Speaker 1: But We Loved is a production of iHeart Podcasts and
Speaker 1: the Outspoken podcast Network.
Speaker 2: There was a proposition on the California ballot that would
Speaker 2: have required all gay identified teachers to be fired in
Speaker 2: the state of California se nineteen seventy nine, and I
Speaker 2: went over to a rally in San Francisco at the
Speaker 2: Civic Center and I wore my Roman collars because I
Speaker 2: didn't want to even know I was gay. I just thought, well,
Speaker 2: I'll be a priestly liberal friend of the gay community.
Speaker 1: You show up to this protest looking like a priest,
Speaker 1: like a cat priest.
Speaker 2: And Harvey Milk was giving a speech and he said,
Speaker 2: we're not here today for ourselves, because we're free. He said,
Speaker 2: we're here for the little girl in Fresno or the
Speaker 2: little boy in Bakersfield who field there all alone. And
Speaker 2: tears started to come down my face, and I pulled them.
Speaker 2: That white tab in a collar out and I put
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and I wrote, I'm a gay man.
Speaker 2: It was over.
Speaker 1: As a gay kid, growing up religious and in the South,
Speaker 1: I thought being gay was the worst thing I could
Speaker 1: ever be. Now, as a journalist, I'm trying to unlearn
Speaker 1: that by seeking out our history and what I've found
Speaker 1: are people and stories full of courage, perseverance, and love.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll meet Bill Glenn, a gay spiritual leader.
Speaker 1: We'll learn about how he was going to become a
Speaker 1: Catholic priest but ultimately ended up on another path, giving
Speaker 1: peace to gay men, Dying of aids From My Heart Podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan and Solves and this is what we loved.
Speaker 1: I have a super complicated relationship with faith and religion.
Speaker 1: Growing up. I was raised super Catholic. I was in
Speaker 1: the church choir, and I never missed Sunday school and
Speaker 1: one Sunday in the seventh grade, the youth minister gave
Speaker 1: this presentation to all the teens at Sunday School on
Speaker 1: Heaven and Hell. I remember he projected this chart onto
Speaker 1: the wall and the chart had three columns. The first
Speaker 1: column was about how you could get to heaven. It
Speaker 1: had things like obeying your parents and never lying. And
Speaker 1: then the middle column was about how you could be
Speaker 1: sent to purgatory. That was small stuff like overeating and
Speaker 1: wasting time. And the last column was about Hell and
Speaker 1: that had the most extreme stuff murder. But at the
Speaker 1: bottom of the hell column there was a line that
Speaker 1: said engaging in homosexual activity. I gulped when I read that,
Speaker 1: so loudly that I thought everyone immediately found out my secret.
Speaker 1: I thought to myself, if I ever acted on being gay,
Speaker 1: if I ever kissed another boy, I was going to
Speaker 1: hell forever. I spent almost the next ten years in
Speaker 1: the closet, ashamed of myself, and after I came out,
Speaker 1: I was furious. I felt like I had been controlled.
Speaker 1: But every once in a while I would go back
Speaker 1: to church with my family for Christmas or Easter, just
Speaker 1: to make them happy. And I hated to admit it,
Speaker 1: but listening to the music would fill my eyes with
Speaker 1: warm tears. The words would overwhelm me that despite my
Speaker 1: failure in the parts of myself I don't even love,
Speaker 1: there's some being out there that loves me simply because
Speaker 1: I have a soul. I still have really complicated feelings
Speaker 1: about religion, and I struggle with how to exactly separate
Speaker 1: it from faith and spirituality, something that so many of
Speaker 1: us long for. My next guest, Bill Glenn, is the
Speaker 1: author of the book I Came Here Seeking a Person,
Speaker 1: A vital story of grace one gay man spiritual journey.
Speaker 1: He's out and proud now, but he was once closeted
Speaker 1: in the Catholic seminary. He's been a therapist to gay
Speaker 1: men for decades and he has this priestly quality to him.
Speaker 1: And even though he's almost fifty years older than me,
Speaker 1: we had a similar upbringing in the Catholic Church, but
Speaker 1: for him that was an Omaha, Nebraska in the fifties.
Speaker 1: What was your earliest memory of church that you can recall.
