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Yesterday I had the privilege of leading the service at UUCA with my friend and fellow worship associate Tommy Lo, featuring insightful reflections from Amy Dryer and Roberta Finkelstein, all on the theme of genuine invitations. Also great music from our new music director, David Mann. We heard people were moved to tears, so we did our job. 🙂 Click the video above to watch the service.

Here is my reflection from the service:

Last week my 11-year-old and I received an unexpected invitation. Our poet friend Regie Cabico called to ask if Niki and I would write poems for an event celebrating the freedom to read. We met Regie last year when he taught a poetry unit to Niki’s class, which unleashed the poet in Niki who we had previously never met. Niki actually won the inaugural poetry slam at their school, and was a finalist in the UU Congregation of Sterling’s poetry slam, where all the other poets were adults, including me. 

The Celebration of Reading event was designed to clap back at the rising tide of book bannings, especially books by and about queer people, people of color, people with disabilities, and other identities that are unfathomably threatening to those who love censorship. Apparently some of these folks also feel threatened by great soccer players and cows. One of the books on the table was a little golden book about Argentinian soccer star Lionel Messi. Was it banned by soccer fans who preferred Real Madrid to Barcelona, where Messi spent most of his career? Another banned book was Click Clack Moo: Cows that Type, a long-time favorite in our family, about farm animals who find a typewriter and demand upgrades in their accommodations from the farmer. Perhaps those who want to ban this book fear an uprising from cows who might read it? 

Anyway, Regie wanted Niki and me to write about how books have shaped our identities and changed our lives. In my poem I wrote about Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, and thanked Judy Blume for unlocking the mysteries of puberty. I wrote about The Color Purple and thanked Alice Walker for teaching me the universality of tenderness and tenacity. I wrote about The Hate You Give and thanked Angie Thomas for replacing headlines with humanity and empathy. 

And I wrote about books featuring queer characters that have opened the world for my family. Here’s one short passage from my poem, about a book called Sir Callie and the Champions of Helston.

Thank you to Esme Symes-Smith 
for bringing Callie into our lives. 
I’ve never had a wish to be a knight of the realm 
or a princess in the palace, 
but I have never felt more seen than 
reading about how Callie’s dad did his best 
to fight for his nonbinary would-be knight 
to claim their power 
in the old-fashioned 
heteronormative kingdom of Helston. 

In Niki’s poem, they wrote about times they were criticized for disrupting gender stereotypes, long before they came out as nonbinary. And they wrote about Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard, a series by Rick Riordan, which includes a character named Alex Fierro who identifies as gender fluid. Niki wrote that they always knew they were different, but they didn’t have the language to describe how they felt until they read Alex Fierro’s words explaining how they weren’t just a boy or just a girl. 

Niki and I read the Magnus Chase books together the summer between their second and third grade years. I had no idea when we started reading them that gender identity would be a major theme in the books, which are largely based on Norse mythology. Although I’ve since learned there is a lot of gender expansiveness in Norse mythology, so it makes sense. I am thankful to Rick Riordan for creating Alex Fierro and giving my kid the vocabulary to articulate their identity. 

In the years since Niki came out, I have spent a lot of time educating myself about gender and sexuality and making sure that my kid is surrounded by people who support them and embrace their identity, and the resources they need to grow up healthy and confident as their unique awesome self. When we invite young people to be themselves, we have to actually mean it. We owe it to them to do everything in our power to ensure that their schools and teams and troops and congregations and all the environments they’re in are willing and able to show them they are perfect just as they are. 

I also try to make sure other families have the information and connections they need to support their LGBTQIA+ kids. That’s why my friend Tracey and I started a covenant group a few years ago for parents of gender-expansive kids. And why we created QA2: Queer and Questioning, Awareness and Acceptance–an event for LGBTQIA+ young people and their families last year. At last year’s gathering we invited dozens of community organizations to participate so kids and their families could see what resources are available, ask questions, and make connections. We invited a fantastic panel of queer individuals and advocates to speak about their experiences and offer advice. 

This year, we’re doing it again, but bigger and better. We’re going to have workshops on gender-affirming care, legal issues, and queer futures. We’re going to have vendors who offer products and services that specifically meet the needs of queer young people. This event is open to the public and we hope to have hundreds of folks from across the DMV coming through our doors, knowing they will be 100% welcomed and supported by everyone we’ve invited to be here. 

Which brings me to my invitation to you. We have some fierce mama bears organizing this year’s QA2, but we still need help. If you have connections to LGBTQIA+ friendly service providers, we want to hear about them. If you are part of an LGBTQIA+ organization, we want to hear from you. And even if you don’t have any of these connections, or even know any queer youth, but you want to help, we will absolutely find a job for you. We need people to help organize, and also folks to help with logistics on the day of the event–October 5. If you have any questions or suggestions or want to volunteer, I invite you to talk with me after the service or email me. If you go to the church website and search for QA2 you can find the address to contact me directly.

Like I said before, when we invite someone to come out, we’ve got to make sure they’re coming out into a safe and welcome space. I invite all of us to create that space, and protect it fiercely and unapologetically. May it be so.

Throughout the service we talked about different kinds of invitations. And we created some actual invitations for folks to take with them when they left the service. We invited everyone to take an invitation of their choice for themselves, or for someone else, or both. Accept the invitation, we said, and see what happens. Here are the pages of cards that we cut up and offered to everyone.