Finally At Peace With Warren Invocation

UPDATE: Newsweek writer Lisa Miller does a nice job of parsing Warren's invocation that on the surface sounded pat and uninteresting, but as Miller points out contained some interesting and significant choices.

My post from January 16:

The subject of Rick Warren has disappeared from huffpo and other media, but I have continued to struggle with how to feel included in the world wide celebration on January 20th. That is, until today. Obama's talking points about including all points of view (including one that disaffirms my identity) only made me feel more excluded. I couldn't imagine watching the inauguration without feeling kicked in the stomach at the sight of Rick Warren smiling smugly on the platform.

Then something happened in my own life, in my own world. I found myself working to bring together two groups within my organization who have historically felt they are on opposite sides of important issues and the parallel with what Obama says he is trying to do suddenly struck me. After weeks spent reading everything I could find and agonizing over my own bitter disappointment, I could finally see beyond Rick Warren on that podium to the sea of Americans standing patiently shoulder to shoulder in the cold. Because of Rick Warren's presence some of them will be people who would not have otherwise come, who would not otherwise be feeling like Obama is their President and I could finally see that Obama's point might be more than the foolishness of trying to change the unchangeable mind of Rick Warren.

If you're reading this and thinking, 'well, duh!' bear with me for a few more lines. As I thought about the good, decent people I know in my own workplace who I want to bring together, I could finally imagine the millions of Americans who don't yet grasp what it is about Rick Warren and his deeply held and oft-iterated attitudes and beliefs that are so hurtful. I could finally imagine that among them are many who are decidedly less sure and even less adamant in their views on homosexuality. Paradoxically, it was when I stopped imagining what it would take to change one man, Rick Warren, and instead began to imagine what can change the hearts and minds of the millions of people who admire him that my feelings of anger and hopelessness subsided. Imagining ordinary people of faith, with life-sized egos, more permeable than Warren's super-sized one, standing shoulder to shoulder with gay people and their families, I thought about Harvey Milk and I began to feel a glimmer of hope.

The revolution Harvey Milk envisioned 40 years ago is on the march, and it won't wait for TV personalities like Rick Warren to "get it." The revolution is happening as Milk foretold, because of all of us who are able to live out, proud, happy lives, among the rest of the real world, beyond TV. It is when people come to know and manifest their full human dignity that it becomes undeniably apparent to all who witness it.

So my hope for the inauguration has changed 180 degrees. I've gone from not being able to imagine how proud, self-loving LGBTQ people could possibly go and be among the millions, to imagining how perfect and beautiful their presence there will be. Instead of dreading the thought of evangelicals showing up that day I am hoping for it, because I have remembered that it will be by standing together with LGBTQ people and our allies that they might begin to experience us as the happy and whole, loving and beautiful people we are.