social justice – you are (queer) here

A Place at the Table: Reflections of a Queer Methodist

I knew God’s love first. There, in rural Illinois, among the high branches of trees, the breeze whispering through the last of the fall leaves, I would lie on the floor of the woods by our house, the cool ground shaded and blanketed with leaves, and look up.

The ground held me and supported me. The sun winked through the branches. The world was a mosaic of light. I breathed.

*Before we moved away from Illinois, I took pictures of all my favorite trees. Here’s one.*

And in the trees, too. The maple out front and the few stocky trees that lined our long gravel driveway. I’d clamber to their pinnacles and just sit, staring out over the corn and soybean fields, over the ribbons of road that meandered through the farmland, down to what I was told was an abandoned railway station.

I was surrounded by abandoned things—discards that became my imagination’s treasures. The abandoned railroad tracks by our house that gave us a straight shot into an even deeper wood and rusted railroad nails that I hefted in my small hand. A hunting stand high in a tree, most of the wooden steps of its ladder either rotted or missing. Sheets of corrugated metal at the entrance to our woods—parts of a small structure that, in my siblings’ and my minds, could’ve once been so many things—an old shed, a playhouse, someone’s home.

But we were not abandoned out in those quiet woods. We built forts and played in the big, muddy ditch that scratched down its center. I watched, and I listened. And when I was saddest, I always ran to the woods, tears streaming down my face, until the pain subsided, until my crying stopped.

In those moments, in that quiet, I heard something. I felt something.

I knew the world was made of more than what my eyes saw. And I knew, at the heart of whatever that was, was love. Continue reading “A Place at the Table: Reflections of a Queer Methodist” →

Five Ways to Make Your Business More Inclusive

Earlier this month, I was invited to write a guest blog post for Tutti Networks, an LGBTQ professional networking group in Denver, CO (my new home base). Since much of my professional background has included providing LGBTQ cultural competency trainings to businesses and organizations (largely in the U.S. South), I thought it’d be a great opportunity to offer some suggestions to help folks to improve their reach among and services to the LGBTQ community. And while this article is geared toward businesses and organizations more generally, I figured I’d post it here since I know a lot of travel businesses, services, and organizations might find this info useful (if any such readers are out there!).

So, if you’d like to learn about what you can do to make your organization or business more inclusive, read the full post here.

And if you’re interested in hiring a consultant or educator to help your business or organization increase its LGBTQ cultural competency, this page on my professional website offers information about my training and consulting services.

In the meantime, Happy New Year, everyone, and safe travels!

The Traveling Bookshelf: Five Books on Leaving and Returning

Reader-subway — *Photo Credit: ©* *Mo Riza*. Used under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-2.0) license.

This summer has been for me a time of leaving and returning, going home and leaving homes behind. Much of my now year-plus journey has been an exploration of what “home” is–how to feel at home where you are, what it means to have multiple homes, how to process conflicting feelings about “home,” feelings of simultaneous belonging and unbelonging.

I’ve also been learning how “home” often consists so much more of the feeling I get with certain people than it does with any particular place. Yet, at the same time, I know there are distinct places that resonate with me, places where I feel in step with the world somehow, sometimes for unknown reasons. And then there are homes I’ve left behind, thinking they weren’t mine, and upon returning, I have been surprised to find that “homeness” intact, and I have been left thinking, Yes, this is my place.

My reading list over the last few months has, without intention, reflected many of these ruminations and complications. And in some ways, the ways I found these books reflect my own wandering: I picked up two of them after hearing the authors speak at the Adelaide Writers’ Week in Australia last spring. Another I’d intended to read for a long time, but this summer I found it on the shelf of an English professor friend who I was housesitting for in South Carolina. Another was left for me in the car I borrowed from a dear friend in South Carolina this summer when she moved back to South Korea. Still another, I simply stumbled across.

These are stories of returning to homes and seeing them in new lights, of being exiled from the people and places we call home, of having a home but not feeling at home in it, and stories of having your home destroyed and changed by forces beyond your control–and making due as you can. I hope these books might give you glimpses into other worlds and perhaps help you along your own journeys to and from home. Continue reading “The Traveling Bookshelf: Five Books on Leaving and Returning” →

An Epic Reading List for the #Resistance

After Trump was elected last fall, I put out a call to my friends on Facebook to help me create a reading list for educating and empowering myself. Specifically, I asked for recommendations of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry that would help me work toward justice and equality–with a focus on racial justice, immigration, disability rights, economic justice, and/or anything regarding feminisms, collaboration/coalitions, organizing, LGBTQ stuff, etc.

