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[music]
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): There are some things
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): I may not know.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): There are some places I can't go.
[speaker]
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: I was raised in a Black Baptist church, in pretty much a country town,
working class folk.
And so what we had in the Black church was what we had.
It was, it was, it was our community, it was our rock, it was our foundation, because we
knew how to pool our resources and to make it work.
Our pastor at the time actually pastored our church for 42 years, so we were blessed as
a family, personally.
He baptized pretty much everybody in my family.
Being in church, music was a way to be ushered into the presence of the holy.
Most of the traditional hymns that have been now long gone are still hymns that are very
important to me today because they helped to shape who I am.
But if there is a song that continues to resonate with me, it would be the song, "My God Is
Real." That first verse is so important to me.
"There are some things I may not know / There are some places I can not go / But this one
thing I know for sure / That God is real. / And I can feel him deep within."
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: I identify specifically as a heterosexual male with a trans experience.
As a young child I knew that there was something different about me.
My mother's a single mother.
When I was born, my sister was 17 years old and ready to go to college, and so it was
the church that helped to raise me.
My mother had to work. It would be the ladies of the church who took care of me so I've
never not known church.
And at the same time as I was growing up, as a child even in my younger years, eight,
nine, ten, I knew that I was different.
I wasn't like the girls, but I liked the girls.
And so as I began to grow and do things like play house, I realized that whenever it was
a play house moment, that I was, I was, I was the husband, I was the daddy, I was the
male of the family.
And so for me personally, I can't say it was a huge struggle for me, it's just something
that was.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: How I was able to reconcile that, was I had a moment alone in my own bedroom
one evening, and simply said, "OK, God, this is what's happening up here, and I
know this to be real for me.
But I also know You to be real.
And if this is not the way it's supposed to be, I need you to make it plain for me."
And from that conversation, from that little prayer, literally, as I have grown and as
I continue to mature, I became even more so convicted and convinced, that I have always
been a heterosexual male, and it was ok.
God lauded and applauded that, that I could ask the question at such a young age and be
able to say, "God, if this is not the way it's supposed to be, reveal it to me, show
it to me, and change it."
And when it didn't happen, as a matter of fact, the more I understood who I was in my
own skin and in my own psyche, the more at peace I became with myself and the more I
believed God was pleased with my acceptance of me.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: I never came out, so to speak, when I was birthed into the church
and as I grew in the church and as I worked in the church and participated in various
ministries of the church.
Other than Sunday, whenever people encountered me I was usually in jeans or something to
that nature.
By time I got to high school and was doing that gig, I had keys, the traditional thing
back in the day was to have keys outside your beltloop outside your pocket. That was just
me.
And so while it was never spoken about, was never talked about, it was readily assumed
by lots of folk that I was a lesbian.
And so it was never a conversation.
But it was never any space or place in the context of that community, the church community,
where I ever felt rejected.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: Our pastor, at the time, was a rock for me, and continues to be a central
role model for me.
He never ever preached a word of judgment or condemnation that I can remember, all my
years growing up in the church.
And whenever we had encounters with one another, he was one to always give me a hug.
"Sugar Pie" was his nickname for everybody.
He never treated me as other or as different.
I was part of the family and I've always appreciated that.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: And I've said for many years, my experience in my church of my growth
and my youth was an exception rather than a rule.
And I feel very fortunate and very blessed because of that.
And so when I have encounters or conversations with individuals who share with me or share
with us in MCC their experiences growing up as people of color in their churches, of their
youth, and to be told how folks would pray over them or pray for them, or how they would
be called out in the context of a sermon and be asked to come to the altar and to have
people literally judge them in front of hundreds of people and rebuke them.
And to be able to sit with them as they cry that pain out and really trying to understand
and make sense of the fact that this was not God who was speaking. Or individuals who were
raised in the church and were still active in the church.
Yet because others know that they are like that, they are shunned.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: They can be involved, but they are shunned.
And then they go to their church of their choice or the church that they loved, so to
speak, in the morning and then in some cases end up in MCC.
And I can't count the number of times a conversation that I've had with individuals,
particularly people of African descent, who have been beaten up for being all of who they
are, because of an understanding or a reading of the Bible that, if anything, is still suspect
and um.
We spend lots of time walking with people through the sacred text.
Six texts that, eventually, as we spend time with them and walk with them, they find the
freedom that they're looking for because they're able to hear a different voice.
And that voice leads them to a place of liberation.
REV. BRENDAN BOONE: We're all sacred beings created by a holy God and I believe that when
God created all of us, God called it good from the inside out.
And I do believe, as the Psalmist wrote, that God knew me before I was formed, before I
was knit together in my mother's womb, and that God knew all about me before I would
know all about me.
And because I understand that to be true, I really encourage my colleagues not to invest
a lot of time, a lot of energies trying to re-create or trying to change individuals
into their understanding of who God is or what the Bible says God is, and to simply
treat another human being as another manifestation of the divine order in the world.
And how we learn to love each other, we learn to love each other as God loves us.
We're not perfect at doing it, but I think the first step is to recognize it and then
if I can honor you for who you are and for who you are growing into, all of who you are,
and if you can honor me and love me and respect me for my journey, then we can go a long way
and accomplish a lot for the dominion of God.
That's a part of the "Many Togetherness" mosaic that we're trying to create here.
[music]
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): His love for me
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Is like pure gold.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Yes, God is real.
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): For I can feel
SINGER (Meredeth Summers Moore): Him in my soul.