Glitter Resistance
Community Beatitudes by Rev. Ashley Horan and Matthew 10:40-42
Holy One, fabulous and fierce, campy Creator, joyous justice-maker, sacred liberator, touch my mouth and all of our hearts that the words about to be spoken and the words about to be heard might be your word. Amen.
This morning, on this 57th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and Riot against police brutality, we are invited to reflect together on the theme of glitter resistance.
Glitter resistance? What does that mean? How is it sacred? How might it make a difference in our lives?
When I was a newly ordained pastor and serving at Spirit of the Lakes UCC, I was part of a program that matched mostly retired UCC pastors with people in their first calls. It was particularly focused on justice work but also included all kinds of general mentoring. We talked regularly on the phone with our mentors and then, toward the end of the year, our mentors came for a visit.
My mentor was Bill Webber. Bill was one of the founders of the East Harlem Protestant Parish in 1948 and served as president of New York Theological Seminary from 1969 (the year I was born) until 1983. One of the programs he was best known for starting was a Master of Theology program in Sing Sing prison. By the time we were in conversation, Bill was in his late seventies and using his time to reflect on the lessons of his ministry in order to continue to shape and form young clergy.
During his visit toward the end of our mentorship, Bill said two things to me and to the community of Spirit of the Lakes that have continued to shape and form me. Quoting Colossians, he said the purpose of Christian community is to help every single member of the community grow in spiritual maturity and to help the whole community grow in collective maturity. The second thing he said was that he had learned again and again, that the gospel is most powerfully present amidst oppression and that as a man of great privilege, his own spiritual maturing had happened mostly when he put himself in solidarity and followership of those marginalized by systems of power. Being together as church is about journeying together toward spiritual maturity. And one of the most powerful ways to mature spiritually is to be in solidarity and followership of marginalized communities and to claim the particular presence of the gospel in marginalized communities that you are a member of. Whew…as they say, that’ll preach.
So one answer to our question is that glitter resistance is the invitation for those of us who are queer and trans to claim and celebrate the gospel’s fabulousness in our midst and for allies and co-conspirators to practice solidarity and followership of LGBTQ+ communities. But what does that mean?
On the cover of your bulletin is a quote from activist Dan Savage that offers one answer to how the gospel is manifest amidst queer and trans community.
“During the darkest days of the AIDS crisis we buried our friends in the morning, we protested in the afternoon, and we danced all night, and it was the dance that kept us in the fight because it was the dance we were fighting for.”
Mourning, protest, and dancing…
Mourning and grief are not exactly the same thing. Grief is largely a solo, individual process that is sometimes isolating. While mourning is done in community. Mourning is the act of gathering in community to sing, and weep, and hold one another in our broken hearts. Mourning helps us metabolize grief. And collective mourning can help us regulate our nervous systems.
During the height of the AIDS crisis, so many were all alone in grief and shame. So many had been rejected by family. So to mourn together, to sing and remember the dead, to pray was to name the reality of oppression, yes. But it was also to begin to claim resurrection. It was to begin to metabolize the shame and allow ourselves to move toward action and resistance.
The mourning helped us move together in protest. The mourning helped us remember the love, believe in our own humanity and in the humanity of our community. And it helped us claim the love and humanity outloud and out proud. And, oh, the fabulousness of the protest… giant condoms over homophobic senators’ houses, brilliantly witty rejoinders to homophobic police officers, and so much camp and fashion and joy.
And the dancing… for me it was at the Timberline in Seattle, a queer Country Western bar. During those years when I was relatively newly out, working as an AIDS buddy, I would go to the Timberline several times a week. I wore by cowgirl boots, my jeans, and my cowgirl shirts and when I walked through the door and smelled the sawdust on the floor, saw all the regulars, and heard “Boot Scootin’ Boogy” and “I Got Friends in Low Places”, I knew I was home. Parenthetically, when I took my parents to the Timberline, my mom exclaimed, I didn’t know men still knew how to dance!
Glitter resistance is all about the spiritual wisdom of the interplay between mourning and protesting and dancing.
We have all lived through a pretty brutal year… last June, Melissa and Mark Hortman and Gilbert were assassinated and John and Yvette Hoffman were seriously injured. In August of last year, twenty three people were shot and two children, Fletcher Merkel and Harper Moyski and the shooter, Robin Westman, were killed at Annunication School. And then in December, Operation Metro Surge began. I don’t have to tell you about the freezing cold, the ice, the abductions, the existential fear, the horror… the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti… the tear gas and green gas… the realization that our federal government has its guns trained on us.
It has been a brutal year… and the actions of the Supreme Court this week were brutal… and the ongoing assault on our trans beloveds continues… and we honestly don’t know what the coming months will hold… particularly as we approach the mid-term elections this Fall.
But I want to remind us that we have been decidedly fabulous members of the glitter resistance. When violence and death came to our Cities we lived the Community Beatitudes and our text from Matthew. We hold one another in mourning, we protest, and we sing and dance. Raise your hand… how many of you have visited the Renee Good or Alex Pretti memorials? How many of you have been to a protest or a Singing Resistance action? How many of you have danced or made art or gotten a Resistance Loon tattoo??
My friends, on this Stonewall anniversary in which we mark glitter resistance, I want to say thank you. Thank you for ALL you are and have done. Thank you for the tears you have shed. Thank you for the refusal to accept that this is normal. Thank you for the thousands of dollars in mutual aid. Thank you for the soup made and the pastoral care given. Thank you for the Gender affirming care resolution at Annual Meeting. Thank you for the singing and dancing and the art made. Thank you for the way in which you have been and continue to be the manifestation of Christian community.
And please don’t stop. The Stonewall aunties and guncles, our siblings and ancestors are urging us onward. They are sending a three snap salute. “Keep going,” they are saying. “Keep up the glitter resistance fabulousness… you can do it. The world needs you now more than ever.”
Amen.
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