Voices In My Head Episode 226: Rick Incorvati

Today's podcast is brought to you by Audible. Get a free audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle, or MP3 player. That's audibletrial.com/voicesinmyhead. Give it a try today. Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer-songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of The Voices in My head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I am your host Rick Lee James, and this week on the podcast we have another Rick, which is like Rick squared this week, which I'm pretty excited about. We have Rick Incorvati. Please tell me I said that right. You said that perfectly.

All right, good to be with you.

Well, thank you for being here today. Just a quick introduction of you, and I'm going to let you do most of your introducing just by telling us some of your story. But you are here in Springfield, Ohio, where I live, at Christ Episcopal Church. You are a deacon there, and you also teach at Wittenberg, which we'll look forward to hearing a little bit more about that. But you've been here, I think, roughly maybe 15 years, I'm thinking.

So here in, in, uh, 2002. Okay.

All right. I came at the end of 2001, so we've been here almost the same amount of time in this community. So our paths are intersecting. Uh, I, uh, a few weeks ago after the Charlottesville incident, just to give our listeners some background on this, and, and definitely I talked about it on this podcast because the whole world was sort of up in arms about that, um, and I got to hear you at the Charlottesville vigil that we had here in Springfield, which was actually a really beautiful night. I think there was, what, 250, 300, something like that. That's what the newspaper said. Good crowd of people and a nice lineup of speakers, beautiful weather.

Just all the planets aligned that night.

Something special was happening. It was very nice. And then maybe a week and a half ago, we had an event called Faith Community Unites that a lady in our community just had a burden for. And you sort of opened the evening that night, and I was playing some music, and you talked. And I hope you'll take this as the compliment I mean it as, because one of my heroes is Mr. Rogers. All right, I mean seriously, I've Yeah, there's been a couple really—

I'm a Muppets fan too.

Well, that's awesome.

Childhood television sticks with us.

That's right. And one thing I love about Mr. Rogers, and I mean, there have been a couple really good, like solid, even like the theology of him and stuff and his life as a minister. But one thing I love about him is he's always focusing on neighborliness. And I hope you'll take this as the compliment I mean it as. Both times when I've heard you speak, you've not only done a great job, but you have reminded me of like Mr. Rogers. Like, did this— and I mean that in the sense like there's a warmth and a comfort to people, you know. There's people that when they talk, they're almost like comfort food, you know, like that. And so I have felt every time that I've heard you speak, I've felt just a real kindred spirit with you. And so I've always appreciated that. So we had a chance to talk and just say, hey, we should get together and do a podcast because you've got a lot of interesting things going on in your life. And I'm looking forward to hearing more about your story as we talk because I think— Well, I appreciate you being able to do that. Um, my pledge has been, um, to listen to brothers and sisters in the church, and we do a lot of that on this podcast. And it's not always people in the church. We've had movie stars, we've had actors, we've had directors, we've had different people. But the thing they all hold in common is a journey of faith in some form or another. That, uh, and many of them come from many different walks of life. And we live in an age, and we live in a society where the church doesn't know what to do with gay Christians. I think the church universally almost is in this struggle, and for certain things, it seems like all of a sudden churches become fundamentalists, and they just want to quote scriptures left and right, and they'll, you know, say things like this. And other times we claim, "Oh no, we've moved beyond fundamentalism, and we don't want to be there," and yet somehow we still get stuck on certain issues. And you are the director, and are you also the the founder of Equality Springfield?

Yeah, organizations come together because there's a spirit in the community. And so founder feels like too much is being said about what I did. But there was a dinner at my house.

Okay.

And some people who were interested in having a voice in the community came together around that dinner. I think that was around 2009 sometime. And just had ideas about the ways that LGBT people might be represented. I think one of the big marks of a community, too, is their policies on discrimination. And so there was some interest in being a voice at City Hall and seeing if we could join those communities where we said firing and evicting was conduct that we didn't want to extend to our LGBT citizens. So we tried to start that dialogue and kind of formed a broader community in the process of being that voice. I mean, it's an ongoing conversation in Springfield, as it is in many communities. But by starting that organization, it was a gift because there were people who came into my circle, and I'm sure into other people's circles too, who otherwise may not have met, may not have had an opportunity to get to know each other and, and to try and be voices of change in one way or another.

Okay, very cool. Well, I'm looking forward to hearing your story. That's really what— just so our listeners will know, that's what this podcast is about tonight. I, I am always interested in hearing stories of people because when I hear their stories, oftentimes I am enriched and my own views begin to open up and see things in new ways. And so I wanted to talk you because you're actually a person I highly respect in the faith community. And not just you, but people I respect talk about you with respect. And so I'm getting to know you more, and I'm glad to have you here to tell some of your story tonight. And so what I'd like to do, if we could, and you can go as far back as you want to, but I'd love to know a little of your, like, your beginnings, where you come from, maybe what your faith background is, and you know, you can go to as little or as much detail as you really want to, but you didn't start out in Springfield, Ohio, but somehow you're here now, and you're on staff at a church, but you're also a teacher at Wittenberg University, which you've had to do a lot of study to get to that point for sure. So why don't you start wherever you want, maybe just, you know, as a child, give us some of your backgrounds and just start telling us some of your story. If it's okay, I might interrupt here and there with questions along the way.

