Read on Twitter
A thread on being queer, vocation & life together: I've talked to groups about queerness, faith, intimacy, community, and what it means and looks like in my life, and by now I've anticipated (and understand) the questions about the possibility of diluting/diminishing queerness 1/
when I talk about it in broad ways, especially when so much was given up by those who identify as such, and continue to hold both pain and grief. I see a lot of my vocation as a desire to bridge experiences/spaces (academic/activism, church/nonchurch, Christian/nonChristian) 2/
and I know that things get lost-in-translation for lack of a better word. There’s a part of me that resists the impulse of proving/legitimizing that I’m queer (stories of my own “coming-out,” experiences of rejection, navigating this in marriage, finding community, etc.) 3/
because I want people to see queerness as ethic and practice, as political, as theological, as spiritual, and not simply as identity. Again, I know that it can’t be so easily disentangled with people’s stories and histories, and for sure, identities. So many people deal daily 4/
with the oppression and violence that comes with identifying as queer. But queerness is liberating, too, and that to me assumes joy and sorrow, always enmeshed with each other in our experiences. So how do we make space for all? 5/
Maybe it requires encouraging the same kind of self-critical reflection that people should be enacting around race, class, nationality, ability, etc. Maybe it means looking at how we hold identity, yes, for the sake of our own coherence but ultimately limitation. 6/
Somedays I wish people knew just how queer I am. LOLLL. I am attracted to so many kinds of people, and I hate institutions and prisons and labels and heteronormativity and the patriarchy. But if I rely on these markers of assimilation/normativity am I replicating these 7/
systems of legitimacy? Of legibility? I can't, because deep in my bones I know this will perpetuate oppression, and I am committed to building something beautiful! A better world.
All of this came out of a few days of thinking and processing. 8/
All of this came out of a few days of thinking and processing. 8/
To @Julie_rodgers, thank you for giving me space to verbalize this. Thank you for seeing me 
Thank you to @ashoncrawley @RevJesKast @JennMJacksonPhD @james_hhilljr @lmcheifetz @TsThames @afreshmind @josiewenig who help me to imagine different futures, which makes me labor with love in this way here and now.
