Last night, I put on my clerical collar and headed to the DIVA Awards.
It’s not much to look at, the collar. Especially not in a room shimmering with rhinestones, velvet, holographic lashes, and thigh-high boots that deserve their own standing ovation. I walked in dressed like a grayscale photo at a technicolor party. And that’s exactly why I wore it.
Not to blend in, but to testify.
To testify that faith is not—and has never been—the property of those who weaponize it against queer and trans people. To testify that faith—real, gut-deep, truth-baring faith—has always been part of queer liberation. Not just in the beautiful lineages of queer spirituality like MCC or the Radical Faeries, though those too. But in every moment a queer kid believed in their own worth without evidence. In every drag queen who turned survival into an art form. In every trans elder who refused to disappear.
That’s faith. Not belief in doctrine, but belief in your own belonging in a world that insists you shouldn’t exist. The refusal to disappear is sacred.
Our show, A Drag Christmas Spectacular, was nominated for a few awards. And other wonderful and well deserving shows took away the trophies.
All good. Drag Christmas was never about winning, it was always about creating a space where a teenage queer kid and a 87 year old queer Elder could sit side-by-side and both feel the warmth of being fully and deeply seen. To see their lives lifted up as holy, because they are.
We didn’t gather last night just to hand out trophies. We gathered to remember what the world keeps trying to supress: queer is sacred.
And not sacred in some sterile, hushed, stained-glass kind of way.
I mean sacred like sweat and sequins. Sacred like shouting the truth.
Sacred like joy that will not tone itself down for anyone’s comfort.
Sacred like becoming living testament to a creative power beyond comprehension.
There are plenty of days I feel a little off—too queer for religious spaces, too clergy for queer ones. Always a little off beat. But last night, at the DIVAs, I noticed the glimmers of fellow travelers—as I delighted in a few fellow travelers of the sacred borderlands, get recognized:
- Foxxy L’Whor, who by day is the Music Director at Columbine Unitarian Universalist Church, won Best Live Music.
- Krisa Gonna, my co-creator in Drag Christmas and honorary UU by the power vested in me by queer divinity, won Breakthrough Performer.
- Sara Burlingame, Executive Director of Wyoming Equality and a member of the UU Church in Cheyenne, was radiant and resolute as always.
As the night went on—as I hugged old friends and met radiant new ones, as we danced and moved and laughed and at times sat awkwardly—I noticed something happening. My black clergy shirt, stiff and plain at the start of the evening, began to shimmer. A speckle here. A sparkle there. And by the end of the night, it was glittered. Covered with flecks of joy, transferred in each embrace.
The sacred had literally rubbed off on me.
That’s faith, isn’t it?
Call it glitter. Call it grace.
Either way, it clings.
To show up in love is to be marked by it.
You can’t help but leave carrying the proof.
That queer joy is sacred.
That community is contagious.
And that love—real, unsanitized, unafraid love—sticks to you like glitter.
Impossible to remove.
Thank God.
Thank God.
Rev. Sean is Foothills Acting Senior Minister while Rev. Gretchen is on Sabbatical.
Responsible for Worship, Justice Ministries, Faith Formation Strategies and sits on Foothills Executive Leadership Team with Director of Finances and Operations Katie Watkins.
Sean was born on Treaty 7 land in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and comes to Foothills after four years in New England where he completed seminary at Harvard Divinity School where he studied alongside future imams, rabbis, justice activists, and other Unitarian Universalists. Sean is a self-proclaimed nerd — particularly about history, current politics, science, and Star Wars. Outside of ministry you will find Sean hiking or cooking up a storm with his partner Charles, watching his son’s basketball games, all under the watchful eye of their dog Dollie.