I love to dance. Specifically, I love to dance salsa and merengue. I’ve been dancing for as long as I can remember. It’s a form of self-care and healing for me, and I’ve spent many nights dancing alone in my bedroom. (It’s not as sad it sounds, I swear.)
This love of dance comes from my family. I was always my mother’s dance partner at our family parties, and from a young age, my dad instilled in me a love for salsa, exposing me to the giants of the genre like Héctor Lavoe, Willie Colón, and of course, my queen, Celia Cruz.
I didn’t learn all of the formal steps until this last year, actually, when I was given a brief salsa lesson in addition to instructions for a protest that I was a part of. I was participating in a "Salsa Shutdown" organized by Movimiento Cosecha, an immigrant-led organization that is working for the permanent protection of undocumented people in this country. The Salsa Shutdown was a means of showing the consumer power of immigrants.
I have been attending Quaker meetings here in the UK for nearly a decade but have never settled at one. I usually attend for a few months then find some convenient excuse to leave it behind and neglect my spiritual needs. ‘I didn’t like that Friend’s testimony’ ‘There isn’t enough discipline at this meeting’ ‘It’s too near a noisy road’ I tell myself I don’t need a religious community, I don’t need God. I know deep down these are just excuses I tell myself to disguise the real reason I cannot remain at one meeting for any real amount of time; my fears and insecurities.
I am afraid of getting close to a Quaker community because of the sheer challenges presented by Quakerism. For me Quakerism is not easily defined and it varies a great deal depending on which part of the world you worship with Friends. Is your meeting Liberal or Conservative? Perhaps it is Evangelical? Is it programmed or unprogrammed? Would the majority of Friends at your meeting be comfortable being described as Christians or would they not? It sometimes seems there are more questions than answers and, in some ways that frightens me. This isn’t what religion is supposed to be about is it? It’s about answers not questions. Quakers live their faith, not just talk about it, which can be an intimidating prospect. I’m far from perfect.
Today I am God's. Let me be cut down, redistributed, rebuilt from the ground up.
So much of me wants to be good already. To have everything figured out, to never fail. And so I'm constantly lamenting how I mess up; I'm not perfect; I've let my expectations down. Then I'm free to hate myself, because who would love someone who's not perfect? And I feel justified in avoiding other people because (it feels) I don't deserve them.
When I'm the arbiter of my own goodness... it's more than I can take. When I act like I am deeply, fundamentally, irreparably bad... it invites abuse.
Then the hardest thing is to turn all this over to God.
I am torn because the last six months have been really crazy. And I want to write about them. But I don’t know how to do it anymore.
I try to write about the place I find myself in right now, but each time I write a sentence and then delete it. I am so tired. I cannot defend my feelings anymore. I cannot explain all of the situations in the last 10 years or even four years or even four months or even four weeks that have helped me question my sanity. I feel like all I can do is find and hold the broken pieces of what I wanted to be. I can’t even explain what went wrong anymore. I just know that I’m holding broken things – broken pieces of something that used to be whole – and they are pointy and heavy things and my hands are bleeding.
And I am tired of making my bruises and cuts and scars teaching tools. I know it is good, but I am tired. It’s confusing and complicated. This often feels like the only way I know how to make meaning out of the pain – I want to point to the scar and say, “Look. This is real. Let’s not do this to others.” I want to point to my scars and say, “Hey, me too.”
Not long before Donald Trump announced victory, early on the morning of Wednesday, November 9, my brother Kento died.
I was in Italy, meeting him for the first time just days before he passed. There in the hospital, he was unable to speak or move much at all. But he squeezed my hand. And it meant the world to me.
Our hands touched.
And then he died.
It’s been a hard month. Hard to know what’s real. Some days, I find myself curled up on the floor, crying, not always sure about what. Other days, most days, I’m numb. Tired. I’ve been struggling to pray, talk, write. It’s hard to make sense of these things. Of anything.
This morning, my two-year-old joined me on the couch at about 7:00 am. We were waking up and chatting when we saw a huge bird fly by the window. We have a fairly large pond in the back (see picture) and two small ponds in the front, so I've seen the blue heron before when I've startled it (accidentally) by bursting out the back door when it was trying to pilfer our goldfish. We used to stock the pond with koi, but that gets rather expensive when feeding a heron! I hadn't seen it go to the front ponds before, and my son hadn't seen it at all.
I wanted to show the heron to my son so I picked him up and tried to approach the window slowly to get a better view. We could see its head and we stopped, it's left eye pointed right at us. Trying to get a better view, I took a couple steps closer, and off swooped the heron. "Oh well," we said, and sat back down on the couch.
