Season 2 Finale: What Blessings May Come in the Mess of Life with Terry Gonda

Hello and welcome to Loving The Imperfect. Today we'll hear from Terry Gonda, a devout Catholic, who was fired from her position as a music director at a local Catholic church because of her marriage to a woman. 

Join us today as she shares her story and we hear how a tragic situation like this can evolve and enrich a person's spiritual life. When this story broke in the summer of 2020, it made the pages of both the New York Times and the Associated Press as well as several local news agencies around Detroit. 

From Terry's bio:

In addition to performing, Terry has studied psychological and spiritual growth for over a decade and is an experienced workshop presenter and lecturer. She offers concert/workshop packages for adults, young adults and teens. Venues may choose from existing workshops or work to tailor the experience for particular needs. Terry is a dynamic speaker and presentations are intense, funny, and full of depth.

Past workshops have included some or all of the following: practical tools for facing our fears in our everyday lives, tools for putting the healing journey into perspective, and inspirational/educational faith presentations.

Terry is also available to run longer retreat type weekends for small to medium size groups. These include a mixture of presentations, creative activities, and time for reflection as well as plenty of fun. Past retreats have included a weekend on "The Wisdom, Power and Beauty of Women".

Thank you for listening!

This episode concludes season 2. I will be taking a much-needed break. I will return in a couple of months. If you miss me, please listen to some of the past episodes you may have missed. A big thank you to all who have supported the show thus far by listening and commenting. I really appreciate it!

Blessings to you,

Brianne

Links mentioned:

Servant's Entrance

Terry Gonda's Website 

My Documentary NOT FOR SALE: A Witness Story

#prayer #LBGTQ #Inclusive #religion #catholic #bible #mystical #mystic #theology #mysticism #music #art #love #christianity #peace #community

For more information about me and my work, please visit www.brianneturczynski.com or www.lovingtheimperfect.com

Transcript

Intro:

 Welcome to Loving the Imperfect Podcast, a show for seekers of deeper contemplation. I'm Brianne Turczynski. For 10 years, I've been studying offerings from holy teachers and holy texts. I'm a journalist who has listened to the stories of many people throughout the years, and I continue to be captivated by the stories of how God nudges and directs us, either by closing doors or opening them. So, join me as we listen to these extraordinary stories and become witnesses to the truth of love. ​

 Hello and welcome to Loving The Imperfect. Today we'll hear from Terry Gonda, a devout Catholic, who was fired from her position as a music director at a local Catholic church because of her marriage to a woman. So, join us today as we talk to her and she shares her story with us and we hear how a tragic situation like that can evolve and enrich a person's spiritual life.

So, thank you for joining me today.

Terry: For the church, I was the assistant music director, but I would run the Saturday mass.

So, I had the Saturday evening group the position I had as assistant music director, and then director was 36 years. I served, and doing spiritual direction, accompanying people. And I worked at Young Adult Ministry where we did music and spiritual direction there.

[It was] more than a job title, I mean, it starts my whole life, my whole spirituality. But 15 years old was when I first started playing as a volunteer, and I'm still playing guitar. Now guitar and sing. And I lead the choir, lead everybody and prompt them and tease them and inspire them. 
 
 

Brianne: So, you were the music director or the assistant? 

Terry: For the church, I was the assistant music director, but I would run the Saturday mass. I had the Saturday evening group.

Brianne: Was that your full-time job? 

Terry: Nope, that was just the weekend job. I worked for the army for 40 years this month, and the first 20 years was as a research engineer doing stealth vehicle work. And then I got opinionated about how organizations worked and didn't work, particularly ours. And I began a career of what's called organization development, which is everything a really big umbrella of creating healthy organizations.

And that's where I've landed now is the passion working a lot with Seven Habits for Highly Effective People and that content. And I've invented some adjacent content of that, of helping us focus on our paradigms, our perspectives, because that's where everything comes from. Everything. So, my spirituality, how I handle the church, all of that you'll hear in my story is paradigm management, perspective management, story management, managing stories to be effective and happy. As opposed to depressed and anxious and spiraling. So, I'm obsessed [with] story management with people and helping people with the neuroscience and the psychology and everything.

To help people have that kind of self-awareness and self-management in the end.

Brianne: It Sounds like you're, mad scientist skills come in handy at work too. 

Terry: Yes. I mean, from a little kid I was dubbed a mad scientist by my family with my oatmeal and everything I was doing, and I love chemistry, but two ADD to have gone into chemistry. So, computer science was it, and the whole research mad scientist for vehicles was there. And then I probably do more research and inventing now in the organization development side of the side of things. But it's a deep passion to do workshops with people and to do coaching one-on-one with them. And just accompany people, very rich. 