Speaker 2: My memories go back to four and five. I was
Speaker 2: one of eight kids in an Irish Catholic family. My
Speaker 2: father was very religious. I don't think he was very spiritual,
Speaker 2: but he was really committed to the church. My mother
Speaker 2: was a convert. I went to a Catholic grade school.
Speaker 2: We went to Mass every day. I loved church as
Speaker 2: a little boy, and the church was often dark, and
Speaker 2: the church was bathing candle light as well as some
Speaker 2: subtle lighting, and I felt enveloped by it. There was
Speaker 2: no place I felt safer, and it's beyond safe. I
Speaker 2: just felt here, I am, this is where I belong.
Speaker 1: And now, fast forwarding a little bit or maybe not,
Speaker 1: when was the moment that you knew that you were gay?
Speaker 2: When I was in kindergarten, I went to Catholic elementary school.
Speaker 2: There was a boy in third grade. We used to
Speaker 2: line up by class. I was crazy about this boy.
Speaker 2: I wanted to hug him or something. I wanted to
Speaker 2: be with him. I didn't call that gay. Of course,
Speaker 2: I did not acknowledge any same sex attraction until my
Speaker 2: sophomore of high school and the boy sitting next to
Speaker 2: me in home room. I could barely sit next to him.
Speaker 2: He was a basketball player, so he was in very
Speaker 2: good shape, and of course I had seen parts of
Speaker 2: his body at basketball games. But I just thought he
Speaker 2: was beautiful that I just thought he was so beautiful
Speaker 2: and he was sweet, and that combination was important for me.
Speaker 2: I was so excited by his presence and simultaneously horrified
Speaker 2: that I was drawn to a boy.
Speaker 1: It seems like you sort of knew that it wasn't
Speaker 1: appropriate for you to have this kind of attraction to him.
Speaker 2: I'd go beyond appropriate to say I felt there was
Speaker 2: a defect in me, and of course, like many many
Speaker 2: many gay Catholic boys at others, I prayed to have
Speaker 2: the defect removed, and I prayed for that from the
Speaker 2: age of fifteen to the age of thirty that God
Speaker 2: would remove this defect.
Speaker 1: And simultaneously, what were the messages that you were receiving
Speaker 1: about being gay from the church from outside of the church.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in ninth grade at school I went
Speaker 2: to was a big football power in this state. And
Speaker 2: I was at a football game at the big stadium
Speaker 2: downtown and I was sitting with a friend and these
Speaker 2: two guys that I now kind of call thug as
Speaker 2: they were my class. They were freshmen, they were bigger
Speaker 2: than me. And these two guys came up to me
Speaker 2: very close to my face and one of them said
Speaker 2: he's the one, and the other one picked me up
Speaker 2: by my collar and I was I had no idea
Speaker 2: how to fight and slug me and I was knocked
Speaker 2: back into my bleacher chair and these two boys went
Speaker 2: on and I was totally humiliated. Knowing what I knew
Speaker 2: about myself. They're on to me. They see that I'm
Speaker 2: this pervert.
Speaker 1: Going back to your family, Bill, what were the unspoken
Speaker 1: expectations of you from your Catholic Irish family.
Speaker 2: There was an expectation that I was going to be
Speaker 2: a priest. Wow, And I think the way I expressed
Speaker 2: my piety people at the grade school, and in my
Speaker 2: family thought, Billy's going to be a priest.
Speaker 1: So fast forwarding a little bit, you decide to join
Speaker 1: the seminary and you're going to be a priest. And
Speaker 1: for the listeners that aren't so familiar with that in
Speaker 1: the Catholic Church, is that you can't have any sexual
Speaker 1: communication with anyone. And I wonder, you know what sort
Speaker 1: of drove you to the priesthood, this life of abstinence.
Speaker 2: I think the majority of gay priests, by far, the
Speaker 2: majority of priests are gay. I didn't join the seminary
Speaker 2: until after college, so I entered the Jesuits. I was
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one. The Jesuits are a very large, actually
Speaker 2: the largest religious order in the Catholic Church, priests and brothers,
Speaker 2: and they are committed mainly to higher education and kind
Speaker 2: of the intellectual life as well as social justice. So
Speaker 2: they're esteemed and revered. And I had been taught by
Speaker 2: them in high school and college, so I was already
Speaker 2: with them for eight years before I entered. I entered
Speaker 2: to be ordained a priest, and it's a very long
Speaker 2: path for Jesuits. It takes over ten years to study, study, study, theology, philosophy,
Speaker 2: secular subject, and I believe now looking back, I thought,
Speaker 2: this is the only way I can expiate my sinfulness.
