...is it blesses you.

I am being blessed in a circle of high school students at Community Presbyterian Church in Pittsburg, California.

It’s almost 10 PM at the end of my first workshop with Empowerment’s Safe Spaces Program for LGBTQ youth. For the next four weeks, I will be leading the group in Theatre of the Oppressed exercises to create a short forum performance for their family and friends on May 18th.

But for now, we are holding hands. To my right, a guy named Andrew cries quietly, his head bowed, his thin fingers very cold against my own.

“I started this youth group,” says Pastor Will. “Because I know that many of you all are spoken to with hate in the name of religion.”

My memory spasms, sensations rushing into me—incense and stained glass and long red carpeted altars. For an instant I am back in the Catholic church I grew up in, head bowed like Andrew’s for forgiveness. Lord I am not worthy to receive you, I prayed.

“The next time someone speaks to you like that,” says Will. “I want you to hear my voice instead of theirs, whether you believe in God or not, because God doesn’t make mistakes.” He looks out across the circle of hands through his square frameless glasses. Love pours into us from them; I can feel it filling up the cisterns in my chest.

“God loves you,” he says.

- - -

Earlier in the evening I had led one of my favorite exercises for gathering topics for forum scenes. I had distributed three slips of paper to each teen and asked them to write a problem on each.

“Something you are going through now,” I said. “It could be an old problem that keeps coming up, or something that just happened today. Either way it should be a pretty big problem, one that you don’t know how to solve.”

Once everyone’s written down their problems, they ball the papers and toss them anonymously in the center of the circle. I play a few games with the paper—we improvise a makeshift basketball hoop by looping arms together, and toss the papers through—but inevitably the game devolves into a snowball fight. Once all the papers are good and mixed, I ask everyone to go to the center of the circle and pick out three papers.

“Open them up,” I say. “And select the one problem that resonates with you most.”

I invite them, then, to share with the group what they chose, and why. Family recurs—my mother don’t respect the way I am, my parents can’t communicate with me. There is also bullying in school—ignorance. One teenager writes simply: gender/identity.

“My mother wants grandchildren,” says one and I think of my own mother, the way she used to look at me in my boy clothes and my bound chest and tell me that it’s like a death, like losing your only daughter.

We make it about one-third of the way around the circle before someone starts crying. The youth beside her lay their hands on her shoulder and I smile at her, trying to be a mentor but I feel like I’m breaking, too. I’ve only been out to myself for three years, I think. What am I doing here? What can I offer?

And then another voice, one I hope my bi people in the house will understand, said something about the boyfriend I have now, the sweet one who buys me flowers and chocolate and the Voice wants to know: who do you think you are? This space is not for you. You aren’t even gay (or ever were), you’re just confused. You don’t belong here.

- - -

Alright, blog-readers, you know the drill: this is the part where I’m honest, so we can learn. At the point in the evening I described above—the point where everyone was most open, emotionally connected and supportive of one another—was exactly the moment I froze up. I paralyzed. My heart locked up and my brain filled with noise because their problems resonated with me so much, I identified with the crying girl so much that I let go of the facilitator in me. I felt like a bystander in my own body.

You guys ever felt like that?

- - -

Things disintegrate. It’s late, almost nine thirty at night, and youth keep peeling off from the group to go cry in the bathroom. We take a break and I ask Dominique, the other adult leader, if I can walk outside for five minutes before we resume.

It’s a clear night, warm, quiet enough for me to hear the voices in my head. I breathe deeply and walk slowly and try to take myself a little less seriously. Of course I’m having a hard time. I’m a young facilitator, newly out, working on my own junk. I round the corner of the church and into the parking lot.

My brother’s getting married in two weeks. I bought the plane tickets a few days ago but now I kick a stone, listen to it skitter across the pavement and wonder how many of my relatives know I’m bi, or care, or will ask me things at the wedding. I wonder if I’ll be cool if they do.

I think about how much more comfortable I’ve felt with my family since I started dating a guy, and feel guilty.

I stop in the middle of the lot. I look up and there are so many stars. I hear another voice:

I’m so proud of you, Hector said a few weeks ago. You are finding your way, that is uniquely yours. Looking up at the stars, breathing the cold air, I feel finally like I’ve landed back inside my body. Still lost, my chest still a gaping wind-tunnel of doubt, but grounded at least.

When I get back into the space, I notice all the youth have returned and are eating food quietly together. A few dance out on the floor around an iPod. I find Father Will and pull him aside before we restart.

“I think we’re done doing big work for the night,” I say. “I’d like to lead a council circle, for appreciations, and speak a little about the logistics of our project.”

Father Will nods. He asks if I wouldn’t mind if he led a short interfaith blessing for the close.

A year ago my ego would have flared, wanting to establish my own special ending for the group. But I’m tired, and need a blessing, too, and maybe (maybe) have learned something over the past year about how to recognize the gifts a group has to offer itself.

“Of course,” I say. “That would be wonderful.”