Let's get another thing straight - I call myself a Christian. Does that make you cringe? Does it confuse or worry you? Do you find yourself raising an eyebrow and wondering how the two things coexist? Then maybe you should ask me about it rather than jumping to conclusions.
Sometimes I feel like I could write an entire documentary on the double quandry of trying to be lesbian in the Christian community and Christian in the GLBTQ community. Having to duck grenades from both sides gets to be a little tiring. I also get entirely confused as to how someone could assume that anyone who is liberal enough to be lesbian is going to somehow browbeat them in another capacity just because of their faith choice.
Now, before we get too far into this rant, I want to point out that yes, I understand the Christian church and faith hasn't endeared itself to the GLBTQ community. I know the pain and hurt and hate and suffering that has come out of thousands of years. I'm not excusing it, or pretending it doesn't exist. All of that stuff pisses me off too, and offends my lesbian sensibilities. Not to mention my female sensibilities, and my liberal politics sensibilities, because homosexuality is not even close to the only topic that the Christian church has fucked up on in it's history. But here's the thing - I try not to judge. It's a struggle that I don't always win, but I try really hard not to judge. I don't hold all of Islamic faith responsible for what happened on 9/11. Nor would I touch down in Germany and spit on the first German I came across just because a hundred years ago their relatives were involved in something that Hitler started. So yeah, Christians are crazy. Conservative. Fucked up. Weird. And can hurt people without intending to or even understanding sometimes that they are. But so are/can atheists. Buddhists, Muslims, Pagans, etcetera and so on.
I've heard lots of GLBTQ stories about sexuality that involved a phase where the person "didn't want to be gay." You know, the whole "I prayed and wished and hoped to be anything but gay!" stories. And you know, I never had that phase. In fact, I rejoiced in realizing I was a lesbian. I love it. I revel in it. Women are NUTS. Dating them is NUTS (no irony or pun intended, actually). But I wouldn't give it up for anything. I have no want of a fairy godmother showing up and granting me any wish to be straight. I have never in all the years I knew I was interested in women wished it away. I love being a lesbian. That having been said, I had a very strong negative reaction to the idea of being Christian. I didn't want to be Christian. "Oh no, anything but that! Give me Confuscianism, Lord, but don't ask me to be Christian!" I bucked against it like a drowning man against the current.
But it happened anyway. Isn't that queer? lol When people ask me why I'm a Christian, there are lots of answers. Some are short, some are very long and complex. They include statements like "God threw a book at my head, and it wasn't the Bible," and "When I pray, God answers." It's just as hard to ignore the thought you might be a lesbian after you fall in love with a woman for the first time, as it is to ignore the possible existence of a power that talks to you even when you ask it to shut up.
All of that being said, I don't hold the same beliefs as most Christians. That's the part that most people don't stick around to hear. I have no interest in bringing you to Jesus. I don't believe that everyone needs to come to Jesus for salvation, or that Christianity is the "one true religion." There is no such thing as "one true religion." I don't think I believe in absolute truth either. I'm pro-choice, not against euthanasia, and read tarot cards too. Welcome to my form of Christianity. I can't speak to Christianity as a religion. I'm not a religious person. I can only speak specifically to what God has done for me, personally. And he had done enough that I was okay with making my faith choice.
So I hope that someday (although probably not soon), I won't get that strange look when I tell new romantic prospects that I am Christian. Or that I can stop having awkward conversations about how I am Christian and Lesbian all at once. Or I can stop feeling attacked for being a Christian in my GLBTQ community even though I am entirely welcomed as Lesbian. Or feeling entirely unwelcomed in certain Christian communities for being both, and then welcomed entirely in other Christian communities as both. Where's the balance, people? Isn't it a little retroactive to want their acceptance when I have a hard time finding acceptance in my own community for being a a part of any of those communities we seek acceptance from? I think Jesus loves the Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Pagan, Hetero, Homo and Asexual the same. We should strive to do the same. Because it's the right thing to do. Not in the name of Jesus or Allah or anyone in particular. Just because we're all human, and I believe at the end of the day we're all seeking the same basic thing when it comes to love and acceptance. Be humane.
