Fay…Gay…& On-The-Way

Rufus Wainwright – Hallelujah” mce_src=”

Rufus Wainwright – Hallelujah” alt=”” border=”” hspace=”” vspace=”” width=”” height=”” align=”” />

<object width=”13″ height=”13″ classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”http://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=7,0,0,0&#8243; allowNetworking=”internal”> <param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”sameDomain” /><param name=”FlashVars” value=”resourceID=1062103&flp=false” /> <param name=”movie” value=”http://static.last.fm/webclient/inline/3/inlinePlayer.swf&#8221; /><param name=”quality” value=”high” /><param name=”bgcolor” value=”#ffffff” /><embed wmode=”transparent” src=”http://static.last.fm/webclient/inline/3/inlinePlayer.swf&#8221; quality=”high” FlashVars=”resourceID=1062103&flp=false” bgcolor=”#ffffff” width=”13″ height=”13″ name=”inlinePlayer” allowNetworking=”internal” allowScriptAccess=”sameDomain” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer&#8221; /> </object> <a href=”http://www.lastfm.pl/music/Rufus+Wainwright”>Rufus Wainwright</a> – <a href=”http://www.lastfm.pl/music/Rufus+Wainwright/_/Hallelujah”>Hallelujah</a&gt;

For “Tha Bish”….. on google’s blogger is an ancient blog entitled
“Not Your Usual Missionary Position”…. You’ll need to “google” for the blog; I’m sorry I can’t make a link work. Lo siento….Just more of “never an undocumented thought”……. Love, oonie

I hope Rufus Wainwright’s “Hallelujah” plays for you at “Not In Seminary Anymore But Wish I Were”…it’s one of my favorite pieces of music, as is the link to the lyrics of “Remember Me” at the end of the blog.

Some months ago, with encouragement from a very very special person, who shall remain nameless unless said person chooses to identify huself, I began intentional prayer to my patron saint, Brigid of Kildare. In prayer/trance/meditation/whatever one chooses to call what it is that I do when I’m able to lose myself in God’s Love and Presence, I began to write. I’d never shared anything this personal with anyone, not even my beloved spouse. But write I did; and send I did, in an email to this beloved person. I choose to share with you all, my personal “beloved community.”

The Ancients and The Fay both call
Both to nourish my heart and soul
Where the body moves and cries to Justice
To Iona, to Skellig, to Glendalough, to Tara and Meath
To Ulster, to Belfast, to Derry, to Portadown, to Armagh and Oomagh

I call down The Powers of the Ancient Ones
I call down The Powers of the Most High
I call down The Powers of the beehive Saints in Cells
I call down The Powers of the Moon and Sun
I call down The Powers of the Mists and Rain
I call down The Powers of the Green and Her Very Stones

To come….to come….to home….to home….
To circle the wells
To leave the clooties

I come as a Daughter of Erin
I come as the Daughter of Grady

I ask to come as a Pilgrim
I come to walk in the mists
and I come to follow The Way

—————-

If You want me to work alongside others
to raise up the all new Irish
If You want me to work to heal the Troubles
If You want me to stand alongside of
and stand up for the Travellers
Then You have to get me there first
You have to change Kilkenny’s heart
You have to make it beat for You like a bodhran
You have to bring us home!

—————–
Brigid, Come get me
Brigid, Call me
Brigid, Heal me
Brigid, I follow.

Brigid, Take me Home
Brigid, Bring me Home
Brigid, Make my bed
Brigid, Be with me
Brigid, I come
—————-

Irish Dove of God, Columba
Whose Home is and within the Derry walls
The place of the Oak
Bring me to your HomeLand
Move me to the Bogside
So that the Voices of my people
Sing me to sleep
Even into the Sleep of Death
I want to Go Home
I want to Come Home

In the very recent past, someone from Albuquerque (for God’s sakes) on the Anglican GLBT site was going on and on about a Rosary prayed during the celebration of the Feast Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I got so tired of it all, I had to respond.

It is fascinating, watching and reading the tempest stirred by La Morenita’s light Christian dusting of syncretism. Fascinating to watch and read the controversy stirred by the Goddess Tonantzin, barely cloaked in the Church’s peculiar restraint, tricked out (for some, only some) as Virgin Meek and Mild. I’m delighted to discover the power of the “feminine face of the Divine” still disturbs.

