Coming Out Monologues - What I Didn't Say.

 I wrote two different monologues.  This is the one I didn't share because I don't know if I believe it.  

Amazing grace… how sweet… the sound, that saved… a wretch… like me.  I once was lost… but now am found, was blind… but now… I see.

Can I get an Amen?

Amen

Hallelujah 

When I was but a young child, 10 or 11 small years lived, the Spirit, spoke in the softest of voices to me.  So soft that I didn’t realise it was her.  I spoke my impression to a friend, a new found realisation about self. Too embarrassed to say sex, I whispered to my friend, “I’d rather do it with a girl than a boy.”

Silence was her response.

I tried to take back my word, erase what I had said.

But I had spoken words of God for they were words of truth.

I lived in denial.  The Spirit had reached out to me, but I would not accept the truth.

How dark it is to deny the Spirit of God.  To deny truth is to walk through the valley of shadow and death, blind and alone.

Seven years went past before I glimpsed at truth again.  A friend reached out to me, inviting me to see who God had created me to be.

He knit me together in mother’s womb.

But I believed it was wrong to be me.  Not that God had made a mistake, but I lived in fear of messing up.  My friend came to me as a prophetess, and I rejected her.  That was my mistake.

You can be prophets.  Share your truth!  Let other’s reject it if they choose.  Worry not, for you shall have done your job.

Woe to those who deny the prophets, for they live in darkness.

I lived in darkness and lies.  I dated with out love, and loved without action. I lived but was not alive.

In the centre of Babylon, mourners lied down, dressed in black wailing the loss of those they loved, those who were told their love was unnatural, sinful.

God is love.  Love, all love is of God.  

Children, refused the love of God, had taken their lives.  Mourners on the street protested “this should not be!”  I sat with them, but I didn’t understand.

How lost, was I.  How far from the truth.  By the river of Babylon I had no words, no tears and no love.

“Repent!” says the spirit.  She calls to me, she opens my eyes to the hopelessness of my path.  “Repent, Turn, Love.”

I saw the warning, but I did not heed it.  Determined I carried on in the wrong direction. I damned, not only myself, on the path of destruction, but sought to bring others down with me.

This is what it means to be lost, hardened against truth, rejecting light, until it came in the form of an Angel.

My Angel came.  And just and Jesus himself did, my Angel met me where I was at.  She didn’t sparkle to the common eye, but in the lowly state she took to be with me, I saw her glory.  Her splendour was interior, but, thanks be to God, I was allowed to see it.  Her splendour was her love.  It took a while for her brilliant love to wear at the hard walls of my soul, but she didn’t give up on me.  Her patience was a river, ever flowing, ever eroding my exterior.

I am saved!  I have been found!  I have experienced the light and love of God.  Now I see.  When I ignored the Spirit of God, the prophetess, the warnings, God’s love pursued me.  He sent his Angel to rescue me.  God is love and love is love.  This love is for each of you!  This love is available now, for you and you and you.

“Come,” the Spirit cries “Come, be found.  See.”  Do not wait any longer.  Now, today is the time.

I say God is good.  You say all the time.  I say all the time.  You say God is good.

God is good

All the time

All the time

God is good.

Amen

The Search

**5**

Invite Jesus into your heart, my Sunday school teacher says. I do. Over and over again I do, but if I never feel a change, how can I know it worked? What does it feel like to have a grown, bearded man, robed in blue and white, living inside my heart? Is he wearing a crown of thorns when he enters in?

**11**

Give your life to Jesus, the camp speaker says. Surrender all you are. Commit your life to him. I do. Over and over again, I pray, I read the Bible. I fast. I am baptised. What does it feel like to be dead to the natural man, alive in Christ? If I don’t feel different, am I doing it wrong?

**15**

I choose my story, the Christian author says, I choose what I want in my story, and I know what I don’t want. I don’t want sin. I don’t want attractions towards women. I don’t want to be gay. I make the choice solid. I commit fully to God’s plan, not my desires. I am happy, right? I may not know who I am. I write dark poetry about being alone. I think about hurting myself, a cry for attention, but surely God is attentive to me. I don’t need, nor deserve the attention of others. If God is with me, must I feel so alone?

**18**

I’ve been promised a personal relationship with God. I seek to know this being I follow. I plan to isolate myself from others. I don’t need human relationships, I need God. I imagine sitting on the floor, hiding beneath over-the-ear headphones on my first day of Bible college. I can’t afford the headphones that I imagine, so I settle for the earphones that come with the MP3 player I buy for this purpose. I sit and observe the other students. I am not here for them. I am here to know God. As the year passes, I do meet the other students, I write about the Trinity, but God never shows up. Where is he?

**19**

At Bible camp, I watch as parents show up with a cake for their son. No one knows it is my birthday too. No one celebrates me. Surely the God who formed me, who knit me together in my mother’s womb, surely he know. That ought to be enough. I can quote the scriptures, but I cry in the basement, alone. Does God see me? Can’t he send some one my way to cheer me up?

