Associate Director Nichola Torbett shared these words during the Fall Festival celebrating the LGBTQ+ work at Kirkridge.

I am honored to stand in these long lineages of LGBTQ+ work here. I’m sitting in my office at Turning Point, just above Memorial garden, and I feel the ancestors stirring around me as we tell these stories

My role tonight is to move us from what has been to what is, right now, and what is coming, and why it matters..

Despite the incredible decades-long work not only at Kirkridge but by countless people and organizations around the country, too many members of our community are brutalized and killed. This is true especially for our transgender siblings, and many fear it is going to get worse under the new administration. Since November 5, calls to crisis and suicide hotlines from transgender youth have skyrocketed. 

Please join me in a moment of silence for those who have been killed or who have taken their own lives because of their sexual orientation or gender expression.

***

Right now, places like Kirkridge are needed more than ever. We are entering into a time where, once again, this kind of refuge is going to be critical. What’s more, as a queer-led retreat center, we have some particular medicine to bring to these times.

When I say we are queer led, I mean we’ve been queer led from the beginning, even when it wasn’t safe to be public about it. (There was once a retreat called “The Square Pegs.” It wasn’t a gay or lesbian retreat, but those folks were “queer” in that they did not fit within the dominant paradigm.)

When I say that we are queer led now, I mean that

• Our current staff leadership is entirely queer

• 70% of our current board members identify as LGBTQ

• 71% of our intentional community members identify this way as well.

We are significantly bent, as they say.

And that is a good thing in a time where the straight arrow shatters the heart of justice and the straight path leaves compassion dying in the ditch. This is a time to go a little queer, a little off the beaten path.

In this political climate of snatch and grab; of emboldened hatred; of compounding, impending chaos; queerness has, yes, queer people have, some vital things to offer. And when I say queer people here, I’m not talking about who you sleep with. I’m talking about a certain willingness to step outside the lines for the sake of love.

So, some of what we have to offer includes:

1. As lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer folk, we know something about fear. We know something about walking through fear for the sake of joy, for the sake of truth, for the sake of love. We know about that. We can model it at a time when it is needed.
2. Queerness is about claiming joy even when the world tries to take it from you. Queer people model that. We are all going to need it.
3. Queerness is medicine. I agree with the transgender performance artist Alok Vaid-Menon, who says, “They brutalize us because they first harmed themselves.” They harm us because they first harmed themselves by suppressing all that is within them that did not fit the gender role, the social role, to which they had been assigned. I feel like we are living in the midst of massive calcified grief, that as much as it was economics or white supremacy or misogyny that decided the election, it was also this unacknowledged grief for all we have given up to assimilate into a social system that ultimately cannot deliver on its promises. Straight white men, in particular, have been promised something that is never going to materialize. It can’t. There is not going to be any “getting ahead” in a system that is built to extract wealth from the many for the benefit of a few. And so, it’s time to stop making that bargain. It’s time to stop assimilating. It’s time to reclaim our queerness, regardless of sexual orientation. It’s time to bring back all the life-giving, love-blooming weirdness and fierceness and realness that lies deep within every single one of us, I know it.
4. My friend and spiritual teacher, Lynice Pinkard, who you’ll hear from in a bit, used to say that queerness is about loving across the lines, about drawing a circle so big that no one is outside it. Let’s do that. Let’s love that boldly.

We have a lot of queer programming coming up in the next year:

We Are Deaf, Queer, and Here

Queer Dating and Relationships

Trans Sanctuary Retreat (description and registration coming soon)

Sisterly Conversations: Sharing Our Stories Across Generations

Gay/bi/trans men’s retreat (description and registration coming soon)

Monthly gatherings where we tell stories and sit around fires and drink mulled cider

We are also looking into othe ways we can provide sanctuary, especially for transgender people and for Black, Indigenous, and other Queer and Trans People of Color.

And also, let’s be honest. Everything we do is pretty queer. We couldn’t put on a truly straight retreat if we tried. Thank you for loving us in that. Thank you for supporting us and holding us accountable for bringing the medicine we have to bring.