How's Kirby?
By Derek Penwell
Apart from the yearly drag show on Phil Donahue, I had no contact with gay people as a kid. That’s not true, exactly, because as we know now, gay people are always around—which I didn’t know then.
The whole thought of people loving others of the same gender was unfathomable to me as a child. I knew it was wrong, but I’m not sure how I knew.
I don’t remember having a conversation about it with anybody. It wasn’t the kind of conversation we would have had–like we would never talk about the relative advantages of owning a beach house in the Keys over owning a sail boat in Martha’s Vineyard. What would have been the point? Our lives were never going to be touched by it, so why talk about it?
I don’t know if I just picked up a vibe about it, when my parents seemed a little fidgety if we walked in and saw Billy Crystal on Soap.
It could be that I, like every kid my age, was especially familiar with the schoolyard epithets that made their way into our vocabulary as a means of publicly establishing our masculinity.
I don’t know where I learned it, but I knew being homosexual was a bad thing for people to be. I didn’t have to do any soul searching about the issue. I was pretty certain that the whole idea was self-evidently something that any “normal” person could recognize as abhorrent—and by “normal” I meant something like “Christian” (since Christianity was a normative reality in my world).
We now live in a different world from the one in which I grew up. My kids have grown up with children who have two moms and two dads.
Our own minds, my wife’s and mine, have changed over the years regarding this issue. I know that on the rare occasion when we talked about “Charlie’s” moms with our children, we were adamant that love is love, and that “Charlie’s moms love each other like Mommy and Daddy do.” But we never had sit-down lessons on diversity.
Consequently, when my own kids, who are now teenagers, overhear the debate about same gender marriage, they’re confounded. Why is this such a big deal?
I grew up in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement believing that everybody is created equal, regardless of race. Just a few years before I came onto the scene, however, no consensus existed on the issue. People braved batons and German Shepherds, went to jail, lost their jobs, and died in the streets to establish an understanding of human relationships that I have always taken to be self-evident.
It never occurred to me as a child that anyone still believed that black people were inferior. I didn’t carry the same baggage about the issue of race that my parent’s generation had had to haul around the first part of their lives.
Let me be quick to add that passing the Civil Rights Act didn’t do away with the baggage from my parents’ and grandparents’ generations, but it did at least two things that I can see: 1) it made continuing to hold racist beliefs problematic, and 2) it cleared the cultural air so that continuing to indoctrinate children with racist ideas was not only problematic socially, but also more difficult.
These days, my children don’t have to carry around the same baggage I did on the issue of Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer people. They see the propriety of love as an issue unencumbered by concerns about which genders should be paired together, and which pairings should be avoided at all costs.
A demographic divide over the issue of homosexuality has emerged, a divide that continues to grow wider with each passing day. The younger you are, the more likely you are to have no problem with the idea of a man marrying a man, a woman marrying a woman, or a man born in a woman’s body, becoming what she feels she was created to be, etc.
Just the other day I had to come home to tell my children that Charlie died (different Charlie).
Back in the 70s Charlie had been ordained in the church where I serve. He soon left the ministry, however, after meeting Kirby—the love of his life. In fact, he didn’t last long in the church altogether. He just couldn’t take being told that being gay made him unacceptable. Charlie became a corporate executive and moved to Virginia.
After Charlie retired, he and Kirby moved back to Louisville. They’ve been together over thirty-eight years. A former minister at our church, got in touch with Charlie and encouraged him to come back to check out the church that had ordained him so many years before. He did.
Charlie found that much had change since he left. For one thing, our church had voted unanimously the year before to welcome all people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, into full participation in the life and ministry of the church. He loved it, and eventually rejoined.
However, not only did Charlie reconnect with the “kids” from his old youth group (almost all of whom were now parents and grandparents), but he got to know the youth who are in the church today. He talked to them, joked with them, brought donuts for them—in short, he cared about them. Everyone in our church, but especially the youth, loved Charlie.
Charlie died the other day. I had to come home to tell my children. They cried. But their first question was: “How's Kirby?”
According to the statistics, the younger you are the more likely the first question out of your mouth in a situation like this is “How is Kirby?” Because to young people Charlie and Kirby aren’t first gay men, they’re people who’ve spent most of their lives loving and taking care of each other.
In a post-denominational world mainline denominations are going to have to come to terms with the inevitability of having to appeal to young people whose first question upon hearing of the death of someone like Charlie is: “How's Kirby?”
Yard Sale -- Sat. 10/13 @ 8 a.m.
Are you looking for the perfect whatcha-ma-call-it at a to-die-for price? If so, there is a great chance you will find it at our sale! Here you will find tons of deals & steals.
