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Being different/being creative

Speech at Forum's annual conference 1996, Oslo.

I have made some corrections in the manuscript before putting it out on the net, but preserved the oral style. Forum is a a network for european christian lesbian and gay organisations)

Introduction

Good afternoon, my friends. Well, there you sit, and here I stand. From the way you are sitting, looking at me, it looks like you are expecting something from me, something like a speech. I can tell you, there's nothing specially different or creative about that. So lets do something different and creative, and sing.

There's a lot of speeches I'm not going to hold this morning. First, I could give an overview over all the lesbian and gay artist through art and music history and then create a proud heritage of great art. Secondly, I could compare the art of lesbian and gay artist to those of others, to see if we could detect a spesific lesbian or gay art. Both of these would be very interesting, and also useful. But I'll leave that to others with more knowledge. I will talk to you as artists, and give some philosophical thoughts on being different and being creative and being both different and creative at the same time. And my focus will be the liturgy, the place were we are standing in front of our Creator and Saviour. My hope is that we will be able to integrate our differentness and our creativeness in our life and give expression to that. And the obvious place for that to happen is the liturgy.

Being different
So. Let's talk about being different. How do we understand ourselves as being different? There's a couple of ways to do that. One way is the dualistic approach: We are different from them. We look at our selves as a minority, different from the cultural mainstream of the society we live in. Then we might spot others, wich are different in the same way as we are, form a group of people that are different from them. In doing so, we get a feeling of strength. I am different, but I'm different together with others. We form a group identity, and each individual of that group can strengthen their identity as different. Then the group can make visible a counter-cultural movement. At certain stages of a prossess, this is a very necessary aproach. Minorities are often objects of discrimination and suppression. By forming a strong group-identity and with the force of a strong counter-culture it's much easier to stand up against massive and oppressive attacks from the the dominating mainstream society than when you are alone, marginalized and fragmentarized. But the dualistic approach also have a major drawback. It can be turned around and be used as a discriminating weapon. They are different. Then the mainsream society can spot out everybody that are different from a defined mainstream culture and place them at the fringe of society. Certain groups of people are of such a kind or behave in such a way that are not tolerated in the mainstream group. This approach is visible in a lot of racist rhetoric, but also in the church. I also think it is visible in certain texts from the New Testament. Like when the apostle Paul for instance say:

When Paul said this, then he appeals to a mainstream conseption of what is natural, and use the consept of un-naturalness to condemn people who are behaving different and opened the door for millenniums of discrimination.

There's another way, and that is the pluralistic approach. And beware my friends, I know a lot of you are students with enormous intelectual capacity, the next sentence are very banal: We are all different. Banal, but nevertheless true. This pluralistic approach doesn't recognize any mainstream society, culture or anything of that sort. It recognizes the differentness in all human beings. Being different is a basic condition of human life. The pluralistic approach challenge every attempt to make a "master"-culture who marginalize counter-cultures. This may sound like post-modern deconstructivism or relativism, but is not necessarily so. It can also be, simply put, a way of seeing all the differences as part of a larger picture, a patchwork or a plural unity. And the same apostle Paul offers a paradigm for this when he says "In the one Spirit we were all brought to one body...wether Jews or greeks, slaves or free". We just have to help Paul with extending the list: women or men, homsexual or heterosexual, black or red, old or young — we are all brought together in the one body of Christ. As the great thinker Gregory Bateson once wrote: "it's the difference that makes the difference".

When God created us, she created us in her image, and she created us as different. That means that God is different too. Well, theologians has said that for centuries, but many of them got it all wrong by implying that God are different from us. On the contrary, God is different like us. That means that God are woman, german, old man, child, chinese, lesbian, vegetarian, gay, creative, afraid, happy, in love...

— and a lot of other things as well.

I think it's time for me to play a song.

(playing)

Being creative
Now, let us talk about being creative. That's another basic condition for human life. We are created by God in her image. So we are by definition creative like she is. When we create, we do the works of God. And when we create, we are giving expression to our differentness, the godly image. Then we are opening up the well inside us founded by God. Creativity has a lot of ways. It has a lot to do with finding connections, unveiling new patterns, giving sound and vision to "the patterns that connect", to say it with Bateson once more. You might do that in words, written or spoken, in pictures or sculptures, in making love, cooking, finding solutions. I will use music as an example. Not only because I'm a musician, but because music is the language of the Holy Spirit. It is implanted in our hearts. Also, music is not trapped in the schismatic dualisms of the wordly language.

Some of you might say: "I'm not musical" or "I cannot sing". Every human being is musical, the whole nature is musical. It's not a matter of singing operatic arias or pretty songs. We are all born with a voice, our own voice. And I know it is there, because the Lord has put in our hearts new songs. Music is our most basic way of communication, although most people tend to forget that as they grow older. But if we listen carefully, we are all able to hear our own voice.

