It’s a weird Easter, isn’t it?

But then again, it’s all weird right now.

I woke up this morning ready to write a blog about my own complicated relationship with religion, but the words have demanded I go a different direction. So, go along with me for a minute, will you?

You see I couldn’t dig into my own experience because I couldn’t stop thinking about you… about the throngs of faithful among us who have nowhere to go today.

The doors of your churches are closed.

The pews, empty.

The people, uninvited.

And for the first time since the first time I chose the truth I knew inside of me, I feel connected to you again.

I know this feeling.

I know what it feels like to wake up one Sunday and have nowhere to go.

I know the sense of loss that follows the absence of the smells and sounds that have soothed you over and over.

I know what it means to miss your family and to long for your home.

Sure, you know it because of a global pandemic, and I know it because I’m gay, but still… just for today, I think our sameness outweighs what makes us different, don’t you?

And in our sameness, I want to spare you the suffering of seeking alone. I want to share with you what it took me years of empty Sundays to know.

I want you to know that the home you’re looking for,

the resurrection you seek,

it is still with you.

It is in your body. It always has been and it always will be.

You may not know it because you have been divorced from your body since before you can remember. Maybe you were taught to believe that the flesh cannot be trusted. Maybe that body has just never behaved the way you’d hoped.

But none of that matters when you’re looking for home.

No, when you’re looking for home, all that matters is that you’re still looking.

And here’s the secret:

You can find it again.

Even with closed doors and empty pews and not a song to be sung within a thousand miles.

You need only one hand on your belly, the other on your heart. With closed eyes and the movement of your breath, your body will remind you:

The home is you. You ARE home.

It’s in that face that has held a thousand smiles and the eyes that have seen sadness. It is there in your belly, your hips, your thighs. It is in the soles of your feet and the top of your head and every space in between. Tucked in between the rolls on your back. Woven into your folded neck and your beating heart.

And I promise you, there is not a church that can compare with that kind of resurrection.

But you have to stay with yourself long enough to remember.

It’s okay if you don’t believe me. I didn't believe me either. Not until I was left with too many silent Sundays and forced to find another way to know the sacred.

But it is there whether you believe it or not. And it will be there, waiting for you, when you’re ready.

As I sit in the sun on this Sunday, having wept a few times writing this, I am reminded that our sameness won’t last forever. Someday, this will all be behind us, and you will likely return to your pews, while I will likely stay with my breath.

But it is my hope that we are both changed by what we have survived together.

It is my hope that you remember what it is like to breathe new life into your body and that I remember we are never quite as far apart as I fear.

And maybe if we both remember, then neither of us will really have to suffer alone again.

Maybe you want a roadmap to make your way home…

I’ve got an idea.
Check out The Galleries. Today we are launching the first gallery called *Whole.* And what do semi-nude female bodies have to do with finding a home in your own? Everything. You will never find your way home if you hate it there. Laying eyes on real bodies helps us heal our relationship with our own. So, make your way to me. I’ll leave the light on.

You are Risen