Blessing in a Time of Violence

Today, my bones ached when waking. Perhaps yours did too, seeing the date September 11 on your calendar; thinking about the violence and terror of that day; thinking about the violence and terror in the days, in the years after. For me that feeling only worsened reading more about the assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday, learning more about yet another school shooting on the same afternoon. In our society that is saturated with violent speech, violent action, and where retaliation seems such a tightly held value, the air feels thick with worry, sorrow, and fear. 

As a community of faith, we are people who uphold the values of inclusion, community, spiritual transformation, and justice. We believe that all people should be able to flourish, and not at the expense of others. This week we are reminded of the urgency of these values. This week when the Supreme Court gave legal authority to use racial profiling during immigration sweeps and raids. This week that is marked by political, social, and school violence. So, let us stand firm in our values that are centered on love, not hate. As Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he himself also a victim of political assassination, said, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Even though Charlie Kirk’s words have been used against the LGBTQ community, even though his words incited violence, it is only compassion, it is only love that will ultimately win; the killing of Kirk is wrong. Children having access to weapons is wrong. Racial profiling is wrong.

This week, we are starting a new series: Our Core Calling: A Series on Our Core Values. This series seems timely as we will be invited to consider what it means to live into the heart of who we are and what we believe at MCCGSL. This series will allow us to dive deeper into what it means to be a community rooted in radical inclusion, nourished in queer community, transformed by God’s liberating love, and to be a people embodied in justice. In this season of worship (and always) we will celebrate a faith and a God where everyone belongs at the table, where love resists exclusion, where lives are renewed by Love’s deep and warming presence, and where worship overflows into action both within and beyond our church walls. 

Friends, wherever you are in your sorrow, your rage, your questions, know you are held in community and you are not alone. In these violent times, let us not turn toward violence ourselves, but increase our capacity for compassion, kindness, and love. Perhaps the sign at a neighboring church sums our charge up best: “Do small things with great love.” 

Blessing in a Time of Violence
by Jan Richardson

Which is to say
this blessing
is always.
Which is to say
there is no place
this blessing
does not long
to cry out
in lament,
to weep its words
in sorrow,
to scream its lines
in sacred rage.

Which is to say
there is no day
this blessing ceases
to whisper
into the ear
of the dying,
the despairing,
the terrified.
Which is to say
there is no moment
this blessing refuses
to sing itself
into the heart
of the hated
and the hateful,
the victim
and the victimizer,
with every last
ounce of hope
it has.

Which is to say
there is none
that can stop it,
none that can
halt its course,
none that will
still its cadence,
none that will
delay its rising,
none that can keep it
from springing forth
from the mouths of us
who hope,
from the hands of us
who act,
from the hearts of us
who love,
from the feet of us
who will not cease
our stubborn, aching
marching, marching

until this blessing
has spoken
its final word,
until this blessing
has breathed
its benediction
In every place,
in every tongue:

Peace.
Peace.
Peace.

May our hearts burn with love, 
Pastors Lauren & Eli 

Praying in Love: Prayers During Times of Violence

Today, we sit in the grief of a school year that begins with a school shooting. I’m struck by the words of the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey who said, “Don’t just say this is about ‘thoughts and prayers’ right now. These kids were literally praying.” All around St. Louis, too, children were praying in their own all school masses, and many districts held previously scheduled active shooter drills. What will it take for us to learn that more guns are not the answer? 

In our community, we hold the complexity of the shooter being of trans experience with tenderness. Hurt people hurt people. In a tragedy like this, we pray for all those who are hurt. All the failed systems. All the wounded healers. All the heartbreak. All the empty seats. And, we work for those same people and families. We work so that our streets become safer not because there are more weapons but because there are fewer. We work so that Catholics can worship in peace and trans kids can receive the care they need. We work to open our own hearts to things we don’t understand. 

