In 2004, my vestry asked me to write a short essay on who I was, so they could consider recommending me to the Bishop for ordination as a priest. It is a little long, but I ran across it today and want to share it with you.
I
am a cradle Episcopalian. My mother’s parents emigrated from Britain 100 years
ago. My father’s family are Russian and Austrian refugees of the pogroms and
anti-Semitism of the early 20th century. One grandfather was a
miner, the other a pharmacist. I am the eldest grandchild of both families. I
was christened in a hand-made 4-foot long lace gown. Both my parents served in
World War II. My father was career Army, serving in Italy and France. My mother
was a Navy nurse, serving in San Diego and on a hospital ship in the Pacific.
They met as students under the GI Bill at the University of Michigan. I was
born in Ann Arbor and we lived in Dexter until my father was commissioned. We
spent the next several years at military posts in the U.S. and Germany. My elder
sister was born in Fort Bragg, my brother in Stuttgart. Dad became a teacher
after he left the service, and also worked as a circuit preacher for the
Methodist church in Michigan. My younger sister was born in Harrisville. We
moved to Livonia, an extensive suburb of Detroit, then to Long Island, New
York. I attended Earl L. Vander Meulen High School, the last of the central
schools of Long Island before the suburbanization of the Island. I worked on a
farm in the summer of my sophomore year. The next year the farm had been made
into a subdivision.
My
father didn’t teach us much theology, but made sure that we were involved in
the life of the church. We worshipped every Sunday, went to Sunday school,
summer Bible school and participated in every social aspect of the church,
first the Methodist, then returning to the Episcopal. We moved back when the
Methodists hired a fund-raising firm to finance a new building. It was a very
divisive decision: almost half the congregation left. For the next year we didn’t
go to church, we had Bible Study. All six of us would sit around the dining
room table. We would read a passage, then try to understand what it meant by
either applying it to our lives or the world around us. Dad would ask leading
questions, and trick questions, too. But I remember trying to use the Gospels
to learn what God and Jesus wanted me to accomplish, and how they wanted me
(and the rest of the world) to behave. When the family moved to Detroit, we
rejoined the Episcopal Church and I went to Confirmation class.
I
prided myself in high school that I wasn’t like anybody else. I was a bookworm,
but made a lot of friends, was active in Scouting and DeMolay and gave up lunch
hour and study hall to be able to take choir, band and orchestra. I worked nights
cleaning the bowling alley in Ronkonkoma and Franklin National Bank and a
couple of doctor’s office buildings. I was Salutatorian. I gave a barnburner of
a speech about going out to change the world (it was the Viet Nam era) and no
one remembered it because the Valedictorian said in his speech that “Education
is a merry-go-round and I’m getting off. I’m gonna be a forest ranger.”
My
struggle was with asking what was right, what was just. Not only was the nation
mired in an ethical battle over the war in Viet Nam, but with civil rights and
the sexual revolution. I was a contender for the Newsday High Honors
competition. It came down to four of us: my best friend, Jeanne Lapham, and I
represented Long Island, and two other students represented New York City. We
were interviewed one at a time by a board consisting of a nun, a general, the
editor of the paper, a professor from Columbia, a congressman and two or three
others. The question which was posed was, “Is Martin Luther King right to
broaden his campaign for civil rights to include protesting the Viet Nam War?”
My response was, “Shouldn’t every minister preach against all the evil in the
world, not just what affects him and his family?” The winning response was, “He has a right to
his opinion on the war, but he will lose supporters because he has brought in
another issue, and civil rights will suffer.”
I
questioned myself about whether I was content with my answer. I decided I was,
but I came to doubt using a question to give it. One consolation was that
Jeanne also lost because she challenged the question rather than answering it.
She
and I had had fun “shopping” for a church. We went to a different church every
Sunday we could, listening to the sermons, seeing how we were welcomed, and
asking what the people of the congregation did for God on weekdays. We really
were a couple of smart-alecks! I am ashamed to admit that I enjoyed
discomfiting the people I saw as “part of the problem.” We ended up back in the
Episcopal Church; the sermons were good lectures, relating the Bible and the
Church to current events, the congregations were friendly and many of the
people in the congregation could speak about the church to us. And the priests
were not offended by the term “shopping.” We attended Christ Church, Caroline
Church and St. Anselm’s in Port Jefferson, Setauket and Miller Place,
In
high school, and then in college, I had to decide whether to enlist, accept the
draft, resist the draft or escape the draft. I wasn’t physically acceptable for
R.O.T.C. My joke with my family was that teenage boys don’t think about sex all
the time, they think about war. I spent a lot of time in the chapel trying to
understand the world outside the campus. I temporarily lost my 1-A status, and
was drafted. I was astounded that my father, whom I had always thought was a
hawk, fought mightily to regain my deferment. He succeeded just as I was being
told to step forward and raise my hand to be inducted. I was back in the
situation of having to decide for myself. After talking about the experience
with fraternity brothers, friends and faculty, I discovered I had been more
upset about having the decision taken away from me than the possibility of
having to serve in the army. The Episcopal Church was silent on the issue.
