Spirit in Action
Amy DeLong - Kairos CoMotion
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps me. Each week I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives Of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, Creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service Hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots And produce sacred fruit in your own life [music] Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today, for Spirit in Action, I have as my guest, Amy DeLong, Founder of a group called Cairo's commotion I had the privilege of visiting with Amy last month at the United Methodist Church of River Falls Amy attended that church in her early 20s and they supported her and her call to ministry in the United Methodist Church Amy serviced congregations as a minister eventually became complicated As she realized she was leading a divided life that denied the truth within her And that the theology and official policy of the church clashed with her love for another woman Cairo's commotion is the ministry she founded which seeks to reform, network, and act up In confronting discrimination within the Methodist Church Amy, thanks for joining me for Spirit in Action I'm glad to be here, thanks for inviting me Mark What is your current pastoral status? What is the work that you're doing as a Methodist minister right now? Right now, I am not serving in a local church I have been appointed to what the Methodist call Extension Ministry Which means that I am appointed to a particular site That needs to be approved by our Board of Ordained Ministry And then once that site is approved, the bishop can appoint me to it And so I am currently appointed to Cairo's commotion and organization that I started about seven years ago Were you serving as a pastor for a local congregation before that? Yes, I have served five different congregations in Wisconsin for eight years Prior to my leaving to go to Cairo's And what is the work of Cairo's? What's the purpose of this group? I'll back up and give you a little history before I answer that When I came into the annual conference in 1997 Methodist Annual Conference The Wisconsin Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church in 1997 I was hoping very much that there would be a group of progressive United Methodists Who would gather together for both for theological education As well as for community, for fellowship A way to kind of break the isolation and be able to talk with one another About theological questions that were in our minds and hearts And when I came into the conference I discovered there was no such thing And so one night a friend and I were at the United Methodist meeting And got to talking late in the hotel room Started talking about how we would like to start such an organization And that was how Cairo's began We really wanted to form a community that gathers people together For theological education, progressive theology Spiritual development, social action And out of that kind of vision, Cairo's came into being What kind of theology were you raised from? Were you raised as a progressive theologian direction? Or was this something that had to be injected, added to the Methodism that you practice? No, actually I was born and raised in Rhineland, Wisconsin In the United Church of Christ, so I was raised in a fairly liberal congregation And when I came to college here in River Falls I became active in the United Methodist Church that we're sitting in right now So we're actually sitting in the church that I came out of for ministry And brought with me today my Bible that when you're on the track to ordination One of the very first steps you have to take is that you have to get approval from your local congregation And so the night that I was approved by this congregation I was presented with a Bible and the folks who had gathered there To vote on me that night all signed my Bible It's the Bible I've used throughout my ministry And this was a fairly liberal congregation And it has definitely been in the church since I was a child But I heard stories about Jesus and how He welcomed everybody How He loved beyond anything that had been understood prior to Him I grew up learning about Jesus who knew how to challenge authority And how to overturn tables when that needed to happen I learned about a God that chose us, that loves us completely About our love that will not let us go And so those are my theological roots So wanting that kind of progressive theology When I became a minister wanting to have that kind of community Was a very natural step for me On your website for color's commotion You have three words that describe your mission Reform, network and act up Can you talk about each of those and what they mean in the context You're talking about? Reform, we really wanted to be intentional about how we live together As people of faith, so we wanted to reform how we are together in community We want our lives to embody the kind of theology that Jesus pursued, practiced and preached So we're trying to reform how we work together as a community of faith Both internally and externally how we deal with other people And work with other folks who are beyond our own community When I came into the annual conference, one of the things that I found Was that progressive Christians weren't talking to each other So the progressive Christian in riverfalls may not be talking to the progressive Christian in Hudson So we wanted to gather people together so that they could have a larger network of folks To just break that isolation so they knew that they weren't alone in the world One of the poignant stories that came out of our very first conference that we did Was that a pastor in the