Advent and a Persevering Faith

This is not quite the traditional hymn in the Chrurch’s advent repertoire, but it could not be more appropriate for the season!

Christ’s advent, His nativity is the ultimate of stories of faith and love. We are called to wait in absolute faith and hope that The Love of our souls, awaits for us to draw near, to call upon Him. Even if we are judged to be undeserving, in the face of obstructions in the path: the call of Advent is to believe and hold on to our love and a belief in a God that loves us!

Advent as a call to faith

A central claim of the Christmas story that we anticipate throughout the season of Advent is that of a real God. An existent Being who consciously makes the choice to incarnate; To assume the form of a human being. A thinking, intelligence that then walks upon the earth and speaks to the human condition with such accuracy and insight, leaves a body of principles that have helped build the greatest civilisations that the world has seen to date. A real Being who transforms the hearts and minds of men and women across several spaces and times.

The comfort from this message, in my view, as a gay man, is simply that God is real enough to engage with the questions and uncertainties that plague any genuine seeker who also happens to be a sexual minority. The message of Advent reminds me that there might be a waiting period involved in receiving God’s assistance, but that it is available and a realty. The season basically calls us to have faith, to belief, and to trust. Yes, to believe, against all contrary messages that say we ought to give up on faith and that there is a false choice between God and our sexuality. This season, to me, is a reminder that God has the will and desires to be reconciled to all of us. We need to activate our faith and defy those who would keep us away from the reality of God.

God’s reality, intelligence, willingness to engage is powerfully reiterated during this period of Advent. We can have faith that He has compassion, that He hears and fully understands, faith in His intelligence to grasp the complex web of emotions of thoughts that go with trying to reconcile sexuality and spirituality, faith to refuse to let go of our relationships to God simply because people – as finite and small as we are – would exclude and hate us; We can have Faith to keep on standing, keep praying relentlessly, anticipating in hope that there is a God who is dependable to ALL who believe Him. In brief, the message of advent issues a call to have the faith to keep believing in a God who became flesh and who continues to engage with all who also draw near to Him.

This is the second biggest calls of Advent that I find as a gay man. The first is to love. This one is a call to believe, to have faith. And to persevere in that faith. I resolve to have faith in a real God who intervenes in real ways, who hears, who enters into our homes, situations, hearts – and is capable of doing so if we ask Him. He clearly desires to help, so we might as well knock on His door relentlessly for the answers and solutions we seek.

If ye love me…

The gospel according to John is a beautiful poetic text in several respects: for its’ comfort with framing God, Christ, as an intimate lover of souls. It works to reduce the distance between us and the immortal-unseen.

Some of the most beautiful words of Christ are articulated in it, expressed in beautiful images and language. Along with the book of Revelations, the Book of John stands out (for this blogger) as one of the high points in New Testament authorship.

During this season of Advent, I find my attention pulled to the following lines from John 14. And,I find in these verses provocation to reflect a lot more deeply on how to be at peace, spiritually, and to find reconciliation with God.

The verses from the King James Version are:

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever;

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you….”

As a gay man, I have battled constantly with the idea of being a transgressor. Being disobedient, and disqualified to fully enjoy communion with God. As much as I like to tell myself that I am at full peace with myself and with my sexuality, I find myself in a terrible cycle at times: I find a sense of peace and then, something pulls me into a sense of being disobedient and condemned. It becomes difficult to reconcile myself to God, I struggle and fight through tears and prayers and finally retrieve peace in powerful moments of what I believe to be God’s peace. Some time later, an image flashes before y eyes, a word is spoken, a song plays and the cycle of guilt rotates once again. And again and again it repeats itself (less and less nowadays but I felt trapped in this cycle some years ago).

The question still remains for me: how do I overcome my sense of guilt – guilt of being in contravention of God’s laws, by the virtue of my being gay? Do I try to convince myself that I am sinless and I am good. That ‘gay is good’? That might have worked as a slogan in the 1970s movement for gay libration (which I am grateful for) but at the end of the day, I have to confront myself and find peace in the hidden recesses of my soul that are hidden to the world. In those secret places where I do not have a public mask, Gay feels the opposite of good, many times. It feels like I have broken obedience to God. I ask myself in those times when no one is looking and I do not have to defend my gay persona – if my conscience is troubling me so much, and I am not at peace, then maybe this whole Gay thing is indeed just sinful and toxic, poisonous. Sinful. Maybe it is indeed true that God would rather have me be heterosexual. Even if I cannot possibly become straight. So, how do I deal with this dilemma?

