Elliot J. Weidenaar, President of the Board
Good morning, beloved siblings in Christ. Notes from the Chair is my attempt to summarize what I have been seeing and feeling as we do this work. I will bring more notes from the chair again in July and then again in November. It is my humble attempt to summarize what I have been hearing the Spirit say to us. You will likely have other moving’s of the spirit, other whispers of guidance she gives to you and not to me. We must believe that it is through the faithful and communal uncovering of these whispers that she will be heard.
This past year has been hard for me personally. From the death of my beloved aunt in February to the clarity granted to me by the holy spirit that my mentors and guides were much more fallible than I or they realized, 2025 has questioned, triggered, and disillusioned me to the work of the church and the work of queer equity within the church. None of that has been made easier by the decline of the United States into overt and profound fascism. It is my imperfect tendency to look to the past and hope that in the annals there might be some guide for us. But as the blessed Stephen Sondheim opines in his iconic musical Into the Woods “Mother cannot guide you, now you’re on your own” (You are Not Alone, 1988). The loss of longtime supporters of Room for All and All One Body has reminded me starkly of how hemmed in and beleaguered this work can make one feel, especially in the moments when so many of our community face an active and growing genocide.
And yet even in this darkness a light shines through. Jesus Christ, the hope of the world, God with us has just appeared in a manger in Bethlehem. Tomorrow we will celebrate his baptism by the hands of his cousin St. John the Baptist in the River Jordan, and the loving claiming of Christ by God into God’s self. Marilyn Paarlberg summarized this light of love in the face of despair well for me in her eulogy of the Reverend Dr. Norman Kansfield at our conference in October. Recounting the moment in that stiff Union College Auditorium Lobby when, despite their own hurt, fear, and perhaps even despair, Norm and Mary began to circulate and console those who also felt fear, hurt, rage, and despair.
Marilyn experienced this as not of myself but always of Christ kind of love. And although I was not in that auditorium, I too experienced Norm’s love this way. In his own oracle against despair, in Isaiah 43:18-19, the Lord of Hosts says to the prophet, “Forget the former things, do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! See now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” I do not quote this great oracle to disregard the importance or profound guidance that the reverend Dr. Norman Kansfield granted to us. Instead, I ask you to think of this as what Micah Bucey would call “a regular and brief turning away” (The Book of Tiny Prayer, 2022, 226) from the normal to something softer and stronger. Something which can inspire hope, faith, and love. I believe deeply that it is this not of myself but always of Christ’s kind of love that will change this church and our world. This moment of turning away, the moment of turning the other cheek, not in submission, but radical loving defiance, that will change this organization, this church, and this world is, and has been, and will be the Gospel of Radical Queer Love that we find in the Scriptures.
Our mission here at Room for All is to advocate, educate, and support the full Inclusion of LGBTQIA2S+ people in the Reformed Church of America. These institutions are hard to love. They have a tendency to fear, avarice, and spite that makes one want to throw one’s hands up and say, “Well, that is that then.” But more than ever, they are desperate for the kind of love that came down on Christmas day. The kind of overwhelming, never-ending, queer love that they are desperately trying to anathematize. This year, I want our new thing to be transformative love. I want it to be a love that transforms the loneliness of queer people into queer community. I want it to be a love that softens hearts. I want it to be a love that looks at institutions and people and offers them the radical love that they desperately need and decidedly do not deserve. I want our advocacy, education, and support to pour out of a place of love. I want our churches and world to look at Room for All and say those people are God’s servants, missionaries in the name of the gospel of love. Because as the prophet, teacher, pastor, and reformer, Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us, “Hate cannot drive out Hate; only love can do that.”
May it be so. Amen.