ST. Gertrude’s Abbey – an at Home Monastic Practice

Tag: empathy

  • Reclaiming Christianity

    By The Abbott

    Christians and Christianity have gotten a bad reputation in the last several…thousand years. And with good reason! From the frightening Crusades of the Middle Ages that brought with them pestilence and death (and apparently cinnamon and pepper…how gay were the Crusades?) to the most recent walking Christian carbuncle, Kim Davis the four-time married, hillbilly hooker from Kentucky who is now bringing a challenge to gay marriage because her legal fees have forced her to sell off her entire Beanie baby collection and her momma’s Elvis memorabilia. Christians deserve their bad rap. The fact is that there are among the Christian world those of us who think and feel differently…about all of it.

    I am a gay Catholic. Openly. Without apologies to the gays or to the Catholics. Despite my faith, I am also not what one might call traditional or conservative. Some might call me a “cafeteria Catholic” – one who likes to pick and choose from a buffet of beliefs which ones they will follow and which they will pass on. I don’t see that as an insult. If that means that I choose to use the good sense God gave me as a reasoning and logical creature rather than blindly follow a group of fussy old men in dresses and custom millinery over the precipice? Fine. However, I do choose to follow those teachings that: 1) make at least a little sense to me, and 2) do not negate, in any way, the Jesus of the Gospels. Some might even call me a heretic. I like that word. It’s not one heard much anymore. (Like “facts” or “hypocrite” or “Nazi sympathizer”)

    Conservative Christians have polluted the faith in a way that should, to a sensible person, shock them. They have taken a brown man from the Middle East who taught as his central teaching to love your neighbor as you would love yourself and turned him into a fusion of WWE wrestling, a monster truck rally, a 4th of July fireworks display and a gun show. And these people have no shame in it. They produce men like Pete Hegseth who do not bat an eye when they use religion as a club to beat down gay people or, as of lately, women. Or J.D. Vance who twists the words of Christ to fit the putrid narrative emanating from America’s Hitler. Then there is the cowardice of the supposed Christian Right. They would rather pander to a power hungry, megalomaniac in a full diaper than put the breaks on it all and stand up for real Christian principles. These include compassion, kindness, understanding, generosity and hospitality. You cannot go to your megachurch’s bake sale and praise Jesus on Sunday and then send your fellow humans to a concentration camp or take away their basic rights the next and still call yourself a Christian. There is nothing Christian or divine about cruelty, or oppression.

    I am, like every human born before and after me, a sinner. Sin is a word that has become synonymous with judgment and condemnation. Like nobody ever has made a mistake before. Sin is used in a strange way by Christians who I believe may have forgotten what that word really entails. It is not saying “shit, or fuck or damn.” It is not drinking too much at a party. It isn’t being gay. It isn’t baking a cake for a lesbian wedding. To sin is to ignore our relationship with creation. When we imprison someone for being gay, or discriminate against them for being trans, or black or Puerto Rican or judge someone…for any reason…that is sinning. To sin is to clear cut a forest for cattle grazing, or cause a wildfire in order to have a gender reveal party, or to pollute the air and water for profit. Sin is to cause offense to God and to others by forgetting them and doing whatever we want. At its root, sin is selfishness, cowardice and hubris all rolled into one.  

    Sin is a wound. But if we know anything at all about the Jesus from the Gospels, he really enjoyed healing people. Those wounds only drew him closer to the people. When we call to mind our shortcomings and our moments of failure, even our moments of darkness, it does not need to be shameful or painful. It is when we bring these dark gifts to God that he delights the most. Recognizing our failure and endeavoring to do better is at the root of what real Christianity is all about. Redemption is not some end times ticket to heaven. It happens right now. When we say we’re sorry for doing something thoughtless and then make up for it, that is redemption. When we make billions of dollars from the poor but then seek to give it all back in ways that augment their lives, that is redemption. I ask God not just for forgiveness, because he gives that willingly and at all times and for all things. I ask him for the strength to bear it all. I ask for wisdom. Sometimes I ask to just keep my head above water.

    Noticing that you are in the presence of God should be something one constantly tries to do because whether you take note of it or not, you are always in his presence. Churches. Temples. The Holy Land, Mecca. Bodh Gaya. Varanasi. Rome. All holy places. All places where God’s presence dwells. But none of these places have more or less presence than where you are right now. Your shower. Your bed. Your favorite chair. Your least favorite chair. The bus stop. Your doctor’s waiting room. On the toilet. In a park. In your office. Each of these places also hold within them the entirety of God’s presence. The difference between St. Peter’s Basilica and your bathroom-aside from several billion dollars worth of priceless art and architecture and the fact that you can’t roam around St. Peters naked- is the perception that it is holier. But God is not more or less present in either place. While a beautiful church, temple, synagogue, or mosque might more easily invite prayer and meditation, they are not more full of God. To deny that is to negate the very nature of God.

    The seasons are reminders of the awesomeness of God. Not awesome like in an old Keanu Reeves’ movie but rather “full of awe.” The wisdom present and on full display for anyone to witness during these times of year truly reminds me that existence itself is the greatest miracle. Trees during springtime know precisely when to flower and bud. Birds know the right day to start their migration. Bees know when to stretch their little wings, do some dusting in the hive and get back to work. Animals know when to come out of hibernation. No one reminds them. They don’t get a text alert. In the summer, these creatures all continue in the vein of the miraculous. Just glance at any leaf- really, any leaf. And the workings of just that one leaf should silence you in amazement and gratitude. And that’s just the one leaf.

