{Kurt}

Truthfully, church on Sunday was the last place Kurt wanted to be, even with Jon sitting in the driver's seat beside him, looking peaceful in the overcast morning light. Kurt felt edgy and dark, his fingers restlessly pressing chords into his legs as they listened to jazz on the radio, and maybe a little bit like he'd prefer to drag Jon down into the shit with him rather than be alone.

"So this isn't my first time heading to church post-coitus," Kurt said. "But I gave up trying to please a Daddy in heaven a long time ago. How are you feeling right now, White?"

Jon's eyes glanced upwards, his face thoughtful. "Mixed," he said lightly. His clear hazel eyes touched Kurt's a second. "I regret nothing. And I don't know what kind of person that makes me yet."

Kurt slouched back in his seat, pleased. "Makes you my kind of person." He let his mind wander back to the night before, feeling a little less shitty than he had a moment earlier.

"Did you ever—believe in God?" Jon asked. "Or was that just your family's thing?"

Kurt folded his arms over his chest, gingerly probing the answer to that question. "Sure I believed in God. I just couldn't please that bitch for the life of me. Now I don't give a shit, and it turns out he doesn't give a shit about me either. We've been mutually ignoring each other for years and this fag is fine with that."

Kurt brushed his fingers over his shirt, like he was flicking away embers from a fire. "No offence but I don't know why you still bother." The quiet stretched and he gave Jon a sideways glance, wondering if he had offended him. His boyfriend smiled back, his forehead wrinkling.

"I guess this fag still believes that Jesus loves him," Jon said simply. He glanced aside, and Kurt saw through his smile to a depth of shadow he was very familiar with. "When I'm most hurt—when it feels like no one is for me, he's close as my skin. I unhooked what I think about God from the garbage people do in Jesus' name a long time ago— because l couldn't shake him off."

Kurt frowned, putting these words together with what Jon had told him about Jesus healing his cuts earlier. "I feel like I don't even know the person you're talking about," he said slowly. "Did we even take the same Sunday school classes?"

Jon laughed quietly. "I don't think there's a standard curriculum. My dad was my Sunday school teacher when I was a kid." 

"So was mine," Kurt said, brushing at some white cat hairs on his shirt. Black was so unforgiving. "I remember nothing. Oh, wait—I remember white Jesus dividing the white sheep and the black goats and sending all the goats to hell."

"That's oddly specific," Jon remarked.

"My dad must have really liked that one."

Jon blew out his breath, his hands tightening on the wheel. "I think you should just assume everything your bigoted, asshole father told you about Jesus is bullshit. And start from scratch." The words snapped with heat, and Kurt's face lifted in a grin.

"You got a little bit of a temper, there, Jon," Kurt teased. "I'm just realizing this about you."

"Yeah, I do," Jon said, his mouth flat. "When people start slinging Jesus' name around, or the Bible he loved, like it's a weapon? I get a little pissed. Don't get me started on this."

Kurt laughed to himself. "Well I feel like I'm walking into church with the right person. And I got my fireproof undies on, so I'm good to go."   

Jon's church was a massive stone building with what might even have been a bell tower rising into the overcast sky, pigeons flapping in and out of the highest window. Inside, Kurt's eyes were full of the colours of the stained glass, the gleaming dark wood arching above the sanctuary, the knotted designs and crests painted along the ceiling. He felt as if he'd stepped into another age, like he should have worn a tunic and sword belt instead of his Johnny Cash shirt, jeans and boots. He was so absorbed in looking around, that Jon took his hand so he wouldn't get lost on the way to the pew.

It was a small, somewhat elderly crowd scattered in the pews around them. Near the front, he was startled to see a Black man he knew better in drag, and he spent a couple minutes side-eyeing the others in that pew, trying to figure out if he knew them too.

Cary came in the side doors a few minutes late, holding the door for a tall Latina woman, strikingly turned out from her heeled boots and belted lilac jacket, to her sleeked-back ponytail. The expression on her face was aloof and Kurt could have dropped his jaw on the floor when she held out her manicured hand to Cary, and he smoothed her fingers into the crook of his elbow to walk with her to a pew. Cary cleaned up nicely, in a white dress shirt open at the neck and buttoned down over his tattoos. His face looked heavy and tired, but he was all considerate attention for the woman beside him.

Kurt leaned over to Jon, "Is that—?" He flicked his eyes over to the pair to get Jon to look.

Jon pursed his lips. "Yeah, that's Liya. Cary's girlfriend."

"She is a fox." Kurt said, astonished.

Jon pulled a face. "Typical for Cary." His expression was guarded as he glanced at his friend, then away, speaking in a low voice for Kurt. "If I had to describe Cary's type, it would be...gorgeous, emotionally complicated, and just broken enough that he can excuse their behaviour for as long as the relationship lasts. Ask yourself who that reminds you of."

"Me?" Kurt asked, worried.

Jon elbowed him. "No, not you." He laughed. "You have a warm beating heart." He thumbed through the prayer book, glancing to the front of the sanctuary for his cue. "I feel like Cary keeps dating his mother to try and fix it. It hurts to watch."

