The Names on My Heart

When Katy and I first married, we lived in a parsonage. Our bedroom window looked out at the church's stained glass. The living room was brightly lit by a picture window. Anyone walking down Center Street could tell if we were watching TV, two-stepping, or having a guest for dinner. It was a classic fishbowl, and we couldn't afford curtains. You could say we were exposed.

It was one afternoon in that bright, open living room that a clergy colleague in our cluster of churches came out to me. He wasn't out at his church. But he could talk, and I could listen and learn about the hurts and hazards of serving God while hiding an essential part of yourself from  God's people.

His name is the first one I wrote on my cut-out heart at the marriage equality vigil last night at the Minnesota State Capitol. Other names quickly followed.

• a gay college friend who married straight but couldn't keep up the facade
• a classmate from divinity school who never went into ministry
• Michael Kinnamon, who showed me at the beginning of my ministry the risks and courage of publicly being an ally
• Roger Weddell, who hosted the first local chapter meeting of GLAD I ever attended
• Mel White, who let me be his pastor for a time, but who, in that relationship, taught me more about the power of public witness than anyone I've known
• Audrey Connor, with whom I was honored to serve on staff in Lynchburg, and who helped me be honest about my convictions out loud
• Dan Adolphson, with whom I'm walking as he journeys toward ordination
• The names of every same-sex couple I've married in church but whose licenses I couldn't sign

In the rain, their names washed off my paper heart, but they are indelible on mine, even as they are eternally on the heart of God. 

They and others are on my heart today as I head up to the Minnesota State Capitol for what looks like a historic vote for marriage equality.

My prayers are rising up today with the names and faces not only of friends and allies in ministry but of those whose only fear of exposure, as their relationships begin, should be a few curtainless windows, not the baring of their identity or the stripping of their soul.

Blessings and Peace,
David