What is Beyond the Rainbow?

Over ten years ago, I dreamed of starting a business to help people wounded by religion. Some of it came out of my training as a hospital/hospice chaplain, where the ministry was to the spirit, regardless of the person’s spiritual connection. I learned that my ministry was to accept a person’s spiritual understanding irrespective of whether it matched my own. After all, a person’s connection to their creator (whoever they envision that creator is) is their unique source of healing, even when medical science can no longer offer any options. If their creator cannot heal them, neither can mine.

At the same time, I befriended several people in the LGBTQIA+ community. I became an ally committed to supporting policy efforts to recognize the community as people with rights equal to those who fit into “societal norms.” I joined a choir made up of this community and their allies and celebrated marriage equality legislation in the state of Delaware and later throughout the country by singing the praises of the acknowledgment of basic human rights for a marginalized community.

My discernment process over the past ten years has taught me that the efforts are not finished but have only just begun. While members of this community are starting to come “out of the closet,” the process from there can be terrifying. Policies can legalize one’s presence and punish those who discriminate, but it takes longer than that to change individuals’ hearts and minds. Families and churches still refuse to accept the same individuals that God and society command them to love and care for. Politics, at least for the moment, seems to be backing away from some of the progress that has been made which concerns me. I have too much at stake as one who now recognizes that if I was born a couple of decades later, I would now identify as gender variant or non-binary rather than female.

While I love rainbows and the brilliant colors they bring, I also see them as the spiritual promise of renewal. With other rainbow depictions, such as “Over the Rainbow” and “The pot of gold at the end …,” Beyond the Rainbow elicits a different viewpoint. It isn’t lofty or out of reach, but on the same level as we are now. All we have to do is walk forward to meet what lies there.