Happy Pride!
This is my niece and goddaughter, Mabel Caitlin, all decked out in her rainbow gear. To me, she symbolizes the beauty of the horizon toward which we are all headed, the evolution of love if you will. To her, of COURSE Love is Love. Rainbows are beautiful and fun. Her uncle Mikey and his husband are her favorites. She loves them easily, totally, without question or condition. There's a reason Jesus said, "let the little children come to me." What some church leaders and politicians make so complicated and divisive, children (and the child within all of us) just know-- love is love. People are people. The impulse towards love in all its myriad diversity-- the living rainbow if you will-- is only good, only bringing more life and love. It's really not very complicated.
Yet, many make it very complicated. For as far as we've come, we're still not there, and we can't, as Rumi says, "go back to sleep." Meaning-- and Jesus says this too-- we have to stay vigilant. Stay awake, stay clear in what we know and who we are. While so many gains have been made-- next year will mark the 10 year anniversary of marriage equality in this country-- there are plenty who wish to roll back and strip away these freedoms that honor love and the inherent dignity of every human person. We have to stay vigilant. We have to ground into who we are and speak what we know to be true.
Here's the really simple thing-- we ARE love. Love is our essence, our home, and our name. Often I wonder-- why, then, is loving in ever increasing freedom so threatening to so many? I think because those who live in the freedom of love (a HUGE bow and thank you to all our brave prophetic LGBTQI+++ siblings) shine a light into all the places so many of us are still longing for love. And maybe that feels scary? Vulnerable? Maybe for those who have been building walls around love for so long, or who thought love would look a certain way or fit into certain boxes, this "new" way threatens to break down all the lies they've constructed, all the ways they've tried to hide? I'm not sure. What I do know is that love is love is love is LIFE! That the more we open to love, the more life rushes in, along with more love, and that all of this is sacred and inevitable, the evolutionary arc upon which we dance. All of this is GOD.
I'll never forget sitting in a Queer theology class in seminary, and my professor and classmates were having a robust conversation around queerness and what it has to do with theology, what the LGBTQ+ experience might be telling us about who God is. We were talking about how when we lean into love, boundaries dissipate and disappear, how life becomes accessible to all, how queerness stretches and expands the categories we've put on things, invites everything into play and creativity and possibility. The more we talked about love and boundary-less-ness and queerness, the more it dawned on me. Ohhhhh-- God is queer. Whatever we think of as God, whatever we call the Divine, he/she/they are QUEER-- constantly dissolving boundaries, constantly inviting us into more love. It landed in me like the wild wind of liberation, and I knew-- God is so much bigger than we've ever yet let Them be.
And here's the thing-- if it's true that we are made in the image and likeness of God, and if the people of Goddess are constantly revealing something about who God really is, if that image thing is a 2-way mirror-- then God is a rainbow. God is Lesbian and Gay and Bisexual and Transgender and Queer and Intersex and all the many myriad sexes and genders and orientations we don't yet have names for. God is LOVE. ALL of this is God, and God is a brilliant fucking rainbow.
So, yes, PRIDE month is a time to celebrate, to honor, to set free liberating love in us all. To give thanks for all the many brave ones who are leading the way, too often at the cost of their own lives. We must stay vigilant for all that's left to do. Let us not be confused or make things complicated. Love is love. It's that simple.
I love you! and all your rainbows,
Erin
