Queen Jesus in Boston Cathedral

This is the time

This is the place

This is the land.

This is the land of the

Massachusett

Pawtucket

and their neighbours

the Wampanoag

and Nipmuc Peoples.

This city of Boston.

This city which takes pride in its historical place as the cradle of the American Revolution:

The first successful uprising of colonised peoples against the British Empire.

And this cathedral church of St. Paul is built circular in reaction to the spiky Gothic rectangles of the colonial power.

This cathedral with its magnificent Greek columns built as a temple to reason and free thought.

These beautiful and harmonious Greek style pillars made from sandstone quarried in Virginia rather than Connecticut because that way they were $8 a ton cheaper.

$8 a ton cheaper because they were dug out of the quarries by enslaved people.

And I’m grateful to the Cathedral for so diligently researching and revealing this fact so it can be the cornerstone of their efforts to achieve healing and restoration…

… Just as I’m grateful to them for appointing as one of their Bishops a member of the Cherokee tribe

Because it matters so much that together we find a way to heal these terrible wounds

These wounds on our hearts and on the hearts of our Mother the Earth

These wounds and the wounds of the unhoused people who gather on the cathedral steps

Often taking refuge from their trauma in alcohol and hard drugs

And the dealers who gather like vultures to profit from their addiction.

And the Cathedral offers a sanctuary they call Many Angels Needed Now and Always

Because Manna is also needed by all of us, always…

And the Cathedral also offers these people a place to write and to tell their stories, stories which need to be heard but very often are neither told or listened to

And they call it The Black Seed.

And then they have a Chinese Mission for Chinese Communities, and they offer a space for Muslim communities to perform the Friday prayers

And they offer a space for people maybe hurt by past experiences in repressive churches, and/or activists seeking social change

A place to craft and create new forms of collective sacred expression

A place they call The Crossing.

And that so resonates with me because long ago I was trying to co-create a dance/text piece with that title

At a time when it had become utterly clear to me that I could no longer go on living as a man

And was in such deep anguish because I didn’t know what to do.

Just as we all, I think, right now are in such deep fear and anguish because we know things can’t go on like this

We know they have to change and we don’t really know how

And the question someone asks Queen Jesus

“Mistress, how should I live?”

Hangs so pregnantly in the air

As the hesitant steps we are trying to make forward

Are so consistently blocked by ruthless men who care for nothing but to hold onto their power

And in the end have nothing to offer but their hatred.

And all this in my mind somehow

As I try to channel the words of Queen Jesus

Standing in the centre of the labyrinth so beautifully inlaid in the marble of the cathedral floor

Aware of holding a weight of suffering and trouble

In the audience who are sharing the space with me

All of us in this together

All of us here to love and to be loved.

All of us trying to find a way forward

Into this uncertain and fearful darkness

And I want to say:

Look, there is light

Light in this darkness that the darkness cannot destroy

And there is a light inside us that will help us find it

As we stumble forward together over the face of our Mother the Earth.

But we are not alone, and so thank you, Boston Cathedral of St. Paul,

Thank you for trying to be a house of prayer for all people

Thank you for being with us as we try to find a way forward towards a better world.