I Still Look Up

Tourists are the ones looking up. There's an adage which says you can identify the New Yorkers as the ones unconcerned with their surroundings; tourists are distracted by the lights, the smells, the sights, the sounds of New York City. For residents, this glamorous city is really rather ordinary. Or, perhaps, we are really rather fabulous.

I'm not sold. As I wandered through midtown tonight, making my way to the Times Square subway stop to catch the 7 train into Queens, I caught myself equally as mesmerized by the flashing lights as the tourists I pretend to begrudge. For as much as I consider myself at home in this city, I still find myself caught in awe every now and then. When tourists are posing for pictures, I offer to help take their pictures. It's my part to dispel the image of angry New Yorkers but it's also an opportunity to share in a carefree moment of happiness. Growing up in DC, going to school in Los Angeles, and now working in New York, I've bounced from one American metropolis to another. City life should be old hat but the lights still dazzle. I take for granted that I'm one or two degrees of separation from almost everyone in the entertainment industry, yet I still get excited when I walk past a Law & Order crew... even though I'm friends with the VP in charge!

Perhaps this is the case with everyone, a life that is simultaneously extravagant and ordinary. I still remember the first time I saw myself on the news. Equality Ride training was wrapping up in Austin, TX and we went out dancing after a fundraiser when news coverage of our event appeared on the television screens. It was surreal.

I was asked to pose for picture at almost every stop during the Equality Ride. I remember walking to the grocery store in Rexburg, ID when a young lady ran from her job at a fast food restaurant jumping and waving, calling our attention. I was often told "I'm so impressed with the work you do," "I could never do this," "What you do so important." I've been asked to speak at Carnegie Mellon University and Marble Church and even still I get messages on social networking sites wanting to say hello, to talk with an Equality Rider.

And yet I can't escape the feeling of ordinariness. Only a month before Equality Ride I was sitting in my apartment eating Papa John's pizza and singing along to Comcast karaoke with my roommate Ryan and our friend Carolyn. I didn't do much, I just showed up. Of course, I don't intend to discount the incredible work the Equality Ride does. It is an exhausting, time consuming, agonizing, taxing, rewarding, and surreal experience. It took a great deal of training and preparation and an equal amount of debriefing. But at the same time, at the end of the day, I'm a young man who saw an opportunity to make a difference and took it.

And that's where I find myself today. A rather ordinary person doing rather extraordinary things. Serving the young adults community at my church, steering Soulforce NYC, working at a national television network, and traveling all over the country to do so; but living every day guided by small and simple decisions. Practicing non-violence, choosing to love, searching for faith, taking small steps towards justice, find beauty and value in the smallest of opportunities.

I'm a New Yorker now, the buzz of the Big Apple has become routine, but I still look up.

Nervous About Lent

I have searched for Your will in all of this. I read, I have studied, I have prayed, I have discussed. It has been a long and difficult process and sometimes I worry that I have not progressed toward a greater understanding but slipped away from one. But everything You've shown me so far is that I must accept my orientation as one part of Your plan for my life. And so that is what I will do. I have asked those around me to approach this with an open heart and an open mind and so I have tried to do the same thing. If you have other plans for me, let me know; I am still listening.

Thus was the prayer I offered during my sophomore year in college at USC. I had only recently come out, after many years of struggling to find what was right. It took years for me to move from a place that saw all gay relationships (if not gay people) as sinful to a place that embraced the diversity of God's creation and recognized the value which gay and trans people have and the blessings that their relationships can bring. But even then, it was not an easy road.

I came out but had only a tentative understanding for what that meant to my life as a Christian. To be honest, I took a break, for all intents and purposes, from faith communities. I had grown up in an Evangelical Presbyterian Church, immersed in YoungLife, and (occasionally) attending Campus Crusade with friends. Being gay didn't fit in any of those places and I wasn't sure where to go.

I realized that Christian faith had played such a formative role in my life that I simply couldn't abandon it and I slowly began to walk back towards it, attempting to piece together everything I thought I knew and believed.

Senior year of college I had been dating Pat, a guy I met through my former roommate Frank, for about six weeks when Chase Edler died in a skateboarding accident. I'd only met Chase once but he was close friends with many of my good friends and the roommate of one of my best friends. It was unexpected and it hit me hard. I could not wait any longer to figure out who God was or to determine my relationship to the Creator. As my (straight) roommate Sean would later put it: "Nice guy, things were going great. But then Brian freaked out."

I ended the relationship and immediately began to question whether I had been living authentically for the past three years. Is this really what God wanted? For awhile, I thought I had made a tragic mistake. I launched back into small group, started going back to church regularly, and made it a habit to study the Word.

This time I was sure: God didn't create in me a capacity to love so that I might deny it.

