Heaven will solve our problems, but not, I think, by showing us subtle reconciliations between all our apparently contradictory notions. The notions will all be knocked from under our feet. We shall see that there never was any problem. And more than once, that impression which I can’t describe except by saying it’s like the sound of a chuckle in the darkness. The sense that some shattering and disarming simplicity is the real answer. C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed

The problem is that waiting for the real answer until the sweet by and by comes at the cost of needless suffering in this life for far too many. To wake up each morning and fear  you’re going to hell unless you expend all your emotional and spiritual energy denying who you fully are sounds like hell without a need for dying. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go. Do not collect 200.00. Go directly to hell. Do not die. Do not fully live.

And from where I sit it sounds like nothing short of hot flames and sulfur-tainted air to face the death of a child and be “comforted” with the well-meaning assurance that God has allowed it to happen for a greater purpose, or to be told God must have a reason after being given the diagnosis that a debilitating terminal disease has invaded your body. Spare the purpose and give me my child back! Keep the disease and the reason and let me live!

The pain behind all these very true to life human experiences of suffering comes down to, as C.S. Lewis experienced through the dying and death of his beloved wife, our contradictory notions. We know what we are experiencing in the moment. We’re living it, breathing it, feeling it; and we know what we believe about who God is and what God can do and at times the two smash head-long into one another and leave us either doubting what’s right before our eyes or doubting in the existence of a God who truly loves us and has our best interest at heart.

I don’t know what the chuckle in the darkness came to be for C.S. Lewis but I can tell you what it is for me, and I’m so convinced that I have this one right that I’m willing to tether my entire life on it even before having it confirmed before being measured for my form fitting white robe with matching feathered wings.  The chuckle in the darkness, the real answer that will shatter all our questions is….oh come on….say it with me….the love of God.

What do we continue to muck up the most one true thing? What is this human need we have to complicate it, burying such a priceless radiant treasure under the murky mire of Christian beliefs and notions that repeatedly weigh the scales on the side of human agency rather than on the side where Divine Love and Grace reside? Honestly, there are days I just don’t get it and this is one of those days.

Everything we believe, however long we’ve believed it, however strongly we believe it, however sure we are that we have it right must, absolutely must be held up to the lens of God’s love if we have any chance of knowing anything at all in this life and experiencing any deep sense of peace. How I understand the stories and teaching of the Scriptures, how I view suffering in this life, what I believe of the life that follows this one, what I think God requires of me, how I comprehend who God is in character and in relationship with me, how God sees me, how God values me, how God judges me and everything else.  Every speck of an idea I have of what it means to faithfully walk the path of Jesus must be held up to close examination through the lens of God’s love and should any belief I value or idea I hold as true to the Christian faith conflict with or tarnish by a single shade the perfect love of God then the other thing must change but never never the unconditional love and extravagant grace of God.

For far too long and for far too many when a conflict has arisen between traditional Christian teaching and the love of God, it’s been the love of God that’s been compromised and cheapened, if it was ever considered at all. When that happens we run the risk of ending up with a God who would make a lousy parent. I mean seriously, we call God our Heavenly Father and yet if my earthly father had ever reflected the kind of parent that God is often made out to be, I would have either run away from home or been removed by Family and Social Services. Think about it. What kind of parent would permanently disown their child for breaking the rules of the household whether they were broken in ignorance or in willful disobedience? For crying out loud, there are serial murderers on death row whose parents visit them in prison and yet we live with the idea that we’ve given our lives over to a God who should we error will cast us into eternal torment before returning to the party in heaven surrounded by his good children. And what would any of us think of a father who stands in a corner while his child is being tortured at the hands of others without doing everything in his power to intervene? What would we have to say about a mother who provides ample food and protection for her daughter while allowing her son to live out in the cold starving to death? Both of these would appall us, and yet some Christians espouse a concept of God that’s even more negligent and cruel.

Please hear me on this. I’m not saying throwing out everything you believe and hold dear to your faith. What I am suggesting is that you hold each belief up to the lens of God’s love and ask, “How does what I believe about this reflect upon the love of God?” and “How is God’s love seen here?” I’m saying that before we respond to someone elses painful questioning of why me? or why now? we ask ourselves how the words we would speak to them would exude the infinite, matchless love of God rather than offering a familiar answer that rings empty in the soul of the one who is suffering more than we might ever know.