Perhaps it helps to actually first understand what God’s commandments actually are – and what Christ call to obedient actually contains.

The commandments, Christ summarises, can be narrowed down to two lifelong assignments for each human being – the call to love God and love of my neighbour as myself.

‘Thou shalt be heterosexual’ is not an edict that is established in Scripture. Yes, there is an underlying assumption in much of the bible that assumes heterosexuality of all people. Rightly so, given the context in which the scriptures were written.

Yet, at the same time, the commandments that we are called to hold on to and to follow are those tied to love. ‘Love’ unlike heterosexuality and cultural mores is a timeless and spaceless concept. It is not tied to a particular context or time period. By its ver nature, it is unseen. It transcends space and time. So, the commandment to love endures as an eternal one. The cultural assumption in the Bible, on the other hand, speak to temporary things. Cultural imperatives that are tied to space and time.

Love.This is what we are called to obey and measure ourselves up to:

So, if it so happens that I frequently find myself in spirals of guilt and self condemnation…if I find myself being overwhelmed by my gayness as a ‘sin’, I need to remember that my focus is in the wrong place.

Christ is calling us to something much more profound and more challenging than the realities of being gay/straight. He is calling – commanding – us to love. That is plenty of work and very few of us have begun to engage with what these commandments mean. Not even the church (which I will never abandon, regardless of her stances on homosexuality) seems to be concerned with this call to love. I pray that there might be grace at all times, for those who need it, to remember to always re-centre on Love as the chief mission of our lives and souls and the essence of Christ’s command for obedience.

a queer perspective on Advent: on Spirit, and the Word becoming flesh

It is already the second week of advent and I am hoping to use the time that remains of the season to blog a bit about reconciling sexuality to spirituality. A small word of caution: much of what I will write, as was the case earlier in the year during Lent, is probably going to be rambling and self involved . But, the hope is that these reflections may be of use to someone else. There have been a few site visits to this blog (thank you) ,so the hope is that some of what is on this blog is being received – and hopefully is of use.

The season of Advent brings to the fore a very powerful claim about the nature of the world around us. There is the assertion that Christ, God himself incarnated, came to earth. I think this is such a laden message with so many implications.

At the least, it presents the visible world that we live in as one alongside at least one other dimension of time and of space. Implied in the idea of Christ coming to earth is the existence of an hidden ‘other world’ that is real and that interacts with the seen as it wills.

This idea of a hidden world – concealed from the senses – is one that has fascinated human beings for centuries and across several cultures. And the general consensus among many religions is that yes, our senses are only a part of a more complex network of hidden realms. And it is from this hidden world that Christ materialises.

It sounds quite banal yet, if one stops to consider the full implications of this – it could get interesting. Especially so as a gay man:

Firstly, the unseen/hidden worlds in Christianity are understood in to be shaped by sharp moral boundaries of good/evil, darkness vs. light. And, the task of each individual is to identify their alliance with one of these sides, and to commit to belonging to either ‘side’.

Yet, at the same time, there are some teachers in Christianity that argue that at times there is no choice. Some classes of people are automatically rejected from the good side – or ‘heaven’, the kingdom’, the ‘kingdom of heaven’. There are lists of outcasts that are judged to not meet minimal entrance requirements. Men who have sex with other men are often part of these lists of outcasts of heaven who are doomed for destruction as part of those who have chosen to align with the dark.

I struggle with this reading of the opportunities that exist in the spirit realm for queer men and women. And this struggle stems from my earnest desire and intention to commit toward the light rather than the opposite. I do believe and choose to believe that yes, there is an unseen realm – despite the weirdness of this in an era of science and empiricism. So, how am I to respond to those who would say that there is no chance, no hope for me to find God as someone who not only fully acknowledges my sexual identity but enacts my sexuality through gay sex?

Does the assertion that being gay is equal to evil and eternal damnation have any merits? Is it correct? Do I get excluded from participating in the celebration of light? Do I get automatically excluded from partaking in the joy of Christ coming into the world because I am an unworthy agent for the other team? Does my identity and my sexual identity and practice exclude me from partaking in God and in the parts of the unseen that are good, filled with light and beauty? Am I also a child of God, accepted as I am? Even if I prefer men and sleep with the one man that I love? (or even if the case was that I do sleep with more than one man – does this exclude me from The Light?)

Put crudely, does my participation in gay sex exclude me from ‘heaven’ (whatever this term actually means), from fellowhip with God and the hidden realms of light and goodness?

