*ahem* (Is this thing on?)
I ain't a gal that preaches much (as k.d. lang says) but I have something I really want to get out as widely as possible. So despite the fact that a couple of earlier posts on this new thread are very important and I hope get the big response they deserve, I'd like to put up a "more words than I've said in a year" post.
After being punched in the gut by BBM, and nurtured and inspired by this forum, I've done 4 stints of public speaking, a death-defying act for me. The place was my church, and the topic was making my church a safe and truly welcoming place for GLBT folks. One presentation was specifically based on one of the posts on this forum, and could easily be adapted to temple, synagogue, monthly meeting.... it's been road-tested in a couple of North American churches and vetted by someone who is trained in pedagogy. I hope you consider passing it on to someone who might take this story to a group of people you know.
With kids:
When you have a piece of paper, and two people want to share it, you tear it in half and then there are two smaller pieces of paper. When there are three or four people sharing the same paper, the pieces are even smaller.
What I like about candles is that you can light a second one from the first, and neither one gets any smaller. At Christmas time, here in this church, the whole church is full of people, and each one of them has a candle, and they all get lit from one candle at the front. And all the lights are just as big as when there’s only one, except there are more of them.
I think that’s how God’s love works, and how some people’s love works. When there’s more people to love, none of them gets any smaller amount of love, it just grows and grows. You don’t have to divide up love.
I heard a great story about light and candles that I want to tell.
It’s about a boy and a woman. The woman lived on a ranch, and sometimes she was in charge of babysitting him. Usually they did really fun things when she was looking after him. One day when she was in charge of looking after him, instead of doing one of the fun things, she said she wanted to talk to him about something.
So he sat there like you guys are doing now, only this was on a ranch, and it was in a beautiful spot outside, like there are on ranches. The woman told the boy that she thought he was very special, she thought that God had made him so that he would grow up different from other men and that one day would understand that. She told him that no matter what, he had to believe that Jesus loved him very much, that he was born to carry a special light, a light that would give the world a sacred brightness.
She told him that there would be people who would not understand and there would be some who would be cruel to him because he was different but no matter what, he had to remember that he was born under a special star and had that special light to carry to the world. She also told him that she would always be his friend and that she would be there as my friend if he wanted to talk.
When I heard that story I wanted to tell all of the kids here that they each have a special light to carry. You might grow up to be teenagers and grownups in a place where there are lots of people like you, or where there are hardly any people like you. But it is possible that you might grow up and find that there are people who don’t understand you and are so cruel that you feel very alone and so much sadness that you forget that you have a special light to carry.
I hope nobody feels that way now.
I’m willing to bet that if you ever feel that alone, there is somebody sitting here in this church right now who would be your friend if you wanted to talk to them about it. Someone who would cheer you up and help you remember that you carry a special light. And that light is never any smaller because of someone else’s light.
With rest of Congregation:
This is the sequel to the story I told the kids.
The boy in the story I told the kids became a teenager. He found out that the woman was in the hospital dying of lung cancer and he went to see her.
By then he had an idea what she was had been talking about all those years before: he was gay. When he walked into the hospital room, she at once reached for hand and said "How is my fire child?" They made small talk for a few minutes and then he told her "I know now what you were talking to me about that day in the aspen grove." She squeezed his hand again and said "Are you alright?" He told her he was and they talked for over four hours.
During that conversation, the woman told this teenager that her brother had taken his own life at the age of 21. Now I believe depression and suicide are complex issues that we are not able to control many times, but the people in this story belonged to a conservative church that repeated to this brother that God could not love him as he was, that he could not be loved. The woman was sure that this had driven her brother to the despair that led to his suicide. That’s why she took a rather bewildered 10 year old boy aside and told him that that God had made him different from other men and that one day would understand what that difference was. She told him that no matter what, he had to believe that Jesus loved him, that he was born to carry a special light, a light that gave the world a sacred brightness.
This is the story of a friend of mine who lives in a different city. He’s a successful business owner, and he has found love: he has shared his life with another man for 15 years, and he is a faithful Christian believer, although he has left the church he was raised in. He spent some year struggling with the demons of loneliness, alienation and self-destructive behavior, but he did not succumb to them.
When he was giving permission for me to tell you his story, he told me he doesn't know what he would have done without those four hours, that they were among the most important minutes of his life. Although the woman died a couple of weeks later, he felt like he had lost his best friend. She was the only person on earth who truly knew him then.
When he first told me that story, [after I went through half a box of Kleenex] I knew I wanted this church to be a place where everyone who walks in those doors, walks out again believing they can be loved, that they have a sacred light to carry to the world, something wonderful and important. There are things that can be a barrier to that belief, like being in a minority about sexual orientation or gender identity. I wanted us to be people who know how to get past the fear, the discomfort, the mistrust; It’s not a dream about us coming here to be perfect, it’s a dream of us learning to be people who know how to open our hearts.
So that's what I wanted to tell you. I'm putting this here because if it reaches just one other person, and changes just one more child's life, the effort will be worthwhile (and so will my taking up all this room for one post!).
You people are all great, thanks for being here - for me, for each other.