Yeah, please do.

But okay.

Before I get there though, the hearing stories about a person, that may be in part due to the person, but it's also a Springfield thing. One of the reasons I've enjoyed living in Springfield, because I feel like I've known you in part at a distance, just from some of the same coffee shops we hang around. We've just been moving in circles that seem to— I mean, we're going to intersect eventually.

Sure, right.

So I was glad when you said, "Well, come on by and let's have a conversation." Yeah, well, in this, this community, I'm, I'm thankful.

I feel like it is sort of a tight-knit community with people that I, I felt a lot of love here. And I— we've got a bad reputation, you know, like we keep getting the saddest city in America. And you know that there was a list a couple months ago, the most white trash cities in America. We were the top 10 or something. But, uh, I, I like our community and I love our people here. Um, so yeah, like, just kind of start where, where are you from originally?

Yeah, so I, uh, I grew up in a town that was not too different from Springfield. It was Barberton, Ohio, which is on the south side of Akron. And Barberton, you could kind of cut Springfield in half. Springfield's about a 60,000 city, Barberton's about a 30,000 city. But it was called the Magic City because it had this industry that powered it and everyone was very proud of, in the way that Springfield is proud of its industrial past. So I grew up there in that magic city, and I grew up in the house that my grandpa built. My dad was captain of the football team and my mom was the head cheerleader, and they were living in that house. So very much part of our community, and the church as I was growing up was the Episcopal Church. And this is not an unusual story. Where you have one spouse who's Catholic, another spouse who's Protestant, and if they're dead set in their ways, they're going to find some happy medium in between. And the Episcopal Church has always been that church that maintains a lot of the Catholic traditions, but some of its theology tends towards the Protestant Reformation, or grew out of that moment. So my mom and dad found a home in the Episcopal Church. And I grew up doing a lot of the things that young people do in the church. You go to Sunday school and always wonder what's going on during the sermon time when you're not there. You know, think something mystical is happening that the kids can't be around for. And then drive home and get donuts at Krispy Kreme on the way home. So there was a lot of tradition.

There. So it was a magic place if it had Krispy Kreme, right?

It was. See the things you remember. I forget all the sermons, but I remember that piece. And so it was part of the family routine. And I don't think, like a lot of things in life, I don't think I felt the full dimensions of that till I got older in my life. But I had a good youth. I was you know, uh, have never wanted for friends in middle school and high school. Um, but there— I always knew I was gay. At some level, I always knew that was there.

Now you say always. Can you remember an age where you, like, started? Because I always wonder, because I'm not sure children always are even aware of that at all. It's at some point, you know, like my son right now, he's 4, and I'm not even sure he's aware of much of anything other than the toy he's playing Yeah, and you got to be careful because anything that you're gonna say about yourself when you were 4 years old is a retroactive thing.

Yeah, you're gonna go back and make sense of something in a way that maybe at the time you wouldn't have made sense of it. And yeah, I certainly agree with the idea that like sexual orientation wasn't an experience at that moment. But there were, there were interests that I had, there were people that I was interested in. I would watch TV and just kind of identify with certain personalities in a way that when I look back on it now, that's how I connect the dots, I guess. And like any other teenager, I think middle school is that period where, okay, if you had any questions, they're over now. Yeah. Yeah. So that's when I knew.

And And it's such a hard age anyway. I mean, you're just— everything's forming and nothing seems— there doesn't seem like there's much of any solid ground in life. I remember, oh, I hated those years so bad.

And I'm going to give my age away, so this would be like the late '70s, somewhere around there, that I was in middle school. And I can honestly say, in my town of 30,000, person. You could look around and not find one person who was openly gay. So as far as there being role models, none. Yeah. And if you're feeling this in yourself and you know that there's, there are these words out there, there are sissies and queers, and I'll just leave, you know, everyone to their own imaginations to find the other words. And you know on some level when my friends say that they mean me.

Yeah.

It's, you know, you've got to put that away. You know, you've got to find some other avenue. And so a lot of my junior high school and then high school experiences involved doing the quote-unquote right thing, you know, and having the girlfriend and going to the dances and not feeling that it was ever natural to me, but knowing that was the only alternative at the time. I've talked to other people in my own generation and we had the same story where the only person that we saw in the media at that time was Billy Crystal, who was a character on this sitcom.

Soap. Soap, right.

