When I was about 11 or so, my dad had a terrible car accident. I remember it was the 4th of July and he had just shipped into Long Beach from Taiwan. We’d greeted him at the pier, and we’d had a great reunion evening, and then early that morning he’d taken the car in to the ship to get the stuff he’d bought in Taiwan, including some magnificent rosewood furniture. But, the main thing was, he’d brought Chinese fireworks for the 4th. So all day we waited for him but he never came; some time in the late afternoon Mother got “the” phone call—he’d been in a wreck and had been taken to San Diego where there was a better military hospital. (You know, right, that this is a fifty page story, so I’m doing my best here to cut to the chase.) Mother had to buy a new car [!] with the money in her purse … it was a horrid chevy station wagon. She paid for it off the used car lot, then she and I drove to San Diego to see Dad. She got a neighbor to babysit the kids (my much younger siblings). Dad was in traction with broken hips. But let’s just cut to the chase. Three months later, Dad is home, and they sit me down in the living room after the kids are asleep, and they explain to me how bad men will try to touch me. It took me years to figure out that really nice Navy nurse (a young red-headed guy) had put the moves on Dad, and Dad had ratted him out.
So, let’s see, I was 11. And it was 13 years later before I could let the eyes of my soul, “born blind” open up and realize it was okay to love another boy. And this is the value of today’s Gospel for gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people everywhere. Because we are all born “blind” my friends. And we have to let our eyes be opened if we are going to experience the beauty of life God has made for us. In the story you might notice that there is a lot of chatter about how Jesus made the blind boy see, but there isn’t any detail about the process. Okay, a little bit of mud. But, it isn’t the mud that opens the boys’ eyes anymore than it was mud that opened my own eyes when I finally came out. One day I just realized I was gay, and I just wanted to stop playing blind. You know what, in 1975 it was harder than you might think to come out. It took the blink of an eye to come out to myself; but it took months to find a sympathetic gay person to take me by the metaphorical hand and show me how to find the community into which I had been born. All jokes aside, his name was Billy, and I’ll never forget the joy and laughter with which he welcomed me into the reality of my own self, and drew me toward the community where I could and would be nurtured.
You know, I intended this story to follow on from the gospel about the man born blind. But now that I think about it, it follows too from the story about the selection of David, the least of Samuel’s sons. Later we will learn that David was “the fairest of men” and that his love for Jonathan surpassed the love of God. So let’s see, sometimes these weird stories we tell about our own lives are pretty much like these stories where God chooses the right one, which is why the Bible is considered revelatory.
“For once you were in darkness but now in the Lord you are light.” You are light. You. Are light. Let your light shine friends, let it illumine the world.
Let me put it more bluntly—BE GAY! Or, REJOICE AND BE GAY! And let your light shine my friends.
*4 Lent (1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5: 8-14; John 9:1-41)
©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.
Dimensions of Reality: glbt Christian spirituality 