Last night, at an event held by Margaret of Scotland Parish in St. Louis, a panel discussion on LGBTQ inclusion was held. We prayed for the violence of our world, for broken families, and hear stories of the ways some in the Catholic Church are shaping the conversation toward inclusion of LGBTQ people. It was a healing evening full of hope.

And so we work and we pray. We pray, not in the ways prayer can be used as an excuse to dismiss the pain, our complicity in living in a society that holds guns with such reverence, but we pray to discern our part in the solution. We pray to channel our energy to the broken and brokenhearted. We pray to bind our destinies to the work of love. And so, as we watch for legislature in our cities, counties, and states, we pray that our next steps become clear.

Let us pray these words by Padraig O’Tuama: 
God of day and night, 
In the great poem of creation 
we read that 
we were considered very good, 
and that you 
find glory
in us.

We look around our city: 
the birds finding home 
the name of it 
the shape of it
the bustle and magnificence of it 

the poverty of it 
the complicity of it 
the repressed stories of it

the generosity of it 
the corners of kindness 
on every corner

the future of it 
the past it hides from 
greed and goodness 
violence and visions 
burdens and bodies 
everywhere.

We pray for our city 
and for the cities we are.

Breathe in us
just like you always do and renew us 
with every twilight 
with every morning 
with every encounter 
with every opportunity.

With you in every breath, every action of love, and every prayer,
Pastor Lauren

We Believe in Fairies!

We Believe in Fairies!

Thirty-five years after Rev. Steve Pieters was interviewed by Tammy Faye Bakker on Praise the Lord’s Tammy’s House Party, Steve spoke with queer journalist Evan Brechtel, saying:

 “It’s a shame that we still have to fight the fight. It seems like religious bigotry is so...I can’t think of the right word. It’s promulgated by fundamentalists and conservative churches. Hatred seems to be part of the discourse going on today...and I think a lot of it is because of conservative religious institutions that continue to promulgate that LGBT people are less than heterosexuals.”

In 2022, former Kentucky County Clerk, Kim Davis was sued after refusing to issue a marriage license to a gay couple, citing her religious beliefs as the reason she would not grant the license. She lost the case and was ordered to pay $100,000. Now, she has sued, and her case may be taken to the Supreme Court for consideration this fall. This is the furthest a challenge to the 2015 Obergefell ruling that granted Nationwide access to marriage for same-gender-loving couples. 

It is a shame we still have to fight the fight, and perhaps it’s most shameful that the church is in the middle of the argument. 

As we work for a world where everyone can flourish, we look to our faith tradition that reminds us we are all created in the image of God. This same God is known in Jesus’s example of practicing a preferential option for the material poor and poor in Spirit, so that we can know love from the inside out. 

This week, as we look around us, within us, and across our world, let us look for miracles as often as we are left breathless with despair. Let us remember our Saint, Rev. Steve Pieters who taught us to believe in miracles and reminded us to follow fairies who point us toward making the impossible possible. 

If you need some inspiration and want to see courage in action, here is a link to Steve’s full interview with Tammy Faye: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjXXdQ6VceQ&t=3s

Mindful of the Miracles, 

Pastor Lauren 

Photo is of Rev. Steve with his fairy want at MCCGSL

Marriage Equality Statement 2025

As you have probably learned by now, the U.S. Supreme Court will consider hearing a case seeking to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges – the landmark decision which recognized marriage equality nationwide 10 years ago. Overturning marriage equality would not only be messy and complicated; it would also be an act of injustice that goes against everything we know about the heart of God. Yet we also know we are living in a time when morality is too often replaced for political or monetary gain, when the dignity and rights of those who do not fit within heteronormative structures are time and time again challenged, and when precedent can often be discarded or overturned.

We, at Metropolitan Community Church of Greater Saint Louis (MCCGSL), have never needed the government’s permission to affirm love. Long before the law recognized marriage equality, we were performing marriages for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer couples. The denomination has stood for marriage equality for over 55 years. We must remember that God’s blessings cannot be legislated. We, as MCC, always have and always will marry people regardless of what the Supreme Court decides. God’s justice is not bound and can never be bound by the rulings of human courts. We stand firm in our beliefs that gay marriage is a fundamental human right and that queer people are whole and holy just as they/we are. We will continuously affirm that God delights in our sacred love. We celebrate a God who celebrates and understands queer love. God blesses queer love in all its forms.

