I lift up my eyes to the mountains— where does my help come from?My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. Psalm 121:1-2
My friends at kin•dom community and I have been working on a new podcast called “kin•dom campfire chats”. This podcast features the voices of LGBTQIA+ pre-teens, teenagers, and adult leaders who attended the kin•dom camp last summer. kin•dom camp provides these youth an opportunity to feel safe and feel free to show up as their full selves, experiencing all the fun a camp has to offer in a week filled with affirmation, community, and celebration.
In this podcast, camp participants tell stories of coming out, transitioning, acceptance and denunciation by classmates, family issues, and so much more.
A common theme among these narratives is the rejection they feel by institutions that ideally should provide care and safety for them as children and youth. School teachers, counselors, and administrators often ignore or oppose their need for safety and security. Church ministers and church camp counselors tell them that, implicitly or directly, they are rejected by God for being exactly who God made them to be. Political officials pass laws and regulations that create direct harm to them, usually for political power.
Black theologian Christena Cleveland, in her book God is a Black Woman, writes this about the church:
In fact, this behavior is modeled in the book of Psalms: “I look to the hills, where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Especially when we feel our own power crumbling, spirituality offers a loving connection to a steadfast, reliable Power. But what happens when you can’t trust the Power you’re supposed to rely on? What happens when that Power is so closely linked to human greed, political power, patriarchy, and white supremacy that it is no longer recognizable? What happens when that Power has been irrevocably corrupted?
In these interviews with LGBTQIA+ youth, you can hear on the first listening that they have been forced, at a young age, to become resilient and to rely only on the help of those who care deeply for them. You can hear a wisdom beyond their years and developmentally before they needed to become so mature. You also hear a deep mistrust of power structures. What you also hear is longing for a relationship with God that they can’t access because of the church.
Asking a 15-year-old black trans youth to fight greed, power, patriarchy, and white supremacy is too much. It is much too much. Ideally, a community of summer camp friends, queer adult leaders, supportive allies, and safe places provides some help and peace. I also suspect that there is a deep spirituality, perhaps deeper than we can imagine, that is providing some level of comfort and help, even if they can’t name it. Can such a person, damaged by the representatives of God in non-affirming communities, still know the help of the Maker of Heaven and Earth? I pray that it is so.
God in heaven,
On this and every day, we pray that you remind our young people that they are always loved by you, held by you, and kept by you. We pray that they feel surrounded by your presence, and they feel your constant grace, compassion, and mercy. Remind them that you love them, just as you created them to be and that nothing they do, no one that they love, and certainly not who you created them to be can ever separate them from your love. Lord, we pray that you order the steps of our young people. Remind them that you know the plans that you have for them, plans to give them hope and a future. And give them the strength to press on each and every day, fulfilling those plans and making this world a more loving, gracious, and caring world…on earth as it is in heaven.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
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