Father Stott and Father Brewster were sympathetic, but the Church was inactive.
I
joined the Episcopal Church congregation at school. We had a mission on campus
and a parish downtown. I served with the University’s crisis hotline,
babysitting fellow students who were having bad acid trips. The Church did not
have any ministry for them. I was the altar guild for a while, and served as
acolyte. I joined a fraternity, Alpha Chi Rho, founded by three Episcopalians
at Trinity College in Hartford. I joined the lightweight crew.
My
sophomore year, a faction of the black student body took over the student union
and was seen carrying automatic weapons. Again, my thoughts about the civil
rights movement and my growing opposition to violence were in conflict. The
campus was torn to pieces by the confrontation. I witnessed the black students’
demands being forgotten in the debate about their decision to use violence. The
fear they provoked didn’t prove their point that all white people opposed them.
It proved that violence can alienate your allies. The churches of the town and
the churches on the Hill spoke out, but took no actions.
New
York’s entry into the abortion debate happened about the same time. Roe v. Wade
was 1973, but New York made abortion legal in 1969. The debates I participated
in late at night, in the dorms and fraternities were much less heated than the
ones about the war. Many of my fellow students knew or were related to a girl
who died from infection or bleeding after a black market abortion or a coat
hanger abortion. Today, we talk about 6 degrees of separation, but then, almost
every high school and college had an abortion death or dramatic near death. The
church didn’t participate much, either. It was the high school and college
students who were arguing. It was personal to us. I went with a young woman to
NYC. She had waited too long and had entered her second trimester. At that
time, there was no place Upstate for her to go. The trip was a unique
experience for me. I mostly listened as she talked herself out to me. We spent
a weekend together in the Village, then went to the clinic. I held her hand in
Recovery. She swore to me that she would
never forget to take precautions again. The trip back was very quiet. I wondered
what her life would have been like if she had dropped out and had the baby. I’m
sure she wondered, too. I never thought to go to the Church for help or
guidance. She did, and rejected the thought out of hand.
The
Stonewall riots happened then, too. I had been doing pretty well keeping my sexuality
separate from my life. I didn’t think it was dishonest to avoid revealing that
one little detail. In high school, I had talked with the other students about
falling in love, but I was not that intimate with anyone, so I had no occasion
to reveal that much. Jeanne must have wondered in high school, but we did
experiment a little, and we were friends, not lovers. The discussions had
remained general. In college, the discussions were even more general. We
discussed romanticism, free love and the strictures of the antiquated system of
our parents, all without discussing our personal doubts and anxieties. It was
easier to talk about the War than interpersonal relationships.
As
it turned out, it was a political action, a radicalizing action to come out. I had fewer opportunities to pair off
privately after I came out than before. I spent so much time being out I didn’t
have time to be gay. I organized the first delegation to the Pride March the
following summer, corresponding with the radicals in NYC, doing public speaking
and Guerilla Theater. The mayor of the town attacked us as we marched holding
hands and occasionally stopping to kiss. The local TV station had us on as
guests. We negotiated with the school to become a recognized student
organization.
To
me, that school year was the pivot. I was confronted by a member of the
downtown Episcopal Church. She said she knew I was pre-med. and she had called
Albany to make sure I couldn’t get a license. “Moral turpitude” was considered
“cause” for denial of medical or teaching certification. The Campus Crusade for
Christ sent people to visit me as a sort of trial by fire. The mayor attacked
physically and politically. My family discovered I had an FBI file. Once again,
my ability to choose was being taken from me. I was being denied a profession,
my privacy, and my safety. As a result I turned on my enemies. The Church was
opposed to me because I was belonged to a group, so the Church was an enemy.
The school refused to allow us to meet, so the school became an enemy. The
Greeks felt obliged to speak against us, so they became the enemy. The mayor
declared himself an enemy, so we agreed. The State discriminated, so the State
was an enemy.
I
lost my membership card in Christianity. My Church had forgotten its founder’s
instructions, and so had I. I had no love left for those in the pews or the
pulpits. The Order of Holy Cross came recruiting, and I did Guerilla Theater on
them. I marched fiercely as well as proudly. If my family, clan and tribe had
evicted me, then I would found a new one. If the FBI thought I was an enemy,
I’d be one.
I
didn’t envision myself as Abraham, but the metaphor almost fit. It certainly
felt right. A group of us tried to re-think everything. (I continue to hold
that, being outside of mainstream society, gays and lesbians should not yearn
for marriage. It is an opportunity to create a new family style.) Several
communes grew up and lived and died. I agreed to support the campaign for gay
marriages because I opposed denying people their right to choose. The anger
died quickly. I immersed myself in doing what I thought was right, and it is
hard to maintain anger while being constructive. The antagonism toward me and
mine was like the weather: something you have to plan around. The radicals set
up support systems. When Castro evicted the Gay Braceros who went to help with
the sugar harvest, it became apparent to many in the gay movement that we could
not look to the revolutionaries for empathy. The Black movement, both the
church and radicals, soon disappointed us, as well.
