| GLBT Prayer Service |
| GLBT Prayer Service |
 |
| Prayer Partners Theresa Healy, Ron Joki and Molly Morton |
Healy and Joki began the service with the reading “A Song of Welcome” followed by singer-songwriter Ann Reed—a well established Twin Cities’ pioneer musician of the GLBT Community herself—who performed her own composition “God is Sleeping/You’ve Got To Be Carefully Taught” which illuminates some sharply defined truths: “You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear/ To hate all the relatives your parents hate.”
SJA’s Pastoral Minister of Peace & Justice Julie Madden was the first to read a fitting community prayer: “Loving God of all People, we gather today to be your voice of inclusion, love, courage and integrity. Let your voice be heard and may your genuine loving presence resonate among those who are gathered in this space and time. Guide us through the process of healing and help us to envision the possibilities we will embrace as we journey hand in hand together.”
St. Stephens’ Pastoral Committee Member of Sexual Minorities Michael Bayly continued
the prayer: “We pray for those among us who are struggling to reconcile their identity as GLBT Catholics and people of faith. We pray that as a community we will continue to reach our hands, hearts and souls to anyone who truly needs a place to be at home in the church. We pray that all people of faith may live in joyful recognition that you have created and blessed each of us with our own identities and as such should respect, love and be the gifts you have given us.”
Reed completed the Community Prayer reading with: “Give us the courage to take this sacred journey together because it is only together that we can move beyond the hurt and pain to come to a place surrounded by love and peace with a personal commitment to strengthen our community. We offer this prayer to you loving God as you hold us in your tender embrace.”
Other faith organizations in attendance along with St. Joan’s and St. Stephens included Pax Christi, St. Francis of Cabrini and Our Lady of Victory St. Catherine’s.
Morton offered insight into her reading of “Stonewall, Yesterday and Today” that recounts that pivotal June night in 1969 when New York City police raided a Greenwich Village bar called Stonewall and the Gay community fought back with a week of nightly rioting that evolved one year later into the establishment of gay liberation groups in over 300 American cities. Morton suggested when finishing, “Maybe this time in our churches where we believe, we need a Stonewall movement. Some of us go to our churches stuffed in our closets. It’s got to start happening in our churches. It needs to happen today.”
Reed (pictured on the right with Julie Madden) broke into her timely penned song “Leap of Faith” where the moved crowd heartily joined in on the chorus:
If people of faith are to become Christ-like, they then need to become welcoming to all communities. Remembering Stonewall or reinventing a peaceful one for today reminds us that we need to build bridges for our parishioners, not hurtful walls.
 and  |
 |