Room to Burn
Everyone was already singing when I entered my very first Revoice conference.
Notes and voices rose and vibrated through the rainbow of stained glass windows that lined the room until the space was absolutely and completely radiant.
And then there was me, tucked away at the back of the balcony, hands twisting a nametag weighted by a sticker reading LGBTQ+. Looking over the crowd of glowing faces, I couldn’t help but feel some hesitance mix in with my awe.
Most of the spaces in my life have been overwhelmingly female or female-led. This room was the opposite. Sitting up there on the balcony, watching and longing to be a part of the glow, a question began to rise, a question I still ask in Revoice spaces, and I am sure many others ask as well.
Is there room for me here and the light I bring?
Growing up, fire was a valued source of light in my home.
Once the warm midwestern summer air would chill and the changing leaves alerted us with their burning hues, we would pull out a messy box overflowing with copper tubes, drilled wooden boards, and bags of wax. Guided by my father, my siblings and I would set about making candles as the days began to shrink and nights stretched. When the dusk finally spilled into dinner time, we embraced its darkness and switched to eating only by the light of those homemade candles.
I still am not quite sure where this tradition came from, but I assume that it traveled with my father from the Netherlands when he immigrated to the USA as a young adult. But wherever the tradition came from, it made the actual mechanics of a meal much more challenging. I’d be lying if I said nothing ever caught fire. But it didn’t particularly matter if we occasionally had to put out a small blaze because mealtimes were for togetherness, not for appearances or even eating. And if anything, my father felt that a little fire and heat was good for the soul.
Like the waxy pillars that defined the table architecture, active and sometimes heated discussions lit up our family meals, with frequent guests and friends joining in. Politics, religion, literature, opinions, debate, disagreements . . . we served it all. The conversations reflected our family culture, with a strong emphasis on European-Dutch values of open communication and togetherness. At this table, differences were seen as valuable, pragmatism mattered far more than individual ideals, and disagreement was not a threat but rather an expected sign of truly doing life together. As children, we learned that, like a candle, every person brings beautiful light and energy to a space. But not in competition with others, only in collaboration. Many candles are needed to light a room, to cast light upon the different corners and contents of a space. Many different voices and opinions are necessary to see a complex world. One small flame is not enough for understanding the world, nor is it nearly as beautiful.
But if we were going to have flames at the table, my siblings and I also had to be taught how to act and behave responsibly around fire. Flames must be attended to, as there can be devastating consequences when the glow transforms into something that blazes and consumes the oxygen in the room. Conflict and strong emotions were okay but dominating or dehumanizing another person endangered the sight and safety of everyone at the table. Amidst the lively, fiery discussions, we had a serious responsibility: to steward our impact for the health of the group. Because the thriving of the table was not someone else’s responsibility; in all its beauty and danger, it belonged to each of us.
It wasn’t until I left the childhood table and began to sit at the various tables of society that I realized ours was not the norm. Society’s tables had wildly different expectations for how people should engage and take up space. It quickly became apparent that these rules were not the same for everyone—rather they were dictated by various factors, including gender.
Around me, the boys were praised for their function and intellect, encouraged to burn through space and given permission to consume the energy and resources of the room. But the girls were not. They were praised for being quiet, kind, and thoughtful, not for having a tongue sharp with opinions and wit like mine. Too talkative. Too emotional. Too strong-willed. And it wasn’t just what people said that caused me to falter. It was also what I saw: the furious anger in the eyes of my male peers when I solved a math problem they couldn’t. They couldn’t be beaten by a girl, especially not a dumb blonde. I was a threat to their self-confidence. Confused and just wanting to be accepted, I eventually switched from fighting for room to soothing the burning glares and comments. I learned how to play dumb, and how to be nicer, kinder, and quieter. I learned how to take up less room at the table so that the boys could take up more.
When I hit middle school, I was introduced to a new set of table rules: how boys and girls should take up room regarding their sexuality. For our youth group “guys & girls” split discussions, the boys talked about pornography and masturbation and the girls talked about how we dressed and how to someday be a good wife. It was never acknowledged that girls were also sexual beings with desires that they were being asked to abstain from, just like the boys. Instead of discussing desire, I was encouraged to pray for my future husband and his struggles, a duty I faithfully tried and epically failed at. I was once given a card and instructed to write a letter to my future husband. I just sat there and stared at the paper. I didn’t know why (at the time), but I couldn’t think of a single word to write. I ended up hiding the card in my bookcase, where it sat for years, absolutely and completely blank. It was hard to parse out my own sexuality when the conversation for girls about romance and sex rotated only around supporting boys. Even years later, when I had one of my first dreams of being intimate with a woman, I was convinced that Jesus had given it to me so that I could understand and care for the struggles of my gay (male) friend who was trying to be celibate. I told him so, then promptly went back to reading lesbian fanfiction.
At home I was encouraged to bring my full self to the table, to take value in the light and insight I could bring to a room. But at church, the message was the opposite. Girls were supposed to be ornamental, a candle that was not actually for bringing light but just there to be positioned next to men, to look and smell nice. Decorative.
To be clear, there is nothing wrong with beautiful and fragrant candles. These candles are powerful; they have the same capacity to burn and bring light. But there is a problem when society dictates the type of candle a person ought to be, melts down people who don’t fit and tries to pour them into a prescribed mold. And, please hear me, I am not saying that when a woman is next to a man she is inhibited in her ability to shine. I am only saying that there is something wrong when the living souls of women are not allowed to burn. This can happen regardless of marital status, orientation, or relational role. It is simply our historical inheritance from a world that has only recently shifted toward considering women deserving of the same rights as cis-men.
