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Kye Flannery
June 28, 2020
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
A celebration of pride from the perspective of queerness and queer theologies – exploring belonging, solidarity and deep acceptance of our collective history, and the possibilities of our collective power.
Chalice Lighting
This is the flame of our hearts as we strive for justice for everyone. This is the light we shine on systems of oppression until they are no more. This is the warmth we share with one another as our struggle becomes our salvation.
Call to Worship
SCANDALOUS GOD
– Enfleshed LBGTQ Liturgy GroupDivine Presence,
Scandalous One,
Versatile God,
You have been called the worst of names,
tossed aside by the hands of tradition,
met with violence and neglect by stranger and kin alike.
And still, you do not conform to the expectations of power
or polite your way into halls of destruction.
You, the ultimate transgressor of norms
that harm or confine,
bear witness to the glory of Strange.
You, Queer One, reveal the gifts of falling outside the lines.
You, Wild One, break open possibilities –
within us and around us –
whispering in our ear,
“See me. Feel me. Desire me.” You help us come alive again.
Beauty is your passion.
Love is your motivation.
Courage is your center.
May your spirit be awakened in every heart, every church,
every space dull with repressed delight,
That we may choose to live into the riches
of this peculiar life together.
Embrace us, O God,
and lead us in the ways of your love,
so promiscuous,
so deviant,
so free.
Amen.
Affirming Our Mission
Together we nourish souls, transform lives, and do justice to build the Beloved Community.
Beloved Community Moment
Those in privileged identities — take a moment to think of what it is to come to identity slowly as a child and then a teen with the mirrors of your behavior — joining in a game on the playground of “the queer” where the last person holding the ball is tackled and pummeled — what it is to add to this an authority figure in the background who when we really speak from a place of joy, when we let loose, says “don’t be queer” or “you have to wear a dress to church, or you’re grounded” — and add to this the knowledge that your family are just trying to keep you safe, that as a person of color your family needs to protect you and themselves from actual violence —
Today we celebrate our Pride, as a community which seeks always to love better, always discover more about ourselves and our neighbors — in the new testament someone asks Jesus “who is my neighbor” and that is a question I think we are confronting deeply right now as a nation — as in, who do I SEE as my neighbor — and HOW do I see my neighbor — and who is my neighbor — what is it that my neighbor experiences? Who are they, really? And is there actually a “they” at all — today, now, in this historical moment, as always, our Pride is bound up in our yearning, in our pain, in our relationships, our justice commitments, our intersectional identities, our shared humanity — today, — where gender shifts, where identities we are bio families and chosen families, we are LGBTQIA… we are allies, in many stages of growth —
Meditation Reading
ASK MOLLY
Heather HavrileskyI am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up. I will make you question what you meant by that. You will open a box of cereal and wonder why you do the job you do. You will stand in the middle of the floor and suddenly need to know what happened to that kid on the bus who taught you about Run DMC. You will mourn all the people you could’ve known better, including yourself.
Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action. Pull on this strand until the days on your Google calendar skitter across the floor like dominoes. What do your cells crave? Who loves you? When you speak, who feels your words on the soles of their feet, behind their eyes, under their fingernails?
Don’t grieve the ones who can’t see you clearly. Grieve the years you spent refusing to see yourself, or refusing to feel your cells whispering for more. Grieve but don’t say that time was wasted. All mistakes and dead ends led you to this moment.
Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?
Sermon
Do you remember the toaster? The joke used to be that, if you were gay, and you ‘converted someone’ you got a toaster. Younger people think that started with Ellen coming out on TV in the late 90s — weird to be in my 40s where I can say to someone, “No, sonny, now back before you were born…”
Like so many creative strong persistent countercultural ideas, the toaster was born in response to deep, ugly fear, Anita Bryant mid-70s cultural crusade – “they’re out there and they’re after your children.” So we flipped that script.
