November 7, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I see first hand the results of the 12-Step ministry every time I meet someone in recovery from alcohol or drug addiction. As you probably know, Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the most important spiritual movement of the 20^th century. There is enormous transformative power in faith and solidarity to overcome addictions and its derivatives of loneliness, depression and powerlessness.

At the same time, I see first hand the power of addiction to keep addicts in its thrall. We have a man who has been visiting our church for months, who is semi-homeless and alcoholic. He admits he never met a beer he didn’t like, and he has been asking for money from members, and even taking coins out of our fountain, to save up for a quart. One Sunday afternoon he sat on the front porch directly in front of the church doors and got totally wasted.

I am still trying to reflect on the spiritual pain I feel after the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and make sense of why some people remain so rejecting, punitive and hateful toward gay and lesbian people. That’s when this analogy came to me.

Over the years, and especially in these most recent 5 months, I have seen first-hand the transformative power of honesty and love in and with the LGBT community. It begins with Step One: Coming Out to Self and Others. Sometimes, people who come out are summarily rejected, but as the years have gone by, more often I hear the stories of those whose lives took a decided turn for the better, with their families, friends, neighbors and even employers.

Two weeks ago I officiated for a wedding in which one of the grooms had come through a difficult period with his family after coming out. His aging parents at first rejected and disowned him. He is in recovery, by the way, and met his life partner—now husband—at an A.A. meeting.

It took time, but his entire family has come around. The accept him, and his loving relationship with his partner. And they all came from near and far to participate in their wedding ceremony, with his sisters and parents joyfully taking part in the final blessings.

People make enormous spiritual progress through honesty and love. It changes lives. This entire family, now united by marriage, has recaptured love and made enormous strides in spread understanding, goodwill and tolerance because of one son’s integrity and honesty. That is spiritual transformation.

Now we come to the political reality of LGBT people in a society which is wrenching back and forth between rights and no rights. The conservatives hotly and loudly call it a culture war. But I now see it from the positive side — the transformative power to change lives through love, honesty, integrity, patience and reconciliation. Some people — millions of them — “get it.” They have embraced the individuals they know among family, friends, neighbors or co-workers, they have ascended the learning curve about human sexuality, psychology, and civil rights, they have wrestled through the issues that made them uncomfortable, and they have grown spiritually.

But there are millions of others, led by religious power blocks, who think they are fighting a war. What they are fighting is their own addiction to hatred, to power and money, and to control. They are drunk on their own illusions of politics, race, money, marriage, and God. They would rather destroy relationships through estrangement and disowning those who are close them (every family in America is not that far away from someone who is lesbian or gay), than to grow spiritually through listening, patience, understanding, empathy, and love.

It is ironic that those on the reactionary side of things call this a culture war, when it is obviously a spiritual struggle they do not wish to face. I am betting my life on the ultimate triumph of love and reconciliation. And I apply my faith to this struggle, remembering the words of Jesus when people of power and bigotry crucified him: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

But in the meantime we have to continue to struggle for rights and for understanding with those who as yet have no interest in the spiritual transformation that could be theirs. Drunk with homophobia, they will not even take the first steps to understand. It is sad when they bring their drunkenness right to the front doors of the church.

—Pastor Dan Hooper

Posted in Lesbian/Gay Marriage, Homophobia, LGBT Christian, LGBT Rights, Recovery, Spirituality, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

October 2, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

“Dear friends, marriage is a legal relationship which is one of the foundations of community and society. It is, therefore, a public and civil relationship which expects all other people to honor and respect it, as our Supreme Court has now fully recognized. Marriage is also a spiritual relationship—a covenant of heart and soul, and a shelter for love and intimacy.”

These are bittersweet days as a church pastor. I know I could be spending more time fighting this stupid Proposition 8, which has too good a chance of passing on November 4 thanks to the hateful lies of the “religious reich.” But I am actually still swamped arranging for the marriages of lesbian couples and gay male couples. I have at least five arranged for this month.