Speaker 2: Mind you, I had never had sex. I had never
Speaker 2: had sex with a man or a woman. I had
Speaker 2: many girlfriends. As soon as you got close, I ended
Speaker 2: the relationships. I couldn't even kiss a girl. I wanted
Speaker 2: to kiss about half the men on in college campus. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was obsessed. I going to the college church and
Speaker 2: I would cry because I would I was I was
Speaker 2: so filled with shame and guilt. But it was a
Speaker 2: way for me to say, to make my final transaction
Speaker 2: with God, I will do this if you will forgive
Speaker 2: me for being homosexual.
Speaker 1: In your book, you write about your struggle with alcohol
Speaker 1: during this time, and it seems like it's somewhat connected
Speaker 1: to escaping these feelings of shame that you had because
Speaker 1: deep down you knew that you were gay. Is that true?
Speaker 2: It's absolutely true and an insightful observation, Jordan. I saw
Speaker 2: drinking my first week of college. You know, most drug addiction,
Speaker 2: alcohol addiction is an attempt to sell me dedicate. I
Speaker 2: believe that, and I've I've worked at treatment centers for
Speaker 2: years and the people They're all self medicating about something
Speaker 2: in themselves that they can't stand. And I was medicating
Speaker 2: myself around my sexuality because the prayer wasn't doing it.
Speaker 1: When did it sort of reach a point where you
Speaker 1: knew that you had to intervene.
Speaker 2: The summer before I left the Jesuits, I got into it.
Speaker 2: I was blackout drunk, and I was driving my dad's
Speaker 2: car coming home from an ordination and I left the
Speaker 2: freeway and ran into a concrete abutment that holds another
Speaker 2: freeway up, and I totaled his car. And I still
Speaker 2: drank for three months. I have been dead. I wasn't dead.
Speaker 2: And then I was riding my bike on Lake Michigan
Speaker 2: where I was teaching a Jesuit high school Milwaukee, and
Speaker 2: I heard the words you never have to drink again.
Speaker 1: Hmm.
Speaker 2: That was forty seven years ago. I knew at that
Speaker 2: moment it was over. It was over. And then I
Speaker 2: came out a month later. Wow, once the alcohol was gone,
Speaker 2: I could see myself as a human being and as alive.
Speaker 2: I was so alive when I came out of the closet,
Speaker 2: I was like on fire. And I left the Jesuits
Speaker 2: on it eight months later.
Speaker 1: It was no coincidence that once Bill stopped drinking, he
Speaker 1: decided he wanted to come out and that he no
Speaker 1: longer wanted to become a priest. And just when he
Speaker 1: left the seminary, his priestly gifts of empathy and love
Speaker 1: were needed more than ever. Gay people were on the
Speaker 1: verge of a political, physical, and social catastrophe AIDS, But
Speaker 1: by then Bill was already out. He was actually pushed
Speaker 1: out of the closet by politics. In the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: there was a gay activist turned politician in San Francisco
Speaker 1: that was taking America by storm. That activist was Harvey Milk.
Speaker 1: Bill was attending one of Milk's rallies when everything changed
Speaker 1: for him. And tell me about that, Bill, What was
Speaker 1: it like for you to come out? What was your
Speaker 1: coming out story?
Speaker 2: There was a proposition on the California ballot that would
Speaker 2: have required all gay identified teachers to be fired in
Speaker 2: the state of California seventeen seventy nine. And I went
Speaker 2: over to a rally in San Francisco at the Civic Center,
Speaker 2: and I wore my Roman collars because I didn't want
Speaker 2: to imno I was gay. I just thought well, I'll be
Speaker 2: a priestly liberal friend of the gay community.
Speaker 1: You show up to this protest looking like a priest,
Speaker 1: like a Catholic priest.
Speaker 2: And there was a huge crowd and standing sitting before
Speaker 2: we went a little plane, and sitting before me were
Speaker 2: two beautiful young boys who had their arms around each other.
Speaker 2: I almost couldn't bear it seeing it. It was so beautiful.
