Chapter 2: Stepping into a Wilderness

 

Rev. Loran Helm was an unusual and initially impressive man.  He was a travelling evangelist who got off track somewhere, sometime before I knew him.  A Voice in the Wilderness is his autobiography.  He attended Taylor University, and then graduated from Earlham College, in the 1930s.  While in college he served as pastor of several small, rural Methodist churches in Eastern Indiana.  Helm began attending seminary but only lasted a few weeks.  I do not think he had the intellectual ability for graduate theological study.  Years after I knew him, I learned that he had experienced a nervous or emotional breakdown about that time.  I cannot fault him for that, I have been close to that point more times than I can count.  There is a scene in one of the Batman movies where the butler Alfred expresses concern about Batman/Bruce Wayne’s mental health, noting that the hero walked a fine line on the edge of where light meets darkness. We live fragmented, frazzled lives.

The mind can play tricks on us at these times, and I came to think for Loran Helm, his time of hospitalization—which persons who knew him at the time told me about, but he never mentioned in his preaching or in his writing—became a flashpoint for an alternate reality of his own construction.  That alternate reality manifested itself in two ways that were evident to me.

First, he characterized this time in his life, not as his own shortcoming or time of need, but as his call to follow Jesus and leave everything of earth behind.  He was being called to be an apostle, and to lead God’s people to God’s kingdom.  This was his exit from the Methodist ministry to take up the itinerant ministry of a revivalist/evangelist.  I think he was unsuitable for real ministry, so he decided to make it up as he went.  And he was successful.  By the time I met him in 1976, he had followers and supporters all over the country.  He had led groups to Israel and many other countries over the years.  He preached love, and he claimed he loved everyone the same way Jesus did.  That will be an important point, and I will elaborate on that later.

The second part of what came from this experience of his was an anti-intellectualism, and a particular disdain for theological education.  You had to be a complete sycophant to advance in his ministry.  There were pastors in some of these fellowships who had seminary education, but basically the way they did things one would never be able to tell if you did not know.  And as far as new people coming into ministry, they would rather just take someone from some other walk of life, ordain them (usually men) and fling them into a ministry role with no preparation.

Another key part of this ministry was something which I see now as terribly spiritually abusive.  They would tell people what “God’s will” for their lives was. I mean things like where people should live, where they should go to college and what their major should be, what career or calling they should pursue, business ventures to invest in, and who they should marry.   It was abusive and cultish.  Somehow among the followers of this man, a mindset developed where everything he said was being said by God.  I will describe this more when I talk about my college experience, but people would do things like make a list of colleges and submit it to the leaders with the request that they pray and see what the leading of the Holy Spirit was, for where the person should go to school.

From there, things grew worse, and they began telling people things were God’s will, even if the person did not ask for their input.  Announcements would just be made, “God has revealed that it is His will”—always using male pronouns for God, “that T. is to be married to M.”  Or just in the middle of a service, he might look at someone and say, “you are called to preach the Gospel.”  And for a while, people just took him at his word.

As I have said, they did not want to accept that I was called to proclaim the Gospel.  There were, I can think of, at least ten of these young people who they said were called to preach.  Only two of those actually attended seminary.  One of those graduated, the other quit to get married to a lady they told him to marry.  Only two of them were ever ordained and only one ever served as a pastor, and he only lasted a year or two and that was, from what I heard, not something that ended well.

None of the others made it to be in ministry at all, and I am the only one who spent any significant amount of time as a pastor.  These guys went zero-for-everything.  They got me wrong, in denying my call, and basically got all the others wrong, in affirming theirs.  It was a disaster.

So many of these arranged marriages ended in divorce.  A number of these people, in second marriages, ended up marrying other people who were themselves victims of these arranged marriages.  I have wondered over the years if the people who people married the second time around would have been who they ended up with on their own to begin with if they had been allowed to find out what they were to do on their own.

One thing I have wondered about many times is why, given the failure rate of these marriages, and the number of people they said were called to ministry and that never materialized, people still believed him.  I thought the empirical evidence was that he was wrong more than he was right.