Brianne: You were probably raised in the Catholic church. 

Terry: Absolutely. Good Polish Catholic. 

Brianne: So, how were you able to come out safely? What was that journey like for you? 

Terry: Well, I was truly raised Catholic in a Polish Catholic family that was part of Polish Catholic family, you know, 400% Polish, 400% Polish, Catholic, all my great, you know, grandparents, great grandparents, and my parents grew up in that whole Detroit. Polish Catholic kind of neighborhood with grade schools, high schools, et cetera. They weren't the, let's say the rosary every day, they weren't extremely, what we might say, pious in that way. It was just part of their bones. We said grace at dinner.

My dad would bless us when we go to bed, you know, put our hands on us. May Almighty God bless you in the name of the Father, Son, Holy Ghost, amen. And we kiss and go to go to sleep. And then we went to church. But we’d do the Lenten practices and we went to Catholic grade school, all of us.

So, that was my world. And I remember just loving looking at the priest. I was young and doing the communion and the vessels and the whole thing, the whole theater of that, just staring and going, wow. And by second grade, wanting to be a priest. And my grandma broke my heart by telling me I couldn't do that 'cause I was a girl.
 But I did pray, get on my knees and pray every night too.

But in the sixties the folk mass came into the Catholic church.

 And I fell in love with that. I want to play guitar. So, by nine years old I was playing guitar. So, I want to do that. And by 15 I was playing in church. It was my, environment. And my coming out was a gradual process to myself.

I had a dream at 10 that would seem like it was about being gay, but I now realize it was about being cut off from my emotions because I felt this attraction to another girl on my Softball team and like a yearning. And I kept saying like, “I’m in love”. And I told my mom, went to psychologist and [the psychologist said,] she's fine.

But from that point on she was watching. So, she was triggered by then. The thing with the girl [in the dream] is that she was sad across a river, which now if you look at it clearly, maybe there's some nascent homosexual, thoughts coming through there. But also, just not being able to reach, you know, reach across to that sad girl on the other side.

But by high school, having attractions in both directions and when there were these two girls, in every school there's these two girls that are paired up that can't be separated kind of thing. And being jealous of that relationship. It's like, I want that. Never having a best friend really. I always felt too old; I ate lunch with the teachers; I never really connected with people my age. I am in a music group at high school. Our Church is doing musical theater regionally with young adults, and I'm in that, my faith is all around me. 

And I took it seriously. I mean, some people don't, but I said from a young age, I just took it seriously. The first song I wrote was a prayer to Jesus. I wrote a prayer at 13 and I put it to music.

I mean, this was the sixties into the seventies with the sexual revolution. I'd already come to this sense that the church might not have all the rules figured out on how to be a good person in all those ways. Certainly, all the teaching of Jesus and being connected to people.

I mean, that is just ingrained in me of taking care of the poor and loving your enemy and just loving. That there were some questions that were okay to hold. I didn't have any problem with evolution. I think our school was fine. So, I there was never any crisis about, is the Bible real? I could do the nuance.

And so, when it became more apparent that these attractions weren't going away and they were persistent, it was my freshman year, and I came out to my roommate; I was scared.

There's always some tension because it's just the fact of living in a world that's generally not accepting more and more, but she was like, you dummy, what you think I was gonna do, throw you out, kind of thing.

So, she was fine. And by June we were together. So, how interesting was that? So, that was the beginning, coming out to myself, coming out to my roommate, coming out to my sister that week.

I'm trying to remember the order. My parents found out, like a year or two later when I left out a letter from my roommate and I had the option of playing it off. I was just joking around. But it was painful to not talk to them.

So, I came out and I watched my father cry for the first time. We're gonna help you. And I agreed to therapy. Because I realized any therapists worth their weight was not going to try and convert me. So, we went to Catholic Social Services of Oakland County. And he, after several sessions, says, you have a lovely daughter, and I wrote them a letter and that was it.

But within a month, my dad came around and he said, I know you—this is where I want to cry—he says, you don't do anything impulsively, you think it through. And if that's who you are, then the church is wrong. And I was wrong. That was like a month and a half after finding out. 

Brianne: Wow. That was quick.

Terry: Yep. My mom, not so, much. My dad actually ended up having to have a bypass and that was a hard summer for my mom between that, and my dad and she withdrew. And while she had, really cared for my roommate and said, you need to have more friends like her. Because she was afraid I was hanging out with dykes.

