Right before I left to come out to General Convention I was sitting at 3 Sisters - a local coffee place that I tend to frequent - and I got a call from a priest in my diocese. She wanted to wish me well on my journey to General Convention and tell me a story of her son. Knowing her son, as she told me the story I became so incredibly proud.
Her son is about 14 and for the past academic year attended a Roman Catholic school. He tried to be part of getting a GSA (Gay Straight Alliance) started at his school. He doesn't identify as gay, but is a wonderful ally. As soon as he started working, he started getting picked on. He started to face the same homophobia that so many of us in the LGBT community faced in high school. He picked up a cross that didn't have to be his own. He feels that there is nothing wrong with being LGBT, and feels that it is incredibly unjust that LGBT people have to face the things they do. At the end of the school year he, his parents, and some administrators form the school met to talk about all the crap he was taking during the year. They were working on giving him the tools to stand up for himself. He's now - if I remember correctly - off to another school and looks like he will continue his fight there.
There have been two phrases I've heard church leadership use to describe Ubuntu - this Convention's theme. "I in you and you in me" and "I am because you are". This young boy picked up this fight, made it part of him, because of what so many of us have faced and will continue to face.
I left for convention two days later holding this story in my heart. I left with with a real life example of Ubuntu.
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