Why I'm Applying to Seminary

I just did something I never, ever, in a billion years thought I would do. I finished my application to seminary. To some in my life, this is not news. A trusted handful of you have been with me on this journey, helping me walk toward this decision even though I still have so very many reservations about it. To others, particularly those whom I met and became close with between 2010 and 2020, this may come as a bit of a surprise. Trust and believe, it shocked the shit outta me, too. 

I know that by moving forward with this decision, I stand to lose a lot. A lot of what I stand to lose I’m more than happy to be rid of - ego, complacency, a life centered around self. Some of what I know I will lose is already breaking my heart. I know that there are some members of my queer community who will almost certainly view this decision as an act of betrayal and violence. And I understand why. Truly, I do. The institutional church has done some massively fucked up things that have irreparably harmed our community. There is absolutely no denying that. I see your pain, I have felt that pain myself. I have no intention of trying to downplay or ignore your experiences, nor do I intend to try to change you or your beliefs in any way whatsoever. 

Dear reader, you might have some questions about this new chapter in my life, and believe me, you’re not alone - I have questions I’m not even yet aware of. But I wanted to try to address one of the biggest ones that you and I probably share: Why? Why the hell would I do something like this?

The events and discernment process up to this point have been long and messy. I could write a book about it (and maybe someday I will - who knows) and it still wouldn’t cover the entirety. But there have been a few checkpoints along the way that have stood out. 

I was raised in the church, and when I moved to Philly for college I continued to go to a little Lutheran church on campus. The vibe at the one in Philly was actually a pretty good fit for me, being led by an openly gay man and filled with some diverse misfits from all walks of Philly life. (I actually met my first serious girlfriend there, although we didn’t start dating until well after we’d both stopped attending.) Throughout the last few years of my college career, life got more busy and church became less and less of a priority as I found my community connection needs fulfilled elsewhere in the world of drag and theater. 

Cue a movie montage of drag shows, night clubs, theater tech booths, TV hangs with friends in cramped apartments, and an increasingly alarming amount of alcohol and drugs. (You can put whatever track you want under this montage, but I imagine it’s set to “Bad Reputation” by Joan Jett.) This is a pretty solid summary of my mid-to-late 20s. It wasn’t all bad, and in fact quite a lot of it was good, and some of it was fantastic. But the last two years of this montage were pretty damn dark. It was during that time that I began to sit alone in my dark apartment late at night googling things like how to check yourself into rehab and if you needed insurance to do so. 

I never did check myself into rehab, although it probably wouldn’t have been the worst idea, to be quite honest. What I DID end up doing is going to my first meeting of a 12-step program that I swore I’d never attend because they seemed to talk about God WAY more than I was comfortable with. But I reached a point where I was sitting alone on my bathroom floor and asked “What the fuck do I do now?” to nothing and nobody in particular. It was supposed to be a rhetorical question, and it sure as hell wasn’t meant as a “prayer” of any kind. I didn’t believe in that shit, anyway. And yet....

And yet somehow the answer came to that question, and I ended up going to that meeting. And then, in spite of myself and my best efforts, I ended up going back over and over again and managed to string together some sobriety time. A few days, a few weeks, a few months, a few years. Somehow, I’ve been sober since the day of that very first meeting.

It took me a few years to accept this, but I don’t have any explanation for my continued sobriety other than some sort of cosmic intervention. Because, the thing is, I’d TRIED to quit drinking on my own. Oh, how I’d tried. I’d tried for years and years at that point. I did the “dry January” thing and detoxes and diets and I’d sworn up and down I’d never drink again more times than I could count. The only explanation that I have is that something bigger and more powerful than me was (and is) keeping me sober. 

By the time we were all locked up tight and sitting on our hands during the quarantine era of the pandemic, I had done a pretty effective job of turning “God as I understand God,” as the recovery fellowship I attend puts it, into “God that looks and sounds and thinks and acts and votes a whole lot like me.” And for a while that was good enough. It was the soft entry I needed into the whole spirituality thing in order to start working a program of recovery that involved turning all my bullshit over to that higher power. But eventually a self-serving higher power that never challenged my less flattering characteristics just wasn’t cutting it. 