Upon first reading of the rounding Rosary on ‘Lupe’s Feast Day at the Episcopal parish in Albuquerque, I felt as if La Morenita had been insulted. It was as if someone thought, “Oh, here’s a day we do something Mexican and Roman Catholic for a Mexican apparition. There’s nothing more Mexican and RC than a Rosary. And we won’t even pray an entire decade; we’ll do Rosary-lite!” If I were playing word association about OLOG, I’m sure “Rosary!” would never occur to me. When I think of La Morenita, I don’t first think Mexican (in a contemporary sense) so much as I think aboriginal/First Peoples/Indigenous. I think Zapata, Hidalgo, Cesar Chavez, Eduardo Fernandez SJ. How many actions and manifestations carry ‘Lupe’s banner? How many homes bid us welcome from an altar grounded in the image of OLOG, proclaiming hospitality as the bedrock of social justice, social action?

Revolution! yes; perpetual rose-smelling Rosary? Hardly. Unless one remembers and then ACTS the revolutionary, social action call-to-justice of the Magnificat.

But then I’m paternally Irish (maternally Sioux–a double dose of glossed Christianity), raised on Brigid of Kildare (Mary of the Gael) and her beloved Darlughdach (lover, we all hope), Maeve, Maud Gonne, Grace O’Malley, Mother Jones, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Rosemary Nelson. My personal Irish Mary is not at Knock; she is in community of a Lavery triptych, wild-haired and barefooted, stomping through RC Belfast’s Troubles and on the Fall Road, a force to overcome Empire’s genocide through Peace, Prayer, Power, and politics, smack dab in the middle of Irish life, incarnate in suffering and redemption.

Unfortunately and all too typically, most Episcopanglicans fail to leap into mentioning, much less acting, out of a position of social justice, even when given an opportunity to speak of Catholic Social Teaching, Liberation Theology, and the power of the Arts to heal and transform. Even when CST could be the springboard to a common heritage of Anglicanism’s unique Social Gospel. In terms of social justice, Rome does it best (no offense to Quakers, UU’s, and Mennonites. I’m thinking liturgically here, folks). All those mighty Jesuits, super Franciscans, edgy Maryknolls.

Many have written about her symbols. Learned articles attempt to explain away her unusual shape, when every feminist/womanist knows a vulva when she sees it, ‘Lupe’s head the Universal Clitoris. Our Lady of Guadalupe is sensual, overtly pregnant. She seems grounded, earthy, strong. ‘Lupe examplifies my personal Mariology. This is no perpetual virgin, I pray. To birth the godhead with hymen intact seems ludicrous. Yes, there has been much power for women in the power of Virgin in community (John Dominic Crossan says “whore” means not connected to a man through marriage, father, or mother of a famous son), throughout the history of Christianity; again Rome still does it best! But the history of “The Feminine Face of God” in Christianity was practically FORCED, early on, by those who came to Xanity out of Isis and her Goddess Sisters; Christianity, the Institution, dusted off Mary to give those who needed a goddess, and if not a goddess, then, at least SOMETHING. And The People have made Her their own; and womyn, feminists, and womanists claim her power in many forms. Even secular feminists have been known to rave.

I, for one, have always thought that monasteries and convents were Rome’s gift to gays, Lesbians, etc.–or the equivalent for the time and culture–as a way to be and live in community of like-minded and gendered souls. Sure, there is a call to celibacy, I believe. Just as there is a call to abstinence. It’s that whole channeling the fires of desire stuff, the Divine energy of Creation the same energy as sexual energy. Sex, being more than actual intercourse, at least in my opinion. Some of the sexiest people on the planet are celibate.

Myth, Symbol, Metaphor. To me it’s ALL Myth, Metaphor, and Symbol, at a great great power it is intended. To me, we trivialise when we literalise. There is mighty M/mystery surrounding La Morenita’s Numinous Inexplicable.

Even though Rosemary Radford Ruether takes issue with this poem, Clarrisa P. Estes, Jungian, feminist, and activist paints our Guadalupe as the guurrrl many of us adore:

“Mi Guadalupe is a girl gang leader in heaven.
She is unlike the pale blue serene woman.
She is serene, yes like a great ocean is serene.
She is obedient, yes, like the sunrise
is obedient to the horizon line.
She is sweet, yes,
like a huge forest of sweet maple trees.
She has a great heart, vast holiness
and like any girl gang leader ought,
substantial hips.
Her lap is big enough
to hold every last one.
Her embrace
Can hold us,
All.”

from The Panama News

Gay church in Panama

Yes, Virgin-ia, there is a gay church in Panama. We all know there are umpteen gay priests; but only this church claims it loud and claims it proud. She may be bi and married to a man, but Our Lady of the Rainbow is here.

