An Old Emergence

Ash Wednesday is an especially poignant moment in the liturgical year for me. Six years ago on Shrove Tuesday, I came out. It was the beginning of a long few months of inviting people into my truth. It was a mixture of terror and jubilation, but it all began with a conversation that day when I finally accepted who I was. The following day, after a beautiful Ash Wednesday service at Glendale Baptist Church (my first Ash Wednesday service), our pastor's family was in a car wreck where their youngest child was killed.  That Lenten season was difficult. Our church family grieved. In many ways, those of us who knew and love Emmie still grieve.  And every year when I receive my ashes, I feel those two emotions profoundly: joy and grief. I feel them to my very core as though I am still 21 years old. While both have faded as I've grown and healed and changed, that moment of the imposition of ashes brings them back. The rawness of those juxtaposed emotions engulfs me. ...

“It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about.” – Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets Five years ago today, I sat down and told my parents my greatest secret. Coming out to them remains the most difficult conversation I have ever had in my life, and I can still remember the raw emotions all of us felt in that moment. I would be lying if I said it was easy and we were all golden immediately. The days and weeks and months that followed were the most challenging any of us have ever experienced. Yet here we are, five years later. I could not have more supportive parents. They have shown what unconditional love looks like. They have been the absolute model for every parent of an LGBT child. They re...

I was originally drawn back to church six years ago by the liturgical practices of a little, liberal Baptist church in Nashville, TN. My academic studies in theology had introduced me to types of liturgy that had been foreign in the churches of my childhood, but it wasn't until Glendale Baptist that I actually encountered them. While the equality and grace that were at the center of this caring community certainly were a major factor in my decision to join up with them, it was through the rhythm of the liturgies that I found God again. I continued to connect with progressive Baptist congregations like this over the following years, exchanging the contemporary for the ancient and disorganization for structure.  I write all this to say that I am no stranger to deep and meaningful liturgy. And while my love for the Baptist churches in my life will never wane, I have enjoyed being an occasional Episcopalian over the last few months. Yes, the smells and bells of high ma...

An open letter to President Fisher and the Belmont University Board of Trust: Five years ago, I was part of a discussion group sponsored by the university to have “difficult dialogs” about Belmont and its treatment of LGBT students. At the time, I was newly out of the closet, a student in the School of Religion and CEMB, and an active leader of student organizations on campus. I was invited to be a part of this group that literally met underground (the symbolism was not lost on us even if it was unintentional) in response to the university denying the recognition of an LGBT student organization. However well intentioned this group may have been, it was a debacle. While I am thankful to this day for the myriad faculty and staff members who were involved in supporting the position of students like me, it was clear that the university was not actively listening to us as a minority within the population. Then, in the fall of 2010, Lisa Howe ceased to be employed at Belmont. I say, “c...

Today is the Solemnity of the Annunciation, the historic observance of the coming of Gabriel to Mary to announce her pregnancy. It is observed exactly nine months to the day prior to Christmas. It is somewhat shameful to admit this, but I grew up in a tradition that placed little value on Mary other than the fact that she birthed Jesus (and, of course, her virginity inspired many lessons about how true love waits). In fact, throughout my protestant upbringing, our religious leaders often led us to believe that Catholics “prayed to Mary” just like they did to Jesus. And we were told how utterly wrong this was. The word “idolatry” was even thrown around for effect. In the intervening years, I have come to hold a much greater appreciation for the person of Mary than my childhood pastors would prefer. Actually, the more I think of it, my burgeoning understanding of Mary helped inform my growing feminism. How could the very mother of Christ (one of few women actually named in th...

Let me begin by saying that this particular post is more of a long-form story than my usual four paragraphs and a quote. But I’ve been away for a year and thought it would be a good idea to update everyone on what has been going on. It’s been a truly transformative year, and I am excited to share what has transpired in my life. It feels like only yesterday that I was contemplating taking a year-long sabbatical from social media. Even I was skeptical about whether or not I would be able to last a few days, much less 12 months. As I look back over my original goals and aims for the year, I can’t help but laugh at how some of those goals (as with most New Year’s resolutions) fell quickly by the wayside. Yet, I ended up achieving goals I hadn’t even set for myself. And, overall, I can confidently say that my year “unplugged” was a positive one. I put “unplugged” in quotations because I came to understand that it is very nearly impossible to spend extended periods of time truly unp...

Today marks the 26 th observance of World AIDS Day, bringing awareness to the global AIDS pandemic. And while it has been over thirty years since awareness of HIV/AIDS bubbled over into mainstream consciousness, there is still much to be done to combat the gross stigma against those living with HIV. We know now that HIV is not a “gay” disease as it was once thought to be, but we also know that the gay and bisexual male population is still at greatest risk for infection in the United States. However, it is the stigma of being HIV positive that is most detrimental to our communities, not the virus itself. In the gay community, terms like “clean” and “DDF” (drug and disease free) are often used to describe oneself when connecting with others within the community. This perpetuation of the idea that testing positive for HIV makes someone unclean has pushed many to concealing their HIV status. Even more destructively, the fear of receiving a positive HIV test keeps many from g...