From the Minister to Students Office Andy Summers Minister to Students Written by Mark Demma

One Yuletide season, not too terribly long ago, a young man of the cynical persuasion was feeling particularly like a Grinch. For him, Christmas seemed little more than a frenzy of commercial exploitation- a way to stimulate the economy. The phone rang and interrupted his melancholy...

It was the second line, which meant that someone was calling in on the Gay/Lesbian Youth Support Line. Calling it that sounds funny, as if it were somehow something other than an extra line that I had on my phone. A group of us had started the support group, most of us barely out of high school ourselves, and some of the leaders were actually still in high school. None of the "adult" leaders of the community would start one, they were too afraid of liability, so we started one ourselves. I had volunteered to take phone inquiries. In the year I had the line, I had received prank calls, crisis calls, angry parents' calls, you are going to hell calls, sexual proposition calls, suicide calls.... Now the phone was ringing again.

The caller was sixteen and his parents kicked him out of the house when they found out he was gay. He had been living on the streets ever since. He wanted to know if I could help find him a place to stay, because he had tried everything else he could conceive. My living situation was such that I couldn't offer him a place to stay, but I said that I would work on it and to please call me back in an hour. I went to work. I called the local shelters. "He's too old to stay at our shelter, sorry." "He's too young to stay at our shelter, too much risk, sorry." I called the local Metropolitan Community Church- a denomination started by gay Christians, thinking surely they would be able to help. "Sorry, we'd really like to help, but it would be way too risky, he is underage. What if his parents found out and sued?" Even pointing out that his parents didn't care enough even to know were he was right then didn't help. I called everyone I could think of and still no one would help. The appointed hour had passed and sure enough the phone rang. "Oh, that's OK, I understand." I couldn't just do nothing. It was becoming a dark and cold December night and I couldn't stand the thought of him out in the cold. Realizing that I was taking a risk myself, I said, "Where are you, I'll come get you and we'll figure something out."

He was a thin small little guy. He was standing there at the appointed corner with all his worldly possessions in a plastic trash bag. I'm sure he was apprehensive about the situation, but tried not to show it. I told him that I was supposed to stop by my boyfriend's house and asked if he would like to hang out there and maybe we could try making some more phone calls. He said sure. I was dating someone at the time who was in the Coast Guard, so we had to be sort of discreet about things lest he lose his job. He was renting a room in a house, and as it turned out, the owner of the house was away that night, so he could offer the spare room as a solution for one night at least. My boyfriend also went out and got him some supplies like a toothbrush, comb etc. He had never seen a "gay couple" before, and somehow found it all fascinating. Showered and fed, he was about to spend his first night in a long time in a real bed.

The next morning, he wouldn't stop talking about how comfortable the bed had been. We were faced that morning with the same problem we had the night before. I had to run errands for work, and offered to let him tag along. I had been cajoled into doing the Christmas decorating at work, so we set out in search of trees. I was not too thrilled about "volunteering" my time for this, but he was very excited about it. He picked out the tree and did most of the decorating, so I got to be real slack. This was the only tree he was likely to get to decorate and he was going to make the most of it! The place I worked had perhaps one straight person working there. He was fascinated by the openness that we all could display here - openness about something that he had been banished for revealing. As much fun as he may have been having, it was approaching time for us to open, and it would have been against ABC rules to have him there after 9pm. A lesbian couple that came in frequently, however, overheard our dilemma and offered him a place to stay. Relieved, and needing to get to work, I said farewell and asked him to call to let me know how he was doing. The next weekend, my best friend was in town and ended up staying in the same guest room. I remember that morning when he got up the first thing he said was "That has to be the most uncomfortable bed I have ever slept in." I laughed, thinking, "you're trying to tell me something, aren't you?" (Being a Unitarian, however, I wasn't sure who the 'you' might have been.)

That moment became a transcendent moment for me, one that is hard to explain in words. When relating this story to Andy, he suggested that maybe the meaning of the holiday was being revealed to me. He said to think of the symbolism of , "Christ, the incarnate God being reborn into the world and the birth of creative transformation in the midst of our lives that continues to live, looking for places to be born. Looking for sheds with goats and shepherds and compansinos and workers and outcasts and the ordinary people." Whether it be the (for some) Christ Child or (for me) the Reborn Sun or (for others) just the idea of the rebirth of creative transformation, I did feel like something had been reborn in me that day - a seed planted, a lesson that needed to be learned. And when I start to think too cynically, or whine and complain too much, I think of that young man, who was like the Christ Child, looking for a place to stay.