To a deacon trying to protect the diaconate

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

XXXXXXX,  your order is indelible, with and without your stole.   Your 
importance as a deacon cannot derive from what others think:  it derives 
from God. Your order is holy. Nothing anyone can say or do can diminish 
the deacon you are.

On the other hand, your defensiveness about your order is certain to put off
some whom you are called to serve.  It suggests that your diaconate is more
about you than about them.  It suggests to me that you are not yet secure
within the order.

I rejoice to move frequently among people who could not care less that I am
a professor and writer.  In no way do they diminish my being a professor or
writer.   Those I am.  I don't need to defend them.   My interaction with
those outside the academy richly enriches my experience of the academy.

I rejoice to move frequently among people who could not care less that I am
a Christian.  In no way do they diminish my being a Christian by dismissing
Christianity or by pitying me for being suckered into it.   They diminish
neither my affection for them nor my desire to serve them whenever I can.

Let not your heart be irked by being mistaken for a mere servant.   At our
best, we're all called to be servants, and there is nothing 'mere' about it.
Jesus did not take equality with God as something to be exploited.

Lutibelle/Louie

Louie Crew, 377 S. Harrison St., 12D, East Orange, NJ 07018 973-395-1068
http://queereye4lectionary.blogspot.com/  Queer Eye for the Lectionary