Spirituality of Imperfection Rev. Hannah Petrie October 15, 2017 LGBTQ History Month’s Emerging Canon By Rev. Irene Monroe (published in LA Progressive and HuffPost Oct 2017) Winston Churchill once said that “History is written by the winners.” When the Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969, the history of more than a century-long oppressed people finally got national attention. And, since that historical moment, the suppressed and closeted oral histories of our fierce and courageous LGBTQ brothers and sisters began to be documented – openly and uncensored. In less than half a century later a new field of inquiry called Queer Studies began to tell our stories. And, as a young discipline, it’s still on a fact-gathering mission . For example, Queer Studies forced the once deliberated and hidden omission of [gay, African American] Bayard Rustin from the historical annals of the 1960’s Black Civil Rights Movement to his rightful place as a key figure. Usually mentioned as merely a historical footnote, we can no longer accurately talk about the historic 1963 March on Washington without Bayard Rustin. Rustin, inarguably, is one of the tallest trees in our forest, was the strategist and chief organizer of the March that catapulted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King onto a world stage. Sadly, he’s still largely an unknown due to the heterosexism that canonized the history. Queer histories, however, are not without their blind spots, too. For example, African American LGBTQ communities have always existed in Harlem, residing here since this former Dutch enclave became America’s Black Mecca in the 1920s. The visibility of Harlem’s LGBTQ communities, for the most part, was forced to be on the “down low.” But gay Harlem, nonetheless, showcased it inimitable style with rent parties, speakeasies, sex circuses, and buffet flats as places to engage in protected same-gender milieux. And let’s not forget Harlem’s notorious gay balls. During the 1920s in Harlem, the renowned Savoy Ballroom and the Rockland Palace hosted drag ball extravaganzas with prizes awarded for the best costumes. Harlem Renaissance writer Langston Hughes depicted the balls as “spectacles of color.” And, As expected, however, African American ministers railed against these communities as they continue to do today . It leads you to believe that the only shakers and movers in the history of people of African descent in the U.S. were and still are heterosexuals. And because of these biases, the sheroes and heroes of LGBTQ people of African descent—like Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Bayard Rustin—are mostly known and lauded within a subculture of black life. Deceased African-American poet and activist Pat Parker, in her book Movement in Black, talked about how society did not embrace her multiple identities. “If I could take all my parts with me when I go somewhere, and not have to say to one of them, ‘No, you stay home tonight, you won’t be welcome, because I’m going to an all-white party where I can be gay, but not Black.’ Or I’m going to a Black poetry reading, and half of the poets are antihomosexual, or thousands of situations where something of what I am cannot come with me. The day all the different parts of me can come along, we would have what I would call a revolution.” The Stonewall Riot was a revolution. And, it wasn’t just white! The historical facts are not all gathered. 1 … On the first night of the Stonewall Inn riot, African-Americans and Latinos were the largest percentages of the protesters, because we heavily frequented the Stonewall Inn. For black and Latino homeless youth and young adults who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the bar was their stable domicile. The Stonewall Inn being raided was nothing new—gay bars in the Village were routinely raided in the 1960s, but many believe the decision to raid Stonewall that fateful night happened because the police were increasingly incensed by how many LGBT people of color hung out there. The Stonewall riots of June 27-29, 1969, in Greenwich Village started on the backs of working-class African-American and Latino queers who patronized that bar. Those brown and black LGBTQ people are not only absent from the photos of that night but have been bleached from its written history. LGBTQ History Month can be a public acknowledgment of correcting the record. SERMON I want to talk about the courage every human being has to muster when it comes to embracing our flaws. Some religions say that it’s faith in God or Christology that works to correct our short-comings. That, not only will divine intervention “fix” you – but wait, there’s more! – faith and your ensuing piety earns you a slot in heaven, and an eternity that is pleasing. By contrast, our liberal faith of Unitarian Universalism doesn’t much fuss over the matter of eternity. We focus on the here and now. The fancy theological term is “ontological” – or that which concerns human beings universally. Things like relationships, work, play, rites of passage; how we navigate the content of our emotional and ethical lives. Religious liberals tend to focus on what is within our human means to deal with. It is a spirituality of imperfection, based not on some revelation or dogma, but against the reality of everyday living. We don’t believe we are born hopelessly imperfect, nor are we foolish enough to believe we’re born perfect. We are born with a mixed bag of traits, and it’s up to us what we do with them. First we have to have the courage to know ourselves well enough to know what our strengths and our struggles are. When we have this courage to self-examine, we discover some interesting paradoxes. Where once we thought there was weakness and smallness, there is actually bigness in our humility. We, incredulously, may discover greater freedom in embracing our imperfections. We embrace the paradoxes of my favorite Call to Worship – that there is strength in our vulnerability, and more meaning in questions than answers. In a spirituality of imperfection, we do the work of acknowledging and accepting our limitations, and in so doing, find unexpected peace. It’s the work of evolving our souls; this effort put forth is the stuff of contentment and restoration. It’s what some say life is all about – this meaning we find in, as Whitney Houston sang, “the greatest love of all.” To not only love our selves warts and all, but to consider how our struggles can be 2 our strengths. For religious liberals, it may be as close as we get to redemption, to absolution. Think of the times in your life you have been at your best, and earned some recognition. Those moments of achieving perfection can feel exultant, but it’s fleeting, it never lasts. The natural laws of entropy and change always mess it up. But hard-earned self-knowledge is enduring and priceless, in all its wabi-sabi glory, in all its sweat, grit, and messiness. I believe it’s the one thing we CAN take with us when we die. Achieving spiritual growth matters in this life, whether or not we get to live another life after this one, whether or not “eternity” is a thing. Each of our flaws represent doorways of opportunity to learn and become better people – not for the sake of achieving perfection, but for the sake of this growth. For the sake that we may be an inspiration to others, and in this small but significant way, we may change the world, just by improving ourselves. So that is one of the take-home messages today: that the pursuit of self-knowledge is far more important than the pursuit of perfection. The bad news is that getting to know thyself is often a painful and arduous process. If anyone’s ever done a 12-step style “inventory,” you know what I’m talking about. The good news is that the work often yields something worthwhile. Let’s illustrate this with an example. Mental illness. Such as depression. Or Bi- polar disorder. I’d like to ask for a show of hands. Who in this room loves someone or is someone with some form of mental illness? (That’s a lot of us). I want to talk about depression. It’s pretty common. A lot of us have it – I am a moderate depressive, myself, and have been since my teens. And yet, there came a point in my ministry, about five years ago, when I realized that depressed people are often suffering alone, because that’s one of the symptoms of depression, to isolate ourselves. So I came up with an idea that I called SOS, which stands for Sailors of Sadness. It was a camaraderie group where we shared tips on how we stay afloat, for those of us who identify as depressives, or struggle with anxiety. Sailors of Sadness because we navigate depression. The waters may be calm some days, and other days the waters may be rough, but with help and with our own wits, we navigate those waters. Like a diabetic or any chronic condition, it’s something we have to work with each day, and make the best of. The SOS group was a way to make my depression, or enhanced sensitivity to the world, an asset, rather than a liability. This group still exists at my last post, and while some meetings were better than others, what I recall was that the magic was in each of us all admitting together that we have this condition that society stigmatizes and refuses to see – to the point, for example, that the very seriously 3 mentally ill often end up in our prisons because no other institution in our society is designated to provide humane care.