Was Jesus Open and Affirming ?

I haven't written much recently, because I've been feeling resistance from a new path I've wandered into at the Federated Church.  You know like those dreams where you're trying to run, but you can only move in slow motion?  That's how church has felt for me recently, sad to say.

A few weeks ago, when I was writing an earlier post referring to the Mormon Church and their position on gays, I went to my current church's website to refer to information about their "Open and Affirming" status to gays and lesbians, as part of a larger United Church of Christ resolution.  I could not find what I was looking for on the local website, so I went to the UCC website, and found that while several UCC churches on Cape Cod have adopted the Open and Affirming resolution, the Federated Church is not one of them.  And in the general listing on the UCC website for the Federated Church, it simply reads "Listed Open and Affirming? No."

When I read this online, late on a Saturday night, I was almost physically sick. My heart started pounding in my chest... one of those moments when you think you know something, and it suddenly turns out you were completely mistaken. The rug just completely pulled out from under you.  It was quite a blow to me, because I had thought I had been specifically told the Federated Church had adopted this resolution, and this was one of the things that had given me the confidence in the first place, to attend an unfamiliar straight church as an open and honest gay man, without having to worry if that was going to be a problem.

It turns out the Federated Church has an old painful history around this resolution, and so this discovery led me onto a new path I had not expected to be taking at this church, of feeling reminded of my second class status and how often I have faced discrimination, and of course now having to speak up and defend and explain my feelings around this issue.  And I finally realized, I was avoiding my blog because of this... it wasn't a subject I had planned to write about... and I certainly wasn't enthusiastic about having to go down this road... but now it seems like I am being called to talk and write about it.

 I found a great writeup by Dan Kirk about how to escape from quicksand, real or metaphorical, here .  He writes, "Well, like any unfortunate wanderer stepping into quicksand or conversational danger, the immediate response is the one most likely to get you in trouble. Thinking before you do anything will save your sorry hide, and understanding your adversary gives you far more hope of survival. First of all, the viscosity of quicksand, just as with your mother in law or boss, increases with the more force you apply in the opposite direction."

So... more to come on this topic.

PS. On a COMPLETELY different subject, I was looking for an image of "dream running in slow motion," and found the MIDDLE image above.   It's from a blog written by some guy named Archimedes Minor, writing as knownstranger1, documenting his game play in in an artificial 3D Life Simulation Game... incredibly detailed and beautiful and thought provoking about the choices people are starting to make between living in the real world or artificial worlds that they create and control... you can check it out here .