Prepared message given as part of Three Rivers worship on Zoom 3 June 2021.

and it was a way for us to put down on  paper  the um explicit invitation that we  wanted to make about this community  in the center of it is faithfulness it's  listening to the divine and following  the leadings  that we hear and um and our purpose  of reclaiming and reinventing quaker  practices for current time so that all  can feel well  welcomed and into ever deepening  faithfulness which is at the center and  around that  is a set of of um what we have named  values caring for families radical  hospitality  starting from yes and um also  queer affirming which is a word  that we use every  week when we talk about who three rivers  is  and welcome folks to this gathering  and because this is pride month  my um goal was to  have a message that talked about  what it means to be queer affirming  so all week i have been wandering  through  sort of the history of queer theory and  queer theology  through liberation theology and through  womenist  and feminist theology through gay and  lesbian theologies  through structuralism and  post-structuralism  and essentialism with foucault  and derrida because queer theory is a  pretty  complicated and complex  um philosophical  uh construct and  i am at the same time navigating the  uh condition of being a single parent  while my spouse is away  doing some family business and being a  single non-anxious parent  so last night i went to bed at the same  time as my  child did aiming to get up at five in  the morning and finish  cleaving off all of the unnecessary  parts of this message  and i woke up at two in the morning  and um could not get back to sleep  until five in the morning when my alarm  went off  and um only managed to add more  to the message and despite my  best efforts to get to sleep could not  and then i remembered two things  one of them was a story that my friend  elaine from pacific yearly meeting  shared about how for several months she  would wake  at four in the morning unable to get  back to sleep  and that at that point she would just  pray and so i tried that  and i heard the words  rest let it go  at which point i remembered the other  thing that is unique about quakerism  which is that we don't ever have to do  anything just because we said we'd do it  that showing up even for  a prepared message at  um a quaker gathering where hundreds of  people  are assembled if that message isn't  ready  if you are told not to bring it it's  okay  to let it go and put it aside  and to listen for what the spirit has  instead  and so i think this is the first of two  parts of a message wondering what it  means to  be a queer affirming community  and the first part of that is that  it's okay to let go  of the plans you have  and just to rest in the spirit  which is actually particularly  related to being queer affirming  i won't go into the long  and complex literary theory  but uh until next time  and not in too much complexity but  the evolution of the  academic discipline of queer theory  is to disrupt  assumed norms and structures  and so i'm inviting  us to settle in to some  waiting worship after we break out into  small  groups and to  be with each other and hold what it  means  to disrupt the structures and norms that  assume that things have to be a certain  way  i think the other thing that i will  share  about preparing for this message  feels very vulnerable  and maybe why i was kept awake  because sharing this message potentially  meant  sharing years and years of  disappointment of  my own coming out story and of not being  met  in community after community  and the ways in which i have been  and know others who are longing for a  place  to call home and longing for a place  that not only  names itself as welcoming  or tolerant but  centers celebrates  and assumes as not just  normal but wonderful  the experience of everyone there  including  gay lesbian trans and  non-binary folks  and sometimes it's hard to hope for  things  lest you be disappointed again  but in that message this morning was  also that the spirit doesn't disappoint