The light in Carbondale

Everywhere I went there was something very special.

Each venue I performed in had a certain something that I loved about it.

First Churches, Northampton, had these amazingly good sightlines that came from it being built as a preaching church, and a church where groundbreaking sermons were in fact preached.

It was the gorgeous simplicity and intimacy of St Mary’s of the Harbor in Provincetown.

The wonderful labyrinth embedded into the floor of St Paul’s Cathedral in Boston.

The beautiful sound of the water flowing through the font of The Good Shepherd in Portage, Kalamazoo.

Here in Carbondale, in The Prince Of Peace, here it was the light.

The light shining in through this window,

The light shining out into something so peaceful and beautiful.

When I first arrived, and was thinking how to perform Queen Jesus in this space, it gave me such pleasure to sit quiet and look out at the peace outside the window.

Until a few days later I saw this sign

And that made me see things differently.

it was explained to me that it was important to put up a “No Guns” sign like this to the entrance to a public building, because otherwise the public would have the right to enter with a gun.

Walmart put the same request rather differently.

“Kindly refrain”, they asked their customers at the entrance, “Kindly refrain from openly carrying a firearm”.

They obviously felt it was the most enormous favour to ask someone not to openly carry a loaded gun.

My companion told me she’d seen people do it. And everyone just pretended not to notice.

“We’re in a little enclave”, people would tell me, “Maybe 10 miles across. And everyone in the next door counties votes for Trump”.

The town, they explained, was a little island of Democrat Blue in a huge ocean of Republican Red.

It was the same in the Civil War. Illinois supported the North; but the southern part of the state, where Carbondale is, was surrounded by the slave states of Kentucky and Missouri.

Carbondale was one of the first towns that offered escaped slaves any chance of refuge; just as now it’s one of the first towns to offer refuge to trans people and their families who have been forced to flee the repressive laws of the South.

Practitioners of reproductive medicine are also coming here after being prohibited from practising their profession by those southern states that are taking away women’s rights to choose.

And for their own protection, they have to surround their premises with high walls.

And then there’s a deeper source of violence and bloodshed.

Everywhere I’ve performed, I’ve begun my performance with an Acknowledgement of Land: an acknowledgement of the First Peoples whose land was stolen by the white settlers.

The further I go west, the longer the list becomes.

This one is by far the longest:

the Osage (whose name means “Calm Waters” who lived a nomadic life on the Great Plains, forced south into Oklahoma in the 19th century)

the Quapaw (“people of the South Wind”; also forcibly removed to Oklahoma)

the Myaamia (“Downstream people” also forcibly removed)

the Ochethi Sakowin (“Seven Council Fires”, or Sioux; also forcibly removed)

the Kickapoo (“Stands here and there”, nomads, also forcibly removed)

Few stories are sadder than the story of the ethnic cleansing and genocide of America’s First Peoples.

The Trail of Tears runs close by to Carbondale: one hundred thousand people were displaced and forced to march along it in the 1830’s: at least 15,000 died.

Such deep wounds. Deep wounds on our hearts; deep wounds on the face of our Mother the Earth…

Cowboys and Indians, I remember, was a childhood game the boys played.

When I was forced to live as a boy, I used to try to join in. The cowboys were good, I remember, and the Indians were bad, and pretending to shoot each other in these imaginary wars was one of the ways we were supposed to learn what it is to be a man.

I remember I desperately wanted a doll; but I know I was given a toy gun.

“Isn’t it strange”, Queen Jesus says, “that men should be proud to carry knives and guns. Proud to carry weapons of death, but ashamed to carry the source of life”.

And I wonder how much all this is bound up in the extraordinary hostility Queen Jesus often inspires in America.

All the people who most fervently wanted me to die of a hideous illness, who longed to be able to witness my suffering when I knew I was condemned to hell in the next world, or the ones who longed for some kind of Christian Ayatollah who could condemn me to death in this world. Not to mention the ones who characterise me as a demon and as the incarnation of evil…

They all seem to come from America; and they were why I didn’t want a strong social media presence during this tour and was happy to operate under the radar.

I really didn’t want these angry people to know. Because I had a feeling that whereas here when people protest against me they tend to take the form of embittered old white men, generally alone, carrying stern placards,

In the US they are more likely to take the form of embittered white men with guns.

And I didn’t want to put myself in danger; far less endanger the wonderfully kind, warm, courageous and hospitable people looking after me so beautifully.

And here in Carbondale they felt uncomfortably close to the men with the guns.

I wasn’t alone in this. There are people in the congregation who feel uneasy sitting with their backs to this window during services.

They’ve been given training by the police as to what to do if a shooter comes.

Their substantial wooden pews can give them some shelter, it seems, and if they could bombard any shooter with their bibles and hymnbooks that might help too….

The services, and my performances, are patrolled by unarmed volunteers walking round the church perimeter, who might be able to warn of any trouble.

And Pastor Kim has a panic button beside the pulpit.

But has decided against leading the services from behind bullet proof glass.

And she fears that in November, if trouble comes, her church will be an obvious target.

It has to be. It has to proclaim who it is and what it stands for.

And knowing all this it was hard for me to sit, as my custom is, sit and meditate in the spot I’m about to perform in

Because as I looked through the beautiful windows I couldn’t stop my mind’s eye from seeing shooter approach with his gun.

So I had to go out to my dressing room at the back of the church and look out at the church garden and labyrinth instead.

“They may try to put out your light

They may hate you for allowing it to shine…”

I said, as I always do, and

“Bless you if they persecute you for being who you are

Because it means you are bringing about change.

And bless those who persecute you, too,

Because hatred is the only thing they have.

And it doesn’t amount to much,

And they will lose it in the end.

For no matter what they say and what they do

They cannot stop the change that is coming

And one day we will all be free.”

And now I’m back home in the UK.

And the news is bad: and the trouble and darkness of America seem deeper than ever.

But that’s not what I’ll remember:

I’ll remember the beauty of the landscape, the incredible vigour and self-healing capacity of the natural world

Remember the hospitality, the courage that acknowledges danger but refuses to be cowed by it

The courage that is aware of the proximity of despair but refuses to give way to it

The courage of hope.

The courage of kindness.