What leads me to contemplate Lenten disciplines? My religious heritage is Anabaptism—the radical left wing of the reformation about as far from high church as possible. I didn’t grow up with it—indeed, my culture was suspicious of anything remotely Catholic.
My queer proclivities lean away from S&M—not that a cute guy in leather will turn me off. It’s just that I’d prefer to take the leather off him and cuddle on the way to sensuous mutual play.
But my seminary training and syncretistic incursions of the liturgical year into my Mennonite tradition of late make me very aware that this is the time for ashes and spiritual discipline.
More deeply, a part of me longs to reconnect with those spiritual highs of my youth and young adulthood. Although I live in nearly constant awareness of divine presence, and even talk to (I’m not sure if it really is prayer) the One who met me in my baptism and once when crossing a lawn attempting Buddhist ritual, I still long for a heightened sense, a spiritual sensuality in which to rest.
But those were the days of my youth. The prophet Joel speaks of youth prophesying and seeing visions. And in my activist youth I marched against the war, organized against nuclear weapons, fought for gay rights. But as I move into elderhood, it is time to dream dreams. So I am seeking those disciplines that might nurture dreaming.
- to open my spirit through meditation each day to receive new dreams
- to prepare my body as a ground for dreaming through regular exercise and play
- to queerly manifest my dreams in waking hours, through acts of attentive inclusion and solidarity.