western part of the state had brought two parishioners to the conference And our keynote speaker was Bishop John Shelby Spong And he just, you know, does what Spong does Which is just kind of open up all of Christianity to any question or thought you ever could imagine And when this pastor was returning after this very nourishing and mind opening weekend She realized that her two parishioners were seeming kind of angry And when she finally inquired about it, they said We have sat next to each other in the same Pua Church for 20 years And we didn't know we thought alike We didn't know that we could have found comfort and conversation in each other And that was a disappointment to them, but it took them that long to network with one another And the act up part is really to be a bold and outspoken voice For those people in our society who have been excluded by the church Who have been left out, who have been marginalized, who have been pushed away And so we, Kairos sees it as part of our mission To really speak out about those kinds of injustices Are you by nature a bold person? I would think that there are some who would say that's true I have a bumper sticker on my refrigerator actually That says something like "Speak up even if your voice shakes" And while I find that I speak up a lot, my voice still shakes when I speak up But it still is nerve-wracking, it still makes my heart beat fast But I also know that there's a greater good that served when silence is broken Because I think one of the most deadly things in families, in the church, in society Is when people keep secrets and when silence is held And so I have tried to be bold in speaking up about the truth that I know I tend to think of United Methodist as being fairly progressive By fairly, I mean they're not usually out on the liberal fringe where I live much of my life But that they're generally supportive and understanding and reaching in a good direction Is that your experience of your statewide conference and where are the growing edges for that conference The places where you're trying to take the progressive theology to help them move closer to what Jesus lived out in his life I think the answer is both and people who hear me talk know that I have a love-hate relationship with the church I love it when it embodies that progressive spirit that I believe Jesus embraced and lived out I think the church can inspire great thoughts and can inspire even greater action in people When it's at its best, but the church so often isn't at its best and that usually comes around issues of discrimination and prejudice And so the work that I've been in, while the Wisconsin Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church Probably as characterized as fairly middle of the road to progressive I'm also engaged in the broader church at a national level And so I see so much of the discrimination that the church has become such a part of who the church is When the church is at its best, it is a wonderful thing to be involved in And when it's at its worst, it really can be one of the most hurtful and harmful places I know of Because it carries any time the church speaks, it seems like it carries the authority of God with it And so that has the power to lift people up and it has the power to crush them as well I'm wondering when you heard John Shelby Spong speak And I'm not sure when this was Amy, but when you heard him speak did he speak about his book The Sins of Scripture? Because he talks about how the church has that potential for good and yet has embodied a certain number of hurtful beliefs He didn't because it was prior to the Sins of Scripture I think the Spong was with us in 2002, so I think it was prior to Sins of Scripture Which Sins of Scripture have you witnessed firsthand and tried to help the church grow beyond? Which ones are you engaging with as part of Cairo's commotion? Well for sure the justice issue that Cairo's has been most involved in as an organization And the work that I have been most personally involved in as an individual has been the church's position around gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people It is around that issue that the church is very divided and very divisive and can be such a soul destroying place If you are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender or an ally of one of these people For me part of my story is that in the United Methodist Church we have in our Book of Discipline A number of places where the role of gay, lesbian people is curtailed So we have a number of prohibitions against GLBT people And one of those is that we have the language that you cannot be a self avowed practicing homosexual And be ordained in the United Methodist Church or serve in our churches And part of the truth telling that I have come to do recently is to say that I am a self avowed practicing homosexual And I am an ordained minister and saying that puts me at risk of being charged and being brought to church trial and being defraked But at some point in my journey I realized that telling that truth was more important to me than holding my credentials And so the work that I have been doing for the last three or four years has been around Helping the church to unlearn its prejudice against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people That must create quite a tension in you The tension of do I affirm who I am or do I have to keep silent, ignoring who I am Therefore not speaking the truth in the sanctuary It has created quite a tension In some ways feel that my relationship with the church has become torn by that tension But what I also know is that while I am torn by the church and my relationship with the church That to me is a safer place to