Equality Ride only cemented my understanding that anti-gay teachings are thoroughly misguided. No matter how dressed up with smiles the teachings may be, they lack a cogent Scriptural basis and wreck havoc upon the lives they reach. Bad fruits if I've ever tasted them. Soulforce reminds us--gay, straight, Christian, atheist, condemning, affirming--that one must not chose one or the other. Interactions save lives and restore faiths.


I have been blessed with Marble Collegiate Church, a beautiful church community, since moving to New York City. I have also been challenged to grow in my faith in greater ways than ever before. Sometimes I can feel the growing pains as my soul stretches. And as Lent approaches, I'm preparing for even more growth. Growing up Protestant, Lent is not a time of year that is often focused on, and this will be my first year observing it. I am excited to set aside the upcoming 40 days and call them holy, to use them to grow in my understanding of my faith, and to appreciate the ultimate sacrifice which Jesus of Nazareth made on our behalf.

And yet, I can't say that I am not nervous. Sometimes, when I go to sleep I wonder if those growing pains are my soul aching to return to a Truth I've been missing. When Lent comes, when my comforts are stripped away, when I am left face to face with God; what will I find? My sophomore year prayer is in my head and in my heart every day. I take it with me wherever I go. I'm still listening, but will I be strong enough to change if I hear something different this time? Will I be confident enough to lay it to rest if the challenge I face is continued advocacy or even greater sacrifice for justice? On this year's Mardi Gras I'm left wondering if I didn't skip out on Lent because it was "too constructed by humans" but rather because it was too inspired by God.

Lent approaches and I am nervous, but I am ready.

Where to begin

For three weeks WeWo focused on the soul. Not surprisingly, suffering was examined at length. “Life is difficult.” That is the opening line of M. Scott Peck's The Road Less Traveled and it is something our pastor Dr. Arthur Caliandro repeats often. Indeed life is difficult. From finding food to eat in remote villages to navigating family relationships in a metropolis, we humans are faced with the difficult task of navigating through life.

What struck me about Pastor Lewicki's sermon was that it focused not on why we suffer or even how to avoid suffering, but rather how to respond to suffering. He painted the picture of a river of suffering that runs through life, everyone eventually comes to it. We can stand on the side and never cross or we can wade and swim and struggle through. It is easy, maybe even natural, to desire the comfort and safety of the river shore, but it is only through navigating those difficult waters that a soul can grow. “Our souls are smaller than they could because it is easier, safer,” David says.

But there is another way. Simone Weil, a wealthy European Jew quit her lucrative job to work in a factory. When the Nazis rose to power she escaped to England and lived on the rations of those in occupied France. Inspired by a conversion to Christianity, She worked endlessly for justice for the working class and then for the Jews during the reign of Hitler. She believe that:

“It is possible for a person to engage in and take seriously, even take on, the suffering of others. One can not only live with suffering, but live as a suffering person, in a way that does not wallow in it or glorifies it but trusts that God will use even suffering to dignify and even elevate the human soul”

As David continued to talk about suffering and our response to it, both our own suffering and that of those around us, I remembered just how important Equality Ride was. That voluntary redemptive suffering is not an idea someone cooked up recently. It isn't even a tactic that Gandhi created. Rather, voluntary redemptive suffering is a very basic way in which we can confront suffering and injustice and rise above it, refusing to be beaten down. Suffering can “compress the human soul into a cramped knot of bitterness” as Weil said, or it can explode it into something powerful and beautiful, as I saw in my two-months on the road and the unexpected path my life has since taken.

I return to a faith in Christ not because I expect to make life easier, or prettier, or more orderly. Far from it, for my life has been more demanding, more taxing, and more uncertain than ever before, but it has also been more fulfilling.

I remember when I was growing up and beginning to realize that there was “something different,” it was my faith in God that supported me. That whatever the reaction of the world may be, I could take shelter in the Lord. I'm not sure what type of person I would have become if I didn't have if the pressures of the world did not forge me into the person I am today; I’m learning to harness the strength I gained in swimming across that whirlpool of a river.

Life is difficult.

Falling Into Grace

I attended Wednesday Worship at Marble Collegiate last night, as per usual, and Pastor Lewicki's sermon touched upon some themes that have been on my heart recently. Also as per usual, timing was miraculous. I've got a bunch to say about the sermon (you can subscribe to the podcast) but for now I want to share a verse from "If I Stand" by Rich Mullins, one of the songs we sang:

If I stand, let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through
And if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you

For me, those two lines stand out as a beautiful encapsulation of what it means to walk with God.

for the BIBLE tells me so

In the oldest Protestant church in North America, they clapped and clapped and clapped. And then they stood, and clapped some more.