Uniting Network
the national network for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people, their families and friends within the Uniting Church in Australia.
Statement to the Church
Re-imagining Love: Embracing Our Strength - Daring 98 Conference
We, who are gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, transgender, and our families and friends, participants in the 1998 Daring Conference held in Sydney June 5-8, bring our message to the rest of the Uniting Church.
The theme of our conference this year has been "Re-imagining love and embracing our strength". This we have done as we have worshipped God, listened to each other, shared our stories, sung our songs and claimed the abundant life offered to us in Jesus Christ.
In the re-imagining of love, we affirm that
- God's love is wider, deeper and greater than the limits of the mind of human kind.
- This God is a "plump and passionate" God who gathers us all into a womb space, in response to a heart of generous and gracious love.
- The church will not be true to its Christ until it reflects in its life this infinitely loving God and until it sees in the rich tapestry of all human loving the image of God.
- The love which arises among us and between us is of God, the source of all love, and is expressed in many different ways, whatever our sexual orientation.
- Love which is respectful of others, self-respecting, and caring for the well-being of all concerned lives in wonderful variety and complexity.
- The Bible is the source of truth for us and gives us strength and inspiration, together with the rest of the church.
In the embracing of our strength, we say to ourselves and the church
- we weep for our church which, in its brokenness, forfeits our gifts; our colour, our exuberance, our solidarity, our time, our money, our theological insight and creative spirituality.
- the weariness in some parts of the church as it discusses our life is translated into pain for us because we may not rest from the truth of our life.
- the pain of we, the excluded, can never be matched or understood by those who exclude us.
- "Weariness" can be caused by many things, including indecision, fear and hate. Our experience is that the church, in the guise of "resting", allows the work of rejection, hunting and hate to proceed. For some of us, the relationship with our church and even God, has already been, and can be destroyed by this activity. The church at this point loses part of its body. It cannot be whole without us.
Inspired by the Spirit, we go on being the church which is called into life by a Christ who lays no conditions for the receiving of costly love. We will not rest, because to rest is to die and we are given the gift of risen life.
We claim our lives and give account of them in our gathering together of caring for each other, in writing, praying and telling our stories, in poems, songs and art.
We have formed a wheel of life, power and love in this sacred hour.
