Flesh and Spirit

We were working in mental health and pastoral activism when we met in Topeka and stepped onto the path together, not knowing who would join us along the way or where it all might lead. We headed east to start a retreat center with friends. That center did not get off the ground, but the work presented itself, nevertheless.

Picking up for our friends Don, Ruth, and Norma, we began hosting the local queer Mennonite group at a time of struggle. When we found out gay and lesbian students at Princeton Theological Seminary were under fire, we invited them to use our home as a retreat and safe space--and soon a little queer family was born. Now scattered across the country, we keep the ties alive with Christmas boxes of biscotti and jellies.

We kept working in queer contexts, designing rituals to honor gay elders. We danced the fleshly, sexual spirituality of queer men in workshops to discover the work of the divine there.

And always there has been art: the carving of walking sticks and stone, the crafting of jewelry; writing and preaching, kitchen craft. Quilts, and flags, and the design of ritual.

Now the retreat awakens in physical form at the cottage in Vermont. Randy has joined us, bringing visions of community, wielding a saw (remodeling the spaces--indoors and out). A labyrinth lies ready for the seeker to seek the center. The cottage offers itself as a place of respite for seekers, justice workers, sojourners and friends--queer people and those who are queer in spirit. Slowly it becomes a body for a scattered community.

With patient urgency, matter and spirit dance together, becoming whole - one again.

We have stepped out toward the center where all things meet. As when we walk the labyrinth, we are sometimes closer to, sometimes farther from, the center we seek. Always the journey beckons, inviting us to venture on.