You should have more friends like her. And then to find out I was with her, that lack of acceptance and how I handled it probably led to the dissolution of that relationship. It was after 10 years though, we've been together for 10 years, but didn't have the tools back then to really understand. But that is also where I learned to sit in the mess, the tension of not just writing my mother off, not just trying to appease her.

I lived my life as authentically as I could. It took six years for me to say, can I bring her to Christmas? And my mom said, “You know, you guys are adults. I really should have years ago.”  So, it was like six years before I could bring her to Christmas. But the damage was done between her and my mom, and my partner never really recovered from that pain understandably.

And my not sort of standing up to my mom, I let her take her own journey. So, that was very formative to do that, to stay in my faith, working for the church. 

So, here I am coming out, and I'm at Oakland University and Michigan State brings their gay group from state. They come and visit OU and do some sort of presentation.

So, we started the first support group, at support at Oakland University. And we met at St. John Fisher. That was my first sort of leadership, stepping on into leadership kinda surprises me that I did that, but obviously it was inspired.

So, that was the community, and it became apparent very quickly that they embraced me for my music. They embraced my leadership of that group. And when a new priest came in, I was like. What's going to happen? And so, at his introduction party, the old priest introduces me to new priest. And here's Terry Ganda. Basically, she's our resident lesbian, right? She runs the Alternative Lifestyle support group. It's like, hello father. It is like, what's gonna happen? And two years later, when they went from two Sunday services to a Saturday and a Sunday, they asked me to run the Saturday Service for music after knowing that.

And that was probably one of the most profound moments. You don't know it then. I mean, I'm like, what? Me? I'm only 24 and guitar player. I'm a singer songwriter. I want to go off and be famous. But what impact did that have on me that this priest hires me to be a music director knowing I was a lesbian?

So, the coming out is just this gradual process. Coming out to my parents was the hardest, most painful, most others have been easy. And that is the community that raised me. And so, when four years later after hiring me, my relationship with my roommate breaks up and I fall into a profound despair for a year, like a zombie, it's the church that saved my life. And that music group, that family that I had, cultivated going out to eat and, you know, Saturday nights after church, not realizing, this thing had helped cultivate, caught me and saved my life.

Brianne: And that was the same priest that was with you in the end, right? 

Terry: Well, that priest went on for like 32 years and. Grew this amazing collaborative group. We now use this term sodality, which means, you know, collaborative meaning journeying together.  And this church did it. There were so, many leaders by like, 2000, 2004 that this one page that had all the ministries and the contact information as the assistant music director, my name didn't even make the page.

That's how many people were involved and how many ministries there were. It was phenomenal. And I was encouraged by, the campus ministers who we became buddies, we ran young adult ministry for 20 years together. And I was encouraged by her to do spiritual direction, program with the Jesuits, Saint Ignatius order and loved it.

And that was so, healing for me. In accompanying young adults, the campus minister came to us after about six years. She kind of interviewed everybody what's going on. And she said there are no fewer than probably 22 people that say you've saved their lives.

So, we were growing leaders and saving lives. So, not just the music director, but also, working with young adults. So, when that priest retires, one of his friends actually got the job. We went from Father Jerry, dear friend, to Father Mike, who became a dear friend. And it was Father Mike who had the joy of having to be there to terminate me when the archdiocese called.

Brianne: And how many years were you working with him as your family? 

Terry: That was about five years with him. And Father Jerry stayed as a member of the community. So, Father Jerry was right there. He stayed; this was his home and he just stayed. 

Brianne: Do you have a moment that you knew that you were God's beloved no matter what?

Terry: It's a journey, there are milestones. I mean…

Brianne: …And this could even be a mystical experience, 

Terry: Right! Back to being raised in a Catholic environment and being on my knees and praying to be a saint, there was its own little baby mystic experiences appropriate to the developmental stages.

I mean, I studied that I have my own sort of connectedness. Very much a close relationship and talking to God. But in growing up, and then we're raised in a shame-based society, and I certainly had that in my own family and being gay just totally dives right into the shame. So, that's the opposite, right? The opposite of the beloved, I'm broken. I'm bad.

I never felt consciously, oh, I'm bad. It was all that sort of unconscious shame. So, I always felt a very good, strong relationship with God. That's a blessing. When my first, big relationship after 10 years ended, I just crashed and I hurt so badly, felt so betrayed, but I didn’t blame God. People would say, “wait, aren’t you mad at God?” I said, “God didn't make us act like idiots. God didn't do this.” It never occurred to me. 

Instead, I said, I want to learn everything I can about human beings and about God and who we are so I don't hurt like this again. I'm wise enough to know that that's not possible, but I'm going to do it anyway. So, started Bible study and that became the best thing that ever happened to me.

