Week 8 | The Great Communion | Pre-Conference Devotionals

I was very excited to choose the theme for this year’s conference: The Great Communion. As a seminary- trained psychotherapist, I find it incredibly important to place emphasis not only on who we are as God’s LGBTQ+ beloved children, but also as relational people who are made for communion. In fact, we not only find stability in communion, we grow because of it.

To grow relationally means that we also grow spiritually. Relational and spiritual growth are inextricably connected. Loving is both a spiritual practice and spirituality at work through us; an inside out and outside in mirror. Love, after all, is an action of giving and receiving.

As I watch who we are—the Christian, LGBTQ+ community—from behind my psychotherapeutic lens, I have become very familiar with, what I call, our Love Hunt. We are all looking (and some desperately scrounging) for love, and it doesn’t even need to be romantic or sexual. Connecting, belonging, and security will do. What we long for seems so simple on paper, yet takes years—if not our entire lives— to manifest. Our Love Hunts are not satisfied when we find belonging, but when we secure meaning, purpose and connection to something much more expansive and permanent than ourselves. We all crave to receive and give Love.

And yes, I mean capital “L” love.

Love as the Divine force—the energy that God is forever pouring upon us and refilling—can also be experienced as a practice, an awareness, and a deep revelation, one that I believe can only arise because of relationship, or shall I say communion.

In the novel Into the Wild, by Jon Krakauer, the main character searches for independence, seclusion, and uninterrupted autonomy. He spends years testing his personal limits and searching for true vitality. Let’s just say relationships had not been kind to the young man, robbing him of any change to discover himself and enjoy peace.

Eventually, the young man finds himself dying in an abandoned bus in the middle of an Alaskan prairie, a place he calls home. Relationships, he determines, were the answer for which he had been searching. The beauty of relationships had been robbed from him. It was so sad that as his life was being taken, he finally received his answer. Needless to say, his years of aloneness revealed his true need: relationships.

Let me be honest and maybe even bold.

Many of us have reconciled our LGBTQ+ identities and our theology. Those of us who have trotted this sometimes precarious path now know of a deeper trust in God, stronger confidence, and rooted faith. But, let me be clear, these wonderful qualities didn’t arise because we stay comfortable!

In my honest opinion, we need to welcome more suffering to take us through the next leg of our journey. It’s time to learn how to do relationships—and dare I say—Love well. And this means we need to become comfortable with being uncomfortable, yet again.

Let’s be honest, many of us judge our neighbors, scream at our partners, abuse sex, and even take advantage of one another. We lie, cheat, manipulate, and avoid emotional intimacy like champions. I’ll be the first to admit that I still have many learning curves, sharp edges, and shards of pride holding fickle pieces of my identity in place, like a nail fastening two pieces of wood together.

Relationally we may have the head data for where we belong in the Kingdom, but we have not yet fully embraced the emotional knowing of Love. Our Love Hunt tells me we still have some growing to do. Our inability to create the love lives we want is a dead giveaway.

This is why The Great Communion is so important for us right now. We need to learn how to commune without fearing the vulnerability it requires. We need to learn about Love’s anatomy and embrace it as our own.

When we know that we are the messengers, the components, the delivery systems for Love itself, we somehow and automatically let ourselves be Love. We are already the multi-hued rainbow shinning from the prism that is Love. To conspire with Love, to engender Love, to practice being Love requires simply that, practice. Communing with one another is the perfect place to start.

That is why the 2020 Conference is so important. We are essentially walking into a massive sandbox where relationships can be created, practiced, and refined.

Healthy boundaries are necessary, for sure. We need to talk about sex, personal space, and consent. Learning to be loved takes practice, and I’ll boldly say, suffering. Stepping out of privileged spaces and into territories occupied by those who know inequity way too well will be challenging for many. But we cannot remain comfortable–otherwise we do not and cannot grow.

Love, for many reasons, expands exponentially when suffering is present. Suffering tears down all the false positives, old and fickle pillars of what we call safety, and outdated labels that no longer serve us.

As a means of continuing your spiritual (which is also relational) growth, I dare you to step outside the limits that keep you comfortable yet stuck in your Love Hunt. Challenge yourself by testing new relational waters and having a deep dive into communion.

Love is waiting for you at this blessed communion table.