It's going to be AMAZING!! This is like the Black Friday of yard sales people.
We are also collecting items for the sale. This is the perfect incentive and opportunity to get rid of things from your house that no longer fit, work, or come in handy.
So ask yourself... have I cooked with it, worn it, displayed it, used it or read it within the last year?" If not Donate It to the Douglass Blvd. Christian Church Yard Sale! Your donated treasures will help provide assistance for children living in the Casa de Hogar Orphanage in Mexico. You can drop off your donations Mon. - Fri. 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. or call the church office for assistance.
Sermon Podcast: The Best Advertising (James 5:13-20)
This week's sermon is here!
Or here, if you'd prefer to read it.
Very soon we'll be back on iTunes. Look up our past podcasts on the iTunes store.
Movie Club/DBCC Youth: The Wise Kids
In honor of October’s coming Louisville AIDS Walk, and our Youth’s participation in the event, the movie club is having a joint meeting with our DBCC Youth on Sunday, October 28th from 4–6:30. The film we will be viewing/discussing is called The Wise Kids; a film featured in the Louisville LGBT Film Festival.
A vivid, dynamic Southern coming-of-age drama, [The Wise Kids] takes place in the transitional space between high school and college, when life seems to be all questions and no answers, and the future is scarily wide open.[1]
So please, come out and join us in a discussion that is sure to be insightful for all of us, young and old.
Oh. And bring a movie snack!
Sermon Podcast: Welcoming the Little Ones (Mark 9:30-37)
The latest Podcast is up!.
You can read it here in plain text.
Subscribe to us on iTunes for our weekly podcast updates.
Trunk r' Treat + Chili Supper!
Guess what? It’s almost October! And what does this mean? It means there are already literally tons of costumes being sifted through at your local Meijer as you read this.
It also means that Halloween Trick-or-Treat anxiety is welling up inside parents and homeowners alike.
That said, we’d like to invite all of you to join us for our annual Trunk r’ Treat + Chili Supper this October 27 from 4–5:30pm. It’s the Saturday before Halloween, so you can still go Trick-or-Treating on Wednesday and not miss out on the awesome chili and candy here at DBCC that is becoming quite the autumn tradition.
Oh, did we mention the River Sirens will be singing? And that the Bardstown Bound Boofest is happening simultaneously?
So, please come out and join us for an awesome time of chili, folk music, funny costumes, technicolor leaves, and, of course, CANDY!
Part of your nutritious breakfast.
Sermon Podcast: Being Faithful (Mark 8:27-38)
Sermon Podcast: The Constraints of Freedom (Gen. 2:15-17, 3:1-7)
Hey folks, due to some tech issues (and a big behind the scenes maneuver with the website), we don't have a brand spankin' new Sermon Podcast for this week.
We know, we know. You're disappointed.
To get your DBCC fix for the week, here is a sermon Rev. Penwell gave on March 14, 2011. It's a pretty good one.
The Constraints of Freedom (Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7) from Douglassblvdcc on Vimeo.
The River Sirens at DLFM!
Everyone check out The River Sirens at the Douglass Loop Farmers Market on Oct. 13th!
Our own Stephanie Mattingly and Claire Mosley, along with the lovely Emily Smith of the River Sirens will be playing sweet, soothing bluegrass on the porch of Briney Hall (barring ground-breaking for renovation).
Seriously. Come on out.
We really love these ladies.
Let's go Hunger Walkin'!
The Louisville Hunger Walk sponsored by Dare to Care is this Sunday!
The Walk/Run begins at 2:15, but we'll have to be there early to get ourselves registered. Registration is $25 for adults, and (at least in years past) you get a pretty sweet t-shirt to commemorate your contribution.
If you are interested in riding the Church van to the Belvedere, be sure to e-mail Geoff Wallace or Jennifer Vandiver before Sunday so that we can get a relative head count.
For more info, visit http://www.thehungerwalk.org/
Come on out for a good time and a noble cause!
God, Tree Climbing, and Infinite Surprise
"It pleased him to imagine God as someone like his mother, someone beleaguered by too many responsibilities, too dog-tired to monitor an energetic boy every minute of the day, but who, out of love and fear for his safety, checked in on him whenever she could. Was this so crazy? Surely God must have other projects besides Man [sic], just as his parents had responsibilities other than raising their children? Miles liked the idea of a God who, when He at last had the opportunity to return His attention to His children, might shake His head with wonder and mutter, "Jesus. Look what they're up to now." A distractible God, perhaps, one who'd be startled to discover so many of His children way up in trees since the last time He looked. A God whose hand would go rushing to His mouth in fear in that instant of recognition that—good God!—that kid's going to hurt himself. A God who could be surprised by unanticipated pride—glory be, that boy is a climber!" (Richard Russo, Empire Falls).
