Here we are. The beginning of Lent. One of the most beautiful seasons of the year. Yet, it is also one that has been misused to abuse many marginalized persons, not limited to, but including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and queer people. An ex-gay group like the Roman Catholic churches Courage likes to make use of Lent to help their members "bear the cross of same-sex attraction" and through prayer, penance and fasting to remain chaste and celibate from loving,committed relationships. This season of fasting, has become politicized through spiritual malpractice and doctrinal abuse.
Last month at an LGBTQ Coffee house meeting at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, the visiting Priest Rev. Candice Corrigan wrote the following beautiful words in the introduction to her booklet: "An LGBT Lent 2011." If my readers would like a copy of it, please email me at BearBudMN@yahoo.com and I will send you a pdf file with a copy. It is uncorrelated and needs to be printed and put in order. But you are welcome to it.
Lent as I understand it is a time to regroup our spiritual lives. To focus on God who has fearfully and wonderfully made all of us. To realize that God's unconditional and all-inclusive love is searching each of us, and asking us to search for God. We can do that by spending just a few moments of each day quietly sitting and listening to what is in our hearts. As we listen to what is in our hearts, if we open up the ears of our hearts we can hear God speaking to that longing for fulfillment and joy. We can find in God's presence that energy and strength that helps us meet the challenges of each day.
I have truly been getting a way from the whole idea of Lent being about "giving up something." What happens with the "giving up something for Lent" idea, is that it becomes a way for us to restart those New Year's resolutions that went south in about 2 days. Lent is not so much about losing weight, giving up smoking, drinking or even sex as some literally try to do. Lent is not really about what we give up. Lent is about what we do with our time and our lives. Lent is as much about our work for justice, inclusion and change for equality, as it is our own personal time with God.
Rather than hit us over the head with the usual Gospel for Ash Wednesday, I want to use the reading from Paul. I think that is a great reading for LGBTQ people in Lent.
Scriptural Basis
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
One individual who knew how urgent his faith was to him, was St. Francis of Assisi.
St. Francis was the son of a prosperous merchant of Assisi, born in 1182. His encounters with the poor and homeless caused him to renounce all earthly possessions and live a life of radical poverty. St. Francis' work led him to place himself among the lowest and most marginalized of society and the Church.
St. Francis is a good saint for LGBT people.
The prayer I use often: "Lord, make us instruments of your peace" is attributed to St. Francis.
The peaceful up rising of LGBT people has been one of a call to society and the Church to take seriously those who are left behind due to prejudice and doctrinal abuse. The Church has a history of proclaiming the God of unconditional love. Yet the Church also has a history of choosing who to extend that love to, and who to with hold it from. Many in the Church have used their "pastoral" or places of religious authority and the Bible to support violence in the Name of God. There really is no sect or denomination of Christianity that is exempt from the history of violence and oppression towards any number of groups of people.
Paul tells us that "now is the day of salvation." Today is the beginning of a season of opportunities to face God with our sinfulness and ask God to help us prepare for Easter. We can look inside of ourselves and see those areas where we hold our own prejudices towards others and even ourselves.
LGBT people often experience our own internalized homophobia because of anti-gay politics. Lent offers to us the opportunity to see our sinfulness in self abuses and to ask God to help us to see ourselves and other LGBT people as "fearfully and wonderfully made." We can also see within ourselves, God's wish for us to allow another wonderful person to love us, romantically, physically and emotionally. We can also take this time of Lent to do all we can to not only rid ourselves of heterosexism and homophobia, but also do our part to end it in the government of our nation, state, city or town.
Lent is a good time to do some volunteer work for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Lent is also a good time to support not only LGBT people who are struggling for inclusion and equality, but also women, people of other races, cultures, challenges, economic statuses, languages etc.
Today is the day to begin learning to love ourselves and others better than we did yesterday. Today is the day of salvation, when putting to use those awesome muscles that LGBT people have of calling for justice and equality on all levels of society and religion.
In about six weeks, our Lenten journey will lead us to where Jesus died for us. Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice of his life out of love for all of God's children. We will again hear the crowds that welcomed Jesus with palm branches and clothing, yell: Crucify Him! Crucify Him! We will sit and/or stand with the disbelief that people who were so nice a few days ago, became so cruel. But, when one of God's children is told that there is no place for them at the altars of a church because she or he is LGBT, those nice church people who claim to follow God's "infallible Word" have just yelled "Crucify!" all over again.
LGBT people celebrate and participate in Lent, because we need to continue to be about the business of challenging Christians attitudes and behaviors. We cannot accomplish our work for justice, inclusion and equality if we do not spend some time being reminded that we are God's beloved, with whom God is well-pleased. God saw that God made us, and what God made was very good.
If we spend this time of Lent doing nothing else, then let us spend it in quiet prayer, reflected that God made us, and that we were made good by God, who continues to love us and at one point offered God's Son to redeem us to live with God eternally.
Now is the day of salvation. Amen.