I don’t know what doing such a thing will do in your own life but in mine, it brought about a monumental shift in my theology that’s taken place over a number of years. Some beliefs remained the same, others shifted to encompass a wider understanding and a few were abandoned altogether. And still, it’s a work in progress. It always will be because I’m a slower learner who has a lot of questions remaining.

Re-evaluating faith is for some a scary proposition. When faith has always been central to your life, there’s a fear of looking too closely and questioning too much, but if I can, let me offer you this bit of comfort if you can take it as such. When the love of God is the litmus test for what you believe, all that you’re risking is failing on the side of love. The worst you can do is give the love of God more credit than it deserves, conclude than it reaches farther than it really does or fail to take into account some pre-existing conditions to the unconditional love of God.

If I’m going to be wrong then I’d rather be wrong in thinking too much of the love and grace of God than too little of it.

But then, that’s me.

And by the way, the title of this post expresses the God that’s sometimes communicated through our contradictory notions but not the God who really is; and certainly not the God I worship and adore.

For that reason, I’m posting just three of the most recent reader comments that have been added to SisterFriends so that their wisdom, faith, and encouragement won’t be missed in the small print at the bottom of a posting. Enjoy!

Sister 1 -

Wow! I had no idea there were other people out there with all these same feelings that are running through my head, but mostly my heart. I was raised that homosexuality is wrong and that you are going to hell if you are gay. I am 33 years old and came out a year ago. For the most part everyone was supportive, considering their world was just turned upside down. The one that mattered the most, my mom has been awsome through it all. Don’t get me wrong. She has cried and denied that her daughter is a lesbian! But now has come to terms with it and just wants me to be happy. I have lost some very close relationships and that saddens me deeply, but I just think about it this way…it’s their loss! I spent my whole life being someone I was not to please everyone (God, my family, society) but at what cost (ME)! I just came to terms with my sexuality and embraced it! Nothing has changed, well I am a lot happier, but I am the same person with the same faith. I love God with all my heart and soul and believe that He died for me…so yes, I have gone through how can I be a lesbian and a Christian? I am just holding on to my faith and the love I have for my Lord and Savior, thank you Anita for this website I needed to know I was not the only one out there! It’s funny how we are so self-centered and like to pity ourselves…oh I’m the only one going through something like this…I should have known better! My heart goes out to everyone out there going through all the heart ache of coming out, just be true to yourself…the rest will follow. And be strong because it’s not going to be easy just hold on to the love and faith you have in God because if you lose that my friend you have lost it all! In God’s love, Yvonne.

Sister 2 -

I only came upon this site in January this year and all I can say is that it has broadened my mind to consider many perspectives on the subject of homosexuality. I am so interested in all the articles and still going through them one at a time. I am throughly enjoying the challenging thinking as I read each article and at the end of it I am most guided by the 2 laws that Jesus gave us – To love God first and to love your neighbour as yourself. Love is all encompassing and I think we humans cannot grasp this mystery easily due to our some form of conditional upbringing.

All I want to say for now is “thank you” for your efforts to bring us a new perspective. It is so liberating to keep challenging our thinking and moving the goalposts. That is what Jesus did in His time here on earth. I enjoyed this article and Dr Walter Wink’s article as well on this subject. I also thought the comments in response to the Wink article that addressed Judaism were good so that we do not clear our understanding of one thing at the expense of another. Good work all around. You should be so proud. You will see me here in the future I hope. For now I am enjoying moving through the thought and heart provoking articles.

Sister 3 -

(This comment was in response to the question “What loss has been your gain?”) It was last Easter during Lent that I found this site. I was struggling with the realization that I was gay and that I knew I could no longer hide and live being dishonest with myself, with my Lord, and with others. And yet, I feared that I would lose everything in my life – my relationship with Jesus, my family, friends, church, leadership and I would ruin my son’s life. I entered a depression as I realized that for 25 adult years, I had eaten to avoid being seen by anyone romantically and to numb the pain and the emotions. It allowed me to pretend that I was in control. The day before Easter, some of the losses had started, and I was ready to no longer live on this Earth. I just wanted to be home with my Father. I didn’t follow through with my plan because God intervened and I realized that nothing could separate me from the love of my God. Certainly not being gay. And that day, I lost my self-righteousness, my view of a God that would judge me for creating me gay. I lost hypocrisy, dishonesty, and my thought that I was in control of my life.

