What Was Represented on Stage That Night

I have sung in choirs my whole life and now, as a senior citizen, singing in a chamber choir is one of the few intergenerational things I still get to do, so it was a great pleasure when our choir was asked to join three choirs from our local university in a production of Vivaldi’s Gloria.  The rehearsals introduced me to the current generation of students, and I can now see how much society has evolved since the time I was a student.

I had attended this university for my second degree in the late 1990’s, when I was in my mid 30’s and was fortunate enough to be accepted into their auditioned choir, quickly becoming the choir mom. During the choir tour at the end of my first year, it was obvious to me that one of the young men in the choir was struggling with something.  He would take every opportunity to go off by himself, and I remember him sitting on a rock looking out at the ocean, deep in thought.  One evening, he asked to talk to me and, with much stammering, said that he had to go home to his mother and tell her that he was gay.  This was a big admission for him to make, made possible by being in university for six years and having the time to work this out for himself.  As a mom of two young boys, I thought about what I would say if one of them came home to tell me something similar.  I hope that what I said to that young man gave him some degree of comfort.

But this was so much less than the scandalous news after my first university degree, 15 years earlier, that a soft-spoken and well-liked young man who had been in my program died of AIDS.  He had hidden his gender throughout four years of university, among students who shared most of our classes.  It only became apparent that he was gay when he died of that awful disease in the mid 1980’s.

These two incidents stayed with me when, after my second degree, I became the chair of my second university’s chaplaincy program.  Unbeknownst to me, I stepped into a controversy that had waged between the university chaplains of this denomination and the church at large for the previous few years.  A few bold university chaplains had declared their campuses to be ‘Reconciling in Christ’, which meant that they would give a blessing to same-sex marriages.  Many members of the church at large were outraged by this and a deep division had arisen in the church, played out in the microcosm of the inter-university chaplaincy committee.  This is what I stepped into for my first meeting.  I knew that it would be contentious, so I prayed during the entire three-hour drive to the meeting that I would be given the right words to say.

As expected, the two sides of the debate squared off.  This committee had been tasked by the larger church with coming up with a statement on the issue, I think with the intent that it would prevent the chaplains from performing same sex blessings.  The louder voices talked, and I listened.  When it became clear that each side was deeply entrenched and they would not agree on the issue of same-sex blessing, I piped up and said that perhaps we could come up with a statement of what we could agree on – could we support  the idea that our chaplains were doing the best work they could to meet the needs of the students?  This brought the naysayers up short, as no one wanted to disparage the work of the chaplains when they were all seated at the table together.  Finally, a wording came together that said that this chaplaincy committee supported the university chaplains in their work.  Nothing was said about same-sex blessing.  It was left to the national church to come to grips with this sea-change in societal thought, but these university campuses were then more or less left alone, to support the needs of young people who were trying to figure out how they fit in society.

Back to our Vivaldi concert.  Another whole generation of students were up on stage with me.  These students have grown up with a completely different understanding of gender and identity.  They may or may not have been able to express themselves while growing up at home, but now at university they are taking that opportunity.  There is no longer a required uniform for the auditioned choir that I had sung in 30 years ago.  When I mentioned this to someone at intermission, they suggested it is because young people can’t be fit into the two boxes of ‘men’ and ‘women’ anymore.  Even the descriptions of the choirs express that.  No longer are two of the choirs a men’s choir and a women’s choir.  They are now a low-voice choir and a treble-voice choir.  The students are free to dress in whatever style they wish, as long as it is concert black.  It is light years away from those two young men who struggled to identify and express who they were in my first and second university programs.

But just as important, in the low-voice choir last night was a community member who was one of the first openly gay individuals in that city.  He has fought for probably close to 50 years for the recognition and right to be who he knows himself to be.  He has been disparaged against for so long in this community but has never lost sight of his own truth and identity.  I wonder what it was like for him to be on that stage last night, singing with these young people who are now free to express their gender in whatever way is authentic to them?  Does he see how he helped to pave the pathway for them?

It was such a joy to sing and make beautiful music with such a diverse group of individuals last night.  It is a small example of what could be accomplished if our culture and society could focus on what we all have in common, not our differences.