Speaker 2: And Harvey Milk be sainted, reallyef founding grandmother of the
Speaker 2: gay world, was giving a speech and he said, we're
Speaker 2: not here today for ourselves because we're free. He said,
Speaker 2: we're here for the little girl in Fresno or the
Speaker 2: little boy in Bakersfield who feel there all alone. And
Speaker 2: tears started to come down my face, and I pulled
Speaker 2: that white tab in a collar out and I put
Speaker 2: a piece of paper and I wrote, I am a
Speaker 2: gay man. It was over, just like the drinking. It
Speaker 2: was over.
Speaker 1: Was your family disappointed?
Speaker 2: So that Christmas I went home a paper in a
Speaker 2: class on the theology of social justice, and it was
Speaker 2: my coming out of paper. I did it like a
Speaker 2: fifteen page explication of why gay was a gift. This
Speaker 2: was unheard of in the seminary. Gay is a gift. Girl,
Speaker 2: that's immortal, sin, I go, well, I've reinterpreted that for you,
Speaker 2: if you want to follow my logic. So I went
Speaker 2: home and gave this paper to my parents and I
Speaker 2: watched them read it. And my mother stopped first and
Speaker 2: she put the paper in her lap, and then my
Speaker 2: father read more slowly because what my father was reading
Speaker 2: was intense. And as soon as my dad finished, my
Speaker 2: mother looked at me and she said, Billy, I've known
Speaker 2: this since you were four years old.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: So my father was very upset when I left the
Speaker 2: Jesuits five months later. My mother she hated all the
Speaker 2: judgment and sexual shit in the church. She just was like,
Speaker 2: of course, and this boy is going to be alive now.
Speaker 2: And if you can't hand then, She told me after
Speaker 2: I left that Christmas, if you don't accept Billy totally,
Speaker 2: you will not see him because that man is in
Speaker 2: his life now and he needs us less than we
Speaker 2: need him. I was very touched by that, and she
Speaker 2: was absolutely right.
Speaker 1: That's a gift to have a parent stand up for
Speaker 1: you like that. It's not as common as we think.
Speaker 2: As very blessed by her, very blessed.
Speaker 1: A few years after you leave the seminary aids begins
Speaker 1: really destroying the gay community. And you write in your
Speaker 1: book that you were called to be a spiritual guide.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you have a story that encompasses what
Speaker 1: that was like for you.
Speaker 2: I came to understand, Jordan, that I had had those
Speaker 2: ten years of preparation in order to do a deeper
Speaker 2: work that I was called to do. I didn't know
Speaker 2: what that was at all. I was just living my life.
Speaker 2: And I had met my now husband of forty three years,
Speaker 2: and we were a young couple. And shortly after we met,
Speaker 2: I saw an article in the national gay paper called
Speaker 2: The Advocate and described four men in Los Angeles and
Speaker 2: four in New York who had this rare skin cancer
Speaker 2: CAPESI sarcoma, and I was like, WHOA, that's weird. About
Speaker 2: six months later, we had a friend who got sick
Speaker 2: on a Tuesday and he died on Sunday. Five days
Speaker 2: and we had a large circle of friends and people
Speaker 2: started getting sick. This is in nineteen eighty three. And
Speaker 2: my best friend at that time was a Catholic priest
Speaker 2: who was a Franciscan who was let's just say, very
Speaker 2: rascally and his vows managed less to him than perhaps
Speaker 2: to some people, and he got AIDS and he was
Speaker 2: fired by a Catholic high school.
Speaker 1: He was a priest with aids.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was a priest with aides. I met him
Speaker 2: at Dignity in nineteen seventy nine because I went to
Speaker 2: see what gay Catholics are like. And I went to
Speaker 2: communion to him and he placed the host on my
Speaker 2: time and he goes by your christ Hansom. I go, oh,
Speaker 2: this is a good church. I like this shirt. And
Speaker 2: he and I became the dearest of friends. And the
Speaker 2: last time I saw him, which was six days before
Speaker 2: he died, my husband and I would go to his
Speaker 2: house on Monday nights for about a year and fix
Speaker 2: dinner for him, and then we'd prayed. It got the
Speaker 2: three of us with our dog, the four of us,
Speaker 2: and this last night, which I didn't know, is our
Speaker 2: last night. We always got up on his bed. Scott
Speaker 2: would carry him from the dining room table to his
Speaker 2: bead because he was so frail. He weighed at that
Speaker 2: point about ninety pounds. And he said, see that Chester
Speaker 2: drawers over there, and I said yes. He goes open
Speaker 2: the bottom drawer, you'll see a stole would you bring
Speaker 2: it over? And I said, of course. I got back
Speaker 2: on the bed and he put the stroll around me
Speaker 2: and he said, you're going to hear my last confession.
