Northeast Regional Conference Postponed

Hello lovely friends and supporters:

Several different circumstances over the past few weeks have led the Leadership Team of Sanctuary Collective to the decision to postpone our conference we were originally planning for this weekend.

We want our first regional gathering to be all that we have dreamed it can be, and are excited to reschedule for this fall with the same exciting workshops and more! We want to wholeheartedly thank you for your support, and will keep you updated as soon as we have a new date. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience, and join us in planning and getting excited for a conference that will be so much better than it would have been if we had tried to push forward for our original date.

In the meantime, we'd love to keep actively engaging with you, so here are some ways to make that happen!

• Join our Prayer Team! Email Matt Beams at matthew@sanctuarycollective.org for more info
• Contribute resources! We're always looking for prayers, sermons, Bible studies, and personal narratives to share on our website. Emailbrian@sanctuarycollective.org for more info and/or to submit your work!
• Join our online conversation! We'd love to have guest blog posts and/or guest video bloggers on our YouTube channel. Email me back atmicah@sanctuarycollective.org for this.

And finally, we are committed to this upcoming fall conference being all that we have envisioned and planned for together and more. If you have ideas or feedback about this, or want to talk more, please don't hesitate to send an email reply or give us a call at 646-571-8266.

Your patience and understanding in this process is invaluable. We could not do any of this without you.

Trans Day of Action

This afternoon, at 4 pm, we will be participating in the 6th annual Trans Day of Action in New York City.

We'll meet at City Hall in Manhattan, and we will march.

We will march because we can't sit still. We will march because we can't stay silent. 

We will march because corporate sponsored Pride events don't help you when you're excluded from them.

We will march because our culture at best does not bat an eye, and at worst condones and makes a spectacle when one of our sisters fall to violence. We will march because we are survivors of violence.

We will march because our lives are beautiful, fabulous, fierce, creative. We will march because we do not only mourn, we also laugh, and are loved.

We will march.

Will you march too?

It is time to take sides

There is a growing movement within straight Christian churches and communities away from outright condemnation and exclusion. Many well-intentioned folks seek to be "build bridges," to show "love & grace regardless of whether it is or is not a sin," and to focus on how "we're all broken and sinful." Those may be good intentions, and even touch upon real truths, but they miss something deeper, fundamental, and more pressing. "I don't hate you" is no longer enough.
 

Elie Wiesel said “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.” 

Desmond Tutu said “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Queer people are tormented and oppressed. We are targeted for violence, discriminated against in jobs, ministry, accommodations, and daily life. The weight of having an integral part of who we are—which is celebrated in others—marked in us as sick and sinful leads to loss of faith, depression, and violence against ourselves.

We must all take sides. The question being asked is not whether “should I judge or should I not judge?” or “should I show grace or should I not show grace?” or even “can gay & straight Christians coexist within the body of Christ?” That is not the question being asked. We may wish it were, but it is not. 

The question asked is: is being gay or queer or trans a sin? That is the question which bars pastors from ministry, which kicks children out of houses, which instigates violence against queer people, and which fuels self-harm. Am I or am I not debased because of my orientation? That is the question being asked and we must all answer it. If we refuse to answer, or equivocate, or dance around it, or answer a different question, our answer is “yes.” And that answer is, frankly, death.

What I learned from my 30-day prayer challenge.

Hello, Sanctuary Collective. So, in February I wrote passionately about my prayer life and my challenge to you to pray every day with me. It was my intention to write back to you the first Monday in March and report back on whether or not I had successfully met my own 30-day prayer challenge. Well, you know what they say about good intentions, right? So, here it is, the middle of May, and I am finally writing again, and this time it’s with a revelation I’ve had about prayer. This is going to sound heretical, but I realized over the course of my practicing that there is such a thing as too much prayer. Yes, I said it. Too. Much. Prayer.

Let me be clear about this, what started happening to me over the course of my month of prayer was that I started praying all the time for and during all kinds of things. Something good happened? Prayer. Something bad happened? Prayer. Joy? Prayer. Anxiety? Prayer. Prayer? Prayer. Phew!  At this same time I was having a lot of anxiety about my new job. I teach 4^th Grade, and every day is a new adventure, to put it mildly. Oftentimes I woke up in the middle of the night, thinking about lesson plans, discipline, etc. So naturally, since I was in this intense period of daily prayer, I figured that praying at all those moments was the thing to do. In retrospect, it wasn’t.  Or at least not the kind of praying that I was doing, which involved me saying, either out loud or in my head, lots of words. I would lie in bed, filled with anxiety, asking God to take the anxiety away, praying for the needs of others, giving glory to God, or saying some of my favorite memorized prayers – the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary, the Prayer of St. Francis. Nothing would work. The anxiety would heighten, the doubt would increase. Sounds pretty awful, right? It was. I should have blogged about it.

One night, I decided “To Hell with this! I’m not going to pray, I’m just going to clear my mind and lie here.” I had a moment of guilt about this, but as I intentionally cleared my mind and lay on my bed, the anxiety passed and I fell into a deep, restful sleep. I tried this for a few days in a row. I didn’t pray all these grand prayers before I went to sleep at night or when I awoke in the middle of the night and two things happened. One, I fell right back into a restful sleep when I did awaken, and two, I stopped waking up in the middle of the night! Again, I was still having a little guilt about this, as it seemed to be the opposite of praying and felt a little bit like I was turning away from conscious contact with God, and that I was benefitting from it.

Sometime over that week, I was reminded about a story I was told about Mother Theresa, whose life, works, faith, and doubt inspire me incredibly. According to the story, Mother Theresa was asked what sort of prayers she said daily. She said she didn’t “say” prayers daily. The interviewer asked her what she did when she prayed, and she said, “I listen.” The interviewer, thinking he was going to get a good quote out of her, asked, “Ah, so what does God say to you when you’re listening?” And Mother Theresa replied, “God doesn’t say anything. God listens.”

And so now, when I go to sleep at night, I turn off the radio, I turn off the music, I turn it all off, and I listen. I listen to God. I listen for the still, small voice. I have yet to hear it. Instead, what I hear is God listening. 

On Family

This weekend, I said goodbye to my brother as he left to go back to Chicago after staying with me for three weeks here in Brooklyn.

It was absolutely marvelous to have him here as he took classes in Manhattan to become certified to teach English as a second language. We cooked familar dishes, watched cartoons, and drank and talked late into the night about whatever came to mind. He also got to see me interact with my other family - queer and trans folks taking care of each other.

During the time he was here, we hosted a baby shower for our friends (who should be having a baby any day now!), had a young trans guy from Canada crash on our couch for a few days, sent Leo and Brian out to Michigan to film and had them come back again, and continued to have Thursday night Community Nights for Sanctuary Collective. It was very special to me to have a member of my family of origin interact with my chosen family. And it got me thinking about how important all of you are to me.

My family is not just local - I love knowing a good handful of the people who comment on progressive Christian blogs patiently and angrily when racist or heterosexist stuff gets said, or recognizing the names in press releases about direct actions or campaigns. Sure, sometimes it feels like there is only a small handful of us doing this work, but it can also be so nice to get on gchat with someone across the country to debrief our reactions before formulating responses.

Thank you, all of you, for the big and small things you do every day to challenge and change the world. And thank you for supporting me while I do the same.