Queer Spirituality
by Rev. Dr. Mona West
"Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and
Transgender people have a unique history as spiritual people and our
expressions of spirituality are being manifested in powerful and healing
ways today. Those expressions are
known as 'Queer Spirituality.'"
~ Rev. Dr. Mona West, Queer Spirituality
In the age of Hollywood's "Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy," popular culture around the world is expanding and
reclaiming the word "Queer." While queer theory speaks to
a wide array of people in terms of identity, Rev. Dr. West provides a
twist in perspective. Here, she looks at "Queer" to encompass our
GLBT identities and offers an in-depth look at our spiritual
heritage.
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Queer
Spirituality
By Rev. Mona West, Ph.
D.
In recent years there has been an increased interest in
spirituality. Today people have a variety of
ways to address spiritual matters, some of which include: therapy,
self-help books, workshops, retreat centers, twelve-step groups,
meditation, exercise, and rituals. As a
result of these various practices specific spiritualities are being
manifested by groups with common histories, cultures, experiences, and
ethnicities. Some of these have been named
“Feminist Spirituality,” “Women’s
Spirituality,” “Men’s Spirituality,” and
“Native American Spirituality.”
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender people have a
unique history as spiritual people and our expressions of spirituality
are being manifested in powerful and healing ways today.
Those expressions are known as “Queer
Spirituality.”
The Power of Naming
Queer Spirituality. These
two words have a multiplicity of meaning alone, much less when they are
put together. Both words have had negative
meanings attached to them in the course of history, but today they are
being reclaimed as positive words. Oppressed peoples over the years have understood the power and
importance of choosing their own words to name themselves rather than
allowing the dominant culture to assign negative meaning to certain
words that are used to demonize a group of people. Words are powerful tools used to describe experience and shape
reality. African
American people have reclaimed the word ‘Black’ for
themselves and Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people have
reclaimed the word ‘Queer’ for themselves.
We have reclaimed ‘Queer’ as an active word,
a questioning word, a creative word and a challenging word. When we
‘Queer’ disciplines such as history, literature or religion
we are actively looking for Queer people who have been hidden or lost by
those disciplines. To Queer these disciplines is also to challenge their
homophobic biases. Queer is also an
indeterminate or generative word, pointing to the ways all identities
are fluid and changing.
The word “spirituality” was first used in the
17th century as a
negative word to describe elite, esoteric religious
practices. It has also been a suspect word
over the years to describe an “anything goes” faith, or an
individualistic “navel gazing” faith that is not concerned
with real world problems. While some of the suspicion about spirituality
still remains today, there are more and more communities who are
embracing spirituality as a vital component to every person’s
faith and the source for social justice.
Spirituality comes from the Latin root, spirare, which means
to
breathe. Our spirit is what animates or
quickens us. It
is what makes us alive. Spirituality, then,
is the practice of staying consciously connected with what makes us
alive: God, ourselves and others. While
“spirituality” is a broad word covering many types of
experiences, it is also a word rooted in particularity.
Gender, race, sexual orientation and being a member of a
particular community all impact and shape one’s
spirituality.
Our Queer Spiritual Ancestors
Throughout history and across different cultures Queer
people have not only been spiritually inclined but respected and revered
for their spiritual leadership. In her
ground breaking book, Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay
Worlds, Judy Grahn attempted to trace many of
the words and behaviors that have been used to define and describe Queer
people. There
are several chapters in her book that mention the spiritual roles Queer
people have played in tribal cultures as shamans, priests and
priestesses, and go-betweens.
In his book, Coming Out Spiritually, Christian de la Huerta identifies ten spiritual
roles that Queer people have assumed throughout the course of
history: catalytic transformers, outsiders, consciousness scouts, sacred
clowns, keepers of beauty, caregivers, mediators, shamans and priests,
the Divine androgyne and gatekeepers. John
Boswell has also emphasized the leading role Queer people have played in
the Western monastic tradition in his book, Christianity,
Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from
the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth
Century.
