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        This past Wednesday, St. David’s held The Open Table, its monthly service that especially welcomes Austin’s LGBTQ+ community and their friends into a space of worship, reflection and affirmation.
We started the service in January, and this community has since grown into one that is at once constant, yet ever changing.  We meet once a month, and our homilists are regularly lay people who bring their own personal insight of LGBTQ+ life into the sacred space.  For those who regularly attend (about half of the group are not St. David’s parishioners), it seems to have become an important part of their spiritual practice.  It is a stop on their ongoing journey that perhaps gives them the spiritual sustenance and strength to go back out into the world, to give thanks, to grieve, to connect, to be wholly seen, to be sad, angry, fearful, joyful or renewed.
I’ve had folks ask me why such a service needed to exist when St. David’s is such an open and welcoming parish and we welcome all who seek Christ at our usual Sunday services.  Some wanted to know if they had to be LGBTQ+ to attend, some called with concerns that we might bait and switch and try to “pray the gay away”, while others gleefully exclaimed “Hallelujah, it’s about time!”  Here’s the simple answer – The Open Table is just as its name implies.  Every month we make room for visitors who might feel as though they don’t fit into any faith community, or regulars who just appreciate a service they know will resonate with their distinctive life experiences, without judgment or pressure of any kind.  People who come can sing along with the hymns, or not; they can pray, or not; they can take communion, or not; they can share in the passing of the peace, or not; they can be in community, or not.  What this space allows for is the ability to just “be”.  Participants “fit in” because they are God’s beloved, whether they know it or not, and that means there is a seat for them at The Open Table.
If you’ve watched the new hit show Pose on FX Channel, you get a sense of what The Open Table is about.  Pose is about the ball culture of 1980’s New York City.  “Ball culture”, the “House System,” the “Ballroom Community” and similar terms describe the underground LGBTQ+ subculture (predominately people of color) in the United States in which people "walk" (i.e. compete) down runways for trophies and prizes at events known as…. balls. Those who walk often also dance and vogue while others compete in various genres of drag, trying to pass as a specific gender and social class. Anybody could compete and there was room on the runway for everybody to express himself or herself.  Categories included “Realness”, “Body”, “Face”, “Fashion” – with competitors vying to elicit perfect 10’s from the judges.  The idea of “realness” ruled – to be “real” was to have successfully emulated the various social circles most LGBTQ+ people of color were excluded from in those heady Reagan-era days of wealth and excess. As one Pose character describes it, "Balls are a gathering of people who are not welcome to gather anywhere else."

  However, these balls were important not simply because of the trophies won (the highest score being 10s from every judge), the heart thumping music, the raucous crowds (known to throw “shade” as part of their critique), or sublime displays of runway fierceness.  The impact of these balls on the participants was, at times, life saving.  They were spaces of welcome to folks who had been rejected, demonized, stigmatized, and/or discriminated against by the larger “majority” segment of society.  Their archetypes and narrative motifs dominate the cast of Pose – Blanca (trans and HIV+), Angel (trans sex worker and dancer), Damon (gay, kicked out of his home by his parents, and living on the streets), to name a few.  These characters, and the real-life marginalized people they represented, are all on journeys that hit patches of (rare) highs and (many) lows, and seek the same thing we all seek, namely, wholeness and the gift of being truly seen and accepted for who and what they are.
  Designer labels, C-suite level jobs, country club memberships and holidays on the Côte d’Azure were out of reach for a majority of the ball participants, but for one night, amongst a crowd of cheering fans and supporters, they realized their dreams of wearing expensive threads (designer wear usually “mopped” or stolen, if not honestly come by), of being the CEO of a multinational conglomerate (complete with an Hermès briefcase), sashaying down the runway in tennis whites, racquet in hand, heading towards The Country Club courts, or slathered in Bain de Soleil with an oversized sun hat à la Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan.  For that one night, they were “seen” as they wanted to be seen, living lives according to their own rules and a sense of self-determination and agency.
Given the history of ball culture (see the documentary Paris is Burning, if you want to know more), and the recent media mainstreaming of this part of LGBTQ+ culture (RuPaul’s Drag Race, Pose), there is an entire segment of our society who are moving from the margins to join the center, asking for their seat at the Table.

  Certainly, it will take more than increased media exposure or The Open Table service to help LGBGTQ+ folks live into a sense of wholeness.  The struggle has been long and it is still very real, and the movement towards a greater level of acceptance and community thankfully continues.  And for one night a month, we gather at St. David’s around The Open Table.  This space full of people made in the image of God – some living joyfully into that God-image, perhaps some in need of space to wipe away the shame and fear that holds them back.  We gather strength from the Table and share it with one another.  Afterwards, some may go out for dinner and fellowship, others will go home perhaps never to return.  In either case, next month we will gather again at The Open Table, and there will be seats enough for everyone seeking or affirming the true “realness” that Jesus Christ gives us all so freely and which we are called to claim.  For that, I give thanks to God…and 10s, 10s, 10s across the board!