Just something to consider...

Someone to need you too much
Someone to know you too well
Someone to pull you up short
And put you through hell
And give you support
For being alive...
(Stephen Sondheim, "Being Alive," from Company)

It was 8:10 PM Saturday, well after dark, as I drove through our development towards home. And as I came up to our duplex, my heart sank and panic set it.

It was after dark, and Chris hadn't made it home.

My mind started racing. Chris had left at 6:20 PM to go for a short hour's ride on his bicycle. His black road bike. When I saw him leave, he was dressed in an orange biking shirt and black shorts, and he was only going to be gone for an hour - because he knew sunset would be at 7:30. He went on his way; I went off to Office Depot to get some supplies, and then off to Godfathers Pizza for our typical motocross-watching feast (a large sausage pizza).

The plan was that I'd meet him back at the duplex at around 7:30. But they messed our order up (mushrooms - ick), and so I waited while made us a new one. I called and left him a message on his cell, but figured he was showering after his ride. No big deal.

But then I came home, and Chris wasn't there. And I panicked.

You see, Chris has been riding bikes a long time. And he knew not to ride bikes after dark - especially since his bike didn't have a front or rear light. And yet, his truck was here, his bike was gone and so was he - and it was after dark. That could only mean trouble.

I did the first sensible thing - called his cell. No answer. Called again - two-calls-in-a-row is our signal for "trouble - pick up." I left the inevitable "call me AS SOON as you get this!" demandment, then hung up - and started to pray for direction. Because if he was (by then) 50 minutes overdue, and not responding, I knew he had to be really in trouble.

So I picked up and pressed the three hardest numbers to dial when you're thinking about a loved one - "9-1-1" - and waited. I told the 911 voice that my housemate was out on a bicycle in the fields between Urbana and Rantoul, uncharacteristically overdue, and unresponsive. "Have there been any... reports of trouble ... involving a bicyclist in this area in the last hour? ..." I forced out.

"We haven't had any reports of any accidents or incidents regarding a bicycle anywhere in the area in the last two hours, sir," the 911 operator said. His tone of voice was meant to be calming, conveying that "I'm sure this is nothing to be worried about" message.

But the voices in my head weren't hearing it. Instead, they were screaming, "Well, then - send your people OUT there and FIND him, for God's sake! He's NEVER late without calling, EVER! He's already been hit once on a bicycle, two years ago, and left for dead in a ditch! Don't you understand?!? This is Chris, the man I LOVE we're talking about here!"

Instead, the one shred of level-headedness still resident in my brain said, "I'll try retracing his route - I'll call back if I need to," thanked the man and hung up.

About thirty-five voices in my head started shouting all at once; if they were strung all together, it would've sounded something like this:

Are you over-reacting?
Of course I'm not over-reacting, you moron! HE KNOWS better than this.
Wouldn't he call if he was in trouble?
But what if he can't call?!? What if he's lying in some ditch, with his cell phone underwater, or smashed?
What if he's unconscious, or worse?
Dear God, you can't just have brought this guy INTO my life and dragged us clear to ILLINOIS, of all places, just to have you take him back OUT of my life, could you?
And what the HELL am I doing, still standing here listening to myself blithering, for God's sake?

With that I left a note that said "GONE TO FIND YOU - IF YOU GET THIS, CALL ME IMMEDIATELY!" and raced out the door.

I had my hand on the door-handle of his pickup when the phone rang. When I saw it was Chris' caller-ID, I shouted "OH THANK YOU, JESUS!" then punched the answer-button and yelled "WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?"

Ten-minutes-that-seemed-like-an-hour later, when he pedaled his way up to the garage, I gave him a minute to dismount and catch his breath before I grabbed him and hugged him. Hugged him and gave thanks to God that he was back with me and safe.

It took a minute before I let him start to describe what had happened - one wrong turn and then another; listening to that silly voice that says, "Oh, no problem, I can handle this;" and a desperately bad estimate of how fast the sun would set - and more than a little panic on his part as well. I could see how it could happen - how I could have been in the very same place myself...

So we ate some lukewarm pizza, and talked about how the first sign of trouble for either of us should trigger the "E.T. syndrome" - phone home - and how the bike will not go back out on the road without marker-lights fore and aft. All was forgiven, all was comforted, and smoothed over with three hours of motocross racing, courtesy of the Speed Channel. And I drifted off to sleep with prayers of thanks for the safe return of the man I love.

Now normally, I wouldn't even bother to share this. After all, it was just an hour of drama in the otherwise boring life of two reasonably contented, average men. However, in the aftermath of the comments around the ELCA's vote about same-sex partnered clergy, I needed to give this testimony...

