A Queer Person Gives Glory To God By Being Queer

 

Quotation by Thomas Merton
Photograph source unknown

I nearly quoted this statement by Thomas Merton in the two blog posts I wrote recently in response to religious homophobia.

There are lots of ways to read the quotation and it's perhaps dangerous to read it out of the context of its chapter. There is a lot more in the chapter. It is, after all, by Merton. The quotation is merely a beginning.

But one way is the way of the last sermon I ever preached back when I was a theist. We are beautifully and wonderfully made. Part of that is our sexuality, gender and our potential to love others generously and love ourselves just as generously. I still use the word god. It means something else now.

So a homosexual gives glory to god by being gay.

A transgender person gives glory to god by being transgender.

A cisgender heterosexual of course gives glory by being cisgender and heterosexual.

Some disagree, some with unintended words of violence to humanity disguised as claims of love, but to me that's like wanting a tree to be a different tree or a flamingo to be a sparrow. In my old theistic belief, god made you fabulous.

In any case it's hard to give glory to God, to reality, to each other, to complexity, to being, to a full dose of awestruck wonder, without self acceptance.

Yes. That's only part of the story. I know. I can hear the old religious voices in my head responding with a series of Buts. The old religion could put many buts in the way of radical self-acceptance. It took a lot to learn to respond to the buts.

I also know that acceptance is a beginning not a stagnation. So as I read about nonviolence this week I looked inside and found violence and I find it in the way I sometimes speak too. Love your enemy? Accepting both the nonviolence and violence within is a place to work with the shadows. Accepting both our purity and our messing up, our progress and our non-progress is an act of balance and we can all fall either way. I know I can but that's okay too. Even Blondin must have fallen many times before gaining the skill to attempt Niagara and Alex Honnold fell many times before ever seeking to climb El Capitan or Half Dome with no rope.

No. That's not being down on myself. It's recognition of complexity, a complexity we all have as humans and which a tree doesn't have. We all shine like stars and we all throw mud. Often in the same day, sometimes within the same sentence. That's our brains' evolution not the intention of any designer.

It's the examen, the noticing, the wanting to be more aware of what raises the many defences and fires the arrows. It's a difficult way. As I read of nonviolence in different traditions I realised again how much easier violence is in all the little ways in which it manifests. Is the dark side more powerful? (pauses for thought). "Quicker. Easier. More seductive." Perhaps the most wise response ever given by a puppet in a movie! We all know it to be true.

Sometimes it would be nice to be a tree in an ancient forest, not even aware perhaps of lumberjacks and industrial scale forest destruction. Better to be an ent though and have the ability to act when needed. I think I'd be a happy ent.

Sometimes it would be very nice not to care and to not have this temperament that won't let go. Sometimes it would be nice to be able to think more about soap operas and Love Island than to be a nontheist but still have a pile of Thomas Merton books to get through!