Freedom.

A blog may be an odd place to share the following thought. But anyone who knows me well knows that I tend to make all things deeply personal and I am prone to over-sharing. So those of you who don't mind, read on:

There is something about the word freedom that gets me. No, not the patriotic “we're bringing freedom to Iraq” type. More the freedom to thrive, to care deeply about the world, to have a voice that can be heard, to love myself, to drive a xe may through the mountains of Vietnam type. The freeing to my soul kind.

I received an email from a dear friend this week sharing with me that he is gay. He and I went to university together at SPU, a place that, for all of the beautiful emphasis on community that I benefited from, is not inclusive of anyone who falls outside of the heterosexual norm. In our time there he accepted the rhetoric, to be gay is to not be Christian.* Because his faith matters to him, he continually made the difficult choice to suppress his questions and choose God. Then we graduated. It is amazing what just a few short months away from such a hostile environment can do for one's soul. Suddenly life does not look so constricted, one is able to see what it means to be abundantly free and to thrive. For my friend, that meant accepting within himself that which he had been socialized to fear. To embrace the path before him despite its unfamiliarity while remaining true to his belief in God. I could not be happier for him.

To be brutally honest, there is a lot about faith I do not know these days. I often question even the foundational assumptions that should define the rest. But I do believe that if there is a purpose to Christianity, it is this: to encourage people to live into the fullness of who they are. Here are a few words from my friend that are a bigger testament to who God could be than anything I have heard for a long time:

“I feel like there's talk a lot in Christian circles about journeying with God, and how that makes us into new people. But maybe the newness isn't different or foreign Maybe the newness comes from us being more ourselves than we were before, more like who we are already created to be. Being more okay with ourselves, and with who we are as people.”

You may be asking, why am I writing this. Well, because it is all I have to offer. I wish my friend's choice was made in a society that offers him abundant freedom, but it is not. The act of freeing his soul puts my friend at the heart of a theological and political controversy that is dehumanizing and hateful. People become defined by their sexuality and not their whole being. Regardless of my opinions, I am a part of these institutions. I am a citizen of a country that cannot tell the difference between fear and politics and a member of a church that chooses division more often than grace. My words do nothing to change these realities for my friend. But hopefully they are something, because from over here in Viet Nam, words are all I have to give.

And finally, because others are much more gifted with words than I am, a Rumi poem about freedom:

"Great lions can find peace in a cage

But we should only do that

as a last

resort.

So those bars I see that restrain your wings,

I guess you won't mind

if I pry them

open.”

*To be fair, I should add that this rhetoric did not come from the professors. Unfortunately, it was from the student body itself and the administration that this heartbreakingly hostile environment stemmed.