On Sun, 2 Feb. 1997, Maggie Heineman wrote:  [snip] 
>I understand Steve's central belief to be that God loves 
> all his children. I don't hear Steve saying that he thinks 
> that every Child of God must be heterosexual. 
> 
> Steve? (can you reply for upload?) 

I can't *not* reply. That is so true that if we don't say it, rocks and stones will start to talk and say so. 

I see this as the absolutely number one issue. There is *nothing* that is *even close* in importance. 

God loves persons who experience same gender attraction as fully and completely as every other person. As with us all, no change or embellishment *of any kind* is required to experience that love and enjoy the friendship of our Creator. 

Our sexual orientation whether heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual, goes deeply to the core of our identity - who we believe we are as an individual person. *Some* (I stress "some") past public comments by theologically conservative Christians have been ignorant, simplistic, unhelpful, unloving, hateful, and harmful. *We* are guilty of the most heinous sin as *WE* have done much to barricade the path to God's open and loving arms - *arms nailed out wide on a cross.*

*We* are in great need of repentance and forgiveness. (I'm weeping as I write this. If I didn't believe in God and the miraculous I would give up.) This is the miracle I want to see - 

"Loving God, *cause your church to love same gender attracted people the way you do* - NOW!" 

(a couple of minutes later) 

I believe that to truly follow Jesus leaves no option on the matter of the treatment of our fellow human beings. To persons who experience same gender attraction, *our brothers and sisters,* Christians are called unmistakably *and without excuse* to extend justice and compassion. 

I look for the day when the stones *do* cry out - *the formerly cold and stony hearts of unloving Christians.* It will happen - I don't know when or how, but it will happen. It will happen all because of Jesus. 

"Even if your own mother forgets you, I won't. Look, I've carved your name on the palms of my hands." 

(Jesus will go to any lengths to get our attention. One might say he was the first to understand the powerful message of piercing.) 

There. That's my heart. To some I will have come off like a "weepy T.V. preacher" caricature. That doesn't matter. This is what I believe and how I feel. I will stake my life on him. 

Your friend, 
Steve 

I've known Joe for years...maybe ten years.  We'd see each other maybe only once or twice a year...but then we had plenty of opportunity to interact when we did. 

My favorite memories: 

- Sitting at an Exodus electoral college (voting on new board members) with Joe and another ministry leader.  Helping us to keep our sense of humor through what turned out to be a laborious process, Joe kept our row almost falling off our seats with his Monty Python imitations. 

- Attending an Exodus conference and standing in the dinner line with Joe and a friend of mine from Maryland.  She looked around and made a comment on all the "together looking people there." Not to worry, Joe said, they just look that way, they're really just like us. 

..Year after year I've waited to hear of Joe's death.  And year after year he was there again.  One year he showed up with a wife...and that was two years after I was sure he should have died (though he didn't look unhealthy).  Four years ago when I saw him I asked him what his T-Cell count was:  it was 3. He was serious. 

I will miss him, hate to lose yet one more person I've known and cherished to AIDS.  I don't know why, but it doesn't seem to get any easier to process or understand.  He's been very sick though this past year.  At least now he can rest. 

Melanie

Maggie--

Good to hear from you again albeit under sad circumstances.  Last night I had not planned on writing the Inspiration I did. My plan had been to write about guidance, but at 2 a.m. I was watching a TV show and noticed the displacement marking on the side of a ship and today's inspiration took place...So, the Lord knows what He's doing even if I don't all the time...Yes, I would like to subscribe to the journeys list.  I'll be visiting your site later today.

Inspiration On-Line is a ministry of Evangel Tabernacle Assembly of God Church, Fresno, California. 

Inspiration On-Line Home Page http://www.evangeltab.org/
Inspiration On-Line Live Bible Study Chat Monday 7 p.m. Java Chat Bible Study  Wednesday 8 p.m. (Pacific Time)

Date: Sat, 27 Sep. 1997 11:41:58 -0500
From: Steve Schalchlin <Steve_S@Cliffhanger.com>
To: Maggie Heineman <maggie@CritPath.Org>
Subject: Re: hallett essay

Maggie,

Your page on Joe Hallett was quite beautiful and I am honored that you chose to use my song as the "connecting" device.

Thanks for your patience and endurance.

