thanks to all who shared to our listening session on homosexuality within the context of Christian spirituality. i had hoped to write about it sooner, but an issue as sensitive & divisive as this needs apt time for discernment. even as i start this post i feel it will take me more time to complete thoughts, but i'm stuck on this so i thought i'd share.
a few years back, when the episcopal church was going through separations after electing Bishop Robinson, i was discussing the state of the church with a close friend in the episcopal church. as we talked it became clear to us, that approaches to homosexual clergy & 'practicing' homosexual clergy were not addresses as a matter of spiritual or theological understanding. they were approached as a issue based solely on the act of sex.
when i started at the university of alabama i remember an afternoon walking through the local mall. as i walked around i saw a mixed race couple holding hands while shopping. i took notice and that bothered me. it didn't bother me because i thought it was weird (where i grew up in nj it was quite commonplace). i thought it odd in the deep south. i asked questions of whether that type of relationship was accepted here. i wondered if they had undue stress on their relationship for the sole reason that their cultural context might tell them they are not to be together. i threw some unsaid admiration their way and kept on.
when i started my call to ministry i met a guy named "d". we became good friends and had our own little circle of friends. as the story goes, a few years later "d" opened up about being gay. till then he had struggled within himself to be 'normal' going so far as to get engaged. since we are still friends i've met some of his boyfriends over the years, though that's not a big part of our friendship.
as i've thought about "d's" relationship and the story of the couple at the mall as significant imprints in my life i've come to understand something for myself. the only thing that i ever really wondered about "d" and his relationship is how they are able to be intimate. being comfortable & within context of my heterosexuality makes it difficult for me to understand the possibility of intimate relationship between same sexes. i can understand the intimate relationship between ethnicities, i only take notice because of a societal context. which, that societal context has changed views over the past 30 years.
for myself i've come to a point where i don't have to understand it.
for our greater Christian faith...
what seems to polarize this difficulty of understanding is that as a whole i think there is such an unhealthy understanding of our own sexuality. now, i'm not even going to attempt to go into a huge psychological analysis, but i think we need to take a look at how we view sex in our own lives. is our current view skewed by cultural trends? do we have a strong or weak sex drive? are we heterosexual or homosexual? are we afraid of sex because of criminal actions? does sex warrant criminal behavior? the individual will have to determine for themselves what parts of their sexuality they understand and seek how that moves or works in their spiritual life. after that they need to make decisions of action or cause. the group will just have to come to understand this instead of just speaking with understanding of where the individual is.
i am reminded of a visual that brian mclaren shared at the emergent convention here in nashville back in may. he brought up if you took a hetero and homosexual orientation comfort-ability on an 'x' axis and then stretched those same people out over the 'y' axis determined by their level of sex drive, you find that people are scattered all over the place.
i'd don't think i can call the 'homosexual' issue of the church the 'white elephant in the corner' because people are talking. however, i wonder if more of the issue has to do with the sex act over a spiritual perspective of Christian faith & practices.