During the pandemic, I started to get curious about the whole church thing again. I don’t know why. I found an old Bible in the bottom of a box during a cleaning binge, and for some inexplicable reason decided to hide it under my mattress the same way I used to hide booze. This still cracks me up and makes absolutely no sense to me. Like, 2020 Bee was a goddamn MESS. Not as much of a mess as 2016 Bee or 2013 Bee or 2004 Bee or 1998 Bee. But still a mess. Bless their li’l heart. Anywayyyy, stuffing the Bible under my mattress did little to nothing to help scratch that organized religion itch. Go figure. So I again turned to googling shit late at night. This time it was less about rehab, more about liberal, queer-friendly, progressive churches and where to find them. 

Since everything was online, I figured it was probably best to start far away from Philly so that FOR SURE nobody would know me there. Because apparently the stories in my head were that it was shameful to go to a church where someone might recognize me from.... Life? I don’t know, y’all. Again, 2020 Bee didn’t have the most sound logic all the time. (See: the super toxic relationship I began and stayed in for over a year.) 

I ended up watching a few services for this weird-ass church in Denver called House For All Sinners and Saints that was actually pretty dope. It didn’t seem like any church I’d ever been to, and yet the cadence of the service was comfortingly familiar. I started out just sort of stalking them on Facebook like a creep and watching their services there. But then one Sunday I went to click the link to their Facebook Live jawn and accidentally hit the Zoom link instead. After about 30 seconds of sheer panic, I realized nobody knew me here and if it was horrible I could just leave the meeting and never go back. But it wasn’t horrible. It was fine. In fact, it was better than fine. It was really quite good. I basically became a member of this church for the rest of the pandemic, and am still kind-of-sort-of-maybe-a-member-ish-type-thing even though I live in Philly??? Hard to say. I hang with them and they hang with me and we seem to like each other.

By the time the world reopened I’d moved to Center City Philly and decided to try and find a local church. Talk about scary! I’m visibly queer, under the age of 70, and pretty thoroughly covered in tattoos, so I turned quite a few heads in some of the rather traditional congregations I visited. Eventually I made my way back to the same little church I’d gone to in college. It was lovely to see and recognize and be recognized by a few of the people I knew from way back when. 

At this point I had a church community that was lovely and full of very nice people who were happy to get into nerdy theological conversations with me, and I had my recovery community where I could talk about my more fucked up experiences and how it shaped my spirituality without them clutching their pearls. I ended up asking some of my friends from the recovery crew if they wanted to do a Bible study where we could just be ourselves and disagree with the scripture and ask questions without being made to feel stupid or ashamed. They said yes. And then after about a year or two of that, one of the women who attended regularly asked the wildest question I’d ever heard: “Bee, have you ever considered starting a church?” 

Now just who the hell did she think she was?! And more importantly, who the hell did she think I was?! I bristled with rage inside, laughed it off on the outside, and tried to ignore the room full of eyeballs looking at me. That question kept nagging me. And nagging me. And nagging me. It was a pesky fly that wouldn’t leave me alone, but boy did I try to swat it away. 

Then, on a truly horrific day in October 2021, I learned that a beloved friend that had been instrumental in helping me develop a much needed queer community and chosen family of drag artists had died. Nick was the first friend I made in the gayborhood, the first to notice me hiding in the back corner of dark bars watching drag shows with awe and amazement at the blatant celebration of queerness. We shared many laughs in the makeshift tech booth of that sticky dive bar. Although I hadn’t seen him since before the pandemic began, my world was rocked. Grief flooded in. I’d lost people before, but all of the prior losses had more or less made sense. Illness or age had taken most of them. Our drag community came together to plan a memorial service. We threw a memorial drag show in one of his home bars. It felt holy and healing. As I wept with, hugged, grieved with, and had deep and meaningful conversations with my community in sorrow that night, my dug-in heels resisting that call began to loosen.