Last February 1, on the Feast of Brigid of Kildare, Bishop William C. “Rusty” Clyma, III, bishop of St Savior’s Inclusive Celtic Episcopal Church-San Francisco, and his spouse/partner, the Rev’d. George McCauslan, traveled to Panama City to ordain the then-deacon oonagh to the priesthood. In attendance, as presenters were members of AHMNP and UNAIDS, her husband — “my true tribe.”

Since then (and before) Amma oonagh has traveled the length and breadth of Panama, carrying the church “in the streets” for those who ask. Weddings, blessings, baptisms, adoptions, hand-fastings, Pride eucharists, World AIDS Day memories and vigils, house blessings, bar blessings, labyrinth walks. “You name it,” she claims,”we’ll write and pray a service! And I do mean ‘we.’ I’m not very good at being ‘Tha Man.’ This is your life; I’m your humble servant and people have a right to agree and disagree on what is said and done in sacred spaces…There is a common denominator of a ‘gay spirituality’ that speaks out of oppression and speaks from Liberation Theology, and most especially a way of thinking-being-and living in the world. My favorite book is Marcella Anthus-Reid’s ‘Indecent Theology;’ my other favorite theologian is Ivone Gebara. Both of these women come from the tradition of Liberation Theology, born right here in Latin America, speaking deeply from our experiences here that have always been deeply rooted in ‘The New World’ and the ‘Old Old’ of the New World that’s powerful and aboriginal, not Spanish, English, French, or US.”

One need not be Christian either. “We are all sacred beings of The Divine One. I use Christian language because that is my tradition, but I’m far from what is usually considered traditional, thank the God/dess!” she grins. “I believe we might be closer to what Jesus had to say about people…Early Church meeting 21st century people meets monastic prayer meets Gaelic and English..and now Spanish…My personal theology is as much a blend of my DNA, a Sioux mother and an Irish father, as it has to do with eight years in seminary; much of who I am has as much to do with Earth-based spirituality as it does with so-called Christian anything. We adapt lots of liturgy from Iona and other Celtic-Christian work and prayers. We practice a way of being church, a verb, as God is a verb, that’s about small groups and house church intimacy and safety; we call it ‘Brigid’s Mantle.’ You can read the story on the website. The ‘old’ of the Earth and Creation never left Ireland; it’s still there, underground, but it’s alive. Just as many RC nuns walk the sacred wells as lay people. Mary Daly is in Ireland. Starhawk danced the Spiral Dance in Ireland. If I don’t honour my Irish heritage then I’m doing a disservice to who and how I am. It’s one of the reasons I’m a member of ICEC, that intentional Celtic connection. The primary reason I’m a priest in this gay church is I couldn’t wait for my former Church to quit arguing about the full rights of Baptism with GLBT folk. A bumper sticker reads: Women, if we’re not going to ordain them, then stop baptizing them.’ The same has been said of GLBT folk; certainly my favorite t-shirt claims that. I’m not here to convert anyone…to anything! I’m here to walk with people, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with people in their lives. For me, that’s the real sacred, in the day to day. That’s where the real miracles are. And besides God is Metaphor, Mystery, and Something Greater Than We That’s About Love And Relationships. That’s how I see it anyway, this day. Ask me tomorrow when I might not be able to say there is a God, whatever G/god is.”

Our Lady of the Rainbow/Nuestra Senora del Arco Iris and the Inclusive Celtic Episcopal Church use inclusive language. They honour the gay saints of Christendom and some of those like William Stringfellow, Martin Luther King, Jr., the s/heroes of Stonewall, and Harvey Milk are not officially canonized, “but that doesn’t matter…a saint’s a saint and a martyr is a martyr. Anyone here can speak to the life of Oscar Romero, the blessed, brilliant, and wonderful Jesuits, the Maryknolls, the ‘Disappeared.’” The liturgies and homilies are specifically addressed towards GLBT rights. “I’ll wear a collar into a gay bar in Panama City; I’ll have a few drinks; I’ll smoke a cigar; I’ll wear a collar to a GLBT movie showing. But you’ll usually find me in a nahua, whether I’m wearing a collar or not. They are beautiful walking rainbows and I love the Ngobe. They’re my other community.”

