Monthly Archives: February 2023

Our Love Is Holy

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Mar 11 2004 Margy and Myke at a rally at the state house in Massachusetts, for the constitutional convention trying to take away equal marriage, holding a poster that says Our Love Is Holy
March 11 2004 Margy and Myke at a rally at the state house in Massachusetts, in support of equal marriage

This week in my basement archives I revisited my life in Massachusetts in 2003 and 2004, during the time when its Supreme Judicial Court declared that to deny civil marriage to same sex couples was unconstitutional. In the six months following their declaration, state legislators were arguing over trying to stop it from happening, or support it to happen, and we were at the state house too, lobbying, and rallying. I had forgotten many of the details of those months, but I had not forgotten the strange mix of joy and fear as we anticipated this unimaginable possibility. It is hard to believe that was only 19 years ago. Now marriage is accessible to same sex couples across the land, but it is still under threat. I found my remarks from a forum we held on Cape Cod that spring, and they still seem relevant today.

This was Civil Rights, Civil Marriage: A Forum on Equal Marriage Rights for Lesbian and Gay Couples, Cape Cod Community College, May 3rd, 2004, where I was part of a panel presentation. At that time I was a minister at First Parish Brewster, Unitarian Universalist. Linda Davies and Gloria Bailey were members of our church, and one of the plaintiff couples in the lawsuit. They also had just spoken at the event.

“I want to start by saying how much I am looking forward to signing the marriage license of Linda and Gloria on May 17th. When I sign that license, I won’t be acting merely on my own behalf, but representing the whole community of First Parish Brewster. I believe I speak for all of us when I say how grateful we are to Linda and Gloria for taking a risk with their lives to end discrimination against gay and lesbian couples, and what a joy it has been to join them at the front lines of this historic civil rights effort. I know that your courage and your transparent love for each other have touched people’s hearts and opened their minds.

“Our struggle is far from over. Many of our opponents use the teachings of Christianity to claim that gay and lesbian couples should be excluded from marriage. I think Jesus would be horrified to see how his message has been twisted.

“Someone once said that even the devil can quote the Bible. Every religious community that draws inspiration from the Bible has the challenge of interpreting a collection of documents that were written and gathered over 1800 years ago in languages and cultures not our own. Some people will tell you that they take the Bible literally word for word. I will tell you, following Karl Barth, that I take the Bible far too seriously to take it literally. As even my Catholic professors used to say, the Bible is ‘the word of God written in the words of men.’ It is full of contradictions and its heroes are entangled mixtures of good and evil. The Bible tells the stories of a community’s experience of the Holy in their midst. If we are to be true to its message, we must also pay attention to the working of the Holy within our midst.

“You know, Jesus actually said very little about marriage, and nothing about homosexuality. He wasn’t so concerned with family arrangements. He was concerned about love. He was concerned about how we care for each other, and especially, about how we care for those who are—what he called—’the least’ among us. He called on his followers to welcome the stranger, to take in the outcast; to bear witness to the kingdom of God within each person. He said, when we live in love, God is in our midst.

“I am a minister and I am a lesbian. So this moment in history is meaningful to me in two ways. I want to say that I respect how difficult this issue is for those who are religious. It was difficult for me when I was a young Catholic woman. It was easy to imagine that everyone could just follow the rules if they tried. It wasn’t until I became friends with a gay man in college that this ‘issue’ took on a human face—the face of a brother who was in deep pain because of the contradictions between the teachings of his religious tradition, and the inner truth of his own body and soul.

“When we risk honoring the truth in our own soul, we are entering dangerous ground. What if we are deluding ourselves? Some would say we are. But on the other hand, what if the truth in our souls is the voice of the Holy in our midst?

“The God of the prophets was always leading them beyond the comfort of the familiar in the direction of greater love. I believe that we are living in a prophetic moment. Something holy and miraculous is going on here. It has always been the Holy who has lifted up the downtrodden. It has always been the Holy who has filled the hearts of people with compassion. It has been the Holy who made strong the faint of heart, and transformed the lowly.

“Equal marriage is a civil rights issue, a legal issue, an issue of respect for diversity. But for my part, I want to take off my shoes, for I believe we are standing on holy ground.”

Gloria Bailey, left, and Linda Davies of Orleans rejoice moments after being pronounced married by First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Dr. Mykel Johnson, left, on Nauset Beach during a 1:00 ceremony on Nauset Beach Monday. The couple, who have been together three decades, were married in front of a group of about 40-50 friends and press. Monday is the first day of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and the US. A dinner party is planned at a friends house to celebrate the event. (Dewitt photo 5/17/04)
Gloria Bailey, left, and Linda Davies of Orleans rejoice moments after being pronounced married by First Parish Brewster Unitarian Universalist minister Rev. Dr. Mykel Johnson, left, on Nauset Beach during a 1:00 ceremony on Nauset Beach Monday. The couple, who have been together three decades, were married in front of a group of about 40-50 friends and press. Monday is the first day of legalized same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and the US. A dinner party is planned at a friends house to celebrate the event. (Dewitt photo 5/17/04)
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Envy

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A confession: there is a kind of envy that sometimes creeps up in me when I notice famous people, like authors with many popular books, or those widely praised or described as “influencers” and “visionaries.” (Especially when those books are most similar to my own one book.) I grapple with the fact that in the great scheme of worldly success I often feel like a nobody, and more so in my life today with chronic illness and retirement isolation. Margy reminds me that it is only human to feel such feelings. My critical thinking also notes that in the capitalist system, these hierarchies are meant to elicit self-hate and hunger. Hierarchy and domination are the underpinnings of all oppression.

