The Divine Scoundrel

When we think of Biblical villains, scoundrels, vixens…questionable people,

Our knee jerk reflexes are often

Judas, Pilate, Pharaoh, Delilah…

 

You know, all the people we were taught were really sinful and bad in Sunday School.

 

However…what about GOD…YHWH…Elohim?

 

Perhaps a bit sacrilegious…escandaloso…profane.

 

As we read the stories of our faith,

We encounter a GOD who has done

some very “mysteriously holy good” things such as:

Destroying cities…wiping out whole communities of people…

smiting two boys for offering the wrong smoke…

sending plagues…hardening hearts…

giving leprosy to a woman who complained…

allowing the chosen people to be enslaved, tortured, and exiled.

 

It is this messiness and not so pretty face of GOD that

invites us to appreciate the divine humanity, confusion, and “amazingness”

within the one called  “I am.”  

 

The Almighty is complicated, quirky, and screwed up…

 

Just like me. 

 

Afterall, we are all made in GOD’s image.

 

Perfection is not the absence of flaw,

but the willingness to find and reflect GOD in the snarky and faithful.

 

It is this Divine Scoundrel who invites us and challenges us

into the trenches to wrestle with counter-narratives that go against hegemony and the status quo of

abelism, heteronormativity, whiteness, thin-ness and all the other isnesses;

to risk the scandal of widening the circle of celebratory acceptance and radical inclusivity by sitting at

the table to share with  the person living with AIDS, a person addicted to drugs …

a person who disagrees with us in our

theology, sexual ethic, political stances, or cultural practice. 

The scandalous divinity that created us, made us in HER image not to be comfortable

but to be just, to be prophetic …

to stand in sacred, sassy, social solidarity advocating for those who are raped by

society, our churches, our schools, our legal system, and by us. 

 

For despite all the power, wrath, and vastness,

GOD took the time to create me, stick with me, abrazarme, carry me, drag me…

 

Gave me a voice and the ability to create scandal not for mere shock value

But to be a partner and lover in creating justice and sanctuary.

 

Mi DIOS risked scandal by loving me and loving through me; and SHE would have it no other way!!!

 

Amen!!!

February 2010 Update

Here's what's been going on with Sanctuary Collective during the month of February!

This month was our first round of regularly scheduled blogs! We've had updates from our Discipleship Program participants as well as Sanctuary Collective staff. Here's a sampling:

Matt's post: Some thoughts on Prayer, and a Challenge for you
...I'm not talking about a quick Pater Noster as I brush my teeth, I'm talking about some quiet reflective time where I talk to God, with God, or at God followed by some time listening.

MarySue's post from Mississippi College
My immediate goal is to help create a safer atmosphere on campus by engaging in dialogue with other students on campus about the issues LGBTQ students face as well as continuing to foster safe community within our QSA.

Micah's post: The Things that Sustain Us
There's just something about sitting down over coffee and laughing about being afraid that the rapture had happened anytime I walked into an empty room as a child that is so therapeutic for me.

Delfin's post from Yale Divinity
Though the journey is just beginning, I am able to embrace and be Queer, American, Cuban, El Salvadoran, Catholic, Spanglish, catholic, Ecumenical, Mujerista, Eccentric, Imperfect, Curvaceous, and share a distinct quirky laugh that the world either likes or doesn’t like.

Emily's post from Hope College
All too often, the struggle for human rights feels like war to me, attacking or defending.  But who am I fighting? I label this person with words like “conservative,” “fundamentalist” or “close-minded.”  Recently, I have been invited to rethink this approach.

Brian's post on What We're Reading
If you're looking for a few good reads, check these out and then share your thoughts with us! 

 

We've also been busy this month connecting our Discipleship Program participants with some amazing mentors. Each participant gave us some guidelines of what qualities would be helpful in a potential mentor, and we've been working from those to make sure each person gets to be in communication with someone who will be a good fit for them. As of now, we're still looking for someone with a strong background of working with the intersection of sexuality within faith communities and communities of color. If you know someone who fits the bill, pass their information along - it would be really helpful!

 

Finally, it is our hope to be able to support a full-time staff member in 2010 so that we can continue to support our current participants, as well as to seek out new and innovative ways to support young folks organizing for LGBTQ justice in Christian communities. But we can't do this without your help. Please consider donating monthly so we can make this a reality. Any monthly contribute--whether $5 or $50--will go a long way to creating sustainable movements for justice.  If you can't commit to monthly giving, will you give $7 today. We honor and appreciate any gift you are able to provide - including and especially the gift of taking the time to spread the word! Will you tell four friends about what we are doing and the need for their financial support?