I love this quote from Richard Russo. God as a distracted mother, responsible for so much, but ferociously attached to her children. I like that. Being married to a mother ferociously attached to her children, but responsible for much else, I'm partial to this image of God. Notwithstanding the questions of orthodoxy (the impassibility and omnicompetence of God), I still like to think of God as much less overbearing than we're traditionally given to believe. I know of and agree with Karl Barth's rather imperious sounding dictum that "God is not human being said in a loud voice!" Still, a surprised and delighted God is a comforting notion in a world filled with pinch-faced people certain that God's highest vocation revolves around abstemiously policing human indiscretion and rooting out joy from among possible human achievement. Surely God must find some joy in human achievement, even (perhaps especially) at its most outrageously indiscreet.
If God had a hand in creating us, God must take some delight in us--and not just when we're wearing our Sunday best either. Human life, as messy and venal as it sometime seems, offers up moments of true grace and rapture—often squarely deposited in the midst of the messiness and venality, rather than despite it. My delight in my children, when I can subdue my own pinch-faced abstemiousness long enough, often comes in realizing the amazing extent to which they are infinitely capable and amazingly clever at goofing up. How, for example, sophisticated electronic gadgets when in my children's hands acquire the properties of divining rods, sniffing out water (toilets, the dog's water bowl, etc.) with alarming precision, is an object of true wonderment to me. Why should God be any less amazed at my own stunning penchant for dropping delicate stuff in the toilet?
The clear temptation that accompanies an image of God as slightly harried parent is that it lets me off the hook with respect to my messes--as if to say, I can do whatever I want because God's busy minding gravity. This would, of course, constitute a singularly self-serving picture of God as undiscerning and ceaselessly approving. But the positive thing this image of God offers, I think, is an opportunity to hold on a little less tightly to myself and to my own need to get everything exactly right--to view my own children, not so much as a project to be perfected but a gift to be enjoyed, to be wondered over, and shared with the rest of the world.
A God surprised by and unanticipatedly proud of tree climbers (and their parents)—that sounds like grace to me.
Sermon Podcast: The Need for Wisdom (8/26)
This week's sermon was given on the text of Ephesians 5:15-20.
If you would like to read the transcript instead, here is the link.
Sermon Podcast: Mexico Reflections (7/29)
Sermon Podcast: The Broom Tree (1 Kings 19:1-15a)
Rev. Penwell's sermon on when we, like Elijah, would just like to give up and find ourselves waiting under the broom tree.
If you'd also like to read it, here is the link to the text version.
Sermon Podcast: The Bread We Ask For (John 6:24-35)
Flowering in the Desert: The Church in an Inhospitable Environment
I am in Mexico as I write this. I can look outside and see the sun at work drying the hard brown earth. Children playing soccer make dust devils swirl as they run.
San Luis Potosí lies nestled in the arid mountains of central México. It’s difficult to imagine that anything can grow here, since so much of the year passes without rain. Yet everywhere you look you can see small patches of green fingers poking out from the ground—a little grass here and there, cacti, mesquite trees. The bougainvilleas paint purple and red pictures against a brown backdrop.
Walking out in the countryside, however, emphasizes the inhospitable nature of the environment. Rocks, sand, mountains—at times an almost lunar landscape. Beauty, but a dread kind of beauty—angular, lots of sharp barbs and keen edges.
As I walk, I puzzle over who it was that wandered into this part of the world first and thought it might make a good home. Water is a mission rather than a natural resource. Food requires imagination and ingenuity borne on the bent back of sun-scorched labor.
And yet, in the midst of this uncooperative terrain life blooms. Stubborn plants prosper. Animals breed. People live and love and create; they produce children who laugh and old people who still sing.
“How can this be?” I wonder. In conditions less than hospitable to life … life flourishes. Sinuous. Unyielding. Spiny.
It makes no sense that I can see. Still there is life.
People have speculated recently about the viability of Christianity. In particular, the church and its waning popularity has stood at the center of the discussion. The numbers seem clear: the church, with few exceptions, has fallen on hard times. The soil that only a few generations ago was fertile and black has hardened—just a few unflagging tendrils peeking through cracks, a flash of color here and there from plants that will not surrender, a tree or a cactus that has made peace with its grim environment.
But there is life … and if you look closely, more life than first meets the eye. There are churches thriving under impossible circumstances: announcing the reign of God, pursuing justice, tending the sick, feeding the hungry, holding hands with those left to die in the desert.
