Slay in the Spirit: Dancing My Queer Dharma

On finding a spiritual home

By Christopher Walling

It was a hot summer evening in rural Garrard County, Kentucky. I watched as what appeared to be an elderly woman was “struck” with such emotion that tears began running down her face; she reached her hands to the sky as I played my tambourine amidst the screaming and shouting that moved in cadence to the rhythm of not only my instrument, but to the call and response of the pastor. It was but a typical Sunday evening, the fish fry was all packed up, and all the folks had gathered back into the church for service. Quickly she yelped and began to speak in a polysyllabic screech that made my ears hurt and began to jerk violently as she then leaped up from her seat and began to bounce from one pew to the next. Everyone’s clapping seemed to keep her afloat. My eleven-year-old brain didn’t know what to make of this, but one thing was for sure—I knew I did not belong. It wasn’t just the spectacle of a holiness revival that had me disconnected; it was the deep struggle for some feeling of connection, of recognition as one who belonged in this “kingdom of God.” I had heard that I didn’t belong in this kingdom of God, at least not people like me, for I knew I was a gay kid – and there was no room for kids like me in this church, no room at their “inn.” I had to seek elsewhere for sure, but until I knew where to go, I would keep playing Sunday after Sunday.

That feeling of being without a spiritual home would consume much of my thinking for two years, until one day, while browsing Netscape (on the dial-up internet at the local library), I found a website that took a different approach, from an organization called the Metropolitan Community Church in Louisville, Kentucky. According to the website, it was a church that was an “example of Jesus and empowered by the spirit” for those who were “fully awake to God’s enduring love,” and particularly to those who were “LGBT.”