Tonight
begins the 27th day of counting the Omer, in the Jewish Tradition;
Yesod sh’b’Netzach. Yesod is the quality of the Divine, experienced as a firm
foundation, and Netzach is the quality of endurance; the ability to overcome
obstacles. It feels like a fitting
moment, since Heaven knows, it has definitely taken endurance to finally
achieve this milestone, just after my 60th birthday! It’s been a long circuitous path!
When I
started this seminary journey, I thought my activist days in social justice were
behind me. That I was going to slow
down, and enjoy an idyllic and contemplative life of spiritual practice and
chaplaincy. Certainly, it was to be a
coming of full circle, (since my journey into ministry first started in an AIDS
hospice, more than 30 years ago), but it was time for this old war horse to go
to pasture.
If I have
learned anything in these 60 years, it is that Mother Divine has a sense of
humor! I guess she isn’t done with me
quite yet. Because she guided me to a
school which has its yesod – it’s foundation – in Educating to Counter
Oppression. In my first term, the Holy
One began guiding me to my future ministry, when I took Lindi’s Bending the Arc
class. Before I started (in both this
class and in our foundational ECO course), I went in feeling like my life
experience (with over 30 years of justice work) would make these courses more
review than new insights. I was
wrong! I remember thinking “How is it,
with all my experience, I didn’t know this?!” – on more than one occasion!
My final
project that first term, was to address the topic of queer youth experiencing
homelessness. That project put me back
in dialogue with an organization for which I had served on their board, in the
early 2000’s; The Community of Welcoming Congregations. This in turn led to doing my field work
practicum, with CWC. But it also
“accidently” led me down a path that has further refined my sense of calling,
when I recognized the deep level of religious wounding that still exists within
the LGBTQ community.
I remember a
conversation I had at one point with a classmate, where I posited the idea that
the trauma experienced by queer youth and the trauma being experienced by
Mother Earth, likely have the same root cause, and that if we could identify that, then maybe, wisdom could lead us
to healing many wounds. This same theme
resurfaced in numerous courses over the past 3 years; certainly, in Hugo’s Queer
Studies class, but also as Chris Fry guided my memoir; all the way down to Faryn’s
wonderful exploration of Jewish Liberation Theology. I have come to believe that all of the social
justice issues we struggle with: racism, misogyny, capitalism, queer &
transphobia, anti-Semitism, Islamaphobia and the fevered destruction of our
planet are indeed symptoms of the religious wounding caused by the
hegemony inherited from Christo-colonizers; as they began exporting fear and
hate as tools for controlling the masses.
No one
person can take it all in, let alone take it all on. We are each called, to serve in unique ways,
to heal the soul of humanity. But like
Nachshon, (who was the first to step into the Red Sea, so the waters could part),
it is only for us to step into the work, for miracles to happen.
For my part,
where The Divine has called me to step, came as such an unexpected
miracle. I am (as of 2 months ago) the
new executive director of The Community of Welcoming Congregations, serving all
of Oregon and SW Washington. I am blessed
that the board and our 100 congregations want to follow the work of that early
vision; to create sanctuary for queer youth experiencing homelessness, and to
begin to heal queer and straight
congregants from the trauma of religious wounding. We have been given a firm
foundation, here at Starr King. And God
gives us the endurance to Bend the Arc, toward justice.
ot;:[&