The worst thing was the best thing. Which is a theme of just understanding that it's in the mess that is where all the richness comes from. I began a rewiring process that I think God took me through. My ex, after we separated for a year, went back to therapy for a year and a half to heal. That's who we were. Not to get back together.

Of course I wanted to. But when I finally accepted what was, I'm in love with her and she's with someone else and it's okay. That was almost a mystical experience. The euphoria of the surrender to what actually is the denying reality was amazing. 

I met my wife to be on a trip with my mother, how ironic is that? My mom still wasn't quite accepting, but she was much more chill. 

When I started the spiritual direction program, a very healing moment, was when the lead of the program, the priest, on a healing on a weekend, I was in his group, and at the end we were supposed to help each other be seen and had this poster of each person. And we all kind of put stuff on there and he put this Bible verse on it. I don’t know if it's Jeremiah, but, so, picture this, I come out that weekend for sure to the whole group.

I wrote to apply to it, I'd already said that I was a lesbian, and what I'd learned from it. Here's the director of the program and he said, I picked this verse for you. And he reads it, and it says, when you were born, you were thrown on the ground and covered in blood and your umbilical cord was barely cut. I took you and I cleaned you in oil and something else. As you grew, I took you and put a diadem on your head. From the Bible's perspective, it's God talking to Israel, and saying, I took you as a bride kind of thing, and here's this priest saying these words to me!

And it just shot through me like lightning. The unconscious messages of this priest saying these things. Boom. 

Now I'm going to backtrack and say that when I was 28 before we broke up, I was leaving work one night and I always worked late. So, my organization development job, actually, this is research engineer job, six o'clock in the parking lot, all empty.

And I look out and the clouds are kind of low and moving, in a really beautiful but ominous way. The sun's kind of breaking through and I was just hit with beauty and joy and awe, the divine mystery hitting me. And I just burst out in song; you will show me the path of life and guide me to joy forever.

And I hear, “write me a mass”. 

Brianne: Oh wow. 

Terry: That's what I said, huh? I look around, there's nobody. Nobody. It was just really clear and classic. Everybody's story's the same, it is like, I'm thinking, okay. It didn't say to kill anyone, So, it's not scary. I should probably write a mass. And so, the next thing was, if this is real, it's like, you know, I'm a lesbian, right?

I mean, it really was right to the shame, right? So, often people say when grace hits in, the first thing people go to is like, I'm not worthy. Just like, what I'm, you know I'm lesbian, right? And, what's a mass? I know what a mass setting is. We sing mass settings all the time, but I didn't get an answer to either one of those questions.

There was no more. And so, I wrote a mass setting. It took me five years and it helped probably save my life because it carried me through the breakup. And the Gloria from that was just really powerful. And we still sing it today. Called it Mass of Joy. 

Brianne: What is a mass setting?

Terry: So, a Mass setting is the music. You sing a holy, holy, and you sing a Lamb of God and you sing an Hallelujah. And the Gloria. So, there's these different prayers that get put to music and it's a mass setting, it's the music of the mass collected as a collection. 

So, that's what I wrote. I wrote one and we played it at church, and we played it at 25th anniversary. And back to the weekend in the Spiritual Direction program, the Healing Weekend. After the weekend, the next Monday, I was sitting in a parking lot ready to go in for work, and it was 20 years later from that first experience and for the first time I heard, write me a mass, not write a mass and chop it around and see if it's good enough and fret over it and angst over it.

Write Me a mass. 

And I burst into tears. God asked me to write God a mass.

So, now it's like, did I do it right? All the questions once I finished the Spiritual Direction program, part of Ignatian spirituality, is you do 8 to 11 day retreats every year, and I have. And it's always part of the retreat. Am I doing it in my therapy and my own spiritual direction for myself?

If you think of what a Mass is—it's prayer, it's music, it's people coming together, the Body of Christ. It's learning how to be better humans. It's joy, it's healing, it's accompaniment. It became pretty obvious that I was writing God a Mass with my life, because every one of those things—I do. I create community with my wife. I help make better humans. I teach, I preach, I do music, I accompany.

And once I had my surgery on my ankle, that gave me a lot of quiet time, and I really dove into Teresa of Ávila.

Then my mom died. And that year of grief—once again, in the pain and all the sort of unfinished business between us—I went deeper. I started to go after the shame inside.

We think, you know, we're bad. So the opposite must be perfect—and the ego can't handle that. So I would sit there and say, "I'm perfect." And my mind would go, “Ooh... no, I’m not, because—" and all the teachings and conditioning would come up. That's bold.

