dearly Beloveds, queerly Beloveds, we are gathering to imagine the world differently.
we are gathering to enflesh the world otherwise.
to say ‘yes’ to new possibilities to live tenderly,
to think expansively, to do daily life with ferocious love so that life can live and breath can breathe.
Beloveds, do we not know all life is cultivated by insisting that we can’t and won’t be satisfied by the norms that suffocate,
the habits that poison, the patterns of relating that deaden?
Beloveds, do we not know the Sacred is restless? the Sacred is restless in us.
we pause to pay attention and nourish strange practices to let the Sacred work her queer magic through us.
Beloveds, do we not know queer magic means dreaming of more than fitting in?
we can’t simply settle for a place at the table if the table is built on binaries, exclusions, hierarchies, and control.
our collective future depends on being in this together.
and so with holy urgency, we extend tables and we turn them over,
we claim our place with stubborn dignity or refuse to take a seat.
we reach for our lover’s hand while stuck at the table,
or leave the table altogether and head to the park for a picnic. so that no one is left alone.
so, blessed be the queers, the freaks, the misfits, the outcasts and all those who cast their lot with the strange.
blessed be the meal before us, the earth that still pours forth its abundance, the food that nourishes our bodies.
and blessed be this gathering, that emboldens us for this holy labor of otherwise living and love,
for the sake of collective survival and also, always, joy.
– Rev. Anna Blaedel and Rev. M Jade Kaiser.