A Giant Leap for Equality

I was at church this evening for my last service before heading across the pond. I gave my pastor a great big hug, knowing how much we're going to miss each other and how much I'm going to miss the church community. Pastor is a wonderful man who has taught me so much about living my life as a spiritual person, his retirement in February is going to be one of the hardest losses of my life. He can't step foot in the church for five years after he retires, which is a church rule in order for the new pastor to become familiar with the congregation. I sure am going to miss him though, but when I get back from London I'll be church shopping near the new apartment. Hopefully I'll be lucky enough to find a congregation as warm as the one I am leaving behind, but no one will ever be able to replace pastor.

It took me a while to get out of church tonight, as everyone was talking with me about London and wishing me well and I was saying my goodbyes. Mom said she thought pastor was getting a little misty when he was saying his goodbyes to me, and I wouldn't doubt it because I was too. I cried like a baby as I drove myself home tonight. I haven't gone four months without going to church since I was baptised.

However, I wasn't so much crying because I am going to miss pastor, the congregation, the feeling I get when I sing a hymn or look up at the cross in the pulpit. Pastor told me, as I was leaving, that the church (the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America) recently (this week!!) voted to stop discriminatory practices in regard to sexual orientation. That means that gays and lesbians are now able to be married in the church by an ordained Lutheran minister, gays and lesbians can serve openly as ordained ministers AND be in committed relationships with their spouses. Previously, gays and lesbians could serve as ordained ministers BUT they had to be abstinant, and church policy was that gay and lesbian commitment ceremonies or weddings wouldn't be church sponsored.

This is the. best. news. EVER! I'm so happy for the church, it literally made me weepy, so my tears were a mix of sadness at leaving and happiness that the church is finally entering the 21st century (they skipped right over the 19th and 20th and moved right into the 21st! big steps for a conservative, old fashioned organization). This bodes very well for my interest in becoming a pastor, something I need to discuss with my pastor when I get back from London. I love research and psychology but I've always felt called to serve God and it's not something I can deny. I'm just glad I no longer have to choose between serving God as an ordained individual and being true to myself. I'm also relieved that, if I want to, I can be married in my own church by my own pastor and have a marriage recognized by my church.

It's a wonderful feeling to be accepted. Somewhere in heaven Jesus is saying "now stop persecuting the homos and start feeding the hungry!"

Truly I Tell You

I wasn't a Christian all my life, in fact today is the four year anniversary of my baptism into the faith.

I'm not a born again, though I suppose you could say that I was born again in Christ. I'm a Lutheran.

I believer wholeheartedly in God (in whatever form you choose God to take), I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, I believe the Bible was written by individuals who heard the Word of God, through whom God spoke to the people and continues to speak today.

I also believe the Bible is the single most misinterpreted piece of literature in the history of the world, or perhaps more accurately the single piece of literature that has caused the most strife and bloodshed in the history of the world.

When I read the Bible, my heart feels full because it's like I am talking to God. God is telling me how much s/he loves me. I have a similar experience when I am hiking or when I am swimming or when I look into the faces of children. The Bible gives me a sense of being overwhelmingly full and at peace, knowing that everything is going to be okay because God, the most powerful being ever, loves me personally. You may disagree and say that God does not exist, and that is your prerogative to believe or not believe or to believe something different, it is a wonderful free country we have here. But every time a rain drop falls on my cheek or I look into my niece's bright blue eyes I know for a fact that God exists, and s/he is good.

But some people don't feel full when they read the Bible. Some people feel so empty that they feel the need to make other people empty, and so they tear others down, they tell others they are going to hell, they fight and they kill and they do it all in God's name. They read the Word, and they see that they have sinned, but they forget that God loves them and they will be forgiven, so they take all of their regret and all of their anger toward themselves and they turn it out into the world. These people are in our churches, our schools, our offices, our neighbourhoods. They are our uncles, our sisters, our mothers, our best friends. They are the ones who feel a deep shame within themselves when they read the Word, and take that shame and do harm to others with it.

Well I won't be shamed by you anymore, nor will I let my friends and loved ones be shamed by you either. From this day forward I pledge that I will love and be loved by God and I will believe in Jesus just as He believes in me because it's my right as an American to believe what I want and it's my responsibility as a Christian to spread the Good News, take it or leave it. I will go about my life, freely and honestly, and I won't make anyone feel bad about themselves just because I am insecure and I won't use the Bible to sway the opinions of others or as a code of law for my country, "free of the bias of religion."

