, I still backed it up with all the conviction I could muster. I had no choice because I’d been led to believe that as a real Christian, as a true believer, my faith guaranteed me the answers to all the questions even if in reality the answers were weak, unsatisfying, and misapplied.

If any metaphor represents my faith at the time best, it would be that of an immovable, unshakable brick wall. Every scrap of Christian belief, doctrine, and dogma was a separate brick in the wall. Brick stacked upon brick, the strength of the wall depending on each brick to provide a firm foundation for all the bricks surrounding it. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, a wall only as sturdy as it’s weakest brick.

Homosexuality was just one of the bricks constructed by teaching that the Bible plainly called it a sin, a belief supported by the story of Sodom, outlined in the laws of Leviticus, and repeated in the teachings of Paul. The Bible had a definitive answer when it came to homosexuality. No ambiguity, no room for discussion, and that was good enough for me, and any time the topic came up I used the familiar rhetoric seasoned with sin, bondage, surrender, sacrifice and deliverance, peppered with long quotations of Scripture, accented with moral conviction and righteous assurance. All my words and beliefs worked fine until the day came when I realized I was gay and in an instant all my previously held incontrovertible answers no longer matched up with my life and my identity before God. The formulaic conclusions of how homosexuality originated, the pat descriptions detailing the one-size-fits-all gay lifestyle, and the supposedly obvious incompatibility of loving someone of the same gender while being in an authentic, committed relationship with God through Christ began to crumble, first around the edges and then in deepening fractures that ran through the brick’s center.

As the brick of homosexuality crumbled you would have thought I would have been relieved. You would have thought so. Instead I was terrified. A brick had fallen from the wall and if one brick had crumbled then what would be the next brick to collapse and how long before the entire wall went to rack and ruin, leaving me with answers, no faith, and no God. Even before the brick dust settled I feared I would lose the entire wall and be left with nothing.

That’s why the most overwhelming part of coming out wasn’t accepting my sexual orientation or the consequences that came from doing so in a conservative Christian world. It wasn’t the relationships I lost, the ridicule leveled at my ministry, or the rejection of my faith by other Christians. No. What rattled me to the core more than all the rest was the loss of holding with a firm grip onto a personal faith based in absolute answers and iron-clad truth. Standing on the edge of that possibility rocked my world and not in a way that felt particularly good.

I don’t think what I’m writing about here is all that unique to my life alone. From the stories I’ve heard and the emails I’ve read mine is a common experience and fear for many who were anchored in a more conservative faith tradition and so I want to share how it was that the crumbling wall I most dreaded would become one of the greatest gifts of coming out as queer to my Christian walk but I’ll save that for later this week. Enough rambling words for today.

Until then, can I get a witness from my sistahs? Do I hear an Amen from the cheap seats? Does any of this connect with you and if so, how so?