be than to have be torn internally The church was asking me to choose, it was requiring me to choose between being who I know I am And who God created me to be and lying about that The church was requiring me to lie and that was something I could no longer participate in And it has been a difficult journey I have let go of all of the security that the church offers I no longer get a regular paycheck and I no longer have health insurance And I no longer am contributing to my pension program So all of those sort of worldly securities have vanished Well at the same time I am more whole now than I ever have been Because I have said no to being torn in that way anymore It takes a lot of courage and I thank you for that witness Going back a ways in your progress towards that As I heard you state what your church book of discipline says United Methodist say that you can't be ordained if you avow that at that time Does that mean if you avow later you can be ordained? I understand that it may be only at induction time that you have to worry No, in our language you can't be a self avowed practicing homosexual Which is I think horrible language which is used to tear gay people apart It disintegrates us, it separates our being from our doing And so part of my way to reintegrate myself has been to proclaim the truth that I know Is it a kind of a don't ask, don't tell policy maybe? In the friendly or annual conferences? Yes In the not friendly or annual conferences it is a do ask, a do tell You can be asked flat out if you are gay So especially when people are going through the ordination process That's a question that many of my gay friends were asked So they might be asked if they are gay and that would prohibit them If they have asked if they have committed murder would that stop them from being ordained? No, right and it's such a fine line because I don't ever want to equate homosexuality with murder Or any other kind of criminal behavior But homosexuality is the only thing that is categorically denied ordination Gay people are the only ones who are categorically denied ordination in our book of discipline Every other condition of being human is evaluated on a case by case basis That's stunning I imagine there's all kinds of discriminations that not only United Methodist But each and every religious body and non-religious body is faced and stepped past What about the discrimination that was practiced in many churches against those of African descent? When did United Methodists come to grips with their discrimination faced on that change? United Methodists have a long history of working through discrimination Much to the chagrin of my seminary pastors won't be able to give you the date The United Methodist Church split a number of times around slavery Northern Methodist churches, we weren't United Methodists at that point Where Northern Methodist churches didn't want anything to do with slavery And the Southern churches did and so we split and we had a Methodist church in the south And eventually that was mended and those two different denominations came back Like I said, I'm not going to be able to tell you the dates of that We have the same kind of history around women It wasn't until 1956 that women were ordained in the United Methodist Church So we have had denomination splitting issues that we have grappled with And we have split as a denomination around slavery And we wisely chose let splitting doesn't solve our problems But we still need to deal with those human issues that are behind every kind of discriminatory policy So we came to our senses around racism Not to say that there aren't still many struggles to overcome in that area But as a denomination we no longer discriminate based on race And we no longer discriminate based on gender When you're working in justice movements There's always a divide between those people who want to keep the church together And those who would just assume it's split Among my friends were not of one mind about how it should go But what I know to be true is that as a denomination We have split regarding slavery And we know better now We know that splitting doesn't solve problems What I also know is that if the denomination were to split on this issue around homosexuality That would be great for me and my partner It would mean that we'd have a place to worship on Sunday morning Which we don't right now But I know that the cause is greater than our own need to find a place to worship on Sunday Because if we were to split create these different denominations One opened to gay people and one closed to gay people I also know that in those churches that are closed to gay people There will be little gay kids rocking in their cradles And they will grow up in the church and they will be baptized in that church And they will be taught in Sunday school that Jesus loves them They will be taught in Sunday school that there's nothing they can ever do That places them outside of God's grace They will go to a potluck They will run around the sanctuary They will be nurtured in the church in all aspects of their lives Their birthdays will be celebrated and when they get to be 13 or 14 they'll be confirmed And then they'll realize they're gay And then the church will ask them to leave And they'll say, "This is my church This is the church that I love" And even if somebody says, "Yeah, but there's a new Methodist denomination that will accept you" They will still say, "This is the church where I learned about Jesus This is the church that nurtured me and that raised me up And this is the church I want to be a part of So a split will make my life easier in the lives of folks right now easier But in the long run, it won't solve anything We need to end our