Making Queer Sacred

Contrary to popular belief religion isn't theology, per se, but is the system through which communities congeal their knowledge and intuitions and hunches and successful theories about life and rules and morals and transcendent experiences into a coherent vision, and then continually reinforce that vision with ritual and communal reaffirmation. It's the magic art that glues life together and makes it sacred, and it's helped us survive through thousands of generations of evolutionary and social history. For good or for ill, religion is something that people and communities do, and I think need to do, in order to feel whole. Some of us have a stronger religious impulse than others just like some of us have a stronger artistic impulse than others, but like doing and appreciating art and music, there's something very natural about being religious. (That's what I'm on about when I say I'm religious. I'm a ritualist and a communitarian, and probably a little bit of a liturgical artist. I'm a theologian to the extent that most people are, but that's not the same thing as being religious.)

That's why I get really excited about things like our Pride Eucharist last night. Not a huge group, but 100 or so folks with lots of different theologies, but one ritual and communal affirmation that we're all in this together - cementing that idea, and making it sacred. We're moving in some positive directions around here, it seems. Would that it would continue. We need to make some new things sacred these days.