Eleven months after Nick’s death, just as the grief began to fade, our community was hit with another tragedy. A young queen in the city, Valencia Prime, whom we’d all known and loved like a kid sister since she was a teenager, died on stage during a performance. She was 25 years old. She was a Black trans woman. She was a drag performer that died during a show. Her death made international headlines. The comments sections were a dumpster fire of hatred. At least one comedian made a joke about her death. The pain of the Philly queer nightlife scene was exploited and amplified. I reached out to my community as much as possible, trying to find words of comfort, or just listen to their enraged rants. 

Her funeral was one of the most appalling experiences of my entire life. (That is genuinely the kindest way I can put that.) When I walked into the viewing before the service I thought I was in the wrong place. The name on the casket was a man’s name. The person in the casket had no makeup, a shaved head, and a man’s suit. It wasn’t until I saw my friends, looking as angry and distraught as I felt, that the truth set in. The funeral service itself was even worse. Male pronouns and her birth certificate name were used throughout. The eulogy message barely mentioned her. The preacher had clearly never met her. He implied that she’d be going to hell for her “lifestyle” and it was too late for her, but the rest of us should get right with God and turn from our sinful ways while we still could.

Of the 150 or so people at her funeral, about 50 were her biological family. The other 100 were queer and trans folks from the gayborhood nightlife scene. For many of them, walking through the doors of a church was a risky and painful experience in and of itself. It was a sacrifice they made for their friend, their sister. And that day many of their worst fears were realized as old traumas and wounds were reopened and new ones were inflicted. It is an understatement to say that I was fuming. I sat there shaking with rage thinking to myself, “She deserves better. We deserve better. These beautiful queer people crying with me deserve better. They deserve a pastor that understands them and sees them and loves them for who they are. They need a good pastor they can trust. They need someone that will bury them under their real name, not just a government name.” And as I sat there with those lyrics playing on repeat softly in the back of my mind, they were interrupted by another louder thought. “Ohhh shit! Seriously!?!?” I sighed and accepted what I’d been running from and pushing away for so long. “Okay. Fine. Let’s do this.” 

I didn’t jump right into action, because, as I said, I still think it’s more absurd than logical. Like, given the volume of profanity in this essay alone, it’s pretty clear I have no business being a pastor. Like, AT ALL. And people who stopped getting to know me at any point in my past are probably likely to agree. Especially the people like my biological siblings and high school friends who will likely forever see me as nothing more than an emotionally volatile dishonest teenage dirtbag. (And, I mean, fair enough. If 2020 Bee was a mess, high school Bee was a goddamn dumpster fire in the middle of a trainwreck.) But I guess I’ve just reached a point where I can no longer care what others are going to say or think. I can no longer allow this decision to be made based solely on what is “logical.” Because logic has only ever taken me so far. Some of the best decisions I’ve made in my life have defied logic. (See: moving to Philly, getting sober, etc.)

I have watched too many people I love suffer devastating tragedies and try to wrestle with Big Questions with nowhere safe to turn for support. I have seen far too many people take scripture in vain and beat the plowshare of grace and love that it is meant to be into a sword to chop down their enemies. 

Enough is enough. 

I don’t believe I, or any one person, can change the institutional church. But I do believe and hope and pray that I can become a safe and responsible space and leader in my little corner of the world for my people, my community, my chosen family and friends - and hell, maybe even my enemies on a really good day - to turn to when they have the Big Questions. I won’t have answers. I don’t think anyone does. But I will gladly be in their corner for that wrestling match. It began as an idea, and grew into a hope, and has now become a bit of a dream. Dangerous shit. But it's worth pursuing, I think. I’ve done crazier things. Why not give it a whirl. 

So, dear reader, I hope that begins to answer your question as to why. As I said, there’s so much more to the answer. Much of it I’m not even aware of myself just yet. But as they say in recovery circles, more will be revealed.