The Grace Of God Is My Only Chance

November 11, 2008

Remember when I said I was done blogging about Prop 8?

I take it back.

Sorry.

In the two weeks prior to the election I participated in four visibility actions on various street corners near our home. On election day I stood 120 feet from a polling place located inside a church next door to our home for 10.5 hours. I suppose all together over those days I stood for a total of 25 hours. Some of those hours I stood alone. Other times I stood with anywhere from one to ninety others. That’s a lot of time to hold a sign and wave at passing cars. That’s a lot of time for private thoughts.

During those hours I thought about my relationship with D; how wildly crazy in love I am with her and how precious God is to me for bringing her into my life. I thought about how I would do anything and give anything to protect our marriage. I thought about the things I might say to someone on the other side of the issue if given the opportunity. I thought about how un-waterproof my waterproof jacket was proving to be in the pouring rain and how I should have chosen any shoes to wear but the shoes that were on my aching feet.

But more than any other thought was a question I couldn’t bear to answer and yet I couldn’t avoid thinking.

If I weren’t gay where would I be standing?

Imagine that instead of being a queer Christian, Anita was a straight conservative evangelical Christian who believed in traditional family values and the sin of homosexuality.

Since you’ve only known me as a mild-mannered chapstick lesbian with strange notions of God’s inclusive love and grace for all people, then it might be a stretch for you, but not for me because for the first 38 years of my life that was me.

Heterosexual Worldview. I grew up in a straight world. I wasn’t exposed to any other way of life; not in church or at school or on TV or in the neighborhood or in my home. I didn’t know that anywhere in the world there were boys who liked boys and girls who liked girls. Boys and girls became men and women who became husbands and wives, and so I just assumed when I grew up I’d marry a man like my father and be a wife like my mother, or become a lonely chaste spinster like my aunt. No other options existed in my world. I was straight to the bone. As far as I knew.

Traditional family. Mom. Dad. Two big brothers. One older sister. Dad left for the office every morning and came home after dark. Mom stayed home and cooked and cleaned and watched “General Hospital.” Dad was the head of the household. Mom ruled the roost. We visited my grandparents on Sunday afternoons and took family vacations with a station wagon filled with a back seat of cranky kids. “Mom, he touched me! I told him not to touch me!” “I did not touch you. I just touched the air around you like this.” “Mom, make him stop it!!!”

Evangelical Conservative Christian. Three times a week we went to church where everyone believed like we believed, thought like we thought and valued what we valued. The Bible was the infallible Word of God. Only Christians like us were really saved and I was sheltered from anything that was seen as threatening to the ideals of our faith. There was no dancing. There was no going to the movies. No listening to certain rock music. Time spent with non-Christian friends was limited, and all the more so if a bottle of wine or a can of beer was known to be kept in their refrigerator. Glancing at the horoscopes in the comic section of the newspaper opened the way to demon possession and eventually church-sponsored Fall Festivals replaced the candy void left when Halloween was deemed satanic.

That’s who I was and even though for last past twelve years I’ve seen the world through queer eyes I haven’t for a moment forgotten  how I understood the world when I identified as a straight evangelical conservative Christian. I clearly remember how I saw gay people and what I believed about the sin of homosexuality. I have no problem remembering the contrast of emotions between compassion for the person and disdain for their sin. None of that has escaped me and most certainly not when I wonder. . .

If I weren’t gay where would I be standing?

What answer would I like to give? Oh, I’d like to say that I would have stood on the side of equality because it’s the right thing to do, that I would have advocated for gays and lesbians because of the example of Christ who demonstrated time and again love and compassion for the marginalized and oppressed. I’d like to think I would have spoken up for fairness and for the defeat of Prop 8 because God calls me as a person of faith to “to do justice and love kindness,” and to actively “love my neighbor as myself.”

But I doubt any of that would have been proven out had I continued to live out my life as I had during the first 38 years. While I take some comfort in knowing I would never have stood on the street with a Yes on Prop 8 sign in my hand, scowling and shouting scriptures at anyone who dared challenge my views, I would have most certainly voted yes. I would have voted yes for all the reasons that straight evangelical Christians voted yes last Tuesday. I would have voted yes without malice. I would have voted yes because I would have sincerely believed it was the right thing to do for God and children and families and even for those on the other side; those lost in their sin homosexuals.

I have to be honest about all that because if I’m not then it becomes too easy for me to fall into bitterness and to lose my compassion for the neighbor who in this moment of history stands oppositional to my equality. Can I, right now, love the neighbor who voted against my marriage? Can I read the most despicable accusations of my queer brothers and sisters and find some place in me where I can tap into the love of God for the man or woman who said them? It took no effort at all for me to see Christ in the woman who stood beside me for two hours on election night holding a handmade sign that read “I’m a heterosexual, Republican, married, Catholic mother who voted ‘No on Prop 8′” but can I…no…am I willing to see Christ in the woman who hours before had stood beside me with her competing “Yes on Prop 8″ banner while angrily declaring my life a perversion? If I can’t then I’ve not only forgotten what it was like to view the world from another perspective but I’ve forgotten the grace of God that has been given to me. I’ve forgotten or maybe I’ve never fully understood that before God we are all absolutely equal; as equal in our sin and brokenness as we are in our goodness and glory.

I don’t love the one who does me harm because I’m righteous. If that were the case then I could barely love my neighbor, let alone my enemies. No. I have a chance to choose love because the grace of God allows me to accept that I’m a mess on wheels much of the time. I’m going to rage and wail against those who have done me wrong. I’m going to judge people and carry resentments long beyond their shelf life. I’ll be much too slow to forgive and far too stingy with compassion and this my dear friends is the magnificence of grace! I see all this within me and in my grittiest moment the gift of grace in Christ Jesus is more than enough to declare me as one unconditionally loved and cherished in the eyes of God. In the fleeting moments of my life when in the deepest recesses of my being I take hold of God’s grace for me, finding compassion and love for the most cruel adversary becomes possible.

No conflict will be resolved by name-calling or blanket stereotyping and equality will never be reached by making others the target of our rage and frustration but when we fall into God’s grace we’re freed even from our brokenness to participate in building bridges, changing hearts, healing the wounded, and being among those who give birth to equality for everyone.

I realize that right now when our passions are running so high it can be difficult to find that place of grace within us. It’s understandable that it would be a little hard to reach not only because of what’s happened but because everyday seems to hold something else that makes us doubt and despair over where this will all lead. If grace has slipped a little out of your reach can I offer a suggestion that might help you get hold on grace again? For every minute you spend in keeping up on the news related to Prop 8, spend an equal amount of time centering your heart on grace. Go to a spiritual practice that feeds your soul. Write or speak a prayer. Sing a hymn. Listen to music. Light a candle and as you sit quietly focus your thoughts on grace, grace, grace. Meditate on a passage from Galatians or a page from The Ragamuffin Gospel. Go for a leisurely walk and notice where God has showed up in creation. Call someone you love and remind them for no reason but for the sake of grace that you love them.

If I weren’t gay where would I be standing?

Maybe I don’t really know where I’d be standing in all this. I only hope that wherever it would be, it would be near to the heart of grace. That’s my greatest hope for all of us.

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Posted in Love and Grace, News and Events