One True Regret

April 5, 2008

It was the early 1990’s and only a few months after coming out I traveled to Northern California and while there I attended Sunday worship at MCC San Francisco. It was my first time to worship among other GLBTQ Christians and to worship openly as a Christian lesbian.

Throughout the service on that crisp autumn morning my attention was drawn almost exclusively to the male couple sitting one pew in front of me. The man on the right had a tall and muscular frame, an athletic brute of a guy with muscles so rippled they threatened to split the short sleeves of his teeshirt wide open. The man sitting to his left was emaciated and frail, a skeleton held together with a paper thin layer of flesh and blood. When he turned to look over his shoulder I could see his eyes were sunken in, his skin pale and slightly gray. Through their gentle exchanges and touches it was easy to see these two men were lovers and easier still to see that one was dying of AIDS and dying soon. I don’t remember any of the sermon or the songs that we sang or the prayers that were said. What I remember is the thin man resting his head on the other’s left shoulder as the service progressed and his energy wained. I remember how his lover’s gargantuan arm wrapped gently around the fragile frame of his partner and drew him close. Occasionally they’d exchange words; spoken tenderly and loving, knowing glances held nearly nose to nose.

But none of that was as moving as this; when it came time for communion, the muscular man lifted his partner into his arms, cradling him across his chest like a parent with a sleeping toddler, and carried him to the table where they received the bread and the cup together and all the while that frail dying beautiful man smiled. He smiled into the eyes of his partner, smiled at the pastor who fed them from the table, and smiled at all those friends in the church who reached out to touch and greet him as he was carried back to their pew.

Do I even need to tell you I wept at the sight? I did. I wept silent hot tears, not merely at the sight of a man I knew wouldn’t be among the living much longer, whose death would be grieved by his lover and this congregation but even more so, I wept at the beauty before me; of this couple caught up in a dance of grieve and love and choosing to spend a part of their last days together among the people of God at the table of Christ.

I also wept for this reason. Only a year before when I was still in the closet to myself about my sexual orientation, I’d been moved by a local news story I’d seen about an agency that was providing meals for people, primarily gay men, homebound by AIDS. I love to cook and thought this would be a wonderful way to do something meaningful. I found the phone number for the agency in the phone book and called them, arranging a date when I would go in for an interview. I was told that if I was approved I would then be required to attend a training weekend to be held at the local AIDS Crisis Center.

I never went for the interview. I was afraid; afraid that if anyone found out I was volunteering for an agency that was primarily caring for gay men, my own sexual orientation might be questioned. I was convinced at that time that I was straight and that homosexuality was a sin but someone might mistakenly think I was gay and I could imagine nothing worse at the time and so I never showed up for the interview and never took a meal and a kind word to a man like the one who sat before me in church that morning. That explains most of my tears that morning in worship; tears of regret and shame. On that Sunday morning I asked God to forgive me and God forgave as God always forgives but it took a few years before I was eventually able to forgive myself.

I still regret that as a Christian I refused to offer a compassionate hand because I was so concerned with the possibility of guilt by association. More than regret it, I’m puzzled by it. Why did it never cross my mind that Jesus risked guilt by association all the time; every time he sat at table with those judged as sinners and outcasts or entered the home of a tax-collector or touched someone with leprosy or stood between a woman caught in adultery and an angry mob? Even if homosexuality were the sin I had been taught fervently and erroneously to believe it was, how could I have ignored the example of Jesus’ life and ministry, not taken note of the overriding call of God to love all people, and forgotten basic human kindness?

I have no clue why I’m sharing this story. The first story, about the lovers at communion, yes, but the second story, of my refusal to cook a meal for someone who needed to be fed, no. After all, it’s not one of my proudest moments and somehow, through the magic of a well-crafted plot I’d like to give it a clean and tidy ending but every story doesn’t have one. I just hope there’s something in this that will mean something to someone; perhaps the assurance that we all mess up, that we all have regrets, that we’re all just trying at each and every moment to do the best we can and that when our best falls short, redemption is still available. Maybe my messy story speaks to the paralyzing and damaging impact of religious-inspired intolerance and the lack of compassion that often accompanies self-righteousness. I don’t know. I’m just putting it out into the universe.

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Posted in Church, Storytelling