Speaker 2: And I said I can't do that. I'm not a priest.
Speaker 2: He said, you're going to hear my last confession. Bell
Speaker 2: you have to be the priest that you are, regardless
Speaker 2: of the church. I started to weep and I obeyed him.
Speaker 2: So I held his hand and I had this stole
Speaker 2: around me, and he blessed me. I put my hands
Speaker 2: on his head and gave him absolution. I started to
Speaker 2: take the stole off and put on him and goes, no, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you keep the stole on you. I can no longer
Speaker 2: be a priest. You have to now be a priest
Speaker 2: for all the people that you and I have taken
Speaker 2: care of. And I started to weep, and I knew
Speaker 2: he was telling the truth to me.
Speaker 1: And for people that don't know. In the Catholic Church,
Speaker 1: it is sort of the ultimate blessing to con fess
Speaker 1: your sins and receive this final blessing from a priest
Speaker 1: before you die. It's sort of like you're guaranteed ticket
Speaker 1: to heaven and so were you now taking on that
Speaker 1: responsibility for several other men that were dying because of AIDS.
Speaker 2: I was with several many gay men on the point
Speaker 2: of death. And regardless of whether it's the sacer and
Speaker 2: a confession or penance, or human beings profound need to
Speaker 2: be as clear with themselves as another human being at
Speaker 2: the end of their lives. There's a lot of commonality
Speaker 2: to people who are dying, especially thirty five year old men.
Speaker 2: One other dear friend, This man had been my boyfriend
Speaker 2: before I met my husband, and he was He looked
Speaker 2: like a porcelain man. He was so beautiful. His body
Speaker 2: was covered with carson. His legs were one huge lesion.
Speaker 2: I think his boyfriend had left him by this point
Speaker 2: and he was living. He was alone in bed and
Speaker 2: he had caretakers. And I went over to his house
Speaker 2: as I did often to visit with him, and he said,
Speaker 2: would you get up, would you get into bed and
Speaker 2: hold me? And I held him and he sobbed and
Speaker 2: sobbed and sobbed, and I cried and he sobbed, and
Speaker 2: then he said, would you do my funeral? So I
Speaker 2: called the local There was a gay gay Catholic parish
Speaker 2: and I went to the pastor and I said, Tony,
Speaker 2: I've been asked again to do a funeral, and these
Speaker 2: boys want to have it in a Catholic church. And
Speaker 2: he said to me, Bill, this church is yours for
Speaker 2: as long as you needed, for any for any boy
Speaker 2: who wants to be buried in a Catholic church. I
Speaker 2: buried many men from that church, and the Swedenborgian Church
Speaker 2: and the Unitarian Church, and it it disciplined me to
Speaker 2: do what Larry had said. Others won't do this. You
Speaker 2: have to do this. You think you left the seminary.
Speaker 2: The seminary was just a training ground for you to
Speaker 2: be in this epidemic, and I came to know that
Speaker 2: there was deep truth in them. I called it my
Speaker 2: ministry without portfolio. I didn't say that publicly, but that's
Speaker 2: how I understood. I said, I really felt I was
Speaker 2: doing the work of a Jesuit, or many Jesus wouldn't do.
Speaker 1: What was the Catholic Church's response to AIDS at the time,
Speaker 1: and how did you feel about it?
Speaker 2: Meager? The church was busy judging gay people. The church
Speaker 2: is very subtle in the way it uses language. It
Speaker 2: wouldn't say you causes, but that they would talk about
Speaker 2: it as the food of our sinfulness? What death is
Speaker 2: that I should die with a horrible, emaciated death with
Speaker 2: capacies because I slept with a man.
Speaker 1: In other words, what you're saying is this was sort
Speaker 1: of implied that it was God's punishment.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was a little more than implied. It wasn't.
