Of music & sustainable living …

I last jumped ship 44 years ago, when I was 16 years old, leaving one church denomination for another, choosing the Lutheran flavor of orthodoxy.  The time has come to jump again, though the few who know the full story might say I was pushed.  That story is not worth telling here.  So let me tell a story that should have been told long ago, but was not allowed — because in the orthodox churches, silence is often mistaken for peace.

My brother Mitch was born 10 years after I, the fifth of us six siblings.  He was a precocious child, a talented musician, a youth of great promise.  When he was 20 years old, he publicly declared himself to be gay.  I was not at all prepared for this challenge to what I had been taught, and previously accepted as truth.  My initial reactions to Mitch embarass me still.  Even worse were the reactions of churches and of most of society.  Mitch however, summoned his inner strength, left many things behind, and became a gay rights activist.  Later he moved to San Francisco, and later still learned that he was HIV positive, when the scourge of AIDS was still new to our understandings.  Faced with his mortality, he returned to the faith he was reared in, and even joined a Lutheran church.  His vocation became giving care to others suffering and dying of AIDS.  He found a life partner in Rick Gelnik; they were married in that S.F. Lutheran church — Rick became my eighth brother-in-law.  When AIDS was overtaking Mitch’s health, he and Rick came to a family reunion (in Iowa).  By this time, we had all learned and changed a great deal.  (My mother, a white-haired matriarch of the local Lutheran congregation, wore the red ribbon and would tell of her son’s life and vocation, rather daring anyone else to criticise.)  With magnanimity and love, Mitch seemed not to remember our earlier attitudes.  On one point he was very outspoken:  He declared the position of churches wrong, and inconsistent with Jesus’ life and teaching.  He pointedly challenged us to change the churches of which we were members.  I hold that admonition dearly to this day.

A couple months after that reunion, Mitch died.  My parents travelled from Iowa to S.F. for the funeral, a bit timidly, given their straight-laced background.  They were overwhelmed by the welcome they received.  It seemed that everyone knew Mitch, that he was a V.I.P. in the S.F. community, and everyone wanted to meet them and share stories about their son.  They were so impressed with that Lutheran congregation.  Sadly, only months after that, the ELCA removed that congregation from its roster, because of the congregation’s inclusive policies and actions.  Threw out the congregation that helped my brother find his way, that helped him find his true vocation, that blessed his marriage, and that comforted our grieving parents.  …end of the story that I choose to tell.

It has been over a decade since Mitch died.  Though I have tried, I have been completely ineffectual regarding Mitch’s challenge.  Worse still, the efforts of my own vocation (within the church) have been time wasted.  After 44 years of membership in Lutheran churches, after education in Lutheran college and seminary, after several years of full-time church employment, after decades of service as a church musician, it is time for me to jump ship.  To leave places which exclude my brother.  To leave places which avoid honest discussion of issues like militarism and nationalism.  To leave places which refuse to adapt worship liturgy and ancient creeds to meet the needs of contemporary humanity.  Happily, there are good options from which to choose.  But this movement and change is challenging, after all these years.