On Saturday we were engaged via phone conference with other Rainbow Access Initiative board members in the Capital District in New York as we designed the next steps for establishing the program format for RAI’s Art of Health Expo 2012. Focus on breakout sessions included discussion on the content of the presentations and the support needed for proposed sessions. The aim of the Expo event is to bring the artistic skills of LGBTQ people to the foreground for the purpose of enhancing healthy living amid creative exchange. RAI supports consumers and providers in uplifting that which is the best of what we can offer each other, giving LGBTQ community opportunity to be our gracious and healthy selves. We celebrate with serious reflection on the desires of our community, honest sharing, good humor, compassionate caring and moments of joy.

Sunday was a day for gathering in Raleigh as the Coalition to Protect NC Families worked to educate and encourage involvement in social action.  RCCares joined over 70 other community organizations, religious and/or secular based, to collaborate in the effort toward helping NC voters understand how they will be impacted by Amendment One which is on the ballet for May 8, 2012. [The first sentence of the proposed amendment states “Marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”]  On Sunday we were able to talk with leaders from NC, including Jimmy Creech, as well as to renew our acquaintance with Rev Dr Mel White, one of Soulforce’s compassionate founders and a celebrant at Holy Relationships in Iowa City, Iowa, in 2006. We weave the net of connection wider and stronger with each conversation, allowing for more influential actions in Being the church together.  The significance of moving the moderate middle to vote against the amendment in response to the needs of all families is imperative to equality and justice for LGBTQ people, our family, friends and our community. Where we had failed to support each other in the past because of our differences, we now affirm our hope for a better way of life and join in care of neighbor as self.

Monday evening we joined The People of Faith group, a coalition of local faith organization congregants whose mission is supporting all NC families and leading the vote against Amendment 1. Their plan includes public actions in which they intend to engage, including one on one educational conversation with those in their social network interested in families, speaking through the public media, collectively participating in the march in February advocating with the NAACP for issues of justice and equality in our community, and bringing speakers to their congregations’ gatherings to continue the education process regarding the need for all families to receive the benefits offered.  Their strategy is to be a faithful voice of equality and justice for LGBTQ families in their personal relationships, within supportive communal gatherings and in the public forum where legislation and policies are formed. We have discovered that as we tell our stories, what can be revealed in that telling is the good news of freedom and release to truly live.

Tuesday we met with the OutRaleigh steering committee to propose an OutRaleigh Clergy component to that annual event. Discussion centered on how clergy might be brought publically into a commitment to offer support to LGBTQ families as identified OutRaleigh Clergy.  Committee consensus was that criteria for inclusion in the brochure would require public actions that demonstrated support and affirmation of LGBTQ families. The OutRaleigh clergy should be present during the event to respond to requests of event participants. A confirmed, connected network of publically affirming and responsive clergy can serve to counter and denounce threats of hate violence due to religious intolerance based on anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. Where policies and legislation exclude LGBTQ people based on ‘religious morals’ and family value, the OutRaleigh Clergy act to expand the inclusion of all families in community.

Wednesday we attended the North Carolina Harm Reduction Coalition (NCHRC) Transgender Discussion Group. As is too often the case, a person joined our conversation who had never met with others with whom they could identify. Exploring terminology while expanding our self expression is a blessing we offer each other every time we gather. Welcome, acceptance, breaking bread (and peeling an orange) together, forgiving our own shortcomings and that of the other, offering care and support in ways that matter, and encouraging each other to keep on caring are the sustenance of every meeting. We inspire each other, empowering in ourselves the goodness in which we participate, nourishing us for co creating justice and reframing inclusion in our daily lives.

Thursday we attended a presentation at a local coffee shop that has become home for us even, and especially, in the midst of a chaotic community issue conversation. To have a venue where all voices may be engaged in community building is a valuable resource which we support with our heart and soul. However, we were brought up short in the bigotry and hateful language spoken by the presenter. The possibility of open exploration was derailed by the presenter’s personal and immovable opinion of the assumed ‘given’ of the abomination of our lives as LBGTQ persons. Others at the presentation felt called to engage in a rhetorical dialogue with the presenter, so we allowed the space and time for them to pursue that task as we disengaged. God bless us all, everyone. We were willing to admit that our passion in ministry is to those who would have ears to hear.

