I'm grateful to Derrick De Lise for publishing an interview with me at his Inexorable Pilgrim site yesterday. Derrick entitles his interview "Courageous Conversation with Bill Lindsey," and notes that the subject of our conversation (via email) was the challenge to be both openly gay and a person of faith. It especially moves me to have this interview appear on the day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, who has played a special role in my coming out process as an openly gay theologian. Steve and I made a pilgrimage to her shrine in Mexico City in the latter half of the 1980s when our lives and careers as theologians were being torn to shreds due to the open, hateful bigotry of those leading the Catholic institutions in which we were trying to establish ourselves as theologians after having finished our graduate work.
Here are a few excerpts — and I'd be pleased if you'd click and read the whole interview at Inexorable Pilgrim, if you're so moved:
Q: Could you describe how your faith journey has been impacted by your LGBTQIA+ identification?
A: I think that when LGBTQIA+ people come to terms with their real identities — usually, as the result of struggle — their lives become more real. The life of faith is also in and of itself a constant struggle to live in the world of reality. Accepting one’s sexual orientation makes the spiritual journey more real, for those interested in pursuing such a journey.
Q: What would advice would you give to your younger self?
A: Live with eyes wide open.
And:
Q: What would you recommend to someone just starting on his or her faith journey?
A: Seek the ground. Seek to be true to yourself. Seek to keep your feet on the ground.
Q: Do you have any tips or advice on prayer? If so, what are they?
A: Prayer is hard. I’m not sure that I always I know how to do it. I think the goal of prayer is to be in contact with — at rest in — one’s deepest self, and then to open the door of that self to the Spirit.
Q: What is the most effective way, in your experience, to help people overcome anti- LGBTQIA+ attitudes?
A: I think that every LGBTQIA+ who lives a “normal,” fulfilled, open, unashamed life becomes a living witness to the fact that LGBTQIA+ are human in the very same way everyone else in the world is human.
A happy Sunday to all of you reading this blog, of whatever nationality, persuasion, religious or anti-religious background: the world was made for all of us and is big enough for all of us, if we could only choose to live in it peaceably with each other.