Dear Ones,
At the conclusion of Pride Month, I am filled with gratitude and also a little weariness. I am grateful for our UU faith, for solidarity and courage to stay in the hard conversations, and for the opportunity to expand joy together. The month started with the inaugural, and hopefully first annual, Evanston Interfaith Family Pride Event in Raymond Park on June 2nd and it concluded with our annual UUA General Assembly, all virtual this year, and some difficult but important discussions.
This year’s General Assembly was probably the most consequential of the last 40 years, in the sense that we have completed the process of re-articulating our organizational documents and our stated values and purposes. This fundamental and foundational work has been five years in the making (at least) and I am pleased with the result. The Denominational Affairs Team and I will be processing and reporting back more thoroughly on all that took place and what comes next, but I will share with you here that the experience was…a lot. Some of the discussions were quite painful to listen to – lots of misinformation and fear based reactions. Change is hard. But we carry on and now the work of learning, growing, and living into our newly stated values as a faith begins. I’m so excited to do that with all of you.
It was also difficult to listen to some of the other discussions, particularly on a resolution Embracing Transgender, Nonbinary and Intersex People is a Fundamental Expression of Our UU Religious Values. There were lots of hurtful things said, that made me sad and angry as the parent of two trans young adults, and someone who recognizes the very real threats to trans people around the country and the world. But the resolution passed with 91.8% approval, and I’m glad we were able to take this position.
It is hard to be in dialogue across difference of identity and viewpoint. The UUA moderators of the conversations did the hard, emotional labor of reminding us again and again of our covenantal commitments to each other: to hold one another’s humanity, with respect and care. Not everyone was able to do that, and I admit that watching alone at home, I wasn’t always so great at feeling respectful of everyone’s opinion (read: lots of muttering and swearing to myself). Building Beloved Community means calling each other again and again into our better selves, especially when it is most challenging. We hold one another accountable, with love, to repair what we break and to heal when we harm.
Some of those who attended the June 2nd Interfaith Family Pride Fest were deeply moved by the statement read by the clergy at the start, repenting for the collective harm caused by religious communities and institutions to our LGBTQIA+ siblings of faith. Some asked if the statement could be shared and, indeed, it can and should be.
We began with a shared lament about the violence and devastation in Gaza and Israel, then read our repentance, those of us who hope to be allies to the LGBTQIA+ community. We repeated this statement mid-way through and then, our colleagues who identify as part of the Queer Community, read the final prayer and blessing. Here are those words of repentance and prayer. Please feel free to pass them along. They were written in the spirit of community care and with the aspirations of collective liberation:
IFPF Word of Acknowledgment for Israel and Gaza
Today we gather to celebrate the LGBTQIA+ community and the diverse identities gathered here from all faith traditions. While we come here to celebrate and find connection, we also hold the reality that there are peoples around the world unable to celebrate, as war and bloodshed continue.
We lament the reality that families in Gaza still fear for their safety and grieve their loved ones who have died. We lament that people in Israel still await news on their family members who are held hostage, and grieve those killed on October 7th.
Just as our hearts can grieve for two populations of people at once we can also hold a vast variety of emotions including grief and happiness. If you find yourself solely in one or the other today, we see you and welcome you.
If you need more space to process or be heard, you can speak with the chaplain located at the wellness tent. Finally, you can read the full statement from the Evanston Interfaith Clergy and Leaders about Israel and Gaza at the Evanston Roundtable website.
Joy, trust, and celebration cannot happen without repentance and liberation and we pray for that day to come in Israel and Gaza.
IFPF Statement of Collective Repentance
On this occasion, at the outset of the first Interfaith Family Pride Festival, the faith communities of Evanston, Illinois come to this day with a spirit of joy and celebration.
AND… we arrive with the harsh awareness of the harm that has been done to the LGBTQIA+ community by our respective faith traditions and congregations.
We atone for our sins, and as a community, repent for those harmful and hateful things our institutions have done,
And we admit to and grieve those acts of compassion and justice that we have left undone….
Today, we repent for the ways we have participated in systems that foster division, bullying, isolation, hatred, fear and oppression.
We have failed to affirm the full status, humanity, and worth of LGBTQIA+ people as fully beloved children of God.