My wife Gay and I did not get together that way, and by the time we were together, I was skeptical of this whole enterprise. Someone who was the victim of one of these ridiculous situations and ended in divorce asked me once, “how will I know when I meet the right person?’  My counsel to her got me in some hot water but I still think I was right—when you have the right relationship you will know you have found the right person.  I am not sure there is just one person for every person.  I believe the marriage relationship is to be one of mutual love and self-giving and where that is present, it is far more important than if you have that one, “right” person.

When I came to be with Elton Trueblood, I was living about 40 miles from Rev. Helm and his church.  But I was also lonely and needed fellowship.  The folks at Rev. Helm’s church in Parker City, IN, seemed like spiritual hypochondriacs to me.  They were always talking about how burdened they were.  Nobody seemed to me to be living with much joy.  In fact, it was not uncommon for people to pick up their things and leave, and nobody would even so much as say hello to me or ask me how I was doing.  It was awful.  I have described them as melodramatic congregants of a megalomaniac preacher.

The Indianapolis fellowship was 70 miles away. I had visited there a few times when I first moved to Indiana. The difference in the atmosphere was like night and day.  It was light, whereas Rev. Helm’s own church was dark.  People would ask me home for dinner and wanted to know how seminary was going.  The pastor, Forrest Richey, affirmed how God had called me, in complete contrast to the way Oliver Hogue and Loran Helm responded to me.  He had me assisting in worship leadership.  I felt welcome and blessed there, so I began attending Sundays there.  People even gave to help with my expenses commuting between Richmond and Indianapolis. 

During the time I was in Indiana, I went through two of these matchmaking experiences, even though I had been led to believe marriage would not be considered possible for me.  The first happened my first year of seminary.  There was a fellowship group in Texas.  In fact, when he was forced out of leadership at our church in West Virginia, Oliver Hogue went there to be their pastor.  But before that they just met and worshipped in music and listened to a taped sermon.  Each year this group made a visit to West Virginia, and a young lady, B., was one of them.  She and I met and talked and grew fond of one another.  I was in seminary in Indiana at the time and attending the Indianapolis fellowship.  We kind of fell for each other and were encouraged to contemplate marriage.  But her mom was not part of the group, and her mom did not want her to get married, or not to marry me, I am not sure which.  So, we were told not to marry until her mom gave her blessing.  One day, in Richmond, IN, where I was in seminary, I felt like the Lord spoke to me and said, “you now are free to petition me about this marriage.”  I just asked God to change the heart of B’s mom.  Later that night, B. called me and said, “Mom says OK, we can get married.”  We were both excited, I thought.  What I found was, it was easy for B to be in love with the idea of being married to me, but when faced with the reality of it, her feet got cold.  She finally told me she could not go through with it.  I was understandably devastated.

A year or so later, I got a call from a guy who was a buddy of mine in West Virginia.  He was one of the guys they had called to the ministry but as it turned out, God had not.  They told him that God would send him as a missionary to Norway.  Forty years later, that has not happened yet.  (I know, you cannot make this stuff up.)  He wanted to know how I would feel if he asked B. out. I told him she was a wonderful young woman, and he would be crazy not to marry her if he could.  They are still together, nearly 40 years later.

This was a time of mental and emotional struggle for me.  I am away from home for the first time, going to seminary, and struggling academically because of this breakup and just the general funk I was in because of what Loran Helm and his ministry had brought upon me—heartache upon heartache.  I was attending the fellowship in Indianapolis, and that was a good experience for me.  But I wanted desperately to not be alone.  The next spring, I asked a young lady, R., from this fellowship to attend a movie with me.  We had a nice date, I liked her.  I made a mistake though.  Not wanting to get hurt again, I wanted to know if being with R. was God’s will for me.  I told the pastor there in Indianapolis that I really did not want to be hurt again, I wanted to know if I was to proceed or back off.  A week later I was at a breakfast at the Holiday Inn on the east side of Indianapolis, with the pastor, another pastor from the group, R., and her parents and this other pastor told us our being married was “God’s perfect will.”  I asked her if she would marry me, and she said yes.  One date and we are engaged.

