Tom Moon, MFCC
Lately gay people have been quite a pain in the ass at church.
It seems that
increasing numbers of us area actually participating
in the
goings-on there on the outrageous assumption that we have every right
to do so. Worse yet, we just can't seem to be polite and
tasteful about it.
We do things like hold hands with our lovers right there in front of
God and
everybody, demand that the churches bless our unions and even
expect
them to ordain openly gay ministers. In times past even conservative
churches were willing to let us in, as long as we were closet cases or
abject penitents struggling with our sinful natures. But most
churches
haven't a clue what to do with gay people who see no reason to be
sneaky
or guilty about it.
We are in a time
in our collective development when gays and lesbians in
increasing numbers are claiming their right to spiritual life. We have
created our own religious institutions, such as the Metropolitan
Community
Church, which impact every aspect of our community life. We have
organizations for gay Catholics and protestants, Jews and
Buddhists.
We have created our own twelve-step culture. We are involved
in studying
A Course in Miracles and Native
American spirituality. We are billys and
radical faeries. We practice yoga, meditation, and shamanism.
We have
become a visible influences in every single form of new and traditional
spirituality.
Opinion is split
as to the value of all this. Critics remind us that the
churches, more than any other social institution, have reviled and
attacked
us. Isn't it self-destructive and homophobic, they ask, for
us to keep
returning, like moths to the flame, to organizations which despise us?
There is an
analogous split within psychology about the value of spirituality.
In the "scientific" camp are those who see it as a relic of
our prescientific
past. The most well-known proponent of this point of view was Freud,
who
argued that religion is a neurotic symptom -- a projection of infantile
fantasies of the all-protecting parent onto the cosmos. He
believed that
maturity was only
possible for those who renounce such delusions and
face their essential aloneness in a meaningless universe.
The dissenters in
psychology argue that the need for spiritual life is not a
form of pathology, but an innate need in the human psyche, and that
true
maturity requires that we develop it. The most articulate
proponent of this
point of view was William James, whose classic The
Varieties of Religious
Experience, attempted to study
spiritual experience empirically.
James' studies
convinced him that the "sense of presence" of a spiritual
reality beyond what the five senses reveal is a common human
experience.
Experiences of personal revelation, communion, sense of meaning and
oneness with a larger whole are common among all peoples. And
he
believed that these events have powerful effects. They unify
the personality,
create a sense of safety and peace, lift people out of despair, and
confer
a capacity for zest and for heroic action. James concludes
that the need for
spiritual fulfillment is as fundamentally biological as sex and
hunger.
Philosophically, he argues that where there is smoke there is
fire. That is,
something which exerts such a potent influence on us must itself be
real
and potent. He saw the power of spiritual experience as evidence for
the
reality of a spiritual dimension in the universe. Prayer and
meditation, in
his view, are not empty rituals but "a process wherein work is really
done,
and spiritual energy flows in and produces real effects, psychological
or
material, within the phenomenal world." Whatever we think of
this point
of view, it does have the merit of encouraging us not to dismiss our
spiritual needs contemptuously.
The dangers of
spirituality are real and well-known. There are the
dangers of
intellectual suicide in the name of faith; of destructive
dependency and sacrifice of individuality; and the dangers of bigotry;
and intolerance that identification with a self-righteous in-group
fosters.
But the benefits
are also real. Spiritual life can be an antidote to despair
and meaninglessness, which are potent dangers for gay people in the
AIDS epidemic. It can unify the personality, provide
direction and coherence
to life, and nourish high ethical ideals. It cannot banish
suffering and loss,
but it can help us bear it with maturity and courage.
Spirituality encourages
us to look below the surface of things, and points to an abiding
reality
unaffected by the flux of life and death.
There are some
who believe that being gay itself involves having unique
spiritual gifts. In his excellent book Gay
Spirit, Mark Thompson expresses
this point of view: "I would define gay people as possessing
a luminous
quality of being, a differentness that accentuates the gifts of
compassion,
empathy, healing, interpretation, and enabling. I see gay
people as the
in-between ones; those who can
entertain irreconcilable differences,
who are capable of uniting opposing forces as one; bridge builders who
intuit the light and dark in all things."
Whether or not
this is correct, it must surely be closer to the truth than
the idea that we are freaks who were never meant to be and who have
no natural place in the family of life. Too many gay people
have lived lives
of spiritual weightlessness, as if they really were outsiders not only
in
relation to their own culture but to the whole universe. The flowering
of gay
spirituality puts an end to centuries of that kind of
alienation. Gay people
are returning to the churches, not as beggars at the door, but as
self-respecting men and women who are coming home to claim their
heritage.
---
Tom Moon is a
psychotherapist in private practice in San Francisco.