As much as I did NOT plan out my travels in the past year and a half, I seemed to have incredible timing anyways. For example, the time I visited my brother in Long Beach:
It was the middle of May, and I was behind schedule… err, “schedule.” After breezing through Vegas and the Mojave Desert, I arrived at my brother’s late Saturday evening. That meant all the time I had to spend in Long Beach was crammed into the first half of an apparently very important Sunday.
PRIDE SUNDAY!!!
God, A Tree
Let me take a detour from that story to tell you about trees. And to tell you about God.
You see, in Christian scripture, God describes himself as human—a king, a warrior, a friend, a parent. In so much as we are said to be created in His image, we can look at ourselves and understand something about God. But God is so much more than human!
In the pages of the Bible, the Lord also describes himself as: a mother hen, a rock, a piece of bread, and (most importantly for this conversation) a tree. When we see these things, we should be able to see them reflecting some character of God. Hens—protective and jealous for the life she gave. Rocks—unmoving and strong. Bread—simple, sustaining, and… delicious?
But what about trees? What about those living monuments which, individually, host thousands of insects, birds, and mammals? What about those tons of living matter, pumping nutrients out of the dust and into countless leaves, blossoms, and fruit? And have you considered what it means for God to be like the trees—reliable as the seasons—which work endlessly to breathe out oxygen, oxygen that goes directly into our lungs, our blood, and our entire being so we can live?
Sorry, I’ll try to stop geeking out about plants for the rest of this post. Well, except for one plant…
Jacaronda mimosafolia.
Due to one botanist’s work in the early 1900’s, this tree is literally EVERYWHERE in Los Angeles and Orange County, California. If you’re not familiar (I’ll assume you’re not or don’t know the name), it’s a sub-tropical tree that has fern-like leaves and purple flowers. Why is it special? BECAUSE THE FLOWERS ARE SO PRETTY!!!
Every May, the trees drop all their leaves and start pushing out thousands and thousands of extravagant purple flowers. I should clarify: thousands and thousands of flowers PER TREE. For a few weeks, you’ll see more purple on almost any given street in LA than you would have at a Prince concert. The things hold nothing back. They are bright. They are beautiful. And they are definitely not going anywhere.
What Kind of God
And so me being me, I thought to myself, “Is God like this tree?” Is God, dare I say, flamboyant?
And the answer is yes. God is unapologetically, defiantly, outrageously loud and outspoken about who he is and what he wants. Sure, God does that whole “still, small voice” thing when dealing with most people. But then there was the whole “ten plagues on Egypt” thing… And the whole “reigning hell fire on the towns full of rapists” thing… And then that deal where he told Abraham to sacrifice his son and then was all “WOAH WOAH WOAAAH! You KNOW I’m not that kinda god. Have a goat and an entire nation all to yourself.” When God is questioned by a people or by his champions, God always makes a statement.
Plus, need I mention the time that Moses asked God who hewas and God responded, “I AM WHO I AM!” Is it really that hard to imagine the TV trope of the “sassy, black woman” or the “sassy, gay friend” yelling this out of the burning bush? (And if I can draw attention to the etymology of the word “flamboyant” without being inappropriate given the connotation, I’d also like to point out that the bush representing God was literally flaming.)
A Colorful Place
So back to Long Beach Pride Parade:
I walked around town, block after block, seeing Jacaranda trees that were gushing with color and painting the street below them a deep, rich purple. But well before I arrived at Ocean Blvd, there were also signs of Pride everywhere. Rainbows painted across crosswalks, flags in every shop window, and girls with rainbow extensions in their hair.
I’ll be honest, at times I thought it felt like nature was actually celebrating Pride too.
Coming from a fairly conservative branch of Christianity, I had a lot of reservations about Pride. And I should probably announce my bias now: I think there’s a number of things in Pride that aren’t good for individuals or a community. Having a bunch of people march in shiny thongs, BDSM gear, and shirts with pictures of genitals on them seems like a fantastic way of hyper-sexualizing people. But it also seems a poor way of promoting the humanization of an often-ostracized community.
However…
God, A Tree, A People
There is a lot of things there I think are wonderful. Namely, flamboyance.
Being excited about who you are is far from “sin.” Celebrating your capacity to love and to love wholeheartedly is not an evil. And making a grand statement that you embrace values like compassion and sensitivity (if you’re a man) or strength and willfulness (if you’re a woman) is desperately needed in this culture.
It’s not hard to see God in a tree that is so colorful, so striking, and so stubbornly unique. I may not agree with everything in the LGBTQ+ community (which is a very broad generalization), but I will say this: It shouldn’t be hard to see God in a people dedicated to being so unapologetic about their beliefs, their identity (misplaced or not), and the personhood which God has granted them.
