The Face of the Divine
A surprising number of profound topics happen to me in the middle of profane or lewd conversations. Talking to one of my nearest and dearest on the drive home from work, we ended up joking about the life transition I’m going through.
I was talking to him about having doctors refuse to treat me in the nineties and other fun moments in being a marginalized population member—as a woman who sleeps with men and women, I was thought (along with other people who weren’t heterosexual) to be contributing to the AIDS epidemic. I was in rural Louisiana, and the doctors at the local hospital were convinced I was going to give them AIDS if they touched or treated me.
The conversation turned to jokes, because ain’t nothing serious for long, and he joked that as a prospective cult leader (a private joke about becoming a priest), I was free to sleep with his wife.
My response was whip quick, in the form of a joke : I’m already asking people to see the face of the divine in my cranky, horny, lewd, crass self. I’m asking people to see the divine in my tattoos and my childish sense of humor, and I’m asking them to see it in my white face. I’m not interested in asking them to look past more than I’m already offering.
It lead to a conversation about seeing the face of the divine. In the end, the divine is everywhere. Everywhere. If you can see it, there’s nowhere it isn’t.
The problem, of course, is that we have expectations.
We expect to see the divine in the face of a man of a certain age and complexion. We expect to see the divine in the right building, only after we’ve sung certain songs. We expect to see the divine on a Saturday or Sunday morning. We expect the divine to only listen to certain kinds of people.
The purpose of a priest is to show you the divine you can see. When I have passage, I will have god children, for whom I will reflect the face of the divine.
The secret is that I won’t just be reflecting the divine, I will be reflecting their own divinity back at them.
The secret is that the children I will be given will see the divine in me, because I am here—this life, this gender, this face, this complexion—for them.
