Urs Mattmann - Coming In: Gays and Lesbians Reclaiming the Spiritual Journey

Coming In

Gays & lesbians reclaiming the spiritual journey

Urs Mattmann

Foreword by Richard Rohr

WILD GOOSE PUBLICATIONS

English edition Urs Mattmann, 2006
Translated from the original German by Urs Mattmann
German edition 2002 Ksel Verlag GmbH & Co, Munich

Published by
Wild Goose Publications, 4th Floor, Savoy House,
140 Sauchiehall St, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK.
Wild Goose Publications is the publishing division
of the Iona Community. Scottish Charity No. SC003794.
Limited Company Reg. No. SC096243.
www.ionabooks.com

ePub:ISBN 978-1-84952-086-7
Mobipocket:ISBN 978-1-84952-087-4
PDF:ISBN 978-1-84952-088-1

Cover image created by Wild Goose Publications,
based on a photo by Ran Plett

All rights reserved. Apart from reasonable personal use on the purchasers own system and related devices, no part of this document or file(s) may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher

Non-commercial use:
The material in this book may be used non-commercially for worship and group work without written permission from the publisher. Please make full acknowledgement of the source, e.g. Urs Mattman from Coming In, published by Wild Goose Publications, 4th Floor, Savoy House, 140 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow G2 3DH, UK.

Where a large number of copies are made, a donation may be made to the Iona Community via Wild Goose Publications, but this is not obligatory.

For any commercial use of the contents of this book, permission must be obtained in writing from the publisher in advance.

Urs Mattman has asserted his right in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

I dedicate this book to my wonderful life partner,
Emanuel Grassi.

Acknowledgements

First of all, I have to say a big thank you to all the gay men and lesbian women who have inspired this book both by their writing and through the example they provide of people on a mature Christian spiritual journey: John McNeill and his partner Charlie, Troy Perry, Chris Glaser, Patrick W. Collins, Freda Smith, Jean White, Hong Tan, Neil Whitehouse and the late P. Josef Douc.

In close solidarity I give thanks to my beloved partner Emanuel Grassi, with whom I have shared my life since 1986, for his support; and to Pierre and Catherine Brunner-Dubey as founders of the Friedensgasse order and community, who have strongly influenced my lifes journey and inspired me with a vision for a contemporary mystic Christian spirituality. I thank my parents and grandparents for nourishing my interest in a path of faith in my childhood.

I thank the many worshippers in the Lesbian and Gay Grassroots Church Basel, the participants in my retreats and seminars in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, England and Scotland, and my Psychosynthesis clients, for sharing their faith and life experiences with me. I also give thanks to the men and women with whom I was able to lead retreats, especially Werner Valentin, Cassandra Howes, Stafford Whiteaker and Keith Sylvester.

I am grateful to Sascha Dnges, director of the Institute for Psychosynthesis in Basel, for all I learnt during my five-year training and for her review of the original manuscript and her critical and helpful comments that helped to shape it. I am particularly indebted to editor Winfried Nonhoff of Ksel Verlag in Munich, the publisher of the original German edition, for his extensive and fruitful collaboration and openness, and to Ingrid Fink for helping to negotiate publication of the English edition. I did the translation myself but was strongly supported by Michael Sznyi, so I thank him for his corrections and suggestions. I am also grateful to Wild Goose Publications for publishing the English edition, and to Sandra Kramer for her co-operation and valuable work as editor.

It has been a special privilege to have known Richard Rohr for many years, so I was overjoyed when he accepted the invitation to write the foreword to this book. It can now be read in the original English for the first time.

Foreword

by Richard Rohr

Avoiding the risk of a transgression has become more important to us than holding a difficult position for God, and it is this that is killing us.

Fr Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.

S urprisingly - although maybe not - the issue of homosexuality has become the test case and the contentious ij issue inside most Christian denominations today. It divides otherwise reasonable people, and they move into fear, accusation, and quick absolutes or Scripture quotes on both sides to settle the seeming dust. When we deal with the issue of sexuality and gender, when we appear to be tampering with the basic archetypes of male and female, everybody gets defensive or aggressive. Its a sure giveaway that we are dealing with something very important and very mysterious. We are on holy ground, which always both attracts and intimidates at the same time. So the first thing we must do is take off our shoes.

In other words, we must tread lightly and with respect for the other, no matter on which side of the issue we find ourselves. Fundamentalist assertions are just as bad as fundamentalist rejections. The true gift will be found in the middle somewhere, not by avoiding the struggle but by entering into the mystery of human love, and letting it teach us and stretch us, until we are finally capable of hearing God in all things even those things that at first appear dangerous. We must hear both the experience of healthy homosexual love and the social critiques of those who are trying to preserve other social and spiritual values. Both have something necessary to say, and both are hard to hear from the other side. So keep those shoes off until you can tiptoe over to the other perspective, and even, if we can dare to imagine it, to the perspective of a good God.

Once other believers can see that gay men and women are concerned about the values of faithfulness, and are willing to preserve the normative value of heterosexual marriage for the sake of human lifes continuation, many of their fears will be lessened. Once gay women and men can expect trust and respect from other people and from society, I think we can begin a civil and truly spiritual conversation. We are still in the early stages of creating that conversation and that climate. Remember, true spirituality is always telling us to change, and not giving us weapons to change other people. How different Christian history would have been if we had just learned that one simple lesson. But somehow the human ego was not ready for that much participation in the mystery of transformation. It is so much easier to spend our lives converting others than to undergo the always painful task of personal conversion. It is more attractive to feel ourselves right than to continually admit that we are also partially wrong.

After working with people as a priest for over 31 years, I have come to an extraordinary conclusion: we come to God not by doing it right, but by doing it wrong. This is obvious to me now, although it does not really become obvious until the second half of life. By then, if we are honest, we have seen the pattern in ourselves and in others. You understand mercy and grace by looking backwards. Looking forwards it is just a nice theory, but not yet good news.

Why, then, are we so obsessed with the bad news of being right? Why do we spend so much time trying to concoct a worthy ego? Whether we are homosexual or heterosexual, cant we just hold a difficult position for God? Jesus appears to be doing just that, as he hangs archetypally between the good thief and the bad thief on the cross naked before reality. He also pays the price of hanging on this collision of opposites, and it seems very few are willing to join him there. The realm of true faith, liminal space as I call it, will always be narrow and only a few find it (Matthew 7:14).