No Cross, No Crown*

“No Cross, No Crown” is a famous quotation, apparently from William Penn (although, curiously, somehow in my brain I’m associating it with Oscar Wilde—Google did not confirm that). I first encountered it sitting at the bar in the bar called Twin Peaks at the corner of Market and Castro in San Francisco. I thought it was hilarious at first, and then I began to understand the depth of its wisdom, especially in such a place. I don’t know whether you know Twin Peaks—it’s an old and venerable and remarkable institution with its big wooden bar, huge round tables, and those enormous open windows facing out both onto Castro and onto a spur of 17^th St. and Market. All of gay San Francisco comes and goes past that corner. I used to love to sit there at the end of the day as the sun was going down (or being blanketed by fog) over the real peaks just up the hill. You could watch people pouring out of the subway station and just imagine their glamorous San Francisco lives. And although my visits there have become fewer and farther between, I still enjoy the energy of the community in that place. And I have, indeed, been surprised to there encounter friends from all over the world, dropping by to pay homage while in town.

Well, back to “no cross, no crown.” It’s pretty pithy. I guess it just about sums everything up. Not just Christianity (although that), but life in general too. I discovered by Googling the phrase that it is considered a companion (or parallel) to “no pain, no gain.” I think what struck me about it that first time in San Francisco was the idea of the power of being fully gay. I sat there and saw that sign and looked around me and out the window at an enormous slice of God’s kingdom, all of it gay, and I saw the wonder—the glory, if you will—of living into the gay lives God has given us. But that glory follows the cross of coming out. No closets here—the phrase says to me that if you’re not willing to bear the social cross of coming out you won’t find the glory of the reality of created life. That’s a fancy way of saying the closet is deadly and coming out is the path to knowing God through knowing each other. And that is the definition of resurrection.

Easter is all about resurrection. We make a mistake as Christians when we focus too much on physical health as it’s meaning because we miss the dimensionality that way. Resurrection is how we continually connect and re-connect with God by connecting and re-connecting with each other. Broken relationships healed are a kind of resurrection. Broken spirits revived are a kind of resurrection. Jesus’ very real death and very real resurrection took place to show us how to stay connected with God. Jesus’ resurrection is our light that shows us the way to fullness of life in community. Resurrection is total connection, total connection with all of God’s powerful reality. Resurrection is in every moment in every life so long as we let Christ in.

No more closets. Time for the crown.

*Easter (Acts 10:34-43; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; 1 Corinthians 15:19-26; John 20:1-18)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved

Put manure around it*

Sometimes tending to reality gets messy. We all know that. As lgbt people we live in different dimensions of reality, as it were. We are male or female, we are sons or daughters or fathers or mothers, we are teachers and students, we are neighbors and customers and citizens and parishioners. And in all of these we are “other” if we are members of a sexual minority. Just, well, just because …

We often think of our sexuality as “none of anyone’s business.” This is true to a point, of course. But as I like to point out anytime a new acquaintance asks if I have children, the question really is what kind of sex do I have and is it normative. And, there is no denying the sexuality of a young heterosexual couple holding hands and sharing the tending of the newborn baby. So,  yes, when my husband and I go out to dinner for Valentine’s Day or our anniversary, there we are right out in public being gay whether we say so or not. So the idea that our sexuality is private is an illusion, a form of distorted reality.

As is the closet in any form. It is a way of locking ourselves in, and everybody else out. Or, is it society’s way of locking us up, to make sure we do not thrive?

In Luke 13 Jesus tells a parable of an unproductive fig tree. It has been there three years and borne no fruit. And there is a dialogue between the owner and his gardner. The owner orders the tree cut down for being unproductive. But the gardener recognizes deprivation when he sees it. He says “wait, let me put manure around it” and let’s see whether it will thrive.

Putting manure around it, (he also says he will dig around it to loosen the soil), means to tend the tree. Tending the tree means showing it love. Showing it love means acknowledging it. You see the parallel? If we shatter closets we can tend with love to the souls inside. Usually, souls tended with love begin to thrive.

I am glad that in my 24th year I shattered my closet and chose to live in the fresh air and sunshine of gay life. I not only began to thrive, I found a community of loving friends, and a lifemate I’ve now been with for almost 35 years. It is not just the power of love, it is the power of love lived in community and in the light of God.