Yes, went the campy response, it’s like when you sell Mary Kay! Only instead of a houndstooth tote, top salespeople receive a toaster! That camp saved us, taking the mickey at homophobia, fear, nudging at the idea that capitalism might tie in with attraction —
This is the verb of queer — “to queer” — had been used as a pejorative — making something broken — queering a deal meant making it sour, driving people away — but what it means now is to look at a thing through a queer lens, find the meaning the thing did not know it had, to claim that meaning and find a new connection — a Yes, And — bringing a thing into the circle, adorning it with love and self-acceptance. Like the Fab Five from Queer Eye.
The word “queer.” – Scary. It meant “other,” not one of us. It was a word, weaponized — One of the scariest things we can experience — YOU! Out of the group of mammals you need to survive. These older generations opened up space for us, with their hearts in their throats, bloody with fighting for their lives and their friends — not knowing if it would work, terrified — in contrast, I have usually been able to pass– to read what others are most comfortable with and like to look at — no matter who I was in love with, I could be, in many settings, undercover. It was only when I lived in Boston, where I began to explore my gender expression… What made me feel strong? What made me feel brave? What colors could I fly? …I got to explore they/them pronouns. Genderqueer.
Rather than the 1950s version, I like the 1500s — odd, peculiar, eccentric.
Vonte Abrams: NY
“My queerness encompasses my voice, as a Black, male-assigned, non-binary individual… I embrace “non-binary” because I am naturally androgynous – puberty gave me a physical and emotional blend of masculine and feminine traits. I’ve learned over time that navigating societal rules of binary presentation is always going to be a unique challenge for me. “Queer” helps me face that challenge.”“Queer” gives courage! And a way of claiming ourselves.
And yet — queering is not an answer that stays for always. It doesn’t give us the final story. It gives us… another part of the story… a richer part of the story…
When we look with queer eyes at religious traditions, we can find the refusal of gender — such as Avalokitesvara buddha, the most compassionate, who is pictured as masculine, feminine, androgynous… might use the pronouns “they”… or delving into Genesis to find the Hebrew pronouns for God and realizing we’ve assumed an awful lot
Rev Irene Monroe:
“The first night of the Stonewall Inn riots played out no differently from previous riots with Black Americans and white policemen. African Americans and Latinos were the largest percentage of the protestors because we heavily frequented the bar. For Black and Latino homeless youth and young adults, who slept in nearby Christopher Park, the Stonewall Inn was their stable domicile. ” The second night is where the broader gay community got involved, white folks, folks with economic privilege, stepped in and went into battle with and for one another —Queering narrative means we want to know the messy version of the story — our neighbors’ view of the story, and frequently we center our neighbor’s view — after all, only one in one in 7.8 billion stories gets to be about me, and that number is bigger when we count all living things, not just humans. We don’t miss the “We” that is bigger than I — and also “I” is allowed and encouraged to sing —
Queer means looking to the collective, to the many voices, to the fringes, to the tentative, to the unself-conscious, to that which does not know how to market itself and doesn’t care to — What I love about queer theology is that it isn’t about purity, it isn’t about the idea of being washed clean — beauty and the divine is found in the dirt, in the earth, in our body’s functions and our body’s desire — this is not a love that knows all answers, or hides in bluster, but a love which wants to know more — a love which offers, above all, attention.
If you have loved — really — you know love contains pain and grit, dirt — and sometimes lust dominates and that’s also to be trusted in its way, it’s not a binary, is it lust or love? — It’s both, it’s all. But we work to make sure that in our self-expressions we don’t do harm, we see the other as a being, not a thing — We don’t throw out one part of ourselves because it’s basic or primal.
Queer theorist Judy Butler:
“Condemnation becomes the way in which we establish the other as unrecognizable.” Queerness re-acquaints us with that which we had thought to condemn….. intrinsically universalist —Queering justice work
Prisons — Black and Pink letter-writing organization out of Boston — nobody is made undesirable because they are rule-breakers, because have been beaten down by a flawed system — power is not the designator… queer theology gets that strength and power are not the same.
