Tuesday

What does one do on a Tuesday? The week is started, no Monday excuses. Maybe the excitement of Sunday is beginning to fade, maybe you're beginning to question your own commitment, maybe you've got a cynical streak that says it was just mass hysteria and you're sorry you were caught up in it. You've spent a lot of chronos waiting for the Messiah, but now you're wondering if this is the kairos.

I'll admit to something: at this point on the timeline, I don't fully believe that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly will pass the documents before them regarding human sexuality. I also can't believe that they'd vote it down. I have faith and doubt in vascillating measures. Well, Frederick Buechner once said that doubt was not the opposite of faith, but a component of it. Yea, verily.

I've spent a lot of chronos waiting for validation from the church. I wonder if that's always been my "problem," the root of my constant involvement at church throughout my life. I want to be told that I'm okay. This goes beyond sexuality. It's probably pathological and deserves some serious couch time.

I'm also waiting for kairos. I have some sense of God's timing, I do. I'm also increasingly aware of passing chronos. Will my chronos intersect with the church's kairos? In some ways it's too late.

I speak of the importance of these documents, so that another generation of children doesn't grow up think GLBT folk can't be pastors. This is important, but today I was reflecting on all the ways allowing openly GLBT folk be pastors can affect a young person's vocational choice---it doesn't have to be about becoming a pastor.

Back in college, as a theater major, I took dance classes. I apparently had some ability. I had dance teachers asking me to declare a double major or at least a dance minor. I might have been able to justify a few classes---they fulfilled P.E. credits, at least---but I couldn't see myself pursuing dance. It just had too many perceptions of being gay. I simply could not allow myself to be perceived as gay (not that not pursuing dance stopped anyone from perceiving me as gay!). The church had told me gay was bad and I wanted to please the church. I don't think this was a conscious thought process, but in retrospect, it was there. There's a part of this fear of being gay that led me to give up acting when I did. I kept being around all these gay people. Guilty by association---or just plain guilty. I needed to get away from it. Would it have made a difference if the church had been supportive of gay folk 25 years ago? Would I have stuck with a performing arts career instead of careening around for my adult life, still not having much of any kind of career at 45? Well, we all look for scapegoats, and again, this might require serious couch time, which I'm not likely to pay for at this point. So perhaps we'll never know.

The point being, the right time for me to have been told it's okay to be perceived as gay was 25 years ago. It's too late, at least for the dance career (although I seem to be building a resume as a dance writer---not a bad substitute, but substitute all the same). But it could be just in time for some good Lutheran boy who is in his teens, looking at clothing design, or visual arts, or any number of things that is seen as "too gay" and thinking, "I don't want to be seen as gay." Or a nice Lutheran girl who is being told that working on cars or pursuing sports is a little dyke-y.

This affects everything. And chronos is always running out for someone. When will there be kairos?

It's Tuesday and there are doubts and the euphoria is passing and there are rumblings about sinister plans afoot. On Tuesday, it's difficult to know what to think with any real conviction.