Queering the American Dream

The chalky remains of a life cut short filled my hands as I watched my faith slip through the cracks between my fingers. As ordained clergy, I''ve officiated a lot of funerals. For fourteen years, I shaped burnt ash across congregants'' foreheads each year before Lent and reminded them that we all come from dust. To dust we shall return. This day, as I officiated my little brother''s funeral, I held the ashes of his body in my bare hands. I''d never done this with anyone else''s remains, but I wanted to somehow touch him one last time, to feel his pain and let his torment fall through my fingers, as fragments of his bones clung to my palms. Duster to dust. Computer duster killed my brother.

The chalky remains of a life cut short filled my hands as I watched my faith slip through the cracks between my fingers. As ordained clergy, I''ve officiated a lot of funerals. For fourteen years, I shaped burnt ash across congregants'' foreheads each year before Lent and reminded them that we all come from dust. To dust we shall return. This day, as I officiated my little brother''s funeral, I held the ashes of his body in my bare hands. I''d never done this with anyone else''s remains, but I wanted to somehow touch him one last time, to feel his pain and let his torment fall through my fingers, as fragments of his bones clung to my palms. Duster to dust. Computer duster killed my brother.

The winds of early March whipped through my grandfather''s muscadine vineyard, the place where my brother and I played hide-and-seek throughout our childhood, the sugary scent of late Georgia summer tickling our noses as we ran and swatted mosquitoes. The farm had been a place of solace for both of us and remained so into adulthood, as a tattered family riddled with divorce, addiction, and abuse cobbled together picnic tables long enough to fit all the extended relatives at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Now, we memorialized my thirty-three-year-old brother, as my ninety-year-old grandfather sat small in a folding chair with the scarves, blankets, and coats of all five of his children heaped upon his tiny frame. If it weren''t for the death and sadness, the sight of our frail patriarch peeking out from under mounds of outerwear would have been quite comical.

You see, my little brother, Carl, was not religious. In fact, he was anti-religious. He embodied his disdain for organized religion with a profound love for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. As I am a professor of religion, Carl could hold his own with me when discussing world religions, and I would dare say he knew more about Christian history, scripture, and theology than most people who profess the faith. This was in large part because my brother was an intelligent critical thinker, and in small part because he deplored the way most churches treated his queer big sister. But organized religions were not for Carl, so he opted to study and parody them with the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Started as a protest against right-wing discrimination, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster holds a light-hearted view of religion and jokingly calls its adherents "pastafarians." So, the colander is a highly esteemed satirical symbol. You know. Because it drains pasta. In addition to omitting any references to god throughout his funeral, I also opted to wear the colander on my head, passing it around whenever anyone wanted to share a memory or a word of comfort. This probably seems blasphemous to many. As an ordained clergywoman, I think it''s pretty damn funny.