I wore cowboy boots to church today.  Why?  I would not have been caught dead in them when I was growing up in Kansas.  I never even owned a pair of boots until country dancing swept the bars sometime in the 90s.  Then, as a gay man, I would not be caught dead dancing without the proper footwear for the occasion.  And I discovered that I liked the way they made me feel–masculine and sexy.  How queer that being queer would turn me on to what epitomized its opposite in my youth.

But why wear those boots to church?  Why would I would I want to feel that confident sexual energy on Sunday morning rather than Saturday night?  I was not looking for a hook-up.  (My hook-up thirty years ago became my Gay Old Soulmate.)  No, I did not  wear those boots for others.  I wore them for me.

In this Easter season, I want to feel my body.  We celebrate resurrection–the vindication of incarnation, God made flesh with lasting consequences.  I do not just to value the flesh but to feel it.  I want to feel myself as holy embodied flesh.  In today’s sensuous Gospel lesson, I hear Jesus tell Thomas, “Touch me and believe.”  Today I want to remember what believing feels like.  That rush when Jesus touched me and made me permanently human, right down into my sexuality.

So I pulled on those cowboy boots today.  I headed out the door.  I walked with a stride only cowboy boots give, all the way to church.  The ancient energy rose in me.  Christ rose in me.  And I believe.