I sang in the Choir, I taught Sunday school,
I taught them God’s Golden Rule.
To do unto others as you would have done to you,
For this is the only way to prove God’s love is true.

I knelt and prayed, I raised my hands high,
I let my singing reach the open sky,
I prayed with a mother, who had lost a child,
Whose sobs were so turbulent, but her spirit mild.

She confessed to me without shame,
Her son was a homosexual, without any blame.
She use to pray that God would change him,
To remove him from this terrible pit of sin.

She told me how he had been scorned,
Here in the very Church where she now mourned.
She told of how she pleaded with God to rearrange,
This son she loved, who could not change.

Tears came to my eyes, as she continued to speak.
She said that she finally found the answers she did seek.
She told of how God spoke to her in words so bold,
About how he was the creator of the young and old.

The Church does not create, nor does any other soul,
And when he makes his creation, He makes them whole.
He was made for who he was, without pity or shame,
And like everyone else he was made wonderfully the same.

I placed my arm around her and spoke of my pain,
Telling her that she needed not to feel any shame,
I told her she had raised him right and not to fear,
That God would always be there to lend his ear.

She shook her head, declaring I did not understand,
It was not for her son’s death, the tears filled the tissue in her
hand.
The tears were for those in the Church, who scorned him,
Those including herself, for the prayer of his sin.

For her son had never treated anyone wrong,
In fact, he went out of his way to give their hearts a song,
Never did he curse or hate this Church of scorn,
And never did he miss an early Sunday morn’

He lived, loved, and died, by the golden rule they teach,
He accepted everyone in the love, the way they preach.
Not a soul from the Church came to his side,
As he lay in that hospital and finally died.

No one called to express sympathy, or sent a flower,
She was all alone, amidst a silent, yet overcoming power.
But her son was not alone as he left this land,
Because God was holding him by the hand.

She knew God smiled and embrace him for all he had been through,
And how he kept the promise of the Golden Rule.
Then God touched her heart when all was done,
And God reminded her that he also had a son.

And his son was different, and unaccepted by his own,
She knew then all the isolation and pain that we had shown.
She learned that the only way God’s love is true,
Is if you do to others as you’d have them do to you.

Mac McClure March 8, 2006