Relatability In Specificity

There is often a misconception that the most relatable content is that which is most vague and generic because it encompasses more experiences. However, in limiting oneself to the most common, shared experiences, there is no learning, no exposure to new, unknown experiences. The diversity of experience is lost and it is in this diversity that true beauty is found. As my church studied the poems, prayers, and meditations from “Black Liturgies” from Cole Arthur Riley, I came across many experiences that I knew I would never experience as a white person with male privilege. I could never fully comprehend the intersection of racism and sexism but, in my reading, I could understand it better than before and I could feel the impact from her testimony radiate from the page. I could also feel my experience with marginalization communing with hers. Themes from her experience with anxiety harmonized with my own. I could feel the weight of her exhaustion and the beauty of her rage and it reminded me of my experience of such divine emotions.

            As a gay, autistic, agender, ADHD person in ministry, I have learned that there are not many people exactly like me. However, there are also so, so many people like me in some way. In all my identities, both marginalized and privileged, I find people with shared experiences, a myriad of communities to which I can belong. Within the beautiful and diverse labels that we may or may not share, each person I have met has reflected a glimmering piece of the divine that is reflected in myself and the world around me, a tile in the mosaic that is the imago Dei, the image of God. In all the prayers and poems and hymns and stories I have come across, such as the ones by Cole Arthur Riley, the most relatable were never the ones that sought to replicate my personal relationship with God and the world but the ones who spoke authentically to their own and allowed me to see how my piece of the imago Dei fit with theirs. The most relatable works of art were the ones that spoke to the authentic and singular experience of being that particular human and, in their singularity, I found communion with my own.

As an autistic person, I thrive in order. As someone with ADHD, I delight in chaos. As a queer person, I see the beauty in the blurring of this binary: structuring chaos and disrupting order to embrace the full spectrum of human experience. As I travel between spaces of queerness and Christianity, as I find myself still navigating the ordination process in a space between laity and clergy, as I recognize how I come from a place of privilege as well as a place of marginalization, I have learned to build a home in this “in between.” There is a space between boxes, between church buildings, between set structures and rules. It is this “in between” that I hope to navigate in this project, building a space here for all those who have ever felt like they don’t belong.

I would say that this means that the material throughout this project isn't going to speak to every queer person but, the truth is, it never was. My experience with Pride and religion and protest is different than that of other queer people. That is a good thing. Each queer person is an individual with an intensely varied spectrum of experiences with society and the church. I start this project with my experience of this intersection and I hope that I can provide a space for the experiences of others to join in conversation, to speak to places of pain and comfort, humility and indulgence, suppression and freedom. Most importantly, I hope that all who read this can find something relatable in my testimony, not because it is identical to theirs, but because it echoes the beauty of the diverse spectrum of human existence. In the end, it is this experience of specificity that we all share.