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Originally Published in the Castlegar News on June 22, 2023 (A27).

I can’t remember when I first heard Jay Hulme’s poem, “Jesus at the Gay Bar.” 

The reader, as I recall it, was Irish, but the poet is from Leicester. And so I have been on a search to figure out where I first heard the poem, who read it, and under what circumstances. Perhaps none of these details matter so much as the poem and the way it tore open my heart. 

He’s here in the midst of it—
right at the centre of the dance floor
robes hitched up to His knees
to make it easy to spin

At some point in the evening
a boy will touch the hem of His robe
and beg to be healed,
beg to be anything other than this

and He will reach his arms out
sweat-damp and weary from dance.
He’ll cup the boy’s face in his hand
and say, 

               My beautiful child
there is nothing in this heart of yours
that ever needs to be healed. 

This June, and throughout the summer, many people across our province will celebrate Pride. 

What began as a necessary protest movement has shifted and evolved over the decades. Some places have domesticated the event, seeking to make it family-friendly. In other places, events have been taken over by corporations attempting to appeal to a wider audience by selling rainbow-flavoured kombucha (or whatever). 

And yet, Pride and its spirit of resistance against injustice and oppression remains just as important today as it was at the Stonewall uprising of 1969. We don’t have to look south of the border towards the increasing number of jurisdictions passing anti-trans legislation to see why.

Here in the Kootenays we see the ways in which anti-queer and anti-trans protests and actions are being emboldened. We can see the ways some feel safe to threaten their 2SLGBTQIA+ neighbours all the while hiding behind the false flags of free speech and religious freedom. It’s a stark reminder that hatred will find any convenient cover to sustain itself. In the end, we all have the choice to seek human flourishing—or not. 

As for me and my congregation, we choose to proclaim love above all.

The beauty and the challenge of living in small communities like ours is that everyone seems to know your business. Who you are, who you’re related to, who your friends are, what you’ve done. This can make it hard—scary even—to come out. For those coming out who cling to their faith, the challenges can be even greater. 

The power of Jay Hulme’s poem rests on the young man’s assumption that Jesus—like many church people today—will demand that he single handedly undermine the reality of his biology and lived experience. It rests on the assumption, drilled into him from birth, that there is something defective, something wrong, something unlovable about his sexuality or identity. 

The power of this poem—indeed the powerful good news of this poem—is that none of these assumptions are true. What the young man finds when he touches the hem of Jesus’ robe, when Jesus cups the boy’s face in his hands, is neither shame nor condemnation, but love. Above all, love. 

We religious folk bicker an awful lot about the truth and who’s got it. And yet, the scriptures that talk about “the way, the truth, and the life,” are the very same ones that remind us that we don’t always see the whole picture. At best, we see pale reflections in the mirror. 

What then do we have to hold onto? The apostle Paul suggests we have at least three: “faith, hope, and love,” he says. And then he continues (and with this I wholeheartedly agree), “the greatest of these is love.” 

My greatest hope for this community is that we are, and that we are always becoming a community of love. 

May we care for our neighbours across any lines that might otherwise divide us. May we look for the divine spark in each others’ eyes. May we find that spark in places expected and unexpected. And may we celebrate the beauty of humanity in its rainbow of God-given diversity, now and in the days to come.