Don’t Mess Up the Message
November 19, 2009
This week I unveiled my personal blog, The Passionate Plate: Savoring Life in Small Bites, which focuses on three areas of interest to me: Food and Health (Savoring), Spirituality and Faith (Saviouring), and Our Adventures at Home and on the Road (Savouring). I hope you stop by sometime. Oh, who am I kidding?! I want you come by all the time! Bookmark me. Tag me in your RSS feed. Plan your days around my posts. Add your comments. Pass the word to your friends. Come and see me. I need you. I’m co-dependent.
But seriously, one of the reasons I’ve gone ahead and created a personal blog where I can yammer away is because I’ve been concerned that I’ve muddied the original purpose of SisterFriends with posting a few too many things from my life that have little to nothing to do with being gay and Christian. The intention of SisterFriends-Together is to provide a place where queer folks can be encouraged in their faith and where those who are struggling with their sexuality can find a place of safety to ask the questions, share their fears or hopes, and have the chance to consider a different voice in the conversation on the Bible and homosexuality than what’s often held up as the only true Christian understanding. SisterFriends is here to witness through the lives of countless gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people (I’m only one of them) that yes, you can be GLBTQ and a Christian and you can be assured that God’s love for you is unchanging and unending no matter what your race, gender, sexual orientation, past mistakes, present circumstances, or whatever. On the day you were born God entered into a full-blown love relationship with you and that relationship will continue on beyond your final breath on this earth. Please take seriously the Word that, “Nothing will ever separate you from the love of God.” Take it seriously and take it to heart. Own it.
Whew. Okay. As I was saying….
Rather than jumping around on SisterFriends between the message of God’s love and reporting on the best bowl of pasta I’ve ever had in my life, my aim is to keep SisterFriends for those conversations that pertain specifically to being queer and being Christian and when I say “queer” I’m not limiting that word to folks of the rainbow persuasion but to anyone, whatever their orientation, who feels in some way different, outcast or on the edges of mainstream Christianity. Those who have been wounded by the church, judged harshly by other Christians, or had their personal faith development move them to reflect on God and what it means to be Christian in the world that doesn’t always square with the status quo.
This doesn’t mean I’m not going to be sharing stories from my life. I’ll continue to do so because just as I suspect it is for you, what happens in my day to day life and all that I encounter among people and experience in those moments when God shows up is what most informs my faith, my hope, and my convictions. I also believe that the best thing, and in the end maybe the only thing that any of us have to give one another is our lives, in hardships and in glory. Please know that you teach, strengthen and encourage me through the simple act of living your life and I only wish to return the same to you. So I’ll share my life as openly as ever but I just want to stay focused on why we’re here instead of holding you a captive audience to my vacation photos. You can come over to The Passionate Plate for that and I hope you will. I hope you will not only because of my desperate need for attention but because I want those of you who have lost so much in coming out or fear losing so much when you do come out, to see through the simple act of living my life that as life has gone on for me, life will go on for you.
You can survive the rough spots of coming out with all the losses and rejection and find incredible joy again. There are churches that will welcome you and your ministry. There are life-long friends who will return to you and new friendships that will come to you. A day may come when you and your family will forge a new relationship made possible by a God who specializes in reconciling hearts to one another. There’s every chance in the world for you to share your life and love with another human being who will cherish you as much as you cherish them. And if you open your heart and your eyes you will see God show up day in and day out in acts of such grace and goodness that your knees will go weak. You might not believe any of this now but let what God has done and is doing in my life and the lives of others witness to you that there is hope for you who are hopeless and joy for you whose joy has been lost or taken captive.
There I go again.
So SisterFriends will always be here and a-n-y-o-n-e looking for a place to explore their faith and how God is calling them to embody that faith in the world is welcome here and it is to their longing to embrace themselves in their wholeness, to experience God’s love in the center of their being, and to learn and grow into a Christian life of faith that is most true for them that SisterFriends is here and will continue to be here until Grace in it’s full glory is revealed and then some.
[My intention for the time being is to add one new post here per week though in time I hope to be posting twice a week once I get a rhythm back to my writing which was shattered this summer.]
Posted in Anita, Blog Basics and Info, Love and Grace, SisterFriends
November 19th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
Anita,
I met you in cyberspace almost 9 years ago. I can say that SisterFriends was the first and only place that told me that I was not an abomination. The Sisters gave me a place to go and pour out my heart and know that they understood the struggles of hearing a sibling tell you that “you will burn in hell” and a father ask what he did “wrong” in raising you.
For all that you share and the places you give for us to meet other Christians and share our lives, I say thank you and thank you sounds so trivial, for a gift so big.
I pray daily for you and D and for the SisterFriends and I look forward to all the posts. Thanks for all that you do.
November 20th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Anita,
I’m so-o looking forward to what you share in the days, weeks, months ahead. And where that takes each of us in a variety of directions & experiences as we share and seek God, His love, & abundant faithfulness, that upholds us, covers us and keeps us in good times & hard.
