Pride 2025
Church staff meeting today, the day after Long Beach Pride. (Yesterday: I was seething a bit, because I just barely missed, because of work, the Pride Parade—I am a glutton for pride parades—and I had to work, which I could have requested off, so I was mad at the church for not being a pride festival, and mad at myself for not requesting the time off…)
Pastor Luther closed the door to the staff meeting. He had been down all of yesterday, and a bit of today. A member of the congregation had sent a letter. Our church is becoming “too progressive,” the member had said. It was not biblical. Its theology was wrong. He did not think that the church would have to speak of “progressive issues” after 2009. (For context: 2009 is when the ELCA decided that gays could, in fact, after decades of debate, be clergy). Of course the pastor had his own disagreements. “I’m not wrong,” the pastor insisted, because, in fact, the church becoming “inclusive” is definitely (in case this was controversial at all) not wrong.
I sat in my seat. Wrong day to wear my new Georges Bataille shirt (I wore it because I knew the pastor would recognize it). Wrong day, when talking about wrong theology in a church. The volunteer director, during a lull in the meeting, looked at me. She asked who Bataille was. I said that he was a writer (for some: not philosophy, not literature, just meaningless ramble). She asked more. “Some say he’s a controversial theorist of religion.” Pastor Luther called him a postmodern lunatic. He’s not wrong about that, but postmodern lunacy might be Bataille’s value. The volunteer director said she would check him out (if I pray for anything right now, it is that she does not accidentally pick up Story of the Eye instead of Theory of Religion). I felt burning a bit, like I was the wrong fit for the job: a person who wears, consistently, pride shirts at a Lutheran church, who also (uh oh!) doesn’t quite believe in the divine in the same way that these people might.
I spent the hour before staff meeting reading Jean-Luc Nancy (somewhere Nancy, I think, says that there is no thinking after Bataille: only thinking with and through him). And Nancy speaks of a sort of homogenization (he does not call it that) that comes through “representation.” There are those that are “outside” of representation; a system of representation that seeks to be “representation without remainder” will exhaust itself and lose its opening to the infinite…
Which is pretty easily and directly applicable to communities. Especially religious communities that claim, in some way, to mediate an opening to the infinite: if they lose an awareness and acceptance of that which is outside of them, then they will suffocate and die.
Two quick reflections. I’ve never felt so strongly that I can never wear my Georges Bataille shirt to church again. I’ve never felt so strongly that I could not wear my pride shirts to church again. I’ve never felt, so reflexively (and maybe it is because I am reflecting now that these feelings are so strong) that I had to change, in order not to scare away a congregation that I work for. That people who are a bit diminished require those around them to shrink too.
During an organ service last night, I stood impatiently. Long Beach Pride day meant that I was eager to get to the festival, or to the bars. And so the beautiful music of the service played, so that the Long Beach chapter of the American Guild of Organists could install new officers. One of the new officers made long and intense eye contact, and I returned it until I needed to click on the computer, and all of a sudden I felt intensely burning and the man left the room and the choir began to sing in words that did not seem to match the slides, singing a routine hymn not so plainly with soaring high notes, and I wondered if I put the wrong lyrics on the screen and felt disoriented, as the man left the room, and I felt like the room became engulfed in an auditory hallucination, because nothing was intelligible anymore--this song was not a hymn, but a cacaphony--and I knew that gaze did wonders to my gut. I drove off quickly to my friend’s house before Pride.
I convinced my straight friend to go to the bars for pride with me (her husband dropped us off). We started on one end of the street, walking down to the bars on the other. Crowds of people, hanging in bars, cheered with loud music. The streets filled with people as we walked. I was so happy. I saw those I know, I hugged some people, I kissed one on the street, one hugged me and picked me up. My friend and I stood under a disco ball. Lights strobed. We drank. We squeezed through crowds. We almost got tattoos (we will one day). And finally, her husband picked us up, bringing cookies and food, and we told him about the man who leaned in to whisper to my friend, but instead kissed, and then licked, her ear. Classic pride story, in my mind. We joked. They went to sleep. I went home, I slept and woke up for the church meeting the next morning.