This recording features the Sunday Talk portion of the service. For the full service watch here.
The Holy Wholeness of The Queer Spirit – Rev. Rainbow Weldon
DESCRIPTION
Join us for a transformative Sunday message with Rev. Rainbow, founder of the Queer Spirit Collective, as we explore the spiritual principle of Oneness through a vibrant, new lens. Looking at the holy revelation of the Queer experience, we see life rooted in Divine curiosity and the sacred nonbinary nature of God. This message is a powerful invitation for everyone to embrace their most audacious, authentic self-expression, moving beyond the binary of “either/or” into the expansive “both/and” present in nature. Imagine a world where everyone is embraced and honored for being the unique expression of the One that we are, and consider the impact this can have on our collective spiritual awakening.
SUMMARY
This Pride Sunday sermon by Reverend Rainbow Weldon explores the “holy wholeness of the queer spirit,” emphasizing that spiritual oneness is not sameness and that honoring diversity is essential to experiencing the fullness of divinity. Using images from nature, sacred geometry, and stardust, Weldon frames all beings as unique yet interconnected expressions of God, whose delight is found in the multiplicity of creation. She shares her own midlife transformation and the founding of Queer Spirit Collective, a mostly online, explicitly queer-led spiritual ministry designed to offer inclusive community to LGBTQIA+ people and allies who have often been harmed or exiled by traditional religious spaces yet remain deeply spiritual.
The sermon reclaims “queer” as a bold, intersectional, spiritually liberatory term that resists the status quo, embraces difference and “weirdness,” and includes sexuality, gender identity and expression, neurodivergence, and queer spirituality under one umbrella. Weldon honors the queer liberation legacy of figures such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera and situates queer struggle within broader movements for housing, racial, and class justice. She critiques rigid binary thinking and highlights non-binary and trans experiences as a “living masterclass” in both/and consciousness that threatens hierarchical systems built on fear and control. Drawing on examples from biology and Indigenous traditions, she argues that queerness is natural and ancient, citing non-binary and same-sex behaviors in fungi, clownfish, penguins, flowers, and over 1,500 species, as well as two-spirit and third-gender roles revered in Navajo and Zuni cultures.
Throughout, Weldon presents queer existence as expanding human consciousness by modeling self-definition, transformation, and the rejection of imposed constructs, offering gifts that can liberate both queer and straight cisgender people from harmful cultural narratives. She invites listeners to examine where they are trapped in binaries and to hear God’s call to “both and,” encouraging a move toward nuance, non-binary thinking, and collective resilience grounded in love. The sermon concludes with a vision of a world where no one has to hide or dim themselves, where loving God includes loving trans teenagers, gay elders, and queer spiritual seekers, and where queer joy, authenticity, and community become healing forces in a divided world.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Rainbow Weldon:
Good morning, good morning. I am Reverend Rainbow, she or they pronouns and baby, I was born this gay. Hey, happy to be with you all on this Pride Sunday. So let us take a deep breath as we enter in this exploration of the holy wholeness of the queer spirit and talking about this idea of oneness and diversity. I think it’s important to make the distinction when talking about the spiritual principle of oneness, that oneness isn’t sameness, right? We are all one, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t celebrate our differences and that is what makes us unique in this world so vast and wonderful. And that by pointing out our differences, it’s not separation. It’s opening up to the vastness and the fullness of our divinity because the only separation we really need to be concerned about is separating ourselves from spirit, God, life, universe, whatever word works for you.
And that is what occurs when we other another’s experience. We are then feeling separate from another and creating that separation then from ourselves with God. When we see some way of being in this beautiful, diverse humanity as being bad or wrong, that is what creates that separation and rejecting the diversity of who we are and the diversity of this planet and the beautifulness all around us, that is rejecting the vastness of God themselves. Imagine a beautiful field. It’s one thing, but it’s not all the same. There’s diversity in the grass and the clovers and the bees and the wildflowers. Although all of that together makes one singular experience, on thriving ecosystem. But when we take the time to sit in nature and to look and to explore it and get in touch with the beauty of the individual bee, it’s that time of year right now.
