OK, maybe I will stay with the Catholic Church. Gee that worship service at MCC was so uncomfortable for me. I think because I felt like I did not have anything else in common with the others in the congregation, despite my sexual orientation. Perhaps that answers the question of why I was not comfortable. Part of me may feel guilty for homophobia, but feeling uncomfortable around people who have almost nothing in common with you does not implicate me as a homophobe, I would argue. Shit. I cannot believe I walked out of there. I could not sit there anymore.
One the way home, I re-examined what is important to me in a church. First, I value the scripture enough to the point that I would like the priest or minister to engage the congregation in more of a challenging way.... bringing in viewpoints that strengthen our faith, and allow us to open our minds. In Catholicism, at least in my experience, good priests will bring in a rich context of Church history and theology and academic approaches to the Bible in order to really dissect, reflect, and deliver the meanings and the Word of God in the modern world context.
Although I did appreciate the sermon today, about forgiveness; and I felt he had a good message, and was a very good-hearted man... I really could not get into it. I literally left toward the end of the service. I was waiting on baited breath for more Liturgy, for Holy Communion... for communal repetition of prayer. It was not there. I felt almost an emptiness, despite the spirit which obviously blesses the very people of that congregation.
In a very real way, I do not feel like I can find a home as a unique homosexual... I am truly caught somewhere in between the gay and the straight world. The experience I had at the service this morning feeds straight int what I may label as the source of my homophobia..... being surrounded by people I cannot relate to. Perhaps prejudices source from that.......... the ability or the refusal to find common ground between groups or individuals. I truly had a visceral response.. an uncomfortable feeling brewing in my body.. which I cannot deny. Honestly, I feel a bit guilty about that.... I mean, shouldn't I have it in my heart to open myself to others? I think this is the tensions we feel as individuals and as a society in accepting others of different cultures. We feel uncomfortable and do not know what to do.
So, is my walking away from this experience with a refusal to go back, a source of intolerance? I'm not sure. I still can't tell why I feel the way I do. How can a man caught between gay/straight feel at home somewhere, if they cannot fully adopt either the homo or the hetero culture? It leaves me feeling very uneasy, and possibly in a quandry about how our society deals with the continuum between homosexuality and heterosexuality. In fact, the prejudice can go the other direction too... where homosexuals begin to harbor an anger or resentment toward the heterosexual world. This too is not right. How do we find middle ground?
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