Of Power, and of Love, and of a Sound Mind
Finding out God. And finding out that I’m gay.
I first felt God in the textures of my childhood, nestled somewhere in the tough tweed upholstery of pale blue chapel pews, in the scratchy burlap lining the halls, and in the soft family room rug where we knelt in prayer every night. I felt Him in the cold, unforgiving metal of foldable overflow chairs and in the stringy net of a basketball hoop tucked away neatly for Sunday service.
I smelled Him in the chlorine of the baptismal font. I tasted Him in Wonder Bread and tap water. I heard Him in shrill organs and fragile four-part harmony. I glimpsed Him in the tiny font of impossibly thin pages lined with gold. God, we learned, has a body, and so I discovered my religion in all five senses. To be like God was to be physical and sensuous and glorious.
That’s how I found out God. And, in the same way, I found out that I was gay. I knew God in my body long before I was able to translate Him into coherent thought. And while this new translation would take me years to unriddle, it too was a language of the body and the spirit. I couldn’t say any of it out loud yet, but I felt it in…