Friday our work week culminated with the Affirming Faith Forum at the LGBT Center of Raleigh. We led a discussion about the movie “For the Bible Tells Me So” with community members interested in exploring scripture for Biblical support of same gender love and gender self identity and self expression.  Our conversation incorporated our understanding of God’s creating us in God’s image and how we have been blessed with supportive people in our lives. A question was asked, “How can we prove that God loves us?” We sat there quietly, heart and soul in love and care for each other, touched by the love that is beyond all understanding. We inherently believe that God loves ALL of God’s creation and who could prove otherwise? The Affirming Faith Forum will continue to meet at the LGBT Center of Raleigh, however, instead of every 3^rd month we will be meeting every month on the 4^th Monday of the month.  The Affirming Faith Forum provides a venue for open exploration of the deep passion for love, the desire for a satisfying life and the joy in a self-connection shared. The forum will also offer the opportunity to explore and reflect upon defusing the power of systemic evils of religious intolerance and bigotry.

As the ordained minister for Rainbow Community Cares (RCCares), my work is deeply rooted in ministry development and church revitalization. Rainbow Community Cares has emerged from the praxis of neighborhood ministry begun in Schenectady, New York, and now is informed by participation in LGBTQ community organizations in Raleigh, North Carolina. An integral part of RCCares’ vision is to help heal the rift in our communities and co-create a safe place for community to grow.  The scriptural imperative to love your neighbor leads the way to the gatherings in which RCCares participates. The 2011 Equality Conference was one such gathering.

Congregating with over 80 participants at the workshop “Advocating for Religious Tolerance” that I led was awesome. The realization that so many people at a public advocacy conference gathering were interested in investigating this way of community reconciliation, and contemplating what that advocacy would entail, enfleshed the possibilities and the power of advocating for religious tolerance.  As the workshop began we got to work immediately, defining the parameters we hoped to explore in the following 70 minute session. The workshop was 1 of 5 workshops held during the third and final breakout session of the day. With no microphone, no markers for the posters and the dry erase board hidden behind the power point screen, our voices quickly and conscientiously moved around the room, filled to overflowing,  identifying who we were and naming ourselves as 1)contemplative, 2) a follower or 3) a leader.  There was a general mix from each category in the gathering, with several people who identified as fluid, spanning the categories to include two of the three choices.

Here was a group of people who obviously ranged in age from late teens to late 70’s, all with the courage, insight and hopefulness born of the need to be free to live fully, to be accepted by parents, family and friends, and to be treated with equality in community; their goal was life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The diversity of the group spanned such a range of spiritual practices to defy definition.  It appeared that we were a group of LGBTQA with a multi-varied perspective on what it meant to advocate for tolerance and we agreed early in the session to offer to the gathering bits of our stories that were to be gathered, and later compiled and then disseminated by email in December 2011. During group discussion, we listed what an allied religious organization might look like, and then spent a few minutes to individually write a sentence or two about a personal experience on an index card. As a group we discussed a couple of experiences, suggesting a responsive behavior a supporting allied religious organization could make, and then individually wrote a responsive behavior that each of us wanted to see related to our own experience on the other side of the index card. After reviewing how one might prepare for a meeting with a religious organization and practicing responses to the barriers and successes that what we might anticipate, the workshop culminated in a role play of an advocacy meeting.

Most of the workshop participants agreed that we needed another hour to really dissect the process regarding how to set up and carry out advocacy meetings as well as to explore further options for responsive behaviors in collaboration with LGBT community advocacy groups and ally religious organizations.  While this workshop was not designed to address all possibilities for advocating for religious tolerance, another topic of concern voiced by several participants was how to respond to religious intolerance at the moment of confrontation.

RCCares passion for leading advocacy work comes from seeing how religious intolerance enables judgment as harsh as using hell as a weapon to cut us off from those whom  we love and who love us, attempting to deny our common humanity and heedlessly bludgeoning families, severing individual  connections for self realization and friendships, effectively separating us from those we love.

