The 50th Anniversary of The Stonewall Riots
One of the things I love about the book of Psalms is the variety and the volume of metaphors used to describe the unimaginable. The Psalms, after all, were the original hymn book of faith, and many Calvinist religions restricted the singing in worship to the book of Psalms itself well into the last century. Throughout the anthology of 150 Psalms, organized into five sections, the Psalmist offers countless descriptors of God, us, and the relationship between us that defy further explanation.
In Psalm 104, we find a few of these images that may be help us imagine the unimaginable. God is wrapped in light, as with a garment; the heavens are stretched out like a tent; all of nature—water, clouds, wings of the wind, even fire—is in service of God’s glory. What a picture this paints. What a glorious, wonderful, light-filled, multi-colored, flaming, gloriously-clad procession of the heavenly hosts Psalm 104 offers. If you’re going from this place to any combination of the various Marches or Rallies or celebrations of diversity and liberation today, perhaps take these images with you. Take the images of God wrapped in light, a rainbow of light, and riding a chariot of cloud carried by the wings of the wind. If today’s festivities are anything like other year’s festivities, I’m sure you’ll see many a human soul wrapped in little more than light today; lest we get prudish, I’ll point you to scripture to remind that if it was good enough for God…well then we are all created in that image, aren’t we?
Today, the 50th Anniversary of the Stonewall uprising that is now commonly called Gay Pride, is a good day to remember the diversity and imagination of God, of a God wrapped in light as with a garment. Come to think of it, I’d rather like to see what our more creative queer folk might dream up if given the challenge of creating light-like garments. Imagine what the queens in the House and Ball community might design were Billy Porter to announce “category is…Light.” Or if RuPaul were to set her drag queens the maxi-challenge task of creating looks “wrapped in pure light.” Its little secret that the LGBTQ community is known for a heightened aesthetic sense—flag design, perhaps, being our one notable exception—and over the years countless queer folk have taken the Psalm’s invitation to metaphor and imagination as an opportunity to leave behind rigid norms of gender and binary expression. Just like we can all learn from the Psalms, so too can we all learn from queer folk. At today’s events, there’s room enough for all of us.
