Dazzled, transfigured*

When you were ever transfigured? Well, no point in begging that question, the answer for me, clearly, is when I came out. That first day, I will never forget it.

I had been working on it for a long time. We forget today how times have changed. I really can’t explain that part clearly here, except that I knew there were gay people and they were pretty happy and I was probably one of them and I just couldn’t figure out how to get from here to there. And then I had a terrible cold I think and had to stay home from work (it was probably the time I had walking pneumonia). So after I left the doctor’s office I stopped at that adult book store that I had never dared to visit before. You know what? There was a really nice young man working there and we had a nice conversation. I never saw him again … who knows, maybe he was the angel sent that day to guide me to my destiny … Still, I bought an Advocate which in those days wasn’t yet a slick magazine, but was a newspaper for gay men from San Francisco.

I went home and devoured that newspaper, and I subscribed to it, and I ordered some books from ads in it. And I eventually started to get used to the idea that it was possible to be one of these gay people. (Okay, sorry, context is everything—this was 1974.) And I began to get comfortable with gay men, who after all in a school of music were all around me, and I began to say yes when they invited me to things, like “come over we’ll bake cookies” and stuff like that. How overtly perverse! And then I fell in crush with a guy who was completely oblivious to me. We ate our cookies and went home (yes, they were really just cookies). The next day I encountered one of his friends on the steps of my library, and he asked me what was on my mind and I told him, and he took me home and the rest was history! Still is! Hurray! Too bad I didn’t write down the date.

But that day, I was transfigured. I became everything I was meant to be, not just scholar, but gay man, and sexual being. It was glorious. I was so brilliant not even Tide or Cheer could’ve made me more brilliant (ok, that’s a gloss on the Gospel, so if you’re curious you’ll have to go read it, I can’t do everything in one blog post!). And you know what, I still am. And there are no more closets to be built like Peter wanted to do to contain his prophets. And there is only God’s reality, to which we have been called, in glory.

So my friends, celebrate who you are. You, too, have been transfigured by God.

*Last Sunday after Epiphany (2 Kings 2:1-12; Psalm 50: 1-6; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9)
©2012 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.