From the depths of the gutters we slept in when we were kicked out of our parents' homes, we called out to you and you answered us with the great expanse of a friendly drag queen's heel and her hand extended to pull us up and sit us down on the nearest bar stool. You answered us in the still small voice of a goth girl techie who taught us oh those many uses for gaffer's tape. You comforted us with show tunes, Gloria Gaynor, and the Indigo Girls. You gave us the strength of each other which led us to have the courage not only to come into our own but to come out to the world. You marched with us on Christopher Street and Folsom Street. You cried with us as we lost amazing women to transphobia, and you learned with us as we developed and refined queer theory.
Some of us had faith in You from the beginning, and some of us still don't have faith in You. Some of us rejected You when others told us You hated us, and some of us only found You when humanity abandoned us. You are invoked all around us, but we lost hope in Your deliverance. We lost hope when people made in Your image killed our brother Matthew Shepard and our sister Rita Hester. Some of us lost faith but all of us lost hope. We lost hope when we woke up with survivor's guilt when we survived the AIDS crisis. We lost hope when kids continued to kill themselves even after Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres came out and so many others followed. We lost hope when Mark Carson was killed in our safehaven of Greenwich Village. We no longer knew how to call out to You. The arc of progress seemed grayscale rather than rainbow. We convinced ourselves You weren't listening, that we just had to wait for humanity to catch up to Your justice and love. And humanity wasn't looking too friendly.
Our Rock and our Redeemer, you sent us allies, who took up the torch we left at the door of the nightclub. To us, some of them seemed like strange bedfellows. However, when we cried that the country was burning they saw that it was not being consumed. They fought when we were tired, and we took strength from them. We were devastated when the US Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act and when they restricted the ability of employees to claim harassment against their employers, and we got angry at people, but not at You because we lost hope when, despite the illusions of progress, we were not safe in our own neighborhoods. We called on You to guard our comings and our goings, but You seemed to be asleep on the job as our siblings, especially those of color continue to be attacked for walking down the street.
Our Strength and our Salvation, You nevertheless renewed our resolve as we held Pride Parades, Dyke Marches, and Trans Days of Action in our cities. You allowed us to broadcast that it can be fun, invigorating, and complicated to be queer, but that coming out of the closet allows a person to be surrounded with complex and jovial folk. As we lamented that Pride has become a spectacle that straight people come to gawk at and a forum for pandering to gay [sic] constituents, we became grateful that we have the privilege to feel that way.
מודים אנחנו לך, grateful are we for You, in the midst of all of this. We are grateful for how far we have come. We are grateful that there is more work to do because we have been struggling so long we don't know how else to live. We are grateful every time we say the words "I love you," every time we see a rainbow - natural or manmade, every time we pass a single-user gender neutral restroom, every time we recognize what someone wants by a handkerchief, and every time we arrive home safely. We are grateful for the opportunity to remember how grateful we are.
We pray that we may be cognizant of our gratitude constantly. Knowing dark hours will still come, we pray that we may recognize the joy of Pride Month 2013 when we are enveloped. We pray that we remain cognizant of our privilege, and that having more equal rights does not cause us to lose our focus on the marginalized members of society. Appreciating the support we have been offered, we pray for the will to continue to form chosen families and mentorships as the world accepts our presence in more spaces. We pray for the ability to show others that difference is positive. We pray to stay queer.
נברך את מעין חיינו חי העולמים שומעת תפילה
Our Strength and our Salvation, You nevertheless renewed our resolve as we held Pride Parades, Dyke Marches, and Trans Days of Action in our cities. You allowed us to broadcast that it can be fun, invigorating, and complicated to be queer, but that coming out of the closet allows a person to be surrounded with complex and jovial folk. As we lamented that Pride has become a spectacle that straight people come to gawk at and a forum for pandering to gay [sic] constituents, we became grateful that we have the privilege to feel that way.
מודים אנחנו לך, grateful are we for You, in the midst of all of this. We are grateful for how far we have come. We are grateful that there is more work to do because we have been struggling so long we don't know how else to live. We are grateful every time we say the words "I love you," every time we see a rainbow - natural or manmade, every time we pass a single-user gender neutral restroom, every time we recognize what someone wants by a handkerchief, and every time we arrive home safely. We are grateful for the opportunity to remember how grateful we are.
We pray that we may be cognizant of our gratitude constantly. Knowing dark hours will still come, we pray that we may recognize the joy of Pride Month 2013 when we are enveloped. We pray that we remain cognizant of our privilege, and that having more equal rights does not cause us to lose our focus on the marginalized members of society. Appreciating the support we have been offered, we pray for the will to continue to form chosen families and mentorships as the world accepts our presence in more spaces. We pray for the ability to show others that difference is positive. We pray to stay queer.
נברך את מעין חיינו חי העולמים שומעת תפילה
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