In the teachings of Christ, I find a teaching that suggests that fellowship with God derives from other sources beyond our sexual orientation and practice. The teachings of Christ seem to be inclusive and concerned with encouraging those who would follow Jesus to focus on their interactions with the weak and marginalised elements of society. This seems to be the criteria by which we all face judgement and access to a Kingdom of light, the Kingdom of Heaven. How we relate to the hungry, the thirsty – basically those in need seems to matter most of all in determining the destiny of our souls.

I also observe in Christ that those who would partake in ‘the Kingdom’ would need to love God, love their neighbours – and be obedient to God’s will.

If I love, if I attend to the needs of the marginalised – surely, this means that even I, as a gay man, have hope of sharing in the joy of a Kingdom of God, and of celebrating Christ’s coming as an event where ‘heaven’ meets our tangible world.

But, ah,there is the question of obedience. By being gay, am I being disobedient and placing myself out of the reach of God’s kingdom and light? And do I need then to stop practicing my homosexuality – having gay sex – to put it crudely?

Discerning God’s will is not an easy task. It is not as simple as just taking out-of-the-context bible verses on homosexuality. Neither does it boil down to the intelligent guesses of either religious leaders or even the conclusions of gay people like myself with an obvious conflict of interest. I would love to say that there is nothing to forbid me from being a practising homosexual. But, I am not sure that there are convincing arguments on what the will of God is for gays. So, I guess the next step in reflecting upon this is to explore what it means to be a gay man who is obedient to God’s will, who can fully enjoy and celebrate the joys of a Christ who has come to earth.

I will reflect on this tomorrow.

A

Basic lessons learnt: Being Gay and Christian

The last few weeks have yielded precious lessons about faith and how to reconcile my Christian beliefs to my sexuality. Many of them are well known but it was great being reminded of these lessons about life, love, spirituality.

These are some of the things that I learned that I hope to carry into real life. This is the last post of the blog for Lent 2012. This was meant to be just for these past weeks, and I am glad to have done it. OI hope to do the same later this year during advent. I pray that all of these lessons will become real in my day to day living:

Be awake, stay alive In the joy of Easter, I learnt to always seek the light, to refuse to blindly accept ideas but to critically question. I learnt not to allow myself to slip into unconscious living, but to be fully aware and awake. I learned to make it my aim to go through life awake, aware, enlightened and alive.

Remember that you are always worthyI learned that validation will not always be available from those I love, but that at my core I shoudl always remember that I am deserving to be here and have a right to be myself. I do not need to diminish myself, or other people. I am valuable even when I do not feel that way.

Learn to Love before all else – put that ahead of even ‘coming out’ I learned that loving others, loving myself, is much more important than coming out – or anything else for that matter. I need to fill my thoughts, words, my heart with love, it is my greatest resource.

Love God passionately No matter what, I need to keep the channels open to God, whatever it takes. I should not let him out my sights. I need to fight to keep love for him alive. My love for God is sufficient, I do not need to be anything else than a person who loves God and others. The rest is noise – including pointless theological ramblings.

The Bible is a complex document, never settle for simplistic interpretations of it while some branches of christianity claim to have the bible as the ultimate authority of their lives, this is always a lie. No one takes the Bible as the only and ultimate authority of their lives, no matter how convinced or deluded they sound. We all weigh up scripture to what is relevant, what works in our time. It is actually impossible to live with the Bible as the only and ultimate authority. Not a sinlgle person does that. We all debate with scripture . What we need to do is hold on to the essence – Our love for God and for others.

Be Grateful Be thankful, do not lose sight of your blessings. Do not take life, other people for granted. Be thankful. Write down your blessings, express thanks.

It’s not all about me. I need to take time to empathise with other people’s suffering and empathise with others, live a life that serves others, it is not all about me.

Be still Get rid of the noise, strive to find quiet and calm. Drop into the core of who you are as often as possible. Get rid of noise, minimise distractions, find peace, don’t be afraid of solitude or the quiet.

Get real Do not be afraid of real, painful truths and realities. When they arise, try to let them flow though you. Feel the anger, feel the shame that others may project onto you and sit with it for a while. Don’t escape from pain. Feel it and gradually allow it to leave, do not resist.

Count the cost Be aware of the very real price and costs of being openly gay and find a way to be at peace with them. It is a huge choice being openly gay. If you need to keep it private for a while, do so. Be aware of the huge costs and remember the price.

Coming out is not as important as it seems , rather it is better to learn to love and to give love, no matter how strong the urge to come out feels. Coming out alone does not make things get better. Rather, learn about how to love yourself, love others and how to be loved – these are more important things. Take the journey to love first.

Be determined Do not give up, even in moments of weakness. Keep walking, push ahead.

Let it all out Tell someone, write it through a blog, speak it out to God, pray, speak to yourself. Express yourself. Do not hold frustrations and fears inside, let it all out.

Get used to Grace Learn to receive grace, nobody is perfect. Give it to others too.

Believe in love, have faith No matter how many times you are bruiesed, learn to love again. Believe in love, do not become disillussioned.

Take a chance, say hello Get rid of shyness, take the first step, strike a conversation. Find community, do not be alone. Find company, do not take the road alone. Make friends, find someone to love. Do not be alone.

Forgive, let go As difficult as it may seem, learn to forgive. Forgive God, forgive others, forgive yourself. Let it go and move on. Leave the past behind.

Check your thoughts Learn to control your thoughts, be conscious of your negative thoughts, get rid of them, replace them with positive ones. Feed your mind with thoughts that will empower and make you grow. Read, write, embrace knowledge, read challenging books, fill your mind with ideas that will take you to where you need to be.

These are some of the very basic lessons learned through my Lenten Journey 2012. What a beautiful journey. I feel the change, I am thankful for that.

29. I am worthy

Holy Saturday Reflection: Through the eyes of Mary

Of all the people that have wondered what Christ’s death meant, I imagine his mother to be the most bewildered and perplexed among them. The crowds vying for her Son’s blood, the deep seated hatred that very powerful people held against him. What did this mean? There would not have been a bible or complex theology to explain substitutionary atonment for her.

Could she trade places with him? In her heart, she knew who he was more than anyone else. He was not what the crowds were accusing him of being. How unjust the moment was. I imagine the events of Christ’s death would have struck her the most.

I imagine that seeing them take him down from a cross, lifeless, would have been one of those moments where assumptions about what one holds to be true are jolted out of the core of one’s being, leaving you disoriented, robbed, shaken, speechless. I wonder how she processed it all.

Perhaps the invisible resources of heaven – strength, courage, peace that passes all understanding came to her aid. Or, perhaps her son had prepared her for the moment.

To my mind, nothing can quite prepare any mother for a moment such as that of a son’s brutal, unjustified death- in this case made worse by hateful, mean-spirited voices actively calling for his death. What a terrible moment it should have been.

I am taking extreme liberty with my interpretation and understanding of events here, but I picture her in the moments of Christ’s death and soon after as inconsolably saddened that her son went through such an ordeal. What would she be if she felt otherwise?

Yesterday, as I listened to the lullaby in the clip below, my thoughts were drawn to the untold moments of Mary with her now lifeless son. In imagining this moment, I appreciate how deep and significant the death of Christ on the cross is and am compelled to let go of pretense. I am drawn to go deeper within myself, to be still and absorb the humourless, morbid, dark aftermath of Christ’s sacrifice.

This goes against some of the training that we receive in mainstream, contemporary culture and even from the label and connotations of what it means to be ‘gay’. It goes against the gay stereotype of the ever smiling, always happy, light headed homosexual. It forces me to take a moment to connect with a pain beyond my own. To live, even for a moment, through the suffering of someone else. It forces me to wipe the smile off my face, get rid of myself maybe even finally get over myself. It pushes me beyond myself into the depths of another being’s suffering.

And, in the midst of finding empathy for Mary, I discover a gem. Perhaps my quest to find fulfilment, to find reconciliation and peace also rests in finding compassion and empathy beyond myself. That sounds as if I am stating the obvious. But, it often is not so apparent. Our struggles, our sense of entitlement to our rights often make it difficult to take time to be with the suffering of others. As it is often said in ‘the culture’, we have enough problems of our own.

Yet, by some cosmic paradox, I find myself when I die and let go of self. I find what I choose to let go off i actually find and hold onto, to paraphrase Christ. I become more aware that as I move beyond myself and take time to sit for a while with a woman from whom I am separated by distance and time, as I empathise with Mary, I become aware of another way of living, of being and of moving beyong my inward looking self-obsession. I discover the sacred depth and significance of Christ’s death. But it only seems to come about as I let go of self.

Good Friday: Perspective, Reconciliation

I guess it all comes back to the foot of the cross of Christ. I see no discrimination in the face of Christ’s death. There is something stark and somber about death that forces the unecessary noise to quieten down.

