Where Are You From?

Where are you from?

I was born among the rolling hills of Pennsylvania, the land of stoic German Lutheran immigrants, not too far from the town of Hershey which to this day on warm summer afternoons has its streets filled with the delicious scent of chocolate. I was held in the gnarled hands of my grandfather, Sterling Lentz, a World War II veteran turned barber, and my earliest memories are of my grandmother, Emma, as she would peel apples for me in her hospice bed in one swirling twist of apple skin that fascinated and delighted my young imagination. I was baptized on Reformation Sunday, my baptism connecting me to the community of saints of our shared Lutheran heritage that began with a German monk saying "Here I stand" on behalf of the poor and marginalized, a heritage we all share and continue to proclaim.

I am heir to another heritage, too, that of the LGBTQIA+ community whose history is found along the margins of society, even though love, loss, desire, and longing form the common currency of all human experience.

My name is Pace, a name I chose for myself, which is a nod to yet another heritage–my mother's Italian lineage. Pace in Italian means peace, and my name is as much a promise as it is a commitment. In English pace reminds me to continue moving, to grow and change, to keep the pace as I follow the divine's movement in my own life. 

Where are you from?

What commonalities bind us, and differences shape us?

What connects you to the past while propelling you into the present?

-Pace Warfield-May