discrimination, period And not even have conversations about splitting because that will not solve anything Oh my children, come to me Oh my children, come to me Oh my children, children, oh children Come to me, come to me, come to me And I will hold you, come to me I will hold you, come to me I will hold you, hold you, hold you Come to me, come to me, come to me And will you hold me, come to me Will you hold me, come to me Will you hold me, hold me, hold me Come to me, come to me, come to me What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? Oh that we could give like the rain Pouring out on rich and poor the same Oh that we could give like the sun Shining light on everyone What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? Teach us how to give, we pray Offering our work and play Oh that we could learn how to care Every breath we breathe a prayer What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? Oh that like the bread we become Scattered grains all gathered in one May the couple blessing you give Fill us and teach us how to give What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? What shall I give to you? Two beautiful songs by Sarah Thompson The first was "Oh my children" and that last one was "What shall I give?" Sarah Thompson's music evokes the blessings that we want to give to our children And the blessings that they are to us And that's part of what we're talking about today with Amy DeLong United Methodist Minister and founder of a group called Cairo's commotion Amy heard the clear message of Jesus' love for all the children But she fears for those who will face rejection as they grow into adults When they find, like she did, that they love someone of the same gender I'm Mark Helpsmeet and you're listening to a northern spirit radio production called "Spirit in Action" And we'll continue with the visit with Amy DeLong, who I interviewed last month in River Falls, Wisconsin As you were talking about that Amy, I was wondering if you were telling your experience what you went through Of course, you weren't Methodist, you were UCC at that time Did you come to awareness of yourself and then did you find people questioning it? No, I was in my 20s before I came out to myself I met my partner at Bible study People say, "Where did you meet?" We met at Bible study in the basement of the United Methodist Church I didn't get any sense of discrimination That was not my experience, what I just described I have been nurtured and loved by the church The only place I've experienced that kind of discrimination Is now that I'm out The church can't find a place for me to be appointed So while I did decide to leave, I was also at kind of the end of the line for me for appointments And then if you go to our general conference, which is our every four-year gathering of the whole United Methodist Church Both nationally and internationally, you go through about two days of debate over the acceptance of homosexuality And it is two of the ugliest days you'd ever want to be a part of Many of my friends have been arrested at general conference When the whole church couldn't think of any better way to be in relationship, but to throw them in jail Is that part of the act up? Yeah, sure Unfortunately, when general conference in 2000 were there were arrests I had already headed home by that time and wasn't a part of that Which I regret because I would really like to go to jail for this cause because it's that important But it has been only as an adult that I have felt the sting of the church's prejudice Is it your experience, Amy, that there are a number of Methodist homosexuals who have difficulty with being affirmed in the church Or that maybe have come out, have had local acceptance and not, that's why you're networking Or is it that there's really a very large number of people who are just waiting for the church to catch up with what is already the truth at the local level? And if the church catches up, they'll... In your book of discipline, it'll say we bless these unions of loving partners who are living out divine love in their relationship So you mean there are... How big of a movement is this within the United Methodist congregations and statewide national that you know of? I think it's dealt with at just about every single annual conference at some level If it's not publicly dealt with, it is certainly a concern among people who are sitting on both sides of the issue Concerned for people who are sitting in the pews on an average Sunday Now I think most local churches don't know how big the struggle is But as soon as you get beyond a local church to like the annual conference level, you can't be unaware anymore It is very present I think the United Methodist Church has been suffering from decline for a number of years And everybody can have their opinion about why that is But I just... I simply feel that a lot of people cannot be part of a denomination that excludes so severely The United Methodist Church just had a judicial council ruling And the judicial council is like the United Methodist Church's Supreme Court Where a gay man was denied membership in the United Methodist Church in Virginia That case went all the way to our Supreme Court, which is our judicial council Which ruled that in fact pastors can decide on their own if gay people can be part of the membership of their church That you can decide to exclude from membership based solely on someone's sexual orientation I think that has enormous repercussions throughout the annual conference, throughout the general church To know that we can just exclude so categorically What is the theological basis that the church uses Versus the kind of theological progressive study that you're inviting