Let the Light Out

I tend to get big ideas for my writing, write a few passionate paragraphs, only to get dissatisfied by some minor flaw and drop the ball, after months of living in first-draft mode. This essay is no different. It began with an account of my past year and a reflection on my life, and I was originally going to post it in July for my birthday. As usual when it comes to expressing my deeper thoughts, especially with any greater ambition, it bore no fruit. But I hit a low point during Theology Beer Camp where I realized I didn’t want to simply throw this away. So, this will be the lucky first time^[1] I raise my own writing from the grave. After all, I still want to properly give thanks (both for the past few years of living and for the growth I’ve experienced), to meditate on what comes next, and to publicly share something personal with you.

A great thanks is in order for my partner Kern, my best friend Elaina, my other friends, my family, and my newfound community. You are the hands and hearts that raised me up this past couple of years.^[2] You are the ones guiding me on my walk through this life we share and blessing me with steadfast love and care. Without you I couldn’t have survived all these years, not by myself.

From 2024 to 2026 has been a whirlwind, a storm of a life churning through the Lubbock community and trying all sorts of things to cope with the state of the world, sojourning from one space to another in search of home. I’ve done mutual aid groups, protests, volunteering, electioneering, group meditations, yoga classes, starting a newspaper, starting school again, quitting school again, presiding over an LGBTQ advocacy group, teaching gender studies and critical race theory like a street preacher, book clubs upon book clubs, and committee after committee. I even ran for Lubbock City Council, if you can believe it. I did these, among other things, while trying to hold down a job, stay in school, and grieving dead friends and relatives.

The biggest change you held me through was the spiritual and religious transformation I experienced this past year, the one I needed but didn’t know I needed. This wasn’t only you. I have to give myself some credit. It took my own work too, always seeking a way forward even when I felt utterly lost. Still, you helped. It was a lot and I couldn’t hold it all alone.

I went the whole circle from agnosticism to agnosticism with lots of Filipino psych and folk paganism then to Universal Unitarianism. An overdue visit to my family in the Philippines led me to walking my homesick self into a Roman Catholic church and rediscovering the passionate, meditative, mystical, folksy faith of my youth when I had all but forgotten what faith could really be. From going there and to the Unitarian Universalist service back-to-back on Sundays to throwing an Episcopal church into the mix, I found a very new faith in God that went beyond all I had known before. I had been holding my breath for years, seeking this awareness, and I finally got a taste of something that satisfied the hunger that first brought me into the UUA in 2024. I didn’t even know I was hungry.

Life has been stressful for a while now, and in all the rush and hurry I must’ve forgotten to eat, to feed my own spirit. That’s to be expected though, in a world that often feels like it is breaking apart. But my community and the faith I have found through it, have sustained me through it all. It is the only way I can explain the hope and meaning I feel, that drives out the despair and apathy that can so easily take us. My turn to God has largely been shaped by this, the love I have found in my beloved community, the life that empire cannot kill. Here – in you, in my partner, in my friends, my family, my community – I have found a love that sees me when I feel unseen, remembers me when I feel forgotten, accepts me when I feel rejected. These people who still show up for me when others fail, when pain is all around, have been to me a mirror, a symbol and sign of God. You’ve been living reminders of love that never leaves, love that never left. In breaking bread with you I have felt the ineffable presence of the divine.

It’s been a gift to participate in this community and feel this love. I can only describe it as the kingdom of heaven breaking into the world, a witness that all has been well, is well, shall be well. I am very grateful that I get to work with you as partners in the in-breaking. At the same time I wonder what I did to be worthy of this gift, this invitation. The answer, seemingly, surprisingly, is nothing. Nothing at all. I don’t know all there is to know about ultimate reality, nor do I know even how much I don’t know, but I know this much:

In this interconnected web of becoming (of which we are all a part) that is yearning for a better world, we are all offered the gift of this love. We can all offer it too, in all its liberating, life-giving, transformative glory.

So now I find myself at age 28, on the other end of this realization and the years leading to it. I realize too how scary and daunting the presence of this love can be, its capacity to destroy what is not ready to hold it. I myself have been scared, afraid of trusting it fully and walking into its embrace. Recognizing love and allowing myself to be vulnerable enough for genuine connection would also entail becoming more aware of how love has been absent, even within myself, and conscious of my own guilt and shame for hiding from love. The more I feel the call and step into it, the more I realize I can’t stay the same. To love God and to love others as myself, to more fully experience and embody this greater Love, I must become more fully me.

A big thing holding me back is my own unwillingness to show my true face, out of fear, out of anxiety, maybe even out of trauma. I don’t want to be revealed to others, to this greater love, or even to myself because I am scared of how it might hurt. I see now that this unwillingness comes from wounds of disconnection on my soul, wounds too many of us also carry. We get them from each other, from society, from structures and systems, from oppression. How we get them is surely important; how we heal from them even more so. The longer I leave my wounds untreated, the more I contribute to my own wounds and the wounds of others, to this alienation and isolation in our world that kills us, or at least threatens to.

Yet through the love I have felt, I do not want to continue these cycles of hurt. I don’t want to suffer or to cause suffering. I can’t help but feel bad for the part I’ve played. Why, then, do I still resist the very love and vulnerability that could renew, heal, and restore me? Maybe it’s the fear, maybe a lack of faith. Regardless, I have to step into that love somehow, even if it’s a small step, just to say that I am here, and even if I’m not fully ready, I want to be ready.

Today was National Coming Out Day, and I want to take a small first step by removing some of my own masks and letting go of some of my fear. Looking to all the becomings ahead of me and the becoming I am experiencing right now, my renewed religious life and approach to organizing for a better world represent a new path unfolding before me. The love this path offers, however, depends on authenticity and integrity – how willing I am to be true to myself and to the world, to who I’ve become, and who I’m becoming. Let me come clean about my becoming:

I’m gay. Queer. Bakla. And I always have been. If any of my existing relations didn’t already know, I apologize. Unfortunately, you’re among the last to find out. I’ve been in a relationship with my partner for the past six years now. I love him like no other. Through him I have realized how expansive love can be. He makes me the best I can be and I only hope I can do the same for him.

I’m also a nonbinary man. I don’t have this one all figured out yet but it’s where I am now. What I have figured out is that, before any labels and identities, we are all the likeness of God.

I’m Filipino. My dad is white and my mom is Filipino. Truthfully I’m mixed. I feel between cultures most days but I’m very grateful for my rich culture, ancestry, and community that has only deepened the experience of love in my life. I don’t see myself as ‘half’ of anything, just full in a different way, and more fully human.

And finally, I am Episcopalian. I’m also Catholic. I’m also Unitarian Universalist. I’m a little bit of a pagan Filipino Spiritualist. I’m also agnostic. It’s hard to settle on one label strictly, but I know I love God, I love the life and the love moving in all of us and all creation.

For all those things I am, all these things I have experienced, I give you all thanks for guiding me to the understanding I have now. Through you and through God I have had a little taste of life eternal and an experience of wondrous love. I will cherish it forever. Your love has renewed my spirit. And given me life and peace and hope and faith, forever and ever, all flowing from the love of God that breathes through it all. Let my life be a living prayer that love and justice will continue to flow, that I will be a channel receiving and giving it, and that you too will be so blessed.

Bless you, and thanks be to God.

G