She hopes all her work in life reflects social justice. “I’m not so much interested in social works, although that is important. Churches with only ‘feeding programs’ raise my eyebrows. I come from the Father Robert Warren Cromey School of Church that lives and teaches an actual change in poverty, homelessness, hunger, education, housing, and health care — especially for women and children. Otherwise, what is the point? Sure a feeding program is important and necessary. But without the other, you’re just only making yourself feel less guilty.” The words of a hero, Camera say: When I gave food to hungry people, they called me a saint: when I asked why people are hungry, they called me a Communist. “I don’t know if anyone could call anyone from the US a real live Communist, but I could certainly pass as a Christian Socialist.” A life-long gay rights advocate and “fag hag,” her work before ordination was in hospice and AIDS-advocacy. She’s been working with WPA before we called it HIV, before ARC, before GRID. Her most “fun” job was as a chaplain on the NAIAD, the San Francisco Neptune Society’s yacht, where five days a week you’d find her blessing cremains scattered into the San Francisco Bay. She dreams of establishing a hospice in Panama.

Included are pictures of the cathdral/bishop’s see in San Francisco. The other picture is most of us ordained folks at San Francisco’s Pride. The silver-haired man is oonagh+’s spouse Kenny, an Episcopal priest in Bocas. Mother oonagh struggles with Spanish. “Language is not my gift; I was in terminal remedial Old Testament Greek” but with twenty-four hours notice, I can read the Mass in Spanish and in 72 hours, with translation assistance, I can preach in Spanish. On a good day and with lots of assistance from mi amiga Meri Elvia, I might be able to utter a few Ngobe words.”

For more information, please email: ammagh.oonagh@gmail.com or check http://www.myspace.com/ammaoonagh for ongoing revisions, music, images, thoughts. Celtic Advent reflections are at http://www.ammaghoonagh.wordpress.com named “Fay, Gay, and On The Way”.

The Rev’d. oonagh Ryan-King
The Inclusive Celtic Episcopal Church
http://inclusivecelticchurch.com/stsavior1.aspx

I’ll not be able to blog until Sunday or Monday.Today, as you know, is Thanksgiving in the US. It is the Feast Day of JFK. It is also the Feast Dday of Kenny’s late wife, Jan, the mother of my darling Jason and the Force of Nan. I had a very bizarre dream about the family last night; I’ll be weeks processing it.Wednesday was spent waiting for the power to be on long enough to go to the ATM, to iron clothes, and get the truck filled with diesel. Filling the tank took two trips.I’m on my way to the Ngobe-Bugle Comarca for three days of teaching and testing with UNAIDS and AHMNP. Right now, we don’t know if we’ll be returning to David every evening, trying to find a place closer than a 2 hour daily commute, or if we’ll actually be able to stay on the Comarca. Regardless of our decision, there will not be adequate internet service (none on the Comarca of course. and probably none in any wee town betwen here and David. The reasonable rate hotel in David (hot water, quiet, great cable, air conditioning) still has dial-up service, which I have not the patience to attempt anymore.I have a few words to say about blogging services. I chose wordpress for this blog because it is the only free blogging service I found with an easy “translatable” quasi-Celtic looking theme. It is not easy to use. Embedding or imbedding music is muy complicado! And I like my playlists going when I blog. I like blogmac but it’s a free five blog-only trial service, at this point, and we are not sure if we want to take blogmac money and apply it toward OSX’s new Leopard, which has iword and ilife, I think–or simply purchase blogmac. I used typepad once upon a time, as a test, and I really liked it; but it is quite expensive. I can understand why professional writers would choose it, though. It looks so good and it is so simple. Google’s blogger is much simpler than wordpress; certainly it’s somehow more intuitive; but I’m not sure I want to get into the headache of trying to translate a theme. Same is true with macblog. Every day, it seems, I stumble upon a new and different “challenge” with WordPress. I’m also trying Opera again; I usually use Camino for browsing; Opera doesn’t seem to like WordPress or vice versa. Maybe I’ll get better. I have patience; I just can’t wait!While we’re in and out of power (and water), I’ve discovered that it’s safer to use pen and paper and then move it to word processing (I’m still searching for the perfect word processing application. I’m not a fan of Word. I miss old ClarisWorks.I’m still trying to make my iLike work. Mercury must be retrograde! These are not my best computer days.So, my love and prayers are with you all. Please keep Jason and Nan in your prayers. Remember the bright eternal flame of Camelot.I’m not only thankful to know you all; I am honoured. You are as much family as Kenny. I am blessed.oonie on the Comarca, with gay men! Ahhh.

