MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Queer blog runs gay Passion and Easter series

Image at right: Jesus Before the Priests (from The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision) by F. Douglas Blanchard (counterlight@earthlink.net)

A queer version of Christ’s Passion is running in daily installments at the Jesus in Love Blog this week through Easter.

Each daily post features a queer Christian painting and an excerpt from my new novel Jesus in Love: At the Cross.

Jesus Before the Priests (above) is one of my personal favorites from the series. The priest looks like so many I have known.  They stand by, wringing their hands while they let injustice and violence happen.  Artist Doug Blanchard has got that churchly smug indifference down cold.

The eight-day Passion series at my blog covers the dramatic events of Palm Sunday, the Last Supper, and Jesus’ arrest, trial, crucifixion, and resurrection.  Jesus is in love with his disciple John and faces religious homophobia in the selections from “At the Cross.”

The online Holy Week series includes paintings by Blanchard, Gary Speziale and Becki Jayne Harrelson.  Click here to visit the gay Passion series.

See video for a happy new year in 2008

I made a video to wish everyone a wonderful new year in 2008. 

Be sure to watch this 30-second video to see the gorgeous poinsettias near our home -- and to find out why I believe 2008 will be a great year.
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Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian art historian and author who offers gay-friendly spiritual resources at JesusInLove.org and blogs at Jesus In Love Blog.

Lesbian Madonna embodies Christmas spirit

Christmas has inspired many contemporary GLBT artists to create queer spiritual art.

For example, Annunciation (at left) by Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin shows the Madonna and her female lover are portrayed by a lesbian couple, pregnant through artificial insemination.

The photo is included in my new book Art That Dares: Gay Jesus, Woman Christ, and More. In our interview for the book, Ohlson Wallin told me how she created the striking, mysterious image. Here are some excerpts from Art That Dares:

She combined the dual influences of Christianity and queer consciousness to create a groundbreaking series of twelve photos showing Jesus in a contemporary LGBT context. It became one of Europe’s most noticed and notorious art exhibits, even arousing the disapproval of Pope John Paul II—who reacted by canceling his planned audience with the Swedish archbishop.

Ohlson Wallin called the series Ecce Homo, a pun meaning “See the human being” and “See the homosexual.” …

She enlisted local LGBT folk to serve as models, and they spent three years meticulously recreating scenes from the life of Christ based on the artistic masterpieces of Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Rubens, and others….

“It’s very important for me in my work that the picture have a documentary truth mixed with the way I arrange the story in the picture,” Ohlson Wallin said. She and her models played with the contradictions….

“I wanted Jesus for me and my own sexual sense. I wanted to be able to identify with Jesus. There are millions and billions of Jesus pictures for heterosexuals to identify with. In Africa they have black Jesus. In China they have Chinese Jesus. Lots of different countries each have a different Jesus.” …

The exhibit went on to tour Scandinavia and continental Europe from 1998 to 2000, winning awards and breaking several attendance records. More than 250,000 people viewed it. Not everyone liked what they saw. A man with an ax destroyed two of the photos. People threw stones at Ohlson Wallin and she needed police protection after receiving death threats….

Ohlson Wallin recorded the whole and and  span of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, beginning with the announcement of his coming birth. In her version, the Madonna and her female lover are portrayed by a lesbian couple, seven months’ pregnant through artificial insemination. The angel Gabriel comes in the form of their gay male friend, who floats in with a message from God—and a test tube for insemination.

That's the end of the excerpts.  May everyone who visits this Gay Spirituality blog experience God born anew in their hearts during the Christmas season.

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Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian art historian and author who offers gay-friendly spiritual resources at JesusInLove.org and blogs at the Jesus in Love Blog.  She recently launched a monthly e-newsletter on queer spirituality and the arts.

 

December 31, 2007: SAVE THE DATE

In response to a question from a reader of Soulfully Gay, do I still support the establishment of a gay-specific winter holiday? (In the book, I proposed a holiday called Yuletide. Subsequently, I refined the proposal to call the holiday Bridge of Light and suggested that the identity be shifted from "celebration of queer identity" to "a celebration of the full equality and dignity of all people").

I've been thinking hard about this one. My answer, only about three years in the making, is yes--I support the emergence of two distinctly new cultural traditions. They are distinct, but they are not necessarily incompatible or separate.

I maintain my proposal, advanced in Soulfully Gay, for the creation of a holiday for the LGBT/queer community called Bridge of Light, to be celebrated on January 1 of each year. December 31, the eve of Bridge of Light, should be the actual time of gatherings and festivities, as the point of such get togethers is to welcome in the New Year and to affirm the Bridge of Light with a distinctively LGBT/queer festival. I'm totally psyched for this, and support it 100%. I should add that I have been personally celebrating Bridge of Light continuously since 2004, and have encouraged my readers to do so as well each holiday season. I know some of them have taken me up on the suggestion, though it's hard to know precisely how many have done so.

