I had a rock tumbler when I was in third grade.
it was a gift from my grandmother
Who took my love of holding her thin-skinned hand,
with her painted nails and a perfect glittering diamond ring
admiring all the gems in the Natural History Museum
As a love for the rocks themselves.

I would put in rocks I found, and sand and I would plug it in
It woudl grind and tumble and I woudl wait
And wait
And wait
And when it was done tumbling, I took out
rocks and sand.
and now the rocks were smoother
But they were still just rocks,
and I was still just a third grader.

One day, when I was 47 and waiting for something
I walked down the street
Stopping in at all the little shops
Vintage dresses, stiff and too expensive
peeking in at the yoga studio, the Reiki place, and the strawberry shop
Where even the air tastes sweet.

I stopped into a crystal shop, organized by promise and color
Milky White stones and sunshiny yellow-
Juicy orange stones and deep red-
Inky black shiny stones
Protection, success, joy, love, peace, focus
The small ones were mostly smooth,
I think they had spent the right amount of time in the rock tumbler

Maybe I am anxious and insecure because I
don’t have the right rock.
I wanted to choose one.
Something I could put in my pocket
that would give me the resilience and peace I had somehow misplaced.

But how could I choose just one?
Best to fill my pockets with virtues
line my clothes with hope that I will be transformed

I should have held onto that rock tumbler
I wonder now if that’s not just the best damn metaphor
For all of it
We gather up and hold onto the stories of our lives
And they tumble along inside of us, and we think somehow that
Our gravel will be transformed into crystals
That will save us.

But, after years of waiting, and tumbling,
all we get is smoother gravel.
And we are still ourselves.

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This week I flew to Denver for my best friend’s wedding. It was small, just nine of us at the courthouse, including the grooms. It was short and tender, legal documents were signed, vows were made.We witnessed the knitting together of two adult lives in the eyes of the state and then went out for lunch. It was joyful acknowledgment that such a thing is glorious and that queer joy is resistance. There was a small party that evening with more of their friends.

One of the best things about weddings is chatting with people who are strangers with one point of contact. One of the trickiest things about weddings is chatting with people who are strangers with one point of contact. First, we always start with the “how do you know the newlywedded ones?” And then you are back to the good old “and what do you do?” Back when I was the editor of a magazine, that was party chat GOLD. Similarly, everyone knows what you do when you say “barista” or “children’s librarian.” Sometimes I wish I had a job that could be named quickly: airline pilot, college professor, donut maker. I love hearing about other people’s jobs and lives, but I am still not good at explaining this stage of my life quickly. And I dont want to take up too much room.

I tell people that I write about the intersection of spirituality and sexuality, that I am a sex-positive spiritual director and a religiously informed sex educator, that I am a sporadic poet and a stalled painter. I tell them that I am the mother of a toddler and I have a part-time obsession with sleep.

There was a woman at the party who had overheard the shortest, tidiest version of my story, “I was a priest, now I’m not. I was kicked out of a church that both proclaims welcome to all and completely refuses to discuss polyamory.”1 She asked me, “What is your relationship with Christ now?”

It is fascinating to me that in ten years of ordained ministry, and years before that of being really, really churchy, almost no one asked me directly about my spiritual life unless they were judging my qualifications for ordination or employment. Now that I have left the church (or the church has left me), people ask.

It isn’t a bad question. I’m not sure I would ask it five minutes after meeting someone. But I understand why they do. I do not remember exactly what I answered her. It was likely the same vague dithering that often arrives instead of clarity. Turns out she is writer too, and we talked about literary type things before we drifted apart on the social currents of the party.

Here is my longer answer that I might have given while balancing charcuterie and champagne.

My relationship is longing.
My relationship is a memory of the shape and ease of prayer.
My faith is a web of desire and resentment. Like any relationship.
I miss the taste of certain words in my mouth,
and the texture of certainty.
I miss God desperately and somehow still believe completely.
I believe that the God I loved before is still in love with me, if she exists at all.
I am reading Julian of Norwich, and I want to believe her.
I am ashamed of what a bad Christian it turns out I am.
I still wish I were the kind of person whose faith never wavered
or that I had walked away without a backwards glance.

Later that evening, after she had left, someone told me that in addition to being a writer, she is also a sex worker and helps organize gangbangs.

Now that’s a cool job.

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I said I was going to poetry class.

What is poetry? The baby,
who is no longer a baby, asked
sitting in the backseat,
strapped in like a fighter pilot.

How do you explain poetry
somehow true and a little quiet?
I told him it was writing
with every word mattering
for what it means and how it
sounds and sometimes astounds.