What did I gain? In the year since this momentous decision, I have gained a glimpse of the grace of my God. The kind of grace that makes me fall down on my knees and cry and wonder how I could ever be acceptable to Him, and yet the knowledge that I am. I have gained the knowledge that He created me, and He did so in His fashion, and that He has the perfect plan for my life. And wow, even when I don’t see it, it is indeed the perfect plan. I have gained my emotions, and the ability to turn them over to God for healing when hurt, instead of reaching for the first cookie I could find. I have gained the experience that physical intimacy and touch from a woman is acceptable to my Lord, because He created me as not only an intellectual being, but a sexual being who desires intimacy. I have realized that friends and family who only love or want a relationship with you because you are straight, are not really worth having. And while my parents may still wonder what they did wrong, they still love and want only my happiness for me. My son, wow — I learned that I have a son who loves unconditionally, who does not see race, creed, or sexuality as a reason to treat anyone differently. And while he still can’t pick up his socks or toys, he will be able to pick up life as an adult. I gained a bunch of new friends along the path, and reclaimed ones from my past that I walked away from because they were doing things I didn’t approve of. And finally, I gained a love for me, just as God created me, not perfect by any means, but growing and allowing Him to be in control. This time, it is an honest love – the kind of love that won’t allow me to hide from myself, others or God.

Your question made me look back at the past year, and I have gained so much more than I ever lost. While church, ministry, and even some close friends are gone, there is a new church, a new ministry, and new friends. And those are deeper and more fulfilling because they are based in honesty and the knowledge that my God loves EVERYONE, ALL THE TIME, AND IN THE MOST PERFECT WAY. Now that is a knowledge that surpasses all human understanding and calms one’s heart!

Now that’s what I’m talking about people!

My point being that Peace Lutheran is a wonderful place, a sacred and safe refuge for D and I and for so many others who have stumbled into this house of worship filled with genuinely good and imperfect people and heavily influenced by some of the finest Swedes you’ll ever meet this side of the fjords.

I wish you could all just show up one Sunday morning, worship with us, and feel their welcome….but if you ever all decide to turn up in mass, all I ask is that you give me a heads-up. I need to be sure there are enough cookies for the hospitality hour.

D and I originally went to Peace for a couple years when we first got together and then were away for about four years while I fulfilled my ordination requirements. When we returned, Peace was different. The pews once full on Sunday mornings were now only occupied by a few dozen dear and familiar faces. The entire clergy and support staff had been reduced to the pastor and the office administrator. The choir that had once filled the three rows near the glossy black grand piano could now barely fill a standard-sized station wagon. The diverse array of outreach ministries and community involvement that Peace had been known for in the area had largely been set aside or abandoned because of limitations of budget and bodies. The Sunday School Hour, including their amazing children’s program was no more.

In our absence, this thriving congregation had confronted one of those agonizingly painful times that occurs in any number of churches where humans are involved. Life in the church got messy and uncertain. Conflicting stories developed. A few families left. Feelings were hurt and spirits wounded. And those who remained, who had faithfully endured the fire, showed the exhaustion and battle scars of their collective dark night of the soul. Though D and I were depleted from what we had just experienced at another congregation, we wept for Peace and we worried about their future, now our future with them.

But as Walter Bruggemann wrote in his Lenten prayer, through loss comes gain, through death comes new life.

Battle scars are healing. Weary souls are being restored. The rows of once sparsely-filled pews are being filled again; filled with joy and life and thankfulness, and with a people living out their individual commitment to the Gospel of Christ through being an inclusive, justice-minded, creation-conscious community in and to the world. In financial difficult times we’ve just accomplished an amazing feat together. Last Sunday morning we gathered outside in the rain around a round red charcoal grill and burned our mortgage papers, celebrating that with no debt remaining, we can look ahead to investing ourselves and our resources toward ministries that will reach beyond our walls. Last Sunday was also the first time in nearly five years our children gathered before worship in their new Sunday School classrooms. Tonight over bowls of steaming soup and warm bread we’ll gather for Soup and Sacrament, our weekly Lenten meal and meditation. Yes. Peace is breathing deep again and breathing with life that’s extending beyond our four walls to embrace the world. Once a month the sanctuary is over-flowing on Sunday nights with our Jazz at Peace series that brings people in from all over the Bay area. Neighbors to Peace come with dogs, cats, lizards, ponies and bugs in tow to our annual Festival of the Animals and every fall Peace hosts Holy Convergence, a spectacular interfaith worship service and afternoon that brings together Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Bahia and every seeking soul.

