Gay and Christian. My free song (or at least I try)

Reflections published on the website of Kairós group, Christians LGBT+ from Florence

There is a song that I tried to play for weeks with my guitar. Each time I seemed to be wrong: a note out of place, a too brusque -agreement change, the rhythm that did not come.

It wasn't even a difficult song, at least not on paper. But there was something that escaped me, as if my hand knew where to go, but the sound didn't want to follow it.

Perhaps it is so even with my faith.

I am gay and I am a Christian. And every time I try to put together these two parts of me, I seem to play a song that nobody has ever written, a melody that exists within me but that the world around refuses to recognize.

I thought about it the other day while I was lined up in a crowded suburban post office, waiting to withdraw a package.

Meanwhile at the counter near my a fairly altered trans woman tried to explain to the employee that yes, the one on her identity card was really she before starting the transition. While a young nun, in the queue with me, looked intrigued the scene.

Around us the people present looked at the scene, some with amused expressions, others with curiosity, others still with a judgment that did not even need to express in words.

And I?

I was there, as always, pointed out between belonging and feeling out of place.

I came back to me a meeting I participated in universities a few months ago. I had gone to browse in a group of Christian Christians who were to confront each other on faith and topicality. The whole meeting had been quite boring until a boy said that the church must be open, but with "clear limits". I raised my hand and asked him: "And who decides what these limits are?"

He replied with an embarrassed smile, trying to explain it with the doctrine, with tradition. But it was not enough for me.

Because Jesus never said "follow me, but only if you return to the right parameters". He never asked questions before welcoming, before healing, before loving.

So why does his church yes?

I don't know what the nun is thinking in line with me in that post office. I don't know if he agreed with the judging looks around us or if, within himself, he felt the same screech that I feel every time I see the Gospel used to exclude instead of to welcome.

What I know is that the Church I want to believe in is not that of the judgment looks.

It is that of people who, like me, try to play a new song, even if they still can't do it without making a few note.

Perhaps, as with the guitar, it will take time. Perhaps we will have to try again a thousand times, with the fingers that hurt and the heart that occasionally surrenders.

But I'm not going to stop playing.