In honor of National Coming Out Day (NCOD), here’s a portion of a chapter from my doctoral thesis, Bringing the Refugees Home: Faith Formation for the Dechurched. This chapter chronicles some of my own history with HIV/AIDS and my participation in creating the very first National Coming Out Day back in 1988. For my friends who do not identify as LGBTQQI or as any sort of sexual minority, “coming out” as whoever you are wherever you are is a gift. Silence is deadly. And if t

Anything scares me, anything scares anyone but really after all considering how dangerous everything is nothing is really very frightening. – Gertrude Stein in Everybody’s Autobiography (1932) My first two weeks of commuting to Montclair from our home in San Francisco have been way more interesting than we might have expected! The first week, the Bay Bridge was closed and I left our second car in Sari Kulberg’s driveway and used BART to go back and forth. (thanks Sari!) This

The future of the Church is jazz. I first wrote that sentence in 1996 as I was just starting out in ordained ministry in the United Church of Christ. At the time, I was serving as a community-based chaplain serving women living with HIV/AIDS and out-of- town families coming to San Francisco to care for their loved ones dying from the disease. The calling to serve as a spiritual caregiver in the HIV/AIDS community was not easy. At the time, no one was really tracking the parti

Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint. – Georgia O’Keefe Loving opera is something I inherited somewhat by accident from my father. He loved opera, though I’m pretty sure he only saw a few live performances during his lifetime. His love of opera was primarily based upon the Saturday broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera in New York that he could hear o

Imagination is more important than knowledge. – Albert Einstein I am fascinated by prophets – both ancient and contemporary. The ancient ones such as Isaiah had the ability to both warn of danger and demise AND to spin beautiful visions of the world the way it “ought” to be. The 11th chapter of Isaiah presents a particularly wondrous description of a world at peace. In this world, equality and safety mark this “peaceable kingdom” that is led by a wise master. Predator lie

Psalm 104 : 1-4 (NRSV) Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord my God, you are very great. You are clothed with honor and majesty, 2 wrapped in light as with a garment. You stretch out the heavens like a tent, 3 you set the beams of yourchambers on the waters, you make the clouds yourchariot, you ride on the wings of the wind, 4 you make the winds yourmessengers, fire and flame your ministers. Human mastery of fire is a key moment in our evolution. From the momen

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. – Mahatma Gandhi Concert pianist Arthur Rubenstein was walking down the street in Manhattan when a tourist stopped him and asked, “do you know the way to Carnegie Hall?” And Rubenstein reportedly replied, “practice, practice, practice!” Do you know the way to develop a deeper relationship with the Divine? Same answer. Now Rubenstein was certainly thinking of the piano (or any other artistic pursuit), but what are t

What a crazy political time it is, this summer of 2013! The Supreme Court of the United States has just gutted the voting rights act making it easier for states to discriminate against minority groups in the balloting process and then on the very next day allowed a lower court ruling to stand that repealed Prop. 8, paving the way for marriage equality in California. It also repealed the federal ban on same-gender marriage (DOMA) thereby granting same-gender couples in state

“You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.” – Anne Lamott I recently got to live-tweet the final dress rehearsal for San Francisco Opera’s new opera, the Gospel of Mary Magdalene by Mark Adamo. For the record, I like this new work in many ways and I am completely smitten by the performance of Sasha Cooke in the title role. I’m looking forward to seeing it again as part of our season tickets. But I

Hands knead the sprained flesh where rib number five has worked itself out of line and out of order. Ugh. Getting a massage used to be more pleasure and less work. Breathe in . . . breathe out . . . breathe through . . . The massage therapist continues along, digging out the past trapped in my body, like an archaeologist mapping a new site. Left knee cap – Cracked in 1982 while running upstairs to the light booth in Hammond Hall at Rice. Coccyx – Shattered by fall down a mar