"Oh," Kurt said quietly. The memory of Cary's big body heaving with sobs, huddled under the window in the attic, opened in his chest and his mouth curled down, watching Cary and his girlfriend in the corner of his eye.

Liya's face was so smoothly made up Kurt couldn't read her expression as she watched the woman at the front raise her robed arms. Cary had his head bent, his fingers folding the song sheet into a smaller and smaller triangle, until Liya plucked the wad of paper out of his hands and smoothed it open to follow the words, giving him a sharp look he didn't see with his head bowed, tucking his empty hands under his legs in the pew.

The congregation stood and Kurt stood with Jon, his hands clasped tightly behind his back to keep them from expressing anything at all. The service was incomprehensible to him; the woman at the front might as well have been speaking Latin. Jon flipped back and forth in the prayer book, giving the responses with the rest of the congregation. Some of the bits sounded like Bible readings.

The part Kurt liked best was, of course, the music. The big old organ made the walls shake, and he tipped his head towards Jon to hear him singing amidst the rest. His boyfriend's voice was lower than it had been when they sang on worship teams together, but it still had the raw edge that lanced clear through to his heart.

He recognized some of the songs from the thousands of hours he'd spent in church with his family. Kurt's chest moved like he was going to sing, his fingers pressing the chords for his guitar even clenched behind his back. He locked his mouth shut, letting his eyes wander over the windows above them.

Every line of the music praised a God Kurt didn't believe in anymore, who could be trusted, who created good things, who was there for his creation. He wasn't taking those words into his mouth when they were bitterly antithetical to his actual experience. Not even to sing with Jon.

{Jon}

The solid familiarity of the wooden pews and arching roof beams made Jon feel as if he'd stepped onto an old ship, marked with age and long use but still sea-worthy. Since he'd started attending with Cary a few years ago, Sunday mornings in the nave of St. Aidan's church had become a source of stability in the high seas of Jon's work and personal life. Watching the robed woman at the front, Jon gave the responses to the readings by heart, his arm brushing Kurt's.

Kurt's hands were crammed in his pockets, his eyes on the toes of his boots and he slouched beside him like he wasn't hearing a word of it. Jon didn't care if he was; he was touched that Kurt had come at all, that after his painful experience with his Christian family and their church, his boyfriend had been willing to put his body in a pew again, beside Jon.

He knew exactly how dangerous that could feel. He'd stepped away from church for years after coming out. Only Cary's trust in this particular congregation, and the rainbow flag prominently displayed on their website, had finally persuaded Jon to edge into the nave one Sunday morning just to watch from the back.

The service had been full of unfamiliar songs and ritual, and at the end the minster had held up her robed arms to bless them. It had felt as if her words pushed into Jon’s body, warm and alive, and he'd realized tears were pouring down his face. He'd slipped out before the end so no one would catch him crying in public.

All that week he had carried that warmth in his stomach: there was another place in the world he was welcome as a person who was both gay and deeply committed to God. It felt as revelatory as the morning he'd woken up to discover the cuts he'd drawn on his body as an act of self-hatred were closed, clean and healed overnight. That day had marked a new chapter in his relationship with his body and his parents, underlining for him that God accepted him just how he was.

Six years after his dad had wrapped his arms around him and told him he loved him no matter what, Jon tentatively joined Cary at the communion rail, watching his friend in the corner of his eye for what to do with his hands when they brought the wafer of bread and the common cup.

Holy Mystery, God the Spirit,

we call on you to transform these familiar things,

as you continually transform the world around us.

At these now-familiar words, the wooden floors creaked as the people in the pews stood and shuffled into the aisles to come to the communion table. Jon joined them. As he waited, shifting from foot to foot, he held the evening he'd just shared with Kurt open to God, one hand turning unconsciously, open at his side, his own heart whispering: Would it please You to transform this?

Stepping up to the wooden prayer rail, Jon knelt on the carpetted step. On the edge of his perception he saw the minister, Rev. Marisol, bending over each person at the rail, setting the wafer in their cupped hands. Her helper came behind with the common cup of wine and a linen cloth to wipe the rim between each mouth that sipped. Jon could smell the paraffin of the candles flickering on the table, and, faintly, the tang of the wine. What he loved about communion here was it was a multi-sensory, bodily experience.

Start to finish, in the Christian story bodies mattered. Made by the Creator in the perfect garden, humans were designed to be in community with one another and with God, walking around in their beautiful naked bodies tending the world together. It was a mouthful of forbidden fruit that exiled humanity from that garden to suffer hardship, want, violence, and broken relationships generation after generation.

Until the body of an ordinary man walked on the scene, with dirt on his feet and callouses on his hands, full, as the story goes, of grace and truth. That beautiful body—fully God, fully man—broken and poured out, was what this table was all about.

"The Body of Christ, broken for you, Jon," Marisol murmured, placing the wafer on his fingertips, and smiling into his face.

