Gay men can truly claim and affirm their lives only by coming out, by naming who and what they are, which includes their experience of the sacred. Gay men's joys and sorrows, their lives and relationships, their amazing ways of celebrating human sexuality and community, and their ways of dying – all require a meaningful interpretive framework, a bigger picture that gives sense and focus to human contingency. The religious is encountered wherever human beings crave and create meaning. All spiritualities, including those we choose to call "gay," are about the carving out of meaning, the bringing forth of transcendence, the ultimate wrestling with the angel, to borrow the title of a bestselling book on the religious experiences of gay men. In the biblical language and imagery of yore, the sacred is encountered and named in this wrestling.
See also the previous posts:
Affirming Our Essential Goodness
Gay Consciousness, Sex, and the Evolution of Religion
Hallowtide Transformations
Body and Soul
Gay Identity
Animal Energies
Prince with a Thousand Enemies
Image: Becki Jayne.
1 comment:
Recently I viewed the German coming-of-age/coming out film Summer Storm recently. Tobi spreads fledgling wings, explores his same-sex desires in the company of Leo. "Was it easy?" Tobi queries, referring to the coming out. Leo doesn't reassure him. "But it gets easier?" Tobi asks. Leo twists his mouth in enigmatic repsonse, then says, "If you spend your life hiding from yourself you forget who you are." My take on it: as gay men we wrestle life-long with the angel. Coming out, too, is a process never really over.
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