Finding The Next Step
One of my best friends Micah writes today,
i don't want to protest the mormon church.I know that we are both racking our hearts, minds, and souls to find our next steps. There is a part of me that is reacting to a great hurt caused by Proposition 8; but equally there is a recognition that this longing and these next steps are larger than any piece of legislation. My pastor Rev. Lewicki reflected on the movement between inward- and outward-focused energy in the life of faith. It feels as if I'm standing on the edge between inward-focused study, reflection, meditation, and preparation and outward-focused faith in action.
i don't want to protest city hall (i'll be there on saturday because i think it's important to stand in solidarity and be counted, i just think there are better messaging strategies).
i want to be intentional. i want my actions to make sense. i want to identify and address the source rather than the effects of oppression.
i want connection, narrative, humanity.
vulnerability, integrity, conviction.
i want to do something radical: i want to live my beliefs.
Where are you in life today? Inward-focused or outward-focused? And what do you want? What steps are do you feel called to that are perhaps not the steps you're used to?
1 comment:
I understand the feeling. As to where I am when it comes to the inward-focused/outward-focused divide, I guess I personally have to come down as being inward-looking. I don't want to be. I want to be out there, using the constructive tension created by all of this pain and protest to try to capitalize on the attention people are willing to pay to these issues. I know that all too soon most straight people will want to move on, to consider this issue over and done with for at least this decade. I know that the reality of a friend in pain is sometimes the most powerful statement we can make.
But I don't know that I can.
I'm tired. I poured everything I had into this campaign, and talked to everybody I could as often as I could. I've burned my community out on this issue - and most of them now either agree with me, or just won't discuss it. I don't know how to overcome that, and think only time will do it. Maybe that's just me making excuses so I can lick my wounds. I am slowly, so slowly, getting back into learning about these issues - reading the new lawsuit briefs, researching first amendment questions, thinking about how the new political situation affects the future of the movement - but these are all matters of preparation, not current action. I am not acting now, don't really know how, and don't know if I could.
What I am doing is falling on my faith. I am learning, really learning, what it means to believe that there is neither slave nor free in Christ... and applying that knowledge to make it possible to walk into a church knowing that I am a second-class citizen in this state. I am struggling to have a servant's heart, to find blessings by blessing others, even when that means celebrating somebody else's marriage in a state that voted by more than 60% to ban mine. I am contemplating what marriage really means, and whether the law really should matter as much to my heart as it does. I am grieving - and trying to believe that my God comforts those who mourn. We will move past this, and I think, in small points of light and acts of faith, we will do so in a way that glorifies God... and in the end, it will be His spirit shining through us when the world has rejected us as outcast, that will someday turn the tide and see justice done. At least, that's my hope - today, it's all I've got.
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