Sunshine Cathedral Blog

Sharing the Light is an Internet talk show where Reverends Durrell Watkins, Robert Griffin, Michael Diaz, and others discuss theological questions of interest to our community.

In this episode of Sharing the Light, Sunshine Cathedral’s Robert Griffin speaks with Durrell Watkins and Michael Diaz. We invite you to join us for an enlightening conversation on Sharing the Light.

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

According to Queerty.com a 13 year old boy, Asher Brown, was “bullied to death.” Asher was small in stature and also gay. His story could have turned out very differently. It could have been a wonderful blessing to know who he was so young (others sometimes can’t accept themselves fully until their 20s, 30s, 40s, or later). Additionally, he came out to his parents who then affirmed and supported him (others have experienced rejection). To know and accept who he was so young in life and to have his family support and love him unconditionally could have been the makings of a very beautiful story. However…

At school, Asher was harassed. He was insulted, tormented, threatened, ridiculed, and even physically attacked. Apparently, he couldn’t bear the thought of being treated so cruelly for the rest of Junior High, High School and possibly beyond. He found his step-father’s handgun and killed himself.

Why do we continue to reach out with an affirming message to LBGT peopel? Sometimes those who have enjoyed our ministry for years and have become comfortable with who they are will say, “I’m more than just gay; why do we have to talk about it in church?” Or they will say, “We’re past all that now, especially the younger generation. Nobody cares about sexual orientation anymore.” The suicide attempts among queer youth, the homelessness among queer youth who have been tossed out of their homes, the bullying that takes places on school campuses, the hatred that is preached from pulpits, the reality of marriage inequality in this country and the fact that politicans will boldy campaign against same-gender loving people, and often win (!) all suggest that reaching out to LBGT people with compassion, affirmation, and hope continues to be a very needed ministry.

Even if we have found ways of living in safety and with joy, we must remember that not everyone has, and until there really is “liberty and justice for ALL” we must continue to offer hope and healing to our sisters and brothers who continue to be abused simply for being who they are.

God bless the ministry of the Sunshine Cathedral and of Metropolitan Community Churches. God bless the memory of Asher Brown and God bless all who mourn his untimely death. Amen.

Question: I’m so glad I found you on your YouTube channel [http://www.youtube.com/sunshinecathedral]. Your program has been inspirational to me.

I have been a Christian my whole life and I do believe in Heaven. My husband doesn’t really believe in God. He believes that there may be a God but he isn’t sure. It honestly worries me that he doesn’t have full faith in God, and that he may not make it into Heaven. I’m not really sure how that works, or what it will take to show him that God really does exist. Do you have any advice on this?

Answer: My first response to people of faith who want to convert their loved ones to a life of faith is: Would you appreciate your agnostic or atheist friends trying to take your faith away from you? People who don’t share our religious vocabulary still have values, and they cherish their values. They probably don’t appreciate having their values insulted anymore than we religious types do. So, in the spirit of the Golden Rule, if we wouldn’t want people to take our religion from us, then we might not want to take their contentment with a lack of religion from them.

Now, that being said, we certainly want to make our religious communities as relevant, as empowering, as optimistic, as loving, and as welcoming as possible. As we do that, people from all kinds of religious and philosophical backgrounds will find themselves attracted to us. And then if and when they embrace our kind of faith, it is a personal decision that was in no way coerced, and one that they can feel good about having made for themselves.

Finally, I have to admit my bias in all of this. I am a humanist and a universalist. By that I mean I have a high anthropology (I do not believe that people are innately depraved and can only be “saved” from their depravity by religious means) and I believe that the divine Spirit (“in which we live and move and have our being”) rejects no one for any reason. I can’t believe that anyone is eternally damned, especially for what their opinions in life happened to be!

