PRIDE week communion
It's PRIDE month. For the last three years, June has been a really strange time in ministry for me. People often refer friends, relatives, and colleagues to talk through issues around identity and gender diversity. I get calls from people dissatisfied with their own church's stance who are trying to figure out steps to allyship. I get calls from parents trying to do the right things. But the most holy calls I get are from people from the LGBTQIA community, folks looking for hope after church rejection, spiritual trauma, and family rejection. These folks are brave: brave to recount the pain, brave to dare to accept themselves, brave to let themselves sense a glimmer of healing grace. Their stories are sacred, and I feel nothing but gratitude that I'm let into this sacredness. Recently I was asked by a group to provide a two-minute speech about the power of story-telling during a time of holy conferencing (the nice version of debate) at the gathering of Minnesota U