There’s so much more happening at Peace these days but most of all what’s happening is the unfolding of hope long unrealized. There were days I wondered. I wondered if Peace would survive. I wondered if these dear people who had been through so much and been through it with so much dignity could hold on a little longer.

I wondered, but I don’t know why I did when in my own life every loss has led to gain and every death has brought the dawn of new life. There are times I get so stuck in the sorrow and suffering of the Lenten seasons of my life that I forget it’s not the destination where I’ll reside forever but instead it’s merely a moment on the path, a path that always and unfailingly leads to yet another Easter morning and to resurrection and new life.

Today your spirit might be empty from all the loss and death is a veil separating you from life but your spirit will be filled and the veil will be lifted. And if you can’t believe that for yourself today, if you can’t believe it for God, then I and all the others who have already walked that road and caught a glimpse of what lies ahead will believe it for you until you can. You can and you will. Just wait and see.

.
Loss is Indeed Our Gain

The pushing and shoving of the world is endless.
…..We are pushed and shoved.
…..And we do our fair share of pushing and shoving
……….in our great anxiety.
And in the middle of that
……….you have set down your beloved suffering son
……….who was like a sheep lead to slaughter
……….who opened not his mouth.
….We seem not able,
….so we ask you to create the spaces in our life
….where we may ponder his suffering
….and your summons for us to suffer with him,
….suspecting that suffering is the only way to come to newness of life.
So we pray for your church in these Lenten days,
….when we are driven to denial -
……..not to notice the suffering,
……..not to engage it,
……..not to acknowledge it.
So be that way of truth among us
….that we should not deceive ourselves.
That we shall see that loss is indeed our gain.
We give you thanks for that mystery from which we live.
Amen.

- Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

So here’s the question for your own self-reflection and then if you will, to share with us….

Has loss been your gain, and if so, what did you gain?

Okay, that’s technically two questions. Indulge me.

How long will grown men and women in this world keep drawing in their coloring books an image of God that makes them sad? – Meister Eckhart

I’m not a big fan of coloring books for children, the ones with the thick black outlines with the white space between them that all but demands where the child will color and what color they will use. There’s no room for the preschool artist to create and dream. A bold outline of a pony filling the page leaves no space for the child who imagines space ships and dragons to bring them to life on paper. The excited new owner of a freshly-opened green and yellow 64 count box of crayons is discouraged from taking all those amazing shades of purple and blue out for a test run when the perfectly shaped stemmed apple limits their choice to red and green. Give a kid a coloring book and you know what you’re going to get but give them a blank sheet of paper and a box of still-pointy crayons and anything is possible. The greatest treasures I’ve been given over the years have come from children, made of cheap recycled newsprint and adorned with drawings of a smiling Jesus with big buck teeth, a wax colored masterpiece of me holding the stick figure hand of the artist who drew it, and pile upon pile of papers covered in rainbows, floating hearts, and sun rays breaking through billowing clouds outlined in cotton candy pink or denim blue. Forget the Guggenheim in New York and the Uffizi in Florence. The most stunning works of art in all the world are hanging just down the street on your neighbor’s refrigerator.

For some of us our faith began as a coloring book we were given as children, pages already imprinted with lines that told us who God was and all that God wanted and expected and demanded of us. Sure, God is love but God also requires. Don’t forget that God loves you just as you are but don’t forget that God also wants you to change. Oh yes, God loves everyone equally but at the same time God consigns that a large number of these everyone’s will spend eternity in hell’s torment.

Leave this space blank. Fill in this space here. Stay inside the lines. Use this color because no other color will do; every other color is wrong. You might as well trade in your box of 64-count crayons for one black crayon and one white crayon; those two over-used crayon nubs at the bottom of the box. No other colors need apply.

