(Behold, I Stand at the Door and Knock--original collage, 2010)
The following memoir appears in the current issue of RFD, no. 164 (Winter 2015/16).
On a mountaintop
at the end of a twisting road through the redwoods, at the end of a six-day Body
Electric retreat, eight of us make Eucharist a little after dawn on the first
day of the week. The valley spreads out beneath us, a river of blue fog
catching fire and flowing in reverse as the sun rises over it. The ashes of
dozens of men have been scattered here over the years of the AIDS epidemic. A
sublime spot, holy ground, and blessed by gay men who through perilous
experience have forged of irony an essential tool for negotiating the Sacred,
smashing the idols, looking on God and continuing to live: we call it Julie
Andrews Point. These hills are alive.
Peter, a
physician from Mississippi, reads the Epistle; Bill, a Christian Brother who
teaches at a Midwestern Catholic college, the Gospel. Facing Bill across our
circle, I recall from earlier in the week our sweet evening of animated,
heartfelt talk, at the end of which we drifted to the hot tub to float naked in
each other’s arms late into the night. Listening to Peter, I think back to the
exercise for which we found ourselves partnered two days ago, bearing silent,
intentional witness to one another’s erotic self-exploration, out on the same
sweeping overlook where we’re now celebrating the Divine Liturgy. I’ve known
extraordinary bliss in his presence: my ejaculation marked only the beginning
of an orgasm that played over my body and soul like living phosphorous stirred
in the nocturnal waters of a luminescent bay. I couldn’t pinpoint the moment
when it finally ended, as the light poured down over me through the branches of
the oak above our blanket; as dragonflies and grass fulfilled their glorious,
mortal natures; and I along with them.
Robert, a Roman Catholic church musician from Milwaukee, chants the psalm. At last year’s retreat, he and I sat on sarongs spread at the edge of this same promontory to exchange the stories of our erotic lives. The telling led to half an hour of caresses and synchronized breath while we gazed into one another’s eyes.
We hold
history’s shortest (and probably chattiest) Quaker meeting in lieu of a sermon;
and yet by some miracle, though all eight of us in the course of fifteen
minutes have something (conscientiously brief) to say about the readings we’ve
just heard, our words emerge from the silence without diminishing its power.
Bob, a
Disciple of Christ from Oklahoma, says the Words of Institution over bread
confiscated for our dark ritual purposes from the yesterday’s lunch buffet.
These last few days, he’s been the beloved of my New York friend Hank.
Dell, a
Presbyterian turned Sufi turned Anglican turned seeker who now contemplates
another foray into organised Christianity, pronounces a benediction. The warm
connection between us falls short of what I long for. I’ve hung helplessly head
over heels for him since our first fifteen minutes together six days ago. Two
days into our time together I patched together the courage to tell him this, in
a nightly checkin group that includes as well the man who by then had already
won his most intense and focused affection for the remainder of the week. I
nearly hyperventilated at the risk of owning my jealousy of the bond between
them; and received from each of them in turn acceptance, grace, and words of
respect for my courage.
Forty of us
have spent a week creating a miracle of mutual love, support, and radical
honesty, a community of the beloved. All of us have come to this place as men
of Spirit–the eight of us in this circle, the thirty-two still asleep up the
slope–Buddhists, Jews, Hindus, atheists, radical faeries, souls of the New Age,
none of the above. The lived experience of love–the vibrating, enlivening,
penetrating, transforming experience of love–has united us all, however variously
we’ve understood what’s happened here. The confessional distinctions that
divide us have fallen away like skins we’ve outgrown. And here the eight of us
stand to take up once again the words and gestures of one tradition among
many–a path toward the Divine as flawed in its unfolding as any other; a
tradition that has misled so many gay men so heartlessly, in so much of the
world, for so many centuries.
The
fearless, grace-filled truth-telling that we’ve learned together to practice
over the last five days, the acceptance of deep joy into our lives, the
blessings we’ve laid on one another’s lives in compassion for our own wounds
and one another’s, under the tutelage of two extraordinary men who have led us
through the process–these constitute a culture of love and mutual support. What
overwhelms me this Sunday morning, in the presence of the seven brothers who’ve
come with me out to the Point to commemorate the life and death of God made
visible in human flesh, is how deeply and how authentically that culture has
become the hermeneutic ground for theological reflection. The day’s reading
from Colossians 3:5-11 would normally have me muttering under my breath against
Paul, the narrow prick who never got a life. The words sound here and now as
though they’re spoken to us of the community that we ourselves have embodied:
“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with
its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed
in knowledge according to the image of its creator.” In that renewal there is
no longer Protestant nor Roman Catholic, neither Californian nor Argentinian,
and ultimately neither Christian, Buddhist, nor atheist; but for us, Love among
us in our flesh is all in all.
In short,
I’ve never heard the Scriptures opened so powerfully by the Spirit as I do this
blessed morning. I’ve never heard the Words of Institution spoken so powerfully
to those who happen to be present at the moment of their recitation. Like
Wesley listening to the words of Luther read aloud, I feel my heart strangely
warmed.
Christianity,
I said last night to Dell as we sat looking at the moon over this valley, is a
crock of shit, but it’s my crock of shit. It’s my flawed, broken vessel for
carrying what cannot and must be carried, what must and cannot be contained in
human language. To stand with these men, to claim together– fearlessly,
defiantly, subversively, and lovingly–the power and authority of the People of
God: this is to behold the vessel at once broken and mended, at once marred and
perfect. This is to behold all things being made new.
