The targeting of our queer beloveds continues to rise.
These are hard things, scary things, and we must not look away from them.
I think it’s no accident that since 2020, 5 brand new pride festivals have popped up around us- Endless mountains pride, Elmira pride, Valley pride, Cortland pride, Ithaca pride. because we need one another. Because we know the way we are going to get through this is the way our queer elders got through tough times in the past- we stick together, and we show up for one another, and we demand our human rights. We insist not only on our right to exist, but our right to thrive, to be creative, to be heard, to be joyful.
The very first pride march, was on the anniversary of the stonewall uprising - Christopher Street Liberation Day March on June 28, 1970. Thousands marched from Greenwich Village to Central Park in New York City. I remember hearing some of the original organizers in a documentary talking about the intentional choice to bring the vibrancy and color of the LGBTQ community out into the streets, “It was raw, bold, and brave—a visible, public declaration: We will no longer live in shame.”[iii]
When Gilbert Baker made those first rainbow pride flags back in 1978, he succeeded in creating a beautiful new symbol for the movement, and that colorful rainbow, has changed over the years to become more and more inclusive, today inspires straight allies as well. I know one member of the Cortland church, a straight cis woman, said she chose Cortland UU because they had that flag on their sign, that told her something about who we were as a church. It’s a symbol of inclusivity, and a community where we strive to be our authentic selves together.
At its root, pride is about claiming that right to live who we are. But there is a beauty, a color, a joy that is unique to pride celebrations. The organizers made a decision, back in the first planning meetings, and embraced by all who celebrate pride, that pride could be creative, it could be beautiful, it could be joyful.
“Joy is an act of resistance” wrote Black poet Toi Derricote[iv],[v] which at first seems like an odd thing to say. Isn’t joy just a spontaneous response to something good in our life? But there are so many ways our society can diminish our opportunities for joy, as we try to be the person others want us to be, as we try to fit into cultural norms. As we try to live in a system that seems increasingly willing to sacrifice the health and wellbeing of ordinary people to increase the wealth of billionaires. And so when we are joyful despite all of that, when we create sheltering spaces that feel safe and worthy to share joy together, we are resisting all those cultural forces that don’t care about our joy, that don’t make space for our joy.
When I hear that phrase “joy is an act of resistance” I feel the truth of it.
In a minute we are going to sing a wonderful song written by Gospel singer Shirley Caesar which has also been adopted by the resistance singers.
This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me (oh, oh, oh)That’s so powerful- the idea that there is joy that the world doesn’t give us… so where does it come from? If you are a theist, perhaps it comes from the divine, or from some inner love of life. When I sit on my porch on one of those rare beautiful days, the plants seem joyful, the birds sing joyfully, the squirrels chasing from branch to branch as joyful as toddlers at the playground.
This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me (don't you know that)
This joy that I have the world didn't give it to me
The world didn't give it, the world can't take it away!
When that joy rises up from deep inside, perhaps it comes from our connection with the divine, with one another, with the interconnected web of life.
When I looked out over the Endless Mountains Pride festival last week, that special kind of joy came over me when I saw the incredible hard work and thoughtfulness the planners had put into that event. When I saw the little kids running towards the bubbles, with their parents trying to keep up behind. When I saw a group of young adults trying to figure out what the labyrinth was, when I saw the care the team put into making it a beautiful safe space for us and the community, the kind of joy that is deeper because we know what is underneath it, the hard work, the thoughtfulness, the defiance that in a time when LGBTQ folks are not feeling so safe, we come together anyway -- loud and proud, ringed by the endless mountains themselves like a big mother earth hug. Even as I walked by the security guards, and the EMT I thought “we keep each other safe”. Grounded in the truth of our world today, balloons and bubbles floating above, rainbow bunting decorating the rafters I felt joy well up from deep inside. Not just because those things are beautiful and festive, but because they shimmer with the love, the blood sweat and tears that built a moment like that. Do you know the kind of joy I’m talking about?
That kind of joy, the world can’t take it away. That’s the kind of joy that brings tears to my eyes sometimes, because it’s not just a superficial happiness, it’s a deep soulful joy that says yes to life.
The world can do scary things, the government can take away our rights, but we, in these beautiful pride celebrations, or when we gather in community on a Sunday morning, we claim a space where we remember that there is a joy the world didn’t give us, and we claim the space to hold that joy for ourselves and for one another. And we are surely not going to let the world take our joy away.
[iv] at the beginning of her “Telly Cycle” written 2008, https://rattle.com/from-the-telly-cycle-by-toi-derricotte/
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