They come in all sorts, sizes and shapes. A dedicated, loving lesbian couple, both of them active Roman Catholics, who can hardly approach their priest about getting married! An older male couple who wanted to secure their legal rights before a planned move out of state. A black and white couple, both of them in recovery. Thank God! A Christian–Jewish couple, who met at an A.A. meeting. Thank God again! And the sister of one of them is apparently coming all the way from Jerusalem to attend her brother’s wedding.

“God bless you and guide you in your faithful commitment to one another. God defend you and shelter you in your tender love for one another. God uphold you in all life’s challenges, and shower you with all life’s rewards, that you always find strength and delight in each other, and grow in love until your life’s end.”

I speak kindly to them about their plan to marry, and reassure them that both God and the community stands with them. We pick out readings, prayers, blessings and vows. And I recommend my new “custom” this past summer, of including the signing of the marriage license as the last ritual act during the ceremony itself. Why? Because we can! And so that the importance of this legal right is not lost on any of their guests, inviting their applause and approval of the really important reason they are coming to a same-gender wedding—just before they all get into a party spirit at the reception and forget how significant that license is.

But I am not getting enough time to volunteer in the “No on Prop 8″ campaign. At least I am reassured, during this proposition fight, that the California Attorney General’s office has already issued a legal opinion that, even in Proposition 8 passes, the marriages being done right now will remain valid. How much do we want to bet that will get litigated anyway? . . .

I started writing this weeks ago, but was interrupted. That marriage of the older couple has come and passed. When the arrived at the church door, the younger man was pushing his partner in a wheel chair. (Thank God our building entrances are completely step-free!) They wanted a very simple civil ceremony. But when it came time to exchange their vows, it took on a sacred character anyway. In order to hold hands and look at one another, the younger man simply knelt down on the floor next to the wheel chair.

“I (Name), take you (Name), to be my husband; to have and to hold from this day forward, in joy and in sorrow, I plenty and in want, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, as long as we both shall live.  This is my solemn promise.”

How can anyone argue that this kind of love and commitment are not valid or should not be recognized in the state of California?  I will continue to officiate over weddings big and small, modest or grand, as part of my campaign to defeat bigotry and homophobia.

“With confidence in the blessing of Almighty God, and by the authority given me by the State of California, I pronounce you spouses for life.”

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Lesbian/Gay Marriage, LGBT Rights, Public Affairs, Recovery, Ministry | Print | No Comments »

January 12, 2008 by Pastor Dan.

I just learned this morning of the death of someone I’d been trying to get closer to. He died apparently of a drug overdose after a drug binge—depressed?—that had cost him his job.

This news has triggered a lot of shock in me, and I found myself questioning our mutual friend hard, as if it were not possible, or somehow the news was not true.

He had a lot going for him, which makes this seem like a total failure of hope and grace. He was a Christian, knew his Bible well, was confident and enthusiastic about both his work and his children (although divorced), and knew the 12 Steps of recovery. He had come with a good friend to our Bible studies on numerous occasions, was affable and stable.

Something completely eclipsed my friend’s path to recovery, however, and snatched his life away.

And sadly—as so often happens—he shut others out when he was in his greatest need and hitting bottom in his greatest depression. I have learned that he refused to go into a detox and rehab facility, and was found dead in his home days later.

As a Christian teacher and Pastor, I feel a huge sense of defeat that I never got or found the right opening or opportunity to get closer to this man. Could I have played a role in redemption for him? Would I ever have been the one he might have called when he hit a low point in life?

It strikes me how often religion plays such a feeble role in the recovery and redemption of human life. Yes, he knew the Scriptures and could quote them as well as may lay people. But what happened? Where had the Christian faith let him down so that in successive moments of poor judgement and discouragement evil forces could pull him completely under?

The pull, and the destruction, of addiction is real and powerful. These are the demons of our times, and they are legion. Thanks to the law of supply and demand, they remain quite plentiful and available in our country. Drugs and alcohol are costly but not so prohibitive as to make anyone avoid them because of money. In any big city, drugs are especially easy to get.