We have tolerated and affirmed theologies that teach hatred and enabled organizations that exclude and deny the humanity of our queer and trans siblings.
We have not confronted homophobia, transphobia, hatred and violence as fully as we could or should have. We remained silent to protect ourselves and our congregations from controversy at the expense of the truth and love.
We have closed our doors, minds, and hearts and left members of our community isolated, alone and living in fear.
We have left our own privilege and sexism, racism, and classism unexamined.
We have fallen into binary thinking, bound by the constraints of gender constructs, and failed to see the many possibilities that the Divine One presents.
We have loved our own comfort more than we have loved our queer, trans, asexual, lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex, or other identifying siblings.
And we acknowledge the resilience that queer people of faith have had to create as they fought to exist in communities that tried to change, silence, or ignore them.
We give thanks for the instrumental ways, known and unknown, that LGBTQIA+ people have acted in our synagogues, mosques, temples, churches, and holy places.
For all of these things and for those harms left unsaid but known in our hearts we offer our sincere apology.
As a community we commit to repair what has been broken and to change our systems, structures and practices by centering our beloved queer and trans siblings and releasing the oppressive chains of heteronormativity and all phobias.
Recognizing that the work of ending systemic oppression requires an ongoing process of uncovering and transforming patterns of thought and belief that are less than divinely loving, we will work together with our LGBTQIA+ siblings, friends, and neighbors to foster faith communities that are truly open, inclusive and affirming for our queer and trans siblings and all of God’s children.
Interfaith Family Pride Fest Final Poem and Blessing
A Love poem to queers by Rev. Anna Blaedel and M Jade Kaiser of enfleshed liturgies
Queer lovers,
Who long for healing
Who ache with exhaustion
Who have been alone for too long
Who know deep in our bones
How very good it is
How very much it hurts
To keep living
To keep loving.
Queer lovers,
Let’s remember:
That which is strange
That which is met with disgust
That which is deemed
Incompatible
Illegal
Unworthy
Is the very site of the Sacred and a source of Holiness.
Queer lovers,
We know far better than they,
How to live in unlivable places
How to pray in Spirit drenched ways in the midst of everyday evil
How to hold each other through impossible choices of inevitable loss.
Queer lovers,
There is power in staying and fighting for our lives.
There is power in leaving for the sake of our lives.
Through all the noise and hate and shallow misunderstandings
Through all the competing voices
telling us what we have to do, to be
We, dear lovers, know what we need
Listen. Listen. Listen.
Queer lovers,
We are birthed from something wildly holy
We are made from and for a dream of flourishing
Crossing time and space; Our ancestors labored for us
To make this possible:The dykes who danced cheek to cheek
The sissies who marched arm in arm The queers who found God in each other
in alleyways and choir lofts and quiet glances across crowded rooms
The trans godmothers with bricks in their hands and the strength of softness in their flesh
While the police raided
While the church raged
While death and destruction
Have their way
So, too, do life and love
Because they knew
Because we know
Disconnecting from delight is deadly
Trusting in delight is a necessary spiritual practice of survival
We, queer lovers, make a future possible.
We need each other and we have each other.
We have and are enough.
Final Blessing and Prayer
A prayer from With All Your Heart an affirming Jewish Prayer book:
We thank You for the miraculous deliverance, for the heroism and for the triumphs in battle of our ancestors in other days, and in our time. In the wake of the civil rights movement lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people [and people of all identities] began to organize for the dignity and justice that all of us are due as human beings on this earth. Those who profane your name, claiming that they hate us in the name of God, rose up to criminalize us, pathologize us, brutalize us, and erase us. And You in your great mercy stood with us in the time of our troubles. You fought alongside us, vindicated us, gave us the courage to stand together, to open our eyes and the eyes of the world around us, to see that the freedom and the right to love belongs to all of your creations. You have given us strength to witness and create wonders, to be who we are and to love whom we love not only in the safety of our homes but outside in the light of the world, to live as [people of all faiths and no faiths] in the embrace of community, to sanctify our unions and celebrate ourselves before each other and before You. The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. May we never know shame again. Amen.
May the blessings of the Divine flow through you as you are made in the image of God and Queerly beloved! Go in peace!
With love and appreciation, and in the commitment to our shared values,
Rev. Eileen
Practicing Beloved Community at UCE 