When you go through life with a coloring book filled with bold simple static outlines of God there’s no reason to imagine a God beyond the lines. There’s no motivation to dream of something outside and beyond the cardstock cover, and even when we break free and dare to imagine a God who lives and breathes and loves outside the lines, the lines are still there, etched even deeper in our hearts than on the printed page. It would be easier to erase the permanent ink lines printed in a child’s coloring book than it would be to erase the images of God that have followed us, and often haunted us, through our lives. A God of conditions and expectations, a black-robed judge who swings a mean gavel, an unpredictable God of contradictions who demanded the full-scale annihilation of the heathen while providing a means of salvation for all creation.

There are few things more tragically poignant to me than when someone is haunted by their image of God; when the very thought of God passing through their mind causes them fear and sadness or to be hit with nauseating icy bouts of guilt and shame; when talk of God’s love makes them feel as though they are the sole exception from receiving such a thing. I hear it all the time. All the time. I want to believe what you’re saying. I want to believe God loves me. I want to believe God delights in me. I want to believe that who I am is who God has created me to be. But I can’t. I’m afraid God is judging me. I’m afraid of failing God. I’m afraid of what God will do. I’m afraid of going to hell.

That unidentified sound you just heard in the distance was God’s heart breaking accented by my gut wrenching.

All I can think to do is offer you one small suggestion to consider and it goes like this….if your image of God causes you to fear, if the idea of God looking on you makes you feel like a failure, or if there’s even the smallest hint of a doubt that you are being tenderly held this very minute in the love of God, then please, just consider trading in that old battered coloring book you’ve been carting around all your life for a blank canvas and a bottomless multi-tiered box of crayons. Close your eyes. Dream of how big love really is when conceived and held in the heart of God. Imagine a God who dances in delight at the sound of your name. Envision the God of Christ; a gentle shepherd, a compassionate father, a woman giddy at having found her one lost coin. Try to put a picture to unconditional love, unending mercy, and the wonder of divine grace.

And once you see the picture, every a blurry shadow of it, grab a crayon and draw….and draw….and draw.

Oh, in case I failed to mention, the black crayon and white crayon are missing from your box.  I took them and you can’t have them back. Ever.

I’m setting down two basic truths here. One, that the love of God is perfect love, and two, that I will never be able to comprehend such love.

By perfect love, I mean perrrrrrfect. A love that’s flawless, incomparable, and most excellent in all the world and all creation. A love that’s the fullest manifestation of any and all love that has ever and ever will be. A love that can never be matched, replicated, or surpassed. I appreciated that in one thesaurus it offered an alternate to the word perfect with the phrase something that is too good to be true. God’s perfect love is too good to be true but here’s the real kicker….it is true.

And still I struggle to understand it. Even with my heart and eyes wide open to receiving the truth of the perfect love of God I, like everyone else including you, see through a glass darkly, because I view the love of God through eyes filmed over by a lifetime of human experiences of love that even in their most awesome, breathless, magnificence, are merely a sliver of a shadow of all that is held within the perfect love of God. Barely a reflection. Less than a full bite.

I’m one of the fortunate ones. I’ve been extravagantly loved most of my life. My grandparents loved me. My parents loved me. My siblings loved me back when I was their annoying baby sister and continue to love me now that I’m their annoying middle-aged baby sister. I’ve had dear friends at every turn in my life who’ve loved me and the children I taught and learned from over the past 30 years have spoiled me with love. And then there’s my beautiful angel of a wife who loves me in a way I can barely believe after ten years of being drenched in it.

And the love I’ve been given has been more than a love of feelings expressed in gushy words but a love of commitment lived out in action. Even when our worlds collided over my sexual orientation my parents continued to demonstrate the deepest of love toward me. Even though my siblings and I have gone through the ringer with one another and our love has been laced with mutual irritation and frustration, love has carried us through so that even at our worst moments we could rest assured that the others had our back. The little kiddos who loved me decades ago when I was their Teacher Anita have continued to love me long into their adulthood, a love so kind and generous I’m rattled by it. And though I’m a high maintenance girl who at times can be as cantankerous and moody as a grizzly bear roused from sleep during mid-hibernation, my wife’s love continues without so much as a hiccup.