So that, as much as it was farcical, was like this person that was out there owning it, saying, "I was gay on primetime TV." It was a fictional character and no one in in the sitcom soap was someone that you wanted to identify with necessarily. But I think that's a sign of the appetite that's out there. Mm-hmm. You're trying to find a way to live your life and you need role models to say what you're feeling is valid. Mm-hmm. And I really think a lot of people in my generation just grew up at a time where that wasn't available. Mm-hmm. It was not an option. Now, it was for some people there before these years. There are enclaves in cities like New York and San Francisco where I think some of the people who just were dead set that's how they were going to live their lives. They knew they had to go there and find those urban centers where community would await them.

Can I stop you for just one second and we'll get back on your story? Because I used to be the youth pastor at this church and have dealt with a lot of teens over the years. This is where my heart starts to ache a little bit and start to think like, "I wonder what I could have done better?" Because I know that every church that I have served in, I always had teens that came forward that were in that junior high to early-mid high school area, and most of them came to me at some point, and thankfully they felt safe enough to talk to me, but many times just sitting in my office just trembling, not having anybody else to tell, and like literally terrified. And I remember one girl told me and the adult youth worker that were sitting there, you know, together, telling us that she was terrified to tell us that she believed she was gay because the last church she was at asked her not to come back until she was straight, you know, type thing. And so this is where my, this is where my heart starts tugging, because what you talked about with role models— and I want to ask you, like, was there anybody in your church that was helpful at that point? Because like you said, it was, it was tough, because I, um, I'll get teary thinking about it, um, but the number of kids who are seriously seeking after God in their lives and have felt like they couldn't because they haven't felt like their church, the sanctuary, was a safe place for them. And so I guess my question, to interrupt you for a second, did you feel like you had that at all in your home congregation?

I didn't have that. I think what I did have was a church where Sexual orientation wasn't an— I won't say it wasn't an issue. It was an issue, but it wasn't a preoccupation. Okay. So, I think I heard one sermon where I could identify, "Oh, part of the message here is it's bad to be gay." And I was— I don't know how old I would have been there. I think I would have been a young teenager at that point. So, I knew what was going on. I knew it involved me on a private level. And it didn't sink in that deeply. Partly because it wasn't a reiterated message. It was one sermon out of many that I would have heard, and that was it. My husband, who grew up very much in the the Christian tradition in the African American Baptist Church, in the Pentecostal tradition as well. Heard that message from various pulpits, not necessarily his home pulpit, but heard that message a lot. And so I think his relationship to the church is really an interesting one because he was, he is and was deeply invested in the life of the church. His family, his whole family was. So when those messages came across, they were of some consequence to it. Yeah, for me it just felt like, well, that may be one of the deal-breakers, but it's not a real big deal to begin with. So there weren't role models, but I think in the grand scheme of things, I was fortunate to grow up in a church that was fairly welcoming. There certainly wasn't the message that if you were gay, you you weren't welcome here, that you needed to straighten that out and then return when you wouldn't be a bad influence on others. That we didn't hear. I think I did grow up with this sense that there was a part of me that would be outside of the church. If I were going to make sense of it, the church was not going to be the place that gave me the language to think about that part of myself. And it sounds bad, and maybe it is bad articulating it that way. I'd like to believe that the church is fairly universal about our human nature, can speak to it, but it didn't feel like a bad decision on my part. It was just, if I were going to make sense of this, if I were going to integrate my sexual orientation in my life— and, you know, I think in my teenage years I never would have thought that that was the goal. The goal was to put this away and to live the life like all the other lives around me in my community.

Which is what many denominations would still say, and probably the vast majority of my denomination would probably still say that. Just kind of bury it and don't talk about it and do that. At the same time, we've I have family members, I have friends, I have people who are really struggling with it because they don't want to leave Jesus. They don't want to leave their faith community behind, and yet sometimes they don't feel like there's an alternative. So I think we're all learning how to— how can we walk this journey together, and how can we find Jesus together? So your story has taken us at this point up to sort of your junior high, middle school years, and your family's still active in that same Episcopal church. Episcopal Church, right? Yeah. So where does your journey take you from there? Let's say maybe college. I'm assuming you left home and— yeah, college.

And I went to John Carroll University, which is a Jesuit college just outside of Cleveland. So that was not a big help. So it was kind of the same deal where there were people there who I think were were— others would identify as gay.

Okay.

But no one who would self-identify as gay. Oh, okay. And so, and that's still early, you know, I went there in '83, was there between '83 to '87. So the world is changing, and but I would say the Catholic tradition is one of those that is drawn a pretty firm line about what's acceptable and what's not. And so that wasn't going to be a place where you'd find a gay student union or openly gay students being— I don't think they would have been reprimanded or ushered off campus in any way, but it wasn't a welcome.

Yeah. Can I just ask, as you're doing this and as you went there to study at a Jesuit university, were you feeling a call to ministry? At that time?

