The Lesbian Whisperer

on chocolate, loss, buttons and resurrection

Some days on my morning walk I pass by St Thomas Episcopal Church; the gorgeous old church that, between 2011-2016 was home to House For All Sinners and Saints (the church I founded). A flood of images and their accompanying ghosts never fail to find me when I pass St Thomas: that Pentecost when fire dancers greeted worshippers as they entered the courtyard, and all the Thanksgivings when 1,000 sack lunches were assembled and then handed out to working folks for what we called "Operation: Turkey Sandwich”, and 6 adult baptisms that one Easter Vigil - during which the unmistakable smell of bacon wafted into the room and made everyone laugh.

Holy mischief was always braided together with actual gravitas. It was magical. Messy. A circus of saints. And sometimes, yeah, I miss the hell out of it.

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The Bear

(Season 3, Episode 5)

In the TV series, The Bear, the main character Carmen, is being asked by his sous chef Sydney about the sudden closing of an epic Michelin star restaurant where he had trained as a chef.

Sydney: Did you know, when you were there… that it was special?

Carmen:…Huh. I don’t know. Don’t know. I think I was too busy to, uh… to know all the time.

Sydney: At least you got to be part of it.

Carmen: Yeah.

(a long pause)

Sydney: How do you feel?

Carmen: …I thought it would be there forever.

Sydney: Most things aren’t.

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Most things aren’t

Most things we think will be there forever or at least for a very long time, aren’t. This includes HFASS, the magical church I got to be a part of; it closed in February this year and my greif about that has more than a couple layers to it.

And there have been times over the last 6 months when I have felt a heaviness about the loss of the community I poured so many years of my life into.

I wasn’t a perfect leader (shocking, I know). I should have done some things differently. Some days I wonder if I took it all for granted. Mostly, I just feel sad it’s no longer there for the folks who need it.

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The Button

That same Easter Vigil, the year that included what we forever called the “bacon baptisms”, I showed up a bit frazzled as usual - there are a LOT of moving parts to an Easter vigil - and so I only sort of noticed everyone was wearing buttons. It took a good half an hour of me rushing about checking on all the details before I stopped someone to have a look at it.

A week or so before, there had been something on line - an article or blog post of some sort - that was vaguely insulting toward me; at one point calling me a “slightly androgynous pastor”. (Fair enough with my super short hair and Crossfit bod both now long gone now).

I finally read the button everyone was wearing:

“Steve made them. Handed them out to everyone before you got here” I was told.

Steve, as I have described in Accidental Saints, was the one straight white corporate guy at church (that we had to “diversity recruit”, as the joke went). As a surprise to us all, he became quick friends with a large group of queer women at church. They LOVED Steve and he adored them.

I have a million stories like this from the years I got to serve that church. It was such a wild and holy thing, HFASS. Imperfect, impossible, immeasurable and I miss it.

Fast forward to May this year when I was standing in the sanctuary of an old downtown church in Boise, Idaho meeting folks, signing books, saying hi, and giving hugs as I have on each stop on the Red Sate Revival Tour. I was looking down at something, when a chocolate bar suddenly appeared before my eyes.

Probably 12 years ago or so, I preached a sermon at HFASS about how God likes to sneak into our lives disguised in small things, like when I was on the road for an out-of-town speaking event earlier that week and was feeling pretty burned out, and suddenly spotted a beloved former member of our church waiting in the book signing line - but when they got to the front they didn’t hand me a book, they just gave me a hug and some dark chocolate because they knew I love it. In a sea of strangers, this person I knew and loved just wanted to make sure I felt it back.

This is how “traditions” start. To this day, former HFASS folks find me at speaking gigs in their towns and those delightful weirdos still hand over the love chocolate.

So, at the Red State Revival in Boise when a chocolate bar appears before me, I look up to see Carina, a former parishioner of mine.

Wait, what? I say. You’re in Boise??

To which she replies, I followed a girl out here a few years ago, married her!

I give her the biggest hug, and when our embrace ends I see that she is wearing the I *heart* my slightly androgynous pastor pin.

I just had lunch with Steve two days ago! I tell her, to which she throws up her hands and says,

THE LESBIAN WHISPERER!
I had totally forgotten the nickname Steve had for a brief but very hilarious time, but it sure made me laugh to be reminded of it.

The next day Carina left this sweet comment on Facebook:

What I wanted to say to you in person but couldn’t get it out: Though HFASS may have closed their doors, it hasn’t gone anywhere. It lives on in diaspora…even in Boise! I’m so glad She brought you to us. Thank you, Nadia. Kyrie eleison.

Carina is right.

We may grieve something or someone who was here and now is not, but the people and times and events of our lives that are now “gone”, just sort of live in diaspora in the world.

Because maybe the physics of love defies the binary gravity of grief.

Maybe all the love, creativity, hilarity, solace etc that comes from the relationships and times in our lives that are now in that past still form a connective tissue that hold and sustain us in ways that are sometimes easy to miss.

Resurrection

I wonder sometimes, about the grief the disciples felt. The ones who got to see the miracles with their own eyes, who heard the sound of Jesus’ voice when he first said Our Father in heaven hallowed be your name thy kingdom come thy will be done, the ones who knew all the inside jokes. I wonder what texture their grief took on - to have experienced something so astonishing only to have it feel like it all was just …. over.

But it wasn’t over. Obviously. Here we are 2,000+ years later still sitting at the same table as them sharing the same bread, the same cup. Telling the stories. Saying The Lord’s Prayer. Singing the Psalms.

Maybe all the love, creativity, hilarity, solace, and tenderness that we’ve ever known—every belly laugh, every whispered secret, every late-night road trip with bad gas-station coffee, every hand we’ve ever held in both joy and grief—maybe all of that is not actually gone.

Maybe it ends up forming the connective tissue in our lives, invisible but strong, like the ligaments that keep our bones from flying apart.

Not in a sentimental way. Not in the “everything happens for a reason” greeting-card-bullshit way. But in the God-is-sneaky kind of way. The way the Divine insists on taking what we thought was gone and fashioning it into a web of grace that keep us tethered, even when we don’t notice.

So if you’re still standing, it might not be because you’re strong. It might be because you are held together by the love you’ve received and maybe even the love you gave, whether or not you knew what the hell you were doing at the time.

Maybe that’s what resurrection looks like; the people we mourn, the physics of their love is ineffable. It’s not dispelled - it’s dispersed. Micronized. Reconfiguring. But never actually GONE. It just sneaks up on us in old buttons and chocolate bars.

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