Seed and Water: A Testimony of Affirmation and Reflection on Spiritual Practice
Updated: Jan 19
By Matthew Meyer
I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one
who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the
growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have one purpose, and
each will receive wages according to their own labor.
(1 Corinthians 3:6-8, NRSVUE)
Long before (Taylor’s Version), I remember listening to Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to
New York” for the first time, driving through the streets of Beaver, PA. The CD had
been purchased for my wife—I had not taken Taylor Swift seriously before—but
from the moment that opening track faded in, I was hooked.
At least until the song reached the lyrics, “And you can want who you want / Boys
and boys and girls and girls.” Although I had outgrown the evangelical non-
denominational church of my youth, I had not yet outgrown the homophobia it
taught me (not what I would have called it then). I immediately picked up on the
LGBTQ+ affirming intent behind these lyrics.1 At the time, I was unwilling to
believe that these words were something I was supposed to sing along with.
But the song was too catchy. I wanted what I wanted, so I would just close my
mouth whenever I reached that part of the song. At first. I find it difficult not to
sing along with a song whenever I know the lyrics. Really hard. I would mumble
incoherently through those lyrics. Then I started singing those lyrics quietly. Then
a little louder. I sang through the discomfort until those lyrics didn’t bother me at
all.
It is not that Taylor Swift singlehandedly turned me into an ally, but when I
listened to “Welcome to New York (Taylor’s Version)” some nine years later, I could
not help but reflect upon the role this song has played in my formation—the ways
in which the seeds of Christ’s character have been watered in me.
Lived experiences and artistic engagement have a way of shaping us that
sometimes pulls us out of line with the things we profess to believe. Those lyrics
forced me to confront internal inconsistencies between what I professed to believe
about homosexuality and how I actually behaved with respect to homosexuality.
I had LGBTQ+ coworkers with whom I got along very well. I got along with their
significant others, just as I did with the partners of my straight coworkers.
No part of me felt any condemnation for them. While I could not fully articulate my
beliefs around homosexuality at that point in time, the evidence of my lived
experiences was out of step with the harmful and homophobic theology that
shaped my childhood.
The seeds had been planted. Now they were being watered.
Further transformation was still yet to come. Although I no longer believed that
same-sex relationships were sinful, I was certainly still comfortable with
transphobia (not what I would have called it then). It would be my seminary
education that helped to further “radicalize” me.
At the time of my studies, all students matriculating through Pittsburgh
Theological Seminary was required to take a class on spiritual formation, its
disciplines and their practices. The curriculum for this course required us to read
Quaker spiritualist Parker Palmer’s accessible little book on vocation: Let Your Life
Speak.
Palmer speaks of vocation much in the same way that the prophet Jeremiah
speaks of his own call to be God’s prophet. Jeremiah speaks of being enticed and
overpowered by God (Jeremiah 20:7a). Jeremiah tries to refrain from speaking
because others mock him (20:7b-9a), but he finds that denying this call wearies
him—it is like a fire shut up in his bones (20:9b). Palmer calls this the “Rosa Parks
decision.”2 Like Jeremiah, Parks is weary of living a life that denied externally the
truths that she knew internally.3
What struck me about how Palmer interpreted Parks’ narrative—particularly her
1955 arrest for refusing to vacate the “colored” section of the bus in deference to
a white passenger was how he related Parks’ decision to the fear of punishment.
Because of her weariness, Parks no longer feared punishment from the bus driver
or from the police. As Palmer writes, “no punishment anyone might inflict on them
could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by
conspiring in their own diminishment.”4
Some seven years ago, as I was reading Palmer’s words on vocation for the
seminary, I also happened to be reading trans individuals’ coming-out stories on
BuzzFeed. Remarkably, story after story talked about how the individual had
reached a point where they could no longer deny who they were, no matter what
consequences would follow their declaration of self. Like Jeremiah and Rosa Parks
before them, these people were weary of trying to hold back the fire that was shut
up in their bones—no longer willing to conspire in their own diminishment.
That’s when everything finally clicked into place for me. In religious language, we
would call it an epiphany.
I had grown up in a church where people talked about feeling led by God or having
things laid on their hearts by the Holy Spirit. Here were people using the same
language of vocation that I was being taught in seminary. Who was I to say that one
was valid and the other was not? How could I say that one came from God and
one did not, just because those trans individuals who shared their stories lacked
reference to the Holy Spirit? What if we just believed what people said about
themselves instead of assuming we knew better?