But if I’m really asking, who’s the “I” that’s saying that? If I believe in mystical theology, then my true self is one with the Divine.

And that is just pure. So if I’m sitting in that place, I can say it authentically. It’s like saying, “I’m the Beloved. I’m perfect. Ooh—I’m perfect.” And I would just sit there, looking at a candle, and I would keep doing it.

And one day, the veil broke—bam. I was filled with unconditional love in the most profound way, and just entered into that space.

And after reading Teresa of Ávila, it was just like—she always says, “Don’t make any fuss over those kinds of experiences.” But it was a gift. I felt what it feels like to just sit in grace.

I’ve had a few more of those over the years, every now and then. And one of them was in between figuring out I was going to be fired—and actually being fired.

Part of my helping people be better humans is that I became a teacher of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

And what Stephen R. Covey did was spend his life reading and collecting all the wisdom that existed—and just packaging it. He didn’t invent anything. He took psychology and theology, and all the best wisdom from around the world, and packaged it into seven categories of practices. I started teaching it—and really trying to live it.

The foundation of it is story management. He calls it "paradigms"—everything comes from the maps in our heads.

And it's all subjective.

So when there are people like Viktor Frankl—who was in the Holocaust, a sociology professor—sitting on an operating table being experimented on after losing everything... everything had been taken away from him.

And it was only because of that experience that he could see there was one thing left they couldn’t take from him: his response. There was something inside him that he still had a choice over—whether to feel like a victim and demonize them, or to see them differently and make a different choice.

And he pictured himself teaching that later on. That gave him purpose and meaning in life, and he survived. So he teaches us: there's always a choice, no matter what. And if you have a why, you can survive almost any how.

Okay, so he wrote Man's Search for Meaning. And that has driven me.

I found myself in January 2020, just coming out of the Christmas break, really wanting to practice this in my spirituality. So it was like, "All right, I'm going to do some paradigm work. I'm going to do some story work. I'm not a victim. I'm Your presence in this world. I'm not a victim. I'm Your presence in this world." And my hands were doing the motion.

I would sort of put on that sense of victimhood. And our brains go a certain way—and chemicals follow. You know, if we think in those terms—biologically, neurobiologically—something happens.

So I would sit there for a second, and then I’d flip the switch: "I’m Your presence in this world," which is outgoing energy—sitting in my truth.

And then, because I’m me, I complicated it. I added a little Merton—Thomas Merton, another mystic.

And he would say, “You are right here, right here, right now.” So, being present. “You love me. Your will be done.”

And I combined those:
 “I’m not a victim. I’m Your presence in this world.
 You are right here, and You love me.
 Your will be done.”

And then I added: “In You, I live and move and have my being.”

So this thing grew. I would do it many times during the day and when I woke up. And you can’t really pray that for months without something happening.

So I started in January. I put it on my phone, on my screensaver, so I’d keep seeing it. And then in the Church—Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent—this was mid-March, we got a notice that in the following July, at the end of the fiscal year, we were getting a new priest.

This guy was a seminary professor and very traditional. I looked him up, and at the last church he served—85% of the people left. And it was a progressive church, like ours.

Brianne: Oh my God.

Terry: So, I’m thinking, “This guy’s probably going to want to fire me.”

Brianne: Oh my.

Terry: And so, I began my Lenten journey praying for him.

Yeah—and praying for the archbishop. It was sort of “pray for your enemies” or those who might persecute you. I began praying fervently—alongside “I’m not a victim. I’m Your presence in this world.” I’d be pacing the hallways—because that was March of 2020.

And what happened then? That was COVID.

So here I was, in the middle of COVID. I was also at George Mason University, taking a coaching program. So, I had 24 people to accompany me on this journey. I mean—here I had Lent to pray about this, I had this amazing prayer, and I had 24 people supporting me.

It became this whole listening journey over the following six months.

And I found myself in April, about four weeks in, praying for this Father Dan—this new guy coming in, who I didn’t know. Praying for him: “Bless him, heal him,” in that kind of spirit. Praying for him legitimately. Authentically.

And then, all of a sudden, this warm wash of love flowed over me and through me. And after that, I just had this confidence: “You know what I’m going to do with him? Like every pastor—I’m going to come out to him. He can see my conscience.”

Because the Catholic Church teaches that we have to follow our conscience. We have to form it. And if we form it well, and our conscience says to do something—we must follow it. Because we believe that’s the Holy Spirit.

Even if it's against Church teachings.