It's been four years, and it took me four years to learn that I'm not doing anything wrong by living my life. So long as I mind my business, give back when and where I can, love everyone I possibly can and always believe, I'll be saved.

I hope those people who would damn me or say that I am a sinner will see the light of reason before it is too late for them. I have faith.

John 3:17 "For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him"

Life in a Northern Town

Mighty Mouse died.

I really don't know what to say, because it's just not fair to the poor little baby mouse.

I picked him up out of the cage and held him close for a while, and told him how sorry I am, and promised God that I really tried. I'm not sure I did the right thing, but I tried. And I loved him, and I didn't want anything bad to happen to him.

I took him outside and paced around for a while, trying to think of what to do with him. I saw a big mouse scurry into the bulkhead that leads into the basement. It was probably the most upsetting part of the whole event. I assume this mouse is a relative of mighty mouse, perhaps his mother searching for him.

I searched high and low for her yesterday. Where was she yesterday? So I left his little body in the bulkhead, where he will be safe from bigger animals and I will be able to find him tomorrow to bury him, but where tonight maybe his mom will find him and know that she doesn't have to search anymore.

I don't know anything about mice but I assume they aren't as sentimental as people are. But if my baby went missing and I couldn't find it, I would at least want to know what happened to it.

I'm super sentimental, I know, and probably a big cry baby because when I was holding mighty I was dripping big tears all over him.

I told him that I'm sure God has a special place in the palm of His hand where he can nuzzle his little head, and I'm sure it's true. There has to be something special for innocent little creatures.

All creatures great and small
All things bright and beautiful
All things wise and wonderful
The Lord God made them all

He gave us eyes to see them
He gave us lips to tell
How great is God Almighty
Who has made all things well

When I get upset I turn to my faith. Sometimes it is trying, as no one can ever understand God's motivation. I DO understand the motives of people (most of the time...), and people are most certainly not God, which is why I disagree with much of organized religion. Too many people doing "God's work" and screwing over everyone in the process.

And I would never, EVER, push my faith on another. But when I needed guidance, God was there for me, and my Pastor was there for me, even when I didn't know him. Everything happens for a reason, I just happen to believe that God is everything.

When I hear people say they don't believe in God, I get kind of confused, I'll admit it. But I have been there, and I respect everyone's decision to believe or not believe. It's a free country, it should be a free world. I believe we should all enjoy this life, because life is meant to be enjoyed. Bad things happen to everyone, good and bad. Good things happen to everyone, good and bad. Life is just life. But I do believe there is more.

When my father died, I said on any number of occasions that I hated God. But hating something proves that you believe in it. I hated everything, I hated life I hated death, I hated myself.

I've grown up a lot in the, geez almost 11, years that my father has been dead. I've lived a lot more and experienced a lot more. I don't hate anything anymore, and I attribute the freedom from hate to my faith. And that's just me.

I wasn't in the room when he died. And I'll never forgive myself for that. Ever. My sister was out to dinner with her husband, on her way back. We're both scarred by it, I know. We both know what it is like to have an absent father, so to speak. She was twenty-five when he died, but my father wasn't allowed to father my sister when she was young (her mother made sure of that, we're half sisters, but that's another story). And my father wasn't allowed to father me, as fate would have it.

He was a wonderful man. He never got to hear me play my violin, or play lacrosse, or graduate high school, or move into college. He wasn't there to knock the cigarette out of my hand outside the shop class garage in high school. He wasn't there to teach me how to change the oil on my car, something I had to teach myself. He wasn't there when I had my first kiss, my first date, my first heart break, the first time I broke someone else's heart. He wasn't there to see my big mistakes, my little mistakes, the happiest moments in my life, the saddest moments in my life, the days when I couldn't get out of bed, the days when I couldn't wait to greet the sun with a smile.

He never got to hold his granddaughter, or his grandson. To see their first steps, to hear their first words. To look into their eyes and see his own. To know that he played a little part in the great mystery of it all. To know that, he touched their lives, even though he never knew them.

And all I can do is carry on his memory, his kindness.

Which loops me back around to where I think I began this rant. My father was very much like me, where he couldn't just leave a helpless animal to suffer. I remember, vividly, the time that he found a baby bird in the pool. He build a makeshift nest and left the baby out in the trees behind our house. When we went to check on the baby the next morning, it was gone. Whenever I see a healthy young robin, I think of the bird that was saved. I'm sure its mother found it, and I'm sure it learned how to fly. Because my daddy saved it.

I hope somewhere, my father is proud of me, the way I am still so very proud of him.

I know you tried daddy. All we can ever do is try.