What is not easy to come by is an absolutely confidence in God’s redemption and grace. This seems to be in short supply– and those who have it cannot always successfully reach those who long for it or need it the most.

And the recovery process is not for wimps. The Twelve Steps are not twelve wishes. They are hard, even demanding work. They require our attention over the long haul—for an entire lifetime—in order to grow in the spiritual strength that nothing can shake or damage or pull under.

As much as I feel defeat in this dark moment, my defeat tells me not to give up or become cynical. My effort—and all of our effort—is critically needed somewhere out there to chase the evil demons of life away, and to be a steady, reliable, unshakable friend for those who lose their nerve or their way. Probably more than anything, we need “street smarts” to understand the demons and to recognize their power.

Posted in Health, Faith, PRAYERS, Recovery, Ministry, Uncategorized | Print | No Comments »

September 28, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

In any conversation about fundamentalism, it is easy to argue about or make fun of their strict beliefs and manners: Biblical literalism, punitive rejection of sin and sinners (”hate the sin, beat up the sinner”), the dramatics of being born again and again, the political clout and cozy relationship with the Republican party, etc.

What is less often talked about openly is pain. Especially, the pain for those who have been raised in Christian sects or fundamentalist denominations who cannot stand the pain any longer. They suffer an enormous spiritual dissonance, often cannot make another Christian home, and go through a protracted period of depression, anger, etc. They have been abused as truthfully as Catholic children have been abused by predatory pedophiles in that church.

Only in the last few years have I really had to “face the music” with recovering fundamentalists. A number of gay men, especially, who have been curious enough about our ministry have trusted us enough to draw near. Some have stayed around; two in particular now refer to their former religion or former church in a tone of relief. Others cannot seem to snap out of the spell they have been put under, an after the initial curiosity has worn off, they disappear.

But where to? Back into the fundamentalist fold, the arms of a dysfunctional community that will eventually smother or strangle them spiritually?

David L. Rattigan runs a blog and a web site, www.leavingfundamentalism.org that has some very helpful material. Rattigan claims now to be a liberal Christian, and discloses his personal pilgrimage into and out of charismatic Christianity here. His pain included intellectual dishonesty, the lack of ability to spiritually perform what others expected or demanded (speaking in tongues, healings, prophesying), and the legalism and judgmentalism of fundamentalist Pentecostalism.

In one of his humorous writings, “I was wrong: God admits defeat and changes policy,” Rattigan parodies the supposed retreat of God from grace and forgiveness in Christ as a failed experiment over the last two thousand years, in the form of a news release about a fundamental change in Divine policy.

Excited seminary undergraduates in Louisville took to the streets yesterday afternoon to throw stones at passing sinners in celebration of the surprise decision. “This is a historic day,” a young sophomore told us proudly as he ducked to avoid a flying rock, apparently aimed at a transsexual standing a few yards away.

The greatest pain I have witnessed is in the lesbian/gay, bisexual and transgender community. Millions of us at some point in our early lives dug more deeply into our faith traditions, trying to (a) conform to other people’s expectations of goodness and uprightness; (b) find God’s promised love and limitless blessings; and (c) seek release from our feelings of inadequacy, shame, and sinful sexual inclinations.

But what we found was that we could never conform enough to other people’s views of holiness or perfection, that we were not released from our innate sexual orientation no matter how hard we tried/prayed/repented/abstained/hated ourselves, and that fundamentalist legalism always withheld or blocked God’s promised love and blessings. Others put conditions on God’s love that — if we only could hear the Gospel itself in all its clarity — God does not put on love, forgiveness and grace.