So here’s all I’m saying. I know what it is to love and be loved and yet despite the heaping mountain of love I’ve been graced to receive, all the love I’ve known, even the greatest of it, has been less than perfect love, and for no other reason than whenever people are in the equation so too is imperfection. We can’t help it. It’s the nature of the beast…or more precisely, it’s in the nature of our beings. Even in the purest expressions of human love our personality flaws and egos occasionally stumble onto the scene. We become irritable and impatient with someone we love because they dare to see things another way than we do. We can love someone with every fiber of our being and still get angry at them when they fail to see and acknowledge our way is always the best way. We hurt those we love without ever intending to but still we do because we’re human and fallible. Self-centeredness at times trumps selflessness. Pride takes humility to the mat and scores a point. I’ve been loved like crazy all my life and I’m as grateful as grateful can be and yet love has let me down time and again and I know just as certainly that everyone I’ve loved has been let down by me whether they be my family, my friends, or my wife. Certainly more than once. Probably more than twice.

So here I am, an imperfect being, loving and being loved imperfectly while at the same time longing to lay hold of a more full understanding of the perfect love of God. And it’s not such an easy thing to do because every time I try to comprehend God’s love I have to slog through the collective experiences of love, both radiant and tarnished that have filled my life and those experiences become a filter through which I catch a foggy glimpse of the love of God.

They say that acknowledging you have a problem is the first step toward finding the solution and that could never be more true than in acknowledging I view the perfect love of God through a glass darkly. I need to be aware of my limited vision of God’s love so that I’m always intent on looking to see beyond the windows murky shadows, to catching a vision of a love that defies my human experience, and that not only goes beyond the greatest love I’ve ever known but beyond all the combined human love that’s ever been lavished upon me.

God loves you and me with a perfect love, and yes, I know….it really is too good to be true. And yet, it is. How awesome is that?!

God is Love.

The love of God is at the forefront of God’s being. God doesn’t merely demonstrate love outward toward us, but the ground and substance of God’s being is Love. Love is more than an attribute of God. Love is the essence of God and all else that we know of God to be; that God is kind, forgiving, compassionate, faithful, just, patient, good, merciful, full of grace, long-suffering, powerful, and every other good, glorious, and life-affirming thing we could ever tag on God channels and flows through the love of God. How much God will forgive, how patient God will be, and how much mercy God will extend, is determined by one thing and that one thing is Divine Love.

I can never experience love in my life without there being a recipient of my love, be it a human or a thing to be loved, but the love of God as the essence of God isn’t dependent on an object to love. Should all living beings cease to be from bird to bug, from you to me, God would continue to love because God is Love.

But being Love wasn’t enough for God. Even the divine perfect love that flowed through the Godhead between Creator, Word, and Spirit wasn’t enough for the Source of All Love. Love always wants more; to feel more love; to express more love; to be more love. And so you and I were created so that God as Love could love more, and in like manner the Word of God was sent into the world to live among us; given not because we loved God but because God loved us.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us. 1 John 4:8-12

Knowing that God is not only loving but that God is Love is more than semantics. It’s a big deal. No longer does God’s love depend on me being or doing anything. No longer is there any chance that I can win or lose God’s love. In fact, the truth be told, while God knows me and sees me and loves me, God’s love for me has little to nothing to do with me but instead it has everything to do with who God is, and in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, God is Love.

And still, I’m only just realizing how much it’s taken from me in terms of my energy and my attention. Every day I miss my mom. Every day my thoughts and prayers turn toward my brother. Every day I’m a little more physically tired than I’m use to being. And because of all these changes in my little corner of the world; the losses that have already come and the potential losses that lay ahead sooner than I would ever care to imagine, I’m finding it a little more difficult to focus on my writing and as I’ve done in the past, I only ask that you be patient with me through this time and that you continue to stay connected to SisterFriends until I can find my breath again. I think I’m getting there.

That’s one of my personal reasons why over the past couple posts I’ve moved into a blogalogue about God’s love and why I don’t plan to go in another direction any time soon. After all, when you’re weary and worn, when the past has left you brokenhearted and the future appears paved with further hardship and loss, what else is there to do but lean fully into God who is able to keep you grounded in a hope that calms all fear and a joy that surpasses all grief? (You do realize I’m not just referring to my life but yours as well, right? Okay. Just checking.) I don’t know about you but when that’s how life looks to me, then hanging out in God’s love is the only place I want to be. It’s not that pitching our tent here changes the past, makes the future any more certain, or answers all the questions that continue to cloud our hearts, but at least we know this; that when we anchor ourselves into God’s love we stand in a truth and reality that is unchangeable, absolutely certain, and unquestionable. God is Love.

