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Recently, many in the LGBTQI+ community, as well as those who identify as allies, celebrated Coming Out Day. As most of us are probably aware, coming out can be a momentous occasion, but it can also be quite terrifying. And I can understand why; those who are more religiously-inclined tend to shun and scapegoat any and all who are not heterosexual—with God on their side of course—and even those who stand in solidarity with non-heterosexual folks. So needless to say, coming out can be quite the stress-inducing situation in our current culture (and most cultures that have preceded ours).

[Note: I realize that many of you who read my reflections aren’t ‘brothers,’ but sisters and non-binary siblings. But I’ve been encouraged to share these words – originally urgently written and shared on social media – more carefully and more widely, in hopes that we male-bodied types can do better. If you are not male, I beg your indulgence – and please feel free to share this with a man in your life who could use the challenge + encouragement.]

M. Scott Peck writes in the Road Less Traveled that there are four basic tools of discipline that allow a person to live a problem solving life rather than a life problem avoiding (which argues leads not only to sorrow but also to mental illness). This sermon addresses the first two of those four: the ability to delay gratification and acceptance of responsibility. While most of this channel’s material addresses systemic injustice this sermon and the one that will follow next week are more personally focused on how we avoid “renting space in our skull” to the painful challenges of life.

Someone said to Murshid, “I heard them talk against you.”

“Did they?” said he. “Have you also heard anyone speak kindly of me?”

“Yes,” the person exclaimed.

“Then,” said Murshid, “this is the light and shade to life’s portrait, making the picture complete.”

Andrew Forsthoefel on the gift of being deeply listened to during an eleven-month walk across the United States.

Where would you find yourself if your need to be right and your addiction to certainty dissolved into a willingness to listen? Who would you be, then? And who would we be together—as a country, as a planet—if each one of us actually knew what listening was and how to do it because we had, over the course of our lives, been deeply listened to? This kind of listening does have to be learned and that is the only way to learn it: to receive it.

Sometimes, we have to erase the boundaries that we have drawn and let some really annoying people in. Sometimes, we have to be a bitch so that we can push people beyond the boundaries. When push comes to shove, this being human requires that we live in community and life in community is messy and it is annoying, but life in community can also shape us in ways that open us to new ways of being human.

For this year’s Pride, we collaborated with The LGBT Community Center, NYC’s home and hub for the LGBTQA community, to create a film celebrating the entire LGBTQA Alphabet—twenty-six ways to share who you are and how you love. Because all voices deserve to be heard.

Winston Churchill once said that “History is written by the winners.” When the Stonewall Riots occurred in 1969 the history of more than a century-long oppressed people finally got national attention. And, since that historical moment, the suppressed and closeted oral histories of our fierce and courageous LGBTQ brothers and sisters began to be documented – openly and uncensored.

“How do your beliefs and spiritual values inspire you to do meaningful work in the world?

We stand today on blood soaked land we have inherited
From a centuries long heritage of violence
Which was born in the genocide of the indigenous
And whose industry was built by the forced labor of slaves.

Race relations in the U.S.A. all too often play out like this:

African-American people: “We have a problem in this country with race, and it is important to us.”
White Americans: “Be quiet!”
African American people: “Lives are impacted both in the past and now.”
White Americans: “Get over it!”

I wish I could say this were an exaggeration. Sadly, I have seen these responses quite literally on the social media pages I manage and elsewhere.

Many of the people who are sputtering and red in the face over the fact that athletes are kneeling are — no surprise here — Christians. White Christians. Christians who maybe have their gods a little confused, because I’m gonna take a hot second to say here: the flag is not supposed to be your god. The national anthem is not supposed to be your god. Excuse me, but your idols are showing, because if you’re more upset by an athlete respectfully taking a knee (and I’ll talk more about that in a minute) than you are about actual human lives being lost, then you should maybe add a Bible class to that Civics class you need to take. Also, maybe a Google spreadsheet class, because that program has this handy-dandy tool where you can number things and then sort your freaking priorities.
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/jerseygirljesus/excuse-idols-showing-athletes-kneeling-totally-biblical/#wV8Kl8ROyPaRr13s.99

For 70 years, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has maintained the Doomsday Clock, a graphic representation of the level of danger to the planet from nuclear weapons and other threats. Partly because of the election of Donald Trump, it has moved the clock from 3 to 2.5 minutes from midnight. The danger has been dire for many decades, and now it is worse – but only by a small increment.

Lots of people are worked up with fear and misinformation. Sometimes it seems that facts just don’t matter anymore. But don’t give up! Keep paying your dues to the reality club and keep your Islamophobia decoder ring handy. Don’t let people who are taken in by every anti-Muslim snake-oil salesman that comes around derail your commitment to what I think Jesus would want us to do: to treat “the other” with respect and dignity. Practice hospitality. Build genuine relationships with those who are excluded or lied about. And maybe, “all of a sudden,” a whole new world will emerge.

Externally, we must also support the brave dissidents who found themselves trapped within the confines of committed Islam. They find themselves in the position that Galileo was in, centuries ago – facing a clerical system that would not listen and would not tolerate. Arabic thought brought back Greek philosophy to the West through the translation movement that started in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. Greek philosophical works were translated into Arabic, and were subsequently augmented with Islamic science and philosophy. With the Christian conquest of Spain, Sicily and Jerusalem, in the 11th century, these writings were translated into Latin and found their way into European cultures. Let us now “return the favour” and deliver Humanism and Progressive thought to the East, because both our civilisations depend on it.

The other side – no matter how vile, how much they hate me – are human beings. Stereotyping and dehumanizing them is wrong. Causing harm to them is wrong. Period.

No matter how wrong someone is, we must not treat them inhumanely.

They might be the problem. They might shout at us. They might threaten us. But hate is never the solution.

Hate is a narrowing; it makes the table more and more narrow, inviting fewer and fewer people to be with us. Love invites more people to join us.

n late July, California Rep. Maxine Waters’ “reclaiming my time” became the rallying cry heard round the world. Manifestos emerged as women and people of color discerned the ways in which time has been historically stolen from them.

Memes are now a fact of life; they direct and shape how we consume information. Yet we seldom ask why they become ubiquitous. Some are so sensational they require no explanation for their virality. Others, like Waters’ mantra, invite us to consider a deeper message beyond click bait.

In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson, in an historic address to Congress, said: “At times history and fate meet in a single place to shape a turning point in man’s unending search for freedom. So it was at Lexington and Concord. So it was a century ago in Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama.”