A couple of weeks later I began work as an associate pastor at the Friends (Quaker) church in Muncie, Indiana.  As I have already mentioned, the pastor, Richard Newby, was the father of my good friend and colleague Jim Newby.  I was travelling back and forth a lot between Indianapolis and Muncie where I was now living and working.  I was the Christian Education minister for the church and the Quaker campus minister at Ball State University.   One weekend I was leaving R’s house to go back to Muncie when her cousin came by.  I knew I felt troubled by her cousin’s presence. I had never met her before.  And ever after that, R was much less affectionate and much less comfortable around me. I knew something was wrong.  But we were told this was “God’s perfect will.”  I have thought for all these years, with my having CP, that her cousin tried to tell her I was not good enough for her.  That may be true…I mean she certainly could have done better.

There were three weddings to happen at the Indianapolis church that summer.  The first two happened, and as was par for the course in this group, both ended in divorce.  One was actually R’s brother, himself a ministerial student.  He could not decide which of his two brothers to have as his best man, so he asked me.  I was glad to do it.  In fact, years later, when he remarried, I was a Nazarene minister and had already married Gay, and he asked me to be his best man again.  I did, but before we went out to the service, I grabbed him by the collar of his tuxedo and said, “Now listen…get it right this time…I am not doing this again.”  He laughed.

The first of these weddings was in July.  There was another wedding in August, and ours was to be September 10, 1983.  R and I were at this August wedding.  It was three weeks to the day before our wedding was to take place. The invitations had gone out. In the middle of this wedding, she looked at me and said, “I do not want to marry you.”  I was so devastated I could not keep my head in either my ministry or my seminary studies.  As hurting people do, I said things which hurt other people, and made some poor choices. I alienated people at the Friends Church where I worked because of the pain I was in. I ended up resigning from my job and moving back to West Virginia in March.

Hearing what had happened, Rev. Helm called me.  He told me that because of my disability there was not, as he saw it, a woman he knew of who was “sanctified and holy enough to be willing to marry me.”  The effect this had on me was to make me feel like I was impossible to love.  I felt defective. He told me I was not to ever get married to anyone without his express and personal confirmation that it was what God wanted.  Again, I felt dehumanized.  I did not obey that order, which was the beginning of the end of my connection to him. When the Holy Spirit made clear to me, about 18 months later, that Gay and I were to be married, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.  We invited the Helms to our wedding, but I did not seek his approval.  Loran Helm basically had no use for me after that.

The time I spent at the fellowship group in Indianapolis was the one bright spot in my entire experience with this ministry.

Richmond, Indiana, is about 70 miles from Indianapolis.   I visited the fellowship there one Sunday shortly after I had moved to Indiana.  The spirit seemed like what I had felt in West Virginia.  I was very comfortable there.  I began attending there regularly.

Now that got me in trouble because Rev. Helm’s own church was only 40 miles from Richmond, and he wanted me there. He said it made him happy to have me there.  But I went a few times and I felt like the people there were snooty.  Nobody would even say hello to me when the services were over.  They were so “spiritually burdened” that everyone would just get up and go home right after church. Like I said, the people there were melodramatic congregants of a megalomaniac preacher.  I did not want to be there, so I went to Indianapolis.

The name of the fellowship in Indianapolis was White Harvest Christ Fellowship. The building there is now occupied by another church.   The pastor, Forrest Richey, went on to his heavenly home a few years ago.  His response to me and my call to the ministry was totally opposite of Pastor Hogue and Rev. Helm.  (Of course, I was only in Indiana because Elton Trueblood had asked me to come and work and study with him.  I would not have been in seminary otherwise.)  But Pastor Richey knew who Dr. Trueblood was.  He affirmed my call, and basically, they allowed me to be like a pastoral intern the year I was there.  I sat on the platform, helped lead worship, prayed with people, etc.  They decorated a coffee can and put it in the back of the church and people could put money in it to help pay for my gas to go back and forth between Richmond and Indianapolis.  Most weeks there was not only enough for my gas, but also to pay for my groceries the next week.  These people were so loving and affirming.  It felt so different than my experience in West Virginia.