For my benefit and I hope and pray for yours as well, I’m going to be spend the next week or more blogging a series of random reflections on the love of God. That’s all they’re going to be too, just random reflections. They’ll be concise (if you can believe that any where within me lays the ability to be concise), in no particular order and with no particular structure. Just your basic stream of consciousness kind of ruminations. Care to join me? I hope so. I really do.

May this modern translation by Daniel Ladinsky of an ancient poem by Kabir get your own ruminations ruminating.

WHAT KIND OF GOD?

What kind of God would He be
if He did not hear the
bangles ring on
an ant’s
wrist
as they move the earth
in their sweet
dance?

And what kind of God would He be
if a leaf’s prayer was not as precious to creation
as the prayer His own son sang
from the glorious depth
of his soul -
for us.

And what kind of God would He be
if the vote of millions in this world could sway Him
to change the divine
law of
love
that speaks so clearly with compassion’s elegant tongue,
saying, eternally saying:
all are forgiven – moreover, dears,
no one has ever been found
guilty.

What
kind of God would He be
if He did not count the blinks
of your
eyes
and is in absolute awe of their movements?

What a God – what a God we
have.

That’s how I think we should begin 2010; by letting go of investing all our time, energy, and attention toward reconciling our sexuality or opposing the churches condemnation of homosexuality or fighting a world that seems set at odds against equality for all people, and that we instead lose ourselves to the bigger spiritual questions of God that in the end will be what leads us each to places of peace and assurance in all the other matters of life that concern us. – Anita Cadonau-Huseby in Turning Our Questions to Questions of God

I know. There’s something a little weird about someone who quotes themselves but then again that’s only slightly weirder than someone referring to themselves as someone as though they’re talking about someone other than themselves. Did you follow that? Me either. I say we give up on making a seamless transition from the last post to this one and just jump in with both feet and hopefully the rest will follow.

As Christians first and then as queer second, we spend a whole lot of our time and energy tied up in knots about God’s opinion of us. What does God think of me? Is God disappointed in me? Am I pleasing to God? Is God irked at me? Am I in big trouble? Is God grinning or grimacing in my direction? Am I doing enough, giving enough, serving enough, sacrificing enough? The church is full of folks caught up in a mindset that they need to be doing more of one thing or less of another thing to be holy and righteous enough to earn God’s favor. You don’t have to be queer to struggle with those questions. We just have a whole other scope of questions to wonder about. Is being queer and accepting that truth about my life an offense to God? Does God delight in the love I share with my partner or is God sickened by it? Does God hate me? If God disapproves of me being gay will God send me to hell? Has God allowed me to have cancer because I’m a lesbian?

I’m not making up those questions off the top of my head for dramatic effect. These questions are just a sampling of questions that have been sent to me over the years from GLBTQ men, women, and youth who are in spiritual and emotional agony, trying so hard to do the right thing and to be the right people to please the God they so deeply love. And fear. Not with our God is an awesome God reverential fear but fear as in scared to death and shaking in their boots fear. Waiting, just waiting for God to strike them down, punish them, cast them aside, wipe God’s holy hands of them, and turn God’s equally holy backside on them. And is it any wonder given how the church in God’s name has done it to them over and over again?

But returning to the questions people are struggling with, including the questions you carry in your own heart, there seems to me to be an implied assumption in all of them that lies just under the surface of the words, and that assumption is this; that the answer to every question hinges on the human side of things. In other words, the action of God is nothing more than a response to our actions or attractions. Whatever God will do is ordained by me. However God will respond is in my power to control. These questions that in content are primarily concerned with God’s potential response to us are questions that seem to rest entirely on the human action in the equation.  If I do this, will God hate me? If I am this, will God be disappointed? If I, if I, if I….will God, will God, will God? The outcome to every question is entirely dependent on God’s response to our behavior, our sexual orientation, our failings, our righteousness, and our sin but I’m here to argue that nothing could be farther from the truth.