*3 Lent (Exodus 3:1-15; Psalm 63:1-8; 1 Corinthians 10:1-13; Luke 13:1-9)

©2013 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.

 

Open the Eyes of Your Heart*

This week’s scripture brings us one of my favorite passages from Paul, where he writes that we should come to know the hope to which God has called us through the eyes of our hearts.

Wow. The eyes of our hearts. And yes, of course it is a metaphor for learning to see the world from within the center of your soul. Which is rather a different way of looking at the world than what most of us do, which is to look at it from behind the ramparts.

It reminds me of my first week in seminary, which is—trust me—an eye-opening experience. You arrive, together with a bunch of other dewy-eyed people, full of hope, full of your own knowledge of the Holy Spirit, ready to dive into the job of becoming a priest. You mustn’t think, reading this, that there is any naïvete about these people. Like me, all of them had been through a “process” as “aspirants” and through the process of opening up and telling their spiritual histories to huge groups of total strangers over and over. That’s the first step toward becoming a “postulant” for holy orders. It is, frankly, an emotionally brutal process at best. But it teaches you to think with your heart as well as your brain.

The first day or two of seminary involve a lot of eating and singing, and then everyone gets down to work and before long the politics show up. And pretty soon, there you are walking around with your walls all down, because that’s how everybody else is, and then comes the zinger that hurts to the quick. And then you see, with the eyes of your heart , just how easy it is to hurt someone, even without really meaning it. And then, if you are to become a priest, you have to keep learning this lesson better and better … because Christ asks us to tear our walls down and walk together in love—as it says “so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you.”

It is not just a lesson for the clergy, of course. It is a lesson for everyone. Christ was born a baby, dangerously in a stable, not in a shiny hospital or an elegant home, but in a barn with animals and filth, it could hardly have been more real or more human. Our God became like us, to show us, that we can be like God, if we can tear down our walls.

GLBT folks live behind lots of walls. I’ve always thought it humorous that the first carpentry I ever did was to build a pantry—a closet—and in fact, in this present home, which is my third house, the only real carpentry I’ve done is to rebuild the pantries—closets. Building closets is the only thing at which I excel. Ha ha … We are all good at protecting ourselves from each other. But, the cost of that is that we wind up separating ourselves from each other. Thus, the power of the Christmas message is the power that tells us to tear down those walls, to open the closet doors, and to learn to see with the eyes of our hearts.

Will it hurt? Yes, certainly, and without question. Will the hurt be worth the gain? Yes, certainly and without question. Because if you can learn to live openly, as who God made you to be, and in full union with those around you, no walls up to separate your hearts … if you can do that, then you will indeed be enlightened to the hope to which Christ calls us in his humble birth.

What should we make of this odd story in Matthew’s Gospel? More dreams—poor Joseph is being jerked around by angels who come to him in dreams, and yet, they are the dreams that open the eyes of his heart to enlightenment, which ultimately fulfills the prophecy. You see, if you are going to be all that God has made you to be, then you must be open to the messages of angels in your dreams. Sounds weird doesn’t it? It means, open the eyes of your heart to see what God is calling you to do and to be. Learn to see with your heart, or listen with your soul. (Maybe I’m being too obtuse here—it means, set your five natural senses aside if you want to hear what God is showing you, or see what God is saying to you.) Or maybe I should just say, don’t overthink it.

There is a persistent theme in this scripture, about a garden full of water in a desolate valley, a place of springs, a place that nourishes, a place that is ordained by God. Not a desolate closet, but an enriching garden of friends and loved ones, whose hearts are opened by the enlightenment you bring. It reminds me of the first Christmas potluck I went to after I came out. There were about 40 guys there, and it was the warmest, most spiritual Christmas I had ever experienced to that point in my life.  I had found my real family, or perhaps I should say, with the eyes of my heart open, my family had found me.

This, then, is the responsibility of Christmastide. Open the eyes of your hearts my friends, and live!

*2nd Sunday after Christmas (Jeremiah 31:7-14; Psalm 84:1-8; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a; Matthew 2:13-15,19-23)

©2011 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.