Walter L. Williams has studied American Indian cultures
that venerate the berdache, androgynous, cross-dressing
people who were considered neither men nor women and thought to be
“two-spirited.”
The berdache had
important spiritual functions within the tribe such as healers, dreamers
and visionaries, and mediators between the spirit world and the human
world.
Because of prejudice and religious abuse Queer people
today have rejected or lost our connection with our spiritual
heritage. It is time for us to look inside,
to do the work of self-discovery and reclaim our spiritual nature as
teachers, healers, prophets, artists, visionaries, mediators,
messengers, entertainers, priests and priestesses, and keepers of
beauty.
Queer Spirituality Today
While many mainline denominations today continue to
struggle with sexuality and spirituality, the reality is that more and
more Queer people are embracing their spirituality and practicing it in
communities of faith. MetropolitanCommunityChurchas been
a place where Queer people have been able to rediscover, articulate and
live out their spirituality.
The contemporary liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez
identifies three stages in the development of a spiritual tradition: (1)
a powerful experience that gives insight into the life of the Spirit;
(2) reflection on that experience through writing, composition of
prayers, liturgy, and art, as well as preaching and teaching; (3) the
entrance of those reflections into the larger tradition to be studied,
built upon and drawn from.
These three stages are clearly present in the
development of a Queer spiritual tradition, especially within
MCC. Many people who come to MCC churches
for the first time have powerful experiences that give insight into the
life of the Spirit. Often these experiences
are described as ‘coming home,’ ‘Lazarus
experiences,’ ‘wholeness or integration—not having to
check sexuality at the door.’
The rich repository of reflections on those
experiences can be found in books like The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay; Ten
Spiritual Truths for Successful Living for Gays and Lesbians; Daring to
Speak Love’s Name: A Gay and Lesbian Prayer Book; Queering Christ;
Queering God; Gay and Lesbian Theologies; Our Tribe: Queer Folks, God,
Jesus and the Bible.
Queer Spirituality has also entered the larger
tradition (Gutierrez’ third stage) as is evidenced by the
increasing number of seminary courses, dissertations and theses that are
being produced from the ongoing study of this
tradition.
Queer Spiritual Disciplines – Learning to Drink from our Own
Wells
A spiritual discipline is a practice that opens us to
God. Some classic spiritual disciplines
include: prayer, fasting, sacred reading, worship, and
almsgiving. A Queer spiritual discipline is
a practice that opens Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender people to
God, the Divine—especially in ourselves. These practices help us to drink from the wells of our own
experience as people of faith. They also
help us to rediscover our ancestry as spiritual people.
Inspired by the saying from Bernard of Clairvaux,
“everyone has to drink from his [or her] own well,”
Gutierrez claims spirituality is like living water that springs from the
very depths of our own personal experience. History has shown that spirituality has flowed from Queer
people in many cultures. What has been and
is most important about that spirituality is personal
experience. We must continue to value our
experience of the Divine. Part of the
valuing is also to name the experience, to give form and shape to it for
ourselves and future generations.
Coming Outis a life long
spiritual practice. Because we live in a
heterosexist society, Queers will always be invited to claim their
unique identity. It is a lifelong process
because it involves the integration and transformation of our Queer
identity into the whole of our lives. To
speak of coming out as a lifelong process of integration and
transformation is to invoke the classic spiritual model of
“purgation, illumination, and union.” Coming out as a spiritual practice takes us through these three
stages over and over again as we ‘purge’ ourselves of false
images and expectations forced upon us by a heterosexist society;
welcome the ‘illumination’ or insight that comes from living
out of an identity that is more authentic to ourselves; and with every
purging of a false life image and illumination from our true or
authentic life image will come ‘union,’ connection, and
abiding with the Divine that is at the deepest center of
ourselves.