Many of the members of the White Harvest church opened their homes to me.  Each of the deacons had a “Shepherd’s list,” a list of families in the church they were to minister to.  My deacon and his wife opened their home to me.  I spent many weekends there and they treated me like family.  Another couple opened their home to me, and this woman who was in this couple was from West Virginia.  Her parents lived on the same street my parents did.  She had known me for years.  I spent a lot of time there.  They told me always to bring my laundry.

But most of the time, I spent weekends at the home of Rev. Daniel and Beverly Jones.  Beverly is a classical pianist with a master’s degree from Indiana University. Daniel taught in public school and was the children’s pastor at the church.  They became my family.  We are still close.  Gay and I spoke to them not long ago.

The lady who lived across the street from Daniel and Beverly did not own a car.  She told me I could park in front of her house any time I was there.  This became the occasion of my learning an important lesson in discernment and how to have a sense of God’s speaking to me.  I came in one Friday evening after being at seminary all week and parked in front of her house like I always did.  And something said to me, “Don’t park here.”  I said, “That is silly, I have parked here every weekend for the better part of a year.”  I just went in the house and dismissed the whole thing.  About midnight, I was just climbing into bed when I heard an awful crash in the street.  An underage drunk driver plowed right into my car.  It was not totaled, but it was close.

One time I did not get to Indianapolis until Saturday morning.  I walked in the house and Daniel said, “Pastor Richey said call him as soon as you get here.”  I did, and he said I would be preaching Sunday.  I thought he meant Sunday evening, but no, he meant Sunday morning.  That was different because in West Virginia the pulpit was guarded so carefully that nobody else except the pastor (provided he was not out of town or on vacation) preached on Sunday morning.  Like I said, the difference was night and day.

I mentioned my near marriage to R.  She had two brothers.  There were five children in that family, and like their father, all five had names which started with R.  The young adults from the church had an outing at Eagle Creek state park.  I was in a canoe with two of R’s brothers.  I was on the back, steering the canoe.  I could not swim, but I knew how to canoe and was pretty good at it.  But the older of these two brothers wanted to steer.  He was in the middle.  I said we would go over to shore and he and I could trade places.  But he didn’t want to wait, so he stood up, jumped in the lake, and climbed on back of the canoe, flipping it and we all ended up in the lake.  Like I said, I could not swim.  I had a life-vest on, and I realized we were OK, and I started laughing.  I remember the other brother said, “Shut up, man, this ain’t funny.”  But someone actually heard my laugh, came to help, and got us out of the water.

Loran Helm would come to these churches for Revival meetings. He would just call up and say, “the Holy Spirit says I am to be with you on these dates” and show up.  And he would preside over the services.  There was never an order of worship, and he would sit and pray and then announce we were going to sing a certain hymn, or the choir or someone else would sing, or it was time for him or someone else to preach.  And this went on for hours.  I have been with him when a 7 pm service did not end until 2 or 3 am.  He would pray for people to be healed, and people were healed.  He prayed for healing for me one time—I had not been able to hold food down for weeks and was losing weight.  And I had a partial healing, but still had some problems.  I have never, in the 45 years since, stated publicly that the healing was not complete, and I still had problems.  As a 17-year-old I was afraid to.  I was afraid I would look like I was grumbling against him—or worse, against God—for not doing a complete job.  I was better, but there were still problems.  This was just the beginning of decades of suppressing what was going on inside of me out of fear.

        He would pray when people asked him to.  My dad asked him to pray for me.  But he would also say things like, “Someone in the fourth row on the right has a backache.  Be healed in Jesus’ name.”  I think sometimes he was on target, and I imagine sometimes he was not.  He would pray over lists of what hymns should be sung.  Is it in the first hundred?  The second hundred? And so on…until he felt like the Holy Spirit had revealed, or witnessed to him, what hymn should be sung.   I have been with this guy when he prayed for guidance from the Holy Spirit as to what button to push on a soft-drink machine.   It was unhealthy and most of us could not see it.