Maybe the only way in which the Gospel will ever be heard in this world is if Christians stop trying to booby-trap the compassion and love of God. (Rattigan now chuckles about fundamentalist warnings of “greasy grace” and “easy believism.”) The bottom line: Christ will come to any and all, out of his goodness and grace—if only we will get out of the way and stop trying to inflict pain on others in order to goad them to come to him.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Fundamentalism, Ecumenical Issues, LGBT Christian, Faith, Recovery, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

September 26, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

A professor at PLTS years ago said that “integrity means your whole life is made from one piece of cloth.” His thought stuck with me. I suppose because at that particular moment I was living a double life: a Lutheran seminary student struggling to keep up with graduate studies and two part-time jobs, and a lonely, emerging gay man trying to understand myself. Looking back at the two lives I was living, I really needed to know what happened that put me in such straits.

If life should be “knit from one piece of cloth,” it is not to be a patchwork of whatever scraps we have on hand, to put our so-called lives together.

Easier said than done. How does one put together a life? It is not like, at the outset, we can design the kind of human being we intend to become. Infants are 100% dependent upon adults. Children are impressionable. I was impressionable as a tot. So were you. Life impressed us, but it was the life we were actually living that made the dents, the impressions, day after day, not the life that we shoulda/coulda/woulda lived.

Some people can honestly blame their parents, their dysfunctional environments and upbringing and catastrophic experiences that warped them, twisted them or shaped them into what they are as adults. But many of us blame, to some degree, just because it’s a way of blowing off or deflecting self-criticism. “It was my hard, unforgiving dad. It was my alcoholic mother. They made me screwed up.” Yada yada ya.

The truth is that all of us have many opportunities for mid-course corrections. We have many chances to look inside and see if we are the people we wanted to be, or the people that we could be if we’d stop making excuses for our own failures or weaknesses.

Then we can blame the culture, if we need to blame something. Our times and our culture do not encourage reflection or inner maturity of any kind. In our culture, we are merely “customers” or “consumers” (to those who have something to sell to us), we are “constituents” or voters (to politicians who have something to sell to us), we are “unchurched” or “prospects” (to preachers who have something to sell to us), and we are “clients” (to lawyers, estate planners and undertakers who have something to sell to us). I could have a lot of fun playing out those metaphors even more.  The culture as a whole is trying very hard to get control of impressionable people, if we allow it to define us.

But the point is we can’t look to pop culture, celebrities, the media, elected officials, or even most religious gurus to help us define ourselves, re-invent ourselves or even understand who we really are inside. We have to look to ourselves.

I quoted Jesus (from John 3:7) a couple of days ago: “Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” Spiritual re-birth is the process of starting over from the inside out, so that our lives have the integrity we cannot have otherwise.

Spiritual growth is a uniquely personal thing. Not private. Not lonely: We don’t go it alone, because after all the Spirit of God is with us in the process of spiritual growth. The indwelling spirit works within and upon our own spirits to re-form us (reform us), to re-weave our lives as if from one piece of cloth.

But spiritual growth is personal and unique for each of us. It is the one thing about life for which we must accept full responsibility. If we have outlived the failures and the foibles of our parents, our upbringing and all the damage that adolescent peers have inflicted on us, we still have this incredible opportunity before us, like an open door, to change. To become. To grow. To seek integrity and to live it out.

God is with us. I am not talking about religious practices and customs. I am talking about deeply personal and interior growth, in that place in the human heart where God really dwells and works with us to become the people we are meant to be. You can do it. God help you.

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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September 25, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

This morning’s Calendar section of the Los Angeles Times reviews Rufus Wainwright’s Sunday concert at the Hollywood Bowl.  He re-created the 1961 Judy Garland concert at Carnegie Hall (for the last time, after doing it in New York, Paris and London).  It sounded like great fun—even as the reviewer acknowledged that Wainwright admitted a certain nervousness about it.

I don’t follow showbiz very closely, so paying attention to out gay singer/actor/composer Wainwright wasn’t high on my list.  But Gay.com has an undated interview with Wainwright that set me thinking:

[Interviewer Jack Shamama:] In a recent New York Times article entitled “Rufus Wainwright Journeys to ‘Gay Hell’ and Back,” you chronicle your struggle with drugs, your subsequent mental collapse and a recent trip to rehab.  Has that gotten you into any trouble — with your label, maybe?

