Call Forwarding

My article has just hit the stands in ThislandPress with the focus of my calling not only to the church but also to develop leaders to find their values driven passion in the world.  It speaks of my coming out as a minister by wearing my collar and coming out as a gay minister in Tulsa.  I am returning this weekend to preach at the church that ordained me on Pentecost which was the first Sunday I preached to my current congregation as a called minister to a brand new combined congregation that included many people of color from Higher Dimensions.  It is an auspicious time. Pentecost has become one of my favorite holidays.

And then the wind began to blow.

(Now in biblical language, if the wind starts blowing,it means you had better wake up,because something very important is about to happen. The fire under somebody’s tush is about to be fanned)You see, in the Abrahamic faith traditions when GOD separates us humanity,the story does not end with the tower of Babel. The tower of Babel is just one of three stories closely woven together: Babel, Moses & the Commandments, and Pentecost. First, God separates the people because we were full of pride. And we learned to remain separated by joining with those who were like us and resisting those who are not. And from our separation came wars and –isms, racism, sexism, terrorism. We remained divided inter-personally as well.

With language and culture came writing and education.  Our experience of the world began to be recorded – made permanent instead of fluid.  And we began, at least in Western Culture’s history, to hierarchically judge our experience of the world, placing what could be classified and cataloged, above experiences of heart, and spirit, and intuition.

In Acts 2, something happens.  The story takes a turn…Pentecost happened actually on
The Jewish Festival Day of Shavuot (which was celebrated long before Jesus came along)Shavuot was the day commemorating God giving Moses the Ten Commandments. This was the Birthday of the church…so to speak. Now everyone hearing this story in Acts, at that time,would know this.  On that day, something very strange happens to a group of Jesus’ followers.  Something happens that most Unitarians for the most part, I would assume, have dismissed. (I’m sure Jefferson didn’t keep this part in.) Pente means 50, so 50 days after Easter - on Pentecost –God, evidently, changes her mind.

On Pentecost,We are told, that people from all over Parthians, Medes and Elamites;residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia,  Egypt and the parts of Libya near Cyrene; visitors from Rome (both Jews and converts to Judaism); They were gathered together (maybe trading goods) and there was a meal. Included at the event was a group of Galileans, those who had followed Jesus.  So the wind begins to blow, and the people see what appear to be tongues of fire that separate and come to rest on each of Jesus’ followers.  (I like to imagine them coming down directly to their hearts.) And they begin to speak. I’m sure, since they were practical people,the first thing they were likely to say to one another was

“You are on fire!”

I imagine, after the practical, everyone was speaking about how incredible
it is to be awake and alive. They were sharing their gratitude for their existence and
The wonders of the Holy. Now the passers by in the street are said to have heard a cacophony of gibberish. But the people in the room heard their own language coming from the Galileans. They heard a message that resonated with their experience. God must have decided that even in our differences, with some help, when our hearts are touched with the fire of the Spirit humanity could in fact understand one another. It was a miracle!  And it fulfilled in the Christian Story the beginning of the church. The birthday in fact of the church.

People with very different experiences, with different cultures, and different understandings were all under the same roof declaring the wonders of GOD in their own tongues. And everyone present, and awake, and understood.

Now there were some skeptics, mind you. Not everyone was buying into this miracle.
Someone in the room (likely a Unitarian) exclaimed, “They have had too much wine!”
 Peter corrected the skeptics: They were not drunk…it was only 9 in the morning.
The wine wasn’t even out yet.

So, God separates the people in Genesis, and then, by miracle of miracles, there is an opportunity to be together in the same room, speaking in our own tongues, about the wonder of God, the mystery of life, the wonder of our experience of being human and alive and they are understood by those closest to us.

What if our worship looked like that?! What if our worship could be a container that gracious? Our churches a meeting place for that kind of dialogue, a hearth from which many hearts can be warmed? From which we are sparked to know and manifest our gifts in the world? What if in our meeting places we could speak from a point of difference about the wonders of God and be heard?

This is the mission we are called to do.

Silly Rabbit

I want to share with you an old story about a rabbit hunter.

One day, the hunter was out in the woods when a rabbit ran right past him and collided with a tree stump, knocking itself unconscious.  The man could not believe his good fortune as he put the rabbit in his game bag.   And from that day forward, he gave up everything he had learned about hunting and came back and watched the stump, waiting for this to happen again. 

Even a broken clock is right twice a day, right?

It seems so obvious to those on the outside when our attention is focused on the wrong thing to reach the goal we desire.

Sometimes ministry feels like the rabbit hunter: We are invested in things large and small that are not producing results.  Social justice work can feel this way.  But, like the hunter, we have skills.  The big question is “Will we use them?” 