So, you have to form your conscience by looking at Scripture, looking at Church teachings, praying, considering the best that wisdom and science have to offer, and evaluating the impact of your actions on the community. If you look at those five things and are truly sitting in that authentically—then if you're led to do something, you must do it.

That’s what I’ve learned. That’s what the Church teaches. I’ve done all of this—all those retreats were always about forming my conscience. So, I’m going to show this priest who I am, and we’re going to accompany each other. And if he thinks he needs to replace me, I will help him find my replacement. And that’s where we’re going to go.

That’s where my prayer led me.

So when I get an email from Father Mike in June that says, "The archdiocese contacted me about your marriage. I told him you had spoken to me five years ago. They would like to terminate you based on the morality clause—next Wednesday. How would you like to respond?”

Brianne: Wow. Oh my goodness.

Terry: So... how does your worst nightmare happen?

And what do you do? You look at your watch and the date and go, “That’s two weeks early, huh?”
 That was my response to the worst thing that could ever happen to me.

Apparently—that's grace.

Yeah. I called Kirsti: “Come look over here.” She reads it, and we call them up and say, “Can we... what’s my response? Can we say, ‘No, thank you’?”

And I was teaching the next Wednesday. I said, “I can’t be fired next Wednesday—I’m teaching. How about the Wednesday after?”

So I had two weeks. Instead of six months to prepare for it, I had two more weeks.

Not surprisingly, I began waking up at 5:00 AM. I went outside and started praying the beginning of the Stations of the Cross. I made a tree one station, a bush another. I made part of the landscaping on my property into the stations. But I did it a little differently—I used the scriptural version of the stations.

So it includes Peter’s denial, Judas’ betrayal, Jesus in front of the Sanhedrin. And I never got much further than the first five. I never got to the crucifixion.

Because I wasn’t really feeling that.
 What I was feeling was the denial, the betrayal, the judgment in front of the Sanhedrin.

So I sat there and just attached myself to Jesus’s story—and began a dialogue at five in the morning, in those early June days.

“Do I talk to the media?”
 “Don’t I talk to the media?”
 “No one’s talking to me.”

Now, for my integrity, I would have liked to go back and at least try to contact the leadership and the archbishop and say, “Can we talk?” I didn’t give them that opportunity.

People might say, “Oh, that was on them.”
 But no—it’s on me. I have to live my integrity. I would like to go back and do that.

Because they hate it when you talk to the media. Someone would’ve liked to have given them that opportunity.

Brianne: Did they contact you and ask to talk to you?

 Terry: No. Oh no. They just told my priest to fire me—against his wishes.

Brianne: Geez.

Terry: He tried to tell them three times: “You don’t want to do this. You don’t want to do this.”

The really crappy thing is: we sign a contract every year. We’re at-will. All they had to do was not renew my contract. It was expiring in two weeks. They could’ve just said, “We’re going in a different direction. We want the priest to be able to hire his own people.”
“Thanks for your service. Thanks for your 30 years.”

That’s all they had to do. That’s all they had to do.

Brianne: Wow.

Terry: I don’t even know if she knew that. That would’ve required research—thinking about it, caring about me, taking the time to know me as opposed to seeing me as a problem.

Stories create reality. Seeing me as a problem created a really, really, really big problem for them.

If they’d just seen me as a person—they didn’t know that I would’ve been fine.

If someone had just talked to me. If they could have validated, “We see your heart. We see that you're doing what the Church teaches. However, this new priest is coming in, and it’s just confusing to people, Terry, we know you're doing your work, but... we can’t have you as a leader.”

 If they had authentically at least felt crappy about it and done that—yeah, I would’ve helped them find somebody.

 But they didn’t know that.

I know organizations. I can see how they could tell a story that it’s the pastor’s role to be pastoral—not theirs. And they were administratively trying to solve the issue so the next priest wouldn’t have a problem. I can see how someone would take that approach.

But this is the Church. And making him do that dirty work—against his will—was horrible to a brother priest.

It was administrative. It was not pastoral. It was not Church.
And that’s the shame.

The archbishop had written a letter—because there was a bit of a campaign going on. The archbishop had written a beautiful letter about accompanying people with same-sex attraction. It said they should know the infinite, unfathomable—and another great word—unconditional love of Christ through our words and actions.

Great words that weren’t adhered to in this moment.

And to expect my pastor to be the one to deliver that was inauthentic.

And I almost grieve more for him. Because he’s got to work there. For a priest to have to sit there and do it...

