The Reverend Gail Geisenhainer, minister of the Unitarian Uiversalist Fellowship of Vero Beach, Florida, stepped forward to deliver a sermon titled "We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest." ...
"I was forthrightly evangelized into Unitarian Universalism," she began, to scattered cheers from the congregation. "I was 38 years old, living in Maine, and driving a snow plow for a living, and feeling very sorry for myself when a friend invited me to his church. He said it wasdifferent." Laughter greeted this remark.
"I rudely refused," Geisenhainer continued. "Truth be told, I cursed his church. 'All blanking churches are the same,' I said, 'They say they're open but they don't want queer folk.' But my friend persisted. He knew his church was different.... He assured me I could come and not have to hide any element of who I was."
"I went. Oh, mama, I went, and I dressed so carefully for my first Sunday. I spiked my short hair straight up into the air. I dug out my oldest, heaviest work boots with the chain saw cut on one toe that showed the metal underneath the black leather.... There would not be one shred of ambiguity that Sunday." The congregation laughed sympathetically. "Those people would embrace my full Amazon glory, or they could go fry ice."
"I bundled up every shred of pain" that she carried as an out lesbian, "and I lumbered into that tiny meeting house on the coast of Maine," said Geisenhainer. "I expected the little gray-haired ladies in the foyer to step back in fear. Instead, those ladies stepped forward as I entered." The congregation erupted into cheers and applause.
"They never even flinched," said Geisenhainer. "They called me 'dear.' It was soodd." The people of that congregation invited Geisenhainer to stay for coffee after the worship service. "I stayed for coffee. I stayed for Unitarian Universalism."
Geisenhainer became a part of that congregation, but the way was not always smooth. One Sunday, during the congregational sharing of joys and concerns, one woman in the congregation stood and spoke about how she thought all homosexuals should be segregated from the rest of society, and how they were not fully human. Geisenhainer left that worship service as quickly as possible.
"But I went back," she said. "I was learning my first lesson about being in covenant. When things get ugly, we do not walk away." This statement was greeted with applause and cries of "All right!"
"Mercy, how we yearn to walk away," she continued. "That's OK, but our covenant calls us to abide and to work things through together."
The next Sunday, Geisenhainer did go back to that small Maine church. That next Sunday, during the sharing of joys and concerns, people rose to speak who had never spoken before during the worship service. "Person after person rose to announce that not everything we heard last week was true or representative of who we are as a Unitarian Universalist congregation."
However, said Geisenhainer, members of that congregation did not demonize or dehumanize the woman who had made homophobic remarks. "They did not start calling her names: that homophobe, or that gay basher," Geisenhainer said. "None of that happened."
Quoting the words of Gotama Buddha, Geisenhainer said, "Never does hatred cease by hating in return." Then she added, "My friend was righthis church was different. He did forget to tell us, however, that some Sundays we could be in for a wild wild ride."
Geisenhainer said she was sometimes frustrated by the pace of change in that Maine congregation, as they worked towards full and open acceptance of gay and lesbian persons. But in the end, she realized that it was best to keep everyone in relation, in covenant, rather than to issue denunciations.
Referring to the theology of Martin Buber, author of I Thou, Geisenhainer said, "I had walked into that meetinghouse as a bruised and fighting 'I' but in time that turned into a 'we'."
Going back to the moment when the woman had risen to make her comments about gay and lesbians persons, Geisenhainer recalled that it felt like everything stopped, including her breathing. That Sunday, she fled the church immediately at the conclusion of the service. A man held the door open for her as she left, and said, "See you next week."
"Was he mad, was he impaired, has he not heard what that woman had said?" Geisenhainer said. "It was at once a question and an invitation.... The man's voice, his soft smile, his gentle tone, his direct eye contact.... Ours was an I-Thou encounter, the very thing I had been seeking. It was an acceptance of the reality that I might not come back." And by that man saying that, Geisenhainer found that she could start breathing again.
"Within our religious community, I feel that we have all too many breath-stopping moments," she continued. "In some congregations, I fear we have grown all too accustomed to this heavy artillery of meanness."
"What spiritual practice and discipline do you employ to get back on track when you have been stopped by meanness and bigotry?" she asked. She encouraged those in the congregation to develop such spiritual practices and spiritual disciplines.
