Listening to Lakotas Talk About LGBTQ Persons

On March 14, 2007, ten years ago today, I was the guest of friends Ritchie Robertson TwoBulls, Robert TwoBulls, and their two delightful precocious children. Robert and I had served for a time together on the board of The Witness Magazine and in a couple of other justice projects within the Episcopal Church. As director of indigenous ministries for the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota, Father Robert invited me to lead a discussion about lgbtq issues.

We met in the church hall of St. John's in St. Cloud. Leaders, clergy and a few lay folks, had driven from the Dakotas as well as Minnesota. I enjoyed listening to worrisome particulars during their business meeting, rather like those of our diocesan council in Newark. I relished our interaction at the breaks. One wore my favorite t-shirt:

I knew by the book about indigenous people's respect for "two-spirit people," and several Lakota gay friends had shared their stories with me, but I came to this session needing to know more.

"I am not bringing a new subject to you," I began. "Everyone in this room has known, or known about, an lgbtq person. I would appreciate it if each would share with the group some of the things you have already heard and already know."

With open arms, I indicated that anyone who wanted to start the discussion, might.

One minute passed. Two. Some of us shifted in our chairs. Five minutes. We heard every tick of the clock, every creak of the plumbing and heater.

I spent 1983-1987 teaching in Beijing and Hong Kong. I knew well that most classes can wait out the professors with silence until the professors answer their own questions.

At about six or seven minutes, the discomfort was palpable. Then one said that as part of his training to be a priest, one of his teachers asked each student to choose a current controversy about which to become expert.

"I chose 'homosexuality' because the bible does not say much about it, and I figured I could master all commentary possible. I did master it. I read the theologians. I read the positions of all of the denominations. I knew all the ways that one could debate the meaning of the six major biblical texts. I knew the oldest versions in Hebrew and Greek. I was ready for any question. And I got good marks.

"Then I was assigned to work for Howard Anderson at St. Paul's in Duluth, a much coveted placement. Noticing that I had studied homosexuality and the church, Howard asked me to work with the parish’s lgbtq group over a period of time.

"'I want you to keep what you now know in your mind and heart, but with the Integrity group, I want you to listen and listen and listen, looking for what you can do to serve with them and for what you can learn about them,' Howard told me.

"My previous study had not prepared me for this. I discovered people who were kind, even when they faced discrimination. I discovered people who sought out those who were sick, or in prison, or hungry, and quietly went about trying to help.... But most of all I discovered something about God and about myself. God does not need me to judge others. God needs me to love them and to leave judgment to God."

That witness opened a floodgate for others willing to share similar experiences. Many, especially the females, pointed to their history even before the church came to them, of valuing the gifts of the two-spirits, and some evoked smiles and laughter as they celebrated various examples of elder two-spirits they knew about when they were children, now no longer alive, but forever a part of the communion of saints.

If I can discipline myself to shut up, almost always I find that the Holy Spirit has been there before me, and I take away more than I could ever bring to teach.

Robert and Ritchie, your hospitality continues to bless me. Thank you.