No, you know, I think I may have had a call to ministry. I think I did early on when I was young. I liked church and we had this wonderful, just loving father of a priest at St. Peter's Episcopal Church. So who wouldn't admire him? You know, he just said all the right things. Said the right things at all the right times. He was big and gracious, had his feet on the ground. He wasn't, I don't know, overly— didn't come across as sanctimonious in any way. He was well suited to that job. But there was something about his role that was appealing to me at an early phase. But I think when, like, in high school that itch wasn't there, and in college that itch wasn't there. And I probably went the way of a lot of college students where my thoughts turned mainly secular. Yeah. And the sexual orientation would have been one piece of that, where, you know, I think I needed to turn elsewhere to find the language to help me make sense of it, find the voices that I could listen to. But in other ways, I'm not sure that the church was always as good as it might have been. I should say the church that I was in contact with, giving me the language to understand the world around me. I just felt like the secular world was coming into my head and organizing my experience. It was rewarding and remains rewarding in some ways. So yeah, I didn't feel the pull to go to church regularly. Kind of my academic thinking became more central to my life at that point. Okay.

And so your studies then led you to— what was your major then?

Yeah, there's an odd thing.

Yeah.

It's really a detour.

Oh, okay. And we don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I'm just curious.

I'll try and give you the short story because it can be a long story. My major is in marketing. My degree is in business administration. Administration.

Okay.

And, uh, here's where I really want to thank the Jesuits. Uh, they want their students to have philosophy and lots of philosophy. So I had one more philosophy class to get out of the way before I graduated.

Sure.

And I took this 19th century European philosophy class in my first semester senior year, and it was like the, the moment, you know, like, oh my gosh, ideas! Yeah, just want to work with ideas and play with ideas. And you know, you start being aware of your mortality and say, well, what am I going to do with this life that I have? Being drawn to big ideas just seemed to be important at that moment. And I thought, well, you know, Mom and Dad were helping me pay through, pay for college, and I wasn't going to go to them and say, oh, I think I'm declaring a different major. Yeah, I'm going to be off and be a poor philosophy student. So I graduated and I worked for a year and in sales. I was in Cleveland and St. Louis. And after about a year, I called up some of my fraternity brothers back at the college and said, I'm quitting my job. I'm going to Cape Cod. I'm frying seafood. And I'm reading Moby Dick. Who's coming with me? And 5 of us just went out to the Cape and did the kind of go find yourself summer.

Sure. Almost who would it be? Hemingway would be, you know, become a man. Go out and— Yeah. Or who was it? Was it Walden Go Build a Cabin? Or, you know, things like that.

It was that time.

Yeah, it's a good time for it though.

I mean, yeah, perfect. Yeah, it was perfect. So, um, I'm grateful to just having the courage to do that when life, I think, could have very easily taken me another direction. I've been perfectly happy there, but, uh, that's when I thought, well, English may be the way for me to in the company of ideas, and maybe more suited to the way my mind works, too. And it turned out okay.

Sure. Well, great. So how do you— you know, you— we all have different roads that take us to where we are, but you're back in the church now.

Yeah.

And you're serving again. So I'm curious about your story of, of sort of following that call back.

Yeah.

And especially in— and let me ask you this, because you grew up in an Episcopal Church and now you're serving in Christ Episcopal Church. Are those— I'm always curious about our stories because sometimes I think, I don't know if I'd be in the Church of the Nazarene if I wasn't raised in the Church of the Nazarene, but it's where I'm comfortable and it's where I've found myself. Um, tell us sort of about that part of your journey of like coming back to it again, because And that is my favorite part of my story.

There's this great book out now that I really recommend. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a book called Between the World and Me.

Yes, read it.

And so he talks about being poor and in Baltimore, and then he goes to Howard University, and he calls Howard his Mecca because it was when he was at Howard that he saw all these different walks walks of life, different things became possible. He intersected with another group of people. And for me, that was the University of North Carolina.

Sure.

So, I, I went there to study English and that was the place where if I was looking for the language to understand sexual orientation, I found it there. And then I found a community there. And I also found my interest in the church come back there, and it was really through the Quakers there. There was a Quaker meeting group that was near the campus, and I was interested in them for a couple reasons. One, they just— they weren't big into doctrine. Quakers were more about that silent voice within and being still long enough to discern what that voice was saying to you, and then having the courage to live the life that that voice was telling you to live.

Wow.