There was a subtle message in this.  He had a couple of scriptures he harped on all the time.  He always used the King James Version. Now, as a scholar, the KJV could be eliminated from the earth, and it would not bother me.  The two verses, in the King James, were:

 

Matthew 16:24, “Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” 

 

Matthew 7:21, “Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.”

 

What Helm was saying was our sinful nature was so bad, so evil, it had to be denied at every point.  He would suggest, in strong terms, no one would go to heaven if they did not do God’s will.

Now, I have wanted to do God’s will my whole life, and now more than ever.   But I have come to understand that even the desire to please God pleases God.  But what we were hearing was that we needed to be in God’s will in every decision we make.  I have come to see that buying or boycotting a product because of some social issue is one thing, but frantically wanting God to reveal if I should have a Coke or Dr. Pepper is dangerous. And I saw him stand over vending machines asking God to reveal to him what buttons to push. I do not think God is that harsh, that exacting, but the God presented by Loran Helm seemed so harsh to me.  People would ask him for God’s revelation about where to go to college, what car to buy, and so on.  I did not realize it at the time, but this was a cult.

Because Loran Helm did not know how to think theologically, his preaching was riddled with poor exegesis and false ideas.  Relying only on the King James, because he claimed the Holy Spirit had revealed to him that was the version God was most pleased with, he preached ideas which are just simply not true. 

Part of the problem with the King James Version is that it was based on manuscripts which were not the best, and scholarship for the past 400 years has shown there are much better manuscripts which have emerged.  Another problem is that in 400 years some words have evolved in meaning.  One of these is the word “let.”  To our ears, the word let means to permit someone to do something.  “Let me pour you another cup of coffee.”  But in the 1600s, the word let meant to hinder, like a “let serve” in tennis means the ball was hindered by the net. Another word with such a transition in meaning is suffer.  To us, suffer means to endure pain.  Then, suffer meant permit, as in “suffer the children to come unto me, and permit them not.”

There were Scriptures he just plainly distorted or misinterpreted.  And the sad thing is, I do not think he realized he was doing so.  And the men who sat on the front row hearing him, and cheering him on, some of whom had seminary degrees, hung on every word. Even though they should have known better because they should have known he was distorting Scripture, to my knowledge not one ever took him aside and offered a word of correction.

He preached frequently about the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  He would cite this verse.  “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. (Acts 2:1, KJV).  Now that is a terrible translation, the New American Standard says, “And when the day of Pentecost, had come, they were all together in one place.”  Nearly all the newer translations say something similar.  The meaning of the passage is simply that they were together in the same room.  But he made a big deal of the phrase, “one accord.” Not only that, but he also subtly changed what the text said from they were there “with one accord” to “in one accord.”  He preached that we needed to come into one accord, to forgive and be reconciled and love each other.  That is true, but he would go on to say if we ever did that, another Pentecost would happen.  He suggested the Holy Spirit came because of what they had done.  And he preached we could have the same results if we did what they did. Whether that is true or not, I do not know, but as a scholar I know that this was an abuse of the passage of Scripture he was depending on.  I have taught logic at the college level, and what I know now is he was committing the Post Hoc fallacy.  This is the fallacy in reasoning which says that if B follows A, then A caused B.  It is assuming causation when there is really only correlation.

Helm used to preach on Matthew 8:20, “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.”  Now this one was a riot.  He said Jesus was the head of the church, but if people did not obey Jesus, they were not the church, so Jesus is looking for an obedient church, so he had some-where to lay his head.  I cannot believe, looking back, people bought into this nonsense.

One time he was in West Virginia, and he preached a stirring sermon on self-denial, and said of the hundreds of people there that evening, maybe only a handful were really walking with Jesus.  I was so moved. I wept.  And for an hour or more I walked the aisles of the church and cried.  He heard about that and sent word to me that I was taking him too seriously and he had to make it seem more stringent than it really is, to get some people to act at all.  That was the beginning of my starting to think he was a fraud if he had to mislead people to get them to respond to his preaching.  To me, that was like lying.