It is humbling overusing words
startled and scattering like birds
to describe an economy of language
on the knife-edge of honesty, because
how do you say what poetry is

To someone who is still plucking words
fresh and raw,
fearless in his choice
I watch in awe
As he leaps without checking or second-guessing
just to see how a new one feels
in his chubby cheeks

his vocabulary is untarished by anxiety
Everything he says is poetry to me

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I am not myself today.
But I can’t prove that I ever was.
Who have I ever been,
but a collection of stories
told and retold
clicked together into the shapes of selves?
A self with this past
Or that point of view

How would I know that
I am myself?
Whose self are you?
If we lost every story
If we misplaced all the markers of self-ness?
The black clothes, the blue hair,
The tattoos, the weak wrists?
The anxity, the insomnia, the sense of humor?
The interrupting, and deep loving?
The kids, the dogs, the lovers, the friends
Who would you be away from the halls of mirrors
From the nametags
And affinity groups

I am no longer my self
But I am not your self either,
Or her self. Whose self could I be?
But that is okay, because
maybe there never was a self

Maybe untethered
We will float away like bubbles
Pretty until we pop,
Setting free the air were holding
in iridescence.

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To all of you who have been hoping that I would never again find faith,1 that I would never again feel the love of God in my heart, that I would never again feel convicted of either truth or beauty in the language of scripture, to all of you who have been waiting for me to finally give up this Christian nonsense and finish walking away once and for all, I have terrible news.

This weekend, I attended a conference I was fairly certain I was not a good fit for.
I went with a guarded reluctance, half-convinced I was not only the wrong kind of queer, but not even sure I was still a Christian. What possible use would I have for a queer Christian conference?

And I hate to disappoint you, but my heart was cracked open. I sat and listened to religious language, some of it felt true, lots of it was beautiful. This weekend I felt something that felt an awful lot like faith.

Many people have told me over the past few years, You’re still a priest. And I have not known what to do with that. My heart has said, “No, I’m not a priest,” because priesthood implies a particular relationship with a church, and that relationship is gone. A priest is one who goes to God with the people on her heart, and back to the people with God on her lips. And my people no longer wanted to hear my voice.
Tell me, what kind of priest is that?

Plenty of folks told me God isn’t finished with you
Tthey said You are still a priest
And I hated it.
I hated it because hope is so expensive.
Hope costs everything.

At the conference I met pastors who had lost their churches. I met people who had been stripped of their ordinations. I met people who were expelled from communities after being told they were welcome and safe. It was terribly sad to meet so many others who have walked this lonesome road, but also wildly validating.

And then I was invited to co-celebrate the eucharist by a wonderful independent catholic priest. I did not rush my answer. What would it be like to stand at that table again? What if all the people who have been telling me I am still a priest are right? What if my time of grieving what I once had with the Episcopal church is ready to shift into something new? What if, and this my loves and my dear ones, is the juicy heart of the matter, What if I am still called? I sat with it overnight, and decided that in a battle between gentle curiosity and most anything else, I always want to side with curiosity.

And it came to pass that at 4:00 on Saturday afternoon, I was handed a white stole with green embroidery at the ends. In a small hotel breakout room, I stood side by side with people who saw me as a priest, who said that I, in the fullness of myself, was welcome and worthy to proclaim the gospel and touch the sacraments.

I have always loved the idea that the Eucharist is one extraordinary moment in time, and whenever we celebrate, we enter into the one eternal moment where God is forever being broken open and Love is always being poured out. We do not repeat the same thing over and over again, instead we reach our hungry hands across time and eternity herself kisses our foreheads.

As of this weekend, there is now a risk that Christianity might, somehow inexplicably, still be the shape of my faith. What if this God who so ridiculously called to me when I was twenty-one, shattered and broken, underloved by her parents and abused by her partners, what if that same God who called me into faith, into love, and into ordination, has not changed her mind about me?

What if the church’s no, was not her no after all?
What if the story of my priesthood is not done?
What if the adventure continues?

I do not know yet what any of this means. I do not know yet what my next steps are or anything useful. All I know for sure is that I have caught a glimpse of a world in which I might still be a Christian.
And while hope is unbearably costly I am indulging.

Surrounded by queer and poly and trans Christians I caught a glimpse of a possible future when I too can be my full self, across my many communites. I caught a vision of my life with my faith flourishing. A life which the ways I love and fuck is simply one facet of the multitudes I contain, and no barrier to proclaiming grace.

Something is stirring again in me. I feel, not so much like Lazarus, but rather more like his tomb, startled to find life moving where I thought life was no longer. I have known for a while now that I cannot be a Chrsitan alone, and yet there was no community to hold me. I have missed God so very much.
This weekend I was seen and held. I felt, God help me, like a priest again.
And even if it was just for that moment, I still believe that moment is eternal.

And so my loves and my dear ones,
whatever is coming to life in you
Please don’t turn away because the storms are raging
Please don’t think yourself undeserving of wonder
Please don’t wait for a better day than this one-
thirteen and a half billion years in the making.
Please my loves and my dear ones
do not dismiss your glorious self as undeserving
of one miraculous moment that just might also be eternity

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If you really do want a boreDomme- please get in touch.

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