Wainwright: No, not trouble with the label. I’m in dangerous territory in terms of the Right using the term “gay hell” as a brand of shampoo for gay people.  I understand that concern.  But I do believe that every gay man knows exactly what I’m talking about.  Anyone who thinks there isn’t a side to gay life that’s not dangerous with a drug culture that sort of forgets about the last 20 years is fooling himself.

Well, no, I’m not fooling myself.  I may have been in a sub-cultural fog not to realize fully that drug abuse has tripped and brought down so many others.  As a guy without an addiction problem, I naively wonder about why everyone who “makes it” in entertainment seems to follow the same downward path, to say nothing of the huge majority of gay men who are so easily seduced into drugs.  Do we need to have one tragedy after another—first HIV, then crystal meth—like a bad two-act play?

Wainwright’s affinity for Judy Garland is unfortunate.  She died in 1969 of a drug overdose after nearly 20 years of drug-induced health problems.   The outline of Wikipedia’s article on Wainwright is literally a 1-2-3 progression:
“1.1 The early years
1.2 Rise to fame
1.3 Addiction.” Uh oh.  From the article:

Wainwright became addicted to crystal meth in the early 2000s and temporarily lost his vision to overuse. [emphasis added.]  His addiction reached its peak in 2002, during what he described as “the most surreal week of his life.”  During that week, he played a drug addict in a cameo role in “Absolutely Fabulous”; spent several nights partying with the president’s daughter, Barbara Bush; enjoyed a “debauched evening” with his mother and Marianne Faithfull; sang with Antony of Antony and the Johnsons for Zaldy’s spring 2003 collection; and, throughout, experienced recurring hallucinations of his father . He decided shortly after that he “was either going to rehab or I was going to live with my father.  I knew I needed an asshole to yell at me, and I felt he fitted the bill”.

Seeking guidance, he telephoned his friend Elton John, who persuaded him to check in to rehab at the Hazelden Foundation in Minnesota.  He detoxed and underwent therapy at the facility; he has neither confirmed nor denied his current sobriety.

Two years ago, I told our interfaith gay/lesbian clergy association I didn’t know of anyone in my church with a crystal meth problem.  They didn’t believe me. That has now changed, sadly.  As a pastor, I face an overwhelming challenge:  to communicate unconditional love, but at the same time to communicate rejection of crystal meth.  But to admit, or even tout, that I never did have a drinking problem or a drug problem doesn’t win any admirers.  They may even revoke my gay card.

But “temporarily losing his vision to overuse”?  Are people nuts?  If we don’t communicate to our own that crystal meth is evil, it is like watching a war unfold in which all our comrades drop like flies.  It doesn’t take a crystal ball.  What is the point of LGBT rights in a culture where so many people won’t need any civil rights, or culture, because they are killing themselves?

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in Hollywood, LGBT Rights, Health, Public Affairs, Recovery | Print | No Comments »

September 24, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

Today I was re-arranging my books in the study. The LGBT books take about 3 shelves. It surprised me to find a number of titles that fit together so closely: Ron Eichberg’s Coming Out: An Act of Love, Christian de la Huerta’s Coming Out Spiritually, Chris Glaser’s Come Home!, O’Neill and Ritter’s Coming Out Within: Stages of Spiritual Awakening for Lesbians and Gay Men, and Kaufman and Raphael’s Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives.

I probably have more related titles somewhere.  These are enough to make the point, that gay men and lesbians have more to do than just announce and start enjoying their new consciousness of belonging to a sexual minority. Coming out entails a huge amount of psychic and spiritual homework:  to understand myself deeply, to make peace with my differentness, to prepare myself for battle with homophobia, to survive in a hostile world.