As we read a Dr. Seuss book, out of the corner of my eye I saw a large shadow fly in again. "There it is!" we both said, excitedly, and tried to be quieter and calmer approaching the window, but again, the heron flew away before we got a very long look. I tried to pull out my phone to take a picture, which scared it off.
My friend Linda suggested, as part of our work with the Artist's Way, that we try "Cheshbon Hanefesh" (a spiritual accounting). It involves keeping track of the number of times you do something each day. After 80 days, the Sages promise, you will be a new person.
"My friend," the text goes, "you have the power. To start this process of self-discovery, ask yourself intimate questions, then wait for answers."
The Gospel of Luke tells us that a man named Zacchaeus, a chief tax collector, heard Jesus was coming. He wanted to see Jesus but was unable to do so because he was “short in stature” and couldn’t see over the people surrounding Jesus. I can relate to that because I’m about 5’4”. I’m afraid of heights, though, so I haven’t tried climbing into a tree to see someone – but I can relate to the experience of being unable to see Jesus because of a crowd.
Most people that know me know that I grew up Roman Catholic. Most people that know me also know that I’m gay. At age 13, I knew I was different from other boys, and I also knew that there would be problems. My classmates made fun of me. My teachers didn’t know how to support me. The words of priests and bishops all sent me the same message over and over again: I needed to change my identity in order to be part of community. It was something I couldn’t do. This is the experience of countless people who grow up, not just in the Roman Catholic Church, but in all kinds of Christian communities. The church often plays the part of the crowd in this Gospel story; we surround the Savior and make it hard for other people – especially those on the margins – to see or touch Jesus.
I tell people I’ve been trying to be Quaker for about a year. I keep asking how one goes about becoming a Quaker, and people keep telling me that I just declare myself one. I think the lack of real process here has something to do with not recognizing hierarchy. It’s a nice idea, but it’s not very helpful.
I shouldn’t just get to declare myself a Quaker. That’s not how these things go. I feel like I need a long-standing, birthright Quaker to recognize me as a Quaker. Then I’ll know I’ve made it.
I was alone in my bedroom the night I decided to follow Jesus. I was sixteen years old, and I was done with religion. But I couldn't stop thinking about Jesus.
I’d grown up in the Unification Church, and Jesus was barely a part of the cosmic narrative there. Actually, what I knew about Jesus was that – among our very ecumenical pantheon of sages and saints – he was a failure. But there was something about Jesus. His grace. His forgiveness. His sacrifice. Something about Jesus that spoke to my condition. He was absurd. And beautiful.
Jesus had shaken my faith before that night. In my sophomore year of high school, I attended a Mormon ward for six months, hoping that I might meet Jesus there. But I never received the promised "burning of the bosom,” so I gave up.
Later, as I tried to detox from religion and keep my distance from anything “spiritual,” my desire to know Christ kept coming back. I didn't want to be a Christian. I didn't want to have to listen to shitty Christian rock music or vote Republican or reject evolution. And more than anything, I didn't want to be seen as a nutty born-again. But I wanted Jesus.
Wednesdays are my Sabbath days. This is a rhythm that learned from my family, that we would practice together. The day of the week changed with the seasons, and sometimes it was just a half day, or a few hours, but we would set aside time to rest. The guiding principle for this day that my parents passed on to me is this: do what brings life.
Today, Wednesdays are an oasis in the middle of my week. I don’t do any work, and the people in my life know that I spend the day resting. Some weeks I come to Sabbath broken and tired, in need of a good night’s sleep and a day in bed. Other days, I arrive energized and have time and peace to create and process. I try not to make too many rules for myself, and abandon the lie of constant productivity.
That’s the problem with the way Christians talk about sin and the cross. We focus our attention on our unworthiness. My sins hurt God.
Why do we talk that way?
I have never met anyone who needed to be reminded that they’d failed. That they’re a failure. That they just aren’t enough. We know. We already know.
Here’s how this works in real life: I’m an engineering student. At the start of the semester, I don’t visit my professors during office hours because I want to show them that I’m not going to waste their time unless I have a really good question. I can work through my own problems. Then I screw up an assignment. I fail.
In the summer of 2000 I made my first trip to West Hollywood to go to a LGBT bookstore called A Different Light. (Those were the days before Amazon.) I was just starting to read coming-out stories and wanted to follow up on certain gay authors whom I found to be accessible. Barnes & Noble bookstore had a dismal gay and lesbian selection, so like a good cross-cultural missionary, I decided I would go out of my comfort zone to gain access to points of view different from what I was used to. I just wanted to understand.
