Marriage equality rally . . . and autumn leaves

This afternoon, Hugo and I attended a rally for same-sex marriage in Raleigh, one of the 300-odd rallies held at the same time around the country. Attending the rally was a spiritual act for me in the sense that I saw it as a way to be anxiously engaged in a good cause, to bear a kind of public witness to what I know to be true, if only by my presence. I'd say there were a few hundred people there. It was, in fact, my first participation in any kind of organized gay demonstration in North Carolina, since I haven't attended any gay pride celebrations since we moved here.

I was grateful that the tone of the rally was positive, oriented toward galvanizing support to push for marriage equality here in North Carolina rather than venting anger about Proposition 8—though certainly some people carried signs to that effect. The only Mormon-themed message I saw was a sign one woman carried that read, "Ironically, my first kiss was from a Mormon." Early in the rally, they talked about having an open mic after we marched around the capitol, and I decided I would say something as a gay Mormon. A testimony of sorts. But the march turned out to be very long, and we got rained on torrentially at the beginning of it, so in the end everyone just dispersed afterward.

I'm not a big fan of rallies and marches. I've participated in I don't know how many, all since 9/11 (if you don't count marching at Salt Lake's gay pride with Affirmation). I spoke at one in Salt Lake just before the Iraq war began. They're usually too long—too many speakers—and most of the ones I've been at have had a hard time staying on message. During probably my second march, a peace demonstration, I had the thought that this was a kind of ritual act, an attempt to make change happen by reenacting the primordial sacred moment of the civil rights marches and anti-Vietnam demonstrations of the 1960s. Marching makes me uncomfortable. I feel on display and therefore awkward. I don't like chanting. I attend these events as a kind of discipline—like putting in your time at the Church cannery, if you will. They need warm bodies for when the media shows up, so there I am. It's a form of service.

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There's no self-evident connection between the above and what I'm about to say next, but there feels to me like there's some vague connection having to do with signs of grace and blessing and Providential favor. Before we went to the rally, I walked the dog along a local nature trail. A wind was blowing clouds of leaves off the trees, and at one point I found myself walking into one of those clouds, with the leaves showering down all around me. It was awe-some and called to mind the scripture about God sending the rain on the just and the unjust. I know (or suspect) that this kind of Romanticism is a luxury of the relatively rich in the global scheme of things, but expressions of beauty in nature have for a long, long time been an important way that I encounter God in my daily living.

Last week, as I was approaching the building where the religious studies department is housed, I suddenly found myself looking at a tree covered in bright yellow leaves, shining in the autumn noontime sunlight. I thought: That would make an incredible set for a temple film. Fill the Garden of Eden with trees whose leaves are different colors—brilliant shades of yellow, orange, red, purple. White leaves for the tree of life; a deep, dark, gorgeous wine-purple for the tree of knowledge of good and evil.