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

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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

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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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August 2, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

My partner and I have been about the psychic homework of re-constructing lost relationships. It is both spiritually moving and painful, rewarding and treacherous.

I will not talk about his psychic work, but my own. For one thing, my church Council has basically ordered me to attend the up-coming Churchwide Assembly next week. I am going to “put a face on the issue” of LGBT pastors serving in the Lutheran Church.

But it’s my face I am taking to Chicago, and it promises to be both rewarding and treacherous. When I was previously active in the ordained ministry, prior to 1988, I was known among a wide circle of people in Southern California, and hopefully well-regarded. No scandals, no missteps. The closet door was closed to all but the most trusted friends.

Then I was outed, and in a matter of months the rumor mill got to the Bishop’s ear. He was privately “supportive” but unwilling to defend me publicly. My ministry went down in flames in a matter of weeks. I vowed to myself and my partner that I would never go back into the closet even if it meant I never returned to the Lutheran ministry.

For sixteen years I worked in other jobs, some of them challenging enough in their own right. Then came downsizing in the new economy, and my second career also went down in flames.

The psychic homework that began then is still going on, as the Spirit led me to reconstruct my life, or re-invent myself, all over again. When I was surprisingly called back to the ministry in 2004 by a congregation willing to take risk of discipline upon itself in order for us to work together, the psychic homework of reconstructing lost relationships took a huge step forward. Spiritually, both moving and painful, both rewarding but treacherous. As another pastor (not gay) said to me, “Dan, you’ve done very well in handling rejection in the past. But now you have to learn to handle acceptance.”

So the work continues as I face the Churchwide Assembly and prepare to put my face in the room with people from whom I had hid for many years, or who will only see my face connected to a rainbow stole and a social controversy. It is humbling and frightening to take this kind of risk. It reminds me of a book by a Jesuit, Powell I believe, called “Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am?” This formative question came to him in a counseling session when a man answered it so succinctly: “Because you may not like who I am, and it’s all I’ve got.”

The psychic work — spiritual work — is to put myself out there, the only self that I’ve got, not knowing whether anyone will like who I am. Whether I will learn some new ways to handle acceptance, or be reminded of old ways I’ve handled rejection.

—Pastor Dan Hooper, Los Angeles

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July 19, 2007 by Pastor Dan.

I am homeless, but I want a home of my own. I see the mansions on the hill— big, magical, luxurious, beautiful. I want to live there. But, I know I cannot, without something that, obviously, I am without … money. In effect, to have a mansion on the hill, or even an apartment at the bottom of it, I still need money! I don’t really need good credit, or creative financing. I wouldn’t have to borrow at all, if I just had money!

Maybe I could rent a mansion, but I would need to have the first and last months’ rent, plus the security deposit. I have nothing—so that’s out. But one way or another, to live in that mansion I would need cold, hard, cash money.

In fact, the lack of it is why I am homeless. Out here I am lost. It is unsafe, it’s filthy. The nights are frightening; the days are long and hot. I cannot protect myself or defend myself or save my own skin. I am always hungry, and I’m afraid I will become sick, living this way.

So, to get money, I would have to work —work very hard—and I’d have to save and hold on to every dollar I can, until I could afford to buy my way up to the mansion on the hill. It takes lots and lots of money, so I would probably spend my whole life on the streets, without shelter or safety or hygiene or self-care, just to save up the money to have that mansion before I die.

But, now I have met someone—maybe he’s a real estate broker or something—who says he can put me in that mansion on the hill today. He says I don’t even need money. I don’t know whether to believe him or not, because he says that all you really need to live in the mansion on the hill is not money, but … the key. Yeah, right! and I’m thinking, you have to have money to get the key. Duh! This broker’s name is Jesus.

It seems like it is too good to be true, because Jesus tells me to follow him, up to this mansion! He says that when we get there, the key will be there for me, and I can walk right in and live in the mansion on the hill. I don’t believe him, because you have to earn the money, whether you buy or rent, before you get the key. Hey, landlords even want a key deposit!—that’s more money! But he says, “No, that’s not true. Believe me,” he says, “I have the key to that mansion on the hill. Follow me. C’mon, right now.”

But who am I? I have trouble believing him. I am a homeless bum, a failure, a loser. It’s not just that I don’t qualify for a mortgage or have the money to buy a mansion. I really don’t deserve to live in that mansion, you know? So I think he’s just “yanking my chain.”

He tells me, “Nah, man. You deserve a better life. You deserve to live in a mansion.” “Are you kidding?” I say. “I don’t deserve that mansion. I just wish I had it.”

“No, you deserve it.”

“Who says, man?” I say.

“I say you deserve it,” he says, “and that makes it so.”

And you know what else he says? (This is too fantastic to think about.) Look, I mean even if I had the key—right?—I don’t own the place. The owner would eventually catch me and throw me out!

This guy is too much, I think! This real estate broker, this Jesus guy, says, “There are a lot of mansions on the hill, not just the one for you. So tell your friends, because the same key opens them all!” And, maybe this guy Jesus is a nut case, because he says, “make as many duplicate keys as you want!”

And while I’m trying not to laugh in his face, then he says, “Believe me, you and all your homeless friends can live on the hill in those mansions because I own them all, and I say it’s okay. C’mon! Follow me! Believe me!!”

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” —Ephesians 2:8–10

— Pastor Dan Hooper

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