More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
In one of the most enduring and compassionate acts of his life, he gave me what mattered most, his best available love.
Note to remember when others fall short, a compasionate way to look at it: their best available selves.
my parents didn’t seem to recognize the significance that music was having in my life. There were times when I wondered if they even noticed just how much their absence left me feeling empty and disregarded.
Highlight for myself to remember this as a parent. To keep my eyes open.
If we are what we are—that is, inescapably human—then part of my responsibility is to learn how to honor myself and others along the way.
I had to get back to that place of honesty. I vowed never again to manufacture anything to the contrary. If I was to be judged, it would be for what is rather than lie for what I hope to be.
Europe’s religious history wasn’t just an isolated happening; its history was my own. The conservative, shiny, commercial success of the American megachurch wasn’t born the way it was. It evolved. I both suffered by it and found benefit in it.
The irony was that I was living with more integrity outside of CCM and Christian culture than I had been when I was immersed in it.
what stands out to me is not the argument as to whether it is religiously acceptable to be gay, but rather that when the time came for a community to share in the journey of one of its members, the answer was, “No. We would prefer your silence rather than consider how we can rise to the challenge of loving you as you are.”
We each long for some kind of community. We long for connection. For though we each have our own individual lives and experiences, it is not until we share those experiences with others that we begin to develop the wholeness of our story.
I tried on dozens of new names, but they were all just cumbersome masks, layered on top of a person whom I couldn’t rename or outrun.
for every kid that comes out, for every pastor who stands up, for every friend, mother, and religious denomination that tells the true story of love, the more we realize how much we have in common.