What could your gifts bring to change a situation?  

I had a dream two nights ago that I was trying to ride my bike somewhere. I pushed and I pulled on the pedals.  They turned but I was going nowhere. I got off the bike and realized that the chain was not connected to the gears.

I remember thinking (in the middle of dreaming it) what a great metaphor!  Sometimes we have to get off the bike to know why we aren’t making progress.

And the work we all want to be engaged in is the kind that when we put forth our time and talent, energy and resources, we move ahead, we contribute to the stream of life.

Gay la la la

Last weekend I attended the annual Dennis R. Neil Equality Center Gala in a collar.  I will say I missed puttin' on the ritz.  I clean up pretty well and would have loved to been able to get all dolled up. The gala is one of my favorite events of the year.  

There is something so encouraging to see 1,000-plus people turn out to support LGBT community.  Among the 1,000 in attendance were many gay men and women I have never seen before.  How is this possible?  It could be because I am in bed by 8:30 and up at 5:00 am.  But still I wonder ... where do all of the lesbians hide?  I never knew there were so many in our city!

Also among those present were many candidates running for office.  My wife was able to stand up and be celebrated, as was the incumbent judge she is running against.  I think that is a blessing. In a state where we are still fighting for non-discrimination and our legislators still believe that they do not represent an LGBT contingency, we can't have too much attention.  I am much more easily recognizable in my collar as clergy, and I was grateful to represent.

What inspired me most were the many tables filled with youth.  There were two full tables of youth from our church.  I can't imagine what my world would have been like to have attended such an event with my Youth Director and my ministers at that age.  It was one of those strobe light moments, where a new reality flashed in front of my eyes in fits and starts. I don't know how we arrived at this place, but I am so blessed to have been alive to see the progress.

Jared Tyler and I were invited to sing my new song at the event.  It was an honor to be asked to do so.  So there I was ...singing in a collar. Again.  

I feel like the Universe is taking special effort to show me that all of parts of me can inhabit one body.  My joy is in my music and my ministry.  I love that I am fortunate enough to do both.

Death Row Debaucle

In my role as a minister, I have seen people die.  

Technological advances appear to have made death easier, including for the observer. This is true in the hospital as well as in states that routinely kill offenders.  I have never witnessed anyone killed by the Department of Corrections. I am clear that, improving methods to decrease the pain of capital punishment does not make it less cruel or more just.  This week my home state is in the news for a death row debacle.  The offender, Lovett, shot a teenage girl in a robbery gone bad and then buried her alive. There is no excuse for what he did.  I fear that our distance from the experience of death is allowing us to feel better about choices we should in fact be struggling with more closely. I have never understood why, as a society, we would synchronize our moral compass to one of a murderer.  We are part of a system that is torn about how to handle this issue.   We tried to kill Lovett for his crime. When his execution did not go as planned, we tried to save his life so that we could kill him again. The irony of this is indicative of our moral struggle. Lovett ended up dying  in the hospital from a heart attack. We still did this to him. You and I the voters of Oklahoma allowed this to happen.  His painful and complicated death requires us to take a serious look at our participation in this process. If it had not gone awry, his death would have gone largely unnoticed by most Oklahomans.

To be responsible in our decision as a state to execute, I believe executions should be public, televised, and in the light of day. We should not be able to hide from that which we silently endorse. 

Now that execution has our full attention. Let us consider the purpose of the Department of Corrections.  If revenge is the goal, then the offender must be alive to receive such revenge. If retribution is the goal, then they must be alive to serve. If Rehabilitation is the goal then they must be alive to learn. If reconciliation is the goal then they must be alive to atone. Killing is not an answer for any of these.

Looping

The soundtrack of my life is deep and varied. I fell asleep to my parent’s popular rock band rehearsing in the next room – think Steely Dan meets Heart.  I have a coveted recording of them playing live to a large crowd in downtown Oklahoma City in 1976.  I fell in love with my parents’ music, including way too much reverb and an overly emotional abundance of cowbell. When I had my own differentiation of musical preference from my parents – the ’80's alternative music of my adolescence – it felt like a personal attack on my father's homegrown three-piece band.  In addition, my grandmother's love of Big Band and adoration of Lawrence Welk made my appreciation for cheesy deep rooted.  My own songwriting started young.  I have been composing with childhood friends for as long as I can remember: rewriting childhood songs and creating rock operas on roller skates a la Xanadu.