Speaker 2: But the church is subtle like that. And in the
Speaker 2: Catholic Church, I was very faithful every Sunday and more
Speaker 2: often than that, and I would be this gay person
Speaker 2: who was not really welcome at the altar, although church
Speaker 2: will say, of course, of course you were welcome at
Speaker 2: the altar as long as you had gone to confession
Speaker 2: for your many, many, many gay sins. Oh yeah, could
Speaker 2: you hear those quickly? Because I'm going to be doing
Speaker 2: those gay sins and you know later today probably you know.
Speaker 2: It's a mindstraw, it's a mind fuck.
Speaker 1: You know, Bill. I wonder if there was a point
Speaker 1: in all of this where you questioned your faith. Even
Speaker 1: the most faith filled person I think out there would
Speaker 1: have some sort of anger at God or whoever they
Speaker 1: prayed to for this just really horrendous disease. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if you had on through a period that really
Speaker 1: tested your faith at that point.
Speaker 2: Well, this agency I ran, called Continuum, which was took
Speaker 2: care of these triple diagnosed, many many of them homeless
Speaker 2: people in the really rough neighborhood of posted downtown San Francisco.
Speaker 1: And what does triple diagnose mean?
Speaker 2: Substance abusers, drug addicts, menly ill and died of AIDS
Speaker 2: late stage AIDS. We had wrap around services. We were
Speaker 2: open from nine to five, and people stayed with us
Speaker 2: all day, and we had doctors and nurses and psychiatrists
Speaker 2: and physical therapists. And I thought, what these men, mainly men,
Speaker 2: but a lot of women too want most deeply is
Speaker 2: community and meaning what did my life mean? Why this?
Speaker 2: Why this end? That was a very very common question
Speaker 2: that I experienced from men during the AIDS epidemic. Why
Speaker 2: is this happening to me? I love this group of people,
Speaker 2: I love this I love this place. Continuum we lost
Speaker 2: one a week, so in the seven years I was
Speaker 2: there that we lost about three hundred and fifty clients.
Speaker 2: We created a chapel and we took I eight by
Speaker 2: eleven photographs of everybody who we called a member, anyone
Speaker 2: who came into the group, and men and women who
Speaker 2: IT died. We put their pictures up, began the ceiling,
Speaker 2: and when I left, every inchant space in that chapel
Speaker 2: was covered with pictures of men and women who IT died.
Speaker 2: I loved being there. I had to stop. I was
Speaker 2: forty and exhausted, and I was at a retreat, a
Speaker 2: Trappist religious retreat center in Oregon, and I found myself
Speaker 2: on the floor of my little room in the fetal position, crying,
Speaker 2: and I knew I had to stop. I didn't want to.
Speaker 2: I felt some way I was betraying, but I'd given
Speaker 2: fifteen years to and that was psychically exhausted by the death.
Speaker 2: Because the death came at our agency and my friends.
Speaker 2: So often, you can't fully grieve that.
Speaker 1: One of the questions my reporting seeks to answer is
Speaker 1: how do we find happiness and joy in our lives.
Speaker 1: What I've been surprised to learn interviewing scores of people
Speaker 1: is that those who are happiest among us are ironically
Speaker 1: okay with being sad. For Bill, he understood that the
Speaker 1: sadness of surviving the AIDS crisis would never fully leave him.
Speaker 1: He surrendered to that sadness when it came up and
Speaker 1: became okay with sitting with it and honoring it and
Speaker 1: having the faith that it would pass. Sometimes, when I
Speaker 1: interview many of the people on this show that lived
Speaker 1: through this period, I can still feel that anger in
Speaker 1: their hearts and in their energy, and I understand it.
Speaker 1: I really get it, because even though I'm not a
Speaker 1: part of their generation, for some reason, it kind of
Speaker 1: feels like it's been passed down to me in a way.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you still grapple with that anger,
Speaker 1: just the unfairness of it all, and if you have
Speaker 1: forgiven I have.
Speaker 2: Such sadness that Larry and I did not. Is Brea
Speaker 2: the exact same age he died, when its thirty nine,
Speaker 2: I can't imagine what our friendship would have been like.
Speaker 2: With forty more years, we probably just get side by
Speaker 2: side houses. But that happened to me a lot. The
Speaker 2: way I understand anger as a psychologist is that I
Speaker 2: think anger covers up fear, and fear covers up grief.
