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.  

The Things That Sustain Us

As I am settling more into the reality of making Sanctuary Collective a large part of my daily life, I'm finding it important to seek out things that sustain me.

One of those things that gives me a lot of energy and push is talking with other queer and trans folks about their experiences growing up in similar faith traditions, and their subsequent experiences processing and/or reclaiming that faith.

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. After the conversations sometimes I find it difficult to even remember the details, I just walk away feeling tired and refreshed.

I remember the first person I talked to that I felt really Got It. His name is Angel, and he's now one of my good friends (and on the Sanctuary Collective Prayer Team!). When I first met him, honestly, I was a bit wary. I was a clean-cut Christian school kid, and he had lots of visible tattoos and piercings. I was silently struggling with my gender, and he was the first openly trans masculine person I'd ever met. I was nervous and skeptical. But when he opened his mouth, and I heard that all-too-familiar and comforting North Carolina accent (the northeast often feels a long way from home for me), and heard him talking about how much he loves Jesus, I was floored. I clung to that sense of sameness that I felt with him, and started myself down the long journey of figuring out what I wanted to do about my own gender identity.

The next person I felt that sense with was Peterson (who has written down some amazing and profound thoughts about Lazarus for us). I first met Peterson face to face at a training, but I was familiar with him before that through a documentary called Fish Can't Fly. The documentary was the first one I'd watched about LGBTQ Christians, and while I was watching it, I met other queer folks from Eastern for the very first time. So I was kind of starstruck, actually - Peterson was (and is!) A Big Deal in my world. I was in a really fragile place at the time - coming to terms with my identity was proving to be a long and arduous process - and when I heard Peterson speaking about his experiences with faith, I knew he Got It. The language he used and the ways he explained things were familiar and comforting to me, and something inside me exhaled for the very first time.

These experiences (and many more like them) are essentially why I do the work that I do, and why I do it in this way. I have these conversations because I need to have them. I share what I've gone through because it's an experience too many other people like me can relate to. I talk about how it's possible to keep your Christian faith and be excited about who God has created you to be because I need to be reminded.

And in the process, other people's tears and other people's laughter are validating to me. They give me permission to say that this has been hard and that this has been ridiculous. They sustain me.

What sustains you? How can you make sure you have that in your work and in your life? It's not a rhetorical question - I want to know! Share with me and each other in the comments if you'd like.

Hello Everyone!

It has been 2 weeks since we finished training in New York City, and I miss everyone already! I definitely benefitted a lot from connecting with like-minded people, and it gave me many ideas to promote justice in my community. Before I get into that though, I should probably introduce myself. My name is MarySue, and I'm currently a senior at a predominantly conservative Christian university in Mississippi. Our school handbook states,

"Sexual Impropriety: Sexual impropriety includes but is not limited to participation in or appearance of engaging in premarital sex, extramarital sex, or homosexual activities."

There is no clarification of what exactly the administration deems ‘homosexual activities’, and there has been no effort (despite requests) to clarify this statement. There are no particular sanctions listed, but instead refers students to the disciplinary actions section of the handbook, which lists everything from a warning to expulsion from the school and dorms. There is a lot of gray area with this policy, and the school offers no protection for LGBTQ students on campus. If a student is being harassed because they identify as LGBTQ, they cannot report it because by doing so they would be outting theirself the school administration, putting themselves in jeopardy. Myself and two other students saw a strong need to create a "safe space" for LGBTQ students and allies, so in October of 2008 (after an Equality Ride visit) we founded our queer-straight alliance. We are not allowed to meet on campus, but are hosted by a wonderful community member (and alum!) and his wife who let us take over their kitchen and living room quite often to have meetings and fellowship with one another. It is pretty amazing!

It is my desire to see the school’s policy eventually overturned, but I’m not naïve enough to think that it will happen overnight.  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.  I am also actively seeking out support within the faculty and am brainstorming ways to educate them about using safe (or safer) language within their classrooms without simultaneously demanding them to change their personal beliefs--little steps at a time! I’m really looking forward to the end of March when the Equality Ride will return, I think this year is going to look a lot different than previous years--but I’ll let you know more about that as details get worked out.

This semester is going to be exciting, change is acomin’! Your thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated!

Peace & Jesus,
MarySue