Love in the face of fear: queerness, faith, and choosing love anyway

Transcript

I'm a lucky man and also unlucky. You see, I was born into a family of love, Irish, Catholic, but I'm also gay. So, you can imagine the confusion that entered my young mind. How could I love so deeply and still be hated for it?

It took me maybe 42 years to start understanding the lesson and honestly I'm still learning. But here's what I've come to know. God never hated me. Jesus neither. But people forgot. So the confusion makes sense now. The leaving makes sense because my single task in this life has always been to love. Anyway, that's what I heard every Sunday and that's what I felt for my big Irish Catholic family.

God doesn't actually punish, but we do. We punish ourselves and each other. The most healing lesson I've learned, the one that keeps me going, is this. Love in the face of fear. And keep going. I didn't realize then what I feel now. The path of Christ isn't about blind faith. It is about continuation.

Christ consciousness is not as mysterious as we think. It's simple. Choose love always, even when it's hard. That's what I've done or tried to. And sometimes, yes, I've suffered because of it. But when you take that same love and turn it inward, something changes. The heart relaxes, the mind softens, and the things that once terrified you begin to fall away.

Yes, I am a queer neurodivergent man who goes to church. But I believe deeply that this love is available to everyone regardless of belief system. God knows no nation, no boundary. He is just, but he is God. Not spiteful, not mean, just trying like we are to help his children understand. Sometimes it feels like the end of everything, but it's not.

Nothing perfect like this earth, this universe can truly end, but we can end it. And that is the scary part. So we carry on hoping the better angels prevail.

The demons? They're not real, not out there. They haunt the mind. The balm? Forgiveness, and also forgetting. To truly let go, to find peace within and without, we must forgive and forget.

So my prayer for you, my hope for all of us is this. Keep loving anyway.

Cry, ask why. And don't rush the answer.

They will come to you in a dream or through the kind word of a stranger.

The answers always come. They just don't arrive in neat little boxes.

God doesn't have an Amazon account. He just has the Amazon and the stars and every beautiful thing on this earth that reminds us we are not actually alone.

Let us end this reflection with a simple mantra or prayer.

I am not alone. I am the prayer. I choose love. Even here, even now,

I am not alone. I am the prayer. I choose love even here. Even now.

I am not alone. I am the prayer. I choose love. Even here, even now.

Amen.