Emotional damage perpetrated by religious beliefs and/or a narrowly prescribed definition of ‘morality’ is contagious as these toxins seep out into the public arena where community gathers. People who choose to nurture their spirituality in affirming ways as well as those who would choose to have nothing to do with religious organizations are assaulted in communal life by the results of this toxicity. Innocent bystanders are drawn into interfamilial strife which would not have occurred were it not for the introduction of that toxin.  Children may not come out to their parents because they have learned rejection outside of their homes and generalize that rejection to their own family. People justify striking out at others with hateful words or physical violence because those people have not heard a consolidated, communal voice denying them the right to create such ‘morality’ boundaries. We challenge this assumption in the work of advocating for tolerance as we reach out across our communities and throughout the country.

Outrageous and violent acts of intolerance, based on purported anti-LGBTQ biases due to ‘religious beliefs’, could not possibly be supported except via a virulent case of homophobia; i.e., a fear that goes beyond rational thought threatening one’s own belief system. There will always be people in this world who want to control the actions of others for a variety of reasons, attempting to refute a perspective other than their own, and a perspective with which they cannot empathize. On the one hand, there is the possibility that in our work advocating for religious tolerance we may encourage an increase in tolerance for diversity with those for whom there is potential for developing empathy and/or tolerance. On the other hand, there remains the responsibility to advocate for justice and equality where people’s human rights are minimalized and marginalized in our society solely on the basis of their sexual orientation, gender expression or gender identity.  A small minority of religious organizations openly advocate for religious intolerance but  many more religious organizations are teaching intolerance through their disallowing recognition and/or speaking out against relationships the LGBTQ communities respect and honor.  This translates as a denial of full participation for the LGBTQ community in social activities throughout community interactions and relationships at work, in places of commerce, and at home. The work of prayerfully creating opportunities to reflect upon and advocate for religious tolerance is the beginning of the beginning to love neighbor as self.

caterpillar ready to butterfly

cocoon pressured    sealed outside by

force    ignorant command    refusal

colors burst     define response

inside out     irreversible

short of breath     flight ended

beauty unbound      awe buried

We remember what our world has lost in the violence committed against transgender people, our family and friends. The injustice of the brutality that can make even a bus ride too rough to endure must end. What we do to support equal access to employment, housing and medical care for the transgender community does matter. Get connected and/or stay connected with the work for love and justice.  Need additional resources? Try Southern Comfort or WPATH.

Since last we spoke, I have continued to work on completing the online Grant Writing Course I am taking from UNC. To my great pleasure, I have found a niche for my desire to be a writer in grant writing!?! I have been volunteering with Equality North Carolina ( www.equalitync.org )  and find that, now that the proposition to change the state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman will come to a popular vote in May, there is more need than ever for advocacy for the LBGTQ community for equality and justice. I am glad that we are here. Two weeks ago I attended a Harm Reduction Conference in Durham, NC ( www.nchrc.net ) . I have volunteered with this state group since July and had worked with the National Coalition in different venues including presenting at the 8^th Annual International Conference last winter.  The third organization that I have been concentrating on building collaboration with is the LGBT Center of Raleigh ( www.lgbtcenterofraleigh.com ) to continue with faith based organizing while volunteering on the OutRaleigh Festival planned for next May.

Last week I was in Atlanta, Georgia at the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association National Conference (www. glma.org )  to participate in the discussion about current concerns and advocacy needs for establishing accessible health care and human services. On the last day of the conference we joined two other organizations, Southern Comfort (www.sccatl.org/index.php ) and WPATH (www.wpath.org/)  and what a convergence of energy that was.  Next month I will participate in the Church Within A Church ( www.cwac.us ) National Conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Community Ministry takes physical form as our actions respond to the needs for equality and justice!

You may be especially interested in the workshop on October 22 at the Church Within A Church National Conference “Living Justice in the Wilderness” to be held in Tucson at St Mark’s Presbyterian Church. CWAC is committed to act in support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Questioning youth and young adults so that they have a stronger reason to believe “it gets better!” In that light, Saturday’s workshop from 9:00 to 11:30 am will be presented by Micheal Weakly, Director of Programs for 1n10 (www.1n10.org). A Phoenix based organization, 1n10 is dedicated to serving the valley youth and working toward safer environments for LGBTQ youth. 1n10 serves LGBTQA youth and young adults, as described in their mission statement, to “enhance their lives by providing empowering social and service programs that promote self-expression, self-acceptance, leadership development and healthy life choices.” Micheal has worked in LGBTQ nonprofit for 10 years, six of which have been as Director of Programs for 1n10. Micheal’s goal for the workshop is that attendees go away with a better understanding of LGBTQ youth issues and how organizations like 1n10 are empowering the current youth movement.

