retreat(ing)+thoughts

"So here it is: I'm lesbian." "I'm gay." "I'm not straight." "The thing is, I'm gay."

Any one of these sentences is a remarkable utterance for a teenager in the midst of eighty peers. It is so difficult to know who you are, so dangerous to expose something vulnerable, so daunting to come out to friends and classmates. Yet in the space of two hours one night last March, four of our students came out to their class and their teachers. The first statement was surprising, coming from a young woman who has never been altogether comfortable within the school community. I will never know if she intended to come out that evening, but when she did, the response was instantaneous, honest, and overwhelming. Her classmates arose and stood applauding; several nearest the young woman surrounded her in hugs, many more stood waiting to do the same, and most people began to cry. It was such a blessing to watch these young people applaud, support, and rejoice.

Then it happened again, and then a third time, and then a fourth. Each time there was the response of applause, but with each new statement, the entire room began to swell with amazement, as though the participants sensed that the moment was about their friends coming out, to be sure, but that the moment was also about them, about their celebration. The rhythm was call and response, an improvised call of sexual identity and a heartfelt response of joyous support. It's a call that I've never heard before in public, a call I can't even imagine hearing when I was a teenager, a call that so many have longed to make, a call whose stifling has cost so many dear friends so much agony. And the response - it was as exhilarating as it was unlooked for.

Trips are scary for faculty to go on - anything might happen. - Mike

The things that we work well are not always the things we've planned for. - Mike again