Practicing My LIfe

I’m practicing. And I’m amazed that I have to exercise who I am, just as I’m trying to walk a few miles each day to build up my endurance, again, and again at 7000 feet elevation. Yesterday, at a gathering for prospective new members of St. Bede’s Episcopal church in Santa Fe, New Mexico, much of the conversation concerned the rift in the Episcopal Church here in the U. S. and in the worldwide Anglican Communion. The conflict has focused on the full inclusion of gay and lesbian members in the communion, most specifically same-sex marriage and the ordination openly gay and lesbian persons.

As I sat listening to the leaders of this discussion give their views on the conflict, and describe the history of "liberal" St. Bede’s in the mostly conservative Diocese of the Rio Grande, my ears caught on the repeated use of conservative and liberal, uncomfortably conscious that I am part of the definition of a liberal church view and that inclusion of me and others of my stripe is a big deal in the struggle of the Christian Church.

I finally had to speak up. Yet, all I could muster seemed lightweight as my thoughts became words, and I felt the spotlight shining on me. I guess I was holding the spotlight. My thinking—as long as people anywhere on this planet believe that homosexuality is a choice, the conversation will amount to nothing more than people passing opinions and beliefs without any real interest in actually understanding one another. And as long as anyone believes that the God who created us all gives any one of us license to stand in judgment of each other on grounds of so-called morality, based in some kind of reading of Holy Scripture, we probably won’t make much progress on this man-made dilemma.

It’s not simple, I know. God knows it’s not simple to me and my brothers and sisters. You certainly don’t have to be gay or lesbian to have decided to leave the church. Scores of thousands of people across the planet who were at least introduced to the church in their upbringing have left the church for scores of reasons. Some of the painfully real reasons include the politics, hypocrisy, divisiveness, even acts of hate that continue to occur, somehow in the name of the God in whose image we are all created.

No, I didn’t choose to be homosexual. I’ve known since I was a young child, and like all those cases depicted in volumes of literature and all those family members and friends who dot the landscape, I lived with my secret—until I was in my mid-twenties. And as we all discover at some point, when we’ve hopefully made the decision to come out, I realized that my secret wasn’t so secret after all. “Well, he’s the only one who didn’t realize he was gay.”

My metaphor yesterday in the church gathering was lightweight. I didn’t choose my sexuality like I would have chosen between coconut meringue and pecan pie. As the song goes, I am what I am. And I am a child of God, just the same as every heterosexual who sat the table with me. Most of the group was silent on the topic, with the exception of one couple, both of whom were enthusiastically vocal in supporting what I had to say. I trust that the other five newbie’s share the viewpoint of our “liberal” parish, which flies the rainbow flag, along with the flag of the Episcopal Church, a decision that led to a siege of vandalism several years ago. Otherwise, they would all have been somewhere else on this afternoon.

I didn’t really want to speak out about myself. I don’t like feeling that I have to justify my existence, but I guess it is my duty to at least cause others who feel that the very essence of who I am as a physical being—my sexuality—is a choice, rather than a matter of what God chose for me, to step back and look at themselves. My homosexuality doesn’t define me. It shouldn’t define me, just as one’s heterosexuality doesn’t define that person. Yes, I am a minority. Yet, I am God’s very own. I can’t walk around the grounds of my estate carrying a gun to practice feeling “manly”, as the psychiatrist character suggested to Maurice in the novel and film of the same name, which is set in Edwardian England. His thinking reflected the understanding of the time. Fortunately, science and the study of human behavior have carried us beyond Maurice’s age. And fortunately for Maurice’s character, he made a choice to be true to himself. Hope steeled him for his choice.

Neither can I, nor do I want to perform any silly act that someone thinks would change my sexual identify, regardless of how well intentioned. My dear mother, my best friend, clung to her belief in me, headed toward 90 at the time of her death. She believed in my essential goodness, but of course she was my mother and my champion. The first question she asked me 30 years ago when I told her and Daddy about my homosexuality, on a Sunday afternoon sitting in the doorway opening of the hallway of the barn that is now my home, was could I see a therapist about changing myself. Although Daddy and I never talked about my sexuality, since his death 27 years ago I have heard both from Mother and my middle sister that he was heart broken. I guess he blamed himself for not doing more to make me “more of a man”. He was born in 1911, brought up the hard-shelled Baptist tradition of the south. I can’t change any of that.

The argument about my fate will continue, long after my death. And as long as I have my wits and the strength to practice, I will continue to grow stronger in God’s grace. That Sunday morning a few years ago when I challenged those gathered for Bible study at the tiny Episcopal mission in conservative East Texas, those who instinctively clucked their tongues over the election of a gay bishop in New Hampshire, an election that was confirmed by the national church, was my first great moment to take a stand. At age 61, led by the Holy Spirit, I am told, I stood up to honor my God, myself and my brothers and sisters. I will try to live in God’s grace, and I will do my part to challenge both those who in their ignorance would love the sinner but hate the sin and those who would hate me or fear me or distrust me, which is indeed a choice.

Practicing My Life—Santa Fe, New Mexico (May 26, 2008)

R. Harold Hollis