Processing Pride by Dax Franklin-Hicks

As I sat in the sanctuary at church this morning, my eyes went to the rainbow alter in the front, lavishly decorated to hold space for and affirm LGBTQIA+ lives for Pride month. I had a sudden flash from years ago. I was around 21 years old, filled with shame and secrets and sitting on a pew much like I was sitting on this morning. Only then, I was surrounded by people from whom I was desperate to receive acceptance but needed to hide a large part of me. I can still feel what that shame felt like in my body, the tension in my stomach. I felt like I was a person constantly waiting to be found out, earnestly praying that somehow God would free me from being… me.

I didn’t have a lot of language for what it was within my being that made me feel so different to the person next to me. I did not allow myself to have the complete thought that I was queer, that I was trans. Even having the thought of being those “things” was too sinful to manage at the time. I had, however, swallowed the message that something was wrong with me, a message worsened by a practice called “reparative therapy”. My very breath and right to be was constantly challenged by people who claimed to live in God’s love.

I was freed of this group of people when I did find the language for my sexuality and began to find the courage to live out my gender more fully. The response from my church was swift, sure, and traumatic. I was disfellowshipped, a painful and archaic practice of shunning. The minister prayed for godly sorrow to bring about repentance. He prayed I would suffer so much in this life, I might return to God. I thought my grandmother who developed cancer soon after this was a casualty of my sin. They had done a number on my psyche and every move I made was somehow shadowed by their judgment and certainty of my damnation.

24 years later, even though I am no longer at the mercy of these teachings, they still are with me, so much so that Pride month does not always feel like a time of celebration, but one of process. I have done a great deal of internal work with affirming, loving, present people through the years. I have been surrounded by individuals who live into the call to love, to move beyond their own comfort zone, to challenge themselves to know others rather than to fear those that are different from them. So much of that damaging theology has been sifted through and turned over and yet I can still feel what it was to want to die simply because I was surrounded by people who believed I shouldn’t exist. That does something to a soul and that is something I am still grappling with today.

I have found safe space in a church to do this grappling and that amazes me. There are times that I tune into the surroundings when I am there and think, “What am I doing in a church again?” In the early days I would shake my head in disbelief to find myself here. Now I shake my head in wonder at the healing that has come to make this space feel pretty safe for me outside of a few trips back in my memories. I know that the décor and the care of stating welcome is a huge part of that sense of safety.

This church that I found is the reason I am writing to you today.  I got to meet Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson through my church nearly a year ago. We invited her to bring a message to us on Juneteenth. My church devotes every Sunday in June to celebrating the belovedness of LGBTQIA+ lives and we asked if she would come and share a message on intersectionality of self.

This congregation is made up predominantly of cisgender, heterosexual, white individuals over the age of 75. A good deal of the work of this congregation is education, self-examination, confession, and willingness to create a more loving and accepting place in which we do not perpetuate further harm with each other. This is a call that weighs on me as a leader in the congregation and one that I do not take at all lightly. Thankfully, there are many others among the congregation that feel the same.

It is, though, a heavy ask of a black, lesbian minister to come share a message of vulnerability with a congregation of this make-up on Juneteenth. In a conversation over zoom in preparation prior to the sermon, Dr. Jackson asked why this church specifically was taking on the work of de-centering whiteness. I thought for a moment and then answered as honestly as I could, “I think they see that if we don’t do this work, if we don’t reckon with the harm of whiteness in our congregation, then we will die.”

She paused thoughtfully. With warmth and clear regard, she said to me, “That’s certainly one reason some are brought to this work. I wonder how far that reason will take you without moving to a desire to alleviate suffering.”  I felt this statement in every part of me. It shifted me that day and continually shifts me as I reckon with my own whiteness in a world that created this category simply for the purpose of harming Dr. Jackson and ensuring my privilege, a system that still exists and perpetuates itself today.

Are we doing this work for our own survival? What would happen if that shifted to a desire to alleviate the suffering of the person sitting next to us? How much of our healing is tied up in our willingness to become a healing presence to another?

I can tell you that the times in my life that I have suffered the most have been alleviated by being able to be with another person who was in pain. I don’t understand fully why that is but there is a spiritual alchemy that happens in that place of absolute vulnerability. I can heal in openness with others more fully than I can heal in shame and isolation. And that’s rough because if I am being fully honest here, I don’t like needing other people.

Sitting in the pew this morning, listening to our minister who embodies intersectionality in his own being, I processed yet again what it is to be queer and trans in America. I sat with the weight of the work of becoming a safe place that doesn’t put whiteness at the center of being. I thought of all the ways we are trying to stretch as a congregation and wondered, “Is it enough?” I must have fidgeted as I often do when I am uncomfortable inside.

My wife reached for my hand and took it gently. She alleviated my suffering with her gentle, steady presence, her surety of being, reminding me that the question nestled in the midst of all the questions we are asking on this way is simply: How can I love you better than I have before?