    I once had an astronomy professor who told our class that, “There is no way to know how many universes have existed before this one and no way to know how many more will come after it.” The miracle of this universe unfolds before us in every moment of our lives. “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth yet people do not see it.” (The Gospel of Thomas). Instead, we see commodities. We see money. We see opportunities to sell crap. We see QVC and Facebook Marketplace. When we have re-learned the sacredness of all things, maybe then we might feel and witness the presence of God everywhere again and not constantly demand signs and wonders.

    As a gay Catholic, the reclamation of Christianity for the sacred, for the contemplative, for the meditative, for compassion, for Christ, is an endeavor that is possibly a losing one. But God takes great delight in his little ones and it is in the underdog, the true David’s of this world, where the glory of God is made manifest. The Beatitudes, Christ’s message to the exhausted people of the 1st century begin with happy are the poor and continue with a litany of weakness as the dwelling place of true blessedness. Christ is not present in the rich. He is not present in the powerful. He is not present in the oppressor. He is not present in the bigot. He is not present in the violent. Christ is present in the smallest of people and in the tiniest of spaces. And always where one least expects him.

  • Pride 2025 Is Weird

    By The Abbot

    “My god! You’re like models! Gorgeous men! So much beauty for one girl.” she said.

    The flamboyance of gays I was with gave her the obligatory patronizing smiles and “Yas Queens” one is expected to give a straight, white woman who compliments you. Try it. Walk up to any fairly friendly looking group of gay men and pay them a compliment and they will return with a variation of “yas queen” or “you go girl” depending on whether they watched The Golden Girls when they first aired or on later syndication on Lifetime.

    “But not you. Not so much.”

    “Pardon me?” I asked.

    “No. Not you.” This woman who only moments before had bestowed such gushing adoration looked at me and called me Quasimodo, except in the most unimaginably bitchy way. Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether to burst into tears, or applaud. That is some serious shade. Normally, I can take a privileged white woman’s condescension. But this was done on a crowded Boystown street the night before the Pride parade. It cut me like a dull Venus razor.

    I could take some of the blame. My friends are beautiful men. So much so that I avoid being in pictures with them when I can. That sounds odd or even sad, but they really are that pretty. I could have befriended uglier people, but who needs all that attention? It’s always better for an introvert to find peacocks who happily slurp up the limelight.

    But my purpose is not to feel sorry for myself because my genetic lottery only paid me $5. My point is that I remember that moment vividly. I could recognize that woman even today. Her auburn hair, her pale, freckled skin, her sneer of a mouth. Ten years has gone by since that evening and I could paint a picture of it from memory. Anytime I feel like saying something intentionally hurtful, especially to someone who I barely know or don’t know, I remember this woman. She is my personal Gospel reminding me to do unto others because when you’re cruel to someone, they don’t forget it…even with a decade of therapy and Klonopin.

    Gay men are notoriously unkind to one another and to themselves. We compensate for childhoods, adolescences and young adulthoods filled with inadequacies because we were not born straight. I was not born to tug on a little girl’s pigtails, or play catch, or play any sports really. Gym glass to most gay men is triggering. We found ourselves in a world where balls were suddenly not our strong suit. Ironic isn’t it? Instead, we sought safe harbor in the drama programs, in our AP English teacher’s classrooms, in the midst of other misfits who were not as skinny as they were expected to be, or not as smart as they should have been, or not as talented in the way everyone wanted them to be. These were the musicians, the artists, the writers, the nerds. It is not a coincidence that so many gay men and women find themselves later pursuing careers in a field akin to their high school experiences.

    Pride for me has always been bittersweet. Celebrating both who I am and at the same time remembering how many people wished I had been someone different and in some cases me hoping that I could be. Gay bars bring on a full panic attack for me. Not because I hate crowds (which I do) or because I dislike gay men (which I don’t). Anyone who knows me, knows that I have worn glasses since I was 12. Without them, even recognizable shapes are an impressionist painting of colors. But in gay bars, or even at brunch, I take them off. I don’t believe in the adage that “boys don’t make passes at boys who wear glasses.” Slutty glasses are making a comeback. But like a horse with blinders, what I cannot see will not harm me. I can avoid seeing the faces that so often seemed to sit in judgment of me.

    This has been a life long problem. The very first time I went to a gay bar, I was terrified. “What will they think of me,” “I’m not hot enough,” “Why did I wear these pants, they make me look fat.” And I know exactly why I am like this  and still no matter how much I reason  with myself or remind myself that I was wrong and still am wrong, I remain so unbelievably fragile. The scar tissue festers. So when a random nobody of a Lena Dunham-like woman publicly humiliates you during Pride weekend, that wound is ripped open and the decades of insecurities pour out like a Capri Sun poked with a fork.

    Pride 2025 feels like a scab picked off a barely healed knee. Our community, that has fought for 56 years for the ability to simply exist and be happy in our own way, is caught in the cross hairs of a man, who funnily enough not only wears more make up than Ru Paul, but surrounds himself with weak, insecure, scared little men who travel with their own glam squads. Maybe in the more somber notes of this Pride, we can all pause and remember a moment in our lifetimes when someone was intentionally cruel or hurtful, and then hold that feeling with us long enough so that the next time we believe we need to say something or do something about someone whose lifestyle is odd to us, or whose hairstyle is terrible to us, or whose outfit is dreadful to us, or whose looks are frightening to us, or whose means of earning a living are beneath us, we can perhaps avoid needing to express our opinions and instead leave them be.

    This Pride for me is unlike any other. I feel compelled to contribute little to the hate game and instead remind myself that not only am I a child covered in the bruises and scars of a turbulent life, but so also are most of the people I will ever meet. Be kind. We’re all hurting.