**20**

I head to Bible college again; different school, different city, new friends. I’m still seeking for that relationship with God. I still avoid getting too involved in social aspects, but I do enjoy community with my roommates. I attend a new church, but find only performance and noise. Is God in the textbooks? The hymnal? Can he really speak directly to me?

**23**

At work I share with youth this good news that I’ve been promised. There is a loving God who can help every youth overcome every challenge. God can help in all situations. In my secret thoughts I wonder why God helps some frantic wealthy woman find her car keys, when every day there are children dying of hunger in Chad. I wonder, if he doesn’t care about the children dying across the world, why would he care about my dad, dying of cancer? Why does God help others, but never me?

**24**

And why doesn’t God comfort me after my dad passes? Why do I try so hard to be righteous, but feel so alone? I’ve memorised scriptures, I’ve written papers, I’ve prayed, but it has made no difference. I wonder if I can find comfort somewhere else. I wonder if sinful living is the path to choose. Yet, as I list vices, none of them appeal much to me. I go through Christian motions, but my heart drifts from the hope it once held. God makes no difference in my life. My belief in him isn’t what makes me a good person, so why believe in him?

**25**

I’ve given up, and yet, I am drawn back by missionaries who once again promise a relational God. They are patient with my questions, sure in their answers. I want to believe. I want to believe in the hope they offer. I want to believe there is goodness and reason in the messiness of life. I desire again for evidence of this being, count every song that pops into my head as a sign. Get baptised, the missionaries say. I do. I participate in community. I accept who I am, a little bit. For the first time say the words, I’m gay. I wonder why God still wants me to marry a man. His plans seem to work great for everyone else, but are they really what is best for me? Why can’t God have a personal plan for me?

**27**

I go on a mission to put off thoughts of marriage. I go on a mission longing to connect with the spiritual, to hear God’s voice, to heed his direction. I go on a mission hoping my commitment to serve God will earn me a personal experience with him. I go on a mission believing that God, who has so often remained silent in my life, will speak into the lives of others. I learn again to hide my sexuality, to fake spirituality, to assume my thoughts are from God. I learn how dark anxiety feels. I remember how lonely I can feel in the presence of people. I don’t give up. The weight of responsibility presses on my shoulders, but I push against it. I choose to be joyful, I find life in music. At times I journey with others, at times I fight alone. Does God ever take my side, or does he just watch from the sideline? Why, after all my effort, don’t I see miracles?

**30**

I love her. I intend just to be her friend, but I love her. More importantly, she loves me. I feel that love. We could just be friends, but I know what I want. It is not the voice of my Sunday school teacher, the voice of the camp speaker, the voice of the missionaries, nor that of any other religious leader. It is a voice from within me. Our love is tangible, and I want to give my whole self to this woman. Do I love her more than I love God, my bishop asks me. Yes, and I’ve felt her love in ways I’ve never felt the love of God. We have a very personal relationship. She cares about me and validates me in ways I only hoped God would. The choice is easy. I abandon the religion which makes me choose, and we marry. Does God rejoice with me?

**31**

We don’t hate God, and we don’t hate religion, so we choose to explore churches willing to accept our relationship. Something within me always draws me back to churches. It isn’t the music nor the sermons. It isn’t the theology which I spent years studying. As I search for God, I asked, can a community be God to me? Can a church be Jesus? I had sought tirelessly for a relationship with God, but had I missed the point when I overlooked human relationships? Perhaps to feel love from God was to feel love from people. My wife and I searched for such a community until we found a place where I can believe that God is love, because it is a community of love. A place where I can believe that God cares, because they care. A place where I can believe that God accepts me, because they accept me. So, I have found the love, compassion and acceptance of God, without any certainty that there is a divine being. Perhaps I could have found this earlier, but it wasn’t what I’d been looking for. Promises of magical intervention, lofty visions, had my eyes focused away from the Christlike love of others. How can I spread this love?

I watched the CES broadcast... well, most of it, and most of it was enough.  I found it disappointingly apologetic and proof-texty.  Apologetics are good for assuring those who already have faith, but from my experience they do little to convince someone to believe something new.  Elder Tad R. Callister speaks to a crowd that nods along.  They are eager to hear what he has to say.  His words fill their desire to be affirmed.  They say "you are right."  I'm sure college students around the globe left the fireside with confidence, feeling ready to return to secular universities, ready for any "anti-material" that might come their way.  They now felt a confidence that their church, was right.  They'd heard the scripture to back up this claim.

Problematically, many take the scripture and produce it as evidence to support their church, or their beliefs.  As many examples and quotations can be given, as Elder Callister gave, and yet different conclusions are reached.  Others look to the scripture as a way God acted, but not as the only way God can act.  They suggest the sacraments are the usual way, but not the only way.  Is God bound by the sacraments?  A more basic question I find myself asking is: Is God?