people to What is it that the church has versus what you're trying to enlighten people towards? Well the church uses language like homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching What Cairo's commotion and I am working toward is an understanding that that is not what Christianity teaches Like Christianity teaches that God loves everyone That God's grace is lavishly offered That no one has ever excluded for any reason And I think although our book of discipline doesn't say that specifically I think what's behind that is six very obscure passages in scripture Which people can look at and just say see the Bible says so Without any kind of intellectual rigor around that What is labeled as homosexuality in the scriptures six different times Has nothing to do with a modern understanding either of sexual orientation Or of what we think of as monogamous loving faithful long term same gender relationships It has nothing to do with that and yet people can still point that scripture and say see Because the Bible says so and what we're trying to do is just do some education around that But that is not at all what scripture says And if we want to think about scripture, scripture is absolutely the friend of gay people There are thousands of passages when I read it let tell me I'm part of the family of God Let it is God's grace not my sexual orientation that includes me in God's family That kind of stuff is all throughout scripture and somehow we just have to get over looking at these six passages As being an indictment against what we understand to be same gender relationships today I know that a number of those passages are back in Leviticus which has a whole lot of interesting statements I don't know if you can get killed for it but you're not allowed to wear clothes of mixed materials So if you have cotton and rayon together then you're out of there That's right So I know that there's a lot of that On the other hand as I read those passages if a man lays with a man get to kill him That seems kind of unequivocal and I don't know it doesn't actually say homosexuality per se But if a man lays with a man that's a fairly definitive act What's your sense of why that doesn't transfer over to today? I mean this is what Moses supposedly was given as laws from God I can find a number of reasons but theologically how does it fit for you that that kind of You can give it all at least the male homosexuals that way It's only the male homosexuals that have to worry about that Lesbians are off the hook Lesbians are off the hook, yes Well I think that my answer will be twofold One is that even if you take the scripture literally like you just said It's pretty unequivocal, two men shouldn't lie together There are all kinds of places in scripture where we are modern understanding Trump's the cultural understanding at the time the Bible was written There are all kinds of passages that can be found telling women that they shouldn't teach men But they should have no voice in church Now by and large most denominations understand that that's an antiquated notion And we do that all the time So when I encountered biblical literalists I actually think there's no such thing as a biblical literalist Because the Bible says that gay people should be killed And yet most of them aren't willing to go that far I mean so even in that they're kind of hedging The other answer is that I think that you have to look at what is behind If we use this passage that you have just raised two men shouldn't lie together My understanding from the work I've done is that what makes that a sin Is that one of the men would have had to "lie the lines of a woman" So they would have to give up their male power In order to be subservient, submissive And that was the sin Now we understand But that's not how women are to be viewed anymore How women were understood in ancient times Is different than what we know to be true now And so my understanding of that passage is not that two men were together But one had to pretend he was a woman And that was lowering himself in a way that was considered sinful And now it would be an elevation, right? That's right I had to let you say that I mean it's so hard in talking about sexual orientation and homosexuality Because somehow it's still just get into these details of sexual contact It's just kind of hard to maneuver all of that I think we have trouble with homosexuality in the church Because we have trouble with sexuality in the church We don't like having these discussions We don't like knowing this much information And so I think our natural avoidance around sexuality carries over to our discomfort with homosexuality We just don't like, as a church we have not come very far in being comfortable with sexuality of any kind That strikes me as true also One of the things that I found interesting I remember having my own communicated sense of fear about homosexuality And I think part of what was communicated to me is I had to fear being victimized by someone who was gay And that the real fear was the promiscuity that gay people were going to be promiscuous So from a kind of practical point of view It strikes me that blessing unions, blessing marriages of gays and lesbians Is a strong force to limit promiscuity To say I'm going to do what I can to nurture the relationship In my understanding that goes in the direction that the church would like to see things go Reduce promiscuity because we're going to support strong unions Well and I don't know that gay people are any more promiscuous than heterosexual people I don't know if that's true or not It certainly is what's out there as truth and I'm not sure there's any validity to that But it does gay people are in a real double