You see, I've known for a quite a while now how much I love Chris, and how much he loves me. Not "lusts after," not "desireth the same flesh," but love. Real love. There is a lot more agape and filios than there ever was of eros, folks.

I am reasonably certain that if the spouse of any married person reading this would turn up inexplicably missing, their thoughts might well parallel those I've described. Even the possibility of living without the love of your life would be no more tolerable to you and yours than it was for me and mine.

If I were feeling theological, I would say that your relationship and mine are homoousios - of the same substance and essence. Not homoi ousios (similar in nature), but homo (which has to be some kind of cosmic pun). Same ingredients, same stuff. Love, commitment, affection, interdependence.

I believe that the taboos that the ELCA has called its churches to reconsider regarding men like Chris and I are no less challenging than those that the apostle Peter faced in Acts 10. It was absolutely unlawful for Peter to even TALK to those Gentiles; yet he heard the call to share the Good News with them. And then made the Spirit-led decision to baptize them into the fellowship of the Spirit!

They got over it; they got past it. Why is it so hard for us to do the same?

How terribly different is it for the Church to see us? The Gentiles were outcast, despised, against the moral standards and sinful in the eyes of The Church at the time. And yet, in so many ways, the Gentiles were not so different. And in the end, they heard the Word from Peter, and the Spirit moved.

Am I so different than you? I love my partner as you do yours. I am committed to be faithful to him, just as you are committed to be faithful to yours. Perhaps more committed – because there is plenty of social and religious pressure for me to abandon this man, and forsake this relationship. And yet I can’t even consider it. For half an hour, I stared into the abyss and had to consider what life without this man might be – and I couldn’t face it.

My faith has not changed; my hunger to reach those who need Christ has not changed. It has, in fact, sharpened – because I see the spiritual wounding in the gay/lesbian community that has separated so many people from the faith communities of their families and loved ones. I am the same man who stood in a church and Overland Park, Kansas and wept at the memorial service for my faith mentor and pastor. I am the same man whom faithful, praying saints of the church urged to pursue leadership in the church.

In many ways, I have little vested interest in what happens to the ELCA – after all, they rejected me, and the gifts I offered five years ago (including, I might add, a willing commitment to celibate ministry). So if others reject the ELCA, there’s an icky little part of me that doesn’t feel all that bad.

But I guess I have to ask those of you who plan to leave the ELCA: are you sure - I mean, really, really certain – that what Chris and I represent is enough to sunder the unity of The Church Universal that I’ve heard you preach about for years? Are you really, really sure that this is the absolute, number-one, sheep-and-goats issue that you need to divide the church over?

To be honest, I don’t even need to know the answers – I’m way past that point. I just had to ask the questions. Regardless which path get taken, I wish everyone involved well.

As for me, I have already said the words I have heard at so many ceremonies before:

But Ruth replied, "Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. (Ruth 1:16, NIV)

Here I stand ... I can do no other.

Thoughts on "holy unions" and same-sex marriage

Late afternoon, Saturday...

I am sitting in a shady spot at The Badlands Offroad Park in Attica, Indiana. All around me there are the rasps and roars of off-road vehicles - everything from the bumblebee buzz-whine of 125cc 2-stroke dirt bikes to the throaty roar of high-powered dune buggies, and everything in between. For folks who would forsake pavement to ride through the great outdoors, The Badlands is a mid-US mecca for off-roading (I forget how many hundreds of acres they have here). Today Chris is just doing a blow-the-dust-out and get-acquainted ride on his Yamaha WR426 (I mention it only because someone, somewhere, may want to know what he rides, I guess - and because I care enough to know, believe it or not!).

Riding a motorcycle holds no thrill for me - I have enough trouble balancing on four wheels - but I enjoy being outdoors when it's cool and breezy, and Chris has been longing to come to The Badlands ever since he first thought about coming to Champaign.

So here we are. It's cool, shady and breezy, and I have a sufficient supply of pretzels and Diet Coke, and about 3 hours of battery time on ye olde laptop. So as he's off on his first dream-ride, I have some time to catch-up, reflect, and ponder life around me.

For a number of reasons, my thoughts have been turning to questions of faith, and questions of church. One of the valuable lessons which the two decades have taught me is that questions of church are quite, quite separate from questions of faith. I will be forever grateful to the communities which helped form my faith - but I am also very glad that there were non-church communities that helped my faith survive when the church world failed me.

For many of my former seminary friends still in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), this is the weekend of several Synod conferences...gatherings of the regional governing conferences within the ELCA. It is a time when bishops are elected, and policy is either set (for a region) or recommended to the greater Churchwide Assembly for action. Synod conferences can be a time of stunning boredom, of great inspiration, or great frustration (sometimes in equal measures!), especially as the regional synods act on resolutions which can indicate an area's stand on certain issues.

