A very Proud Halloween, and religious sadness (but mostly rambling)

Last weekend was Atlanta Gay Pride, and I had the opportunity to go. It was an absolute blast. Ally went as an organization event, and we stayed at the home church of one of the members and former officers. We arrived Saturday evening and got settled in, then everyone else went out to party a bit. I had some very interesting reading, was very tired, and had the suspicion -confirmed- that the security system might not be generous enough to let them in if they got back after midnight, so I stayed at the church. We all went to church there (Saint Mark's United Methodist) Sunday morning and then watched the parade. The route leads right in front of the church, so we got seats on the curb facing the church and had an excellent view of the parade.

Although I had a full battery when it started, my camera died right before the end of the march, so I missed a few good shots, including a man who'd painted himself into a rainbow and donned a suit of bubble wrap--JUST a suit of bubble wrap. I did get a picture on a friend's camera, though.

After the parade we went down to the park and walked the booths for a bit before heading back to school. All around, pride was amazing, hilarious, inspiring, and kind of sad in some ways. St. Mark's was very welcoming and open, had rainbows all over the chapel and had a speaker from the Human Rights Campaign. Even though the woman whose church it was had told us it was a welcoming and accepting church, I felt anxious before the service over wearing my "gay tag," a rainbow dog tag on a chain.

I am a gay/bisexual, trans-spectrum human being, predominately identifying as a female. I am a Christian. I feel that God loves me, and He/She will always love me and I should strive to live as morally straight a life as possible. Jesus said,

³⁰And you shall love the Lord your God out of and with your whole heart and out of and with all your soul (your life) and out of and with all your mind (with your faculty of thought and your moral understanding) and out of and with all your strength. This is the first and principal commandment.

^{³¹The second is like it and is this, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. (Mark 12:30-31)}

And I try. And I often fail, because I am human, and I am a fallen creature. But He/She loves me anyway. Knowing that, I get little love from The Church. I felt honest surprise -joy, elation, relief, giddiness, a real sense of rightness, but also surprise- when the actions and words of everyone I heard in that church actually matched the professed acceptance. That church made me happy, but my surprise makes me that much more aware of how far I feel I have been pushed or have willingly retracted myself from the established church.

I loved church as a child, and still do to some extent. Though not by any stretch of the imagination a singer, my most earnest form of worship has always been through music. Whenever I have attended a church without a good music program, I have felt that my communion with God has been stifled or limited in some way. While I am not currently attending regularly, I make a point in my personal worship to listen and sing songs that seem to have a deeper spirituality. It helps.

{{This is where the pictures are supposed to be, but We are Experiencing Technical Difficulties. My camera would let me look at the pics, then it gave me generic icon images, then it died, so we'll see how generous it's feeling after a recharge and a stern talking to.}}

You'll just have to make do with pictures of protesters from another march/ pride/ something. I found this on Pundit Kitchen and it made me happy.

see more Political Pictures

This post was a lot more rambling than I intended, and didn't focus on what I'd originally planned on posting, but I've been meaning to do a post or two on religion (Cameron got a bug in my ear for that), so here you go. Deal with it, oh three people who read my blog.

~Brill