*This is the last intentional conversation of Christian Parks’ summer internship.
J: Christian, you have become a spiritual son to me this summer. In the words of Ruth, “Do not ask me to leave you…” I am so very thankful for our three months together. A deep abiding love has bubbled up. What are the last things you want to discuss on our drive to the airport?
C: First of all, I feel the same way. Thank you so much for your love. Over the last day, I have pondered what it means to live into your teaching that I am enough. What does it mean to be enough? I feel like I have learned that the love and energy within me is enough. As I leave, I am constantly reflecting on how to be enough. I need to be queerer. I know that is the only way to live enough. In queerness, I know that everything will be alright.
J: Define enough.
C: Enough is to simply be.
J: Define being.
C: Being is living into the spectrum and my unique spot on it. Being is believing that my spot is enough. I blur the categories in my own person. In all queerness, Jesus shows us how to do this.
J: Jesus shows us that one does not arrive at queerness without death. The Canaanite woman helped Jesus kill his racism and grow queerer. In dying on the cross, Jesus shows us queerness is about loving to the end and beyond. Loving your neighbor as yourself is the great path of queer death and resurrection. Being cannot happen without death. Death cannot happen without resurrection. Queerness survives death and blossoms in the resurrection. When I met you…I met you in a period of death. Eastern Mennonite University had just killed your play. I felt like you were looking for a resurrection. I hope you found it.
C: I did and more. We can only resurrect others when we have been resurrected. I learned in the words of Ezekiel, how to “prophesy to the breathe.” I learned how to call forth life. Death is dead for me. I now have a courageous and reconstructed faith. I am on the way of the queer. The path you have shown me will sustain me for the rest of my life.
J: I want you to remember that normativity has taken over all spaces. We must expect both the oppressed and the oppressor to have addictions to normative constructions of power and hate. There is no identity that speaks for justice. Only queerness can do that. The normative ideas of fitting in and pushing contrary persons out has to die in order for justice to be a possibility. God is calling us to make all things new…to make all things queer. We can’t do that with the constructed identities we currently have.
C: We must beware of the suicide of identity. We can’t fall into the trap of thinking that our identities are enough. We are enough and that is so much bigger than the limited nature of our identities. You have taught me how to live queerer. Thank you so much.
J: Thank you my son.
Amen.
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