This is the first of three books in the “Nulaperion” sequence by John Meaney. I picked it up at Borders (*sigh*) because I was intrigued by the jacket description, and by the review which said “After Meaney everything is different”. He’s apparently well-regarded in the UK, so I thought I’d give it a chance. My only hesitation was the terrible binding (not quite book-club quality, but bad), and the rather sparse amount of print on the page (I’m all for maximizing information density!)
Its a very interesting and engaging book. Like the complex novels of authors like Iain Banks and Alastair Reynolds (both also from the UK), this is a book that’s hard to summarize in a nuanced way. The basic story follows Tom Corcorigan, a young man born on the world of Nulaperion in humanity’s far future. Tom’s world is highly-stratified (literally), and after the death of his father and the “claiming” of his mother by a prescient Oracle (whose predictive abilities maintain the rigid status quo of Tom’s world), Tom is sent on a journey that will take him to the heights and depths of his world and his society. Tom’s accidential encounter with a mythical Pilot, whose mysterious ability to navigate mu-space enables space travel (or SPACE TRAVEL! as Frank Herbert would say), and the data crystal she gives him initiates a transformation in Tom that engenders a transformation of his world.
There’s a lot to like here, and little to dislike. I’d put this in the category of “cool sci-fi”.
Pride flag number four was stolen last night. There will be another police report filed tomorrow. Hopefully my favorite Chelsea police officer will come to take the report again.
When we first came to Chelsea, everyone said we were daft to hang a rainbow flag on our house, but we hung it just the same, just to show them. It was stolen. So we hung a second one. That one was stolen. So we hung a third. That one was snapped off, then stolen. So we hung a fourth. That one was torn, then stolen.
We’re going to hang a fifth. And that, my friends, will be the strongest, queerest, gayest, most prideful flag in all of Chelsea.
(Ten points if you get the reference.)
The text of a sermon I delivered at Northside Presbyterian Church on the occasion of the second annual More Light Sunday.
‘B’ // Pentecost 2 // 06-11-2006 // Celebration of Worship, Northside/St. Aidan’s, Ann Arbor, MI
Scriptures: Isaiah 6:1-8, Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17
“Yet More Real Family Values”
I want to start this sermon with these lyrics, composed by those great masters of modern hymnody, Sister Sledge. Our sisters wrote:
We are family
I got all my sisters with me
We are family
Get up ev’rybody and sing
Ev’ryone can see we’re together
As we walk on by
(FLY!) and we fly just like birds of a feather
I won’t tell no lie
(ALL!) all of the people around us they say
Can they be that close
Just let me state for the record
We’re giving love in a family dose
Happy Trinity Sunday, and Happy More Light Sunday! This is the second annual More Light Sunday, and it is a time here at Northside Presbyterian, in concert with dozens of other congregations around the country where we celebrate the wonderful gifts of ministry, service, and faith that our transgender, bisexual, queer, questioning, lesbian, and gay sisters and brothers bring to the life of this congregation and our Presbyterian church as a whole.
So in addition to being a member of this congregation, I want to bring greetings “to the saints of Northside church in Ann Arbor” (as one board member put it) from the national board of More Light Presbyterians, a national church organization of which this congregation is a part, and of course which Chuck has served in the past as well. More Light Presbyterians, “following the risen Christ, seeks to make the Church a true community of hospitality, and to work for the full participation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people of faith in the life, ministry, and witness of the Presbyterian Church (USA)”. Because this is an important time in our denomination (and because we Northsiders tend to skip Adult Education most Sundays except of course today) I want to take some time this morning to talk a little bit about the history of the “More Light” movement (and where did that strange name come from anyways?), reflect on the biblical basis for why we believe what we believe with respect to the whole “gay issue”, and the important challenges that lie before our denomination and our church as a whole at this very moment.