bind when it comes to the church Because we are accused of being promiscuous And then we are denied having our faithful committed long-term relationships be blessed My partner and I can't be married doesn't affect our promiscuity level We are faithful to one another We're in a committed relationship and have been for over 12 years It would be really nice to have that blessed in the church It would be very nice to have it blessed by the civil authorities So it only affects us because there are just so many benefits to being married I'm going to do a little playing of Devil's Advocate And I don't really think the devil needs that much advocacy But I do want to ask the question so that our listeners have heard this dealt with In the story about women taking in adultery It's a stunning reversal for our society That Jesus didn't jump in and say "killer killer killer" Which is a significant step I think that most Christians who come down on the side of homosexuality is not good Would then say "of course we don't kill, we don't stone you, we don't do that" But we do say what Jesus said which is "go and sin no more" How do you respond to that? A truly compassionate Christian doesn't want to hurt you But sees what you do as sin and then just says "please don't do that" And you still have our love Well I'll play Devil's Advocate back and say "what is it that I do that you consider sinful?" I love my partner, we have raised children together We are contributing members of society I look around our neighborhood and except for our gender We are exactly like every other family in our neighborhood So I don't know what it is we do that is considered sin And my answer to that is "I don't think homosexuality is a sin" If sin is something that separates us from God Nothing has brought me closer to God Than acknowledging who I am and who I believe God has created me to be And to live into that I think our sexuality including homosexuality is one of God's greatest gifts to us Because from that arises our ability to love others I don't understand what could possibly be sinful about loving others I have never been fond of the statement "love the sinner hate the sin" Because if you tell me that you hate my relationship with my partner You have done a violent thing to me And there is no way you can love me in the midst of that kind of violence So I cannot hear "love the sinner hate the sin" Because if you diminish the most important relationship in my life There is no way you can love me That makes sense to me too, that's a good answer You're a good devil I've been converted back to the rank of angels I accept your answer and I may actually in the same place Well let's talk a little bit more about Cairo's commotion Maybe we should have to spell that out The listening audience doesn't know how commotion is spelled Give me the history of the name of Cairo's commotion Cairo's, that spelled K-A-I-R-O-S Is a Greek word that literally means "just the right time" And unlike Cronos time, Cairo's time is unpredictable It reveals a new reality which moves us off our agenda And on to God's agenda Cairo's time can't be marked on a clock Or measured with a calendar It is literally the fullness of God's time So that's where the word "kyrose" comes from "Co-motion" and we spell that with a capital C, small O capital M-O-T-I-O-N So "Co-motion" And it is that idea that we are trying to form community And to work together to move in a positive direction Around all kinds of different issues Of inclusiveness and around theological education And spiritual growth We're trying to form a community that moves together And what we also know is that when communities are transformed When individual lives are transformed When God's justice is done It can cause a commotion So it's trying to play on that Moving together As well as kind of stirring things up As I watch your face and see a little glint of glee there With that stir things up Is there a part of you which really would like to... I mean I can imagine it's hard to be patient For me, it has taken a long time to disconnect myself from results And just be concerned about being faithful So while we may have a vote at the general conference level I let I don't agree with What I know is that I have been faithful To who I understand God calling me to be That the worst thing that can happen is that we remain invisible Which means the discussion never happens So sometimes even when the results aren't what I want I have to be positive Let invisibility has been broken And I'm trying to understand that is the most important thing Being faithful and leaving their results to God Hell cleared off the table The leftovers saved Watch the dishes and put them away I have told you a story and tucked you in tight At the end of your knockabout day As the moon sets its sails to carry you to sleep Over the midnight sea I will sing you a song no one sang to me May it keep you good company You can be anybody you want to be You can love whomever you will You can travel any country You can travel any country where your heart beats And know I will love you still You can live by yourself You can live by yourself You can gather friends around You can choose one special one And the only measure And the only measure of your words and your deeds Will be the love you leave behind when you're done There are girls who grow up strong and bold There are boys in quiet and tight Some race on the hill Some follow behind Some go in their own way and time Some women love women Some race children Some never do You can dream all the day Never reaching the ends Of everything possible for you Don't be rattled by names By talks, by games By games, let's seek out Spirits true If you give your friends The