Straight Talk on Gay Pride

I wrote this blog 12 years ago, while I was serving at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Charlotte, where my congregation taught me so much more than I realized at the time.

I hang out a lot with LGBT folks. Often I find myself in a social situation where I am the only straight person in the group. It’s become so commonplace for me that I sometimes have passing moments when I forget I’m not gay. And I’ll wonder, “What’s wrong with me that I’m not attracted to women the way my friends are?” Then I'll remember. Oh, yeah. It's because you're straight, Nancy.

My relationships with gay, lesbian and transgender friends have developed while serving at Advent and then Holy Trinity, both in Charlotte, over the past 15 years or so. I’ve learned a lot through those years. In the beginning, I remember being relieved to discover how much we have in common. But as I’ve grown closer to my gay, lesbian and transgender friends, I've also come to realize just how different we are.

I have trouble imagining the world as they experience it. Their sexual orientation seems to be the soundtrack of their lives that’s continually playing in the background. They may not always mention it, but, in every conversation, they are filtering everything they say and hear through their experience as a gay or transgender person. Everywhere they go, they are scoping out how safe the situation will be for them. Will they be accepted? Will people feel uncomfortable with them? Will someone say something hurtful, knowingly or unknowingly? Will it be better to hide who they are in this situation? Such thoughts are always present for them. And yet, such thoughts never cross my mind.

Once, my friend and colleague Pastor David Eck, who happens to be gay, told me that every time a gay person reads a Bible story they identify with the person in the story who is being ostracized or judged or persecuted in some way. They see themselves in the outsider. I had assumed they read Bible stories the same way I do. And when I read a Bible story, I NEVER identify with the outsider. I always identify with the people who are being challenged to welcome the outsider, or even Jesus, as the one who is standing up for the outsider. That’s the perspective I take when I preach. And yet, many of my parishioners who are gay/lesbian/transgender don’t really relate to the story as I do. When they read about outsiders, that's who they identify with. This blew me away.

As we’re preparing for the Pride Festival in Charlotte this weekend, I’ve been thinking a lot about that word, pride. I confess that in my younger years when I saw gay people parading in the streets on T.V., usually in some far-off place like San Francisco, I couldn’t understand the point of it all. Yeah, okay, so you’re gay, I thought. Do you have to make such a public display of it? Well, I don’t see it that way anymore.

Now I think about how pride is actually the opposite of shame. Every gay person I know has struggled with shame on some level. Growing up in our homophobic culture has done a number on them. They may internalize that homophobia and turn it upon themselves. Or maybe they rebel against it and express their sexuality openly and freely. But in any case, they are living in reaction to the shaming that has been directed toward them in their school or their place of employment, their house of worship or their family. They have been told in hundreds of ways that who they are is not acceptable and the only way to become acceptable is to become someone they’re not.  

What courage it takes to journey from a place of shame to a place of pride! To live into the person God created you to be. To love the person you truly are.  To be gay and proud! I can only imagine how freeing it must feel to emerge from the shackles of shame to strut your gay-self down Tryon Street with Pride.

It truly is something to celebrate. That’s why I’ll be there, waving my rainbow flag, basking in the pride of those who are so dear to me. Even though I can never fully understand how it is to live in their world, there’s a larger world that we share. My life would be greatly diminished without the gifts of the LGBT community. And that fills me with a pride of my own.

Where have all the flowers gone? (the floral sins of my youth)

 As I’m seeing the first flowers of spring start to make their yearly appearance, I’m ruminating on the flowers I’ve enjoyed in my life. From prom corsages to wedding flowers in my hair, festive worship services, curtain call honors, anniversaries, birthdays... Flowers add magic to any occasion.

In the house where I grew up, we had a small strawberry patch in our backyard. This was a gift bestowed upon us by our neighbors. After they planted the strawberries on their side of the fence, they never got a single one. Instead, the plants popped up on our side. Collecting the berries and putting them on ice cream was an annual summer treat. Except for one year. That was the year when I saw beautiful white blossoms in the strawberry patch and picked every last one of them to present to my mother. She always had admired the bouquet of yellow dandelions I gave her and placed them in a little vase where they lasted about 30 minutes. I assumed the strawberry patch flowers would receive the same reaction, but they didn’t. 

I should have learned from that experience that there are times when flowers are best not picked. But I was a slow learner when it came to some things.

My friend Fritzy and I admired the flowers in a neighbor’s yard, and we just knew they would make a perfect gift for our mothers. We each picked a lovely little bouquet and brought them home. And both of our moms asked, “Where did these come from?” We told them that we had picked them from the yard on the corner. We thought our words were spoken as information, but for our mothers, they were a confession. 

Apparently, it’s a really big deal to take the flowers from someone else’s yard. I was shocked when our mothers called it “stealing.” I had always figured that flowers belonged to nature, and they didn’t really belong to any person, even if they’re in that person's yard. So, wow. This was stealing. But the flowers were already picked. What could we do? 

“You’re going to take those flowers back and apologize to the family.” Suddenly, we were shamed as the thieves we were. 

