What Mushrooms Taught me about Officiating a Wedding

Love in an Era of Erasure

I'm back!! Rest assured, I did not disappear from your inboxes because of a lack of good news. After a month of moving followed by the absolute craziness that is pride month, it was time for a break. I took the week to visit family, give a few wonderful PFLAG presentations, and officiate a wedding!

Ben GRINNING at a beautifully dressed bride as he officiates a wedding between two lovely, adorable people

The wedding was deeply, deeply queer and nerdy (we used d20s to roll for initiative to see who would say their vows first!) and it was absolutely beautiful. In my officiant intro, I talked about the Honey Mushrooms of Oregon, a 4-square-mile mycelial network that are all a part of the largest single living organism on earth.

Here's an excerpt from what I shared with everyone at the ceremony:

Mycelium networks act like both one brain and a community. they provide resources and nutrients to keep each other alive, they have a language with which they send messages about resources and safety. Through genetics they have memory of centuries of connection.

When we happen to find love, when we find people that we then choose to invest time and energy to build something beautiful with, we are choosing to expand our mycelium network.

The beautiful thing about these new connections is that they aren't solitary, they aren't exclusive, they're additive. The people in this room have also chosen you both. Chosen to connect with you, to share love and resources and community, and as you connect to each other in this new, beautiful way, and as we all have the gift of being present for this moment, we get to connect with you even more too.

The celebration was warm and loving, full of chosen family, fellow queers, and passionate allies of all ages. In the lead up to the wedding, which was hosted in a small town in Indiana, we visited a queer owned coffee shop, spent two hours in the crocs store, and the bride was gifted free hairstyling from her local salon. The wedding was hosted in a local art museum. Everything was perfect.

Love in the Time of Erasure

I'm struck by the contrast between this amazing weekend, full of love and community, and the increasingly dire narrative spun by many of the people around me. Complete Erasure, they say. Yes, transphobia is relentless, christian nationalism is a major threat, and the attacks on our community are dangerous and exhausting, but erasure?

Last I checked, we didn't need the government's permission to exist. The story of stonewall was written in our bones, on the bricks of the historic inn, not on the government website.

The queer community has been building loving and beautiful partnerships long before the right to marry, which often felt like it would never come.

We built networks of care and mutual aid during the AIDS epidemic when hospitals and governments refused to see and treat us. Even when it seemed, we might be truly wiped out, we continued to live and love and dance and fight for a better future.

We found fashion and art and expressed ourselves in the face of three articles laws that demanded we hold back.

The queer community has existed for millennium. Queerness was co-created with humanity itself. We’ve survived countless attacks on our community with far fewer allies and far weaker legal and structural supports, but now they take Harvey Milk's name off a ship— a ship meant to tote oil around the ocean and aid the US military in bringing death and destruction to countless global communities—and we throw up our hands and say the game is over, that they’ve erased us? With all the love in my heart, we need to get a grip.

Harvey Milk and Elaine Noble had no idea if they could be elected to make change as openly queer politicians. Now, there are more out LGBTQ+ elected officials across the US than ever before in history. We are standing on their backs, living in the world they built us, all the while crying out that their legacy is erased. We forget that WE are their legacy.

So What?

I’m not saying not to be upset about the attacks on our community or not to take them seriously. Be furious, be disgusted, be frightened, be motivated, be anything except defeatist and numb. When you say “we’re cooked”, when you say everything’s on fire, or the world is garbage, you’re saying I give up. You’re saying everything our queer ancestors fought for was nothing compared to what we’re going through now and what they survived was all worthless because now we’ve been erased. This community has always been here, we will always be here. It may not look the same as I did last year, it might take a minute to get back to some of the benefits we were enjoying, but I gotta tell you that even from 10 years ago, so many things are so much better than they were.

If you're trying to figure out how to pull yourself out of doomerism, here is a little bit of a reading list of articles or events that might be helpful for you:

If you find yourself feeling total overwhelm at the gloom and doom around you, check out this FANTASTIC article by

Stephanie Nakhleh

: Ok, Doomer

If you're wanting to find a way to use your voice and story to build resilience, check out this event from my dear friend and fellow advocate Lex Horowitz! It’s virtual, free, and this weekend. It’s called “Embodying Resilience: The power of storytelling in trans self-actualization”

If you feel like you aren't sure how to balance staying informed with staying sane, check out this article I wrote on which news sources I trust and how I engage.

If you're looking to learn more about how to fight back, join the organization behind the No Kings Day protests for their efforts to train ONE MILLION PEOPLE in strategic noncompliance to fight authoritarianism. The first training is tonight!

If you're really struggling, and you are in need of a dose of tenderness, check out the books How to Keep House While Drowning, as well as On Thriving.

And lastly, if you're needing some more ideas on how to actively choose joy, because no one is going to choose it for you, don't forget to check out my new project: The Joyful Choice! Here was an example of a challenge I presented to my readers last week:

Choose Joy: Be Wrong!

I'm hard at work on a major good news roundup for Friday, what do you want me to make sure I include? What is the best news story you've heard this week? The more local, the better! I can't be everywhere at once :)

That's all for today! All my love,

Ben & Oliver