So the Quakers brought me back to church, and they're still part of my practice, still part of my life. The other part of them that always nags at the back of my head, or at least seems like the question that I would hope every Christian would ask, is if we look back to the 18th century after— who was standing there in the way of slavery saying, "This is not the way to go"? It was the Quakers more than anyone who were the abolitionists. I think what their virtue is, partly the attention they give to that, that still voice within us. Once we get into large communities and we form polities and then there are statements of belief and those kinds of things, movement doesn't happen very very quickly. So I look at the Quakers as the wake-up call for a lot of us. If I go— last couple years I've taken vacations in the South where, you know, plaques are outside of some churches in major downtown areas, and you can kind of read where were they during the Civil Rights era or during slavery. And I was just in Atlanta over the summer, and there's There's an Episcopal church down there with a plaque that doesn't say too much about the Civil War, or just that it was built by Confederate members of the Confederate Army. And there's a United Church of Christ church down there that had to be one of the first integrated churches. Because the moment that slavery was over, they opened up schools. Because they knew these slaves were going to need new jobs. They needed to be educated. So the people who taught them were sitting next to the students in those pews, the white teachers, the African American students. And so there's that plaque right downtown. And I got to think that whatever the Kingdom of God is, it's leading us in that direction. Maybe that's that neighborliness.

Yeah, right. Well, and you think of the— and I'll put it this way. The Quakers, who themselves were incredibly persecuted in this country. I mean, like, we don't want to face that part of our history, but man, we really put it to the Quakers. I say we, I mean Christian people in this country, because they didn't believe in baptism. So they were gonna, you know, we put them on a cart and tied them to it, and people went with hot pincers and ripped their flesh off going down the street. And that was the church. That was the church doing those things. What's amazing to me is I know a lot of Quakers now, and almost all of them, I find to be like you, incredibly gracious. In many ways, I would want to say, "What do you have to be so gracious for?" You should be the person that's angry, if anybody is. But I think in many ways, as I've often heard it said, and it may be kind of a trite little saying, but what Trials can either make us better, they can make us bitter, and I think in many cases it's made people better and helped them to overcome a lot. So anyway, sorry, that was just sort of a side note on that.

But yeah, no, but that— I agree. The Quakers that I know are— it's not to say they don't get angry. They're impassioned.

Yeah, for sure.

But they are gracious. And some of the theologians that write within that tradition have just some of the books that stick with me too. So I don't worship or pray with the Quakers much these days. Occasionally I get a Sunday off and I'll drive down to Yellow Springs.

Sure.

And I'll go to the Quaker meetings to keep those roots alive. Feeding me. But yeah, I then found my way, and it was coming back to Springfield when I found my way into the Episcopal Church.

Wow.

So I think the Quakers kind of brought me back into a relationship with God and seeing social justice as part of living out a covenant with God. And the other piece of it was Really much like what Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about, if you have the advantage in your life to spend some time in a place that you can call your Mecca, then you need to bring that with you because not everyone gets a chance to be in a place like that.

Sure.

So I feel really fortunate because I don't know who I'd be if I weren't at the University of North Carolina. Yeah. You know, there were my role models, there were the ideas, there was the acceptance. And there was rigor there too. It's not just a kumbaya, we all get along— not that there's anything wrong with that— but it was all those things combined.

I'm grateful for it. And actually, when you really get to know people, sometimes it gets even harder to love them, you know, in some way. That's the challenge of the gospel is like, wow, that person might be an enemy, but guess what? Jesus says we've got to love our enemies, you know.

Isn't that the hardest?

Yeah, it's difficult.

Yeah.

And it's It's not an easy task at all. So at this point in our journey, and we may be fast-forwarding a little bit, but you've moved to Springfield, and I assume you moved here for the teaching position, or was it partially also because you knew you'd have an opportunity to serve, or is that something that came as a result of moving here?

That came as a result of moving here.

Okay.

And it was actually— didn't happen until after after forming Equality Springfield, and my pastor at the time, Charlotte Reed, said, "You might think about looking into the diaconate, to being a deacon, because some of the work that you're doing now is the work that within the Episcopal Church is what we identify as being part of that order." And it felt right to me. Seemed, you know, I think ambivalence is a way of life for me, so I never feel like I'm definite at any point. But as I went through the training, it's not really seminary, but there's kind of a 3-year school we went through. I did feel that I was able to connect my theology to the work that I felt I wanted to to do, and that just felt right to me in the community. So the Diaconate was kind of bringing that together, bringing my interest in the church and then finding a deeper relationship to God and interest in community. Church is first and foremost a community. All those things seem to gel around that.

I think that's powerful because I know I'm, in my own life, I've told people all the time, like, I I tried to run from ministry, you know. I tried to get away from it in many ways. I just wanted to be a guitarist out on the road playing for Vince Gill or somebody, you know. That's all I wanted to do was— and, uh, and I didn't know that this could be such a wonderful part of a journey, that there was still going to be music and still going to be life, um, in other ways. But, uh, boy, I tried to run from it for a while. You know, my dad was a pastor. I didn't think I wanted to be. So it's interesting to me always to hear these stories, because I— even just hearing your story and your journey back to even learning to listen in a contemplative way and start to find that voice of God that was speaking to you in the midst of Mennonite congregations and wherever you were, because a lot of our hearing God is just allowing ourselves to be quiet enough to hear it. In many ways, I'm always just fascinated in, in the idea that maybe Maybe we are not as free as we think we are, in some ways. Maybe free is not the right word. But I can remember this, and sorry, this is going to be off topic just a little bit, but not incredibly.