But, back to the scriptures.  So many people take them so many ways.  It wake me wonder if there is any good in studying them at all.  To every person they say something different, and these messages, often contradictory fail to tell us anything about capital T Truth.  Perhaps because there is no such thing, or at least, such a thing is unknowable.  So, why study the scriptures?  Why read them at all? While some look to the Bible through the eyes of historians, and others through the eyes of the poor, John Chrysostom (I believe, but I cannot find a reference), suggests that a good interpretation of the Bible is one which leads to love.  To throw away authorial intent, and to measure an interpretation by love sounds pretty great to me.  There are, however, certain problems bound to surface.  Love is a great sounding measurement, but it fails as people interpret some actions as loving that I would call horrible.  We each define love differently, and so, love is really no standard at all.  

Why study the Bible?  So we can find support for our beliefs?  So we can feel confident that we are right?  Those sound like poor reasons, but maybe there is something more.  Maybe the Bible can inspire us to live differently, and maybe there is something beneficial about letting the Bible shape out lives.  Can we do that?  We come to the Bible with preformed ideas; is it possible to learn from the text?  I hope so.

I can (and have) spent countless hours arguing the Bible against the Bible.  Many cling to this sacred work, but derive interpretations completely contrary to my understandings.  The above is a reminder that countless hours simply throwing Bible verses back and forth will be wasted.  My Mormon friends would simply conclude that this is why the Bible is not enough, and modern day scriptures have been provided.   Rather than searching for accurate information within the Bible they will prod me to read and pray about The Book of Mormon to know if it is true.  Latter-day Saints do not need to know all their doctrine because they know that someone, namely their Prophet and the General Authorities, do, and they trust that they have got it figured out.  Saint Augustine put it well: “To trust the word of another is one thing, to trust our own reason is a different thing; to take something on authority is a great timesaver and involves no toil.”[1]  How much easier and simpler it would be to name an authority to my theology and take whatever she says as truth without question.  While taking one as an authority provides a great opportunity to be led astray, my mind may do no better job of leading me to truth. 

---

[1] John J. McMahon, “The Magnitude of the Soul” Saint Augustine.

Community

I love Moses! I love the story of God meeting with Moses. I’ve wished that I could have just a bit of what Moses had when he went up on the mountain and spoke with God for forty days. I have often thought to have an experience anything like that of Moses’ I would have I needed to spend time in silence and solitude. I still think those are great things, but I have been trying to understand what is meant by a “personal relationship with God”. I don’t think that it is a phrase that occurs in the scriptures anywhere, and I’ve been wondering if it leads me to have false expectations about how God should be interacting with me. I was flipping through my Bible with this question in mind, and bouncing some Ideas off of a friend. The letters in the New Testament are written to whole churches, so when it is written “you are the temple of God”, it means that we are the temple of God. That blows my mind. We were talking about how it seems that we should relate to God as a community. (Does that happen in church? Or do we all just relate to God individually while happening to be in the same place?) I thought if we are to relate to God as a community, maybe he will relate to us when we are in community. I wondered if that was true. My friend mentioned the letters to the churches in Revelation; they are to churches, not individuals. I find that to be interesting. I then thought about Moses. In Exodus 19 God has a message for his people, the commandments. He gathers them all together so that as a community they hear from God.

“Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain trembled violently. As the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.” (Ex 19:17-19)

I wonder what it was like to be among the Israelites that day?

“When the people saw the thunder and lightning and heard the trumpet and saw the mountain in smoke, they trembled with fear. They stayed at a distance and said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die.”

Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid. God has come to test you, so that the fear of God will be with you to keep you from sinning.”

The people remained at a distance, while Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.” (Ex 20:18-21)

In the end the Israelites back off, and Moses alone approaches God, but I can’t help but wonder if God desires to meet with us in community. I wonder if we’d be ready for that. I think it is time for me to focus on my communal relationship with God.

Don't worry, be happy

“The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)

For the lack

At work as staff we always do devotions. We haven't always, then we questioned if maybe our programs we not very God focused because our office time was not very God focused and we were not doing the devotions. But I took that further and thought my personal life should include more God time, and that I need to start my morning off I prayer (part of what is telling me I need to make time for God every morning, the other part in a priority thing, so I can remember God is the priority, and people too. Not stuff.) Maybe, I should leave for work early and then find somewhere on my walk to work to stop and talk to God and Bible read. See if the Bible is our daily bread, then going to work and not having Bible reading time is like going to work hungry, and it is hard to be as effective if one goes to work hungry... maybe it is hard to be as effective at work if I go without spending time with God first... or at least some time in the day. I find though sometimes the time seems empty, meaningless. Like I don't really learning anything, I don't get new inspiration, or if I do, I just forget it. And if I forget it, then did it ever really happen?