Back in the dusty annals of history, when I was in Baptist seminary, bursting with excitement about new ways of seeing things and in love with theology yet still stuck in the dreaded closet, I had a dream. It came to mind as I did the last post and I think I really ought to share it.
It was one of those desperate nightmares. I was among the defenders of a walled city (I had been reading a lot of mediaeval history in those days). We were under attack. Everything was dark. The opposing side had, like its Goliath, a very dark, powerful monster that would annihilate our walls and destroy us. The beast dwarfed our city walls. Total terror. There was no imaginable hope.
Early in the dream, as best I can recall, I was just one among the defenders but when all was lost I cried out, "Open the gates!"
I surrendered myself and the city.
And we were not annihilated, or even attacked.
The monster turned out to be benign.
All was going to be well.
And I woke up.
It seemed then, and seems even more so now, that the monster I was terrified of was my sexuality. It only threatened if I tried to keep it at bay. Embraced it would be my friend. In surrender was grace.
The walled city was probably my "closet."
In the years that followed, I did not open my closet door. Someone else ripped it off the hinges for me. But I have never regretted letting go of the terrifying secret and learning all over to be the person God made me.
Of course, learning to be the persons God made us is a lifelong task that we face often. But it is so much better than trying to be anyone or anything else.
Grace to you all, and peace.
--the BB
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4 comments:
And to you.
Oh there are no words, but there is respect and so much love.
Grace and peace be with you, too. And, thank you.
This reminds me of a dream 30 years ago just when I began to meditate, and asked God to let me know "if you're there" for me, not because a priest told me or my father...
There was a castle, so fortified its moat was a river. Beyond the moat a chain link fence so tough the link wire was thick as a man's thumb. "No one can get in" I thought. Just then a whisp of something white: fog probably, wound its way in and around the links and drifted through the fence.
Decades later I think this was the Spirit getting through my defenses. It was the beginning of decades of transformation, that lifetime you talk about. Perhaps your terrifying monster that was not a monster also had something to do with that. "Open the gates!"
Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in
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