Taking a brief walk today, I imagine my ancestors curious and baffled at this strange descendent who is a writer, who has strange cravings for fame. They never thought about such things. Then I remembered a poem I wrote many years ago, and went looking for it. I had titled it The Inner Wounds of Class Oppression. It is still a healing incantation for me.

Every day, envy gnaws at your fingers.
Your eyes watch the movers and shakers
climbing into dream cars, Going Places.
You want to be Somebody.  You would ride,
eyes averted from the rear view mirror
where all of the Nobodies recede
like small dark flies to brush away
from smooth shoulders.

Every day, anger fills your gut like a pile of bricks.
Your own hard shoulders ache to reach in
and hurl them forward one by one.
Your ears would strain to hear the glass
shattering and rubber squealing,
as the fine white shine of the dream machine
careens sidelong off the grade
into a deep obituary.

Every day, you clutch at the bark of trees,
knees trembling, moved and shaken.
Your fingertips feel for hidden messages
left there on some other blue morning when somebody
was repeating poems into gnarled crevices,
quiet voice seeping down the edges of roots
into rock under sand:  Remember who you are.
Precious as soil.  Worthy of the sun.
Beech tree with markings and roots
Copper beech tree with markings

The Beach in Winter

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Ocean waves coming in against rocks bright with sunshine. In the distance, island trees, clouds and blue sky.
Ocean, rocks, sky, sun, clouds

I needed this winter afternoon at the beach. We went to Kettle Cove, where it was windy, sunny, and warm–well, in the forties anyway. So now my heart is calmed and refreshed. There is a quiet that comes from the sound of waves and wind, the feeling of our feet walking on sand. We always say we should go more often, but it takes some push, some energy to get ourselves there. Funny that, because it always feels so good once we arrive.

Even though I am retired, I’ve been doing too many days of projects–still plugging away at the boxes for the archive, among other things. Don’t we need this other rhythm? The one of being in the presence of all that is bigger than we are?

And there was evidence that the wind and the waves had been bigger than the beach recently, maybe when the recent huge storm came through. The wooden walkway was broken apart, and there was erosion in parts of the shore. We are so small, and what we can build is so puny. But all of that is okay–it’s part of what brings the feeling of magic to our walks on the beach.

Broken wooden walkway with brush behind and a stream of water underneath, through the sand.
Broken walkway

So we come home again, and the great quiet is within, the mysterious gratitude for life, in the midst of all its challenges. Can you feel it? How does it come to you?

February Sunlight

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Bright sun shining on snow with small dark tree on left side, shadows marking places where tracks were made.
Bright February sun shining on bright snow.

We are halfway to Spring! So many cultures celebrate this day, or this change of season. For just a few examples: Imbolc or Brigid’s Day for Celtic people, Apuknajit (the winter spirit) for Mi’kmaq people, Candlemas in Catholic liturgy, Groundhog Day in secular America. They hearken to the coming Spring, and offer courage for getting through the rest of the winter. Here at our home in Maine, I can feel the change in the quality and angle of the sunlight. My heart is lifted by its brightness.

We’ve recently had a triple set of snowstorms, so the ground is finally covered in snow after nothing much in December. It too adds to the brightness. I love how it also reveals the creatures who live here with us. I’ve seen deer tracks going through the orchard all the way back across the frozen pond and into the hedgerow. You can see their traces in the photo above. I was also delighted to find these distinct squirrel prints after a rain on top of the snow a week ago. Like little hands.

Squirrel prints on snow, on a gray day.
Squirrel prints

I’ve been continuing my winter project of sorting, organizing and winnowing old papers in the basement. I had started with my years in Boston 1986-1999, then moved backwards in time. I am now finished with the very earliest files-hurray! So then I moved forward from 1999. I’ve begun to sort through papers from my years on Cape Cod, 1999-2005. That has meant that I’ve also started to incorporate the winnowing of digital files on my laptop for the same years. Some of it is plodding work, comparing documents to put duplicates in the trash, renaming documents so they are easier to organize, stuff like that. But some of it includes moments of sweetness, like finding a letter from a young queer person whose life was helped along by a sermon I preached called “Believing in Fairies.” [A version of which found its way into my book, Finding Our Way Home, and was excerpted in the post The Mystery Seed.]

It does my heart good to think of those seeds of blessing planted in the hearts of people I met along the way. Sometimes we hear about it afterwards, and sometimes we may never know. When the interactions were not so blessed–since I had my share of conflict and trouble along the way–it does my heart good to shred the remnants of those interactions, and let go. Lighten the load.

Imbolc is a time for setting intentions, for shaping our hopes for the future. It is kind of like looking through seed catalogues imagining what we will plant when the next season turns. I’m not ready yet for seed catalogues and intentions. But it is good to remember that the sorting and winnowing of my past life will not go on forever. I don’t know what sort of seed I want to plant for the future. That is still a mystery to me. But I am good with a mystery seed.

I saw a funny story on Facebook about a child who thought that bird seed grew birds. They showed their parents the proof–they planted a big pile of bird seed outside, and the following day, there was a whole flock of birds gathered round the spot. Maybe that is what I will plant today–filling the bird feeder with seed so that they will have nourishment for the deep freeze we are expecting in a couple days. I understand that Mi’kmaq people put out food for Apuknajit so that the winter spirit will be remembered and be kind. Maybe that is part of feeding the birds too–to remember our fellow creatures during these cold winter times, so that all of us might make it through to the spring.

Small brown bird perched on a stick on green bird feeder, with snow on top of it.
Bird on feeder today.