A Confession (Nashville Statement)

My dear friend shudders
at the news of terrorism, gun violence,
waiting, hoping that it will not
be perpetrated by
a person of her faith,
that somewhere, sometime,
she will not be asked
to explain how this came out
of her holy book, her daily prayers,
her Friday worship.

She looks at me, overwhelmed
with what has happened
to her heart
“I think – let it not be us,
my people, my responsibility,
ten minutes before
I begin to mourn the real losses –
and so I know that this
terrorism
has also destroyed me.”

She does not want me
to comfort her, and neither do I
want comfort
when my first response
to the Nashville Statement –
is – “not-Christian, not-Christian,
don’t call it Christian,”

and then I begin to weep,
for all the God-images
bleeding their queer beauty
across the streets, the pews, their homes,
perhaps forgetting
how much Jesus loves them,

because a Council of the Mistaken
has decided to weaponize paper.

Please forgive me.