It occurs to me that the church has experienced lean seasons in the past. But every time things green up for a bit, we think the fat years are permanent, that the land of milk and honey knows no drought or blight. But plenty never lasts.
On the other hand, neither does lean.
What an inhospitable environment can produce is strength and focus, and the tenacity to do what we have been given to do, even though we may never see it result in the kind of fecundity we think signals “success.”
Heroes and saints are almost never made during easy times. The first holy mothers and fathers bloomed in the desert, after all. Heroes and saints aren’t people who do great things for God because they have no shortcomings, no flaws, no challenges from their environment; heroes and saints are people who do great things for God in spite of the fact that the deck’s stacked against them, that the shortcomings and flaws always threaten to undo them, that the environment in which they live doesn’t want them. Heroes and saints are people determined to live their everyday lives as if God matters more than the sum total of their weaknesses and challenges.
We may very well be in the desert.
Now, I think, is the time for heroes and saints, for a church unwilling to yield.
¡Mexico! Post-trip reflections: Geoff Wallace
I have traveled to a number of different counties on this earth. I have seen many cultures unalike to my own. I have met many people who live very different lives than mine. I have learned from these experiences; each one shaping and reshaping the person I am and will become. There are few places, however, that are as dear to my heart as San Luis Potosi, SLP, Mexico.
This past July was my third trip in as many years to the Casa Hogar de San Juan Children’s Home in San Luis Potosi. Each trip has been uniquely special to me. Each trip has revealed to me a different side of myself. They have given me new insights into my own path, and yielded some unforgettable stories from man-pants to a solo unintended extension to my stay.
The relationships that groups traveling to Casa Hogar have cultured throughout the years could never be quantified nor could their importance be measured to each individual. It is fascinating how folks can become so incredibly intimate with a group of people with whom they can barely communicate. We are all family there as soon as we arrive on the grounds. Those who truly feel that love understand above all others the intoxication it can hold.
The unexpected relationships of these journeys, however absent minded it may seem to overlook them, are the relationships we build amongst ourselves as we travel as a group to “foreign” lands. The past three years have proven to be ones of great change in my life. While these changes could in part be attributed to major milestones in my life, I will never understate the importance of Casa Hogar as an influence on how my life is and will continue to play out.
Three years ago I was in my senior year at the University of Louisville. For over two years, I had been coming to Douglass as a section leader in the choir. In those two years, I could have counted on one hand how many folks I had ever spoken to. Since returning from my first trip to Casa Hogar that autumn, not only have I gained a whole new church family (something I never expected to happen again after leaving my childhood church in Morgantown, KY) but I am now on staff and committed to the task of ensuring that others get to experience all that Douglass Blvd. Christian Church is and could be.
Casa Hogar and the folks who occupy it open up the hearts of those who come to share their home. They create an atmosphere of warmth that relieves us of the barriers we put up around our lives; whether it be physical, economical, social or emotional. They set an example of exactly what the family of God looks like.
Most who venture south to Casa Hogar go expecting to open their hearts to “needy” children. But there is something we are rarely ever prepared for.
When you open your heart for something … anything, you’ll always be surprised what else finds its way inside that you may have been looking for all along.
Originally posted at www.soygeoffwallace.com as "¡Ohhhhhh Mexico!".
Sermon Podcast: Being Weak (Second Corinthians 2:1-12)
¡Mexico! Part 3: 'Agua Day' - Allison King
Today was all about 'agua', beginning at 2:30 a.m. when Ruth Ann, Mary, and Christina awoke to two inches of water on their bedroom floor - the result of a disconnected faucet in the girl's bathroom. This led to panic, then bailing out and mopping, with everyone pitching in, including Betty, John and Salina. Then it was back to bed...for about five minutes...when we began to hear the sobs and cries of a young boy in the courtyard - a sleepover guest who apparently woke up frightened in a strange place and wanted to go home. Betty got dressed and took him home. Exciting night! After breakfast and a couple of trips to the plumbing supply house, we got to work replacing the plastic water lines that had been melted at some point by steam that backed up in the lines. Much collaboration helped get the job done, with some people drilling holes for clamps to hang the pipes, others putting in the clamps, and dad and Basil working on installing a new water heater. We were finally ready around 6 to tear out the old lines and hook up the new one. All went without a hitch and all have been reveling in warm showers since, including all of the teenage girls who returned to the home yesterday from camp. It was a long day of work, finished off with a fun bonfire organized by the guys, complete with s'mores that all of the kids loved. I continue to be so impressed with the kids' self-sufficiency and care for one another...all kept a look out for the younger kids during the bonfire...at one point patting out some cinders that landed on a young boy. It's Sunday morning now and off to church...more fun to come.