My bike led me home. Physically. Spiritually. Emotionally. It was Sunday, September 4, 2011. The forecast called for rain.
I pedaled north from my house just outside of Indianapolis. Subdivisions gave way to scattered homes, woods, fields. About 12 miles into my ride, the rain started.
I approached a small white church on a knoll, a spot I’d ridden by hundreds of times before and since – Hinkle Creek Friends Church. A little porch with an overhang offered escape from the downpour. I sat on the steps and listened. Just the other side of the door, a man played an acoustic guitar and sang a folk song. His soothing music blended with the sound of raindrops hitting the trees. He had no idea I was his audience. An unexpected sense of peace and comfort – what I could best describe as a nearness to God – swept over me. I felt tears, and I knew I needed to share this experience.
Truth-telling. It’s hard to say for Quakers today if it matters the way it once did.
That first generation of Friends were honest. Brutally honest. About the crookedness of Church-as-Empire, about the empty strength of the empire itself. Those Quakers were shameless. They preached a God of justice and peace. A God who didn’t. Couldn’t. Wouldn’t tolerate a religion for show nor the vanity of power-schemers. They surrendered their lives to God, and in sweet surrender found themselves dynamically demonstrating the power of God’s Kingdom. On earth as it is in heaven. The early Friends prophesied, subverted society. Convicted by Love, they followed in her footsteps. She shook them, made them quake. And sometimes they danced. Polite society couldn’t understand and didn’t approve. That’s why so many Quakers ended up imprisoned, tortured – or dead.
How much hope is enough? I understand and experience hope to be “leaning into better.” Hope is trusting that as things change, good will come. When we are hopeful, we lean into things getting better, not worse.
Is hope a precious natural resource? Is there a limited amount of hope in the world that we need to carefully monitor? Or is hope a renewable energy, like the wind?
What if hope is sourced from a divine energy, limitless and eternal? Hope never runs out. The supply is unlimited.
We live in a time of a “scarcity culture” says social scientist Brene Brown. A culture of scarcity is where we live in fear of not having enough. If she’s right, then this mentality of scarcity is impacting our national supply of hope. We feel as if we are running low on hope. And too many of us are flat running out of it. Our hope gauge is on empty.
Just over a year ago, I came out as bisexual to those who know and love me. But for the sake of Christian connection, I put myself back in the closet in order to avoid hard conversations, criticism, isolation and the potential loss of relationship. It hurt. I started to lose myself. I became judgmental, defensive, angry, and isolated. All the things I’d been afraid of.
Friends and family tried to reach out to me, to be close with me. They called, texted, and emailed regularly. I shut them out. I kept telling myself, “They won’t understand” because I knew they couldn’t accept me—at least not the real me. What I was forgetting is that many of these people already love and accept me. Always have. Always will. What’s more, many of them suspected I was struggling with something bigger than my anxiety.
I know the statistics. Patterns of discrimination and oppression. Inequalities in education, employment, housing, law enforcement, criminal justice. But this year those data points came to life. For two months I volunteered in the emergency department at the Los Angeles County and USC Medical Center, and the facts I’d read about became a lot more than facts.
Every day at the hospital I met people of color who had been failed by social structures and support systems that I take for granted. Young men who were victims of gang violence. Families denied housing, who used the emergency department as a haven from the streets. People whose lack of access to primary care created preventable health emergencies.
White supremacy is the foundational organizing principle of American public life, and for centuries has held the distinction of being the most consistent animating force in our national history. This reality affects every social institution, certainly including our most visible Christian gatherings. In the Christian tradition, we see this problem in both "multiethnic churches” and in more progressive Emergent circles to the point where people of color are actually emotionally hesitant to participate in these communities, or are sidelined when they do. Although the structural racism embedded in these spaces—whiteness—is an enormous stumbling block, relatively simple changes can be put into motion to make it less lethal at your progressive Christian gathering.
"We do not want you to copy or imitate us. We want to be like a ship that has crossed the ocean, leaving a wake of foam which soon fades away. We want you to follow the Spirit, which we have sought to follow, but which must be sought anew in every generation." —Extracts from the Writings of Friends, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Faith & Practice
A phrase that keeps coming to mind is "a new Quakerism," and oddly enough, I've been hearing other Friends unknowingly echo this phrase back to me. It seems to me that many Friends, even those who consider themselves "convinced," are hungry for more than what the Society has to offer. We keep coming back to the same point: we desperately need to re-imagine Quakerism.