Hostility to LGBT people seems to be on the decline in the last few decades . . . until we remember that:

• well-funded right-wing groups are working tirelessly to deprive us and prevent us from exercising civil rights;
• hate crimes in general are declining somewhat but hate crimes against sexual minorities continue to rise;
• very few cities and states in the U.S. and few nations in the world provide the relative tolerance we experience now.
• well-known and well-funded religious leaders continue to espouse extremely vile attitudes against LGBT people—among them ex-preacher and televangelist Pat Robertson, Anglican archbishop Peter Akinola of Nigeria, and the current pontiff Benedict XVI, and of course many Muslim leaders.
• earlier historical periods of tolerance gave way almost overnight to periods of bigotry and extreme intolerance.

Coming Out of Shame is an extremely compelling although densely-written book.  Kaufman and Raphael are absolutely right in calling shame “a sickness of the soul.” But that does not mean a sinful state of being from which one must repent.  Shame is a condition most often imposed from the outside and then internalized.  Numerous components of shame are “assembled” inside of us.

“The principal forms of shame are discouragement, embarrassment, shyness, self-consciousness, inferiority, and guilt.”

Do any of these shoes fit you? We hold ourselves back because of shame. We set ourselves up for unnecessary failure.  We worry about pleasing people for the wrong reasons (”the best little boys in the world.”)  We self-eliminate in contests where shame could be used against us.  I know of several cases within the Church where keen and gifted persons withdrew their names from consideration for jobs where they could have done wonderful work, because of the reality that they could be exposed, shamed, destroyed, if their sexuality ever came to light.

And shame is one of those “gifts” that keep on giving until we learn to deal with our interior selves and to extract ourselves from shame. Until we come out of it.

Shame does not confirm guilt. Shame may be caused by the actions or reactions of other people toward us. But their actions or even reactions are not necessarily evidence of something objectively wrong in us or our behavior.  Our cross to bear is that we are still, in this 21^st century, expected to feel shame for things as immutable and ordinary as who we are, and how we were “wired” by our Creator. What appalls many right-wing fundamentalists (and energizes them politically) is that out-lesbian and gay people do not exhibit any shame.  Right-wing political action is an attempt not only to deprive us of liberties and rights but to re-shame us and drive us back into closets where we would remain alone and ashamed of ourselves.

National Coming Out Day is Thursday, October 11. “Take your next step” out of your closet.  The Human Rights Campaign has resources for you to create your own National Coming Out Day Video.  And HRC has a downloadable 23-page Guide to Coming Out.

But the reality of our lives and our times tell me there is a lot more homework to do after you come out. In some ways, the real coming out experience is only superficial unless it is a complete spiritual re-birth from the inside out.

“Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’”—Jesus, John 3:7

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

Posted in LGBT Christian, Fundamentalism, LGBT Rights, History, Recovery, Spirituality, Coming Out | Print | No Comments »

September 12, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

[Listen to this!]

I just got a phone call from an acquaintance of the church who used to periodically stop by and “look after” the two homeless people who lived in our parking lot. (They are still around our neighborhood, but no longer in the parking lot). She was concerned, because they had disappeared today. I assured her it was temporary. They will be back with the rolling cart within 24 hours.

It prompted a longer conversation, however, for this lady and I to talk about the problems of homeless people in general and this couple in particular. I brought her up to speed on the number of attempts we have made to get this couple into one of the shelters and the programs that stand ready to help them. They just won’t go.

But the situation underscores the truth that these individuals are free and independent human beings. No one can force them to go into a shelter if they are still considered mentally competent to make their own decisions. In truth, they do have mental “issues,” but I think they would be evaluated by any qualified professional as still being able to make their own decisions. The down side is that they make bad decisions. The current bad decision this summer was to pass up offers of shelter and shower in order to remain free and unfettered on the sidewalk.

