Coming Out

A poem about my experience of 'Coming Out' as trans. It's still a work in progress, but I think it has some energy & is worth sharing.

A quick note: I say, 'On this day when I'm talking about 'coming out and Zacchaeus' in my opening spiel. I was asked to offer some thoughts on Luke 19 for Diverse Church, which I did in a longer post before I put this together! I shall probably link that here at some point.

'Shared Conversations' and the place of LGBTI people in the C of E

‘When are the shared conversations starting and who’s going to be involved?’

I’ve heard and been asked these two questions in various settings over the months since The Pilling Report came out. 

The Pilling Report commended a process of ‘facilitated conversation’ as a way of moving forward discussion and relationships within the Church of England on all things LGBT. In light of the House of Bishops’ meeting earlier this year, the notion of ‘facilitated conversation’ shifted towards ‘shared conversations’ between various interested parties, leading up to a discussion in General Synod in 2016. (One assumes that the term ‘facilitated’ was troublesome because it held the implication that healing and mediation might be necessary.)

As I understand it, this formal process of shared conversation begins after a meeting of the College of Bishops this coming autumn. Diocesan bishops will then nominate representatives for regional discussions, including LGBT reps and a mix of lay and ordained.

I’ve been thinking an awful lot about this (by church standards!) imminent process in the past couple of weeks. While this fact is no doubt a symptom of my need to get out more, my rumination is also unsurprising. Like pretty much every LGBT person who has chosen to stick around within the church I am profoundly conscious of the extent to which ‘we’ have been treated as something to be talked about, as an issue. So there’s a part of me that’s intrigued by the possibility that we might be talked to. Really talked to.

And, yet, the Pilling Report was also, supposedly, part of a process of being talked to and with. As someone who conversed at length with members of the Pilling Committee I’m not especially convinced I was listened to. It would not be beyond the possibility that I might the kind of person who was asked to participate in the upcoming conversations.  (And I suspect there will be a goodly number of people who – as much out of a desire to know what this process will involve – will be keen to participate.) And yet that previous experience has made me suspicious of the whole process.

In some respects it feels like the world is changing fast. The number of ‘coming outs’ recently, including Vicky Beeching, has hopefully left some church people thinking, ‘are there actually any straight people in the church?’ (;-D). However, the treatment of Jeremy Pemberton and the patchy nature of support for LGBT people in the C of E should give pause. As someone said to me recently, ‘We live in a bubble in Manchester diocese.’ It is a place where – more or less – LGBT lay and ordained can thrive and feel supported. You don’t have to travel too far outside the bounds of the city to experience a quite different reality.

Why am I suspicious about the ‘shared conversation’ process? Partly because ‘conversations’ have been going on in one form or another since at least the Consultations of the ‘70s. And yet it’s not clear that the C of E institution qua institution has shifted that much.

However, I am more concerned about whether the conversations will truly be conversations. The notion of ‘conversation’ includes the meanings of a ‘turning together’ or a ‘changing together’ as well as a living amongst or dwelling together. It is a mesmerizing possibility, but given things like the House of Bishops’ Pastoral Statement (aka The Valentine’s Day Massacre) it’s difficult for those of us who have been traditionally excluded from welcome in the church to trust that those with power, privilege and authority will genuinely place their privilege at risk of conversion, of conversation.

I believe that, in conversation, a mutual conversion to one other is certainly possible and I guess many of us would still be willing to give it a go. But we’d better hope God is around to give all participants a reality check, a regular kick in the shins.

Two 'War' Poems

Grandfather 1978

he is sitting in a high-backed chair watching fat wrestlers on TV

the screen thicker than a cartoon character’s glasses

his shirt grimy collared fraying around the cuffs     his trousers

great clown-worthy trousers imprisoned in braces

and a belt surely made from the side of a cow

the liver-spotted arms    the muscles thin as his hair   

that finger    the third on his left hand knuckled short

as if a knife has been taken to it as vicious as the one he uses

to de-string sausages for tea

and the sigh he gives when

I ask how the finger was lost

the words he speaks

Mametz    Neuve Chappelle    Wipers and finally

Passchendaele    said as if his mouth is clotted with mud

Flags

Some days we receive them as gift,

held above us like snow falling,

yet seeming to rise, threads packed thickly,

heavy with names. Threatening to wipe away

the familiar paths beneath our feet.

Down here there is nothing,

but waiting, trying to remember

the lessons that would make us safe,

forgetting how when the storm comes we shall

find nothing to cling to, the night

slick with ice; how it is possible for frost to be made

in summer, how there can be emblems waved,

celebrations at which no one is found.