best part of yourself They will give the same back to you You can be anybody you want to be You can love, who never you will Sing it with us You can travel any country where your heart beats And know I will love you still You can live by yourself You can gather friends around You can choose one special one And the only measure of your words And your deeds will be the love you leave behind When you're done The love you leave behind when you're done Ah, that's a fine song by Fred Small It's called "Everything Possible" You'll find a link to Fred Small's music On my northern spirit radio .org website As well as other information about this program Including a link to Cairo's commotion I'm Mark Helps meet and my guest today for Spirit in Action Is Amy DeLong, United Methodist Minister And founder of Cairo's commotion I spoke to her last month about her work To lift up the dialogue about Progressive theology within the United Methodist Church And to connect those concerned about the ways that the church Sometimes hurts and discriminates unfairly Tell me Amy about some more of the activities That you've done as part of Cairo's commotion What do you actually do out there in the world? Does this use the machinery? I guess you'd say the mailing list Whatever pulpit announcements, whatever Of Methodists throughout your district We are in no way officially connected To the United Methodist Church in Wisconsin Or nationally But our board of directors is made up entirely Of lay and clergy members of the Wisconsin annual conference Of the United Methodist Church So we don't use the church's mailing list Although most of the ways we are in contact With people is through the church So for example at our annual conference This last month, Cairo's gathers every night To have conversations So we're working with people Right in the midst of the annual conference What we've done in the past Cairo's really has, till now, been very focused And been very event driven Which means every year or so We have an event that brings in a world-renowned theologian To talk about any number of theological topics So our first event, we had Bishop Spong come We've had Marjorie Suhaki Theologian from out in California Who spoke about a year ago And talked about forgiveness as power The focus of trying to live peaceful lives We had Rita Nakashima Brock, a theologian Who's now out in California Also, we had an event called Extreme Makeover Where we tried to sort of put a new face On our theory of the atonement Our theory of the atonement has So many violent components to it Let Rita Brock was invited to come out And help us re-envision that a little bit We've had camping experiences Where we've brought in folks to actually spend Two or three days sort of in a more intensive setting So we've been very event driven Recently, what we've tried to work on And we're just sort of getting up and running At what we're calling Cairo's commotion cell groups Where right now we are every year or so gathering Are these big events and then people are kind of out On their own in between time And so what we're trying to do is Start cell groups around the annual conference Around Wisconsin that will keep people connected On a very regular basis For theological education, spiritual growth For service and then also just for Nurture and fellowship So they can have that sort of tangible contact With a Cairo's community on a regular basis And then we'd still do our big events As a way to bring folks back together For those kind of exciting all cell gatherings But those cell groups are just getting up and running now So we've got a ways to go on that But I'm pleased with this direction Because I think it will help folks Be in solidarity with one another and network And provide opportunities for good critical thinking On a regular basis As I was listening to the list of theologians That you invited in I know John Shelby Spong, retired Episcopal Are the others Methodists or who are your favorite theologians? Some of them are United Methodists, some are not We've had American Baptists, we've had Unitarian So the theologians we've brought in Have sort of gone the spectrum of denominations So we believe there's wisdom out there Other than just among the Methodists Although we have had a lot of Methodist speakers too When I have been places and have talked about my story One of the theologians that I like the best is A man named Parker Palmer Who I remember today is also a Quaker And he has a book When I was really in my most difficult discernment period About whether to leave ministry I couldn't sleep one night So I got up in the middle of the night And pulled Parker Palmer's book off of my bookshelf It was called "Let Your Life Speak" And a friend had recommended it to me years ago And I just never read it And I sat down and started reading And I tell people not to read it because it will ruin your life Make it very whole like that That's right So the partlet undid me the most was this quote from Parker Palmer He says, "What we see is simple but often ignored The movements that transform us, our relations and our world Emerge from the lives of people who decide to care for their authentic selfhood The social systems in which these people must survive Often try to force them to live in a way untrue to who they are If you are poor you are supposed to accept with gratitude half a loaf or less If you are black you are supposed to suffer racism without protest If you are gay you are supposed to pretend that you are not You and I may not know but we can at least imagine how tempting it would be To mask one's truth in situations of this sort Because the system threatens punishment if one does not But in spite of that threat or because of