There is one aspect of my time in this ministry which was enormously painful.  I really do not even want to write about it, I just want to forget about it and have it fade into the past.  I only intend to devote a few pages to this, but it is such an important part of the story that some people, especially those who knew me at this time, will not be able to have a sense of the full impact my association with this ministry had if I do not devote some space to telling this—the story will not be complete.

I was a poet.  I even had some works in print in a religious periodical connected to the group, called Kerygma, which is the Greek word for proclamation.  I was in my late teens and early twenties.

As I followed Loran Helm around the country, in West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana, Alabama, and even in Israel and Europe, sometimes I read my poetry in his meetings. One lady who happened to be an English teacher likened me to Robert Frost. 

This chapter of my life is painful to even recollect, let alone write about.  I had one poem which I was known for.  It came to me after hearing Oliver Hogue describe the phrase in Ephesians 2:10:

           
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them. (RSV)

 

The word workmanship here is the Greek poema. From that word we derive our word poem.  St. Paul is saying we are God’s poem, so I wrote:

 

I am a beautiful poem,

a classic work of art.

No composition is quite like me,

I am dear to the Writer’s heart.

 

I may not sound like very much,

And I might not be much to see,

But whatever my beloved Composer creates

Is beautiful poetry.

 

Carefully written, line by line,

By the one called the Living Word,

The finished work will be divine,

As sweet as we’ve ever heard.

 

Actually, I am still being written

As I follow the Master’s plan.

My greatest desire is to be like him,

Pure without and within.

 

We can all be poems of precious truth

As we seek for the Savior’s face.

The word can write through each of us

Writings of Jesus’ love and grace.

 

I have read that in churches and at holy sites in the Holy Land, and in gatherings in large hotel ballrooms, and people seemed to be deeply moved.   It resonated with me because of the significance of just two lines, “I may not sound like very much, and I might not be much to see.”  I say that because of how my disability has shaped my appearance and the way I speak. 

I am writing this in June of 2021, some forty or more years since those words were written. And I am still sensitive to how I talk and how people who do not know me have supposed me to be mentally deficient.  One time in Iowa, I called the small-town hospital ten miles away from where I was a pastor to find out if someone had been discharged, so I would know if I needed to make a call at the hospital.  The nurse on the floor said, “You are drunk” and hung up on me.  And in 2021 I see people suggesting the President of the United States, Joe Biden, has dementia.  I tell them that is not the case.  He does have a speech impediment he deals with.  I tell them I do as well, and people have said I was retarded, but I am a philosophy professor and former college dean.  I tell them they do not have any idea what they are talking about.

At the time this poem was written, it seemed special to me.  And probably it still should, but it does not, because of how, in the end, the person who inspired me to write it turned on me and dehumanized me.  I did not want to recite it anymore and have declined some when asked.

I remember being with some of the Christian school students at a speech tournament and seeing these teenagers converse with people from different schools and it was not uncommon for someone to exclaim, “Yeah…I know him…I know her.”   I wrote,

 

 

Nameless faces in the wind,

They and we so far apart,

Until we find that we’ve a common friend,

Then each becomes a living heart.

 

And all this talk of who I know,

And who they knew, and who they knew

Goes on and on and on and so,

Until I find that I know you.

 

Once a dear friend lost a family member in an untimely death.  I sent them this:

 

            What grieves the eye and heart this day,

            When trusted to God’s loving hand,  

            Can bring us to the goal he planned.

  And although we fail to understand,

            Our Savior’s love does work that way.

 

I wrote a hymn, which has only been sung one time in history, and that was at our wedding.  It is sung to the same tune as “O God our help in ages past.”

 

O Lord, we pray thee, consecrate

This love we now express.

With those we love we celebrate

This union thou hast blessed.

 

For man his mother’s arms shall leave,

And woman leave her home.

They then to thee together cleave.

And thus, one flesh become.

 

As thou, O Christ, thy church hath loved

So shall man love his wife.

Like thee, with him, this love is proved

In giving his own life.