I have also quietly begun to support a new proposal, effective January 1, 2008 (and not yet formally announced in any way), for the creation of an international, global, humanitarian holiday called Spirit Day. Spirit Day will be recognized on January 1 of each year, and will also be "rung in" on December 31. The point of Spirit Day is to honor Spirit in all its many forms and faces. So while in a sense the holiday is humanitarian, it's most fully humanitarian precisely because its focus is on that Spirit which connects and bonds human beings to one another and to every other living creature and everything in the cosmos.

I have proposed that Bridge of Light will be integrated into Spirit Day as a specific way of celebrating the Spirit Day. Bridge of Light will bring in the Spirit Day in a way distinctive to the LGBT/queer communities in which it is celebrated. It's a queer celebration of a human and universal wonder: Spirit.

I'll have more to say about both of these holidays in the fall and into the holiday season. For now, SAVE THE DATE. :-)

cross-posted at http://www.joe-perez.com/until

Greetings at Christmas and Bridge of Light

By Joe Perez

I'll be on break from blogging from now until January 1. A vacation for recharging my batteries, getting well, enjoying time with friends and family, and preparing for some changes in the new year. I've got some good things planned for Until and Gay Spirituality & Culture next year, so I hope you'll be dropping by.

In these days of political correctness and "wars over Christmas," any holiday greeting you give is likely to offend someone somewhere. Peace, joy, refreshed hope, that sort of thing, wished to you and to all ... no offense is intended or implied.

And I add Merry Christmas because I'll be celebrating the Incarnation in just a few days and wish you all well from my place of joy.

And I add a Happy New Year because not everyone celebrates Christmas as I will (even those who decorate a tree and buy gifts or go to church). On December 31, bring in 2007 with a day of honoring the beautiful uniqueness and hidden unity of all people ... learn about the Bridge of Light ... learn about the World Spirituality Day ... and make the transition to the new year a true Spirit Day for you, whatever that looks like.

I hope you'll join me in lighting six candles on December 31 for the Bridge of Light. Don't forget to have six candles handy--purple, red, blue, yellow, green, and orange are recommended. If you don't have them handy now, you can pick up six tealight candles in a drug store for a few bucks.

"Convert or Die"

By Darrell Grizzle

Just in time for holiday gift-giving . . .

Liberal and progressive Christian groups say a new computer game [Left Behind: Eternal Forces] in which players must either convert or kill non-Christians is the wrong gift to give this holiday season and that Wal-Mart, a major video game retailer, should yank it off its shelves.

. . . The Rev. Tim Simpson, a Jacksonville, Fla., Presbyterian minister and president of the Christian Alliance for Progress, added: “So, under the Christmas tree this year for little Johnny is this allegedly Christian video game teaching Johnny to hate and kill?”

The news story, from the San Francisco Chronicle:
‘Convert or Die’ Game Divides Christians

Gratefulness.org

Got an e-mail from a friend to a website on the theme of gratitude. I recommend a visit.

Go to Gratefulness.org. It won’t cost anything but a few minutes of your time. You will be joining literally thousands of others around the planet in this simple gesture who are offering prayers of peace, wholeness and love for others, the world and themselves. Each candle “burns” for 48 hours, which will take those of us in the United States nicely through Thanksgiving Day with a feast that is somewhat larger than what we may be used to.

In a news day of bodies in the streets, crimes, racism, torture, and diseased cadaver tissue, I am grateful for folks who can take a step back and try to shake off the weariness and cynicism.

Gays lead in Dec. 31 celebration of the Bridge of Light

By Joe Perez

At this time of year, major religions from throughout the world celebrate holidays designed to signal the warmth of family and community amid the winter gloom. These celebrations often use the symbol of Light to represent hope, unity, and spirituality. Other seasonal holidays mark the arrival of the new year and provide an opportunity for introspection and setting visions for the year ahead.

Until recently there have only been two sorts of winter holidays: on the one hand, traditional religious ceremonies grounded in one particular faith; on the other hand, secular traditions devoid of any recognition of common spiritual bonds capable of uniting people in a higher purpose. However, three years ago a new twist emerged: Bridge of Light (BOL), a new winter celebration intended to stress the shared threads that unite people of all faiths and philosophies.

October is gay history month, didn't you know

Or so says the Broward County library system.

The inaugural Gay and Lesbian History Month, organized by the Broward County library system, is this month featuring a series of cultural and historic programs and films that highlight gay and lesbian issues.

How far can tolerance go?

Revised Version

The term "tolerance" is a buzzword applied like a Band-Aid to religious fractures. How far can tolerance really go, especially with Religious Belief (A) directly challenges Religious Belief (B), beliefs held by two citizens of a freedom-loving democracy? I'm thinking of a concrete example which, naturally, originates from my experience.

I consider myself a "religious humanist", meaning that I do not automatically assume that religious expressions are invalid or untrue. At the same time, my focus is not the life after, nor Eternal Truths pointed to by scriptures, but the appropriation of these Truths in the present world. My parents and my sister are Christians. Of the born-again, evangelical, Reformed and Presbyterian sort. Most people would apply the term "fundamentalist" to them, but that would be unfair. They simply believe that God has spoken to his people through the Bible, and that certain things, like the resurrection, atonement, and the incarnation, are True.