 

Love & Peace,
Micah 

What We’re Reading

We like to read. And we like to share what we're reading with each other. And talk about what we're reading. And put what we've read into action.  We will regularly gather together what we're reading and share it with you.  A lot of what we're reading are blog posts and online articles, sometimes we'll share books or other offline material that we're reading.  If you're looking for a few good reads, check these out and then share your thoughts with us! 

What We're Reading for February 1 - 18th, 2010

Girls do what they have to do to survive A study of resilience and resistance by the Young Women's Empowerment Project (direct link to PDF)

"The Battered Bride of Christ : Religious Domsestic Violence" by Peterson Toscano

"DADT and the Silence / Silencing of Queer Anti-War Voices" by Yasmin Nair, on The Bilerico Project

ACT UP Civil Disobedience Training Manual

The Autobiography of Malcolm X

A New Kind of Christian by Brian McLaren

The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox

Healing and Hope

I do not know when I decided to become an activist—I think I was seduced by the idea of working both within and outside of myself, fighting for love in the open, explosive sense of the verb. Like most activists, I have a very personal, vested interest in my work. I am a queer person and I work to further the rights for and understanding of queer people, specifically at Hope College—a small, Christian, liberal arts college in Holland, MI.  The personal is political to me, in the sense that I cannot engage “the issue” in an academic sense only, and I prefer to classify the topics of gender and sexuality as personal and relational. 

All too often, the struggle for human rights feels like war to me, attacking or defending.  But who am I fighting? I label this person with words like “conservative,” “fundamentalist” or “close-minded.”  Recently, I have been invited to rethink this approach.

 

The day before I left the Sanctuary Collective discipleship gathering in New York, I lost a friend in a plane crash. 

Continue Reading Healing and Hope

Voicing Through Otherization

Spick ... Pansy ... Freak ... Sicko ... Sinner

Reffy ... Rafter ... Wacko ... Abomination ... Loonie

Faggot ... Disordered ... UnAmerican … Not human

 

As a Latin@ and queer person of faith who is flat-footed, slightly over weight, has a balding head, suffers from anxiety, depression, and possibly sleep anemia, and who precociously defies labels and categories that have been pastorally coerced onto my body, mind, soul, and voice –

these words are not new to me, but have followed me throughout my life. 

 

They have been spoken to me and about me by family, friends, colleagues, teachers, pastors, news-casters, politicians, therapists, celebrities, total strangers. 

 

There have been times that these combinations of orally expressed hurtful letters (along with many many others not written here) have been uttered by me to others and even to myself. 

 

These labels, names, misconstrued identities, paradigms, distorted realities

are used to silence me … to other me … to de-member me … to de-voice me. 

 

However, it is these same words that have challenged, thrust, and wrestled me into voice.

It is because of discrimination, misappropriation, and misconception;

it is because of homophobia, transphobia, religiophobia, and latin@phobia--

it is through my marignalization by words spoken and powerfully unspoken by society, the church, the academy, cultural institutions, education systems, the media that I have come into my own unique and prophetic voice with pride, chutzpah, vulnerability, and faith. 

 

It is an ongoing spiritual and literal vocal chord re-memberment and stimulation that only a few years ago… it took many scars, tears, sweat, blood, and questions to live in the tension and peace of integrating body, mind, soul, ruach, and voice … it has taken me a while to come into and claim my own as my own.  This process and journey has just begun and will not end. 

 

By not being celebrated for living, loving, and laughing beyond the norm,

I have found my evolving authentic spirit and begun learning how to sing and proclaim my warrior chant, even when I am off tune or key.

 

It is my wrestling with isness and isms,

Of living in the in between spaces of competing yet complementing identities

that I have come into voice and active presence-filled silence.

 

Though the journey is just beginning, I am able to embrace and be Queer, American, Cuban, El Salvadoran, Catholic, Spanglish, catholic, Ecumenical, Mujerista, Eccentric, Imperfect, Curvaceous, and share a distinct quirky laugh that the world either likes or doesn’t like.

 

By messages that have sought to dis-engage me, I have begun learning to re-engage, re-claim, re-own, re-rant, and re-embrace mi lucha, mi voz, mi DIOS, mi vida.