Have you all seen bees with the little pollen packets on them? They’re so cute landing on the lavender and the clover. We discover so much about ourselves and about God. We are on but we are not the same. Anyone have that U2 song going in their head? Yeah. And yet we all have that divine pattern that is so beautifully expressed in nature and sacred geometry, right? That fractile repeating patterns that we can see down to the tiniest little bit in our DNA to the vastness of the cosmos. Whole perfect wondrous. And this is true of all of us because we are all made of the same stardust and God’s stuff. We are spirit itself getting to know themselves through creation in all of its vast and multifaceted ways. As Dr. Ernest Holmes says, “The universe must exist for the self-expression of God and the delight of God.” Now we can read that and if we get a little analytical about it, it’s like, well, God really isn’t like a person that gets happy or sad about things, but this idea of spirit delighting in itself really is an energy that we all experience.
And how can we get into that vibration of delight through noticing the beauty of all of our different expressions? And yet we have to acknowledge that there is a tendency in the human mind because of fear to want to separate and to put things in nice little boxes and categories and say this, that, and the other. And then our brains have evolved to feel comfortable around those that we feel safe and comfortable around those that are just like us, right? But yet through the evolution of moving beyond that hardwiring of the brain that fears things that look different, we get to explore through this consciousness of oneness and becoming aware of the beauty of diversity, we get to stretch ourselves and grow by surrounding and choosing consciously to surround ourselves with those who are not just like us, but it’s a bit uncomfortable. Yeah? It takes stepping out of our comfort zone and otherwise if we don’t challenge this or consciously choose to grow and expand in our own awareness of the vastness of spirit’s creation and to celebrate all that diversity of expression, then we will continue to live isolated small little lives.
So as I mentioned last time I was here that I’m in the midst of transformation and already I feel a lot more light than I did just a few months ago, but literally every area of my life has been shifting and fueled a lot by grief and change and perhaps the stage of life that I’m in this midlife season. It is for the first time looking at not only getting clear about my heart’s desires but realizing I can actually create that life like I’ve been pretty clear for a while, but it seemed like I couldn’t really have it. Would I really allow myself to experience the fullness of my heart’s desires in all areas of life and to live what I call this queer life beyond the status quo or the expectations of other people’s ideas of who I am or what my life should be.
So earlier this year I took that leap of faith in another way and first pushed by some pain but then pulled by that vision of a new ministry coming through me. So I left the comfort and the routine of the traditional pulpit as I stepped away from my position as the senior minister at Ahava Center for Spiritual Living in Lexington, Kentucky and I’m still in Lexington and now I’m embarking on a new radical adventure with spirit and creating a mostly online ministry led by queer folks called Queer Spirit Collective.
And I was compelled by the stories of so many LGBTQIA+ queer folks, especially those living in Kentucky and that come from more rural areas, right who felt that they had to leave their spirituality at the door when they came out of the closet because the church was a place of much harm and yet I feel this strong like, oh, because there’s that part of me that said, “Well, that’s not fair.” Being exiled from a building or this construct of church doesn’t mean you have to be pushed out or exiled from spirit. And in fact, in most people I know, most queer people I know are deeply spiritual. It’s just not in maybe the traditional ways of the Sunday mornings or the pews and the hymns, but in a more fluid, curious way that embraces ancient wisdom and universal truths and a deep curiosity looking at the gifts and the wisdom of nature as an opportunity to explore community and oneness and connection and to know ourselves more fully.
So that is the calling that I am leaning into and providing this space for queer folks as well as allies who are spiritually curious to know that they don’t have to give up that spiritual connection or the idea of spiritual community because for many people we can have our own private spiritual practice, but some still desire this experience of community. I know I do, but don’t know that you can have that and be fully who you are out and expressed as however you identify. And so being able to present that and it’s interesting people on sometimes in the gay community there is judgment or discomfort for anyone that is more spiritual or religious and it’s like, “Yeah, I’m a minister.” Oh, all of a sudden that comes with a whole baggage and then me just saying that and then there’s that church trauma coming up, but I don’t know.