“Thanks be to God.” Jon gave the response softly and lifted his hands to set the wafer on his tongue. Closing his eyes, he sucked on the dry morsel in his mouth.

For a moment, he felt as if he leaned his head against the chest of a Father so much bigger than his dad, and everlasting arms wrapped around him in a hug so warm and life-giving, that loving energy filled Jon up from the tips of his toes in his scruffy sneakers to the tender top of his head. On his knees at this table, Jon felt like he was completely okay—there was so much of God's life available and overflowing that it more than made up for his shortcomings.

A rustle of robes and then the cool rim of a cup touched his lips. "The Blood of Christ, shed for you," a man said softly, and Jon opened his mouth. The mouthful of wine softened the wafer on his tongue and he swallowed them both.

Jon thought of Kurt's body, of the warm throb of Kurt's heartbeat under his cheek when he touched him. Wine burned all the way to his stomach and Jon covered his face with his hands. He was teetering on the ledge, about to take a huge risk. As long as he kept his gay body inside the boundary of friend-love and family-love, he was safe. If he was going to love Kurt Visser, he was eventually going to give his body to him completely and receive the other man's body in return.

Possibly his boss was right and the life choice Jon was considering was a perversion of everything the Bible meant by the word 'love.' Even though no one in this room held that view, years of absorbing that message in other Christian settings made it sticky as hell.

Are we okay, Father? Jon whispered the prayer in his mind. I don't want to trade You for this but I want…this.

He didn't hear anything in response, just felt the press of carpet under his knees and the warm smell of paraffin around his face. Jon rose from the prayer rail feeling unsteady, as if he'd taken a whole cupful of wine instead of one sip. What he'd had to accept, years ago, was that his ordinary life apart from this table was messy and hard and he was never getting back the simple answers he'd trusted in as a child. All he had to hold onto was a memory and a belief that he was loved regardless.

Sliding onto the pew next to Kurt, he clasped his hand around the other man's wrist, tugging his hand out of his pocket to hold it in the pew between them. Kurt glanced at his lowered face, and the pressure of his fingers squeezing back quieted Jon's trembling.

The words that closed the communion time were the same most weeks, but today they struck Jon in a way he'd never felt before.

Thank you, O Christ, for this feast of life.

We are fed by your love, we are strengthened by your life.

We are sent forth into this world to live into the visions God has laid on our hearts.

We are now commissioned to feed as we have been fed;

forgive as we have been forgiven;

love as we have been loved.

Love as he had been loved.

Jon lifted his face, looking at Rev. Marisol at the front, then finding her wife seated at the end of the second pew, her hair buzzed up one side and falling over her eye as she watched her spouse with a look of quiet satisfaction on her face. In the end, weren't they all throwing themselves off the cliff of grace, trusting in a good God to catch them? Every single person here came to the table in such desperate need of that gift of grace that they risked body and soul should God let them fall. He was no different.

*Is this a new idea to you, that Jon and Kurt could attend a church where they're free to hold hands, or do you have churches like that where you live?

Was the word "affirming" familiar to you? If not, here's the background:

So I grew up Baptist, like Jon, and I still consider myself to be part of a broad group of Christians marked by evangelical beliefs: a personal relationship with Jesus, a high view of the Bible, and relatively few 'smells and bells' in our services. However, there are no evangelical church denominations that I'm aware of that are what Christians loosely call "affirming" - which means, they would bless Jon to take communion as a sexually active gay man, bless and perform his same-sex marriage, and ordain him to lead a ministry as a married gay man.

This creates a very painful tension for LGBTQ+ kids growing up in evangelical churches. If they fully embrace their sexuality, they can't fully participate in their church and they might lose their Christian community. I explore this a bit in WAKE, with Jon and his parents.

There are individual churches that are affirming, and I really think it's worth searching around online to see what welcoming spaces you can find close to you. Pre-COVID we attended a church that is not part of an affirming denomination, but that has a strong presence of affirming parents and LGBTQ+ kids. That's not something you would find out by looking online, so asking your Christian LGBTQ+ friends, or affirming friends, would give you a better inside scoop.

In Canada, there are two affirming denominations that I'm aware of: the United Church in Canada and the Mennonite Church in Canada (not to be confused with the 'Mennonite Brethren' denomination). Their inclusive stance is encoded in their denominational policies, and there's a safety in that I wanted for Jon. You will probably find a United church building to be more fancy and their service to be more 'old fashioned,' with hymns and read prayers. Mennonites come from the Anabaptist tradition, so they would tend to be pacifists, justice advocates and have a very simple sanctuary and service.

The Canadian Anglican denomination is still divided on this issue - some churches are affirming and some are not. I love the practice of weekly communion, but our local Anglican church is not affirming and since their denomination is in conflict about this issue I'd prefer to stay away from that controversy while my kids are going through adolescence.

So that's the inside scoop, lovelies! Like Jon, I find the foolishness of church to be a good anchor in my weekly rhythm and if that's something you wish for I'll send good vibes into the Universe for you to find someplace that will welcome and enfold you <3 *

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