I’m twenty-five and experiencing a period of great dislocation, racial loneliness, political questioning, transformation, and attempts to gather myself. Finding your online offerings reminds me (a) why I want to be a writer, and (b) why writing as a place of connection remains so very important to me.

Thank you very much. Hope you’re well.

Stay tough, stay strong. I pray you will always remember that other opinions always have some validity and deserve a civil hearing.

But speak to the truth as you see it. The Church needs people like you now, more than ever.

God Bless – and GodSpeed.

I would have stayed Roman Catholic except the deepest pull on my life was in celebrating the Eucharist, and I would never be permitted to stand at the altar and do that within Roman Catholicism. So I tore myself up by the roots, and now I am an Episcopal priest, the first openly queer priest in a big conservative suburban city, and I make room. I fight for the hotel workers and the grocery store workers making extreme poverty wages, I harbor and encourage queer young people, I offer the kind of attentive compassionate listening and presence that everyone needs and not everyone can afford but in the church those with money pay my salary so I can provide it to all. I refuse to cede the territory of the church to those with hate in their hearts. This is my land too, my claim to grace. No one gets to rob me of that, especially not the Pat Robertsons and Rick Santorums of this world.

Thank you. Thank you for your life and witness, and thank you for staying put and thank you for your faith. Thank you for writing this. Even though I couldn’t, thank you so much for staying put within Catholicism.