I guess it's time for me to stop assuming anyone has any idea where I'm coming from. I'm currently 76 years old and retired. I have sometimes jokingly described myself as a contemplative monk of the post-Christian era. The latter phrase describes my perception that we are no longer in an era when Christianity is the dominant force in our society.

Shortly after I graduated from High School I went to work because there was no money for college. However, my Methodist pastor arranged for me to begin studies for the ministry at a non-denominational school in Bangor Maine, while serving as a student pastor in small Maine towns. When I learned that John Wesley had no intention of starting another church I asked why I should stay where I was and went "back" to the Episcopal Church where I remained for most of 50 years. Along the way I spent a year in Seminary and nearly 5 years as a Benedictine monk, where I completed studies for the Episcopal priesthood. However, as a result of intimate problems with the superior, I left and therefore was never ordained.

I pursued a course of studies in Rehab and eventually rose to executive levels in 2 successive state agencies. While in Arizona I was asked why I had never married. I thought for a moment, of the fact that I was tired of lying in answer to that question and also of the fact that, at the time my career appeared to be gold plated. So I responded that I guessed it might be because I was the kind of person they would call gay. I was not active in any way. I had carefully avoided acting out because I loved my work and did not wish to endanger it. I believed at the time that if I did act out, I was in danger of going to prison and sure of going to Hell. The room went silent, everyone found something else to do and over succeeding months 2 things happened. I got involved in Scientology because they convinced me they could cure me. In the early 70's there was nothing else but what Socarides claims to do today and I was terrified of turning to the Church. Second, my career was destroyed. My family eventually cut off contact, partly because I was being so weird and partly because they feared I would "infect" my nieces and nephews.

I survived, any way I could. My reputation followed me in every job I applied for and I eventually found out I had been "blackballed" nationally in the field of Rehab and would never again be able to practice the profession which I loved and for which I was trained.

For a time I was deeply involved in Scientology but finally came to see it for what it is and walked away. I have had two major "rebirths", one when I "came back" to Christianity and saw it in a depth and dimension I never had before and again, after reading Rev. Elder Nancy Wilson's book Our Tribe and did what Jarrel Rix names in his song "I met Jesus Down at Stonewall". I have spent years reading, studying, meditating and praying to try to understand why an obviously loving God would create me as something that so many people abhor and fear. The simplest answer I got is that the reason is essentially the same as the reason Jesus came and lived and died and rose again. When I "met" Him as a gay man, saw myself reflected in Him and the light of His presence casting away all the shadows I knew that I am meant from all time to be exactly who and what I am. I do not need to be "cured" but I do need to stay in constant contact with Him and to live my life by the light He has shined into my life. Everything I read points to my perception that God isn't anywhere near finished with what we are destined to be and that we SGA folks are an integral part of our future. But we have a long way to go to learn how to do that. I hope I am not preaching. I care and I care deeply that we find the way to be fully who God means us to be and wasting energy battling people who seem to fear change is a waste of time. I would rather "draw a circle" that includes them and get on with my life. The fields are white with the harvest.

Date: August 27, 1999
From: Rob Batten
Subject: An addendum to my intro for the website?

I've been struggling with this for several days and in profound prayer (struggle)? with God about writing it.. But my attention keeps coming back to this .

I came to B-A via whosoever.org having been a sometime monk and a committed contemplative, my spiritual life is literally something that I do "in the closet" as Jesus suggested. However, my MCC pastor recently asked me to "give my testimony" at a Sunday evening service.

I did not look forward to it any more than I look forward to doing this. However, I simply said to God, "I can't do this. You're gonna have to" and when the time came I opened my mouth. God gave me all that I needed to share with those folks what God wanted them to hear.

When I was 18, at a Sunday evening service in the Methodist Episcopal church in which I grew up, we were having a "hymn sing". I called out one last hymn, "Spirit of God, descend upon my heart... Perhaps the reader knows it. During the singing, I felt totally surrounded and caught up in a feeling of being loved, and I knew, not thought, I knew that God loved me, always had and always would and that nothing would ever take that away. This was at a time when I had been begging God to take away my sexuality because I didn't know what to do about it.