Good to me.

Whenever I was being ordained in my denomination as an elder, which is— it would be sort of like what you do, but I can preach and do things in this denomination and do the sacraments and marrying and things like that. So it's a little bit different. We still have the track of ministry you have to go through and several years of study and working in church. And my dad is also a pastor. And at my ordination, I was able to invite a minister to come and pray the ordination prayer over me, and they would anoint you and give you— say, "Take thou authority to preach the word and administer the sacraments," which is a pretty powerful moment. But when my dad was praying over me, he prayed this prayer, and in his prayer he said something I never knew. At least if I had known it, I'd forgotten it. I knew I was born way premature, like months early, and I spent the first several, couple months at least, I think anyway, in like an incubator type thing in the hospital. And my dad, as he's at my ordination praying over me, says, "Lord, as I told you when Rick was in the hospital for all those years and we were afraid we're gonna lose him," I told you then I was going to give him to you for your service and whatever you wanted, and I see it coming to fruition today. You know, like that. Well, there wasn't like this push from my dad throughout my whole life to be like, you've got to be a minister or whatever, whatever. What's interesting to me is that it was God's direction and leading that took me to this path where all of a sudden I went like, oh, I thought this was my choice, you know, or something, you know. So I, I feel like I I can almost hear some of that path in your story too. Like, it's not, it's not even something you were seeking out. It's almost like, like, hey, God is the one seeking us. It's not us seeking him. And, and sometimes it would be easier if we could get away from him, but God is a relentless pursuer of our lives and, and just comes to us. So anyway, sorry I took that side trail.

That's a good message.

But I, but I hear that, and I, I hear that in your story. And so it's kind of a, it's an something. I always want to celebrate that when I hear it, of like, wow, we're not as big as we think we are in some ways. So, so you've been here and around, I think you said around 2010 you started Equality Springfield.

Springfield, yeah.

Okay. And, and sort of the, the purpose behind that, just for listeners who won't know, most people that listen aren't from Springfield, so they aren't gonna probably know fully what this is.

But yeah, and I got I got involved in— I'll try and tell this in a short version. I got involved in Equality Ohio, which is a state-level non-discrimination LGBT advocacy group. And the reason for getting involved in it— I've heard other people who are gay, lesbian, transgender tell the same story. In fact, there's a one person right now who is the only openly gay legislator in the State House. Hmm. And she tells the same story. If you ask her, "When did you decide you were going to get into public life?" She says, "2004." Hmm. And when I came to Wittenberg, I didn't say anything about being gay. I just figured this is a private thing. And advocacy was not not something I was going to do. But in 2004, that was the year that on our ballot was an issue that would put the marriage prohibition in the state constitution. Now, it was already against the law. So it was— this was really an effort to try and put a nail in the coffin. And everyone knew it was going to pass. But when we saw the numbers by which it passed, it felt like a kick in the stomach. You know, and that was the thing when I said, "I've got to get active." I mean, I think I literally just was online like the next day or two days later, just processing that all. Well, that's when Equality Ohio started. And that's when Nikki Antonio decides she's going to run for public office. Yeah, that's when I thought, well, I've got to do something because this is— it felt degrading, unnecessarily degrading. And so that got me interested in being a voice in some way or another. And then by— so being involved at the state level, just on a board, so you're, you know, traveling into Columbus once every month or something and being being a part of meetings was the extent of it. And then feeling like, well, if you're going to be committed at the state level, then you should be at work in your community too. And that's kind of where Equality Springfield for me got started. But there were other people who were— who I think had an appetite for it. There is one other story around it too. Somewhere around 2009, it was the summer of 2009, I don't know what put me in this direction, I decided I was going to write a letter for the Springfield News-Sun, kind of a longer editorial, and see if they would publish it. And they did. Or they said, "Yeah, we want to put this in here." And all this was, was me saying, "Here's how Springfield looks through the eyes of a gay person." And it would be beneficial for other people like me if if the community made the statement that if you feel you are fired or evicted or denied services because you're gay, lesbian, transgender, you would have some recourse. That should be against city policy. Right now it's legal and there are people who want it legal and fought to have it legal and so it is legal. People with more influence than our group has.

So when you say legal, I get It's legal to be denied services? Yeah. Or just even to be fired from your job?

Fired from your job.

See, I wasn't even aware of that.

Yeah.

So just— and they don't have to have any other reason except for finding out you're not straight?