Music is the mother of all languages. Music is the organizing principle of language in that language are structured by rythm, sound and pitch. Music is the language of Nature. Many philosophers say that language distinguish the human being from the animals. I'll say that music is a language we share with the Creation as a whole. Listen to the birds, but also to the songs of wolves, whales and grasshoppers. Listen to the wind blowing through the trees, listen to the polyphonic sounds of the rainforest that changes through the day and the year. Listen to the water, to the rain, to the waterfall. Listen to the thunder and the fire. The nature got it's own rythm. If we want to communicate with the nature, we must learn the natures own language: music. Actually, it's more a matter of relearning, since this language is deeply rooted in our souls, it has been with us since the beginning of time. Music is our first language.

Before words were developed, people communicated through music. Before telephone and TV, humankind used various forms of horns and drums to send messages long distance. We learn this musical language before we are born, when we are in our mother's womb. As it is written in the gospel of Luke:

Here, in the womb, we are united with our mother through sound, through pitch and rythm. Here we listen to our parents' voices and learn the structures of the language we later will speak. Our first communication to the new world when we are born are not a speech, but a scream that all our later creative utterings are related to. As a baby we converse with our surroundings in musical ways, the first years of learning the adults language. Music is a very important part of our identity, in many ways. First of all: music is a way of expressing this identity, a way of expressing our selves. But we have to think of music in a broad sense. I think for instance of both crying and laughing as musical utterance. Through music we can carry out the most remote part of our souls. Music gets through were words comes to short. That's why there is so many songs about love. That's why there is so many songs of despair.

Music is strongly connected to memories. That's why there is so many record collections out with "Hits of the fifties", "Hits of the sixties" and so on.. We connect certain songs to certain events and people in our lives. If you were in love one summer, and you hear a song that was popular at that time, you will remember all these sweet things when you hear that particular song played on radio. Or maybe you only have bitter memories and turn off the radio. Since different styles of music are popular at different times, music also identify what generation you belongs to. Heavy Metal means something to the youths of today, but our parents think it's just a lot of noise. On the other hand we think of theirs music as boring.

When we are small kids, we learn a lot of children songs and nursery rhymes. Although most of us stop to sing these songs when we grow older, we still carry these songs with us. When we later hear these songs, they bring back memories of childhood.

But what I have said, is true for other ways of expressions as well. There are so many languages we forget in the process of growing up. When we are kids, we draw, we play, we dance, make noise, make up funny words and secret languages and create stories. Why is all this not a part of our liturgical life?

The liturgy
Lastly, let us talk about the possibillity of being different and creative in the liturgy. It doesn't look very good. The church room is structured basically in the same way as this room. You sit, and from the pulpit way up there you receive the Word of God, wrapped up in a language formed through two thousand years of male, theo-logical dominance. And you are surrounded by cold walls of stone. It is if as the world outside has nothing to do with the world inside. Behind those walls we hide, and there we keep our God. Yes, I know, a lot of you don't feel it like that. You might find a lot of inspiration going to church, and so do I. But still, I dream of a different church, a church with no pulpit, no seats, no ministers, a church where you can scream from the deep of your heart, were you can dance and play games, a church with no walls, so that God can see and hear us and we as well get a glimpse of Her.

And now my friends, let us sing out loudly and tear down some walls.

This church, this different church is not only a dream. We are that church. I'm not talking about a gnostic and esoteric mystical and invisible church within us. We are the living church in flesh and blood, the body of Christ. And we are going to celebrate that in the workshops afterwards and the liturgy tomorrow. As a matter of fact, we will celebrate this liturgy in a church without walls, were only the ruins are left. So we have to build it up again, with ourselves as the living stones of the new church. Here we will celebrate our selves and God as different and creative. I'm not going to tell you how, because thats up to you. It might be a little scary if you haven't done anything like that before. We sort of like to know what we are doing all the time, thats the way we are brought up. Don't loose control! Okay, we are trying to loose control, we don't know where it will end. But wherever it is,we believe that it still will be in the face of God. And whatever the liturgy will look or sound like, it will be a true liturgy, reflecting the different and creative people that's taking part in it. There will be no judge there, just you and the Holy Spirit.

I'm going to leave you with some questions for you to think about. The liturgy are divided in a number of themes, Introitus, Kyrie, Gloria, Imagio and Communio. What does these words mean? What does it mean to enter a church, Why do we go there what do we expect? When we say, Kyrie Eleison, or Lord, have mercy on us, what kind of pain does these words contain? Do they carry our pain? If not how can we express our pain to each other and to God in the liturgy? How will you praise God with your body? What does God look like? What smell do you associate whith the Holy Spirit? What would you really like to do when you are together with other people?

I will end with my version of a creation myth.

Thanks for your time.