What I got was better than I could’ve ever imagined. The comment thread grew and grew, with book recommendations ranging from racial justice to feminist/womanist theology to socially critical poetry.

So, without further adieu, please find below the (only slightly curated) recommendations from my awesome friends. Hope you find something here that moves and inspires you! Continue reading “An Epic Reading List for the #Resistance” →

The Story I Can’t Tell

There is a story I want to tell, but no matter how many times I try, I can’t get it right.

There is a writer. They go to Bhaktapur, Nepal. It’s October. A young girl approaches them as they enter the city. Says “hello.” Starts chatting. Asks if she can show the writer around to practice her English.

The writer is a white American. The young girl—a teenager, really, though she looks like she could be in middle school—is Newari, an ethnic minority in Nepal.

Let’s call the girl Matina. Let’s say she shows the writer around. There are buildings that are hundreds of years old. There are intricate wood carvings on the doors, in the eaves, above the windows, making windows themselves. This is what people come to Bhaktapur to see.

Let’s say the writer takes her to a café, but mostly because the writer is hungry and hasn’t had coffee. Let’s say they watch Nepali music videos on the writer’s cell phone. Let’s say Matina loves Nepali singers, but her favorite band is One Direction.

What if even in that moment, the writer realizes the complexity of what’s happening? Wonders when Matina might make an ask. Wonders if her parents put her up to snagging tourists off the streets and showing them around, telling them things like how much she likes chemistry. Wonders about the economics that would lead a family to do a thing like that. Wonders if Matina will be able to finish school. Wonders how many other foreigners have taken her to this café.

Still, the writer goes along. Eventually, Matina invites them to her home. The writer meets Matina’s parents. Matina shows the writer her homework—pages and pages, reciting chemistry facts and asking if she got the answers right on her English test. Her mom asks the writer to buy the family groceries.

The writer has been ripped off before with a similar ask—once in Delhi and once in Kathmandu—but they buy the groceries anyway—rice, oil, milk. Matina’s mom invites them back to the house to drink Fanta, their one splurge. Matina cleans off a metal cup with cloudy water from an old 7Up bottle and pours the soda in.

Matina calls the writer “sister” and “friend.” The writer thinks it might all be an act but is tempted to think that Matina might be lonely, too. Maybe in that way, they’re the same. When asked about her best friend, Matina says she had one before, but not now.

It is tempting for the writer to think in terms of these well-worn narratives. Because it easy, and there are clean lines to follow. Lines that could make the writer feel more comfortable.

But they’re not comfortable. And when Matina takes them back to the bus stop, and tells the writer to come back to visit, and asks them to send her post cards, and makes sure they get on the right bus to Kathmandu, the writer can’t help but thinking. And thinking. And thinking.

Did I do the right thing? Did I just make things worse? Will she become a tour guide, nurse, or singer like she dreams? What if my life had been like this? Where would I be? Why do I get to go back to an air-conditioned hotel with wifi when her home has dirt floors and no running water? Why do I keep talking to strangers? How did her house still stand in the earthquake? Did she lose anyone she knew? How do I tell this story? Can I? Continue reading “The Story I Can’t Tell” →

An Avalanche of Love: Thoughts on an Impending Inauguration

As Trump’s inauguration looms ahead of us, I feel a shadow cast over my friends’ Facebook walls and a palpable fear in our conversations.

One friend is trans and fears they won’t be able to afford (or be offered) trans-related healthcare with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Another is a freelancer who said the ACA allowed her to be insured for the first time since she was a teenager (she’s in her 30s now). She’s worried her asthma will once again disqualify her from coverage, as it was considered a “pre-existing condition” before Obamacare.

Another friend suffers from depression that is compounded by the uncertainty of life as an LGBTQ person in Trump’s America–and the potential discrimination they might encounter.

Still another works with LGBTQ youth in the South and said she’s received more hateful comments on her organization’s Facebook page in the last few months than she has in years.

“Why would grown men pick on kids?” she asked.

Yet, that is the standard that Trump is bringing to his new vision of the United States. Our next president, who uses Twitter to bully teenagers and pick on everyday citizens. Continue reading “An Avalanche of Love: Thoughts on an Impending Inauguration” →

What to Do, Kathmandu?

Durbar Square 1.jpg — *Durbar Square, Kathmandu, Nepal*

“What to do, Kathmandu?”