At this time, we are called, not just as Christians, but as human beings, to do more than watch history unfold. We are called to pray fiercely and to speak truth especially when it shakes the room. Even when we ourselves shake or tremble in fear. We are called to stand in the public square for justice, hand-in-hand as fear will yet again try to scatter and divide us. We are called to be a people who weep and hold the ones that we love oh so closely. We are called to rise and speak out when the world would rather we sit down and be silent. We will not be silent! We will not allow the love of God — which has no gender, no borders, and no end — to be diminished by narrow minds or hardened hearts.

The poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer reminds us that peace is not a pristine destination, but something often grown in the dirt — amid blight, drought, and the mess of real life. This is where we find ourselves: in the dirt, in the mess, in the struggle. And yet, we know that God is here too, in every step forward, in every act of courage, in every moment of stubborn hope. Our hearts may scrape against the rugged earth, but we will keep moving, always together. Because love is worth it! Justice is worth it! We are worth it! And every single one of God’s beloved children is worth it!

If you need to talk to someone about your anger, fear, or worry, please reach out to your pastors - or a pastor of any MCC church. And, if you have been on the fence about getting married, it might be time to schedule your wedding. At MCCGSL, we are happy to be with you to prepare you for that sacred commitment.

We know there will be many days of advocacy ahead for us all. May the God of justice be with us in our fight.

Angel of the Get Through - Andrea Gibson

Angel of the Get Through - Andrea Gibson

August 13, 1975 – July 14, 2025

Best friend, this is what we do.
We gather each other up.
We say “The cup is half
yours and half mine.”
We say, “Alone is the last place you will ever be.”

On Monday, the world lost one of its fiercest hearts. Andrea Gibson (they/them)—beloved poet, activist, truth-teller—passed away, and the grief that followed was not quiet. It bloomed loudly, openly, in shared poems and stories, in whispered thanks and loud declarations. Queer and trans communities across the globe have gathered to mourn, to honor, and to celebrate the life and legacy of someone who gave voice to what so many of us were never sure we were allowed to say out loud.

For so many of us, Andrea’s words were the first ones that told us we weren’t broken. That being queer, trans, tender-hearted, or feeling deeply wasn’t something to hide, but something holy and something to be cherished. Their poems didn’t flinch from pain. They reached into the pain and pulled out something honest, beautiful, and deeply human.

Andrea taught me, how to live largely and love loudly. Their poetry gave permission to take up space, to feel too much, to cry in public, to dance alone in the kitchen, to love your friends and community so fiercely you can’t help but say it out loud. They showed us that vulnerability is a true kind of strength, and that community is also built through many soft moments. The soft moments that show up through shared meals, laughter, and on quiet nights when someone stays on the phone with you when you need it the most.

We build Beloved Community as daily practice. We text our friends to remind them we love them, or even pick up the phone to call them and let them know. We show up with soup when someone is sick. We forgive each other’s small (and sometimes large) failings. We create art that helps someone feel less alone, that helps our own bodies feel less alone. We organize, we listen, and we build safe havens where people can show up authentically.

We remind ourselves that Beloved Community isn’t a utopia. It’s messy and real and human. It’s built through daily care and collective responsibility. It’s the chosen family that shows up. It’s the refusal to let anyone disappear into loneliness.

So, in honor of our Beloved Andrea, we keep going, not alone, but gathered up saying the cup is half yours, and half mine. Alone is the last place you will ever be.

I say, let us hold each other a little closer. Let us keep building a world where no one has to hide, no one has to go it alone, and love is always loud.

Rest in power, Andrea. Thank you for showing us a way.

With Love,
Pastor Eli