Preview: Queering Advent

What this episode covers

Queering Advent is a guided audio experience for this time of waiting, dreaming, and preparing as we hope for and work toward liberation and salvation. Rituals and liturgical seasons like Advent are invitations for us to re-center on what is most important to us. This winter, journey with us through Advent to deepen your awareness of and commitment to the connections between queerness and faith. Learn more and register at queertheology.com/advent An Advent practices that enriches your December, rather than stresses you out Brian & Shannon will offer a deeper reflection each Sunday of Advent—a mix of teaching, queer insights, and questions to consider. Then, during the week, you’ll get a short audio guide—shorter readings, reflections, prompts, and experiments— delivered right to your podcast app or available in our community hub. So that you move through this season with intentionality and contemplation. Feel steadied and reassured in these trying times. And a greater inspiration for how our faith can speak a good word to your personal life and our communal systems. All for $25 — that’s just one dollar for each day of Advent. Register here: queertheology.com/advent This transcript was generated by AI and may contain errors or omissions. 0 (0s): Hello. Hello. We are just a few days into Advent, and I wanted to make sure that you knew about Queering Advent, a daily guided audio exploration of Advent so that in this time of winter waiting, you might be able to draw closer to the Divine, also to draw your queerness and your faith closer to one another as part of Queering Advent. Each day there are short audio reflections on weekdays, they’re five minutes or less, and then on Sundays it’s a little bit longer of a conversation between myself and Shannon on the different themes of Advent. You get them in a private audio feed that you can put in the podcast player of your choice. 0 (41s): So if you’re listening to this podcast, you already know how that works. You don’t have to remember any logins. You don’t have to sit at your computer. There are no screens to stare at. Just a daily dose of queer Faithful Reflections, meditations, and even some challenges and inspirations. We would love to have you be part of it. It’s just $25. That’s $1 for each day of Advent. You can learn more at queer theology.com/advent. And now I would like to share with you a preview of what you’ll find inside of Queering Advent. 1 (1m 12s): Welcome to Queering Advent. 0 (1m 21s): After I came out, it took my parents many years for them to come around and be affirming, and in those in-between years, I spent a lot of time waiting, waiting for them to accept me, waiting for them to say the right things, waiting for them to ask meaningful questions about who I am and the life that I’m really living. When I think about it, I also spent some time waiting on myself before I even came out waiting to be sure that this was true, waiting on the right explanation to confirm for myself that it was okay to be queer, waiting for the right time to tell my friends and families and coworkers and people that I knew from church waiting to feel comfortable being perceived as queer out in public, and even since I’ve been out as queer for over half my life at this point, which is wild to think about, and even still, I find myself in these periods of waiting to settle into my identity, to feel comfortable as a polyamorous person of faith to uncover new areas of shame that I still carry in my body to weight. 0 (2m 29s): For those to be excised and to feel completely comfortable. Psalm one 30 says, I cry out to you from the depths, Lord, my Lord, listen to my voice. Let your ears pay close attention to my request for mercy. If you kept track of sins, Lord, my Lord, who would stand a chance, but forgiveness is with you. That’s why you are honored. I hope, Lord, my whole being hopes and I wait for God’s