“This world would be a whole lot better if we just made an effort to be less horrible to one another.” --Ellen Page
If you happen to follow my social media feed, then you’ll have been well aware that this past Saturday, June 29, was Watertown’s first-ever Pride in the Park celebration! It was an incredible, inspiring, heart-melting celebration of openness and affirmation, a place where our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors, children and parents and grandparents, could gather to celebrate their God-given identities and know that they were loved and supported by their community. Some folks told me was the first time they’d felt like they could be fully themselves in public in Watertown – ever.
This is the work of the church, y’all. This is what it looks like to follow in the path of Jesus: to let those who have been bullied and excluded, ostracized and shamed, know that God loves them exactly the way God made them, and there’s nothing they can do about it! I was delighted to see so many of our UCCW family turned out to show their support, as the photo above testifies… just about as delighted as I was to join my partner Satya in offering “glitter blessings” to more than a hundred passersby throughout the course of a very hot summer’s day. You are whole, we would say. You are holy. May you continue to be a blessing to the people in your life.
I wrote this poem in honor of this historic occasion. Here’s to many more years of Pride in the Park! And here’s to many more years of sharing the abundant, indiscriminate love of God with all God’s LGBTQ children.
Blessin’s, --Tom
…
EVERY PREACHER HAS JUST ONE SERMON SO HERE’S MINE
for Watertown Pride 2019
I don’t know
who
it was, but this
I’ve learned
for certain: it never was
God
who told you
that you are not
worthy.
...
Poem © 2019 by Tom Emanuel