Amid the confusing juxtaposition between home and society, I struggled through adolescence. Some evenings, back in the safety of home, I would creep outside to stand barefoot in the quiet of falling snow for as long as my freezing feet would allow me. I would beg God to please let me get sick enough to stay home from school and church, as I stared up at the drifting flakes and longed for the crisp air to fuel my flickering soul and give me some room to burn.
It turns out that Jesus is the ultimate flame-tender.
All across scripture, we see that Jesus navigated many dinner tables during his time on earth. And everywhere he went, he coaxed the flickering flames of society’s discarded people back to life and corrected the blazes that had grown too large. He cared for people and showed them how to cast a light that would glow throughout history. A light that would disrupt the social systems. A light that could shine from any candle, regardless of size, shape, and type. A light that the darkness could not overcome.
This is clear in Jesus’ interactions with the Samaritan woman, starting with the fact that he goes to her. The scripture of John 4 reads that Jesus had to go through Samaria, even though Jews typically took a route that went around the country. In a scene that echoes religious forefathers finding wives at wells (Isaac, Jacob, and Moses), Jesus waits by a well, and along comes the Samaritan woman.
They could not be more different. Jesus held societal power as a man, a Jew, and a religious teacher with disciples. The Samaritan woman held few societal rights as a woman and was considered by Jews as ethnically inferior and ceremonially unclean. But Jesus, stewarding his privilege, invites interaction with a startling request to receive from her. “Will you give me a drink?”
He shouldn’t be willing to even touch the same water vessel as a Samaritan, let alone drink from it. The woman is shocked. “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?”
Then Jesus flips the historic script of waiting-at-the-well etiquette; he is the one who ultimately offers water and the woman is the one who accepts it. It’s at this point that Jesus asks the woman to get a husband that she does not have and then lays out her marital history. “The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband.”
While we might read this as shaming or condemning, I am inclined to believe there is something else happening here. Because, at these words, the woman does not withdraw from Jesus in shame. Rather, she leans in.
Historical context offers insight on why this might be. Remarriage was frequent at this time and generally arranged by male family members for the advantage of the family. In opposition to frequent modern interpretations of this woman as an adulterer, a prostitute, or barren, both infidelity and inability to conceive would significantly damage a woman’s ability to remarry. A more likely explanation is that this woman had been divorced or widowed by five different men, at no fault of her own. And the man she was actively with was probably an arrangement of necessity for her personal and economic security.
Whatever her exact story is, it’s not condemnation that she receives from Jesus. Rather, I wonder if maybe his words whispered something to her soul like, “I know how you have been treated by society’s systems. I know what you have gone through. I see your personhood and the flame that burns within you, even though the world has neglected it.”
Jesus goes on to reveal the truth about his own life, just as he had revealed the truth about the woman’s life. “I, the one speaking to you—I am he [the Messiah].”
It’s this Samaritan woman that he honors with the revelation of who he is. He sought her out from the beginning, he had to go through Samaria to find her. She belongs at his table, not as an object to be used and passed around, but to shine and share light to new and beautiful corners, to her whole town and throughout all history as her story is read again and again.
I cherish having a seat at the Revoice table. It is a table where I do not feel the pressure to look or act—or sit—a certain way. Having a place where I can just be is one of the most precious gifts I have ever received. I see the daily influence of this gift all over my life: the calendared meetups with my “Side B” queer friends, the rainbow bracelets on my bedside table, and the now-short hair in my reflection. I never knew how much I needed a space to just exist as a queer Christian.
But as thrilled as I am to be at this beloved table of Revoice, I am not sure if there is room for me to safely bring my flame to our majority male space. We have a table vibrant with furious discussions and enthusiastic gesturing and flames that are bright and beautiful. But the presence of flames does not mean that we have mastered the skill of flame-tending.
I deeply value there being a space for my gay cis-brothers. For those of you reading, you matter to me, and I want you to have a place for your presence and personhood to blaze. But at times, I have felt that same heat singe my skin, pushing me back in my seat, away from the table we are supposed to share. I struggle to lean forward because, as much as I love Revoice, I already have plenty of burns from navigating male-dominated spaces. And I don’t always have the energy to push back both the socialization that lives within me and the untended flames of others. I long for my brothers to pause, like Jesus did, and to steward their impact for the thriving of the table. I long for my brothers to use their voices to create room rather than fill it. And I want to do the same for others, with the many areas of privilege that I also hold.
Because, in my fiery soul, I have a hope that burns brightly. It is a hope that, like Jesus approaching Samaria, we look toward the dim corners of our table and know that we have to go there. Not to dominate with our own fire but to see and tend to the flames that have been neglected, both by society and by our own community. The flames of women, of Black people, of Indigenous peoples, of people of color, of trans* siblings, of aro-ace folks, of those with disabilities, the flames of all of the intersectional corners of our table. I have this hope that, like Jesus, we learn to steward our presence and impact to tend to the personhood of another. Because the thriving of this table is not someone else’s responsibility. It belongs to each of us.
And just imagine the beauty of more candles and corners being lit at our table.
We would glow even more brightly, with a light nobody could bear to look away from. A light that disrupts systems of society. A light that the darkness cannot overcome. The light of Jesus.
From Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones by Bill Henson: Cisgender (or cis) describes a person whose internal sense of gender identity corresponds with their birth sex.
The Samaritan Woman's Story: Reconsidering John 4 After #ChurchToo by Caryn A. Reeder (2022)
From Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones by Bill Henson: Asexual (or ace) [describes a person] experiencing minimal to no sexual attraction to other individuals. Asexual people can experience a range of romantic inclination, from none (aromantic or aro) to some (gray-romantic) to full (romantic)
