Anonymous ("To the family of Jesus Christ: If by chance you are reading this letter...")

ANONYMOUS

To the family of Jesus Christ:  If by chance you are reading this letter, I want to thank you for your courage to be here and to read these words.  What ever it is that has brought you here, I ask a special blessing upon you.  As Peter followed Christ, Christ has brought you here.  It will be your choice to choose how to respond.

First, regardless of your own sexual orientation, being gay is not the worst thing that can happen to you.  For myself, it has not been the curse I was taught it to be.  Not everyone that is gay has HIV or AIDS.  The gay community is a diverse community within itself.  For myself, it has been a blessing that has opened many more doors than I ever thought possible.  While some doors have been closed, I have been blessed with the most loving and kind people I could ever have hope to have met or have known.

Second, while my orientation was not a choice, it was my choice to choose how to respond.  I could have chosen to lie.  But I decided to practice what I was preaching.  I made the choice to embrace what God created and I decided to love.

As our culture continues to open up and accept homosexuality, the lack of inclusiveness, openness and integrity of the church will continue to fall into question.  As Jesus said himself, "What so ever you do to the least of each other, so you do unto me," can be seen as an indictment against how the church is responding to this issue.

As a minority group, the gay, lesbian, transsexual and transgendered community will never become a dominant force within any particular denomination.  It is not a question of forcing an agenda or converting people to a different lifestyle.  It is about being inclusive and opening doors to everyone and allowing everyone to have a voice to speak.  It is about opening all biblical texts and being open to all images of God that are contained in scripture, not just the ones we like or embody what we want to believe.  It is about practicing the family values of love, trust, honesty, and dignity of all people.

It is no accident that the gay community chooses the rainbow as a symbol and sign of our community.  As the rainbow was a covenant between God and humanity, it has become a sign of inclusiveness for all.  We may not be able to choose our orientation, but we do have the choice to choose between love and hate, to support or tear down.  We can become victims of our own bigotry or we can open our hearts, minds and souls to a loving God that works through many people of all types, shapes, colors and sexual orientations.

God has indeed given us a choice.  I for one, choose to love.

This anonymous stole, with its thoughtful, provocative "open letter," was given to us in advance of the 2000 General Conference of the United Methodist Church in Cleveland, OH.  In 1999, the Reconciling Ministries Network (RMN) inquired about the possibility of having a display of the Shower of Stoles at the General Conference the following April.  At the time, there were only around twenty United Methodist stoles in the collection.  We decided to introduce the Shower of Stoles to the Reconciling community by bringing the twenty UM stoles and about a hundred others to RMN’s Convocation in Denton, TX over the Labor Day weekend.  Stoles started to trickle in during the fall, and by February they began coming in droves.  In all, we received 220 United Methodist stoles – the vast majority of them arriving within eight weeks of the Conference.  Thanks to a monumental effort by a number of volunteers who pitched in to help record, inventory, sew labels and make last-minute repairs, all of the new stoles were present in Cleveland.  Twenty more people brought stoles directly to Cleveland, bringing the total number on display to 240.

Towards the end of the General Conference, twenty eight lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender United Methodists and allies stood on the Conference floor in silent protest over the Conference’s failure to overturn the ban on LGBT ordination – a profound witness and act of defiance for which they were later arrested.  As these twenty eight moved to the front of the room, another 200 supporters stood up around the balcony railing, each wearing one of the new United Methodist stoles.  Hundreds more stood in solidarity as well, in the balcony and on the plenary floor, wearing symbolic “stoles” made from colorful bands of cloth.  A group of young people from Minneapolis, members of a Communicant’s Class, had purchased bolts of cloth the preceding evening and stayed up all night cutting out close to a thousand of these “stoles”.  In less than eight months, a handful of stoles had grown to become a powerful, visible witness to the steadfast faith of LGBT United Methodists nationwide.

Martha Juillerat
Founder, Shower of Stoles Project
2006