Eventually
I had to graduate, and moved to Rochester. I devoted time to the U of R GLF,
eventually serving as vice president when we were kicked off campus. I served as a
counselor for people coming out, and joined the Speakers’ Bureau. What money we had, we shared. We owned little
that we couldn’t live without. The houses we lived in were meeting places,
where marches and demonstrations were planned, sympathy given, support in hard
times found and dreams shared. We visited men in jail, put there by the routine
police roundups on Court Street and North Street. I even worked a while (very
part time) as talent on a radio show called Green Thursdays. There were times I
really thought we were forging a new society for ourselves, based on our
values, not those from outside.
Of
course, the world intruded. The Women’s movement intruded. We men were
admittedly still unreconstructed chauvinists. The lesbians needed to separate.
As the men who were left aged, security and stability became important to us.
The new society we were trying to form didn’t offer enough security and
stability, and as they grew apart, critical mass was lost. The radical furor
was lost, too, and the movement became institutional. We had more members, but
we were accomplishing less. I fell away, too. I got involved in renovating a
house in the Third Ward, and most of the group didn’t feel like coming to see
me, they wanted me to come to where they were. Eventually, I dropped out.
I
didn’t stop talking to God, though. Through all of this, it was God’s people
who were the enemy, not God. I had figured out early on that they just didn’t
understand what He was saying. They looked on the covenants as treaties, not as
gifts. They waved the Book around but couldn’t understand the story it told. I
told Him this over and over. My prayers were, “Lord, let them show a teeny bit
of love. Please!” When I was really angry, my prayer was, “Lord, please give
him his reward, NOW!” But mostly, my prayers were for forgiveness for falling
into the habit of hating instead of working to love. They still are.
I
have become the middle aged, middle class, and middle-of- the-road man I made
fun of thirty years ago. I have a house, a car, credit cards and I joined the
Masons, volunteered to serve as an advisor for a youth group. I’ve even served
on a couple of Boards of Directors. I even overheard myself being described as
“a pillar of the church.”
Lately,
however, the ironies of my youth are making me uncomfortable. I believe that I
should have stayed with it, back there in school. I should have gone for my
license and sued the State if it was denied. I should have stayed in the
Church, staying out of the closet but sitting in the pew to be a reminder to
brothers and sisters that gays were people they knew personally. I have begun
to see that I have been hearing a call all my life, but that I haven’t had the
inner ear to hear it clearly. I cut myself off from the community which could
have helped me understand that call. I have been striving to do what God wants:
live in love and serve my brethren. But I have been trying to do it without His
Church. I found employment in social work. I created my own charities. But I
had to be the one in control. I wanted the Church to be active in the World. I
didn’t realize that I was the Church myself.
I
believe that what drove me away from the Church, what radicalized me is: people
have a hard time hearing what God has said and is still saying. When a vestry
member is so mad at a teenager that she calls Albany, she’s not listening. When
a man comes out of a house and shoots at peaceful demonstrators, he’s lost his
way. When a police chief orders men to be arrested on Court Street at two in
the morning, claiming he’s acting because of citizen complaints, God is being
ignored. When a young man traumatizes a
monk who has done him no wrong, the Kingdom moves a little further off. We’re
all confused and lost in the forest. I
have come to enjoy the metaphor of God as a compass, pointing the direction we
want to go, but trusting that we know how to walk. Lost souls are walking in
circles, making no advance. To me, being saved has become a daily prayer for
strength to look at that compass and maintain the course. Ideally, belonging to
the Church is finding others heading in the same direction, helping them on the
trail, offering guidance or accepting it when we stray. And ideally, the Church
is many congregations, heading in the same direction. Offering and accepting
guidance, too.
What’s
the goal? I am most uncomfortable talking about Evangelism and about the City
of God. But I think the City is the goal. Not Heaven, but God’s City, a true
Philadelphia. A “place” in the sense we used it in the sixties and seventies. I
want my “head to be in the right place.” And my developing sense is that I am
called to talk about that goal. I want to tell people. I want to show people
how to use the compass, not as a step-by-step map, but as a guide. I want to
show people that God can be found in consensus, consultation and cooperation,
but He is speaking with the voices of the dissenters, of the malcontents, also.
I want to show people the quandary: that conviction is good, but certitude and
rectitude are dangerous. I want to be a guide, and that’s Evangelism.
Leaving
the metaphoric forest, I am still discerning what way is prepared for me to
walk in, in the Episcopal Church. I believe that God will work through my
brothers and sisters to make it clear.
Meanwhile, I am not just maintaining. I have decided to work on my
Masters degree the better to suit me for work as an employee of the Church. I
accepted an invitation last summer to take donated clothing to Johannesburg for
the victims of the flooding in Mozambique. I was rewarded with a magnificent
tour of the country and an introduction to the people and cultures. I was also
able to be a witness to the uneasiness of the country, the harvest of Apartheid
and its failure to teach the tribes how to live in justice and peace. This
summer, I was invited to visit Panama. I spent time living with and working
with three seminarians and several people working in the Episcopal Church of
Panama. Returning to Rochester, I brought back a rebirth of the enthusiasm I
thought had become casualty of middle age, and a real appreciation for the blessing
of being who I am and where I am.