And then also like the opposite. So it’s like this space of like, but then yet like in more traditional places like feeling like you might have to hide your sexuality or your gender expression or who you are. So my goal is the integration and the oneness and love, which is totally our spiritual principles. And so it was very important to me that I also put the word queer in the name of what I’m created because I wanted to be explicit about it. I wanted to be bold in what this offering is. And I know that the word queer has traveled a long road and it has some different contexts and for people of different generations and different times and for some folks of a certain age that that word was really used for harm and I get that and I understand that that may still sting and there may be that discomfort in hearing that word.
And even for me, like I’m not too young to have experienced that as well. And in fact, when I was in my young 20s and visiting a gay bar in Portland, walked out and the word dyke and an egg thrown at my face and we are always as much as we’ve evolved today, we still see that rise in that fear and that hate for something that is other indifferent. So it’s important to me that it’s still an act of conversation and that we don’t just say, “Well, gay marriage solve that. We’re all equal now, right?” No, just like, “Oh, we had a black president. We solved racism.” Sometimes there’s these things in consciousness that people just think. It’s like, “No, we are just beginning the work, y’all. Let’s stay in the conversation.” So I just wanted to acknowledge that idea, but what I am doing is also embracing the younger generations as well, reclamation of the word queer and the word queer as being different or even weird.
I love being weird. I don’t want to be the same. I don’t want to be normal and how can we look at this word queer more than just a label but also as a spiritual reclamation. And so I relate to it as an umbrella term that covers many aspects under the rainbow of gender identity and gender expression and sexuality as well as neurodivergence and queer spirituality. To me, when I say queer, it’s really the refusal to accept the status quo.
Queer is being willing to look at something from a new perspective, not just because, “Oh, well, that’s how it’s always been done.” It’s like, “But why?” There’s an invitation for liberation and it’s the freedom to think for ourselves because often in the queer community we’ve already been kind of forced to navigate upstream in the world of what the standard roles look like. So there’s this incredible and I understand hard won freedom that comes in that. And of course, I want to mention on this Pride Sunday, the bravery, the courage and the spiritual audacity of those who led the first Pride riot and spearheaded the Queer Liberation Movement and Stonewall in New York City, what is 57 years ago, I believe? Yeah. So Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, trans women of color, drag performers were really on the forefront and the leaders of this movement that we benefit from now.
And they not only fought for gay rights, but they also fought for the rights of the whole community to have access to things such as housing, racial justice, class justice. Queer is also very intersectional, right? It’s like we want freedom. We want freedom for all and for all beings in all areas such as science of mind, that freedom, right? That is what we desire. Yes. So when we stand together in solidarity and commitment to the wholeness and to the integrity of justice for all, we allow love to really be that guiding force and to take hold in our collective consciousness. And to me, one of the gifts of being queer is that when you don’t fit into a box, you stop trying to live in one in all areas and it becomes a great exploration of the vastness of spirit. Queering is loving yourself so much that you get to choose your life despite the cultural narratives, right?
There’s no like default way when everything is kind of different. And so I invite you to think of queer not just as a label for like someone who loves someone of the same gender or not as like the opposite of straight, but as this dynamic, fluid, spiritual way of being in the world that we can all embrace. To be queer is to live in a state of divine curiosity and it’s the refusal to accept constructs of the world simply because that’s how it is or that’s how it’s always been and to live in a way beyond the binary.
Our systems in our world are so trapped in this binary thinking of black, white, good, bad, male, female, Democrat, Republican, Northside, South Side, Cubs, socks. Yeah. Oh, I opened a whole can of worm there. So what would it be like to live beyond that rigid binary thinking and to be in the gray space or the nuance? Because that kind of thinking is really what is holding the current systems and structures and consciousness in place, which are not very liberating. They keep us separate. They hold us back. It’s limiting if we think it’s this or that black or white. You can choose to be a Cubs or a Sox fan. I don’t care about that. All right. So I truly feel that the non-binary and the trans experience is a living masterclass in this idea of both and that is scary to a lot of people and a lot of people in power who want to maintain their fragile status of being on top and in control and the powers that be.