I would later learn that this position was a “good fruits / bad fruits” argument. This
argument draws its basis from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. Warning about false
prophets, Jesus says, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear
good fruit” (Matthew 7:18) and that “You will know [the false prophets] by their
fruits” (Matthew 7:20). We can judge the value of a doctrine or practice based on
whether it has produced Christ’s character in us.
Proponents of this argument reject homophobic interpretations of scripture
because they produce bad fruit. The bad fruits of homophobia cause LGBTQ+
youth to experience higher rates of suicide than their straight peers,5, higher rates
of homelessness and housing instability than their straight peers,6, and higher rates
of physical and sexual violence than their straight peers.7 LGBTQ+ Christians, on
the other hand, produce good fruit. They contribute to their faith communities and
do good works. Palmer might say that they correctly discern God’s vocation for
their lives. The evidence of their lived experience is out of step with the bad
theology that claims homosexuality is sinful.
In reflecting on my formation surrounding the affirmation of LGBTQ+ individuals, I
find that two sets of spiritual practices were particularly helpful to me, the first of
these being the examen—a spiritual exercise in which we reflect upon our lived
experiences to discern God’s presence and God’s guidance for us. Unknowingly, I
had embarked upon this practice when confronted with those lyrics, “And you can
want who you want / Boys and boys and girls and girls.”
In The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, James Martin, SJ, lays out the Ignatian
way of discernment for us. Although there are many ways to implement the
examen, three terms remain helpful. Firstly, in the examen, we pray to achieve a
state of indifference—the ability to approach a decision free from partiality, bias, and assumption toward any option.8 Striving for indifference frees us from
reaching a foregone conclusion. By acknowledging our biases, we better position
ourselves to discern God’s path free from the constraints of what we believe the
answer ought to be (an ought that tends to come from others’ opinions and our
upbringings and not from God).
The second and third terms that help us with the examen are related. We look to
see where we have experienced consolation—feelings of peace in God’s presence,
a sense of peace and rightness in a decision9 as well as where we have
experienced desolation— anything that moves you toward hopelessness.10 We
should not confuse consolation and desolation with our own wants and desires.
The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain can cause similar feelings, but,
having first sought indifference, we can trust that the peace or hopelessness we
may feel comes from the stirrings of the Holy Spirit within us.
We should not confuse consolation and desolation with our own wants and desires.
The pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain can cause similar but,
having first sought indifference, we can trust that the peace or hopelessness we
may feel comes from the stirrings of the Holy Spirit within us.
A helpful clarification on consolation and desolation can be adapted from
Athanasius’ Life of St. Anthony. In citing Abba Anthony’s words, Athanasius
describes how demons and evil spirits misrepresent themselves as God’s angels.
However, true heavenly messengers dispel fear where demonic influence cannot.11
As we attend to feelings of consolation and desolation amidst the stress and
anxiety of cognitive dissonance, that anxiety should dissipate as we draw closer
toward God’s presence.
I entered a season of discernment around homosexuality from a place of bias, a
belief that I should not sing a lyric affirming same-sex relationships. I had to
achieve indifference to be able to reflect honestly upon my beliefs and my
experiences. When I did, I experienced consolation in accepting the LGBTQ+
people around me; I experienced desolation in believing that these wonderful
people were wrong about themselves, and in the eyes of God. Despite the bad
seeds of homophobia that had been planted and watered (both in me as well as by
me), the affirmation of LGBTQ+ individuals brought me into God’s presence, while
“hating the sin, but loving the sinner” drove me out of God’s presence. The fear
that I was wrong to be singing along dissipated into peace.
In the examen, we listen for God through our own lived experiences. But we must
also listen for God through the lived experiences of others. The second spiritual
practice I found helpful was hospitality. Henri Nouwen writes, “Listening is a form
of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to
know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you.”12 A
saying from the desert monastics helps us to better understand hospitality: “A
brother came to a hermit, and as he was taking his leave, he said, ‘Forgive me,
Abba, for preventing you from keeping your rule.’ The hermit answered, ‘My rule is
to welcome you with hospitality, and to send you on your way in peace.’”13
Hospitality, then, is the practice of making human space for one another as we
accommodate and listen to each other.
When we practice listening as a form of hospitality, we welcome others’ stories.
It is important that we educate ourselves by reading others’ stories, by
researching statistics, and by reviewing studies, but if we simply take in this
information without allowing LGBTQ+ individuals to be the experts of their own
experiences, this information will fail to make a meaningful impact on our own
formation. It is not that I had never read others’ stories before or encountered
these statistics—I just had never listened to them.