Speaker 2: We have to work through a lot of men do
Speaker 2: not work through their anger. They stay angry. Alcohol helps,
Speaker 2: of course, but below that is fear, and men are
Speaker 2: of course trained to have no fear. They're weaned of
Speaker 2: their fear that they have as boys. But underneath that
Speaker 2: is grief, grief about what all of it, grief about
Speaker 2: life's impossibility, life's suffering pain.
Speaker 1: In July of twenty twenty five, Bill will be ordained
Speaker 1: as a priest in the Episcopal Church, over forty years
Speaker 1: after he left the Catholic Seminary and one gay plague
Speaker 1: in between. Bill is fulfilling a calling he had since
Speaker 1: he was a boy to be spiritual guide. This time
Speaker 1: he's doing it being one hundred percent himself. You're now
Speaker 1: in your seventies and you're going to become an ordained priest.
Speaker 1: I am in the Episcopal Church. It feels kind of
Speaker 1: full circle from my perspective. Tell me about what that
Speaker 1: feels like for you.
Speaker 2: It was greatly unexpected, and a friend of mine told
Speaker 2: me to a lesbian priest, told me I should go
Speaker 2: to this church. She said, I think you like what's
Speaker 2: going on. There was four years ago, and I went
Speaker 2: and met the rector of the pastor and we had
Speaker 2: a honestly a very immediate strong connection, and he took
Speaker 2: me out to lunch. About a year later, he said,
Speaker 2: you still think about becoming a priest, and I looked
Speaker 2: at him. I said, Stephen, you know how old I am? Yeah,
Speaker 2: in his kind of droll forty one year old way,
Speaker 2: and I said, do you know I spent ten years
Speaker 2: of my life preparing to be a priest. He goes yeah.
Speaker 2: I said, why would you ask me this? I was,
Speaker 2: I wasn't. I was a little annoyed, and yet I
Speaker 2: knew he was a man of great integrity, but I
Speaker 2: had no idea what he was. And he said, Bill,
Speaker 2: because you are a priest, and I want the church
Speaker 2: to ordain you and allow your priestsood to flourish. I
Speaker 2: was seventy two at the time. I'm in this cafe
Speaker 2: and I'm I start to cry. I like, it's one
Speaker 2: of those moments where the psyche gets broken open. I'm
Speaker 2: going to be ordained a deacon in a month, and
Speaker 2: I'm going to be ordained a priest in six months
Speaker 2: at the age of seventy six, I am four years
Speaker 2: older than the mandatory retirement age for priests in the church.
Speaker 2: And the bishop said, no, I want you or Daan.
Speaker 2: You have work to do. So I'm like, it feels
Speaker 2: like a grace, it feels like it's own time.
Speaker 1: So my last questions for you are the really, really
Speaker 1: big questions. What is God?
Speaker 2: When anyone opens their heart to love, that's the spirit
Speaker 2: of God inside of us. And the more we connect,
Speaker 2: life is still with love. That's the presence of God.
Speaker 2: All the good work being done on the planet today
Speaker 2: by billions of people, that's the presence of God. God
Speaker 2: is love. And that sounds tripe, but it is so
Speaker 2: not trite, it is so true.
Speaker 1: Last one, what is faith?
Speaker 2: Faith is not being in charge. Faith is giving up
Speaker 2: control to what bill it's giving up control? You don't
Speaker 2: even get to answer the question to what it's giving
Speaker 2: up control. We know intuitively there is something someone some
Speaker 2: We don't have a proNT on for it. We're not
Speaker 2: on our own. We're only being held up the image
Speaker 2: of God holding me up. That's faith.
Speaker 1: But We Loved is hosted by me Jordan Gonsolves. New
Speaker 1: episodes drop every Wednesday. If you want to write in
Speaker 1: to tell your story, email us at Buttweloved at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com, or you can send me a message on
Speaker 1: Instagram or TikTok at your underscore goosolves. We are a
Speaker 1: production of the Outspoken podcast Network and iHeart Podcasts, But
Speaker 1: We Loved was originally developed with Pushkin Industries. Our producers
Speaker 1: are Joey pat Emily Meronoff, and Christina Loranger. Our executive
Speaker 1: producers are me Maya Howard and Katrina Norvil. Original music
Speaker 1: by Steve Boone. Special thanks to Jay Brunson and Roquel Willis.
Speaker 1: If you loved this episode, leave us a rating and
Speaker 1: follow us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and thank you
Speaker 1: for listening. I'll see you next week.