CWAC is dedicated to equipping our members and allies for living in love and justice, and see Micheal’s workshop as an opportunity to learn how to enhance the work of youth and young adults in their involvement as agents of change toward improving community wellbeing and realizing the blessing of diversity.

Workshop Title: Rebel YELL

Workshop Description:

An interactive and engaging workshop about the work with 1n10 and how we empower LGBTQ youth to live fulfilling lives. The workshop will engage the audience regarding the issues facing LGBTQ today, how they are empowering themselves, how they are reacting to these issues and ways that the youth are utilizing social media as an outlet of expression, outreach and engagement. Statistics will be shared along with data reinforcing the need for LGBTQ youth specific programs. Much time will be spent exploring the relationship between spirituality and sexual orientation and how this process is unique for LGBTQ youth.

To learn more about the workshop and/or other events at the conference, go to www.cwac.us

Celebration of Renewal – Marriage Ceremony

July 24, 2011

Presented by Rev Jenna Zirbel, MS, MTS, MDiv

For Rainbow Community Cares, Inc.

And Church Within A Church Movement, Inc

Permission to use context may be obtained by emailing j.zirbel@yahoo.com

Gathering      

We have gathered here to celebrate and renew the promises of love we have from our Creator and the ones that we have made to each other. We wish to demonstrate commitment to a vision of living a healthier, happier life with each other, our soul mates and friends. You may repeat the promises you have made to each other when you first committed to live in covenantal love.  We have two readings for inspiration and spiritual guidance. We will share communion together as a way of affirming and transforming our intentions to lead holy, healthy lives in the power of the Source of all life.

Having experienced love, we look for ways to grow in love with our lives and to heal. One way is to do what we are doing today; recognizing the presence of love in our lives whose source and depth is unfathomable and opening to that love so we may flourish. We are making a conscious and focused effort to ignore the noisy distractions and allow the spirit of love fill our mind, body and spirit.

Selected Poem/Prose/Hymn “Spirit”

Spirit, spirit of gentleness.
Blow through the wilderness, calling and free.
Spirit, spirit of restlessness. Stir me from placidness.
Wind, wind on the sea.

1. You moved on the waters, You called to the deep,
Then You coaxed up the mountains. From the valley of sleep,
And over the eons You called to each thing,
“A wake from your slumbers and rise on your wings.”
2. You swept through the dessert, You stung with the sand,
And You gifted your people With a law and a land,
And when they were blinded With their idols and lies,
Then You spoke through Your prophets To open their eyes.
3. You sang in a stable, You cried from a hill,
Then You whispered in silence When the whole world was still,
And down in the city You called once again
When You blew through Your people On the rush of the wind.
4. You call from tomorrow, You break ancient schemes,
From the bondage of sorrow The captives dream dreams;
Our women see visions, Our men clear their eyes.
With bold new decisions Your people arise.

(Perhaps one verse at a time throughout this service)

Greeting        

Introduction

K arranged this gathering, first to celebrate a promise you made to each other 5 years ago, a promise to live in love and care. Second, to renew your promises to each other now as you become legally married. Third, to recognize how relationships influence the wellbeing of all life.

K has something K would like to say and will give you time to tell K what you want. I picked a reading I believe will help guide us to understanding the love shared here, between you two, in a particular and very special way, that is rooted deeply in the sacred everyday life of the world.

We all understand that lives change, people we love and care about grow in their own identities, and our own needs and desires change as we come to more fully know ourselves. And it is only through these changes that relationships grow stronger, healthy and more vital.

Intention

K’s writing.

Do you want to make/renew your marriage vows?

This is a real choice you and your partner can make, yes or no.

We need each other to experience and understand love’s true strength, to have examples of how to live and to heal, to grow and be happy.           We know people in our lives that have been examples, sometimes examples of how not to be, but more helpfully that act as a guide! We need each other to love.

Prose reading on love [1 Corinthians 13 adapted]

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant

or rude. It does not insist on having its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it is not happy about acting hurtful, but is joyful in sincerity and kindness. It puts up with a lot of hard things, believes in the good of things, hopes through all things, and continues through all things.

Love never ends, even though it sometimes grows weary. Predictions will come to an end, either realized or not; beautiful prose and poetry will need new interpretations as times change; new ways of thinking about things will always challenge what we believe as we grow and learn about life. We are not destined to remain naïve and without reasoning even though we do not know the outcome of the decision that we make.  Faith, hope, and love live on forever, these three; and the most enduring of the three is love.

Proclamation and Promise

Repeat promises couple has selected.

Prayer for Couple

John 15 [Selected verses]

to endure, to heal, to bless each other,

to cherish and honor what we experience when we love the other as self

not giving over self, but offering the gifts we have been given to share

Inclusive Words of Thanksgiving and Institution

We give thanks, Holy One, eternal Lover of all, present always and everywhere. We recognize the continual care and love living in creation, and in that cherished image we live in relationship with the source of life. Although we at times turn away from loving other as self, pretending we have only ourselves to care for and love, the loving source of all life is never taken away from any of us. We make barriers with angry words, self centeredness overwhelming shared concern, denying respect for self and other in our relationships. The spirit of creation and renewal is brought back into focus through prophets and teachers, visionaries and dreamers inspired by the source of all life. That word of hope, renewal lived wondrously in Christ Jesus. We give thanks for the countless living expressions of love, especially for that uniquely given through Christ Jesus’ sharing at table, with life renewing promise.

Communion

Healthy living is an individual as well as a community thing; everyday holiness is nurtured in us, with our family, friends and neighbors, near and far. We will share bread and juice, fruit given to all as beloved people of God, a loving gift of the earth. The Spirit of God made visible in the life of Christ guides us to wholeness. May we recognize how love connects us to the loving creator, source of eternal love.

With thankful hearts, take and eat the bread – nourishment for life everlasting; drink the fruit of the vine – a promise of love kept; gifts prepared by human hands. Let them represent for us God’s boundless love that gives life that endures, that heals, that enables us to bless and cherish others. Share this gift with the person whom you have today vowed to love, and then, strengthened and renewed, share that love of God with all the people that you encounter in your daily living.

Prayer following communion:

May this sharing strengthen us by the spirit of God to live and invest that love to cherish and honor what we experience when we love the other as self.  Realize how your loving and caring for others, not giving over self, but offering the gifts you have been given ripen and mature as they are shared.

The culture in which we live is undergirded by a socialized religion granting heterosexual couples’s status in the way of financial, legal, psychological and spiritual supports denied gay and lesbian relationships.  Those persons who vary from the “moral” norms of sexual identity, sexual orientation, gender expression and gender identity, established in the same discriminatory manner by the dominant minority, are denied the safeguards that protect their full rights, as well.

Leaders in our nation will sometimes define social practices as “moral,” and therefore “acceptable,” based on dominant religious biases irrespective of the reality of the diversity of relationships lived in community. Heterosexual coupling has been legally identified as meriting “moral” status with the entitlements that go along with it, while discrimination against other relationships is sanctioned. The burden of proof that relationships other than heterosexual coupling are “moral” is placed on the community in a system where the leaders refuse to recognize the “acceptable” existence of diverse relationships. There is no legitimate place allowed for justice in this system. Blindness to the diversity of relationships in community creates an unjust living environment resulting in the denial of civil rights, inequality, oppression, and strife in the name of “morality.”

Practicing Safe Spirituality  -  PowerPoint presentation

The message in this book brings a wake-up call challenging the drowsy complacency in heart and soul. It is a call to rally with other church members to remember the value of our own lives well lived, to realize the ability to live in the power of the Spirit more freely and fully in care of neighbor as self. This book is about faith-based organizing and how church communities through grace can consciously choose to live into the professed Christian identity “called to be holy, catholic, apostolic, and confessional.” Jacobsen recognizes the tendency of the well to do churches to be underwhelmed by issues, partly because of the pervasiveness on the part of the church, following the model of society as a whole, of the complacent acceptance of the suffering of the oppressed. The author wrote about the significance of being reflective regarding the mutuality in meaningful relationships in the work of community organizing. Having the passion to be engaged in the work of ministry of love and justice, need be fully accompanied with reexamining how that passion can be used in ways that can make a difference in how to live in community.  It is about more than being do gooder’s offering charity and prayers for the oppressed.  It is about seeing the struggle for justice and realizing how our specific skills and expertise can serve as reinforcement in that work with others, expanding the power base in the community as a way of broadening the accessibility of the resources in community, and living into God’s salvation and call of justice for all.

