Lifting Up the Voices

Around this time of year, there are graphics that go around on social media proclaiming liberation for those who are queer, for people of color, for people who are disabled, for people who face injustice. And inevitably someone asks: well why can’t there be a straight pride month? Why isn’t there a white history month? When do men get an appreciation month?

Like that isn’t all the months for the rest of the year.

And thankfully, there are people who speak that truth - that we need to lift up the voices of those who have been harmed by the dominant culture. We need to celebrate and honor the stories of those who have never given up hope of a liberating love winning the day.

Beneath those posts, with those questions I simply can’t repeat, are others. They say:

None of us are free, until all of us are free.

None of us are free, until all of us are free.

Today, in this celebration of liberating love, we celebrate a love that sets us free. Free from the confines and boxes and boundaries of specific feminine and masculine rules. Free from the need to defend a dominant, white supremacist culture. Free to love and be loved. Free to see and be seen. Free from the influences that would tell us who we are innately, the image of God we have been created to be, is sick, or in need of healing.

Let us hear these words from poet Jay Hulme, a celebration of a God that is in the midst of us, a Jesus on the dance floor with us, who sees each of us in our wholeness, and would never have us be anything else.

Jesus at the Gay Bar

He's here in the midst of it -

right at the center of the dance floor

robes hitched up to His knees

to make it easy to spin.

At some point in the evening

a boy will touch the hem of His robe

and begged to be healed, beg to be

anything other than this;

and He will reach His arms out,

sweat-damp and weary from dance.

He'll cup this boy's face in His hand

and say -

my beautiful child

there is nothing in this heart of yours

that ever needs to be healed.

—Jay Hulme