 

Lord, bless them as they follow thee,

Who bids them at his word.

O may they never masters be

But servants of their Lord.

 

That was sung as we were married, July 14, 1985, at Caldwell Chapel of the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and has never been sung again.

These two leaders—Oliver Hogue and Loran Helm—would go on and on about this wonderful gift God gave me, and if someone only saw what was taking place in public, would tend to think they were very affirming of me.  But at the same time, even though I knew God had called me to a preaching ministry, and I knew that before I ever wrote a word of poetry, they were telling me behind closed doors that they did not believe me, that God had not called me to do that at all.  One time Oliver even said I could let go of thinking I was called to preach, because “God is not that hard up.”

This was another episode of cognitive dissonance for me.  I realized they were defining me as a poet so they would not have to deal with me as a preacher.  It began to be a source of pain and dejection.  I was feeling like I would never be able to do what I had been called to do.  I was in anguish.

My poetry turned dark and introspective.  I wrote about how alone I felt, and the overall sense I had that no one cared about what was going on inside of me.  I made up some profanity-laden rhymes.  I asked God, “Where are you in all this?”

There were no personal computers in those days.  All of this was written by hand.  Some of it was the only copy of that poem in the world.  And I just stuffed the file I kept it all in, in a closet to forget about it.  And yet the grief and woundedness of this episode, which to me represented them defining me, continued to be a source of deep pain.

What this was all about, to me, was people whose affirmation I sought and needed, was denied, because I had to be who they wanted me to be, instead of who I knew I was to be.  It made me colossally angry.  But good came out of it.

I want the world to know I am just fine with what anybody’s sexual identity or orientation is.  No problem with me.  I really do not care.  I have lived for six decades in a body which I do not want to live in.  While there has never been any question in my mind about my own sexual identity, I do know what it is like to feel trapped in a body which doesn’t feel like a good home for me.  And I am not going to have any problem with anyone who feels like their body is one way and who they are is another.  I believe my own life experience is similar enough to have empathy in those situations.  I am not saying God made them that way, I am not saying God did not.  I am saying, with Pope Francis, “who am I to judge?”  All of this is found in the experience of feeling like people would have rather defined me to fit their own comfort level than let me be who I needed to be.

My position on this changed on a dime, as I listened to Bill Moyers interview David Boies and Ted Olson, lawyers who opposed each other in the 2000 Bush v Gore Supreme Court case which settled that year’s presidential election, as they teamed up to oppose Proposition 8.  This case resulted from a 2008 ballot measure in California banning same-sex marriage.  In the interview, Ted Olson made a statement to the effect that most people do not know what it is like to be told they are not suitable for marriage.  I remember it was like I had been slapped to get my attention.  I thought, “My God, I know exactly what that feels like.” As I said, my position on this issue turned on a dime.

Poetry had been, in this ministry, a vehicle to define me, to keep me safe, to keep me from preaching things which maybe would have been hard for the leaders to hear and assimilate. I simply stopped writing.  But my spirit still oozed with grief.  I finally, while pastoring in Iowa, sometime in the late 1990s, took this file out of the closet, drove to a nearby park, put the file in a grill near the picnic tables and burned it!  I literally took a lighter and burned the entire file.  It was one of the most cathartic things I have ever done.  That person I had been labeled as, sweet, and harmless and needy and emotional, and not able to be a Christian thinker, had died, and this was a cremation for him. I have never regretted it, not even for a second, in the quarter of a century since this cremation took place.

Something I cannot describe lifted off my shoulders that day. Friends from this fellowship reacted in shock and horror when I told them I did this, but to me it was affirming and healing.  I really do not believe anybody even has a right to say they wish I had not done this, or that they are sad to learn about it.  People have no idea about the inner hell I had walked through.  It is not fair at all for them to say, because they enjoyed what I wrote, that they wish I had not done this.  That is a form of objectification. 

Will there ever be poetry again?  I do not know, and really I do not care. What came of this is something more important than meter and rhyme.  I had learned I did not have to just settle.  I learned that my life was to be defined by my own response to God’s grace.  They had no right to define it for me.