. This interest springs directly from my mother's influence in my life as she would take us off to the Lutheran church for a long time. Grace was a big deal to Martin Luther. It shouldn't be a surprise to many people that my favorite Pauline letters are Romans and Galatians. For the most part, my experience in faith communities has some incredibly high points of grace and consistent, while combined with very low points of, legalistic oppression. In my Christian Counseling class in my undergraduate Religious Studies degree at ENMU, I became fascinated with the interior workings of Christian communities as I continued to find extremes rather than moderation; while at the same time, the open GLBT leaders in the academic community were being targeted
for violence in the name of God on our campus. A student was arrested. Her name was ________. She had been either found guilty, or she was the scapegoat. Either way, the police had documents that cited "The Hand of God" as the culprit for the posters that were placed around targeting the academic community. After some research, I learned that "The Hand of God" was a religious group on a cult watch
list that operated on the high planes of NM and West Texas. They actually existed, so there was a real cause for concern. During this point in time in my undergraduate education, I watched our GLBT leaders have several different responses to this threat. Some locked themselves in their homes armed for self-defense; some hid in undisclosed locations; a group of us (including me) were taken to a professor's house for a conversation about these kinds of threats, dinner, and star gazing; and some simply ignored the threats.I encountered an amount of stress that I had never encountered before. Matthew Shepherd, if memory serves correctly, had been murdered the summer before all of this happened. There I was: a young GLBT Episcopalian in a small town waiting for the next one to happen. What we were taught when we were all taken into the country for dinner and conversation under the stars will stay with me until I die. It was very simple. There were no parades, no permission needed for the conversation, and no pomp and circumstance necessary. We were told very simply, "This is beyond your control, and so is God's love for all of us. That's why we are here together." In my earnest undergraduate years as I yearned for a grassroots movement in my life so we too could pray with one another and love who we loved, I realized one of the most important things I've ever learned: grace was real.
There wasn't a great controlling mechanism for the universe or humanity. No one was there to stop us from praying, conversing, or loving one another. There was no great "one true way" as we had all been taught in our denominations. They are all man made. Denominations and inter-faith groups and all of their rules exist to make money
in one way or another. At some point, I need to agree that they are important as I have spent countless hours studying about religion, scripture, and the like as I can also be employed through those denominations. The more knowledgeable I become, the more leery I am of those claiming to be "doing good" in the name of God especially when they have great statistics and facts to back up how good they really are. As I approach the end of my graduate religious studies degree, I am brought back to the reality of grace. Most people want it, and most don't know how to give it. I have been blessed to know several people whom have been gracious to me. I know grace because it has been given to me. Ash Wednesday was a few days ago. Today is the first Sunday in Lent
.I love Lent. I love it because at one point it made my devotional life the norm for others in the church. For years, I prayed the Stations of the Cross every Friday along with Spiritual Direction and Confession. It's how I survived
graduate school the first time. I had a focal point every Friday to meet with my parish priest to contend with my spiritual life and guide it out of the mess it was in. It was the norm for me. It anchored me at that point in time. Now, having been told to leave the church and to join one of several suggested cults by a bishop under the guise of "reconciliation with the church," I can look at my life and know that those whom have been trained to find those problems will be excluded. They don't want me there because I am trained to see the problems. Those whom point the finger of "too sick to be here," "not normal," or even state "that's now how I was raised" are actually the sicker people. They don't want to be found to be sicker than the rest of us.Everything is in how we use power. So today because so many of my friends
are involved in faith communities, I give this checklist. It is not the best one I have seen, but it fairly good. The main point is that everything is in how people use power. Is someone included in everything, but then all of a sudden that person is the "outreach project?" There's a real emotionally manipulative problem when that happens. If someone tries to hold a leader accountable for what that person has actually done and can't even through the civil authorities, then there's a definite issue. If you quit a faith community, then will you be shunned? Will your membership at a church be stripped away if you don't wear what people want? Do they demand to tell you how to raise your kids or what you can say to theirs? Do they interfere with your employment? Cults exist even when they are inside of denominations and other faith communities.Do people actually forgive? So they demand perfect of others, but not themselves. God loves everyone with or without our permission for His existence. I suggest that during this Lent, while the faith communities that we are all involved in are focusing on what the individual is willing to give up, that we consider whether or not we are willing to choose for ourselves or continue
to be a part of the problems. How much control should the church, temple, faith community, prayer group, or synagogue really have in our individual lives? Finally, is God leading your life, or are you giving your thoughts over to the control of another?
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