The path I walk, Christ walks it. May the land in which I am be without sorrow.

May the Trinity protect me wherever I stay, Love/Lover/Love-Ever-Over-Flowing.

Bright angels walk with me–dear presence–in every dealing.

In every dealing I pray them that no one’s poison may reach me.

The ninefold people of heaven of holy cloud, the tenth force of the stout earth.

Favorable company, they come with me, so that the Sovereign may not be troubled by me.

May I arrive at every place, may I return home; may the way in which I spend be a way without loss.

May every path before me be smooth, man, woman, and child welcome me.

A truly good journey! Well does the fair Sovereign show us a course, a path.

Today I’m publishing an old, old sermon. But it’s Kenny’s favorite of all my sermons. (I like the Cats of Christendom sermons, myself)

CREATING JERUSALEM FROM BABYLON

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon. This was after King Jeconiah, and the queen mother, the court officials, the leaders of Judah and Jerusalem, the artisans, and the smiths had departed from Jerusalem. The letter was sent by the hand of Elasah son of Shaphan and Gemariah son of Hilkiah, whom King Zedekiah of Judah sent to Babylon to King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. It said: Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. Jeremiah 29. 1-7

Published in “The Trinity Newsletter,” San Francisco, May 2000; written for “Urban Ministry” class with The Rev’d. Doctor J. Alfred Smith, Sr. (Allen Temple Baptist Church, Oakland CA and ABSW, GTU, Berkeley CA)What is left after leaders and artists have abandoned the City and its life? Who is left to care for the City and those who remain? What happens to a society when its artisans have fled, leaving behind others unable to go? I read Jeremiah and I hear the pain and I imagine the fear of what will happen to those remaining? Are they so poor they cannot leave? Are they forever stuck in an urban ghetto with seemingly no way out?The call to all exiles is a powerful one. The call is to make the City home; to create, to recreate a full and rich life, even fuller and richer than before. The call is to live, to live fully in this City, to treat it as one’s very own, because it has become that-the City of those people in exile.The people are called to pray for the City. They are called to pray for one another and for future generations of that City. This is a call to rebuild, to set free those in exile.What does this say to me today about an inner city struggle? What does this say to leaders of cities where people of other cultures are in exile for whatever reason? What does this say to the leaders of people exiled from the “First Worlds” of Silicon Valleys and gated communities? Whom do those leaders serve? Do they serve those in exile or do they serve those of greater economics and power?I cannot speak for political and economic leaders. I cannot speak for the Church either. But I can speak from my heart and I can speak out of a Liberation Theology that says to church leaders, ministers, and elders, lay and clergy alike. I would echo the words of Paulo Freire and say to those leaders to teach the children and adults, and to let those children and adults teach back. Do not bank information in-to brains, but listen with hearts and minds to the hearts and minds of those oppressed and marginalized. Listen to their stories; they have much to give and share. They know the City. They walk her back and side streets. They know the paths of safety and paths of danger. They walk both every day. These exiles travel in our midst every day. They sit in our pews. They stand on our street corners. They youth speed their cars up and down the streets of the City in the early hours in the morning, disturbing many with peel-offs and the screeches of brakes. They ride on the same BARTS and buses that many of us do. I choose public transportation because this is where the people of the City are. We of the Church are called to encourage creativity. We are called to give hope when hope is failing. We have the words of a man who chose a City in which to tell the world his empowering message. We have Jesus, the GodMan who came to give freedom to all.God made us for God’s Self-to be whole and embodied. The arts are still alive in the City even if the known artists have fled. There remain artists and those creative. Give them blank walls for murals and paper and paint for splashing. Take them to concerts and operas and let them hear the gifts of those artists who have gone before. Give them instruments to play and computers on which to create. Then listen to their music. Invite yourself to the concerts of the people of the City; support those who drum on plastic at Sather Gate and in parks. Let the Church give her music of liberation to the people of the City. Give them spirituals and songs of freedom. Give them the Message of Hope, God’s hope of wholeness and love. We are not the only bearers of hope in the City, though. Those who live there, too, have hope-many of them. Listen to their hopes and dreams. It is our task to encourage those dreams and to help them rebuild the City.I am a white woman who lives with a white man in a teeny house in East Oakland. We deliberately chose to live here as a part of our ministry. But we realize we must appear the ultimate in luxurious living-the life of graduate students. We are surrounded by blue collar and frayed-collar working people. We attend neighborhood and block meetings. There are concerns and fears of these people whose homes surround ours. I have suggestions and questions for our neighbors, but I do not feel I have the (white) right to say them yet. These people have been on this block for years and have seen much, have feared much, have suffered much, have lived much. I am sure it is thought that we will move on, will not make East Oakland our home. We have not done our time. We are part of the domination system, to quote Walter Wink-we of the white world. We have much to learn from those people of colour who live around us. It seems our task to at first be still, to listen, and to quietly encourage. We must first establish trust. This may be our task of the City, in our efforts to give hope-to be still and to shut up our white Domination System’s power and to listen.Jeremiah’s call to prayer is an important one. Prayers change things and people. I invite the people of the City to pray for the leaders. Invite the people of the City to pray before casting a ballot. Invite the people of the City to protests and to acts of civil disobedience. Pray that the Church will support and bail out of jail those arrested for nonviolent civil disobedience. I feel frustration when there are no, or few, people of color at protests and demonstrations. The leaders of city blocks, of cities themselves, need our prayers. They also need to hear the concerns of those in exile. Even though the time of this world is fleeting, it is our task, our God-given task, stated in Jeremiah, to inhabit the City, to embody her with exiles who make the City their own. If one can choose to view the city as a place in which the Kingdom of God can break through, then the people will experience the Reign of God in the here and now. This, I believe, is key. It is the key for change. It is the message of Jeremiah. It is the Gospel message of Jesus.