All manners of life’s problems grow in the soil of bad decisions freely made.  Alcoholism doesn’t usually start as a drinking problem. Alcohol just irrigates life’s many other problems (pre-existing conditions!), rather than washing them away.  Substance abuse and other self-destructive behaviors, prostitution, poverty, crime, fraud and racketeering, and downward-spiraling nutrition and health, etc., all come from making bad decisions. Theologian and best-selling author John Bradshaw  (Healing the Shame That Binds You, Homecoming, Bradshaw on the Family) finds shame growing in this soil as well.  Psychologist Nathaniel Brandon (The Disowned Self, Six Pillars of Self-Esteem) knows what poor self-esteem does to contribute to the same list of tragic failures.

Life’s bad decisions play out as both spiritual terrors and physical catastrophes. We cannot separate mind, body and spirit. Is mental illness the cause, or the effect, of so many people living on the streets in Hollywood?

Christians and our churches often fail completely to address these inter-connected problems, whose roots are entangled in everything human.  Christian thought often addresses the “bad decisions” of life with words such as “sin” and “evil.”  But there is great resistance nowadays to hearing these words used to describe realities which are far more complex.  Some of life’s poorest decisions for an individual may properly be labeled as “sinful,” but once those decisions play out, and trigger other unintended consequences, does it matter any more if the cause was sin, or errors in judgment, low self-esteem, victimization, bad breaks, or the prejudices of other people?

As time passes, I find it harder and harder to say that “repentance” is a cure-all for what ails the people of this world. Yet I know that “redemption” continues to describe what God wants for all of us. The answer to life’s bad decisions is God’s good grace, generously poured out.  It is God’s will to love and redeem the world no matter what—the homeless, the addict, those who become trapped in the errors and excesses of sexuality, money, power and other gratifications. God sends us out to bring hope and healing. So get going!

— Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

This post may also be heard with Windows Media Player here:  audioblog091207.mp3

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August 29, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I began journaling some years ago–actually in the 80s. Daily, I took a small spiral-bound notebook with me to lunch and I wrote, much of it about what it means to be gay and Christian—and to hold those together in a world that wants them to be ripped apart.  When it got full, I started numbering the notebooks.  I still have them.  It was a neat and tidy way to accumulate my thoughts and at least have them down. But as PCs got better and better, it became so much better to jot down things at the keyboard. I found that my rate of speed on a keyboard was about equal to my rate of speed in the brain. Handwriting is too slow.

But as each successive hard drive filled up (and when I changed jobs), keeping track of what I had written became more problematic. I lost things, or at least misplaced them electronically for long periods of time. I couldn’t keep them organized. Worse, through the mischief of electronic demons, pieces of files became scattered on the hard drive, creating fragments of thought ripped out of their context, or enthusiastic ideas now cut off from their conclusions. The naughty hard drive became the land fill of thought, like dementia for the organized mind.

The blog is today’s journal. I am experimenting with it as my own form of organization, under key topics which are important to me. Plus, it allows me to link to other people, ideas, computers, and to my own mind in a way which creates new insight through the effort to find and make links.

Searching my hard drive for material I have treated, I see that five years ago I did a lot of idea-collecting and writing about coming out from a Christian perspective. Entire books could be written on this. (Have been written?)

What set me thinking was a bit of research David Plummer mentions in One of the Boys [p207].  Stay with me here. He says,  

“Coming out” is often described as part of gay identity formation. The “coming-out” process . . . appears to be constituted because of homophobia and, as such, testifies to the power and pervasiveness of homophobia. As Garnets and colleagues wrote, “coming out becomes a process of reclaiming disowned or devalued parts of the self, and developing an identity into which one’s sexuality is well-integrated” (Garnets, Herek, and Levy, 1993: 583). [boldface added] . . . Once again, the relevance of the “closet” for this research is that it is a place to hide and is constructed by homophobia.

“Reclaiming disowned or devalued parts of the self.” There is a link here to the spiritual work of recovery, whether from substance abuse, shame, a dysfunctional family history, or internalized homophobia.

