Finding Faith Sex and Acceptance
[Music]
[Laughter]
sometimes
it’s really helpful to remember your
foundation
the place where you feel connected to
your core you know you’re standing on
solid ground
and no winds or anything else is going
to blow you off course
it’s especially important when new or
unusual situations hit you
it could be something that’s scary or it
could be
almost anything like discovering
something about your heritage
that you didn’t know or dealing with
your sexuality
and facing something you weren’t sure
about
or it could be realizing you have a
vocation
that isn’t going to make you a lot of
money
but that foundation is important then
but also i wondered why is that
foundation so important in the future
the event for me that helped me sort of
find my foundational truth so to speak
was when i was asked to lead a choir
retreat at a church
in hartford connecticut i was just
ordained an episcopal priest
i was sort of a new kid on the block i
had ideas i wanted to shake things up
and i’d heard about the four quaker
questions
and i thought what a great exercise for
this choir
they needed to get to know each other
and they could go as deep or as
shallow as they wanted to talking with
one another where did you grow up
how was your house heated what was the
center of warmth in your home and when
did you first know god loved you
and the choir did great there were about
12 people they shared
information they talked about their
experiences there was a deep sharing
especially for that last question
i heard people talk about my
grandparents were the ones who told me
that god loved me
and didn’t judge me or a time when a
spouse was ill or a family member died
that they had some awareness that there
was more going on there than just their
friends or their family that there was
something
more present something spiritual
that was walking that journey with them
now i had answers to those questions too
where did i grow up rural new jersey
what was the uh how was my house heated
forced hot air
i remember this big vent right in the
dining
in our dining room and you could stand
at it to stay warm
the center of warmth in our home the
kitchen and a butcher
block table and when did you first know
god loved you
oops you know when you lead these
retreats you should figure out your
answers before you lead the retreat
but i hadn’t figured it out and the
answer that jumped into my mind
was embarrassing because it was event
that happened during my second year of
being in graduate school in seminary
now you think if you’re going to go to
seminary
you would have figured out the god stuff
first
but you know there’s the head stuff and
then there’s the heart stuff
i could talk about god and theology and
scripture and saving the world and
making the world a better place
but being loved
so the story i ended up telling was
about my second year in seminary
i was in new york city as it happened
both my parents were having open heart
surgery
their surgeon was at columbia
presbyterian hospital i was at seminary
in lower manhattan
so every day i would go to school then
i’d get on the subway
i’d go 144 streets see my parents
get back on the subway come back do my
homework
talk about being stressed and one night
i got back to school and i was just
pissed
and exhausted and i went out on 10th
avenue and i took a walk
and i just railed at god
what do you want from me what more am i
supposed to do
what’s going what what do you want me to
do
so let me be clear no voice
no sign on a billboard
but there was some sense of inner
clarity
and a message came through that was sort
of like thad
i don’t want you to do anything
i’m your creator i love you you can’t do
anything i’m already with you
on these trips up and down manhattan
so i don’t know maybe it was stress
maybe it was exhaustion
but i decided to listen and even believe
that message little did i know
that it would shortly be the step the
foundation from which
i would come out to myself
you see for 27 years
i basically ignored the whole issue of
my sexuality
now in 2020 that might seem almost
impossible
and with therapy and a lot of work and
time i can look back and realize the
roots of that
but friends in 1979 i was clueless
i had no idea
so some friends and i oh i was also
in 1979 i was working in philadelphia i
took a year off from graduate school
to earn money to pay for my last year
and so some friends of mine and i
decided uh actually over this
president’s day weekend we went winter
camping
up in new hampshire the white mountains
and during that time i realized that my
best friend
something was off and i said to him at
one point
i i don’t know what’s going on i know
you’re having a hard time
but just know that i care about you and
if i can help you in any way
just let me know i’d be glad to talk
and much to my surprise he actually
called me up and he said
i want to get on the train come to
philadelphia we’ll have dinner we’ll
talk
i gotta get on the train the next
morning go back for school i said okay
that’d be great
and i had no idea what was coming
so he came down we had dinner and then
we sat down to talk
and he told me that the previous fall
he had had a gay experience even though
he
thought of himself as a straight man he
had a fiance
but he found this whole side of himself
that he
was both amazing and
sort of confusing and he was just trying
to figure out what was going on
he also said to me that he was a little
afraid
to tell me about this story
because he perceived me as something as
a jock and he wasn’t sure how i was
going to respond
and as it was i was actually the
executive director for the sport of
rowing in the united states at the time
but my response was totally supportive
how can i help i’m with you all the way
well to make a long and somewhat
complicated story
uh shorter that night i had my first
sexual same-sex experience
with my best friend and it was wonderful
but then the next morning i was scared
i said to him ah i’m not sure this
should ever happen again
and he had to get on the train to go to
school and i had to go to work
so i go to my car and it won’t start
coincidence i i don’t know but it meant
i had to walk to work
and on the walk i went past
the museum of modern art into fairmont
park
along the schoolkill river and
everything looked different the grass
was greener
the trees were greener the sky was bluer
everything was different and in a good
way
i got to work and decided this is
useless so i turned around and walked
back home
and sat down to write my best friend a
letter
i told him that what i realized is that
for
years i had hidden
my sexuality behind a great big brick
wall
i had just tucked it away and tried to
ignore it
as much as i could but that this
experience with him
had put a crack in that wall and light
was streaming through there was a
distraction
the light touched all parts of my being
and i realized i had a choice
i could either decide to plaster up the
crack
and stay in darkness or
i could start to dismantle the wall
and that’s when i remembered my
foundation that that i wasn’t alone
on this journey so i continued to write
and i said to him the reason i said i
don’t think this should happen again