THE FRACTION, STOWE MISSAL–“Cognouerunt Dominum”

They recognised The Monarch, Alleluia
In the breaking of the Bread. Alleluia.
For the bread that we break is the body of our Sovereign Jesus Christ, Alleluia;
The cup which we bless is the blood of our Sovereign Jesus Christ, Alleluia.
For the remission of our sins, Alleluia.
O Sovereign, let your mercy come upon us, Alleluia;
For how we have hoped in you, Alleluia.
They recognised The Sovereign, Alleluia;
In the breaking of the Bread, Alleluia.

We believe, O Sovereign, we believe that in this breaking of your body
and pouring out of your blood we become redeemed people;
We confess that by our sharing of this Sacrament we are strengthened
to endure in hope until we lay hold
and enjoy its true fruits in the heavenly places.

I’ve been on this Journey to ICEC my whole life. Sure, that’s a way to look at a life. But it actually makes a lot of sense. I’m alive on this planet today because of the courage of gay men. One beautiful, spring-like Epiphany, a group of gay men rescued me from a sidewalk in Houston TX, where a man had kicked me to the ground, put a knife to my throat, and promised he was going to kill me. When I made eye contact with this man I realised he intended me harm and started screaming “Fire!” (one does not scream “Help/Murder/Rape” but “Fire!” because people will come out to see if their house is burning down) At any rate, a group of gay men, in literal Leather, came out to rescue me and send a few of their running jocks out after my fleeing attacker. In that time and at that time, in that place–the Montrose–there was a vigilante group after gay men. I was buffed and beautiful; I had super short, spiky hair all plastered down from running and headphones; my breasts were bound in a jog-bra covered up by a baggy sweatshirt; I had on gym shorts over sweatpants. Two Lesbian psychologists put me in touch with a number of gay men who’d been accosted and attacked by a man fitting the description of my attacker. I was the victim of a gay hate crime. At that time the AIDS fear was at a peak. I can remember thinking, “Oh, it’s just a virus that a 1:10 bleach:water solution kills”; these folks risked their lives to save mine; I’m spending the rest of my life in solidarity with the folks who’d always saved my life; with a group of folks who continue to save my life, in so many ways.

I was born into a household of totally atypical Southern Baptists, two people whose theology had nothing much to do with the SBC, a witchy Native American woman/mother and an Irish-American, Fenian/father. From an early age I knew I was no more a Southern Baptist than I was a Republican! In high school and nursing school I started exploring different faiths. I first thought I might be RC…or Jewish. But I realised that connection was about family, something this only child wanted, a big extended family.

From an early age of about five I discovered St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Jackson MS. The Beauty of that place drew me into Confirmation. And there I remained, discerning, until 2004.