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Posts by Author: Emily West
Emily says, "I believe in Sanctuary Collective. I celebrate its passion and love and grace as a crucial part of the body of Christ. I am excited by how the spirit is moving. I celebrate the haven that Sanctuary Collective is and the divine goodness it will continue to channel. I am thrilled and honored to be invited to be a part of this collective community that can and will challenge me to love."
Wed
Feb
17
2010
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.