Weeping in Technicolor Tears
9/20/22
The Genesis story of Joseph and his brothers fed me, sustained me and gave me life through a time when I, like Joseph, had been violently betrayed, falsely accused, sold-out, dumped, forgotten and imprisoned in trauma. I fed on Joseph's story as if it were life.
I knew that this powerful section in Hebrew scripture was for me and that, of course, held a degree of promise due to the arc of the story itself. Everywhere I looked, there was Joseph's story. It came to me unbidden in perfectly formed moments of awe. Sometimes in a novel. Sometimes in film or in a blog or a sermon. Sometimes from people whose theology is quite different from mine.
Joseph's story was as alive in me as my own breath for years. Wherever I found it , it fit perfectly and wove into the very stitching of my soul. I watched the DreamWorks animated version countless times and that is still a precious memory to my daughters.
Even the call that rose out of my pain related to Joseph. In my exile, I looked around me and I saw the rainbow people of God: the LGBTQIA2S+ siblings who knew this pain in greater breadth.
(One of my early mentors, Achbishop Desmond Tutu used this phrase “Rainbow People of God” to describe his vision of Peace and Reconciliation for South Africa. I have to hope that he won't mind a second application of equal weight)
In my exile, I looked around me and I saw the rainbow people of God: the LGBTQIA2S+ siblings who knew this pain in greater breadth.
The beauty and the diversity of those hurting like me, but in their own particularities, became the color of my blossoming spiritual revelation. I would "wear my coat of many colors" for them. I would lift up those in the pit of exile with my gifts even though those same gifts had been thrown away by my own siblings.
Over time, I no longer pined for reconciliation. I was healing, growing and becoming stronger. I was finding what I needed without changing the past. Leaning into my strengths, the right people at the right time lifted me out of prison even with a few bumps in the road. I began to soar. My leadership bloomed and was trusted.
My baby girl found particular bravery in auditioning for her first musical at age 8 - Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Pensacola Little Theatre's production was by far the most incredible theatre experience I've ever had and probably ever will have. Every finale, every moment of that beautiful production with my sprite Annabelle shining on the front row and with the best voices I have ever, ever heard in a local production, I literally digested the show. It must have helped reform me from the inside out.
It has been 9 years that I have been in exile from the people who threw me in a pit. A few of their acquaintances have made their way back to me but not my brothers and sisters who did the deed.
This week one of them reached out to me. Time slowed down. I couldn't form words.
The shock of the story continuing well beyond my own healthy separation and healing leveled me.
I have been lifted… and nurtured… and have astonishingly recovered the knowledge that I indeed have something to offer a world that is starving for belonging.
And here comes my sister back to me to seek forgiveness. I may look different. My language about God is different. My life is more colorful. But I am still me.
I don't trust her, this sister who reached out. She left me for dead. My family suffered irreparable damage.
Digging in to Genesis, the words jump off the page. Joseph weeps continuously in the midst of reconnecting and testing his siblings. Surely all Joseph wanted to do at first was to run to them but he knew devastating harm and the pain he bore was so intense… and it all started coming up again. Did he want to embrace them or take their very lives? Make them pay for all the trauma cost and all that was lost? The juxtaposition of desire for reconciliation and reunion mixed with the anger and the hurt is a combination almost unbearable in one human's body. I know.
Joseph wept so loudly that the attendants in the courts of Egypt heard him from quite a distance. He wept consistently even as he honored his own boundaries, tested his family's motivation and stood in his power before offering wholehearted forgiveness.
But that is what did eventually occur. And that is how the story is finished.
I am truly brought to my knees today. I need to be reminded how Joseph handled things in these moments.
For years, I sang "Close Every Door to Me…" from the broadway show.
We are not at the end of this story yet. But God's faithfulness is the main character.
I have choices, as did Joseph. I have something of value to give, but I don't have to give it. I get to choose and I get to walk through the process and honor that process. I also believe in the power of forgiveness and in hope for those who genuinely grieve their misdeeds. There's no easy answer here, but we will all have to walk with these realities in a new world where more pain is being unveiled and change is being invited.
"I closed my eyes
Drew back the curtain
To see for certain
What I thought I knew…
May I return (may I return)
To the beginning
The light is dimming
And the dream is too
The world and I (the world and I)
We are still waiting
Still hesitating
Any dream will do…"
Words by Tim Rice from
“Any Dream Will Do”