The “More Light” movement in the Presbyterian Church started in 1974 when the Rev. David Bailey Sindt began writing to people he knew or had heard of inviting them to join the “Presbyterian Gay Caucus” (which eventually renamed itself Presbyterians for Gay Concerns, then Presbyterians for Lesbian and Gay Concerns, and eventually More Light Presbyterians). PGC made its first public appearance at the 1974 Louisville General Assembly where David held up a sign outside the Assembly that said simply “Is anyone else here gay?” This inaugurated a “ministry of presence” that MLP (and other LGBT-supportive organizations) continue to this day, and will continue at the General Assembly in Birmingham next week.
The More Light Church movement actually began in 1978 soon after the close of the General Assembly. It was this GA that adopted the “definitive guidance” that would later become the legislative tool to bar LGBT persons from seeking ordination in the church, deciding the adopt instead the “minority report” of the 1976 “Task Force to Study Homosexuality”, whose majority report recommendation was that there was nothing either in Scripture nor in the Reformed tradition that should bar homosexual persons from full participation in the life and ministry of the church. Indeed it was this task force, and its encouragement for local Presbyteries and congregations to engage in prayerful study and dialogue around the many issues of human sexuality that provided the impetus (with the gracious prodding of the Holy Spirit) for this congregation to begin its own “More Light journey”. There are around 120 churches and meetings that have officially affiliated as “More Light”, and more make the decision to follow this path of joyful and sometimes costly discipleship every year.
The “More Light” moniker itself refers to a famous sermon given by John Robinson, an English Puritan minister, given to the Pilgrims just prior to their departure for the “New World”. He said:
If God should reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it, as ever we were to receive any truth by my Ministry. For I am very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of His holy Word.
Robinson was a keen observer and critic of the religious institutions of his day, and readily aware of the tendency towards institutional and doctrinal idolatry that we were, and very much are still, prone to. He remarked:
[…] for example, the Lutherans: they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw, for whatever part of God’s will He had further imparted and revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than embrace it. “And also,” saith he, “you see the Calvinists. They stick where he left them, a misery much to be lamented.”
And so here we are today. Almost 400 years later and the story hasn’t changed.
We’re a church that’s struggling – with questions of sexuality and theology, with differing visions of what the Church (big C and little) is and should be about, and with a lot of fear. Some of us are afraid of change and what that might bring. Some of us are afraid of giving up something (a sense of security, traditions that are familiar and comfortable), and some of us are afraid of each other. The whole “gay problem” has this denomination tied up in ecclesiastical knots (and not in a good way!), and the General Assembly opening this week in Birmingham will include a lot of angst and activity over questions of same-sex marriage and ordination of queer folks. It has been 30 years since the first “task force” was started, so we’ve been studying and debating for a long time now! Some on both sides are so tired of the fighting that they’re talking about “irreconcilable differences” and of splitting the church. Given the history of this denomination over the past century, as Yogi Berra would say, its “déjà vu all over again”. While no direct discussion or debate of “splitting the church” is on the table at GA to my knowledge, the question will be on the minds of many.
The Good News is that Paul’s letter to the church in Rome today reminds us who we are and what we are about. Paul tells us:
For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.
Paul’s use of the word “adoption” is important here. Notice his words: “adoption”, “Father”, “children”, “heirs”. He is telling us that, as members of the body of Christ we are members of Christ’s family, and therefore are members of God’s family, of one family. We are all part of the same family (including my fabulous sisters and me, AMEN!). It was a pretty radical notion then, and remains so today, despite how easily the words can come to our lips. Look around – everyone here is part of your family. Families are different than our friends – we choose our friends, but we inherit our families, and sometimes we have to learn to live with and love people who in other circumstances we might be happier not knowing.
But that’s just the point. We don’t always get to decide. And that’s a good thing. When we are family, we stay in relationship with one another, even when sometimes it is painfully difficult to do so. We are confronted in relationship with people who challenge our assumptions, teach us humility, and require us to learn and practice the spiritual discipline of forgiveness.