is because i was afraid
and that instead my care for him maybe
even my love for him had somehow
allowed me to touch my sexuality
and even more scary to touch it as a gay
man
and i wondered if he would be willing to
talk
again long story short lots of
complications but
we were in a committed relationship for
three years
and i was on that journey of saying yes
to being a gay man
and figuring out ways to be open and out
on that journey
but at some point i wondered
what did i do with all those bricks
what does one do with all the
mental psychic emotional
all that energy that i used so much to
hide from my sexuality
when you start disbanding it what do you
do with it
and in looking back what i realize is i
used old bricks
to build bridges
when i left philadelphia and i went back
to school for my final year
where the first two years in new york
city had taken this rural kid
and just freaked me out all of a sudden
manhattan was kind of exciting
i had an opportunity for my field
placement to work with
shopping bag ladies homeless women who
lived on the street
i went interviewed with a group of roman
catholic nuns who had a ministry to
these women
and i said to sister bernanette i’m not
sure why i’m here
what what does a guy who went to a prep
school
in an ivy league college have to offer
a shopping bag lady and i will never
forget
bernadette looked me straight in the eye
and said to me
your presence
and suddenly a bridge started to be
built
that year twice a week from 11 p.m till
1 in the morning i would go to the
bus station at the port authority or the
train station at penn station and i
would seek out shopping bag ladies
and i would sit down and offer to talk
with them and
if they didn’t want to talk with me
which is more often the case
i would just sit quietly for 10 or 15
minutes say good night and then move on
two mornings a week i would go to the
dwelling place at their ministry
and help serve breakfast to any homeless
woman who walked in
i was stunned at the energy and the
care that was given to these women and
thought i
i want my first job to be in a city
so when i got a chance to work
i moved to hartford connecticut my first
church
small church racially diverse
not not a lot of people not
fancy indeed there was 240 units of
low-income housing right in our backyard
and that church had built an extra
112 units of low-income housing on their
property it was exciting and i was
i was jazzed it was going to be a great
challenge
and then the aids crisis
came to hartford and i’ll tell you
friends
i almost started putting those bricks
back up
this is the early mid 80s there was no
treatment
there was no cure
it was basically a death sentence and
everybody said it was the gay disease
well one day a woman from the
neighborhood came to the church and
asked if i would go visit her husband
who was dying with aids so at the time i
said that i would
and then i’m not proud of this but i put
it off and i put it off
but i finally did go and i went to her
apartment and i knocked on the door and
she invited me in and we chatted and she
handed me a glass of water
now i know you can’t get aids from a
glass of water
but that’s rational the irrational
fear just hit me and i had to make a
decision
and i decided again that i wasn’t alone
in this journey
and i took that glass of water and i
drank it
because i’d begun to realize that the
thing that was happening with hiv and
age was
three things that are scary for human
beings
we’re all connected the whole issue of
sex and sexuality
the whole issue of drugs and addiction
and then oh let’s connect it all to
death
people did not want to talk about this
but i actually realized
that maybe religion or spirituality or
whatever it was
had language and words that could help
people move from fear
to compassion where some people were
saying this is god’s wrath and people
are getting what they’re
what they deserve in our little church
we decided we were going to say
this is an illness and we’re going to
respond with care compassion and respect
we were the first church to have a
healing service for people with aids
and i began slowly to start working
locally and nationally
to see if we could find ways to build
bridges to help get from fear
to compassion i founded an organization
in the city where i was
and we were very fortunate that there
was a ad advertising agency that
worked in that city and they put
together
four posters for uh aids awareness month
and you’ll see them on the screen
building bridges they help people say oh
maybe there’s another way
to respond to hiv aids at the same time
one of the things we realized
is people were losing their housing
because of fear around
hiv and aids and discriminating against
people kicking them out of their
apartments and this wasn’t just
happening in hartford this was happening
in lots of cities
and so pretty soon we decided there was
a way to build a coalition
instead of everybody figuring it out in
eight different cities
let’s all come together and figure out
how best to respond
to this reality and the connecticut aids
residence coalition
actually uh ended up going to our
legislature
and getting a million dollars in bond
money so that we could provide housing
for people living with hiv and aids
in the same way the national episcopal
church was trying to figure out ways to
respond with care and compassion
and it also occurred to me that if we’re
not careful we’re going to reinvent the
wheel again
so this is our button up on the slide
with our with our theme
our church has aids trying to make sure
that
we were going to work together to help
people living with hiv and aids
and then what about young people you
know one of the highest risk groups in
the 80s
were young people mostly teenagers
so it’s one thing to have a bunch of
grown-ups say to teenagers well you know
this is what you ought to do and you
know
this is how you ought to be and safe sex
and all that
what i realized was if you want to build
a bridge to a young person
you educate their peers to be peer
educators
and so i helped write a curriculum that
would help young people
learn all about hiv and age so they
could help their peers
make sure they didn’t get hiv infected
so looking back i realized i spent most
of my professional life
trying to take old bricks to build new
bridges
helping individuals and people find that
foundational place that was solid for
them
so that they could do something to help
others for me
it was that i was loved by my creator
but whatever it was for someone else
find that foundation
and then realize it’s not there just to
keep you happy
it’s there to be an anchor to build a
bridge
so you can reach out and help other
people
and remember you can’t do it by yourself
my best friend had to come
overcome his fear and come and talk to
me so i could
face my own fears and be more true about
who i was
so whatever it is for you if you find
your foundation
i just hope that you will discover that
the world looks different
the grass is greener the sky is bluer
it’s different and it’s a good thing
find your foundation build a bridge
help others because my friends we live
in a desperate time
and the need is great may we all do that
thank you