My guide smiled at me over our steaming bowls of vegetable soup. He’d shown me around Kathmandu’s famous Durbar Square and shrugged as if the question encompassed all we’d spoken about. His struggles to make ends meet. His conversion to Christianity. His attempts to be an honest guide in the midst of touts and scammers.

I smiled back and looked at the buildings around us. We were sitting in a rooftop café by the Square, looking at the intricately carved wooden structures and the remains of ancient buildings destroyed by the earthquake that shook the Kathmandu Valley in April 2015.

I wanted to know what Kathmandu would do. What anyone could do in the face of such odds. Continue reading “What to Do, Kathmandu?” →

The Traveling Bookshelf: Five Books to Read on Race

As a writer, one of my favorite things to do is to read. All throughout my journey, and especially after the election, I’ve been trying to pull together books that will help me see the world in a broader light and make me a more empathetic human and effective advocate.

Here are five books that have been on my shelf the last couple months. Hope you might enjoy (and learn from) them as much as I did!

Building a Movement to End the New Jim Crow: An Organizing Guide (Daniel Hunter)

After the election, I felt pretty powerless in terms of how to respond and also realized I needed to learn more about engaging with the racial justice movement and integrating anti-racism work into my other advocacy. This book was a great primer for me regarding work being done to end the prison industrial complex (and its inherent racism) as well as an awesome guide for movement-building in general. I recommend it for anyone working in advocacy and activism and for all my non-profit sector friends. Find out more online here. (Available on Kindle for only $0.99USD!) Continue reading “The Traveling Bookshelf: Five Books to Read on Race” →

An Open Letter to My Friends Who Voted for Trump

For any of you who have read my fiction, you know I don’t like telling linear stories.

I’ve struggled with this while writing this blog, as I’ve felt compelled to break my travel narratives up into blog-sized bites. To make storylines that make sense. An arc across India and Asia.

But my timeline has been disrupted by events beyond my control. And besides, time never moves in a straight line anyway, and neither do my stories. There is always some piece of the past that makes itself known, some dream of the future.

I am writing this in a tea house in Myanmar. I will go to Vietnam soon.

I still have so many stories to tell you—from India, Korea, Nepal. Those will come, I promise.

But just not now.

Trump’s election and the ensuing fear and grief I (and my community) felt have derailed me. I’ve spent hours on social media, sharing together, raging together, trying to understand, to educate, to advocate while still loving all humanity. Still trying to bridge the divides among us.

I don’t always know how to do so while still speaking out against the violent oppression that is happening. I don’t know how to explain to you how the leaders Trump has drawn together to aid in his transition and potentially lead his administration scare me just as much—if not more—than Trump himself. Continue reading “An Open Letter to My Friends Who Voted for Trump” →

White People Problems (American Tourist Edition)

Let’s face it: I have a problem with being a white American traveling in India. Chalk it up to white guilt or simply a recognition of (historical and present) privilege, but my whiteness preceded me everywhere I went and reminded me of echoes of the past—the white, British colonizers who oppressed and dehumanized Indians for years, who demolished their culture and devalued their lives.

Admission: I am not an expert on either Indian history or British colonialism. But I couldn’t help but be aware of the damage wrought by people who looked like me, worshipped in the kinds of churches I attend, and spoke my language.

I guess it was a good thing to be aware of. But beyond awareness of privilege, I’ve wondered what I could do. Colonization is over, but the real inequalities are still there—because of nationality, class, place of birth, first language—all of those things.

Boyeon and I had some interesting conversations about this. How she, as someone from a country that had been colonized (by the Japanese, for those of you who missed out on East Asian history), felt a certain kind of empathy for (and to her, perhaps from) the Indian people. How walking down the street, she felt a kinship—both as someone from Asia and from a formerly colonized country.

For us, this sometimes played out in how we interacted with people on the street. For example, Boyeon frequently was ready to ask questions, get directions, and get answers for other basic travel information. I, however, was not. Granted, this is partly because she’s more extroverted than I am, and I’m self-reliant to a fault. But one of my major hangups, as I told her, was really my lack of knowing the local language and how imperialistic (and particularly American) it felt to expect everyone to know English. (And our cramming of Hindi did not help us at all in the Bengali-dominated Northeast or Malayalam-speaking South.)

And while I didn’t feel the Indian people holding me accountable for British failings, I did realize that I wanted to find a way to acknowledge those failings, to recognize my positionality within that space, to work to counteract any ways in which power and privilege became barriers between me, the place, and the people. Continue reading “White People Problems (American Tourist Edition)” →