The Word is made flesh, and we are preparing our hearts to meet the Word of God.
Much of what we do at Building Catholic Futures focuses on the patterns in gay spiritual journeys: What works? What kinds of pastoral interventions tend to help people encounter the Living God, and what kinds of pastoral interventions tend to mislead the pilgrim on the Way? How do gay people integrate their orientation and their faith? How do people answer questions like, “What does it mean to be ‘gay and Catholic’?”
But this can all get a bit theoretical. Too much logos… not enough flesh! One of BCF’s Five Building Blocks is, “Tell Good Stories,” because it is in stories that we meet the full texture of a life. The spiritual journeys of LGBT/SSA+ people are sacred drama.
Our frameworks help us make good guesses about how to connect Scripture and doctrine with individual pastoral situations. Our frameworks are maps to a far more complex territory. In stories we begin to encounter the territory: the smells of a desert night, the burn in the muscles of pilgrims crossing a mountain pass.
That’s why we tell the stories of saints in our Living Friendship classroom poster. It’s why we tell the stories of historical figures in our high-school worksheets, professional development workshops for educators, and parish talks. It’s why, when we present our Journeys curriculum for people in pastoral care, we weave in lectio divina, roleplaying, personal testimony, and the stories of people we’ve mentored. It’s why we’re developing new ways to tell the stories that make a difference, from videos to holy cards and more.
We’ll be telling some of these stories on our Instagram throughout the Christmas season. All of these stories help us to see, in the lives and journeys of gay people, Jesus and the great story of our redemption.
Each year we remind ourselves that Christmas is real. That it happened. That after millennia of longing, “the people who walked in darkness have seen a great Light.” Telling this story once more helps us to see the Uncreated Light shining now, today, in our own lives.
Where is Jesus coming into your life today? In whose eyes, in whose “unstable house”, in whose story and journey will you discover Him?
Merry Christmas,
From Eve and Keith