Untamed

Recently I was holding a town hall–type event in the Midwest. There were a thousand women in the audience, a smattering of men, a few gurgling babies. After we opened up the event for questions, I noticed a hand slowly rise in the back of the room. A runner hurried to the back, slid along the pew, and asked the owner of the hand to stand. A woman with short gray hair and a gentle, serious face with deep wrinkles slowly stood. She wore a sweatshirt with an American flag and the word GRAMMA puffy-painted onto it. Her hand shook a little as she held the mic. I loved her instantly. She said:

“Hi, Glennon. I’ve been following your work for ten years, and I came here to ask you a question that I’m afraid to ask anyone else. I feel…confused. My nephew is now my niece. I adore him…I’m sorry—her. My granddaughter took a boy to homecoming last year and a girl this year. And now…you’re gay, too? I don’t mean any offense, it’s just: Why is everybody so gay all of a sudden?”

The room fell still and silent. The sea of heads that was turned toward this woman slowly turned back toward me. Eyes were wide. I felt the room’s collective stress. For her, for me, for all of us. (Oh, God, was that offensive? Was that wrong? Is Glennon pissed? But also why is everybody so gay all of a sudden?) They were worried that we’d just crashed and burned. I knew we’d finally taken off. Blessed are those brave enough to make things awkward, for they wake us up and move us forward.

I said, “Thank you for asking a question most are too afraid to admit they have. Unasked questions become prejudices. Your niece and granddaughter are lucky to have you. Will you tell me your name?”

“Joanne.”

“Okay. I do know why everybody’s so gay all of a sudden. It’s those damn GMOs, Joanne.”

A wave of relieved laughter washed over the entire church. Some ladies laughed so hard that tears rolled down their faces as we all had ourselves one giant, collective, organic baptism. When the laughter died down, I suggested that we all take a deep breath. It felt so good to laugh and then breathe together. Everything doesn’t have to be terrifying, after all. This is just life, and we are just people trying to figure each other out. Trying to figure ourselves out. After our breath, I said something like this:

There are wild, mysterious forces inside and between human beings that we have never been able to understand. Forces like faith. Like love. Like sexuality. We are uncomfortable with our inability to comprehend or control these mysteries.

So we took wild faith—the mysterious undefinable ever-shifting flow between humans and the divine—and we packaged it into religions.

We took wild sexuality—the mysterious undefinable ever-shifting flow between human beings—and we packaged it into sexual identities.

It’s like water in a glass.

Faith is water. Religion is a glass.

Sexuality is water. Sexual identity is a glass.

We created these glasses to try to contain uncontainable forces.

Then we said to people: Pick a glass—straight or gay.

(By the way, choosing the gay glass will likely leave you unprotected by the law, ostracized by your community, and banished by God. Choose wisely.)

So folks poured their wide, juicy selves into those narrow, arbitrary glasses because that was what was expected. Many lived lives of quiet desperation, slowly suffocating as they held their breath to fit inside.

Somewhere, sometime, someone—for whatever courageous, miraculous reason—finally acknowledged her dragon. She decided to trust what she felt, to know what she knew, and to dare to imagine an unseen order where she might be free. She refused to contain herself any longer. She decided to speak her insides on the outside and just Let It Burn. She raised her hand and said, “Those labels don’t feel true to me. I don’t want to squeeze myself inside either of those glasses. For me, that’s not exactly it. I am not sure what it is, yet—but it’s not that.”

Someone else heard the first brave one speak and felt electric hope flowing through his veins. He thought: Wait. What if I am not alone? What if I am not broken at all? What if the glasses system is broken? He felt his hand rise and voice rise with a “Me too!” Then another person’s hand slowly rose and then another and another until there was a sea of hands, some shaking, some in fists—a chain reaction of truth, hope, freedom.

I don’t think that gayness is contagious. But I am certain that freedom is.

In the name of freedom, we added more glasses. We said, “Okay, I hear you. Those other glasses don’t fit. So, here’s a bisexual glass for you! And for you, how about a pansexual glass?” We kept adding labeled glasses for every letter of the LGBTQ until it felt like we’d eventually use up the whole alphabet. This was better. But not exactly right: Because some glasses still came with fewer rights and greater burdens. And some people, like me, still couldn’t find a glass that fit.

My hunch is that folks have always been fifty shades of gay. I wonder if instead of adding more glasses, we should stop trying to contain people within them. Perhaps, eventually, we’ll rid ourselves of the glass system altogether. Faith, sexuality, and gender are fluid. No glasses—all sea.

But letting old structures burn can feel uncomfortable and disorienting. Rumbling freedom is scary because at first it feels like chaos. Pronouns and bathrooms and girls taking girls to prom, oh my! But “progress” is just perpetually undoing our no-longer-true-enough systems in order to create new ones that more closely fit people as they really are. People aren’t changing, after all. It’s just that for the first time, there’s enough freedom for people to stop changing who they are. Progress is the acknowledgment of what is and what has always been. Progress is always a returning.

Maybe we can stop trying so hard to understand the gorgeous mystery of sexuality. Instead, we can just listen to ourselves and each other with curiosity and love, and without fear. We can just let people be who they are and we can believe that the freer each person is, the better we all are. Maybe our understanding of sexuality can become as fluid as sexuality itself. We can remember that no matter how inconvenient it is for us to allow people to emerge from their glasses and flow, it’s worth it. Our willingness to be confused, open, and kind will save lives.

Maybe courage is not just refusing to be afraid of ourselves but refusing to be afraid of others, too. Maybe we can stop trying to find common ground and let everybody be the sea. They already are, anyway. Let it be.