Sunshine in my Soul: My reaction to "Ain't No Homos Gonna Make It To Heaven"

When I was a kid, I can remember going to church and doing lots of things that made the adults in the congregation ooh and aah with delight. My siblings and I played in a hand-bell choir, we sang or played instruments, we ushered, put on plays, served food on Mothers' Day, and did tons of other things, participating fully in the life of The Church. Many years before all that, in a different congregation, I can remember participating in a "Tom Thumb" wedding where my younger brother "got married" - it was the first time I heard the word "cummerbund", or actually wore one - and I remember him, on separate occasion, singing a song during a Sunday service that had everyone shouting for joy. It was great, and is a lovely memory my family members and I share with one another to this day.

The song that my brother sang in church was "Sunshine in My Soul". I'm not sure whether that was the actual title, and I can't find any decent reference to the song, but here are the lyrics I remember:

Sunshine in my soul!
Sunshine in my soul!
Sunshine in my soul, today!
Each and every day, I can truly say,
There is sunshine in my soul today!

Peace and love abide!
Peace and love abide!
Peace and love abide, today!
Each and every day, I can truly say,
There is sunshine in my soul today!

Isn't that sweet?!? Now, I don't wish to paint too rosy a picture about my experiences in the churches I grew up in; but overall, they were filled with good people with good intentions, and despite any failings I was raised to be a good, kind person. All of this came to mind this morning when someone tweeted a link to this video:

Really? Some parents taught their young son to stand in front of his congregation and sing "Ain't no homos gonna make it to Heaven", and the church was excited. I mean, Holy Ghost excited. They cheered. It seems lately there is an abundance of videos making it around the interwebs showcasing the embarrassing underbelly of some of our nation's churches. Recently, one pastor in North Carolina made a call from his pulpit to put gay and lesbian Americans into electrified concentration camps until we "die out".

Is it any wonder that people are more and more disaffected by hostile toward organized religion?

This video really saddens me. Not just for the fact that a room full of adults collectively rejoiced in hateful rhetoric. Not just because this rhetoric is coming from a child, who has been trained and is only doing what he thinks will please all the "grown-ups". But also because it's just plain heartrending to witness what types of spiritual and psychic damage adults wreak on children.

"Sunshine in my soul" teaches kids about their inherent worth and dignity as children of God. "Ain't no homos gonna make it to Heaven" teaches kids to denigrate people who are different from themselves; to strip others of any worth or dignity they might have held on to; to be judgmental and discriminating rather than loving and compassionate.

Of course, it's a privilege of parenting to determine the sort of spiritual foundation one's children will have, and I support families raising children with particular religious beliefs. What I don't support are beliefs based in fear, hatred, and ignorance, and the scarring abuse of conditioning a child to despise other human beings because of an essential quality of their existence.

It is my prayer that this child grow up in love, rather than in hate.

Proverbs 22:6 (KJV) reads, "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it."

I know this verse verbatim because this is one that my mother and other adults in my life loved to quote when I was a kid. I took it to mean that the foundation you lay for your children will become the essence of their being as adults, so take care what you teach them when they're young.

Other translations of scripture hint that the original meaning of this verse might have been more along the lines of "encourage children in their own natures, and when they are adults they will be their authentic selves". Could just be my imagination, but it's interesting to see how differing translations of the Bible bear out expansive understandings of the text.

In either case, please be mindful of how you treat children and of the things you teach them. View them as full human beings, despite their being very young. Who knows what this young boy will think of this video when he is older? Will he maintain the bias du jour of his family's church? Will he be ashamed and embarrassed by his blatant homophobic indoctrination? I guess we'll have to wait and see...but I certainly do hope he has some other, more positive influences and experiences in his life.

I hope that he learns that there is sunshine in his soul, as well as in the souls of people who are unlike him, and that it is up to each and every one of us to ensure that peace and love abide.

Ubi caritas et amor, deus ibi est.
Where there is kindly consideration and love, God is there.

formspring question: What holiday traditions do you and your family celebrate?

This time of year my partner and I celebrate the Winter Solstice at home. Then we celebrate Christmas together with each of our families. I am thinking about observing Kwanzaa; I also plan to be more intentional about observing the natural cycle of seasons. My favorite holidays are Thanksgiving and Passover!

Ask me anything cultural, especially about language, music, sexuality, religion and faith.

How I came to celebrate the winter solstice

Winter and I have never quite succeeded in getting along with each other.

Every year, the days grow noticeably shorter. The temperature drops. Everything slows down except such year-round obligations as, say, going to work and paying bills. Included among the things that slow down are my energy and the capacity to deal with all the things that seem to speed up in comparison to my spirit’s attempt at hibernation. In short, I usually find winter to be a depressing season that I just have to survive until it’s over, and some years are easier than others.

I moved to Baltimore in September 2003, about two weeks before the autumnal equinox. Having no family in the area, and knowing only two people in the city, this was a time of great adjustment for me. I immediately became half of a new couple that had a brief and tempestuous relationship, ending two weeks before Christmas. It was devastating, and that may well have been the hardest winter of my life. I somehow made it through, but I would continue to see the season as a grave hardship that, unfortunately, I would have to battle every single year for the rest of my life.

I hadn’t really been a big fan of Christmas since leaving the United Methodist Church. The scars from my disputes with Christianity had not yet really begun to heal, and the overly-commercialized mess (in my opinion) that the holiday had become was a real downer and left a bad taste in my mouth. If I had thought to do so, I might have said a hearty “bah, humbug!” – but as it was, my focus was on making it to spring and trying not to feel left out entirely from winterly festivities. This was no easy task.

Then my church here in Baltimore started holding worship services on the day of the winter solstice. At first, there was a very small gathering in our parish hall, and it was quite an intimate, interactive and embodied affair. I don’t recall whether it had a specifically Wiccan bent, but it may have. In subsequent years, it was moved to our sanctuary and morphed into something more recognizable as a “Protestant-style” worship service, which was nice for some and not as nice for others. It has since become one of the most largely attended events on our church calendar and is the winter holiday of choice for many, including myself.

Learning about and celebrating the natural source of so many festivals of light meshed well with my understanding of my reaction to winter and made the mythic stories of the season more palatable. I simply wasn’t getting enough sunlight, and didn’t feel any personal connection to the winter festivals with which I was familiar. Acknowledging the reality of the solstice in story, ritual, and song [and by using a Happy Lite®, and a daily regimen of vitamin D, and a new attitude…], welcoming the return of the “light of the world” each year, has helped me to see that the season I so despised is part of a natural cycle in which I can find both joy and wonder. Instead of brooding melodramatically until the trees begin to bloom in the spring, I can actually enjoy the unique opportunities winter presents. Well, I still brood, but now I can actually live through the winter instead of just trying to survive it.

In addition to celebrating the Solstice, for the past six Decembers I have even gone with my partner’s family to their Lutheran Christmas Eve Service and celebrated Christmas with them as well. I enjoy spending the holiday with them even if I don’t claim it as my own. There’s something beautiful about so many people across so many diverse cultures trying to find a way to literally survive the winter. I might not ever have understood this as one of the origins of the Christmas story, which tells of a people celebrating the birth of the Sun/Son, the Light of the World, if it weren’t for the annual Winter Solstice service in my Unitarian Universalist congregation. Seeing the commonalities between the two and celebrating both, in my own way, is one of the most hopeful things I can do in this season.

We turn the wheel of the year; what is old dies and is born again.

May it be so!