it The people who plant the seeds of movements make a critical decision They decide to live divided no more They decide no longer to act on the outside In a way that contradicts some truth about themselves That they hold deeply on the inside That passage undid me because that was me And the church was requiring me to act on the outside In a way that contradicted what I knew to be true on the inside And that kind of disintegration is really crazy making Because gay people know what's expected of us We're expected to be silent and ashamed And I was not ashamed and I was afraid that my silence was going to convey that Now there are gay people in and out of ministry who maneuver this minefield In different ways than I have And I don't in any way want to be pejorative to the experience that they've had Or the way they have chosen to go through it What I know for me was that I was going crazy Trying to figure out how to live undivided How to live authentically in an institution that required me to be divided and inauthentic And so that decision came that I could no longer do that I'm so glad you don't have to live divided anymore Thank you As you talk about reading Parker Palmer's book and not being divided I wonder if you've come to that kind of junctures in your life Where you've had to make that decision Clearly you had to make that decision as regards what your ministry within the church is Have there been other times when you felt like you've had that kind of decision go this way or that? Interestingly, I tell the story a lot when I'm speaking It's a completely true story and it's hilarious My partner and I were in Nashville, Tennessee Going to visit friends and all of a sudden my phone rang And as it was ringing we realized we were very very lost in downtown Nashville And when I answered the phone my friend Beth who we were trying to find said I just got this feeling that you were lost And I'm calling to see if that's true And I said it's completely true I have no idea where we are And she said well where are you right now? And I said I have no idea because we're lost I said we're in an intersection where to stoplight And she said well what are the streets on the cross street And I looked up and literally we were at the intersection of church street and gay street And I said Beth we're at the intersection of church and gay And over the phone she yells you don't have to choose They do intersects And people who know downtown Nashville know I'm exactly right And the hard part for me and the church is that so many people have had to choose Between church and gay They have had to choose between being authentic to themselves And being a part of the church they love I love the United Methodist Church And I mourned but I had to make such a decisive decision To step out of active ministry in a local parish So that I could honor my true self So downtown Nashville is funny But it is the struggle of many gay people to have to make that decision I think that's a parable that ranks right up there Probably deserves a place in some sacred writings I'd had my friend go back and take a picture one day when the traffic wasn't bad So when I do speaking I actually show the picture because people don't believe that this is true But I had her take it from the opposite direction of the way we were going So that gay went left and church went right Symbology is heavy there I tell you a little story of my experience that maybe will give you a little hope for the world Quakers have been dealing with questions of homosexuality for perhaps a couple decades longer They engaged with that debate I think a little bit earlier than most other churches By the mid 80s the decision was already well long So I was back in Milwaukee part of the meeting there And we were having a discussion about first day school What you'd call Sunday school So we were talking about involvement in teaching and taking turns leading Take care of the kids Of course homosexuals and kids is one of the big fears for a lot of people Anyway we were talking along with one woman who has three boys who part of first day school And the question came up is Do we have any concerns about homosexuals working with kids? And she spoke right up she says There's no way they're going to get out of taking their turn at first day school teaching Just because they're gay, no way There was no hour That's great Yeah the fear clearly wasn't ruling and I imagine the society will get there And I know that the waiting is painful and long and frustrating But I bless you for your witness And I'm so thankful that you came to speak to us today for spirit and action Thank you I was glad to be here thank you I will mention just one more time that the website for Kyros commotion is Kyros commotion Dot org Dot org That's K-A-I-R-O-S-C-O-M-O-T-I-O-N dot org Thanks again for your work Thank you You've been listening to a spirit in action interview with Amy Delong founder of Kyros commotion A group working to enrich the progressive theological dialogue within the United Methodist Church I spoke to her last month in River Falls, Wisconsin As part of a series of interviews held at the United Methodist Church there As I attended a week long Quaker gathering hosted at the University of Wisconsin down the street The theme music for this program is turning of the world performed by Sarah Thompson This spirit in action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website northernspiritradio.org Thank you for listening I am your host Marc Helpsmeet and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light This is spirit in action With every voice, with every song We will move this world along With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing You