Finding my voice again post-election.

In the time that has passed since Concession last week, it's been hard to even know what to say - say as distinct from feel or scream or simply react. (I urge you to read TSW's thoughts, much more articulate than my own.) While much has been on my mind - the coming period of distress, la longue durée for a progressive vision to take hold in the US, the task of progressive religious folk in hastening that durée, my weariness at being part of the scapegoat group - what has been lurking in my spirit, poisoning my days, has been my fears for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, my church, the fifth-largest Protestant community in the US. More importantly, it is the institution to which I am most directly preparing to pledge my working life. In nine months' time, the ELCA will make a decision on whether to authorize in some form the ordination of gay and lesbian people in relationships. Of course this isn't the kind of big-picture stuff, á la the Center for American Progress' mission, that we should all be pondering right now in the aftermath of the election. But it is the most direct way in which my entire future is touched by the election. For the same forces that mobilized a majority of voters to endorse Bush - a mobilization in no small part spurred by anti-gay prejudice encoded in legal measures - are the same that have been and could very easily shift the balance in the ELCA in favor of harsher exclusionary policies. And if these forces have their sway within my faith-community like they have had sway in our national electoral community, then I'll be without job and back to the drawing board for a "When I Grow Up" plan.

It wasn't until this afternoon and evening that I realized how much my depression over the past week has been tied to this ominous sense of the collusion between November 2004 and August 2005. And much more than my anger and weariness of bearing the anger, hatred, and prejudice of voters who were drawn to vote on account of "moral values," I'M TIRED of living in a space where I must be asked again and again to prove that God loves me sufficiently for the church to validate my ministry gifts. I'm TIRED of putting my whole concrete future on the line for a community that is still willing to acknowledge, much less tolerate, much less accept that glbtq people are any less deserving, ceteris paribus, of leading God's people.

For so many years, this weariness has skated on the thin ice over the cool rage of despair. And every time, something keeps me from falling in and freezing my hope to death. Before, it was always something that helped me keep my faith in the church, in the desperate project of proclaiming the Gospel in defiance of the institutions that claim God's name. Now, only tonight, something different has come: I don't need this - I can just walk away.

I will no longer play the game waiting for the church to decide whether my near-perfect and comprehensive record of preparation for the ministry is sufficient to overlook the "problem" of my abominable sexuality. Aside from speaking Spanish fluently - which I hope to begin remedying next semester - there's hardly an experience or area of learning left that one wouldn't want for a soon-to-be first-time pastor. For seven years I have strategized what I need to do to be ready for the work to which I believe God has called me: frankly, this has made me more qualified than 95% of candidates for ordination, and I'm ready to put all of it towards the rescue and renewal of failing congregations and the communities they failed. If this isn't enough, I don't know what is.

And if this isn't enough, so be it. I don't need this - and neither does God. God doesn't need someone to pay this price - it's a calling that some have felt the need to answer, but I don't necessarily any longer. There are a hundred things I could do with the skills and experiences I have cultivated - things that in every way advance the work of God in redeeming the world - things for which my sexuality is no basis for exclusion or exception.

I have nothing to lose by pursuing other vocations in which my whole self can be engaged in saving the world. And the church has everything to lose - even the gospel itself - by clinging to prejudices that twist Jesus' crown of thorns just a little bit tighter. The church cannot afford to lose young, talented people willing to commit to the hard work of rebuilding and reimagining congregational life. But more importantly, I now know in the marrow of my soul, the place where my calling is stored, that God can't afford to lose the gifts I and every other glbtq person has to offer to the work of creating that Beloved Community.

Now, strangely enough, I really can let go - and let God.