At every major transition in my life, I can document one of three signs: a radical hair transformation (usually from red to blond or blonde to red), a new tattoo (more about that later), or a renewed interest, or really a return, to my music.  Music has been home for me.  I was in a band when I left home at 16. It was music that carried me through my exchange student year abroad – it expressed what I was feeling and helped me make friends.  In college it punctuated my philosophical angst.  During my teaching career, music brought me closer to the students and other teachers.  In seminary, it told the story of my deepening personality, helped me make a mediocre sermon memorable worship, and developed relationships outside of the ministry. All through the years my parents’ original music has looped through the soundtrack of my life to support me. And it still does, even though my dad is no longer physically with me.

Last week I was in the studio recording my first *real* album.  I say real because there are hours and hours of live recordings of me playing with a blues band in Chicago, and there is our garage mix of a few of my songs we did while I was in seminary.  But this is the first time I have had artistic control and the resources to record and arrange my music in a way that I imagine it in my head.  It is incredible.  I wrote a song called “Dear Oklahoma,” also the title of the album, that is way bigger than me.  It caught the attention of some musician friends from the East Coast who just happened to be in town and wanted to offer vocals. And so last Friday I found myself in a collar, in the studio, recording “Dear Oklahoma.”  And then later that evening, I opened the show with Emma's Revolution in front of legendary activist folk artist Holly Near.  Last night I recorded a version of one of my father's songs. 

And now Beckett will have my songs as well as my father's added to the soundtrack of her life.

Tour of Duty

My first assignment as a chaplain intern at Stateville Maximum Security Men’s Prison was in the receiving and classification unit.  I was wearing my newly bought fresh out of the package clerical collar and shirt. There was often no electricity or running water.  It was January in Illinois, and it was drafty and cold. In many of the cells I could feel the breeze pass into the hallway from the window slits in the cells that were stuck open.  Instead of the traditional bars found on the regular units, there were steel doors with a 2 foot wide rectangular pass through for food plates at knee level …and a wire mesh covered square opening at eye level.  

If the lights were on in the cell, I would talk through the eye-level wire mesh that was oddly reminiscent of a confessional.  I could just make out the inmate’s shadowy faces.  Most of the time, however, I would kneel down on the floor in front of the chuckhole.  The inmates would do the same on their side and we would talk face to face with nothing between us, through a hole in a steel wall.  I was terrified until I began to hear their stories, moving from cell to cell, and meeting them eye-to-eye.

I spent a lot of time the first few weeks explaining my faith tradition in sentence or two.  I spent more of my time convincing them that I was not there to convert them.  Unfortunately the role of chaplain is often considerably warped behind the prison wall.  There is a monopoly of fundamentalist Christian volunteers. The inmates’ default perception of a religious person outside their door, is someone whose modus operandi is to convert them. 

There were actually many converted fundamentalists at Stateville.  They built their walls with Bible verses.  For those men, walled in by literalism, if I couldn’t site a particular verse, I immediately lost credibility.  (I must admit, I lost a lot of credibility with those men.)  The majority of the inmates, however, were intrigued by the fact that I would carry a Bible, a Koran, the Kabbalah, and the Tao te Ching together in my clear plastic backpack.  The Muslims were confused when I greeted them with As sala'amu alaikum.

Religion not only comforted the afflicted, it was used as a tool to separate.  The inmates intentionally separate themselves into religious communities and were segregated by the institution.  Inmates must identify their religion upon entering the institution.  If they do not choose an approved religion on arrival, NONE is inscribed on the back of their ID, denying them all religious privileges.  Religious services are provided based on what they have indicated on the back of their card. Changing religious preference often requires an interview with an outside representative from that religion, which is not easy to do.  The inmates learned to use the system.    Catholic Mass often turned into a gang meeting.  And if you are a vegetarian, the only way to receive a vegetarian meal was to become a Hebrew Israelite.  My tradition was not an option if you wanted any services at all.

The men who coped best with the religion issue were those who had negotiated a rough theological compromise that all religions might have some threads in common.  They often identified with a major religion in order to attend a service.  Initially this compromise was often forged of two men of different religious traditions placed in the same cell.   In this 6 by 13 foot space, they were forced to work out their differences in order to live together.  They questioned the wall between them and put down a few of their stones.

That first day as a chaplain, I have a picture that could have been on the cover of LIFE magazine emblazoned upon my memory.  I had just made my way down the corridor, talking with the 30 or so new inmates.  They were scared.  They wanted into general population where there were blankets and heat, and the routine was more familiar.   You see with the rate of recidivism in the United States, the majority of the men I met in the classification had been to prison before. 

After talking with nearly thirty of these men, I realized that they were desperate for reading material and especially calendars. One way to cope with detention is to live in the past prior to incarceration or to live in the future focusing on an out date.  A sense of time offered a sense of place that nothing else did.  There is a reason it is called doing time. That day, I remembered that there were plastic wallet sized calendar cards in the chaplain office provided by the Salvation Army. 