What a refuge SFT is, gathering with others of similar heart–simply seeking God, and desiring to be all He calls each of us to be in a world so desperate for genuine love, hope & joy. Standing shoulder to shoulder, in weakness & in strength, sharing laughter & tears, may we cheer & uphold each other on in this holy, wonderous journey called LIFE!
Here, I’ve finally found a place where I can freely share the intense struggles of trying to find my place in Christ’s church as a women. My deepest hurts regarding my femaleness came from within the Church, (beyond being gay) to the point where I hated being a woman & wished God had created me a man. For only in that did I see any hope or reality of being able to fulfill my call, so often ignored, questioned & nullified by church leadership. As the years pile up, you quit trying to find your place and quietly walk away. That’s where I find myself, dead inside, emotionally, spiritually–wondering if it’s just too late.
God has generously brought SisterFriends across my path, and glimmers of hope appear. Like the crisp Autumn mornings, when the heavy frost on roof-tops begins to melt in the noon time sun, maybe my heart will thaw! Thanks.
November 22nd, 2009 at 8:43 pm
…and when I say “queer” I’m not limiting that word to folks of the rainbow persuasion but to anyone, whatever their orientation, who feels in some way different, outcast or on the edges of mainstream Christianity. Those who have been wounded by the church, judged harshly by other Christians, or had their personal faith development move them to reflect on God and what it means to be Christian in the world that doesn’t always square with the status quo.
Well, you got *me* pegged, now don’t you?!
I think the world beyond Facebook needs your recipes and your joie de vivre. (Now if only I knew the Italian for that last bit…)
Thank you for keeping a few extra places set at the table, here and elsewhere. It’s always wonderful to pull up a chair and have a cuppa with you and all the rest of the SF gals.
November 23rd, 2009 at 1:58 pm
e—> Yes, I have you pegged. All the signs are there of yet another round peg who has grown weary, worn and slightly agitated from past attempts to be forced into a square hole. The recipes will keep coming over at The Passionate Plate and I have enough joie de vivre for here, Passionate Plate, and Facebook. Glad you’re at the table too….keep on sipping!
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Paperskater—> Wow, I only wish you could be just a little more supportive and encouraging!
I’m so glad you’re found us here and at the same time I pray that in the coming days, weeks, months, or however long it takes you experience newness of life in your soul and spirit. It’s never too late. NEVER too late to experience the balm of Gilead. NEVER too late for God to restore what human institutions and brokenness has beat down. Can you not see your heart is already un-thawing?
November 23rd, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Dear Anita, I am very glad you are here. I can not believe everything you say about coming out about the losses of peoples and familys. But I do see you and you are a hope to me to keep looking for a way to live my life real. And this places is amazing to me, even if I am only reading. Yes, I think that God is loving me, and that through all the peoples here I will find everything and more than for what I looking for. Thank you so much! So yes, this is like a great feast to my soul.
November 25th, 2009 at 2:55 pm
thanks so much Anita!! You have helped so much!!! I look forward to reading your words. I am in a pretty good place in my life right now – not great, but I give thanks to God for what I have.
Happy Thanksgiving to you and ALL
November 25th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
JRC–> My guess is that being in a “pretty good place” has been a long haul for you to arrive at JRC and I pray that a “great” place is where you find yourself one day!
December 8th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
yes, you can be GLBTQ and a Christian and you can be assured that God’s love for you is unchanging and unending no matter what your race, gender, sexual orientation, past mistakes, present circumstances, or whatever
Yes! How absolutely true. Christ’s blood cleanses us all. Your site here is so refreshing and wonderful. It’s good for those of us ‘on the fringe’ to hear about the love of God for us without being clobbered. Thank you!
December 8th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Erin—>What a failure on the part of Christianity that the love of God would EVER be spoken of in a way that would make a person feel less than or that such love only included them if they only did this or thought that or became this or denied that. And yes, it’s absolutely true. When we say God loves you, the sentence ends there. God loves you. And if anything is added to that let it be something along the lines of God loves you…completely, unconditionally, passionately, forever, relentlessly….
December 13th, 2009 at 4:25 am
I understand about diversifying the blogs LOL I have my “me” blog, my “private” blog, my “craft” blog and my “Hurricane” blog (we live in FL).
The comment you said about being queer not just meaning GLBT really hit home for me. In the 17 years I’ve been married, we are looking for our 4th church. I have chronic illness & pain. And we are definitely not a member of “the haves”. So as long as I was contributing physically to the church by singing, teaching choir, etc, I was visible. But when my illnesses worsened, I disappeared. Our last church, we were there for the school but once my daughter finished (they go up to 8th) we were done. When you nearly get run over by a Hummer trying to get a close spot for Sunday services and no one notices that you’ve not been to a service for 2 years, it’s time to leave
We are tentatively attending the Christmas Eve service at a Unitarian Universalist congregation that proclaims it is a GLBT friendly place. They are doing a traditional Christian Christmas Eve service. I feel God’s nudge to go. I am hoping beyond hope that I won’t feel queer or queer there. Church families have hurt us just as much as our human families, and I need a spiritual place to call home.