love
stretching me
beyond me
beyond my limits
over the edge
beyond my control
because that is where
love happens.
not in the safe comfortable space
of the heart’s
ensconce
the heart’s
embrace
but out
upon the cliff face
hanging by a rope
reaching out a hand
swinging past and missing
doubling back and trying again
grasping the hand
when the other won’t let go
pulling you face in
to rock
and face and fear
here
we are suspension
rope and fear
and love
in tension
[a dedication of one small vote in the postal survey on the legalisation of same-sex marriage]
yes.
dedicated to all the conservative christians of the past and present (and I hope no more in the future)
– who were told to pray away the gay;
.
– to get (straight) married on the “promise” that God would honour this with the “godly [read:hetero] desires;
– who God has failed to ‘heal’ or ‘make right’ as a God so interested and invested in heterosexuality, complementarity and salvation ought to.
– who gave their straight partners intimacy whilst their own most intimate longings remained unmet – and often even unnamed;
– who were subjected to endless prayer ministry, healing prayers and exorcisms to be rid of their errant same sex attraction but to no avail;
– those who lived quiet lives of lonely longing in enforced celibacy;
– those partners who lived with the secret of a gay spouse enduring their own share of suffering under the church’s twisted and unfulfilled promises;
– those who courageously have found strength for living forwards, for calling the pseudo-theological bullshit and have forfeited security, reputation and friendship
– those whose partners have broken free but have left ruptures of family and identity and resources and hearts in doing so.
dedicated to all of the children whose most loved and significant adults have been held up as ‘disgusting’ in cowardly anonymous and vitriolic youtube rants;
– whose trust and security and wellbeing lies in the bonds of two people whose very being is held open to public derision and judgement.
– whose world is shaped by an heteronormative internet and saturated with messages that call them to evaluate their worth by superficial conventions of body and fashion that is accessible and relevant to only a very small number of people anywhere on the planet.
– whose family system has been vilified and whose educational context has become a political point-scoring field, while they – actual real children – remain marginalised and voiceless.
dedicated to all of those people for whom the Bible is somehow so important,
– but who don’t know how to read the gifts of paragraphs around more than one verse from Leviticus 19 or three verses from Romans 1 or how to read the whole of Luke 7,
– and who will, despite the deep wisdom the larger conversations of scripture might hold for them, will continue to shake their heads in fear, and point their fingers in judgement and harden their hearts in ignorance, in a world in which marriage between same sex couples is already internationally a very real thing.
and to those whose lives are even more unspeakably complicated, hidden, unacceptable, unliveable whose pain now and onwards is beyond imagining…
one small ‘yes’ is all I have tonight. but it is yours dear ones.
What to do in these days?
These are the days of drama queen articles and posts and soundbytes on every topic of life imaginable.
How to manage all our feelings in the light of faux-news, media manipulated overworked outrage, polarised passionate fightpicking. When we are close to compassion frustration and cynicism fatigue.
The temptation to log out emotionally is strong.
The prophets of old lived in dramatic times too. And they asked these questions.
Are these days for mourning? – yes very so.
And are these days for singing? – yes also very so.
Are these days for still sombre reflection? aye indeed
And are these days for breathing the gulp of God’s air and throwing back our heads in glorious laughter and praise? Yes! Yes!
some days be as this tune below, but starting with an old soulful hymn,
yet to break out into a rollicking reel and be dancing
Let us be fasting and feasting:
fasting from greed, excess, despair, hate and blame
feasting on whole heartedness, generosity, hope, love and lifting the broken up with our own grubby hands of grace.
Fast and feast. Mourn and make merry.
Jesus prophesies against neither of these, but rails against the generation that cares neither to sorrow nor to celebrate.
Let us weep with those weeping
and laugh with those laughing,
and let us renounce the sins of nonchalance,
and let us repent of the sins of distant detachment,
the sins of contrived objectivity,
the sins of deadpan poker-face,
the sins of whatever.
or as in Matthew 11
“It is like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling to one another,
‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance;
we wailed, and you did not mourn.’
For John came neither eating nor drinking,
and they say,
‘He has a demon’;
the Son of Man came eating and drinking,
and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’
Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds.”
As in Jesus’ little parable here, children teach us to be emotionally present. Children still have to learn how to take care of their emotions – to make emotional life work healthily, but they start with an abundance. Those of us who have lived a while sometimes have learned to switch to emotional mute, to dissociate, to flatline. Managing our emotions has turned into negating our emotions.
The Law and the prophets calls us to full hearted, full minded, full bodied, full strength loving and living – Justice needs it. Truth needs it. Grace and Forgiveness need it.
The full-feeling life fuels us with God-given courage for the living we need to do today in the coming Kingdom of God.
‘
beth barnett