Blogs
Greater NW Pride: Calendars, Remembrances, and Thanksgiving
11/24/2020
Calendars, Remembrances, and Thanksgiving I carry two paper program calendars with me from my respective homes in the Presbyterian Church (USA)(PCUSA) and The United Methodist Church (UMC). Each one tells me the holy days in the life of the Church, the secular holidays like Veterans Day and Thanksgiving, as well as the programmatic special days, like “World Communion Sunday,” “Youth in the Church,” and “Disability Sunday,” to name a few. On my iPhone, I also have a calendar that reminds me ...
Greater NW Pride: Role Models
11/19/2020
Role Models In 1980, I went to Princeton Theological Seminary to pursue an M. Div. My call to ministry was somewhat split between pastoral ministry and an interest in how people with intellectual disabilities understood or knew God if they were unable to communicate using written or spoken language. Having been a music therapist, I knew that the young people I worked with, many who were labeled as autistic, knew the world through music, but not necessarily through spoken, let alone ...
Greater NW Pride: Quitting Church
11/10/2020
Quitting Church In an article this week on religionnews.com website, “Study finds that queer Christians quit the church twice as much as others,” Kathryn Post writes of a study by Brandi Woodell (sociology professor at Old Dominion University) and Philip Schwadel (social profession, Univ. of Nebraska-Lincoln), published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion that reports that “same-sex attraction, behavior, and queer identity is strongly associated with a decision to step ...
Patient? You Want Me to Be Patient?
11/4/2020
Patient? You Want Me to Be Patient? Now this is patience. Peter Fischer@pixabay I want to know who the ignoramus was that said, “Patience is a virtue.” What? You say it was Saint Paul? And he said it a few times? Maybe not exactly in those exact words, but pretty close? Oops. My bad. Sorry Paul. And here’s proof: Romans 8:25 – But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. And then there’s Galatians 5:22-23 (which I almost hesitate ...
Greater NW Pride: A Rushed Wedding
11/3/2020
A Rushed Wedding The below post started to spring up all over my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter accounts in the last few weeks. I lost count of how many times this message, or something like it, sprung up, with pastors, ministers, rabbis, and priests from all denominations and religions, including some retired bishops of both The United Methodist Church and Episcopal Church, some who never “showed their hand” about where they stood on marriage equality before, offering officiating ...