This speaking is not simply for the sake of ourselves and other gay people. Almost any passing engagement with thoughtful adults in the developed societies of our time quickly reveals the deep disillusionment and even cynicism with which organised religion in general, and Christianity in particular, are regarded.
If Christianity is to be credible – let alone inspirational – to people of our time, its leaders will have to get over their addiction to power and learn to listen to the wisdom and pain of those who speak about embodiment, erotic grace, radical justice and the incarnate love that flourishes beyond the bounds of the officially sanctioned ‘sacred’.
One of the blessings and liabilities of a collection such as this, which ranges over a decade of the writer’s life, is that it is not the product of a grand thesis. Rather, it shows the evolution of several key ideas, of a certain approach to life and to spirituality, of the ongoing process of shaping a public voice. This public voice has been expressed in newspaper articles, reflective essays, chapters in anthologies, formal lectures and informal talks, and my publisher and I have chosen to retain the different textures and styles of the original pieces, avoiding extensive footnotes and keeping contextual information to a minimum. We have also kept the writings in their original chronological order except in a few cases where, for reasons of balance and variety, it has seemed prudent to make adjustments.
However, both the first essay and the last have their place not because of chronology, but because they represent key movements in my own life. They are like bookends, the first leading us into the collection and the last ending it by pointing to a new chapter that is yet to be written.
The first essay speaks of a movement that pre-dates all of the writing in this collection. It was a movement into a contemplative way of living that emerged strongly in my life in 1988. I have no doubt that this simple, unobtrusive, relentless movement into contemplative spirituality prepared me for the letting go of my career, my dreams, my security, and the affirmation of my ecclesial community – the Catholic Church – which lay some years ahead. The gradual opening of my life to the hidden demands and gentle grace of contemplative life is the first of two foundations on which these writings stand.
The second foundation, my claiming the freedom to speak the truth of my experience as a gay man, took shape as I was losing my career in the Catholic Church, back in 1993. This process unfolded over several months. I had already given an initial ‘yes’ to the call to come out publicly, just as I was leaving my position as a campus minister in a Catholic college. Some months later, in the midst of personal and financial difficulties, I was offered another position in ministry, in another Catholic college. All that was required was that I sign a document that would have guaranteed that, though I might be privately known to be gay, I would not be a ‘troublemaker’. Of course, the actual words used were more elevated than that, but that’s what they meant. It was at this point that my practice of ‘letting go’ not only allowed me but, as I experienced it, called me to refuse the deal being offered, a deal which would have made it impossible for me to speak the deep truths of my body and my soul. To have signed would have been not only to collude in the lie that the Church tells about gay people, it would have been to refuse to trust the God who had been leading me, often in spite of myself, on a path of surrender, simplicity and trust. I feel a certain gratitude towards the person who offered me the document – his action helped make it clear that my life as a closeted Catholic educator was over. I was now free to be who I was, and say what I thought, both for my own sake and the sake of others.
So, being gay and contemplative has been for me a kind of ‘double-whammy’: through being gay I have faced losing everything I once thought I valued and hoped to be; through being contemplative I have been freed to let the losing happen. This seems to me to be the shape that the seduction of grace has taken in my life. Not coincidentally, it was only at this point that the writings in this collection became possible.
Throughout this same period, including the entire period covered by this collection, I began to face chronic health problems. So, where I might otherwise have just gone out and found a job of some kind, my feet were kept to the fire of loss by the collapse of my health. Though I have faced this with some kicking and screaming, it has also freed me to say what I needed to say, to write what I needed to write, to travel when invited, to walk the empty beaches and sit in the empty silence, to look at life and spirituality from the margins, to become something of a troublemaker.
Many of the essays that follow give expression, in diverse ways, to the kind of ‘troublemaking’ I have engaged in. Some of that has meant reflecting in my public writing on new ways to explore, embrace and integrate the mystery of incarnation, of embodiment – so long preached, and feared, by the churches. Some of it has meant exposing the flaws, brokenness, hypocrisy and hard-heartedness that have so diseased the church, and calling for honest dialogue and radical change. Some of it has taken the form of public activism with the Rainbow Sash Movement in Australia1, as, with other friends and companions, we created a voice for gay and lesbian Catholics where before no voice existed.
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1 The activities and ethos of the Rainbow Sash Movement are discussed in several articles in this collection. See the Appendix at the end of this volume for a more extensive history and discussion of the Rainbow Sash Movement.
Through it all lies the story of one man’s faltering attempt to discern and respond to the call of Divine Love in his life. It is this movement of the heart and soul that I invite you to listen for as you read this collection. There is a seduction going on here, both in my writing and in your reading, a hidden seduction that will lead us where we thought we would rather not go, a tender but ruthless seduction that will unravel our dreams, expose our tawdry ambitions, unwrap our fingers from the grasp we have on our lives, and teach us how to let go into the mystery of love. Despite all our misunderstandings, stubbornness, vanity and brokenness – yours and mine – God is seducing us into life beyond our imagining.
Surrendering to this seduction, however, can be frightening and bewildering and it is not wise to face it alone. One of the worst features of the spiritual oppression of sexual minorities has been the deep isolation so many of us have suffered, as we have struggled to deal with life and faith with all of their terror and beauty. At the heart of Jesus’ message is the promise that where two or three gather in his name, he would be there in the midst of them. Gay people, however, have been denied the chance to gather together – and certainly not in Christ’s name – because we have been forbidden to speak the truth of our deep selves in the community of God’s people. This is grave oppression.
I regard it as a miracle of grace that, despite everything, gay people have begun to find their voice and find one another. The final essay in this collection, the second ‘book-end’, is about the longing for community, for brotherhood, for companions on the road into the desert of the Divine. As he lay dying, St Francis said that when he set out on his spiritual journey, ‘No-one showed me what to do, but the Lord himself led me’, but then he added, ‘and the Lord gave me some brothers’. It was with the giving of those brothers that the Franciscan movement came into being. We need loving community as we seek to build a world where no-one will be a spiritual outcast, where everyone will be welcomed as sister and brother, where wise companions will support us as we surrender to the mystery of God.
Around the world there are attempts being made to form new spiritual communities, and these tentative, fragile experiments are bringing a new quality of hope into the lives of many gay people. I wrote the final essay in this book while staying with a very traditional community of Trappist monks, and just two weeks before encountering the Easton Mountain Retreat community in upstate New York, where gay men from a variety of spiritual traditions are forming a new kind of religious brotherhood. There is something symbolic in this movement from traditional religious forms, into solitude and search, then into evolving models of spiritual community. We need to come together, drawing both from traditional sources of wisdom and from our own particular insight and experience, and learn to support one another in ways that conventional religious institutions cannot even imagine. As we do this, we offer inspiration, challenge and witness to other spiritual seekers, from every religious tradition and every sexual orientation, that they