Prayers
Last month at an LGBTQ Coffee house meeting at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, the visiting Priest Rev. Candice Corrigan wrote the following beautiful words in the introduction to her booklet: "An LGBT Lent 2011." If my readers would like a copy of it, please email me at BearBudMN@yahoo.com and I will send you a pdf file with a copy. It is uncorrelated and needs to be printed and put in order. But you are welcome to it.
"My first thought about Lent and the LGBT community was, for sure we don't need any more penitence, sackcloth and ashes! And that's not how I've come to think the Lenten Season anyway. I think of it as an opportunity for a spiritual tune-up, a revitalizing of my sense of balance, simplicity, order, focus , and selfhood as a child of God, beloved and wonderfully made--as in the Benedictine sense of how to maximize the fruits of leisure, prayer, work and study."
Lent as I understand it is a time to regroup our spiritual lives. To focus on God who has fearfully and wonderfully made all of us. To realize that God's unconditional and all-inclusive love is searching each of us, and asking us to search for God. We can do that by spending just a few moments of each day quietly sitting and listening to what is in our hearts. As we listen to what is in our hearts, if we open up the ears of our hearts we can hear God speaking to that longing for fulfillment and joy. We can find in God's presence that energy and strength that helps us meet the challenges of each day.
I have truly been getting a way from the whole idea of Lent being about "giving up something." What happens with the "giving up something for Lent" idea, is that it becomes a way for us to restart those New Year's resolutions that went south in about 2 days. Lent is not so much about losing weight, giving up smoking, drinking or even sex as some literally try to do. Lent is not really about what we give up. Lent is about what we do with our time and our lives. Lent is as much about our work for justice, inclusion and change for equality, as it is our own personal time with God.
Rather than hit us over the head with the usual Gospel for Ash Wednesday, I want to use the reading from Paul. I think that is a great reading for LGBTQ people in Lent.
Scriptural Basis
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,
"At an acceptable time I have listened to you,
and on a day of salvation I have helped you."
See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation! We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see-- we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
St. Francis was the son of a prosperous merchant of Assisi, born in 1182. His encounters with the poor and homeless caused him to renounce all earthly possessions and live a life of radical poverty. St. Francis' work led him to place himself among the lowest and most marginalized of society and the Church.
St. Francis is a good saint for LGBT people.
The prayer I use often: "Lord, make us instruments of your peace" is attributed to St. Francis.
The peaceful up rising of LGBT people has been one of a call to society and the Church to take seriously those who are left behind due to prejudice and doctrinal abuse. The Church has a history of proclaiming the God of unconditional love. Yet the Church also has a history of choosing who to extend that love to, and who to with hold it from. Many in the Church have used their "pastoral" or places of religious authority and the Bible to support violence in the Name of God. There really is no sect or denomination of Christianity that is exempt from the history of violence and oppression towards any number of groups of people.
Paul tells us that "now is the day of salvation." Today is the beginning of a season of opportunities to face God with our sinfulness and ask God to help us prepare for Easter. We can look inside of ourselves and see those areas where we hold our own prejudices towards others and even ourselves.
LGBT people often experience our own internalized homophobia because of anti-gay politics. Lent offers to us the opportunity to see our sinfulness in self abuses and to ask God to help us to see ourselves and other LGBT people as "fearfully and wonderfully made." We can also see within ourselves, God's wish for us to allow another wonderful person to love us, romantically, physically and emotionally. We can also take this time of Lent to do all we can to not only rid ourselves of heterosexism and homophobia, but also do our part to end it in the government of our nation, state, city or town.
Lent is a good time to do some volunteer work for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Lent is also a good time to support not only LGBT people who are struggling for inclusion and equality, but also women, people of other races, cultures, challenges, economic statuses, languages etc.
Today is the day to begin learning to love ourselves and others better than we did yesterday. Today is the day of salvation, when putting to use those awesome muscles that LGBT people have of calling for justice and equality on all levels of society and religion.
In about six weeks, our Lenten journey will lead us to where Jesus died for us. Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice of his life out of love for all of God's children. We will again hear the crowds that welcomed Jesus with palm branches and clothing, yell: Crucify Him! Crucify Him! We will sit and/or stand with the disbelief that people who were so nice a few days ago, became so cruel. But, when one of God's children is told that there is no place for them at the altars of a church because she or he is LGBT, those nice church people who claim to follow God's "infallible Word" have just yelled "Crucify!" all over again.
LGBT people celebrate and participate in Lent, because we need to continue to be about the business of challenging Christians attitudes and behaviors. We cannot accomplish our work for justice, inclusion and equality if we do not spend some time being reminded that we are God's beloved, with whom God is well-pleased. God saw that God made us, and what God made was very good.
If we spend this time of Lent doing nothing else, then let us spend it in quiet prayer, reflected that God made us, and that we were made good by God, who continues to love us and at one point offered God's Son to redeem us to live with God eternally.
Now is the day of salvation. Amen.
Prayers
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Collect for Ash Wednesday, Book of Common Prayer, page 217).
Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen. (Prayer attributed to St. Francis, Book of Common Prayer, page 833).
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