Right. Wow. Yeah. And there are places with that policy. They don't hire gay or lesbian people in their communities where it's illegal to do that. 20 cities in Ohio with the latest counting, but Springfield is not one of those. So yeah, we're still making that push. But I wrote this editorial and there were friends that I'd had that I'd worked with, just in outreach, and they were from more conservative religious traditions. And I was worried, you know, and I sent the editorial to to them before it appeared in the paper, and I said, "Well, I want you to know that this is going to be in the paper, and this is a part of my life that I haven't shared with you." And in some cases, I knew not only where they stood because of their own religious traditions, but also when I did a turn on the vestry and our church received letters from people in the community who wanted us to know they weren't happy when Gene Robinson, an openly gay bishop, was ordained. So that was kind of another flashpoint. And so these are my friends, but I don't think they knew I was in the vestry meeting where their letter was read. And I experienced nothing but graciousness. I remember one friend in particular hugging me and saying, "Well, we're Christians. We don't agree." But just, you know, you're always that person that you were for me. So that was a moment for me to say, okay, here's my picture, here are my words. I'm a gay man, I'm living in Springfield. I don't feel that there's a tension. Well, I'll say I don't think, I don't feel, and I don't believe that there's a tension between my orientation and my Christian life. And this is who I'm going to be, and as a member of this community. I think that was kind of a launching pad at that moment. And I've got to give kudos to Wittenberg University for being a place where not only did I feel comfortable saying that, but I felt like I had colleagues that I worked with who would welcome it, they would be okay with it, they wouldn't see that is drawing too much attention or being in any way a poor reflection on the university. So in some ways that's a gift that I feel I should be using because I have so many friends who aren't in that spot. And that includes friends in the public schools. You know, imagine yourself teaching the 4th grade and just having to worry that if your You mentioned that you have a same-gender partner and that coming home to a parent who doesn't want a gay person in the class with their kid, I could easily imagine that happening in our community. And, you know, depending on who the administration is, and we hear good things about the administration here, but if someone doesn't want to take that heat, you can be fired. And you wouldn't be hired again. Wow.

So I'm curious when— and don't know exactly how to ask this question, I guess I'm trying to think it through as I'm, as I'm saying it— do you live just in this, not even just Springfield, but just sort of in the air of the nation as a whole, do you live within the background sort of a sense sense of fear. Like, and I'm gonna equate it to this. My good friends who are black, there's a sense with them that they have been pulled over many times for no reason, really. I mean, seriously, no reason. Like, if they were doing the same thing I was doing in the car, I didn't get pulled over for that. But they've gotten pulled over, they've gotten frisked. One guy that was a guest on my show said he's seen a gun like 6 times in his life. 4 of those were pulled on him by police officers when he was just walking down the street. So I'm asking you from that sort of perspective, like, from a—

from—

do you ever feel that way? Like, in a sense, like, oh, if this person finds out, like, is there that sense of a fear in your heart? Because I think that would be a very hard place to live from in some That is such a good question.

And I have to— seems like the kind of thing you should be able to answer without thinking about, but I think I don't have that experience anymore. Well, I shouldn't say that. I think there are situations where I say I have to be careful what— how I represent my husband, or, you know, if someone talks about my home life. What I say because I don't want to— but I think it's more that I don't want to make other people unnecessarily uncomfortable in some situations, and I think it could. But I think that's rare. So I don't know. I don't think I have that fear. I know what you mean. My husband is African American, and yeah, he lives with that fear about who's going to pull him over and and what might happen if one thing leads to another. I don't feel that. I feel pretty fortunate.

Well, that's—

I think the first year that we put a big rainbow flag outside of our house during Pride Month, that was a test. But I'll sing Springfield's praises about this one too. I really love the way this community does come together around issues and the way that we have this this diversity here of viewpoints and don't always get along in all ways, but we know each other and form something bigger than ourselves together. Springfield has not been a place where I have seen overt violence towards LGBT people. Now there are— it's happened and there are police records to show it's happened. It's not perfect, but in I guess 6, 7 years of being part of an LGBT advocacy group and doing the first Pride celebrations in town, bringing the Dayton Gay Men's Chorus in to do holiday concerts for 8 years now, we just haven't seen it. So, you know, it's not, it's not a testament to my character that I'm not afraid. I don't think Springfield's given me much cause to feel afraid.

Well, I'm glad to hear that.

I'm glad it's the reality.