My faith is in the universal power of divine Love which seeks to heal our loneliness, despair, and degradation (in this life) and which excludes none of us (in this life or beyond) for any reason. I’m sure your husband believes in beauty, in love, in hope, in compassion, in kindness, in justice, in joy… in all the Goodness that I believe God is. He may not call that Goodness God, but “what’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet” (Shakespeare). Whether or not your husband believes in God, I am certain that the infinite Love that I call God believes in your husband. And isn’t that enough?

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

“When I was young I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn’t want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.” George Bernard Shaw

My grandmother was an elementary school teacher. She started teaching when there was a teacher shortage, and so she was able to get a one year teaching certificate without a degree. She took one semester of coursework and one semester of student teaching, and then she started teaching professionally. But she didn’t stop there. She knew she’d be paid more if she had more education, and she knew the teacher shortage would one day be over and teachers would be required to have degrees again; so every summer, she took courses and after ten years she finally completed her Baccalaureate degree. Her sister (my Great Aunt Lois who is my oldest living relative today) also started teaching after only one year of college, spent a decade completing her degree, and then spent three more summers earning a Master’s degree.

My grandmother and her sister spent a long time pursuing their dream of higher education. Both did so while working full-time, and my grandmother did it as a single mother of two children! What these strong women demonstrated is that with enough hard work and if we refuse to give up too soon, we can accomplish great things.

Do you want to accomplish a particular goal? It might not be easy. It might require a lot of work. It might even take quite a bit of time, but by doing the work and not giving up too soon, it is possible to achieve your goals; imagine how wonderful it will feel when you do! And when you know from experience that you can accomplish almost anything then you will also know that when we work together toward a common goal, even if it isn’t easy and even if it takes a long time, we will accomplish that goal. As we faithfully pursue our goals, personally and collectively, we can be sure that amazing results are on the way.

Sharing the Light is an Internet talk show where Reverends Durrell Watkins, Robert Griffin, Michael Diaz, and others discuss theological questions of interest to our community.

In this episode of Sharing the Light, Sunshine Cathedral’s Robert Griffin speaks with Michael Diaz. We invite you to join us for an enlightening conversation on Sharing the Light.

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

For this week’s Healing Rays, I’m sharing my 9/14/10 reflection from Spirit & Truth.

“Universal Mind is perfect and knows no lack.” Paramahansa  Yogananda (Yogi & guru who introduced Kriya Yoga to many in the West)

I love stories where someone puts out into the universe a particular intention, and BAM! The miracle drops out of the sky and all is well. I especially enjoy when that story is mine! But when the miracle comes in an unexpected form, or it comes later than I would like, or it doesn’t come at all but something much better shows up are the times I have to love myself enough to not wallow in blame and guilt just because something didn’t happen the instant I twitched my nose. When I remember that God is love and I am part of that universal, all-encompassing, all-inclusive Love, then I am able to love myself through the times of waiting.

I believe in miracles! I am a miracle worker. Whether the miracle happens in an instant or over time, I know that nothing can keep it from me. And the greatest miracle is when I love myself unconditionally.

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

For this week’s Healing Rays, I’m sharing a Q&A from our weekly newsletter, The SunBurst.

Question: I recently read a commentary saying that the bible doesn’t address social issues but only identifies sin and calls people to repentance. That seems contrary to the message I hear at Sunshine Cathedral. Can you respond?

Answer: To say the bible doesn’t address social issues is incredibly naïve, and even myopic. It doesn’t address all social issues (for example, it doesn’t challenge the institution of slavery; amazingly, it doesn’t even identify it as a sin against humanity! And yet, there is the story of God helping a people escape the torments of slavery), but it does address many social issues. Children were not considered to have agency in antiquity, but we see Jesus affirming children, saying, “Let the children come to me.” Women were considered secondary to men, and yet the biblical witness is that the first people to experience the event we call “resurrection” were women disciples of Jesus. Jesus identified the commandment to love one’s neighbor as being one of the most important of all commandments; and what could be more “social” than the Golden Rule. We see Jesus touching lepers, a marginalized group that society said was untouchable, and we see Jesus confronting prejudice against Samaritans, and overcoming his own prejudice against Canaanites (when the Canaanite / Syro-Phonecian woman insists that he help her daughter). So, whoever declared the bible doesn’t address social issues has simply not read it very carefully. As for as naming “sin” — to sin is to “miss the mark” — when we fail to care about “the least of these” in society (those who have so far been denied opportunity and justice), we have surely missed the mark and will want to correct that (“repent”) as best we can.