Lettting Gois a spiritual
discipline similar to the ‘purgation’ stage mentioned
above. It is a practice that involves
freeing ourselves from harmful religious beliefs and institutional
expectations that keep us bound and not free. A Queer spirituality often involves the process and practice of
letting go of ideas about God, the Bible, church, family, sexuality, and
our own bodies that are not true to our experience. What is most important in this spiritual practice is honoring
and recognizing that our experience is a source of revelation and can be
trusted to point us to the Divine.
Justice Makingis a third
spiritual discipline which characterizes a Queer
spirituality. It involves the hard work of
understanding the interlocking nature of oppression. For example, the more we understand the ways homophobia grows
out of sexism and is hidden by issues of
race, the more Queers will be able to practice the truth that
“none are free, unless
all are free.” Justice making
is also a spiritual practice that calls us to deal with our own
‘isms’ in the Queer community. Reclaiming a Queer spirituality does not exempt us from doing
the work of justice in our own backyard. Finally, justice making is about embracing our sexuality and
our spiritually. Queer people living in a
heterosexist society often fall into the trap of feeling like we have to
choose between our sexuality and our spirituality. The two are integrally related as expressions of who we are as
‘body selves’ in the world.
Queer Lectio Divinais a
spiritual discipline that involves reading sacred texts.
Lectio Divina means sacred reading. Spiritual practices all over the world engage some form of
sacred texts. These texts are windows and
guides to the Divine. For Queers in the
Judeo-Christian tradition the Bible has been a difficult text because of
the way it has been misinterpreted regarding issues of
homosexuality. However more and more Queer
people of faith are reclaiming the Bible as a sacred text.
Reading a text as a spiritual discipline means that
instead of reading for information, one reads for
formation. It is a meditative reading that
allows the words and stories of scripture to open us to the
Divine. Not only is the Bible a sacred text
for Queers, but our coming out stories and our history can also be
sacred texts.
Prayeris a classic
spiritual discipline that takes many forms. The phrase “silence equals death” is often invoked
in the Queer community. While there is much
wisdom in that statement—the more we come out and speak out, the
more we will live into our own truth and the more we will dispel harmful
stereotypes—it is also true that keeping silence in intentional
ways is a profound spiritual act. In an
increasingly crowded and complex world, silence is becoming an
endangered species. Being intentional about
cultivating silence in our lives is a form of prayer and a profound
spiritual discipline that opens us to the Divine within ourselves and
others. When we keep silence we are able to
listen deeply to ourselves and others. We
are able to discern specific activities for justice making and letting
go.
Worshipis an important
corporate spiritual discipline. It is a
practice in which one can experience the Divine, as well as give
expression to those experiences through music, art, preaching, teaching,
and liturgy. Worship involves ritual and
blessing and is a place where Queer rites of passage such as marriage,
baptism, dedications, memorials and celebrations can be
expressed.
A Queer spirituality exists today because we are
learning to drink from our own wells!
For Further Study
John Boswell, Christianity,
Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in
Western
Europefrom the Beginning of the
Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago:
Universityof
ChicagoPress,
1980.
Kit Cherry and Sherwood Solomon, Equal Rites.
Christian de la Huerta, Coming Out Spiritually: The Next Step. New
York: Putnam,
1999.
Judy Grahn, Another Mother
Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds.
Boston: Beacon
Press, 1984.
John J. McNeill, Freedom,
Glorious Freedom: The Spiritual Journey to the Fullness of Life for
Gays, Lesbians, and Everybody Else.
Boston: Beacon
Press, 1995.
Troy D. Perry, 10 Spiritual
Truths for Successful Living For Gays and Lesbians. Nebraska: Morris
Publishing, 2003.
Elizabeth Stuart, Daring to
Speak Love’s Name: A Gay and Lesbian Prayer Book. London: Hamish
Hamilton, 1992.
Nancy Wilson, Our Tribe:
Queer Folks, God, Jesus, and the Bible.
San
Francisco: Harper Collins,
1995.
Walter L. Williams, The
Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian
Culture. Boston: Beacon,
1992.
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