Where sacred sanctuary space can be recovered is one of the biggest concerns that we have encountered in our work with ministry development.  And the next concern that begs to be addressed is how one defines sanctuary.  We have watched churches drop one ministry after another that had served the local community in addressing basic living needs. Take care of the widows and the orphans, we have been admonished in the Hebrew Testament. Maybe we take “feed my sheep” from the New Testament too literally, but I don’t think so. If the worry for keeping the building repaired takes precedence over caring for neighbor, what is the use of the church building? And then again, where can people gather that is safe and accepting if there is no open neighborhood sanctuary?

The issues above are not so much erudite as they are practical concerns for those of us in ministry outside the established church walls. We walk the streets in our neighborhoods where there is not a safe place to name what is sacred in our lives, nor to claim a space to share the experience with others. If we have no one to reflect with, we are missing an opportunity to grow to wholeness and improve the well being of the community.

I talked with a person who had been looking for a way to gather with others to celebrate the loving child that we all are, in a safe place. This person had been looking for a way to organize other friends who shared the desire to practice their spirituality in community in a home church. Developing liturgy had been one of her concerns that we had discussed around the work of a home church gathering. Since then, she has found a group that had been organized around the premise of listening for God to speak and has decided that this group of Quakers is a safe sanctuary for her.

Finding a place and finding the words to express what is sacred in life is for me a daily task. Quite naturally, some days are more open to community gatherings than others.  On the first day of spring, I led a spirituality workshop I developed for that day at our first Rainbow Access Initiative LGBTQ Mind, Body, Spirit Expo. What an awesome day of celebration of renewed life. The spring equinox is a sacred time for many faith practices and it surely was a diverse and blessed group that gathered in the room where the workshop was held.  We honored the sacred in each of us that was named and claimed by us as congregants. We created sacred space for that hour, which was built upon trust and the willingness to respect the other while each of us lifted up what was uniquely our own expression.

Just this past Saturday we got together with a new acquaintance from the Expo to see how we could expand the common ground we shared spiritually, honoring what is sacred in our lives. We talked about our experiences looking for a way to put into spiritual practice with others that which has been put in our hearts to share. We had felt a strong connection in how we view what is of sacred worth in each of our lives, and how the earth is to be cherished as home for us and those who have gone before us. The person with whom we met spoke about his desire to be in ministry using the healing skills that he has nurtured. He is prepared to share his healing power with others in need, but he wonders where he will find a viable place from which to work.

Faith Ministries organizing is a barely tapped resource from which so many communities could benefit. In order for a community to flourish, all participants have to be enabled to access basic services. When people are left out of the loop of community engagement, their needs do not disappear but are met in less efficient and more expensive manner, often to the detriment of the individual and of the community as a whole.

Grocery stores in most communities are not located in neighborhoods for easy access for those without their own transportation, while convenience stores with high prices for items are more readily accessible.  Food pantries only act somewhat as a backup support for people unable to afford to meet their needs because of limited access to a local grocery store.  Someone without the money and/or stamina to take a bus to their medical care provider, may find that the only safe means of transportation to get needed medical care is by ambulance to the hospital emergency room.  And for some of our neighbors, getting someone able to care enough to accompany them for support and assistance to an appointment is not possible. The injustice of the lack of access for some individuals to basic services hurts the life of the community.

Faith Ministries organizing can be used to establish relationships in communities where the wellbeing of every neighbor is considered significant to the community as a whole. No one deserves to be left out.  This ministry can promote an environment where caring for other is realized as in one’s own best interest. To always be on the asking side of a relationship prohibits mutuality and respectful encounters and distorts the meaning of giving.  In a healthy relationship it is easy to recognize how giving and getting are mutually inclusive, and how caring for neighbor as self, is caring for self.