Reconciling Stories

I am impinging on your world for a brief moment and don’t want to offend, but a few I shall. I have a story that I feel I must tell and share …

Once upon a time, there was a young woman named Loette. She had sought out the church at an early age, and knew in her heart that she wanted to be a preacher’s wife (contrary to popular belief, this is not a mental health condition … *smile*). One bright Sunday morn’, she went to Union Church with her uncle in the small rural town of Goggins. There that day was a young man named Huey Long, named after the governor of Louisiana who his good father admired.

Now Loette spotted Huey in a slick blue suit. And she sure was very much attracted to him. She knew that she was the prettiest girl there that day, and she decided to flirt with this good-looking yet lanky guy. Her true southern divine nature wooed Huey that afternoon. She commented on how her bus schedule always dropped her at a particular spot in Macon in the afternoons. Then both went their separate ways having made no further plans to meet.

Then Monday came, just the next day, and on that particular spot where Loette was dropped each afternoon, awaited Huey. Loette arrived, and there was the beginning of a love story. This story has continued on for 46 years. There has been pain and denial, joy and births, stress and anger, prayer and faith. Even though the community saw their family as the ideal, no one saw the bends and near-breaks that this marriage endured. Yet it endured. Around the bends … avoiding the near-breaks … this love story is now continuing …

Now, there is a second love story to tell. There was an 18-year-old young man named Chuck. It was the Christmas of 1948, and he worked as a cook at a local cafe in Seattle. Then came one day a handsome, striking Scandinavian man named David, eight years Chuck’s senior. There was an attraction and, just as sweet as the southern divine nature of Loette, Chuck used his nature to woo David just the same.

And it worked. The beginning of a love story that started with their belief in a covenant between each other that began on April 6th of 1949. Now this is a different love story. Both young men came from true religious backgrounds. David from Pentecostal roots. Chuck from largely the Episcopalian church.

And this was shortly after WWII. The climate in this bustling American society engulfed their love story as wrong. Yet Chuck and David knew what they felt. Normal, natural feelings that had emanated as far back as both young men could remember into their youth … Chuck as early as four or five.

And though they whispered not a word of this covenant to their families … ever … and though they dared not speak of their covenant to their neighbors … to their community … this covenant remarkably endured in a society that said it was not to be. But was to be … 50 years later, David died of a massive heart attack on April 6th, 1999. Yes, that is right, 50 years from the day they shared their first home.

Now how could this be?

Some of you have already made up your minds. But as with Loette and Huey, there was pain and denial, joy yet much time to themselves, stress and anger, and prayer and faith. Yet even though they knew in their hearts that they were Christians, they never attended church as a couple. Not one time. You see, they did abide by the understanding this country they loved had of them … this country that David served combat during WWII in the Air Force … they abided by the law of the land. Yet their love story endured … silently.

David’s beautiful Scandinavian sister was murdered by her husband during a jealous rage at the Mayflower Hotel. It was David and Chuck who went to identify the body. Chuck’s brother was married six times … so much for the compliment of the sexes. Each of Chuck’s three sisters also had multiple marriages. Yet this love story endured. It endured even as they took Chuck’s parents into their home during the final years of his parents’ life on this blessed earth.

It endured even as they took David’s father into their home during his father’s final years on this blessed earth. Where were the children … the brothers and sisters … who were “normal” and “legit.” This love story endured until the night that David died in Chuck’s arms. 50 years. Virtually no one knew. Now, all knew of the enduring love of Loette and Huey and their four boys. Yet no one acknowledged this love of 50 years. And even after this love story on this blessed earth ended at the early morn’ of their golden anniversary, no one acknowledged the end of this story. Chuck buried his lifemate on Queen Anne Hill without a service. But still Chuck, in his immense pain, sought out the Church that had rejected him and David.

Pain of a soul, mind, heart, body, and life that was ripped from him in one night. Pain that was just as great as any person who has faced the final days of a terminal, slow death. Pain that brought Chuck to a small, struggling church in Everett. There Chuck sought comfort for a grieving heart. And they did not shut their doors.

How can all of this be?