A child wanting to surprise their parent by setting the breakfast table accidentally spills a bottle of milk on the kitchen floor. Their parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and wipes up the milk with a paper towel while assuring the child that accidents happen. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and slaps the child across the face and calls the child a clumsy fool. The parent enters the room, sees the spilled milk on the floor and laughs. Or screams. Or comforts. Or rages. Or hugs the child. Or hits the child. There could be a thousand different parental responses to spilled milk on the floor and all of them would hinge solely on the character and virtue, or the lack there of, of the parent. The child who spilled the milk has no say in the parent’s response. The parent will do as the parent will do independent of the child.

We are the child. God is the parent. Whether we drop the milk bottle or carry it to the table without spilling so much as a smidge matters little to how our heavenly parent will respond to us because God’s relationship to us and how God chooses to respond to us is held singularly within the character of who God is.

That’s all I’m saying and even as I say it I know it’s too simple for some to believe. For whatever reason we need things to be more complicated, and if I’m sounding too abstract then I offer as evidence what we’ve done with the Good News. We’ve spent 2000 years tangling it’s simple message of divine love (not to be confused with it’s easy message) in doctrines, dogma, theologies, and bullet point statements of belief suitable for framing in the church narthex.

Here’s what I can tell you after 53 years of walking, stumbling, and crawling along the path of Christian faith. God will be God. God will do as God will do. God will be who God will be. And to that end, God isn’t waiting on my next move to give or withhold love to me. God isn’t watching over my actions, words, and thoughts today to decide whether tomorrow God will bless or curse, reject or accept me. No. Today as it was yesterday and as it will be tomorrow God is acting out of the core of God’s being toward me and toward all people and at God’s core is Love. God is Love and that one truth alone determines everything. E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G. Every question, every answer, every decision, and every eternity are held up in this one thing; that God is many things but above it all and through it all, God is Love.

We’ve all probably said it a thousand times. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love. God is love.

We’ve committed scripture passages to memory that affirm it. We’ve sung hymns and songs about it. We might even adhere it on a bumper sticker to the back end of our car or default to it when we can think of nothing else to say to someone in need of comfort and hope, but now I think it’s time we really talk about what it means.

God is Love.

Chill on that for a couple days then swing back over this way.

Maybe in this new year those of us who continue to be caught in the struggle need to put aside grappling with the six passages that are used by some within the church to condemn homosexuality and stop trying to answer to the arguments that they can’t be Christian and queer. Maybe for a season we need to let go of the religious prohibitions against homosexuality that’s entrenched within everyone of us who have spent any portion of our lives within the conservative end of the church and instead shift our attention to God and nothing about God.

• Who is God to me?
• How would I describe God to someone else?
• What is the nature of God? What are the virtues of God? What are the outstanding characteristics of God?
• What gets God out of bed in the morning?
• What is the focus of God’s day?
• What does God think about me?
• What does God want for me?
• What does God think about and desire for those who are set against me?
• How does God desire to engage in relationship with me?
• What is the heart of God for all creation?

In other words, put aside all our questions about being gay for the moment and turn our attention to questions about God because as we gain clarity in our understanding of God I believe we’ll find resolution to the other questions that have our hearts tied up in knots. We can become so focused on the central issues of our lives that we lose sight of the relationship of our lives, that being our relationship with God and our understanding of God’s relationship to and with us.

All I’m doing is asking you to think thoughtfully about what your personal theology of God is, because theology (beliefs about God) is in the end a very personal thing. While our early theology was shaped by what we’d been taught to believe and what we’d witnessed within the lives of our families or our churches, as we grow into the maturity of our own faith and gain our spiritual independence it becomes necessary that we define our faith in God for ourselves because this and this alone is what will guide us through our lives. How we “hear” God and how we experience the Spirit’s “leading” are merely extensions of what it is we already believe about the heart of God for us, for all humanity, and all creation in the core of our being.

That’s how I think we should begin 2010; by letting go of investing all our time, energy, and attention toward reconciling our sexuality or opposing the churches condemnation of homosexuality or fighting a world that seems set at odds against equality for all people, and that we instead lose ourselves to the bigger spiritual questions of God that in the end will be what leads us each to places of peace and assurance in all the other matters of life that concern us.