I sing the body electric
I celebrate the me yet to come
I toast to my own reunion
When I become one with the sun
And I’ll look back on Venus
I’ll look back on Mars
And I’ll burn with the fire
Of ten million stars
And in time and in time
We will all be stars
I sing the body electric
I glory in the glow of rebirth
Creating my own tomorrow
When I shall embody the Earth
And I’ll serenade Venus
I’ll serenade Mars
And I’ll burn with the fire
Of ten million stars
And in time and in time
We will all be stars
While considering what would be the message and hoped for experience of this Pride Celebration, this song to my mind. It’s from the 1980 movie “Fame,” and it was based on a poem written by Unitarian Walt Whitman. Whitman’s poem exudes gay pride!
The movie Fame that gave us the modern rendition of Whitman’s poem, followed the lives of several students from NYC’s high school for performing arts, their struggles and their coming to claim their gifts.
UU congregations want this type of pride and claiming of gifts. We want it for LGBTQ+ people. We want it for all people.
Perhaps the holy encounter most often experienced in our congregations is unconditional self-acceptance that is encouraged when we are embraced by the community. We strive to make our congregations places where all people, and especially LGBTQ+ can bring their whole selves. We invite each other into a spiritual journey encouraged by the safety and freedom to explore our world and ourselves as living breathing dynamic and changing human beings. This song exudes this spirit of acceptance and celebration of the miracle of the gift of life that each of us has and each of us brings.
I am fortunate to have been accepted into a school that I believe had something in common with the performing arts school of the movie Fame. I attended Thomas Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkely California. It was place that encouraged students and challenged us to claim our gifts, to experience Pride.
Starr King Students had access to many amazing classes from the other seminaries of the Graduate Theological Union. We also had cross registration with UC Berkely. The best learning, however, came through “the Starr King experience.” Starr King valued students and placed trusted in us. Students were encouraged to apply to teach a class at Starr King. Students were on the board of trustees. Every semester every student met with the entire core faculty to have a conversation about ministerial formation and the fulfillment of individual educational goals.
My mentor Bob Kimball helped me understand the seminary’s educational philosophy. He said “We believe that by listening to students, having interest in your faith journey, by treating you with respect and trust, taking seriously your yearnings, we are teaching Unitarian Universalist Ministry. We hope you will take with you the trust and respect you find here and share it with the congregations that you will serve.” Starr King School provided an environment that encouraged and nurtured faith development not by a top-down feeding of beliefs, but as a journey of study, reflection, discussion and most importantly, self-exploration.
Kimball helped me to see the violence that is common in religious and other of society’s institutions. He said, “If we assumed that we could dictate exactly what you needed to know, if we forced or coerced you to follow our plans for you, you would be more likely try to do the same to the members of the congregations you will serve.” He inspired and encouraged me to find better alternatives.
Unitarian Universalist history is rich with examples of people looking and finding better ways than traditions that oppress. One example is the Transcendentalist movement. It was largely a Unitarian phenomenon.
The song “I sing the Body Electric” was based on a poem of the same title written by Walt Whitman and published in “Leaves of Grass” in 1855. Whitman was a gay Unitarian Transcendentalist poet and writer whose exuberance for nature, weaved the physical, including the erotic and the spiritual.
Whitman wrote:
These are not parts and poems of the body only. But of the soul
Oh I say now these are the soul.
170 years later and we are still suffering from the influence of religions that denigrate sex and the body as sinful.
UU congregations observe Pride month and take the opportunity to “unhesitatingly and wholeheartedly support lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people’s rights, marriages, pursuits of happiness and breath. BTW We also do these, July through May. *(meme adapted)
“I sing the Body Electric,” Whitman’s words express, conjure, and recall ecstasy in ways that convey human dignity and worth. In this same poem where Whitman celebrates bodies and souls, he condemns the auction where enslaved people are sold. He says “Within there runs blood, the same old blood. The same red running blood.” In this same poem he asserts the equality of women. These were radical ideas 170 years ago.
