Tag: church hurt

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Current Events / Activism LGBT/queer Prayers of the People Reflections for worship services

Beatitudes for the prophets who move our churches into truer welcome

To the ones who bear witness
to the church’s flaws and failings,
and still believe in everything that Church could be —
and work to make that holy vision real
though the labor is long, and tough, and often thankless —

Let us offer thanks,
remembering the unlikely blessings
our subversive Savior likes to lavish
on those the world least expects.

Blessed are you who make a way
out of no way: who pioneer a path
for those of God’s children who’ve been told they don’t belong
in the pews, in the pulpit, or in holy bonds of marriage.

Blessed are you when you come in bold and disruptive,
flipping the tables that make no room for you;
And blessed when you work behind the scenes,
change rippling out from constant conversation —

For we we need both: the Spirit of roaring flame, and gentle rain.

Blessed are you when your voice shakes
and you speak out anyway.

Blessed are you in patience, persistence, and grace;
Blessed also are you in frustration and righteous rage

For the psalmist joins you in crying, “God, how long?”

Blessed are you who endure judgment and scrutiny
from people who are meant to be neighbors in the Body of Christ

For the peacemaker’s crown, the friendship of God is yours.

Blessed are you when you tire,
and burn out, and wrestle with despair

For rest is your right, and others will take up your fight
as long as you need.

And when ignorant tongues defame you,
when they twist your words
and accuse you of being the divisive one,
when they try to shut you up and drive you out

Blessed, blessed are you!

For you belong to an unbroken line of prophets
stretching back to the cross
and forward to a feast laid out for all.

Yes! Blessed are you when “blessed” is the last thing you feel —
you who fight the good fight
even when it seems hopeless,
even when you lose, again and again,
even if you will not be around
when the drought on justice ends
and the fruits of your labor bloom into life at last

For future generations will remember you with pride.

For no matter how it looks right now,
your efforts are never in vain.

For you are part of what makes Church worth fighting for,
and what you sowed in sweat and tears,
tomorrow’s children reap rejoicing.

Blessed are you, for yours is the kin-dom
you are helping to build, one brave truth at a time.

Please feel free to make use of this piece in worship or Sunday school, in ceremony or across social media. Just credit it to Avery Arden of binarybreakingworship.com — and I invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know you’re using it!

About this piece:

The past few days have been rough ones for queer Presbyterians and those who love us. The 226th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) kicked off with the Olympia Overture, which sought to add sexuality & gender identity to a portion of our Book of Order that lists classes protected from discrimination; as well as to make it so candidates for ordination must be asked about their ability and commitment to uphold the “principles of participation, representation, and non-discrimination” found in that other part of the Book of Order.

Both parts of the overture ended up getting approved, but only after much discourse before the GA even began, and more debate before the committee. It was…really hard to watch (so hard that I didn’t watch most of it myself — but friends watching kept me informed of what was happening).

It was a reminder that there are people in my own denomination who, whether they would word it this way or not, don’t want to see me and my queer kin as fully human — to recognize us as called by God, as colleagues, as part of Christ’s movement in the world.

Also, part B only passed after the language was amended to take out the word “non-discrimination” — apparently the implication that a candidate might be discriminating against someone is Not Nice. I’m reminded how many of us — myself included as a white person — have it instilled in us from birth that it’s more important to be nice, and to avoid discomfort, than it is to call out harm.

But also, as many queer Presbyterians took their turn speaking — each granted just two minutes to make the case for their belonging, their right to have colleagues who recognize their equality in our church — I felt pride swell up deep in my soul. We are put through so much! We are scrutinized, we are shamed, we are accused of “causing division” just because we call it out — yet we remain faithful. We believe in God’s promise of justice rolling down, of a kin-dom where the last are first and the dignity and worth of all is recognized.

They can’t drive us out. We will stay, and we will persist in loving them back into their own humanity.

This prayer is for all the people across the decades, even centuries, who have fought in loud ways or quiet, in the spotlight or behind the scenes, to have their dignity recognized. For Black folk and queer folk, for women and immigrants and disabled persons, and for so many more, across all the different communities of faith.

We are Church. We are making the Church be what it was always meant to be. Blessed indeed are we.

Categories
LGBT/queer My poetry

poem: swords into swingsets

my god they have cornered me
like an animal
and like an animal i want to lash out
i want to sink my teeth into their flesh until they shout and
let. me. go.

but god

when my fist flies forward
to sink into their face

it hits yours instead.

they cornered me, made me a beast
who cannot tell friend from foe
and in my frenzy i struck you
just as you were reaching
for my hand to pull me up

oh, god

sit with me
in this fear, in this fury, in this pain
sit with me until it melts into tears
and i am ready to stand up
to walk out past their leers
their spit their stones

god
help me pull the nails
from my feet, sides, wrists
and i shall use them
to build a house

for all of us
who are trampled into dust

with tender touch we pluck
the nails from each other’s flesh,
the knives from one another’s hearts

and we
will not
hurl them into the ones
who drove them into our skin

no. they will never
be weapons again.

can you smell the flowers blooming round the doorway?
can you hear the laughter ringing through the halls?

i have repurposed the rope
they tried to hang me with
into a swing that children
take turns swinging on.

This poem was written by Avery Arden.