My life went on. My prayer life continued, with God leading me a little deeper every once in a while.

Then came the moment of disaster in which I admitted who I really am. The horror that followed was the way friends, family, professional colleagues not only abandoned me, but blackballed me so that I was unable to earn a living..

As I wrote earlier, I had gotten involved in Scientology. While I was there, I had some "out-of-body" experience. Later, when I came to the decision that Scientology was not for me and left, I had some further experience of similar kind. This happened while I was trying to deprogram myself. I had sought out help from various Christian clergy who had been part of m life earlier, one an abbot, another a seminary dean, a third pastor of a large urban parish. None were able or willing.

I did succeed, and finally came to where I could see that I had been involved not just in mind control, but in attempted "soul-stealing." Definition: leading a human soul into a place of inability to make choice and then taking control of that soul's decisions about life.

During the time my deprogramming was happening, I had an experience of being taken to where I could "see" what the human race could be like in 10,000 years. All I can recall of that was making the observation that I finally could understand why a man named Jesus thought that was worth dying for, and that the least I could do is to live for it.

The years went on. I found ways to feed and house myself and tried to find some place where I could fit. Meanwhile, I continued my spiritual practices and prayer life. I came to see that the Bible, for me, is a wondrous record of the experience of a people in their relationship with the Creator of all that is. But I also saw that it has to be seen in the context in which it occurs, that it only has meaning in relationship to human life. I read everything I could find that helped me to do that, and also would help me to understand my life in relationship to that and to the world around me.

Two books have been benchmarks for me, in addition to the Bible. One is Jew and Greek by the late Dom Gregory Dix of the Order of St. Benedict. I had the wondrous gift of having been his "gopher" when he was visiting this country and to have typed the original manuscript as it came hot from his hand. It was only 30 years later, when I found a copy (it is now out of print) and came to see how profoundly it had shaped my life.

The other book is Our Tribe by Rev Elder Nancy Wilson, pastor of Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles and a mover and shaker among queer Christians.

Dom Gregory's' book showed me the absolute need to be aware of and to value a multiple viewpoint of reality. Only that way could I see that my being gay, not by any choice of mine, could be considered part of God's plan for creation.

Dom Gregory points out how the first generation of Christianity took shape, not out of a coming together of Eastern spirituality and Western philosophy, but by pointing human thought to a higher reality than either had been, which has become what we know as Christianity. This began to open my mind to the incredible wonder of what God has in store for us when the children of God decide to grow up and find out what being a child of God leads to being. 

Nancy Wilson's book opened my eyes and heart to the fact that there is no such thing a "the" Bible. There are a multitude of translations of many manuscripts, put together and sanctioned by a number of authorities and open to many differing interpretations. But the crowning glory for me was a moment in which I "got" what must have happened to Paul on the way to Damascus. And in a flash I "saw" Jesus as the agent of all that is, the light of truth that illuminates all human thought, that burns away all that doesn't belong and then lets us see who we are, reflected in Him. In effect, I "heard" Him say, "Look at me, not at them, I made you for Myself, not to please them. Look at yourself reflected in Me. Follow Me!

As time has gone on, my heart and mind have been opened to new levels of truth in all that I have known about my faith. I came to see that what God is telling us will always be more than we are able to hear. I had been trying to see God in an old black and white, monaural TV and God had given me a new HD stereo, color set! And then led me to B-A. Why. I figure God will tell me when I am supposed to know. But I do know that there have times in my journey when what God has opened to me has left me aware of more than my limited mind knows how to know. Some of that relates to why, in my perception, God has said to the human race, "You can have 90% to keep on doing what you're doing. I want a tithe, 10% off the top, to do a new thing. It won't be easy. And I know you can't. But I can. so start."