Tracie Kurth's account of Joe's 11/14/96 visit to Gustavus College
 

The b-a working group's 2/2/97 discussion of  Tracie's report.

July, 1997 prayer requests for Joe Hallett - broadcast to the Exodus  Public General List.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." (Matthew 11:28) 

"For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." (Matthew 11:30) 

It is now noon in Philadelphia, time for Joe Hallett's memorial service in Minneapolis, 11 am, Central Daylight Time. I am enough of a mystic to wish to write during this exact hour. And wouldn't you know, minutes ago (the timestamp reads 11:54 a.m. EDT) I received email from Ken Prunty and so Ken's message provides the direction for what I will write. Because I do not know what scripture is being used in Minneapolis, I had decided last night to take my text either from today's Oswald Chambers or from this morning's Daily Inspiration. The devotion which arrived this morning (dated the 27th, distributed the 26th) is uncannily appropriate as we think of Joe's life. Terri Main makes an analogy between "heavy laden" and the ballast of a ship.

"A large ship floating without much of a load on top of the water is unstable...So, it is with us. Most of us think we would like to go through life without any burdens. We think our lives would be much better if we never had to carry around sadness, pain, grief or sickness. But very often these burdens that we carry sometimes for a lifetime are the very things which give us stability when the winds start to blow around us... Since we live in a fallen world, our heavenly father allows us to face difficulties, and presents us with burdens, not to cause us pain, but to give us stability. But just as the Captain knows just how much his ship can hold before foundering, we can take heart in knowing that our Captain knows how much we can take and he will never overstock the hold. 

Lord, even though it is hard, let me not forget to thank you even for the burdens. May I carry them with honor and grace. Amen"

I never met Joe and he never heard of me. Yet, as Steve Schalchlin's song says, "We will always be connected to each other."

Melanie and Alan knew Joe. I've read Alan's condolence to Nancy Hallett by way of Dan Puumala. Melanie's remembrances are in the sidebar. 

Joe entered my life through Tracie Kurth who wrote about Joe's November, 1996 visit to Gustavus College. Her account reached the Bridges Across working group in February, 1997. During our dialogue about Joe's visit, (as reported by Tracie), Steve Calverley sent his post about God's love.  Joe Hallett caused the email in the sidebar to be written and consequently we are connected to each other, we should all be connected to each other.

Two weeks later, reading Walter Wink's Engaging the Powers, Steve started to look to me like an Old Testament prophet. Wink, in writing about prayer and the powers, says that the prophets of old, prayed in the imperative: not with a request but with arm-raised, fist-clenched demands. Steve had used capital letters, which in email is shouting. "Loving God, *cause your church to love same-gender-attracted people the way you do*- NOW!"

Ken Prunty's message, just received, says, "Much of the church continues to work with a misleading assumption that somehow its main task is to change people. Our real mission/task as believers is to show the unconditional love of God to everyone we meet, everyplace we go. We have nothing more important than that to do." 

"Hallett's Pallet" is an online newsletter that had a six-month run. 

In the final issue, April 1997, Joe wrote: 
"In closing, I want to say that God is for you regardless of what you struggle with. When I was struggling over the issue of homosexuality as a new Christian, a friend kept telling me that homosexuality was not big enough to keep me from God. She encouraged me to pursue Him no matter what I felt about myself, homosexuality or even about God. She knew that my joy, my hope all would ultimately be found there, though the going would get rough. After living with AIDS for more than eleven years I know that she was right. I have more hope, peace and joy in my life living with AIDS and God, than I ever had in the gay lifestyle with a beautiful six-foot five man. We serve a great God!"

In March, he appealed: "Pray for us: As we love our abusers both Christian and non, gay and straight. Pray for my people [the gay community] that they might know God, enter into his peace and his joy and understand his acceptance. Pray that they would come to see that we are not against them but for them. That they would see we are not standing in judgment over them, but walking with them on a journey going somewhere!"

In February he wrote of his progressive illness: Like Steve Schalchlin, Joe knew what it was to be connected to a meter."  Well, several months have passed since I shared that I thought God wanted to heal me. I'm still not healed. Lately, I've struggled with lots of neurological problems again just like when I almost died last Spring. The doctors did an MRI and the images show that my brain is atrophying. I am getting worse. My first inclination is to make a joke here and hide my loss. But, the truth is that I ache with despair. It hurts to be so vulnerable, hopeful and yet disappointed."