This is a revised version of a poem included in their volume The Kin(g)dom in the Rubble.

It also appears in the anthology There Is Us: Flowers for Ukraine.

About this poem: This piece contemplates how the horrors done to us might be transformed into something life-giving — and in the meantime, God is with us. How do we fight back against our oppressors’ dehumanizing violence? How do we bear good fruit and thrive in a world that would see us quashed?

This poem was inspired by Psalm 73, where the psalmist begs to know why unjust oppressors thrive while the oppressed suffer. So overcome with pain and fear is this psalmist that they risk becoming the animal their oppressors try to dehumanize them into — but God raises them up from that fate. Here are verses 21-23, my translation:

Yes, my heart was warping into a bitter husk,
   my insides were all cut up.
I became brutish, I knew nothing anymore —
   I lashed out, a wild animal, against You.
Yet even so, I am unceasingly with You!
   You hold fast to my right hand!

Categories
Catholic vibes LGBT/queer My poetry

poem to Our Lady of the Wayside: the queer little not-girl revisits their childhood church.

these pews were once my home
but their backs are to me now.

“you changed. too much you changed” they accuse
without speaking to me
and they gawk
without meeting my eyes.

in the windows your robes
and your son’s
are far too gilt
to be yours,

your skin too white,
too smooth. hairless.
callous-less. Mary, where
are the dirt and sweat
of the rugged roads
your blistered feet trudged out?

what are these false eyes
pale as standing water
where brown eyes deep as rich earth
dark as the secret grove
should be?

those glass eyes stare off
into something too distant to be
the Kin(g)dom of
a skin-swaddled God
a beggar’s flaking palms
a cast-off seed.

but
Maria della Strada,

in your corner you see —
you see — me!

their backs are to you, too.

Mary, Mother
of the long and potholed road
no one bothers to patch

Mary, Mother
of refugees and castoffs

of crumbling wayside shrines
that only bruised knees discover

let me sit with you as you nurse
God’s hungry, toothless mouth

and i will gather wildflowers
to crown your unwashed hair.

If you use this piece, please credit it to Avery Arden and link this website. I also invite you to email me at queerlychristian36@gmail.com to let me know how you’re using it!

About this poem:

“Maria Della Strada” is the Italian form of Our Lady of the Wayside, and a statue of her can be found in my childhood church. Maria Della Strada is a patron of the Ignatians, and Our Lady of the Wayside is a patron of travelers, but I also imagine her as a patron of those left behind on the wayside by churches tied to power.
She is Mary who knew what it was to be an outcast and to embrace impropriety in order to follow after God’s call for her; she is Mary who protects those shoved to the margins and who inspires us to build our sanctuaries there.

I wrote the following about this poem on my instagram back in September 2019:

I wrote this poem a couple Sundays ago after going to Mass for the first time in a long time. I started out in a pew but felt like everyone was staring at me to the point that I could feel panic beginning to clutch at my lungs, restricting my breath — so i awkwardly went and sat in a back corner with a statue of Mary for the entirety of the service.

Ever since my first inkling I might be queer quite some years ago, Mother Mary has felt like a comforting protector — whenever I talk to her about it, I feel nothing but love and acceptance from her, and her desire for me to embrace how God had made me and use my queerness to honor her Son. I was grateful to have her in my corner (literally, ha) that Sunday when I felt too anxious to be seen.

Even so, when I went to Mass again this past Sunday and managed to, ya know, sit in a pew like a normal person, I realized my feeling of being gawked at and cold-shouldered was probably more my anxious imagination than reality. Trauma at being rejected by some Christian groups has led to my brain, body, and spirit developing a cynical shield — better not to trust anyone so I can’t be hurt again. Better to hide myself and shield myself, to assume the worst from the start, than risk opening myself up to community only to receive hatred instead.

The cynicism that had me thinking “no one’s going to join me in this pew, to dirty themselves by sitting by this queer who dares enter the house of God,” was quickly exposed as false by a family with young children sliding into my pew. “Oh…they’re not scared I’ll be a Bad Influence on their kids? Huh. …And… no one is staring?? Sure people are glancing at me but that’s normal; the hostile glares I could have sworn I saw last week just aren’t there.” I was able to relax, just a little bit, to calm my fight-or-flight adrenaline-rush enough to feel like I was truly worshiping God with my fellows in the pews, instead of worshiping God in spite of them like the week before.

…The thing I need cishet Christians to understand is this:

It is so. hard. to enter a non-affirming church (or honestly even an affirming one) as a queer person — especially as a visibly queer and trans person. There is so much trauma and fear built up in my psyche that I can’t help but assume the worst of everyone there. I’m glad I went back to Mass a second week to continue to work through that anxiety — because while it’s certainly not unfounded, I know that God calls me to a sort of vulnerability and trust and openness that is so difficult to achieve when you’re dealing with trauma and marginalization!!

When you have been wounded before by fellow members of the Body of Christ, by people who claim “all are welcome” but then turn on you when you show them who you really are….how do you heal enough to be vulnerable again? How do you know which ones you can trust and which ones will attack?

LGBT/queer Christians: How do we be “wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” balancing trust with rationality, vulnerability with self-protection? What do you do to prepare yourself to enter a Christian space?

Cishet Christians: what work can you do to help make LGBTQA folks feel truly safe and welcome in your faith spaces?