Realizing that the yard with the flowers had a huge blue spruce that obstructed the view to the front porch, Fritzy and I hid behind the tree for a few minutes, left our flowers on the ground and then returned to tell our mothers that we had apologized.

They didn’t buy it. Now, in addition to being thieves, we had become involved in a cover-up. Needless to say, they marched us down to the front door and watched us do the mortifying thing we needed to do. 

That wasn’t the last time I was responsible for taking a neighbor’s flowers. A few years later, my pet rabbit escaped his hutch at night and went straight for a (different) neighbor’s petunias they had just planted. He ate the blossoms off every single one. I don’t remember the name of those neighbors or the rabbit involved, but I do remember that they were pink petunias and cost $36, which was a lot of money back in the early 60s. 

At my home in Charlotte, and then again in Timonium (Baltimore), I spent a lot more than $36 and many hours of my time, over the course of years, building up a perennial garden in my yard, including an entire fence line of roses. In both cases, these got just about perfect right before I moved. 

Now someone else is enjoying my labor of love. I like to think that I’ve given these people I will never know a gift. But maybe it should also be considered penance for the floral sins of my youth.

Freedom is a precarious gift

 Freedom is a precarious gift.

When in the garden God gave us everything that is,

the riskiest gift of all was freedom.

 

White men in powdered wigs with ink-stained fingers,

defying a tyrant,

signed up for the freedom of all,     

          (when all were far from free)

propelling a nation forward

          that has never stopped fighting for freedom.

 

That fight, we call democracy,

is lived through the consequences of our choices:

          compassion or cruelty

          decency or immorality

          competence or ignorance

          peace or chaos

          patriotism or betrayal

 

A democracy may choose to turn on itself,

relinquishing its power to a tyrant.

          (or a petty, little liar)

Or a democracy may choose to do freedom better. 

Freedom is a precarious gift.

 

- 

The gift no one wants, yet we feel compelled to give

No one appreciates unsolicited advice. So, why do we continue to offer it? Is this just one more pointless human activity, like when someone screams at you and you scream back at them, or when you carry on philosophical conversations with your cat? There is no explanation for why we do such things. We know they don’t serve any purpose whatsoever, yet we continue to do them anyway. Does unsolicited advice fall into that same category? Or could there possibly be a good reason for this compulsion we have to tell other people what’s best for them despite the fact that they have no interest in hearing it? 

When I go to a friend with a problem and pour my heart out, it doesn’t mean I’m asking for advice. I don’t want her to solve my problem; I just want her to listen to me. When I want advice, I ask for it. If I don’t ask, it doesn’t matter if it’s the best advice in the world, I’m not receptive to it. The only time I respond well to unsolicited advice is when someone advises me to do something I wanted to do all along. Otherwise, put a sock in it! And while I know this is true for myself as an advice-receiver, I have difficulty recognizing how it might also be worth acknowledging for myself as an advice-giver.

Advice-givers will often find well-disguised ways to get their message across. There’s the stealth advisor, who sneaks his directives under the radar by asking innocent questions like, “Were there any instructions in the box?” Or the disclaim-er who thinks she can clear the way for receptivity by preceding her prescription with, “I don’t mean to be telling you what to do, but…” The one I find most endearing is the yarn spinner, who opens with, “Did I ever tell you about the time…?” You know this stroll down memory lane is going to be a story with an agenda, perhaps a disturbing, cautionary tale.

There are clearly some people who enjoy telling others what they ought to do. I suspect it gives them a feeling of superiority. Others are insufferable control freaks who jump at every opportunity to push other people around. But what about the people who truly mean well when they freely offer up their pearls of wisdom without being asked?

My children have been the recipients of unsolicited advice through the years. I know this because I’ve been their unsolicited adviser. They used to roll their eyes and sigh while I said my piece. Then they proceeded to do whatever they wanted. But I couldn’t help myself. I felt compelled to dish it out like great big heaps of mashed potatoes.

When they were little, they needed me to guide them. If I hadn’t, they probably wouldn’t be here today. They needed me to tell them things like, “Don't play with rattlesnakes 30 minutes after you've eaten without a lifejacket on.” As they grew more self-sufficient, I tried to keep my mouth shut as much as possible. Yet, I still found myself saying things like, “It’s never smart to make the minimum payment on your credit card.” Or, “Please promise me you wear a condom when you have sex.” The content of my advice changed, but my need to offer it didn’t. And that may be the key to understanding why I still do it.

It’s not that I think Gretchen and Ben are incompetent to figure these things out on their own. They’re both smart people, and I know they don’t need me to give them advice. Yes, they’ll do whatever they choose, despite anything I might say to them. But when I offer them advice, it’s not for them, it’s for me. I do it because I need to be needed. 

When you love someone, your happiness is intricately connected to theirs. You want to protect them because, if they’re not safe, you’re not safe. You don’t want them to mess their lives up because when they do, it messes up your life, too. When they pay the price for their mistakes, you pay the price as well. Their heartbreak breaks your heart. Their failures leave you feeling defeated. Their wounds make you bleed. That’s why parents have no choice but to offer advice to their children, whether they ask for it or not. Yes, it may be annoying as hell for them, but hopefully they understand that offering unsolicited advice is just another variation on “I love you.”