Blessed are the Queer

You have heard it said
            that queer love distorts the “proper” categories
                        of who counts as a man and what men are allowed to do
                        and who counts as a woman and what women are supposed to have done to them
                        and who counts as a person
                        and who counts as a partner.

But I say to you
            What is queerer than the incarnation
                        disrupting the divide between the human realm and the divine?

            Not dissolving the difference between the two
                        but eliminating the distance
                                    and turning limitations into limitless love
                                                and boundaries into opportunities
                                                to make an unseen God tangible
                                                in a rainbow of genders and bodies and partners and positions.

You have heard it said
            that male-bodied visitors are more valuable than female-bodied children
            and a man’s desire to penetrate or be penetrated by another
                        is worse than a man offering his daughters to the power-lust of an angry mob.

But I say to you
            No one has ever seen God
                        —and of course they haven’t in a world like this,
            but when you love one another –
                        when you and you and you love yourself and love each other
            I say to you that God’s love – that God who is love
                      —is revealed, is manifest, is experienced, is present
                      in a way that would otherwise be invisible
                      in a way that would otherwise be impossible.

For we are the image of a queer God
            who is at the same time
                      powerful beyond comprehension
                      and vulnerable beyond all reason

You have heard it said
            that sex is an expression of power
            and marriage is a property contract
            and affection is a means for procreation.
What a sad, small vision to see love as so limited.

You have heard it said that you are an abomination.

But I say to you
            that power-hungry people may not have the stomach for love beyond hierarchy.
And I say to you – Blessed are the queer.