Yeah, well, that's— I know it's not everybody's story, so I am glad to hear that. I'm trying to think how to wrap up our conversation a little bit, and I'm just trying to think through some different things because I have friends and family members who have come out to me over the years. And many times it's been with a real sense of fear. And that's one reason I'm asking you about that. And I think some of them have even moved far away to places that have been more affirming because of the fear they are in at times, and I think that's unfortunate. I think as I hear our conversation tonight, I'm hearing in the midst of it all— first of all, I know many people are listening to this— and like I told you before we started, we're just about to, I think, 32,000 downloads of this podcast. So I know we've got people from all walks of life, from all denominations, from all kinds of places. So I don't know that our conversation tonight, that I want to do anything other than just say, if you can take time to listen to other people's stories and hear where they've been and where they're coming from, you know, so often we don't get to know other people because we've already got a preconceived notion, maybe, about them at times. And I feel like part of what we can do, and hopefully what's been happening in Springfield and what you've been experiencing even with some of the stories you've told, is even with people that may not agree with where you're coming from, they've been gracious enough to listen to your stories, and that has enabled some conversations to happen that are very important. And I guess if I want to try to do anything with a podcast format like this, when I'm always having guests on from all different walks of life, hopefully we can continue just to share those stories and talk about those things that make us human. And what I hear in this conversation too, those things in our lives that are seemingly beyond our control. When we think about God and the way he calls us, and you know, William Willimon, one of my favorite theologians, he always says, you know, I question Jesus' judgment sometimes because if it was me, I wouldn't be calling half the people that seem to get called. And yet here we are on this journey together, different stories, but we have the same God who seems to be calling us out to be about his business in the world. And I think of just knowing you and even my own attitude probably 15, 20 years ago that would have probably not enabled me to have a friendship with you. Because of my view on things like this. So I want to thank you for being sensitive to the Lord and listening in your life, you know, and what a benefit it's been to me to get to know you a little bit more. And much of that is because you have sensed God leading in your life. And I do mean it, when I've heard you speak, even tonight, I've heard you speak out at other places. I do sense this real sense of Jesus' call to neighborliness, and I feel like it exudes from you. And, uh, and so I appreciate it so much. I appreciate it. Well, I appreciate your heart and, uh, and for taking time to be with us tonight. What is it that we've missed in this conversation? Is there something that was kind of burning on your heart tonight that you wanted to share about that we just didn't get to? I realize we're like 52 minutes into our recording now, and I could go longer, but I usually try to keep it at around an hour.

Well, as you were talking about people coming forward to you to share their stories and you could read the fear in them, and I think I understood your question a bit more too about if I'm fearful in some situations. An observation that was really helpful to me was a— I'm going to forget the guy's name— but he was a civil rights activist who was kind of Martin Luther King's era. And he had come to speak at Wittenberg. We just really had some tremendous speakers there. And he said that, you know, the difference between African American civil rights and LGBT civil rights is that in the African American traditions, they had the church and the family working for them. In the LGBT tradition, they've got the church and the family working against them.

Against them.

And I think that's where that fear is, is that for some people, not for everyone, but for some people, the things that would be bulwarks for them, the things that would prop them up, they think might not be to be there in this moment as they're coming forward saying what they're saying. And I've just been fortunate not to be in that situation. I worry certainly about social exclusion. No one likes to be cut off.

Sure.

But as I described the church I grew up in, it wasn't going to be a preoccupation. So even if I had been remarkably courageous, and in those early years decided I was just going to say who I was and speak my truth and find a way to live my path. I don't think the church would have let me go. But I know that's not the universal story.

Yeah.

And that's where that fear is. Yeah.

Well, I hope that even in my conservative denomination, I would hope and I pray that we can become a place where people can feel safe and find a place to come and know God more. And that's, that's my hope. And as Christians, I don't think that's always been the priority. We often tell people you have to look a certain way and act a certain way and be a certain way, and then you can come be a part of us. Seems like that's the wrong order, uh, because Jesus doesn't seem to be so discerning about the people that he He comes to, does he? And, uh, and all of us have to be, um, I think, I think all of us are stretched by God, and all of us are stretched to become so much more than we ever would have been without him. And, um, so anyway, um, I appreciate you taking time tonight. I hope you'll come back and be a guest again, and we can talk about some other things. One thing I know about you is, you know, I've— I don't want to— I don't want to pigeonhole you like I, I have a tendency to feel like at times when I have guests on who are Black, I don't want them to be like, "Oh, you're my Black friend," or, you know, because I want them to be known as like, "Hey, you're my friend," and I don't want to just be, "Oh, you're my gay friend." I don't want to be just that way either. And I know that you have so much that we could talk about and share and matters of faith that are not even about this necessarily, and I'd love to do that sometime some more. But thank you for tonight and having this conversation. With me.

Thank you for your openness, your graciousness, and, uh, uh, just, um, making me feel at home here. Appreciate it.

I'm glad you feel that way. Well, as I say to all my guests, uh, here on Voices in My Head, thank you for being one of the voices in my head this week. Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at rickleejames.com. Follow me on Twitter at Rick Lee James, like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames, and keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency. That's P-A-R-E Booking. And finally, It would mean the world to me if you would leave me a review of this podcast on iTunes. The more positive reviews that we receive, the more visible this podcast is on the internet. And now the benediction: May the God of peace, who raised Christ from the dead, strengthen your inner being for every good work. And may the blessing of God Almighty, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rest upon you and dwell within you this day and forevermore. And forevermore. Amen.