The Queerness of Love

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, the primary meaning of queer is strange or odd.

Let's be honest, when you're behaving as your truest self, you're a bit idiosynchratic, somewhat quirky. And you are resolutely you, which is that, you are profoundly unique. This. This! THIS is to be celebrated, this is to be delighted in. This is to be witnessed and appreciated.

Authentic love is to allow someone to be fully themself and to cherish them, to support them, to root for them. How queer it is when folks let them be fully seen by others! How magically moving and connecting!

How marvelous it is for your quirks to be known and accepted. How much peace and safety it brings - whether lying naked in the arms of a lover, sharing a delightfully unorthodox meal with a friend, or cackling to an inside joke or sharing a silly dance tradition with a beloved family member.

How comforting it is to have a place where the nonsense of perfection falls away - to have a refuge from this cultural deluge of earning your worth. How world-shifting to be shown again and again your invincible preciousness - which is a transformative term taught by the mystic psychotherapist James Finley.

Love is inherently queer because it is inherently unique. Love requires listening. It requires getting outside of yourself and your comfort zone, both to show your oddities and blemishes and insecurities and to honor and protect others in their oddities, blemishes, and insecurities.

Yes, love protects. Our core uniqueness needs to be protected by ourselves and others, but our core uniqueness is meant to be shared. Love is risky; it is vulnerable; it is brave.

Biblical text speaks of love as patient, kind, not envious, not boasting, not proud, not selfish, not prone to anger, forgiving, honest, protecting, trusting, hopeful, persevering, and perpetual.

The Bible also teaches of love as more important than faith or hope. It teaches that loving God, loving ourselves, and loving one another are the most important mandates.

The Bible also teaches of our uniqueness, that we have distinct capacities to offer one another, and it also considers our splendidness - how we are awesomely and wonderfully made. It teaches how we need community, how we need each other, how we are meant to care for each others needs.

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My journey of romantic and erotic love for women does not exclude me from the virtues of love, rather, it makes me a better student and practitioner of love.

It might seem strange, queer, and odd to some, but anything new to you feels this way. These feelings are likely due to a lack of familiarity and fear that arose in communities choosing to shrink back from love in some sort of misguided act of self-preservation and control.

Talking honestly and openly to God about queer love will reveal that all love is queer, because we humans are queer, eccentric beings; and this is a beautiful, beautiful fact. It does steal from love, but instead enriches it.

We are better together in all our individuality as we honor each other's individuality. We each are made in the image of God, so we are Divine image-bearers. The fullness of God cannot be contained in a human, but we sure can reflect the Divinity of God, like how the moon reflects the sun. Our DNA is imbued with magnificent miracle. We are designed to live and thrive. We thrive in loving community. Me being me, you being you.

I wish this weren't such a hard, confusing journey, but as I go, pain and wounds of failed attempts at love, show me more clearly what Love is - WHO Love is! I then re-orient myself towards this more true compass.

Each day offers me myriad moments to talk to Love, to participate in Love, to grow in Love. Love heals those broken places in me. Love shows me that those wounds don't have to separate me from people, but can alternatively magnetize souls together in this bond of Love.

Love invites me to queerness. It whispers to me: "Will you be curious? Will you be brave? Will you be gracious and kind?" Each day, opportunity after opportunity emerges. When I expand my definition of love incrementally closer to Divine Love, I get to experience life more like the Divine Dance that Richard Rohr speaks of. I get to engage God like the poetic author of the Song of Solomon - in rapturous love. As I practice love with God, I practice love with humans and then this flows into loving creatures of the earth and the wisdom of the plants and the seasons. Isn't God in it all? How can God not be? What else sustains it?

It is easy to see what a lack of love leads to - the brokenness takes all forms. The remedy? Authentic love of each individual’s invincible preciousness (thank again, Jim, for this phrase that touches the Self deep within) heals us; it allows us to express our true nature.

You have specialness from God inside you that no one else has. No one else has the same combination, same intellect, same personal history, same view of the world, same talents, same beauty-detecting capacity, same vision for creating.

Oh, how I long for your queerness to grow, so that love might grow! You know you aren't meant to be bland. You know you aren't meant to be walled off. You know you aren't meant to be sarcastic and caustic and judgemental.

There is a vibrancy, a tenderness that longs to emerge and be expressed. Love longs for this for you, for us.

You, taking care of you, is taking care of us.

Your needs are unique to you. No one being can meet those needs and these needs cannot be met without your participation. Unmet needs cause suffering. Suffering separates us from Love. Love wants to ease our suffering.

Love is not small. Love is not weak. Love is not formulaic, nor ritualistic. Love is not fearful. Love is hopeful. Love wins.

In times such as these, don't forget - LOVE WINS. For love to win we must accept the queer - in others and ourselves.

1. What things are queer about you?

2. How might viewing the world through queer-tinted glasses help your love expand?

3. How might your love expand if others viewed you through queer-tinted glasses?

4. What practices are you starting or leaning into to counteract the barrage of broadcasts in the world that are not love?

May you always see the blessing.

-esb

P.S. - Thanks for being here. We’d love to hear how you’re doing & what you’re learning!

P.P.S. - All the art in these newsletters is mine, unless otherwise specified.

P.P.P.S. - I just started a “Becoming Divergent” playlist on the TEB (TheElleBottrell) YouTube Channel? This one is: “Neurodivergence: Library Edition” with a silly story about a recent excursion to the library. Three cheers for the library - hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray!