This coming Sunday our church is honoring a young parishioner who has just turned 13 – not because we want to celebrate a birthday, but because we want to honor the very real life-changes that are happening in the parishioner’s life at this significant developmental stage.  Last week, our Diocese hosted its inaugural Pride Service, where histories were retold, truths were honored, and where one queer attendee marveled, “I’ve never been to a worship service like this – especially not with my priest.”  And over the last six weeks, ten parishioners in our Discovery Class have been learning about the Episcopal Church, sharing their faith journeys, and asking hard questions about their faith and spiritual practices. 

What has struck me about all these experiences from church lately is how grateful I am that the Church is not at all afraid of the very real, honest, and vulnerable experience of being a human – and how the Church willingly steps along side us to help us make meaning.  What I have loved about these experiences is the absence of the word “should,” or any sense of judgment.  Instead, there is an abundance of wonder, curiosity, understanding, and care.  There has never been a feeling like something was taboo or inappropriate for question.  Sometimes just the naming of the thing – the transition, the hurt, the journey, or the longing – has been incredibly liberating and affirming.

So many times, the Church has gotten it wrong – has been an agent of judgment, exclusion, and hurt.  I have talked with many people who left the Church for a time (or permanently) because of such experiences.  Knowing that truth, I have been feeling especially grateful for a church who tries to be better – who acknowledges her faults and failings, and actively seeks to live in truth and love. 

I know many of you have stepped away from Church or have been hurt enough times by the Church that you are no longer interested in finding community there.  Know that you are loved and missed.  Also know that wherever you are on your spiritual journey, there are communities of faith who are working to be better – to be more loving, to be more affirming, to be more Christ-like.   For all of us, I lift up Thomas Merton’s prayer:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead of me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end.  Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You.  And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.  I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.  And I know that, if I do this, You will lead me by the right road, though I may know nothing about it.  Therefore I will trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.  I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.  Amen.[i]

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[i] Thomas Merton, “A Prayer of Unknowing,” Thoughts in Solitude (New York:  Farrar, Straus & Cudahy, 1958), 79.