I had a conversation with my sister tonight – she was showing me a knitting project she loved, and asked how I was doing. I’ve been a little broken up about what happened in Orlando this past weekend. We have friends and family who live there – friends who are part of the LGBTQ+ community. Friends who welcomed us with open hearts and arms and who make our world a better place. Wonderful, accepting, open, quirky, fabulous, beautiful, varied humans who treat us like they’ve known us our whole lives. And they were attacked this weekend. Our second family was attacked this weekend.

I felt terribly weird for being on the verge of tears for three straight days (or opting to skip the verge and just try to work through tears and a snotty nose) – I’ve never been to Pulse, and it’s not quite a place I would go. I’m a little too introverted for large scenes. And I’m not an active member of the LGBTQ+ community in Orlando. Why was this hitting me so hard? Harder than other hate crimes.(Which is saying something. These things hit me pretty hard every time.) I think I know what some of it is – and it’s what is hitting a LOT of people so hard.

These people were attacked in one of their community sanctuaries, one of their safe gathering spaces, where they could be themselves, their authentic self. Some of these people may have found a second home in the community there in Orlando, some may have found their only home if their families of origin were less than welcoming to them.

And they were murdered. And my heart broke. These people who had and have the courage to be honestly and truly themselves in a culture that is so hostile to who that makes them were murdered. They were made into martyrs, just for being themselves in a culture that peacock-postures and screams how it values conforming individualism. Be yourself, as long as you are like everyone else.

And they are gone. These people who just wanted to be allowed to love who they loved and be who they were, are gone, murdered, because they were too much themselves. In a culture full of cheap love stories on screen and cheaper, assembly-line love songs on the radio, the people who wanted to authentically love and be are slaughtered by the product of the homophobic, conformist, repressed culture that is still holding on in it’s dying breaths to much of our world.

They died for loving and being honest, even as they were hated and reviled by many who call them abominations, pedophiles, abhorrent, the same people who preach love and tolerance and holy light.

And that’s where I was when my sister asked me how I was. Thinking about how the people who preach love and kindness, patience, non-judgement, are so quick to claim their book allows them to judge. The same people who so quickly forget that the one commandment in their book is LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF. And love, love is patient and kind and is slow to anger, it does not rejoice in evil, it trusts, it hopes, and IT PROTECTS. There are no qualifications for who gets to be loved and who doesn’t. That’s why their faith is supposed to be so radical. It is meant to challenge you to develop world-changing compassion, to seek out your broken human-ness in every other human.

Love seeks to understand. Everyone. Everything. Always. If you love, you seek to understand, and when you cannot, you love anyway, trusting that it is your limits of understanding and compassion that are at fault, not creation’s. Love is work, love is hard, love never gives up.

Fear, fear isolates and insulates. Fear says Us vs Them. Fear qualifies and quantifies, fear makes up rules and requirements, fear gives comfort in not having to face the discomfort of growth and deepening of compassion. Fear is lazy. Fear runs and hides until it can strike from the shadows and run; fear is a coward and bully.

There are no qualifiers for love and compassion. There are no rules, no requirements. You love. You love until there is nothing left of you to get in the way of loving others. That is what you are called to do. Not preach from your pulpit about how it was a good thing these people were killed, these people who just wanted to love who they loved.

—

The Greatest Of These 

It’s just a matter of
faith and hope
before the greatest of these,
those so well known three
faith hope and [it conquers all] –
even the darkness, that
seemingly impervious solidity
that stands before us,
will crumble before us –
before those who hold to the belief in
the greatest of these
[it conquers all].

//2013

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

//If I’ve used the incorrect terms let me know. My intention is NOT to insult or offend; I’m open, as always, to learning.