And I think that’s why what we’re seeing right now with this blatant attack on the trans community is because of that fear because the invitation is the liberation beyond the boxes that we’ve been put in. And if we liberate ourselves, oh, then we might see that some of these ways we might be controlled are no longer serving us and we might have to change some things that no longer benefit a hierarchical society. So I see like the bigger picture of it in that way and this one way that we can all individually kind of be on that leading edge of that evolution of consciousness is begin to notice our own ways of both and thinking and to be able to see between and the nuance, right? When a person identifies as non-binary, they’re saying, “The boxes you built are too small for the vastness of the spirit that I am.” This isn’t like a rebellion against nature.
It is actually in alignment with nature. So there’s more and more studies coming out now in science about nature and how queer nature is. I’ve been reading the book called Queer Ducks if you’re interested in more. It’s fascinating and it talks about how a lot of these studies and observations were done in biology on insects and stuff like that showing like same sex mating and all this stuff, even though it wasn’t just for procreation. And they’re like, “Well, why do these beetles do this? This doesn’t make sense.” But those papers and stuff weren’t even published because of the fear of the society of they didn’t want to be labeled as seen as who knows what. So it’s just now coming out more. And so if we look at spirits creation really is non-binary Fungi for example, the Mycelia Network has tens of thousands of different mating types or biological genders and it’s the literal glue of the forest, right?
We’ve heard this idea probably of the wood wide web and showing us the fluidity and the connection of how through the fungi the trees can communicate and as a network of support care for each other, not this individual all about me and my own survival, it’s a community and animals, for example, the clownfish changes sex based on the needs of their community.
Isn’t that amazing? And there’s hundreds of species where same sex pairing is the norm. Some of you may remember the famous penguins at the zoo, right? Yes. And many different water fowl have long-term bonds with the same sex. Roy and Silo, the gay penguins that became famous in the Central Park Zoo in the ’90s. Plants as well carry both male and female. So many flowers can carry both the male and the female expression within a single bloom. And same sex sexual behavior has been confirmed in over 1,500 species. So when people say, “That’s not natural,” I’m really curious what nature they’re talking about because it is very natural and we too are nature. So when we embrace the queer expression within humanity, we’re acknowledging the same creative genius that designed the fungi and the oak tree and the flowers and the birds and the penguins designed us as a unique expression and diversity is the very evidence of God’s infinite imagination.
And another thing I just want to mention is like, this isn’t a new trend, this idea of trans and non-binary, people are like, “I don’t know. We just didn’t have that back in my day and I’m still trying to figure out these pronouns things and I just don’t get it. ” That’s fine. And I just hope if you have that idea that maybe there’s an openness or a willingness to expand or to learn from others’ experiences because it’s not a new idea. It’s just that the Western world colonization and the intersection of the white supremacy and the religious theology kind of put over all of that because the Native American culture held trans and gender non-confirming people in high regard, right, known as two spirited or third gender. The Navajo people revered individuals who possess both masculine and feminine spirits as sacred mediators and healers.
Another native to American tribe, the Zuni tribe have a term called Lamana, which honors leaders who live beyond the binary gender roles. That’s just a couple examples. It’s really fun to research, at least for me. So if you’re interested in this, like I said, queer ducks, do some searching, find out more. But these cultures being different didn’t lead to exile. It was revered. So my question is how can this non-binary way of being in the world teach us all? Like what do we have to learn from this? And the freedom and the joy of expression, because I think it must be something pretty powerful that so many people are so scared of it because it’s all about empowerment and community and connection. And when we come together and love and empower each other in our vastness, we become unstoppable as a people and can demand rights for all inequality.
Contrasting that with our modern Western culture, which is often putting everything into little categories and boxes. I don’t know about you, but like I hate filling out forms because I’m like, “I don’t fit any of these boxes.” So the new thought teaches us that we are all sovereign beings who have the power within to transform the fear narrative and to lean into the strength and the power of our own inner truth. And that is something that only we individually can define. We heal not by pretending that any harm hasn’t occurred or just ignoring that, but by acknowledging it and honoring the resilience of those who have survived, who have paved the way and returning to the love that we are, reclaiming our inherent worth and our value as a beloved expression of God and standing tall in our own power and unique authenticity. Our freedom of expression, our authenticity, our vulnerability empowers others to be free as well.
