Will You Listen?

The bishops have repeatedly called us to listen and dialogue. When we debate, we are listening only for those parts that we can use to make our case. When we dialogue, we are seeking to understand the other person’s experience. We don’t have to agree with it. We don’t pass any judgement on it. We quiet our own internal chatter and attempt to be fully present to the other person.

Are we willing to do this? Let’s try.

We’re listening over at Holy Moly. At least, we though we were, and then a few weeks back our eyes were opened to issues that we thought settled long ago.

If you are heartily bored with the issue of gay marriage, gay clergy, or indeed anything gay, then… happy Saturday! No work until Monday!

But I beg you to be open to at least listening, anyway. That’s all. Just listen with ears and mind open if the subject should ever come up in conversation with someone you know.

Anyway. To continue.

I can blog about this subject at length here but not on the church blog because over there my voice is not entirely my own – it’s more the collective or editorial “we.” As it is, I haven’t yet convinced anyone else to submit posts of their own, and I have to do some more thinking about what “permissions” they’d have – probably post-only. So whatever I post has to be fairly generic, but I do allow myself the leeway to be gently progressive in outlook. There was some discomfort expressed in a Bishop’s Committee meeting for some of the hopes and plans for the website’s use I had outlined once in an announcement I made to the entire church – but hey, that guy isn’t on the board anymore (due to time constraints) anyway. And the plans weren’t all that shocking: I thought it would be nice to take photos of individual people and get their “church story” for a proposed See All The People category – especially some of the older members. But that’s a different topic.

This issue (gay persons in the Church, and gay clergy at the altar) is one, again, we thought we’d settled, at least in our own little world. It’s certainly not settled in the larger Episcopal world, and indeed is a cause of much rancor and pushing of hot-buttons. So I hesitated to even blog Father Jake’s open call to listen over at the church blog. Don’t want to go too far for fear of causing offense on the one side, and trepidation on the other, as in “Oh no! We’re going to be attacked for expressing our progressive, liberal views!”

Well. To be silent in order to avoid being attacked is to give tacit approval to the attackers to carry on. Duh – I guess that’s why AIDS activists keep reminding us that “Silence=Death.” So I blogged the same quote. If they don’t click on the link, they won’t find anything to be offensive in it. 😉

I can’t forget that, because I’ve attended the “Festival Solemn Evensong” memorial for a fellow parishioner who died, rather horribly, of AIDS. He was a stalwart high-church Episcopalian and a very brave man. This was years ago and far away, but I can never forget two hazy memories of him. After church one day, we were chatting about different things – his illness, the Evensong choir he liked to sing in, his social life. He was having a good day that day, and we got distracted, so he ended up having to run for his bus. I marveled at the impression of health he gave as he ran off, because he’d been in the hospital just a few weeks before. And a few months after that, he was in the hospital the last time, and a few of us went along to take the Eucharist to him. He was homeless by then – he had sold or given everything away, and he had no possessions except for a few knick-knacks around his bed. He was emaciated, and barely able to speak, and we didn’t stay long for fear of exhausting him. Later, when his memorial was being planned, it seemed like the best possible choice was to make Evensong as stuffily High Church as possible, with incense, handbells, and the whole Anglo-Catholic nine yards. He would have loved it.

A little history, for anyone that hasn’t seen this here before: our previous vicar was gay. Our current vicar is gay. Because we’d had a positive experience already, the Search Committee of both parishes put forward the name of our new vicar with confidence, because we thought we’d already wrestled with the issue, and frankly it was less of a problem than the fact that our previous vicar had been a female. “Yay!” we thought. “We’ve done the gay clergy thing, it’s a non-issue for us.”

It turns out that the social dynamics of a female couple is quite different from a male couple. Compound that with the fact that they’re a clergy couple too, and it’s even more fraught with tension, I guess. Well, color me naive, but somehow 2 women showing affection and love for one another was less disturbing for some than 2 men doing the same. There were ructions from unexpected quarters – someone objected the first week or so to our vicar and his partner exchanging a quick and discreet kiss during the Peace, when our previous vicar and her partner doing this very same thing caused no comment.

I don’t know if there have been similar problems in the other congregation. I think it’s just us. 🙁

Feelings were hurt. Someone was offended? There was bewilderment from those persons for whom it was not a problem, and not a little embarassment from all that the issue had blown up so quickly that it had to be dealt with publicly – in a sermon, no less. But we were assured that it had been settled and hashed out, and everything was fine.

Except that some people I like and care for decided they were happier elsewhere, that is. Which is sad, and I hope temporary, but it made some other things more difficult for the parish, because we’re talking “pillars of the church” type people. Which is a damn shame, if I may be so bold. I don’t know if they were offended, or if they simply took offense at the unseemly fuss that was made over it and voted with their feet. It’s complicated.

Some time has gone by, but it turns out there were small hurts and discomforts occuring that continued to simmer quietly on the back burner.

Things came to a boil (to extend the cooking analogy just a bit further) at the end of a long meeting a couple of months ago when everyone was already overtired and stressed out over the bad financial patch we found ourselves in. There were several arguments, over different issues, but all with the same starting point.

It turns out that in spite of our, well, complacency, we just weren’t welcoming to gay people enough. There had been an incident where someone was greeted at the Peace, but their guest (a gay man) was not. The guest declared afterwards that they would never visit us again because of this rejection. His host decided that he, too was unwelcome, and had been attending the other parish as a consequence. He then accused several people in turn of rejecting him, or rejecting people from the other parish, repeatedly.

I was surprised to hear this. This is someone that I like and enjoy spending time with. I worried whether the person who turned away could possibly have been me, in a moment of unthinking shyness. It could have been any one of us, but it was taken as a rejection from all.

There were more ructions, but that’s the gist. Most everyone concerned seems to have gotten over it, at least in public. It’s been long enough that everyone is back to thinking about the positive steps we can take to improve our financial viability or increase our visibility in the community and welcome more new people. A small-group meeting the other night was very open to discussion of the issue, and it seemed that we could learn how to deal with it effectively in the future.

There’s even a feeling of hope or optimism, along with the normal stubborn “this too shall pass” mood. It’s like a breath of fresh air, sometimes. In light of last week’s Via Media discussion on the Holy Spirit, the irony is not lost on me. In fact, I think the Holy Spirit is irony, in addition to sometimes being that little indrawn breath of an “Aha!” moment of inspiration (Ooh! I loves me some Latin root-words!). Spirit is sometimes that ironic little shared joke between you and… an unknown person whose existence is deduced by the fact that you feel you’re not the only person in on the joke.

Anyway. Back on topic.

We have to figure out now some new ways to reach out to these theoretical new people, or find a constituency that is under-served by other social action or volunteer groups, in order to actually have a mission rather than just be one. And one of the ways that has been suggested to us is to reach out to the suburban gay and lesbian community. Another way is to connect somehow to the very large Hispanic population, or to the homeless, or to one of a dozen other disaffected or disenfranchised groups. All on a shoestring, with limited funds, energy, or “horsepower.”

And to do this we have to sharpen up our listening skills, and de-emphasise the ruction skills if possible.