To this day many people get indoctrinated to forms of Christianity so far divorced from Jesus and his love ethic as to be grotesque. You remember Jesus? He was the guy who creatively intervened to interrupt the stoning of a woman said to be guilty of the crime of adultery. Jesus said famously “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Whether its Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, there have been those in power and those who have sought power that manipulate fear and hatred. They demonize, dehumanize and scapegoat the perceived “other.”
To a very large extent LGBTQ+ people have been targeted this way. Directing hate, judgment and violence against gays or queers enforces rigid social roles based on sex and gender. Anti-gay oppression, sexism, violence against transgendered people these serve to maintain a status quo where a ruling elite are enabled to dominate and steal resources from the commonwealth.
The widespread practice of promoting hatred of LGBTQ+ has nothing to do with Jesus. It doesn’t even have anything to do with the bible. Repressive forces have tricked people into believing that condemning gays is moral, Christian and scripturally based. It’s none of these.
Hebrew and Christian scriptures had nothing or nearly nothing to say about those we call LGBTQ+ today.
According to Rev. David Clark Senior Minister of BayShore Church in LongBeach California, there at most six verses that mention same sex relations. They are ambiguous and taken out of context. … By contrast scripture contains fifty verses about money lending, 2000 verses regarding treatment of foreigners, strangers, or poor people.” And yet many Christians have been convinced that anti-gay sentiment, fighting “the gay agenda” is the moral obligation of every Christian today.
Condemnation of LGBTQ+ is not based on sound reading of scripture. Let’s take the example of Genesis 19. The evil condemned in this Sodom and Gomorrah story was not homosexuality but intent to gang rape two strangers (actually angels disguised as humans.) Horrific mistreatment of strangers was common. Men “protected” their town by abusing strangers to discourage any spies or interlopers from infiltrating their village. Perhaps this is why so many biblical verses condemn mistreatment of strangers (foreigners). The #1 most repeated verse in Scriptures is variations of “Don’t mistreat the stranger. You were once strangers in the land of Egypt.”
Beyond treatment of “strangers” or foreigners, Hebrew scriptures speak consistently against mistreatment of vulnerable populations. The clear pattern of Jesus ministry points to a bold and expansive inclusivity, an ethic of loving compassion.
Our Unitarian and Universalist theologies continued this emphasis on God’s love. Whether or not we use the word God, our religious tradition calls us to affirm our shared humanity and find a “love that is beyond belief.” It expresses an optimism and belief in the potential for human progress.
A quotation often attributed to Winston Churchill says that history is written by the victors. It is important to remember that the academic field of history does strive for objective fact. Truth matters.
One of the most important insights from modern research in the field of psychology is the power of narrative. Perhaps more important that what happened in our past, is the story we tell ourselves about it. Families tend to hold a shared narrative.
Our religious tradition values truth as well as sacred stories. We value critical examination that reveals how political agendas, bias, and prejudice can amplify or distort truth through stories. For example, UUs have considered the how the ways that Europeans and Americans of European told history to minimize, gloss over and justify the brutality to enslaved Africans and the attempted genocide of people indigenous to this continent.
Our tradition is also concerned with the sacred stories of Western religion and how they have engendered our relationship to nature. Should we be trying to have dominion over nature, or learning with reverence to live in harmony with it?
Unitarian Minister Ralph Waldo Emerson started us seeking communion with the divine in nature. This theme was continued in Walt Whitman’s “I Sing The Body Electric.”
What story will we tell about our nature? Our sexuality? Must we swear allegiance to the stories told by our forbearers?
Today we acknowledge the damage done by generations learning to think of their bodies and their sexuality as sinful. Today we honor the diversity of ways that people can experience spirituality in bodies.
We affirm that those of us who identify as LGBTQ+ are a manifestation of nature, a nature we hold as divine, worthy of awe and reverence. By doing so we affirm the inherent worth and dignity of life. May your Pride Month be glorious, healing and power! Amen, Ashe’, Blessings!
Acknowledgments
- Quotes of mentor Bob Kimball are recalled from memory, and not likely an accurate recounting of his exact words.
- Ideas taken from sermons by Rev David Clark on LGBTQQ+ inclusion bayshorechurch.org
- Quotes from “I Sing The Body Electric” taken from Russel Jaffe https://youtu.be/EMX7C4pRwOU
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