Casual Fridays

You may recall that I wrote earlier about the need for and the challenge of reaching out to friends and colleagues about my Christian faith. As I said there, I am hesitant to do the "evangelizing thing" because the right-wing wack-jobs seem to have "patented" the Christian name.

A new visitor has weighed-in on that thread, and I welcome her remarks. As I've pondered them this evening, they led me to this additional reflection.

In my leisure times, and on casual Fridays at work, I typically wear one of my many shirts with the TEC shield or my parish logo or my Manner of Life shirt. Many folks around here know I'm gay. Living in a part of the U.S. where "gay" equals "infidel," "apostate," and/or "heathen," I wear the Christian and Episcopal shirts in hopes that it will provide a "door opening" for folks to ask me about my faith.

I remember a friendship nearly 20 years ago. I had a good friend and colleague, whom I knew to be an Episcopalian, and whose faith and spirituality I knew to be important to her. At that point, I had completely given up on Christianity and the church. I well recall an evening sitting out on the deck where I was vacationing with her and her friend on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, when I blurted out (no doubt violently and angrily and insolently): "How the hell can two such smart women as you continue to worship that old white god?" I was pissed. I was angry and hurt by religionists. But these women engaged my question tenderly and thoughtfully. And they kept talking with me through several years of our friendship – despite my anger and my approach/avoidance belligerence. Several years later, I was confirmed in the Episcopal Church. One of those women was the priest who led me through the catechism and preparation for confirmation; the other sat in the nave that spring day when I recited my promises and was confirmed.

To this day, I credit those two women with saving my life. I was on a downward spiral of spiritual despair. When I blurted out my antipathy at their "old white God," they didn't beat me over the head with a Bible and tell me I had to accept the Lord Cheezus as my Personal Savior. They engaged my question tenderly and respectfully, in a conversation that took place over the course not just of that week, but of several years to come.

And so I think again about my habit of wearing my Christian/Episcopalian shirts. I wear them in the hopes of being an open door. I wear them in the hope that somebody may ask me – as I asked those friends back in the early '90s: "How the heck can you be gay and a Christian?" I keep hoping it will eventually give me a chance to talk with them about Christianity outside the neanderthal mindset that so hideously dominates our American culture.

I think some of those conversations do occur – though perhaps not as dramatically as I might hope. Sometimes, people who are hurting or struggling do seek me out. And I speak with them as honestly as I can, out of my full humanity and out of my full, flawed faith. I can't say that any of them have shown up in church the next Sunday to accept Cheezus Christ.

But I didn't run to church the next Sunday after Nancy & Pam talked to me of their faith, either. It took years for me to talk and listen and slowly be converted.

I want to offer other people – especially the "outcasts" – the kind of faith and hope that I have found in the church. I wish all of them would come to my healthy Episcopal parish this Sunday, and that they would "taste and see" as I have tasted and seen. But I suppose it doesn't always happen that quickly and easily.

So, meanwhile, I will continue to wear my polo shirts and t-shirts and sweatshirts with the Episcopal shield … in hopes that doors will continue to open and that folks who feel beat-up by the religionists may get a hunch that we're not all close-minded bigots.

Know what I mean?