Queer people by our very existence expand the consciousness of humanity. We show the world that you can reinvent yourself, you can rename yourself, you can reclaim yourself from the constructs that were imposed by others of the world. You can define yourself, you can evolve, you can transition, you can transform, and you could be the architect of your own soul. And I’m not saying that queer people are the only ones that have some special gift to give humanity, but this is Pride Sunday and this is the context of today’s talk. So let’s look at how the queer community has something to offer all of us, not just as this thing to like, “Oh, good. Yeah, sure. I don’t care who you sleep with. ” And it just be this kind of dismissive thing like, “I’m open.” No, what if we were to really look at what are the gifts that it has to teach all of us?
So when we stop trying to fit into a world that doesn’t fit us, we start envisioning a new world and a world that works for all. A world where straight cisgender people are also free from the status quo expectations of how life should or shouldn’t be because these narratives don’t just hurt queer folks, right? They hurt us all. The holy, holy experience of the queer spirit is an invitation to bring us all out of the closet in whatever ways that we have hidden away parts of ourselves or that we have deemed parts of ourselves different, other or unlovable, right? So the queer identity fully expressed is a gift to humanity and it only scares those who are clinging to that ego for safety.
So to wrap up this beautiful month on love and to wrap up this message today on this Pride Sunday, I invite us to realize that we cannot fully love the on if we are excluding parts of its expression or if we are saying some are good and some are bad or unholy. So to love God is to love the trans teenager, the gay elder, the queer spiritual seeker. I envision a world where we no longer have to hide or dim parts of ourselves in order to fit in or to manage other people’s comfort or discomfort as a trade off for being our own unique God-given selves, to love who we want to love, to express all the beautiful colors with no limitation. So the invitation this week is to consider where in your life are you stuck in a binary? Where are you maybe saying, “Oh, I have to choose something or I need to make a choice or in some area of my life, it’s either this or it’s that.
” When perhaps God is actually whispering, “Both and both and. ” Or perhaps God is screaming and shouting, yes, right? Yes, be bold, be more, be joy, be free.
So let’s be like that fungi connected as one, loving, honoring and supporting each other, not despite our differences, but because we realize our differences make us stronger and more resilient and let us be like the queer ducks who don’t quiet their quacks because they know who they are and they are worthy and let us be more like nature, unbothered by boxes or limitation and to be like those flowers that bloom fully and freely knowing that we are a holy expression of God themselves and may we celebrate the queer spirit as a holy divine experience that it is and allow more love and queer joy and freedom into all of our lives, which I say the world desperately needs.
We can’t simply look out there for things to change, but we can look within and we can begin to love ourselves more fully and our neighbors and to allow this love to be the healing balm in such a divided world. Yes? We are on and we are all worthy and so it is. We’re going to take this into prayer. So just taking that breath, relaxing into this now moment where we call forth the essence and the energy of this quality of joy, of freedom, of creativity, of wholeness, seeing and recognizing that this is the very essence in nature of life itself, freedom, joy, love, wholeness, so evident in nature must be evident in who I am for we are one. There is only one life, one thing happening right here right now moving and expressing itself in as and through me in as and through all as love, as creativity, as joy, as freedom.
So it is from this place the oneness that I claim right here right now, holy wholeness of all beings to be revealed, knowing that we can stretch beyond the constructs of the world and envision a new world that works for all, that we all have this creative imagination to experience life and all of the fullness of our heart’s desires. We are worthy. All life is worthy, whole, perfect, and complete. So I’m so grateful to speak this word now, so grateful to bless this beautiful pride Sunday and all of those who are out at the parade today, just knowing that it is a space of joy and love and peace and authenticity, calling forth divine guidance and safety just to surround this whole area and to know that right where I am, God is and all is well and for that I give things as I release this word into the law, knowing it always says, yes, yes, my beloved, it is done and it is so and so it is.
Yes. Thank you, Reverend Rainbow.