~ Mar
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thursday, December 2, 2010
So ... I Got a Blog
After some prodding from a couple of my friends, I have been peer pressured into getting this blog. My thought, whenever it's been suggested has been, "Why? What could I possibly have to say that's relevant? Or interesting??" But then I started thinking well, I'm sure the world is full of people who are blogging about completely irrelevant, uninteresting things, so I figured I could easily join their ranks and not feel quite so awkward about it. Reminds me of my LiveJournal days - which, btw, I'm sure is still out there, floating around somewhere in cyberspace no man's land. That having been said, I'm about to dive right into something that's probably not going to make a lot of sense, unless you know me. Heh.
You ever meet somebody who makes you feel narrow? Not bigoted or judgemental, or even conservative. Just narrow. Like there's an entire other world or corners of other worlds that you've been somehow walking around without even really knowing that you'd trained yourself to walk that way? I've met a couple people like that in relatively recent history. And life inside their worldview is both breathtaking and asthma-attack inducing all at once. You are amazed and intrigued by everything you haven't seen that is suddenly occuring to you, yet there's an upcoming undertow that you have to kick against. Or at least, for me there seemed to be. I wondered - how could I have lived so inside the box and never seen things that way? Should I feel bad for living inside that box if I didn't even know there WAS a box or a world outside that box that I was missing?
These people are both my heroes, and the people that shine brightest and most intense in my life experiences. I take the memories and roll them over in my hands and in my mind daily, hourly, moment by moment and try to see things anew. I ask myself questions that I can only hope are relevant. About them, my world, myself, my own boundaries and definitions and hopes. I tell myself in the quiet of their being gone that I should be proud and satisfied that they stumbled into my box and shook my corners free. But sometimes that thought is not enough to fill the void their brief season in my life has left behind. I shape their memories into pearls and I wear them, like a brooch, in my most quiet hours. My mouth still smiles, days and even a year later.
My hope is that people like that keep coming into my life. No matter how much pain or heartache or tears I go through when their season ends and I am left to wonder what went wrong, my life and my world are always a little brighter, with new corners built on when they leave. I learn things, and seek out things after they leave that I never would have considered without them. Every pearl of memory added to my chain is something I hope to take away with me when this long journey is over. I admire and respect these people more than I am able to succinctly say. So for you, who are out there and I don't talk to anymore, know that I think of you. That I admire you, and miss you every day. Thank you, for all I learned from you. And for you, handsome, who are there but "not in the same capacity," (even when conversation is sometimes like pulling teeth from a chicken) thank you too. You blew my corners off, darlin'. There is nothing I could give you in return for all the windows you opened in my world. I'm learning to live with the chill.
~ Mar
You ever meet somebody who makes you feel narrow? Not bigoted or judgemental, or even conservative. Just narrow. Like there's an entire other world or corners of other worlds that you've been somehow walking around without even really knowing that you'd trained yourself to walk that way? I've met a couple people like that in relatively recent history. And life inside their worldview is both breathtaking and asthma-attack inducing all at once. You are amazed and intrigued by everything you haven't seen that is suddenly occuring to you, yet there's an upcoming undertow that you have to kick against. Or at least, for me there seemed to be. I wondered - how could I have lived so inside the box and never seen things that way? Should I feel bad for living inside that box if I didn't even know there WAS a box or a world outside that box that I was missing?
These people are both my heroes, and the people that shine brightest and most intense in my life experiences. I take the memories and roll them over in my hands and in my mind daily, hourly, moment by moment and try to see things anew. I ask myself questions that I can only hope are relevant. About them, my world, myself, my own boundaries and definitions and hopes. I tell myself in the quiet of their being gone that I should be proud and satisfied that they stumbled into my box and shook my corners free. But sometimes that thought is not enough to fill the void their brief season in my life has left behind. I shape their memories into pearls and I wear them, like a brooch, in my most quiet hours. My mouth still smiles, days and even a year later.
My hope is that people like that keep coming into my life. No matter how much pain or heartache or tears I go through when their season ends and I am left to wonder what went wrong, my life and my world are always a little brighter, with new corners built on when they leave. I learn things, and seek out things after they leave that I never would have considered without them. Every pearl of memory added to my chain is something I hope to take away with me when this long journey is over. I admire and respect these people more than I am able to succinctly say. So for you, who are out there and I don't talk to anymore, know that I think of you. That I admire you, and miss you every day. Thank you, for all I learned from you. And for you, handsome, who are there but "not in the same capacity," (even when conversation is sometimes like pulling teeth from a chicken) thank you too. You blew my corners off, darlin'. There is nothing I could give you in return for all the windows you opened in my world. I'm learning to live with the chill.
~ Mar
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