I told the men on this unit that I would be back.  When I returned, I announced “chaplain on the wing” as I was instructed to do and the cover of Life magazine unfolded before me.  I looked down this corridor of 13 steel gray doors on each side. A narrow window lit up the hallway in a hazy glow.  Then, I saw, hands and arms: grasping, stretching for the calendars that I was offering them.  They were mainly brown hands and brown arms… extending all along the length of the corridor from the chuck holes on both sides.

We are part of a society who primarily incarcerates minorities.  We are part of a society who mainly incarcerates the poor, the addicted and the mentally ill. I am part of a state who incarcerates more women than any other state in the United States.   We cannot let the society that we live in, a society that we are a part of, wall off suffering.  I wish every religious conflict could be worked out... maybe by finding some greater common cause like cohabitating in confined space.   I wish that every voter, every elected official, every lawmaker, lawyer, prosecutor and judge would take a tour of duty behind the wall and experience life and the people there. 

Pumpkin Eater

I cheated in school only once and I was caught. 

I had this marvelous teacher named Mrs. Gouldy who was my English and French teacher my Freshman year of high school.  I had both classes on the same day and on this particular day, I had an exam on Golding’s Lord of the Flies in her English Class and a vocabulary quiz in her French class.  I stayed up most of the night before reading all about human kind’s base status of savagery and evil, how the innocence of children was a mere myth, and how in the end individualism would replace comradeship and lead to our complete destruction.  Human kind may have been deemed a complete wash, but I was ready for that exam.  I was also prepared to argue with Golding, because I believed then as I do now that humanity is inherently good.  Rampant individualism might indeed lead to humanity’s destruction in the text and in real life, but I was (and am) optimistic that in community our goodness will prevail.

That morning, French class was first and to my horror I had forgotten about the vocabulary quiz!  So, I begin frantically writing out the words to help me remember them.  Before the quiz began I hurriedly stashed the pile of papers I was using on the floor.  As I shifted in my extremely uncomfortable seat, not knowing the answers to the first 3 questions, I realized that my study sheet had slipped ahead of the others and was visible to me from the floor just in front of my desk.

I was usually such a good student, normally such a well-prepared student, even an overly conscientious student and yet, how could I not look? Likely, No one would believe my good intentions at this point anyway, not even me.  The paper was way too conveniently placed. I knew even then, that the right thing to do would have been to move it out of view.  I didn’t. Three or four questions of taking advantage of the opportunity and I was busted.  I was left to writhe in my own discomfort, devastated and embarrassed as I awaited the Scarlet C for cheater to be emblazoned upon my breast.

She was my favorite English teacher, ever, and the only French teacher at my high school. 

I would be forced to not only face her regularly, but she would also accompany me through the pages of Hawthorne, Camus, and Sartre.  Her curriculum and the way I saw her seeing me would shape my behavior for years to come: from my own exploration of atheism and the influence of existentialism to my desire to be an exchange student and a French and Philosophy teacher.  But at that time in my 14-year-old mind, one mistake and now I was a cheater.

“Label[ing] individuals [is] shorthand [when] trying to deal with people who are always complex, and [People] always pop out of the boxes we put them into”   Sister Helen Prejean, writes.  “Like [the way we view] Mother Teresa, we will attribute nothing bad to her. Then, when somebody (else) has done a terrible thing, we say that's all there is to them…Suppose there was a way that the worst thing you had ever done could be projected on a screen for everybody to see. Then suppose you were told, "That is all you are." You'd say, "But…I've been kind to my grandmother. I was honest most of the time.” 

My value as I understood it then, was entirely dependent on my mistake. How on earth would I be able to argue just two class periods later for the inherent goodness of humanity, with the same teacher? Maybe, Golding was right. Maybe even in Paradise, even in idyllic circumstances…when there is plenty of food and water for everyone, and no real threats, humanity will inevitably find a way to war against itself: project our fears onto the world, fail to live up to even our own moral standards.

Since that young age of 14, I have not just cheated. I have stolen, lied, gossiped, misconstrued, omitted, been unfaithful, been greedy, boastful, envious, gluttonous, angry, lusty, and lazy…  And I still believe people are inherently good.   In our nature we are good.  We are also inherently fallible, because we are not God. 

I believe in redemption.   Our value does not rest on a single event, nor does it merely rest on the sum of our actions.  When we have a desire to be held accountable and a diverse community who will do so, healing of all kinds is possible. It is in community we glean what is right and wrong and so it is in community our redemption and mercy are found.  

Tis the season to be redeemed.