Now, that day was actually beautiful. The Scriptures of the day it was John the Baptist, or one of the prophets in the readings. And then also, the Old Testament was talking about a prophet being born to speak. And the Psalm was Psalm 139, which is basically: we are fearfully and wonderfully made.

I called up Father Mike and said, “How about we pray the Psalm today? I can lead that.”
 He said, “Absolutely.”

The HR person—when they called him—they didn’t even know my name. 

Brianne: Wow

Terry: “Oh, it’s Terry Gonda, not Sherry Gonda. No wonder I couldn’t find her on Facebook.”

Second time they called—still didn’t know my name.
 
Brianne: That’s terrible.

Terry: So clearly there was some pastoral work to be done.

And I work in organizational development. I work with organizations. I get the dysfunction of every organization.

So, I was able—with that prayer—to say: I’m not a victim. I’m Christ’s presence in this world.

From that first moment of going, “Huh. Okay, well that’s two weeks early,” to: “Wait a minute... that’s not how this is supposed to go,” to: “I’m angry. I need to speak out.”

But I don’t want to speak out from a place of anger. I want to speak out as Christ’s presence in this world.

So, I get it. I see that they’re trying—they think they’re doing the right thing. Absolutely.

This is not the first time I’ve had this conversation with myself. I’ve watched the Catholic Church’s approach to things, but I know the difference between the organization, Canon Law, local leadership, and the actual Body of Christ.

I was baptized into this Church. It is my family. And there are just people—there’s history, there are teachings that come from it—and it evolves. Our understanding of the teaching evolves. And there are people. And in this case, it was people.

So, I held no ill will toward the Church. I even understood, I had watched—they had fired people before. I wasn’t surprised. We chose to get legally married. Kirsti was not a citizen yet. She was on a green card at that point. But getting married—our discernment—afforded certain rights. It made sense.

But nobody asked us that. We were not just flipping the bird at the Church. Again, nobody who fired us knows that. So there was no bitterness. I mean, again—it would’ve been really weird for me to say, “Oh! What a surprise!” and then be bitter.

The real pain was watching my community disintegrate and feeling under attack.

Institutions are organisms. They have their own self-preservation, hierarchy of needs and survival instincts—just like a human being. We seek power to feel safe. Because if I have power, then I don’t feel threatened.

It’s all survival, ultimately. Why do we want power? Why do we want money? It’s not for itself—it’s survival. Safety. And it’s the same with organizations. “How do we protect the institution?”
 “So we’re going to fire you because you’re a bad image. You’re going to confuse people.”

“It’s against Church teaching. You’re showing that you disobey and disregard the law.”

But they didn’t talk to me. And that’s just the thing.

So this idea we’re moving toward in the Catholic Church—of being more synodal, more accompanying, more collaborative...

I know what that looks like. It was my parish for all those years.

And I know what it doesn’t look like.

And that’s how I was fired.

Beautiful contrast: accompanying me, walking with me, teaching me how to form my conscience, and then allowing me to do so.

And then—not even talking to me, just firing me.
 Seeing me as a problem.

Brianne: Just like Jesus.
 
 Terry: Just like Jesus. Well said. 

So, as we walk closer to Holy Week and remember all that...it was exactly the same way.

Brianne: So after that experience, what happened? Did you come back to the Church as a parishioner, or did you leave and go to another parish?

Terry: The beauty of having two weeks to think through all of this was: not only was I going to speak to the press and say, “We are inspired to find a better way. We forgive them. We know they think they were doing the right thing... but there’s a better way.”

There’s a better way to fire me—and we want to help accompany that.

The question always helps:
 How can we, together as baptized Catholics, find a way to build bridges?

And work toward a better way. And in that prayer over those two weeks, that became the vision. I prayed about Father Dan. You know, God and I had a plan—darn it. So, I said, I'm just going to follow through with it. We're going to come back and sit in the front pew next week and welcome him.

Because that's what we do here. And in fact, I finally got a hold of him. He hadn’t contacted us—for months I'd been trying to get ahold of him to talk. So, I figured, I guess this will be it. It was a Saturday—we met him at the door, kind of reminded him where his office was, helped turn the light on, and scheduled a conversation.

We talked to him for an hour before Mass—the first of many conversations.
 
 Brianne: You and your wife?
 
 Terry: Yeah. And we told our story.

Now, he said at the end of it—looked at his watch—“Okay, I got to go prepare for my homily. I do ask that if you’re sexually active not to present yourself for communion.”
 
 It’s like, okay... bye.

Brianne: Oh my gosh.

Terry: So many people would've been crushed or hurt or whatever. But again, this is not our first rodeo. My wife's a therapist. Psychology has been my passion for 30 years. My response to that was like, Okay. He just does not get what he just did.