In queering we care for everyone — solidarity — there is no “them.” There is a spectrum of abilities, of colors, or strengths, of weaknesses, of visions, of desires — and we learn where we are on the spectrum through connection, through meeting — being a mirror and finding a mirror —
“No one ever came to my door in searching – for you, no one, except for you”
– Canadian poet Cabrisa LubrinAnd I think this is even more threatening to the fabric of business-as-usual. And why does it threaten the fabric?… because queerness pushes us to ask…
Queerness! is communicable?? Capitalism, gender is communicable — it takes us up in its arms and we don’t notice the violence in it — as Bear’s song today illustrates — until it is acted out on us and those we love —
A queer lens makes us look twice — embracing that which is surprising, outcast, celebrating — the voices saying “you are all wrong, too loud, your voice is the wrong pitch–you don’t get to play. What are you?”…those voices are still present but we have taken time to appreciate our own mystery, and yours… what can you say against the power of another person’s mystery?
Mystery – God – goddess – divine – spark
We are here, we are queer, you are queered, no longer feared
Pauli Murray
I have been cast aside, but I sparkle in the darkness.
I have been slain but live on in the river of history.
I seek no conquest, no wealth, no power, no revenge:
I seek only discovery
Of the illimitable heights and depths of my own being.
– Cambridge, 1969With queerness, I think, we moved to a Broken toaster model –
I am an appliance that rattles and spits out sparks and blows every fuse. I used to serve some function but now I prefer not to. Place me on your kitchen counter and watch life become less and less convenient. I will trip you up.
Welcome this unraveling. The less efficient you become, the better. Break all rote habits and build your life out of satisfying pauses between action. Now eliminate all action… Now you can finally feel the truth: Mourning is slow but it’s the straightest path forward. The question is “How do I break this appliance permanently? How do I become an inconvenience to myself and others? How do I swear off efficiency forever? How do I keep losing the thread over and over? How do I remain out of the groove, off the map, in the zone, flexible and reflective, shimmering and cool, examining the high stakes of tiny moments, encouraging communion, forgiveness, expansion, invention?
May it be so, Amen.
Resources
Love is the Spirit of this church:
https://www.uuworld.org/articles/bound-in-covenantAsk Molly – Heather Havrilesky:
https://askmolly.substack.com/p/lossQueer theology
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10059955-radical-lovePalimpsest: But this is how history happens, in pastiche — palimpsest — think of an old thick paper used again and again — where our memory fades, and the whispers of what was underneath remain and affect the picture we have now.
https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/palimpsest/This kind of demonization continues, and people get deported back to places where that thinking is backed by law – do something this Pride month for a person who needs it – Pastor Steven, Ugandan, Angry Tias and Abuelas –
https://www.facebook.com/angrytiasandabuelas/Vonte and others on what it means to them to be queer: “those who lived through some of the darkest days of legal and societal discrimination are not comfortable using a slur that was sometimes used alongside physical violence.”
https://www.them.us/story/what-does-queer-meanOn how lust and love don’t have to be a binary: Starhawk’s “The Fifth Sacred Thing.” Great book.
Black and Pink
https://www.facebook.com/blackandpinknational/Pauli Murray:
https://paulimurrayproject.org/pauli-murray/poetry-by-pauli-murray/“Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold” -history of women loving women in Buffalo, NY
Ellen and the toaster:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTFNK1PQ6jgAvalokitesvara Buddha
https://bit.ly/3eF2BuxGender of God in Genesis:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God_in_JudaismThe Kiss-In of 2011
http://themostcake.co.uk/right-on/homophobia-in-the-john-snow-the-kiss-in-self-censorship/Queer Ecology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queer_ecology
https://smithsonianapa.org/care/
http://www.jessxsnow.com/ABOUT
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