The Bishop got home later than he'd intended. When he walked in his front door, it was obvious to his wife that the meeting had been difficult.
"Do you want a glass of wine," she asked.
"Yes," he answered.
She brought it to him as he sat down in the family room, tired, wrung out from all the emotion of that afternoon. Shr brought herself one, too, and sat beside him on the couch.
"Can I rub your feet?"
"No, not yet. I'm still too tired."
"Tell me about it, if you want."
"It was a meeting of the gay and lesbian clergy of the diocese. They wanted to introduce themselves to me. Of course, I knew them all. I've been here for twenty years, but now they were being open about who they were, and it was pretty tough. There were the obvious ones I would have guessed about, and a lot of others I would never have known. And there were the ones I wondered about, too. I'm sure there are still some others who were too scared to come to the meeting, or who just couldn't break away from their parish responsibilities, but there were a lot of people there. It was tough. These were men and women I've known for many years, good priests, people I've served with, people I've looked up to, and they've hidden all these years. It was just heart-breaking."
"Were you surprised?"
"Oh sure. As I said, there were some I would never have guessed. But, it was the pain that was most surprising, shocking really. Can you imagine the irony, 'You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free' and yet these people have had to hide all these years ... preaching and teaching about truth and authenticity and too scared to reveal themselves. I listened after they dropped the bomb-shell as they told me stories, one after another, of what it had been like during seminary, or during the early years in the parish; how lonely it was. And the younger ones told me how difficult it was to 'go back into the closet' as they put it because they wanted to serve the Church. It was just heart=breaking. These are good people, people we've driven to desperation. And now, they want out..." his voice trailed off.
"What are you going to do," she asked.
"I don't know. I can't stand by and just let them continue to suffer. And I know that when they come out into the open, I'm going to have a royal mess on my hands. I don't know. How can I minister to everyone, how can I lead this diocese through this?"
She reached out and took his hand, "Mike, I've stood by you all these years. You know what we've gone through and I've been there. I think that's been pretty helpful for you."
He interrupted urgently, "Of course it has. I couldn't have done it without you."
"Mike, who have they got? Who is there to hold their hands? Who holds them at night when they cry about the parishioner who died, or the couple who is breaking up, or the teenager who committed suicide? Who is there to laugh with them and celebrate when the new baby is baptized, or that young couple comes in for marriage, or the person suddenly comes to know Christ and gets turned on? Who is there for them?"
The questions hung in the air between them, as they held hands. Tears began running down both their faces as their memories went back over the years, and they remembered the bad times and the good times. They knew how important that support had been, for both of them. The enormity of the isolation under which their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters had been forced to operate began to become real for both of them.
"Mike, you're the bishop. You've been a strong support for gays and lesbians for years now. I guess the chickens have come to roost. Now they're looking to you for support. These people are your parish now' you're their pastor. What else can you do but support them, help them, pastor them, and try to lead the rest of the diocese forwards as well?"
"I guess there's not much choice, is there. 'The buck stops here,' doesn't it? I've got to figure out a way to be true to them, to be their pastor, and to continue to be a pastor to everyone else, too."
He smiled wryly, "You realize there are going to be some pretty annoyed people out there, don't you? The phone is going to be pretty busy. Are you ready for that?"
"Yes. We're in this together. I'll handle the homefront and the telephone here, you take care of the office and the diocese." Her voice had firmed up, she knew where her priorities lay.
"Yes, sir," he laughed. "Oh, I'm already sorry for whoever gets you on the phone!"
They cuddled on the couch, slowly drinking their wine, each lost in their own thoughts, but already turned towards solving the situation which had been handed to them.
John sat cuddled with Chuck on his living room couch. They, too, were sipping wine together. Chuck had his arms around John, supporting him with his body, John's head tucked back against Chuck's shoulder. It was one of their favorite positions, close, cuddled, warm, safe. Right now, John needed to feel safe. It had been a tough evening. All the emotion had taken its toll of him, not too mention his own personal emotions. He felt exhausted, drained.
"It was overwhelming, Chuck. All those other priests gathered together and facing the Bishop. We were so scared. We could all have lost our jobs, and then where would we be?"
"But John, haven't you told me how liberal and caring this bishop is? Do you really believe that he would have fired you all on the spot?"
"No, of course not. Intellectually you're absolutely right, but deep down in my guts I was really scared. I'm still scared."
"It's OK, John. I'm here. It took a lot of courage to do what you people did. It was kind of like facing the principal, wasn't it?"
"Yes! That's an awful lot of how it felt. Facing the principal, even when you knew you hadn't done anything wrong, but you just weren't sure if he knew that."
"So, what comes next?"
"I'm not sure. I guess I need to figure out how to tell the parish...," John trailed off into silence, his eyes focused on the distance as his fingers played with the wine glass.
"John, why do you need to tell the parish?"
John's fingers stopped their twirling. He looked down at the wine glass, and then turned his head to look back at Chuck. Chuck craned his head around and looked at Jim, waiting. After a few moments, Jim began to speak.
"Chuck, you're absolutely right. Why do I 'need' to tell the parish? Well, let me explain. First, I need to live my life with integrity and honesty. Hiding who I am isn't honest and doesn't have integrity. Second, I'm in love with you. I want to celebrate that. I want others to celebrate that with us, and I can't do that if I'm hiding. Third, well, third, I want you to move in with me, and we can't do that if I'm still hiding. It'll just be too complicated and too nerve-wracking."
"John, I'm in love with you, too. But you already know that. I love you." He leaned down and kissed John, hard, tongues reaching out to each other and playing. "Yes, I love you. It sounded to me as if you were, dare I say it, proposing to me. Are you?"
John got up, put down the wine glass, and turned around. He pulled Chuck up so that they were both standing together. "Chuck, will you move in with me? Will you come and share your life with me?"
"Absolutely yes! Now, let's go celebrate, or is that consumate?" And he leaned down and scooped John up into his arms and carried him off to the bedroom, to consumate their celebration.
Jeff walked around his home, picking up trash and putting it into a garbage bag. He shook his head at all the mess still left around the room. He had a rythmn, first the paper garbage, then he would pick up all the glasses and take them to the dishwasher and fill the top shelf, then the dishes to be scraped into the 'insinkerator' and then stacked on the lower shelf of the dishwasher. Once the dishwasher was loaded, he would start it up, and then as it cycled through he would go back and finish cleaning up. He hummed quietly to himself, some of the old hymns that he had grown up with. Somehow they were comforting. It had been a tough evening.. He loved to entertain but he wasn't sure that he wanted to do this again any time soon. There had been just too much emotion flowing, literally, around that room.
He felt good, though. It had been good to get all those people together in one room. It was amusing how some of them hadn't even known about each other. Gaydar! Ha! Sure, it sometimes worked when you were cruising, but infallible, absolutely not! Not even the pope was infallible, at least not from an Anglican point of view. Yeah, yeah, he thought to himself, so that's an in-joke for Anglicans. He thought it might have been the first time that some of the guys realized that some of the women were lesbian. So that had been good, too. It began to create a network, a sort of coalition. And they were going to need all the support they could get.
The Bishop had taken it well. He had hoped that he would, but it had been a risk. It might have just been too much for the guy -- all those people being gay. Who would have thought? Well, he did, of course, 'cause he knew all these people. Would the Bishop support them now? He thought some of them might begin to make noise about coming out to their parishes. Oh boy, that was going to be tough. If the Bishop was supportive maybe they could find a way to do it together...he needed to think, how could they coordinate this, how make it effective. Oh, he did love it when a plan came together, and he hoped this one would.