His January newsletter showed me that Joe faces the same temptations that I do:"If we are faithful to the spouse that God has given us, then we are faithful in much. How we treat our wives is very important to God because it reveals our heart in a way nothing else does. I can manage to do right and look good when I'm in public. My ministry requires it. No one would support me if I was cruel and unloving to the people I meet or minister to. But, unfortunately, at home I am often a different person. Real integrity is about being the same no matter where you are. Real integrity is what pleases and honors God."

In December he confessed that he didn't know how to love.  "I must confess I don't know how to love. I haven't seen much of real love in the world to teach me. If I measure love by human relationships love doesn't mean very much. "Love" on this earth seems to be more about self-protection and getting what I need. If I measure it by the content of the TV screen or the music on the radio I would be more disappointed. "Love" there seems to be more about animal attraction and lust.

Yet there is something within me which cries out for something bigger, deeper, wider. There is a place within me that cries out for something that I have never experienced. I believe this longing, which nothing here on earth fulfills, means I was made for something else. I hunger and thirst so that I will be drawn to the one who I was created for. Thankfully, we do have an example of real honest-to-goodness unconditional love. We find it in God, who sacrificed His only begotten Son on our behalf. We find it in the example of Jesus, who laid down His life for us."

The first issue of Hallett's Pallet was written in the month of Joe's visit to Gustavus. "Getting married to Nancy was another milestone in my journey of faith. It was one of the hardest. I didn't only have my own inner voices of doubt and darkness with their incessant complaints and whines to contend with. Now I had most of the world chiming in too. Some people accused me of being a murderer and Nancy of committing suicide. I struggled to reconcile the one true voice encouraging us to marry with the shrill noise of the world around me. Many insisted that our inspiration to marry came from our sinful, lustful hearts and that we were outside God's will."

I have also read Dan Puumala's writings. In his May newsletter, describing a lunch with the pastor of a predominantly gay congregation, he asked rhetorically, "Do I have a right to question and put down and be generally disagreeable with someone who may very well, in fact, be doing Kingdom work? Do I know the mind of God? Might some people come into the Kingdom and grow in this gay church? Can God NOT use this church to build His Church? Some people who may be attracted to that church will undoubtedly fearfully avoid Outpost and other traditional, evangelical-theology based groups." 

Considering Steve C's story, and others like it, one would think that the notion that God is great enough to work through pro-gay churches would not be dismissed, even by those who believe that pro-gay theology is a Satanic deception. 

How good it is when we acknowledge that while we strive to know the mind of God, we see through a glass darkly. On September 17, 1997  the Rev. Canon A. Paul Feheley, of Fidelity, in a joint celebration of the Eucharist with the Toronto chapter of Integrity  preached,  "You and I owe God and each other a commitment to be open to hearing and seeing new truth, to risk our deepest presuppositions to know, believe, and understand that our thinking can and should be altered to the mind of Christ."

Melanie Geyer, author of Wisdom and the Messenger, says in her intro, "My hope and prayer is that each person who enters into this dialogue (including myself) will be open to learning and open to hearing the experiences of others."

And from my side of the divide , Candace Chellew, editor of Whosoever, writes in her intro, "Our individual work may appear contradictory at times, but if we'll earnestly and honestly listen to each person's perspective, maybe we can find common ground, and a way to reach out together to those in need."

In the Justice and Respect website, Tom Cole calls for the church to speak out against the abuse of gay and perceived-gay youth.

It is now 12:55 in Philadelphia and time to close this essay. And now I see where this is going  -- to a call for pro-gay people to repent of their treatment of those who have followed the ex-gay path. I am haunted by the unasked question in Steve's account of the Rochester Mass. 

The mass began, the singing was hearty and the joy was so thick you could touch it. We exchanged the peace. I knew the person to my right was lesbian from overhearing earlier conversation. I turned and we both looked at each other a little hesitant. Should we shake hands or hug? It was as if she wanted to say, "I'm lesbian, do you accept me as a person?" I thought to myself, "Gladly, my sister, but do you accept me? I'm what some call 'ex-gay'" After a brief moment's hesitation we embraced heartily, grinning at each other like kids with a secret. Unfortunately I had to keep mine. It wasn't the time or place.

Joe, may your prayer be answered. 

September 26, 1:00 pm EDT.