Truly listening to one another fosters dialogue—what literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin
describes as “the single adequate form for verbally expressing authentic human
life.”14 Regarding dialogue and conversation, Marjorie Thompson writes that guests
must be given the freedom to reveal themselves as they choose: “A guest should
not need to fear personal attack, rejection, or conversion efforts on the part of the
host.”15 Rather than listening for the sake of argument, then, we listen to begin
building relationships. In these relationships, we are better able to recognize the
ways that we have mischaracterized others as sinful, wrong, or evil. In hospitality,
we meet Jesus Christ in welcoming others.16
Such spiritual practices—those like the examen, hospitality, and other disciplines
we may find helpful—are vital to counter-forming Christians away from harmful,
heterosexist beliefs. Wonderful biblically sound arguments in favor of welcoming
and affirming LGBTQ+ individuals already exist in abundance, and these
arguments are a crucial piece in transforming the church to the standards of
diversity, equity, and inclusion expressed in the gospels and in the epistles. But
bringing a well-researched argument to a proof-text fight is unlikely to yield the
desired results.
People rarely change their minds when presented with contrary evidence unless
their hearts have already been prepared, unless the seeds have already been
planted. I believe that spiritual practices provide those formative experiences
that draw us ever deeper into the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
These practices afford us the opportunity to plant the seeds of affirmation to be
watered by these arguments. Living out of my own experiences, my own sense of
vocation is that I am called to pursue those practices that will help prepare those
hearts for change.
In speaking of another bad-fruit theology, womanist ethicist Traci C. West writes,
““the weekly practice of communal worship holds promises for providing Christians
with a space to cultivate their ability to recognize and contest repressive cultural
norms like white superiority.”17 What we say (or don’t say) in worship, how we sing
or pray, can either reinforce or challenge our underlying beliefs and practices
regarding white superiority or heterosexism or any name by which hate
Masquerades.
Just as singing the lyric “Boys and boys and girls and girls” led me to explore the
relationship between what I professed to believe and how I had actually been
behaving, offering prayers and singing hymns that reflect the inclusive breadth
and depth of God’s love leads us into practices of self-examination and hospitality.
Mumble incoherently through those words if that is the best you can do for now.
Engage the practice anyway, and I believe you’ll find that it’s hard not to sing
along. Really hard. The song of God’s love is too catchy.
1. The Talk, season 5, episode 39, " Anna Faris/Taylor Swift/Chef Jet Tila,"
directed by Joseph Carolei, written by John Redmann, featuring Julie Chen
Moonves, Sara Gilbert, Sharon Osbourne, Aisha Tyler, Sheryl Underwood, Anna
Faris, Taylor Swift, and Jet Tila aired on October 20, 2014, in broadcast syndication.
CBS Productions, 2014.
In an interview on daytime show The Talk, Swift cites the recent legalization
of same-sex marriage in New York, as well as her friendships with LGBTQ+
individuals as the inspiration for these lyrics.
2. Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation
(Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2009), 32.
3. Ibid.
4. Palmer, Let Your Life Speak, 34.
5.“Facts About LGBTQ Youth Suicide,” The Trevor Project, December 15,
suicide/.
6 “Homelessness and Housing Instability Among LGBTQ Youth,” The Trevor
Project, February 3, 2022, https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-
briefs/homelessness-and-housinginstability-among-lgbtq-youth-feb-2022/.
7 “LGBTQ+ Youth,” Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Health, Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, last reviewed June 6, 2023,
8 James Martin, SJ, The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything: A Spirituality
for Real Life (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2012), 306.
9 Martin, The Jesuit Guide, 316.
10. Ibid.
11. The Life of St. Anthony, New Advent, New Advent LLC, accessed January.
12.“Listening as Spiritual Hospitality,” Henri Nouwen Society, March 11,
2018:
13. The Desert Fathers: Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, translated by
Benedicta Ward (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), 136.
14. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics, Mikhail Bakhtin, edited and translated
by Caryl Emerson (Minneapolis: MN, 1984), 293.
15. Marjorie J. Thompson, Soul Feast: An Invitation to the Christian Spiritual
Life, newly revised and enlarged print edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John
Knox Press, 2015), 139.
16.Ibid., 146.
17. Traci West, Disruptive Christian Ethics: When Racism and Women’s Lives
Matter (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 112.
Edited by Welby Delinois
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