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Any time we look for a reason why something can’t be done, such a reason is usually easily found:

“I can’t go back to school because {I’m too told; It’s too expensive; I don’t have the time; I was never a good student; It would take too long; At this point in my career, what’s the point?}.”
“I can’t manage this health problem because {I’ve never been very healthy; My mother had this same problem and it got the best of her; I don’t want to have ‘false’ hope; What do doctors really know?}”.
“I can’t tell the truth about this issue because {No one would believe me; I have too much to lose; It would make me look bad}”.
“I can’t ask for help because {I’ll look weak or needy; They might say no; They’ll think less of me}.”
“I can’t offer help to a friend in need because…”
“I can’t pay down this debt because…”
“I can’t contribute to a good cause because…”
“I can’t lose a few pounds because…”
“I can’t learn a language because…”
“I can’t…”

But what might happen if we forgot all the reasons why we can’t do something. What if we were to dare to imagine, just now and again, that nothing was impossible, that we had all the time and all the resources and all the help needed to accomplish almost anything, and that we and our world would be better served by our optimism than by our pessimism?  I bet we’d see more than a few miracles in our lives. In fact, the “can do” people can share a plethora of stories about the miracles they’ve experienced because they simply believed miracles were possible for them.

Joseph Murphy said, “Your desire is your prayer.” Instead of talking ourselves out of the good we desire (and deserve), let’s allow ourselves to want our good, hope for our good, expect our good, imagine our good, and trust that our good is at hand. As we start to believe that possibilities are unlimited, we will find that more and more opportunities show up to bless our lives. Let’s say with the Apostle Paul, “I CAN DO ALL THINGS through the [divine Presence] which strengthens me.”

Sharing the Light is an Internet talk show where Reverends Durrell Watkins, Robert Griffin, Michael Diaz, and others discuss theological questions of interest to our community.

In this episode of Sharing the Light, Sunshine Cathedral’s Robert Griffin speaks with Michael Diaz. We invite you to join us for an enlightening conversation on Sharing the Light.

by the Reverend Doctor Durrell Watkins

“Forgiveness is primarily for our own sake, so that we no longer carry the burden of resentment. But to forgive does not mean that we will allow injustice again.” Jack Kornfield

Forgiveness is healing release. It isn’t ignoring pain, nor is it approving of abusive behavior or betrayal. Forgiveness is saying, “I’m not going to torment myself for days / weeks / months / years with something you did in the past.”

Now, once we are willing to forgive, we can even begin to see that the person or people who wronged us were themselves acting from habitual pain, fear, brokenness. As Louise Hay says, “We’re all victims of victims.” Once we see that most people are doing about the best they can most of the time, we can view even our perceived enemies with compassion.

And you know what? Sometimes we even need to forgive ourselves! Sometimes we need to realize that our behavior at some point did not honor the God in us, but also, in that set of circumstances, we were doing what we knew to do or we were doing the best we believed was possible. We’ve learned some lessons since then and experienced some healing, so why not give ourselves a break too?

Forgiveness isn’t easy, and sometimes the best we can do is say out loud that we are “willing” (at least in a particular moment) to forgive. But that little willingness is sometimes enough to ignite a miracle. We don’t have to allow people to continually betray us, walk all over us, or abuse us, but neither do we need to continually punish ourselves with bitterness, resentment, and ill-will. Forgiveness is a desire for healing, a choice to release the past to the past, an affirmation that love is bigger than any difficulty we’ve experienced. And so we pray each week, “Forgive us our debts (trespasses / transgressions / sins) as we forgive our debtors (those who trespass against us / those who have sinned against us).” Amen.