"When we all get to heaven"

I promise this isn't just for religious folks

So I try not to do too much religious content, since a lot of the folks who subscribe to my newsletter are connected through our “anti-oppression in the workplace” collaborations, and others are interested in the practical application content.

But I started listening to a podcast during a morning bout of insomnia (shout-out to the folks who aren’t going back to sleep if you wake up any time after 2:30am) and I got to work late because I could not stop listening to it. And while it’s about a religious community, I think it’s useful to all of us.

By means of context, in the earliest days of the COVID pandemic, my congregation gathered on zoom to talk about how we would make it through. One of the elders who had been part of the LGBTQ community during the 1980s told us about the ways they showed up for each other during the AIDS pandemic, the ways they extended care to people dying and people who were sick and provided relief for caretakers, and they also fought hard for their basic human rights. It was a time when people who considered themselves good and generous were not showing up for a community in crisis. That community figured out how to show up for each other. And during that zoom meeting in early 2020, we saw the lessons there for all of us in that moment—we needed to figure out how to care for each other. (As an aside, if you haven’t read Dean Spade’s book Mutual Aid, it is available for free online and is a great resource if you’re looking for some How To’s.)

We’re in a different moment of crisis right now, but as I listened to the first four episodes of “When We All Get to Heaven” this morning, I kept thinking about the lessons of that moment for the pandemic in which we find ourselves right now, where people are once again withholding resources from people they think of as lesser: poor people, Black people, immigrants and refugees, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, people without children, people with too many children, people who are housing insecure despite working multiple jobs, people who are housing insecure because they cannot work for pay, people who are too old, people who are too young, people who are the wrong religion or do the right religion the wrong way, people who believe genocide is wrong, people who don’t grieve the right way or grieve for the wrong people…you get the idea.

The podcast When We All Get to Heaven is about the Metropolitan Community Church of San Francisco (MCCSF) in the 1980s and 1990s. Let me make two appeals for why you should listen to it:

Non-religious reason to listen: This podcast is a masterclass in how to build community and show up for each other when you have been abandoned (by your government, by your community, by your family). It talks about isolation and its antidotes. It talks about fighting back. It talks about building coalition across a lot of differences…and how hard that can be, and how necessary it can be. To me, these are all lessons that are urgent in this moment when our ability to build real connections, to build real relationships, are our best tool. Additionally, I often tell students in classes I teach about how critical it is to shift from charity to solidarity in order to create sustainable and meaningful change at a community level. Well, over and over in this podcast I was reminded of how community can show those around them how to practice exactly that: solidarity, not just charity.

Religious reason to listen: There’s a moment in episode one where a congregant is so scared about whether she can really take care of this friend from Bible study who’s dying of AIDS, and she prays for courage so she can be of service. She’s someone who left her parents’ church not because of their condemnation of HER, but because their condemnation of homosexuality was a vicious lie about who God is. And she wasn’t sure there would ever be a church for her, but she ended up helping make MCCSF what it became. Also, I can think of few podcasts that really illustrate what applied but very intentional theology looks like. Now, I think that will look different in different religious contexts, but when you get to the story about the Easter worship service in episode 2, you’ll think, “oh…that’s what it looks like to really embody what you believe about God.”

I also have a personal reason for recommending this. I have a pretty fundamental criterion for friendships: I’m only friends with people seeking to make the world a better place, in a million different ways. I could probably write a newsletter about every one of you through that lens. But this podcast gave me a chance to remember why my friend and colleague the Rev. Jim Mitulski is one of the foremost among the world-changing people in my life. He’s featured in the podcast multiple times, and I was struck by his heart, his deeply rigorous intellect, his humility, and his strategy. One of the stories in episode four is so profoundly uncomfortable and also important, related to how to accept the people who show up for you even if you can’t accept all of what they believe, and how hard that journey is to navigate—especially when it’s not just two people but two communities of hundreds of people. And Jim recognized that while there was much to critique about the other community, it was his job to help his community wrestle with their own issues and challenges. What a critical lesson for us all to wrestle with right now as we figure out who to show up with, when, and why or why not. I just felt a little extra grateful to know Jim as I listened to the show, and I think if you do, you’ll maybe feel like you know him, too.

I hate for this newsletter to just be me saying “hey—I’m giving you multiple hours of homework; enjoy!” But I really do think you’ll find this podcast series meaningful, whether you listen to it on Apple podcasts, spotify, or on your computer.

There’s still six episodes to go, but I’ve preached at that church and I know quite a few people connected with it, so I’m pretty confident it won’t have a surprise twist in the middle.

I’m grateful for your patience with my less regular newsletters recently as life has life’d. And I’m grateful, as always but especially now, to be in the struggle with you.

-Sandhya