You see, there is this tribe … a small group of people … marginalized from this society … and even disconnected from themselves and each other. This tribe has lost many to the untold oppressions over the centuries. Yet the love story of this tribe has endured. Despite the majority who controlled all power and belief, this tribe of people—male and female, black and white, right- and left-handed, healthy and chronically ill. They endured. This is a love story that is filled with more pain, more tragedy, more angst than the overwhelming majority of this great vastly Christian nation can ever … ever … imagine. The pain was grounded in a belief of six verses in the Great Book of all history. Six verses out of 31,000 verses. Divorced people who divorced not for adultery are welcomed with open arms into almost all churches today, yet we know what the Bible says about them. Yet there are no groups and ministries that seek to convince these people of a sin the Bible states without a doubt in the literal words of Christ. He offers no forgiveness, yet could this be too? Black people have turned a corner with largely the silence of the white church in a little more than three decades. Yet we know that the largest Protestant denomination was formed largely over their protection of the right to own slaves. Women now grace the pulpit from the Methodist church to the conservative Charismatic church. Yet we know what the words of Paul clearly states about the role of the woman in the Church.

The tribe here is scattered unlike the tribe of the Hebrews. Scattered silently in the Church. Gathered at times flamboyantly in small closely-knit communites in large cities. The rest of the others are scattered elsewhere simply blending quietly into the surroundings of a suburban neighborhood, into a relationship of 35 years as one couple in Yakima relays to this writer. Silently. Yet this tribe endures. Because they have no choice. It is imprimpted from the conception of sperm and egg. A mystery that no one probably can ever prove. But neither can we prove that the big tribe is who they say they are … heterosexual. Sexual orientation … not male and female. There is a difference this great country with all its wealth and power still refuses to accept despite the testimony of the lives of millions. Most of this great, big tribe are good, religious citizens who are told by their leaders that orientation is a choice and the Good Book clearly states its position. Yet we know reason and experience has led to further revelation revelations in the Good Book. If not, then why has the Church changed so dramatically and why all the fuss over what truth really is.

There is a 33-year-old man named George. His “mommer” and dad are a love story. He grew up on the first bench in the House of God. Silently, he grew as a member of this scattered tribe. Parents not knowing for most of his life. Brothers barely realizing the immense pain that his soul carried yet not fully willing to acknowledge or change their old view. This they say due to reality of their own busy lives, but how can they not acknowledge the testimony of this young fellow. What if their child is gay? Yet this young man endured. Survived.

And his love story began on November 27th, 1987, when in a dramatic but quiet way, he entered into salvation with Christ on the side steps of a student Pentecostal chapel in Athens. There began a person who was forever changed. Entered into a covenant of grace that has and will always endure. A love story that despite the grief of his Father over the pain this boy went and goes through against the natural will of his Father … this love story endures. This one member of this scattered tribe … disconnected from his people until George was 31 and a half. He refused to give up his faith.

And this love story of a young man, now a grown, wounded man … it has endured. It endured because it was of a nature not of George’s own. It was a nature that embraced George’s nature and that Divine One embedded his very own Spirit into the depths of George’s being just as deep as the depths of George’s inheritance as a member of this scattered tribe.

And despite the pain and confusion served directly at the hands of the Church George loved, this love story endured. And when George came out of his shadow, he still sought the Church. Not because the Church opened their doors, but because the Church was embedded deep within the depths of his being.

Yet this is a different love story quite unequal in the reciprocation of the love between the two. The Divine One loved George so much that He gave His own son to find George. The Divine One loved George so completely that He made George in the One’s image.

On the other hand, George has loved this One brilliantly at times, purely at times. Yet so much of the time, George remained on the periphery … not in the bosom of the One’s center. George loved weakly at times because he was told that was all he could do. Even since George came out of his shadow and joined his people … of this scattered tribe, George has loved his One and only true love thus far in his life … inconsistently and at times, unfaithfully, and through deep pain.

The Divine One was faithful at all times. How could this be when George was not … when George was one of this scattered tribe that most of the Church still says cannot be. How could this be despite the daily evidence of fruits produced as he lived in the life of the Divine One.

How could this be? The Divine One, could it be? The love of a Father and Mother of us all. The grace of the Divine and of a Truth that all people seek after but yet will always be somewhat elusive.

How could this be? Maybe because it is. And the bride of Christ has failed the Divine One’s love of this scattered tribe. Yet its love story endures.

In the name of the Father and Mother God, in the name of the Christ the Son, Savior, and Lord, and in the name of the embedded Spirit Ghost that abides within, I write. I am George.