To Stirling today for the Scottish Episcopal Church’s day of listening.
Quite a lot of the day was food for thought though it would not be appropriate to blog about the people or the stories involved. In the end I was generally glad that I was there though sometimes still frustrated by the process. It is all beginning far too late.
Two significant moments for me. The first was experiencing and articulating a sense of outrage that the main speaker had been put in the position of accepting to speak in the first session when he could not stay for the whole day. The act of speaking without listening could not more clearly sum up much of what is wrong. I still have reservations about the fact that the only two people who gave talks to the whole group were straight bishops. To speak and not stick around to engage with people modelled precisely what should not be.
WIth the exception of some inaccuracies about the Porvoo churches, Richard Clark actually spoke very well indeed, but by that stage, that was not the point for me.
Later in the day there was another significant moment for me. I realised in a group that I was hearing people speaking positively and lovingly about gay relatives. All of a sudden I was struck with the realisation that I have almost never heard anyone in a church context say anything positive about anyone gay. As that realisation dawned, I began to weep.
So you see, I’m glad I was there and I heard something that I was not expecting to hear. I never knew until today that I had not heard such things before. I was surprised by tears and now know not what to do with them.
Are tears a bad thing?
No, tears are not a bad thing and I have long since learned not to be afraid of them.
What gives rise to tears can be a bad thing though and I think we are in the business of wiping tears from every eye.
Just to affirm, as one of the day’s facilitators, that the event will be recorded in a variety of formats. None of these will include a list of witnesses, nor any details of their stories.
And a personal reflection. As someone who always wants to know what’s going on in the other rooms at a party, I understand the urge to know who was there and who said what. The discipline of staying with the bit of experience one is presented with is a hard one, but rewarding.
a propos celibacy. In any context celibacy is a calling or choice, which someone willingly and freely accepts. It demeans celibates either to demand it :
— “as a matter of Discipline” (RC), or
— because they are poofs and heterosexual Primates say so (Anglican orthodoxy).
In earlier days in LGCM, it was magnificent to have a ex-monk on the Committee who still willingly remained celibate but openly gay. *He* was able to make the point by his life.
The other problem is that, within certain churches, Christian homophobia often entails settling for furtive gay sex combined with emotional celibacy, thus supporting the stereotype of gay people being incapable of loving monogamous relationships.
I know what you mean, Kelvin, about how little listening often occurs at a ‘Listening Day.’ I remember one I attended in which a diocese invited two heteroseuxal white men to give presentations about what they thought about gay people and same-sex relationships. There was only time, as I recall, for two questions to be asked. I asked one of them, and it was this:
“What, in this experience of listening to the other person’s point of view, have you learned that will deepen your walk with Christ and your pastoral ministry? What insights have you gained from the other person?”
You should have seen the blood drain from the speakers’ faces. It wasn’t a day of listening, but a day of debate, and the speakers clearly hadn’t listened to one another except insofar as they could catalog points they wanted to refute.
I’m glad for your ministry in the church that confirmed me, and especially for the tears.
What gave rise to your tears, Kelvin, is definitely a bad thing. For me, what you said about the rarity of gay people being lovingly affirmed opened up an appalling vista of hard-heartedness and incomprehension in the Church and society at large. God forgive us all.
Thank you all for your comments.
Eamonn, I wonder whether you noticed that the group that we were in was sitting next to a noticeboard which had on it material from CARE, with their usual anti-gay campaigns.
I sometimes notice that kind of thing and point out to others that it is there and that some people might not feel particularly safe or comfortable in such an environment. I tend to be met with surprised incomprehension when I do. I meet that surprised incomprehension with my own surprised incomprehension and we go on our way shaking our heads wearily.
When one of my sons was in Primary 1, he often talked about his new friend Josh. We learned several things about Josh these first few weeks – that he had a cool pencil case, that he was good at writing his name. One day our son had discovered that his friend was something called a Jehovah’s Witness – and wanted to know if that was different from us.
It was months later that we met Josh and found that he was also black. Our son hadn’t found that fact worthy of mention at all. It was just part of being Josh.
Until we are as open and as carefree as that with each other we will struggle with our correctness and our carefulness. We do, truly, need to be as little children.
I didn’t notice the CARE material, I’m afraid. I was concentrating on what was being said – that’s my excuse anyway. But your comment, Kelvin, brings home to me once again how we in the majority community need constantly to be more alert and sensitive than we commonly are.