There is a hymn that I really love, called “Canticle of the Turning.”  The refrain goes a li’l somethin’ like this:

My heart shall sing of the day You bring.
Let the fires of Your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears,
For the dawn draws near,
And the world is about to turn.

It was announced recently that my denomination’s task force on sexuality has finalized its work on a proposed social statement on human sexuality, which includes a report with recommendations on ministry standards regarding possible changes to policies that preclude pastors in committed same-sex relationships from the denomination’s clergy roster.  The two documents will be released to the public on February 19.  The next church-wide assembly will be held this upcoming August and among the many other items on its agenda will vote whether or not to accept the proposal.

As someone who is gay and single, I feel as though I live within the eye of the hurricane in many respects.  I sit within the calm and I read my denomination’s monthly periodical, cringing and more often than not getting just as heated as the vitriol I read in the letters to the editor written against “my kind” often by people who don’t know a single queer person and won’t go out of their way to.  But that’s about as bad as the tempest gets for me.  I hear about it.  I read about it.  I’m told that the synod my seminary is located in is by far the most conservative synod in the United States.  I hear about the synod assemblies and church-wide assemblies that are so completely emotionally charged on the issue of allowing gay and lesbian people in committed same-sex relationships to serve as clergy that people scream and cry and say the most un-Christlike things to each other.

And I get where the conservative people are coming from, I really do, but I just have to ask: Why?

Why–well past thirty years since the igniting of the gay rights movement–are we still having this argument over biblical interpretation regarding people’s lives and who they love?  And more importantly, by accepting your gay and lesbian brothers’ and sisters’ gifts and calling within the church especially, what will you lose?  What is at stake here?  

I am afraid that the task force’s proposed statement concluding their sexuality study and their recommendation is not going to be what many of us whom it will directly impact hope for.  I do not have a sense that February 19, let alone church-wide assembly, will be a time when I can wipe away the tears of my queer brothers and sisters caused by the years of spiritual abuse in the church, that the fires of God’s justice will be quenched, and the world is still the same place it was today.  Already, a lesbian seminarian I know is contemplating switching out of the ordination track and going a different direction; she says this is part of her continuing discernment and, granted, not everyone who enters the MDiv track completes it and that is completely okay.  But part of me wonders if she is switching because she is sick of the hassle and part of me wonders if she wonders that, too.  I listen to her discuss discernment and issues with her candidacy committee and that kind of tired look on her face after only having been out a little over a year herself–just one year and she’s already tired!–and I have to wonder: 

When it comes right down to it and they pronounce that “absolutely not,” what will I do then?

Of course I want to hope for the best outcome, especially on behalf of all those who love me, believe in what I’m doing here, and are behind me.  Then again, if the church says “absolutely not,” how is the church serving those who are supporting me?

I don’t have any answers, but I wait with baited breath and pray that the world is about to turn.