It was out of these regional resolutions that the ELCA Churchwide Assembly in 2007 took the step to "memorialize" (without getting painfully technical, to make a non-binding recommendation to the Church at large) that ELCA bishops did not have to enforce the rules on clergy in committed same-sex relationships. The rules still stood - clergy should be monogamous within traditional marriage, and celibate outside of it. Nothing changed there.

But up to that point, the rulebook essentially said that clergy found to be in committed, monogamous same-sex relationships were to be removed from the roster of ordained clergy, period - effectively defrocking them. What happened in 2007 wasn't a giant step forward - as I wrote earlier, the bishops still hold the gun, and it's still loaded - but the action two years ago allows the bishops to not have to "pull the trigger" and remove partnered GLBT clergy. The action of the ELCA allows their bishops to choose mercy (imagine that in a Christian organization!...), where there once was no room for it.

I've seen updates this weekend on Facebook from my former classmates attending their synod conferences, and some of them are hearing the same old language on same-sex marriage and partnered GLBT clergy - abomination, sin, death, rejection. But the joy, for me, is hearing them some of them angered by it, resisting it - and speaking out against it. For those of you who are in that group, and are reading this, my partner and I give thanks to you, and give thanks for God for you and your voice.

That, by the way, is one of the reasons I am "out" - not because I feel the need to convert anyone, wear a rainbow flag banner, or any of that nonsense, but to simply put a face (or a pair of faces) on this issue. My prayer is that men and women of faith, when they hear these discussions about same-sex relationships, will realize, "That's Steve they're talking about. My friend... coworker.... fellow student... church member... neighbor. We're talking about Steve, and his partner Chris. Not some fear-based mythical stereotype, but a person I've worked with, and laughed with, and prayed with, and lived with."

Several people have asked me if I want to have a "holy union" ceremony (the Presbyterian church we attend does that), and I think they are surprised by the answer. You see, anyone who spends time with us doesn't have to ask if we are a couple. It's not because we are some lovey-dovey, please-get-a-room kind of people, but because we care for each other, deeply - and I think that kind of love and care becomes obvious, even if you aren't used to seeing it between two men.

We are committed to each other. At one point near the start of our relationship, Chris said something like, "So...you think you'll keep me for a while?...." and I jokingly told him that we'd see how we do for the first forty years, and still occasionally tell him that he only has 38 years left before he can re-negotiate this deal between us.

To be honest, there is nothing that a church can do to legitimize our relationship that McKinley Presbyterian Church in Champaign hasn't already done. The pastors and members greet us as a partnered couple; no one bats an eye when we hold hands when we pray in worship; it's just no big deal in so many ways that I can't even begin to explain to someone who has not seen a truly open-and-affirming congregation. This congregation already recognizes our relationship; we don't need a ceremony or a party to get there. My family doesn't need a holy-union to recognize our commitment to each other, either. We celebrate that union every time we get together with them.

My dream would be to have a "holy union ceremony" where it would matter most - in Chicago, among my former seminary and AA sisters and brothers; or in Kansas City, among my former church members and AA friends who have loved me, supported me, and know my faith; or in Springfield, MO, among Chris's family and friends. It would be the chance for our family and friends to join us in celebrating a life-long commitment to love, to publicly affirm our belief that God says to Chris and I, "This love is good in My sight," and to build community as the early church did - with some really, really good food. (Wonder if Arthur Bryant's or Oklahoma Joes's would cater? Now that would be a "dream wedding"!)

It couldn't happen at LSTC in Chicago, nor at Atonement Lutheran in Kansas - the ELCA just isn't there yet, and won't "get there" for some years to come, I think. I don't think we could even do it at the Hollis Center, an ELCA-supported retreat center west of KC - too much church support would be jeopardized if the word got out. Maybe Arthur Bryant's up at the Casino wouldn't be such a bad idea, after all...at least we wouldn't have to worry about Fred Phelps picketing us there...

The only legitimacy that my relationship with Chris can gain is in legal and civil rights - rights of survivorship, joint property ownership, being treated as "family" in a hospital setting, and things like this. That's the reason why we are advocates for same-sex marriage - not for the cake and candles, or the chance to be his-and-his Bridezillas - but so this bond between us can receive the same legal and social blessing from the rest of the world that McKinley Church has already bestowed upon us.

Until that day, we will soldier on as we have, trusting in God's acceptance and love, and praying for the same from His followers. May it come quickly, Lord.