Now I’m not talking about abusive relationships. People who are abused in relationships should leave them. I grew up in a house where my mother was physically and verbally abused (although not by my father) and I know what kind of damage that does. In terms of our current national church struggle, some wonderful LGBT clergy and leaders have decided that they’ve taken enough abuse, and have left for other denominations. I may face the same dilemma myself someday in the not too distant future, and the MCC, UCC, and other churches are getting some of this church’s best and brightest. The PC(USA)’s loss is definitely their gain. But the most basic definition of “sin” is “separation”, and any separation, particularly one at a national church level, seems like a great tragedy and sin to me.
One of the things that some evangelicals decry about liberal or progressive Christians (sometimes rightly, but sometimes not) is the notion of moral relativism. And indeed there is much in our Christian tradition that is ambiguous and contradictory. Yet when it came to the subject of divorce (that is the sundering of a covenant relationship), Jesus was not at all ambiguous. In all three synoptic gospels He tells us that divorce is a sin. And while I think the story there is somewhat contextual and editorialized by the Gospel writers themselves, I think the notion of keeping relationships together if at all possible is part of God’s intention for us and a cause of deep sorrow for God and for us when we part. I realize I’m saying this to a room with many divorced persons in it , and I myself the product of a so-called “broken home”.
It is this notion of being part of God’s family that makes me, that makes us confident that our belief in the inclusion of, welcome for, and full participation by bisexual, lesbian, transgender, and gay persons is God’s full intention for this and for every church. As part of God’s family we know we belong, even if we’re sometimes difficult for others in our family to understand, or who do things we don’t agree with. When you’re family there’s room for everyone at the table, no one is a stranger for long, and there’s always enough to eat. When we encounter others in the church and in the world, I encourage us to be confident and bold witnesses to this belief, for, as Paul would say, we are justified through our faith and through the witness of Holy Scripture.
We humans tend to draw circles around things. God draws and circle as big as the universe and invites us all in. And there is nothing morally relative or ambiguous about that. And that is indeed Good News.
So our prayers go this week to our sisters and brothers who travel in the footsteps of Dr. King and so many saints in the south to Birmingham, and especially to those on both sides (and in the middle!) of our perennial issues of sexuality and same-sex love. May we all continue to be patient with each other, listen closely to one another, and try to love each other as best we can. And may God continue to shed More Light on this and every church throughout the entire world.
I want to close with this quote from the fabulous queer poet, W. H. Auden, who said:
“”Remember the gift, the one from the manger;
it means only this, you can dance with a stranger.”
May we all remember our savior, who touched lepers, broke bread with traitors, and kept company with prostitutes. May we continually strive to welcome the stranger in our midst, in our churches, in our families, and in our own hearts.
To God be the glory.
Amen.
† † †
More Guy Kay books. I have them all, and realized I couldn’t remember much about some of the early ones. That’s actually the reason that I began this blogging effort — I wanted to have some way to remember more about the books that I’ve read, and figured maybe others would find some of my ramblings useful or entertaining.
Despite these efforts, the most popular entry on my blog, according to the search engine stats, is the Sweet Zombie High post. Alas.
This is the last Guy Kay post for a while I think, as its time to move on.
This book is quite similar in tone, style, and structure to the Arbonne book, but this one is set in Moorish Spain. If you’ve read enough of Kay’s books, you will recognize many of the same themes: religiously-inspired war, a love triangle, political intrigue, rather barbaric violence, unrequieted love, the transition from youth to adulthood, self-sacrifice, music, poetry, and more love.
Similar to Arbonne and Last Light of the Sun, the use of magic is kept to a minimum (with a little room for the workings of the Divine), and the story moves based on the actions and choices of the characters. The writing is at times particularly lyrical and beautiful.
I love Kay’s writing, and this is another very fine example. I might read this after Tigana but before Arbonne. Such a feast!