In my mind’s eye I travel back into time to the day that Christ was nailed to the cross. In his moment of death, I believe that our love for Him is sufficient. He does not ask that we first become perfect, straight, get rid of our gayness. The law and pedantic cultural rules lose their power to manipulate and terrorise. They become inappropriate. The veil that blocks access to God is torn. All are welcomed, our love for him is sufficient. The only fitting response is to draw closer. Pray. Seek His presence. Worship.

I find that my entire perspective changes as I imagine Christ on the cross and I meditate on his suffering. I realise that things like homophobia and other cultural debates are only superficial. I see that the suffering and death of Christ overcomes the inconsequential worries, fears about my being gay or whatever else. I realise that at Christ’s cross, all are accepted. It is ridiculous to imagine otherwise.

In gaining this perspective, it becomes clearer that we can be reconciled, we are reunited to God who is Love. The rest of the noise and mindless chatter simply have no place. I find reconciliation of my faith to my sexuality, of myself to God at the foot of the cross of Christ.

Icons to meditate upon on Maundy Thursday

I find in works of art a certain comfort that what we believe in over the course of this week are events we believe to be authentic and historical. Not necessarily fully accurate, but real. these two are quite powerful ones for me. I am reminded that our struggles are not isolated and new. We share a common struggle that transcends time with Christ and those who, throughout the ages, have chosen to take a path of faith. On the road to reconciling faith and sexuality, I take courage from paintings and art, I take inspiration to pray and to persevere in faith.

The Last Supper

The Garden of Gethsemane

Passionate Christianity/ Sorrowful Mysteries

Came across this video of a long discussion but a worthwhile one – great advice on devling a bit deeper into engaging all our faculties to connect with God through ‘imaginative prayer’.

Holy Week Reflection 4: Getting Real

I wonder what ran through the mind of Jesus the day before the crucifixion, what his intuition was telling him and how he managed to look into the eyes of those he loved while holding a sense of what was to come. It was all becoming real. What was to happen soon was becomong palpable. And, who knows, perhaps he had even caught a few hate-filled glances that suggested something was afoot among the religious establishment who would maybe cup their hands to whisper into each others ears about the troublesome small town rabbi.

Perhaps he was even aware of the details of the plot that was being hatched, having had friends on the inside. He evidently felt the weight of what was to come by the time the evening came. He would share a last supper with his disciples, wash their feet and spend hours in agony as he tried to pray and negotiate with a Heavenly Father who abandoned him wnd refused to let the cup of suffering pass.

I wonder how he would have felt as he saw Judas Iscariot and Peter at the dinner table, knowing exactly what they would do and what the tone of his voice would have been as he told his band of brothers that one of them would betray him. Even more so, I wonder how he felt as Judas left the room to do what he was meant to do. One gets the impression that Christ would have simply been smug and un-bothered from a cursory reading about this moment in cold, lifeless black and white print.

But, what if, in that moment it began to sink in and get more real and he would have had to still his fearful heart. What if Jesus kept wishing that maybe things would get better : Maybe Judas would change his mind, repent, resist the temptation and return to the fold and confess. Maybe God would figure out another, less brutal way to save the world. What if Christ continued to entertain the idea that perhaps something would show up, even up to the last moments of the next day as he hung on the cross? Yet, as we know, there would not be a single sign of mercy or grace, His Father would fall silent.

Yet, he chooses to submit to the moment, he chooses to face and accept the reality of what was happening. He submits to the cruelty of the moment.

I find that a challenge and an example. I see it as a calling to be real and honest with ourselves and about the reality of where we are, what we feel and of our surroundings. I find in Christ on this Thursday of holy week, an encouragment to ‘get real’. To take honest stock of my life, to acknowledge what is not working and to not deny inconvenient realities about myself and life. To confront issues and to take them on, even if it is painful.

I find it as a challenge to not shy away from difficult decisions. To be able to take painful, less travelled roads. And I appreciate that this is so much easier said than done, but on this Maundy Thursday, the invitation to get real, to not despise the road less travelled seems to be very clear to. This may mean choosing to hold on to Christian faith under very hostile conditions and to be openly gay and a believer at the same time. This is not in any way comparable to the suffering of Christ. But, there is encouragement that our struggles are surmountable. There is encouragement in the experience of Christ that while the path is painful – we need to be both fully awake to the very cold, brutal facts of the costs of the choice, and be prepared for difficulty. But ultimately, there is encouragement to continue to take the road and stay on course.