It is like my old hard drive, with fragments and pieces of files, and the new enthusiasm of developments in one’s life, cut off from its conclusions. Thoughts are lost. Sanity is lost. The links to other human beings are cut off. The closet is a place of solitary confinement as much as supposed safety.

Coming out is the reclaiming of lost or devalued parts of myself.  This is actually why I started keeping a journal in the 80s and now a blog in the 00s.  To reclaim pieces of myself which were disowned or devalued.  And distorted by fear and shame.  To come out is to re-order my dignity as a human being, and to reconnect what had been scattered or chopped up and discarded by homophobia.

Presbyterian author Chris Glaser, in Coming Out to God: Prayers for Lesbians, Gay Men, Their Families and Friends (Westminster, John Knox Press, 1991) has a wonderful prayer about the closet. It’s on the “Prayers of Others” page.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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August 27, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I’ve been spending more and more time thinking about recovery. (I’m not thinking about the stock market, the housing sector, New Orleans two years after hurricane Katrina, or the White House after Rove and Gonzales.)

Thanks to my friends in recovery from substance abuse or other forms of addiction, and the 12-Step programs which populate our church building each week, I have been thinking a lot about personal recovery.

Alcoholics Anonymous has been called the most powerful spiritual movement of the 20^th century. I had never thought of it as being a spiritual movement — probably because I’d never been exposed to its work, its mission, its people. I didn’t have a drinking problem, so it was something I paid little attention to.

Then I learned that A.A. grew out of the Oxford Group, which came from a couple of visionaries including a Lutheran pastor and missionary. I began to see the tap root of recovery programs was planted deeply in spiritual soil.

And I met Luke – who was running a small, introspective A.A. meeting at church. We would talk far into the night after his Tuesday meeting had concluded. I learned to recognize the signs of an addictive personality within myself. I think he used the term “dry drunk” of himself. After he sobered up he still had all the bad traits: non-responsibility for his own life, blaming others, etc.

It is slowly sinking in to this preacher’s mind that all people suffer from similar, related symptoms. Many people refuse to accept responsibility. Many people blame. Many people distance themselves from intimacy, trust, forgiveness. Many of us are “faking it.”

In the words of the apostle Paul, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) But we need to talk about this stuff, even without the trappings of theology—sin, forgiveness, hell and damnation, heaven and salvation. Those words are useful metaphors to some. But millions of people cannot relate to God-talk who can relate to innate human spirituality, and struggle with where it becomes blocked, wounded, starved.

Recovery programs and 12-Step programs are well-organized. Their sites and literature are all over the internet. The first two steps of A.A. is similar, I guess, to the admission of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:17 ). “When he came to his senses, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired men have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father . . .’”

How hard it is for some of us to come to our senses! Is there such a thing as “Step 0″ in the process? That point before we have come to our senses? When we’re not sure there’s a better way to live? Cynically doubting that tomorrow could be any better than yesterday?

In John’s Gospel, Jesus encounters a sick man (paralyzed for 38 years). The most fascinating thing about this miracle story is that Jesus meets this man stuck at Step 0: he was not quite ready to admit that his illness was an addiction.  He blamed others for his pitiful life circumstances of begging, etc.   Jesus asks him (John 5:6) the fundamental spiritual question that he asks of every human being: “Do you want to be well?”

That is not a no-brainer question. It’s very confronting, very threatening.  It would change your life if you can answer it honestly.  For millions of us who are stuck spiritually, we are not yet convinced we should desire to move on. We have made our beds and they’re comfortable (addictions, broken relationships, cynicism, poverty or even homelessness, dead-end jobs, self-pity). We get by, without ever expecting that life could be much more rewarding, or that today could be infinitely better than yesterday.

But how do we get from Point A to Point B, or from Step 0 to Step 1? Scripture tells us that we are all saved by grace. Think about that one. We are all saved from ourselves, our ruts, our failures, our addictions, our pettiness, our cynicism by grace alone. The more we think about recovering from these things, the more we would name it grace and salvation.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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