Brianne: After listening to you for an hour though.
 
 Terry: Yeah, right. Just blurts it right out. And that's a complicated question. So, being 60 years old, you know, what does that mean? But, you know, I got the message of it. So, the intent is this: We made the decision not to present for communion. And not to do it as a protest.

I would think of it almost more as a spiritual practice. Because what you could do is come up and be blessed by the priest, right? He was a big fan of St. Augustine. St. Augustine says, Receive what you are: the Body of Christ. So when you're being presented, you can hear that—Receive what you are.

And so at the Eucharistic prayers, when the priest is lifting his arms over the gifts and speaking the words that they become the Body and Blood of Christ—remember, I’ve been praying since January: I am not a victim. I am your presence in this world.
 
I lock in at that moment. 
 
That’s my Eucharistic experience.

I am your presence. I am your presence, right now. Just reaffirming that. And the laying on of hands over the gifts is also the laying on of hands over me—becoming the Body and Blood of Christ.

That’s my Eucharistic moment.
 
 Nobody can take it away from me. No one's getting between me and Jesus. I know my theology.

And then I go up and I get blessed by him, which closes that Eucharistic experience. I look him in the eye with dignity, trying not to go, F you, F you, F you—while I’m coming up to him—trying to be grounded in forgiveness and grace. Coming up to him, being blessed, looking him in the eye, smiling, and saying, Thank you.

And that repeated every week.

I had a more intense and authentic Eucharistic experience with Father Dan in those months than the whole rest of my life.

Probably because—boy—I was laser-focused.

We would talk. I talked about the young adult ministry and how I just wanted to bring people to Jesus.
 This was after Mass and he stops dramatically, looks at me, and says,
 "That's all I've ever wanted to do—bring people to Jesus."

So, we are bonding, right?

Over these things. He loved our music. He let me stay on and do music. I left that part out.
 So, here I am, in the middle of COVID still, with my Saturday family, and we're still doing music in the midst of all this—with the parish just starting to crumble.

And people—you know, there weren’t many people anyway because it was COVID.
 But people are leaving. The heartbreak is here. It's hard.

But we are sitting in the mess. Sitting in the tension. Accompanying each other—in the music group, and with Father Dan.

And it becomes really clear that he's getting dementia. Things are happening.
 We talked to his brother priests.
 We had dinner with them. They said, “Yeah.”
 So, we’re all watching out for him. And this is what’s happening.

And by Christmas, his sermons are more mystic theology. He’s practically levitating off the altar. One of the guys in the music group says, “I see what you’re doing. I think you’re having an influence on him.”

And by Christmas, Dan’s looking at us and saying,
 I am so humbled by how graciously the two of you are handling all this.
 
 

And that was the whole point—to live in our truth with grace. To accompany.

And what God showed me back in that April—when that grace flowed through me—was exactly what played out.
 
 And two months later, he died.

He’d had a blood cancer, it turns out. But turning the corner of that January, Kirsti made him a shepherd’s pie—because he had been in England and liked it.
 We stood at the back of the church at six o’clock on a Sunday, coming to bring it over—and saw the Mass happening.

It was the young priest who was there. A new Mass for the students—we’d added a Sunday night Mass for them.
 And there they were, with a music director (a friend of mine, who’s lovely).
 And I could’ve been so bitter standing there. Here’s this foreign priest. He’s rearranged the altar.
 Here are the students. I’d wanted to do that. And now somebody else is doing it.

You know, it would’ve been so easy to be bitter.
 But it was just the opposite.

We stood in the back of the church, with the evening lights on, and I just... I felt filled again—with grace and awe and gratitude. Smiling.
 Here’s this young priest in his first year, enjoying himself.
 Here are these students with this wonderful music director.

We went up afterward, and a couple of the students knew me—we connected. Hadn’t seen them since the firing.
 And so we all just connected. It was beautiful.

And a month later, we decided, you know—we don’t really need Saturday Mass anymore. When you get two on Sunday, and it’s COVID.
 So, we had our last Mass, January 26th.

That Saturday, we had tamales downstairs afterward.
 Came up, recorded a couple videos for this project we were doing.
 Sang some songs.
 Then everybody left—except Kirsti and me.

We sang that Gloria that I wrote—part of a mass I composed.
Turned off the lights.
Sang the Gloria.
And then walked out.

After—whatever—30-some years of being the Saturday music director, that was the last Mass there. It felt right to part.

And we started playing at other churches, to help them out.

Then Kirsti went to tell the music director down at this Jesuit parish that she wanted to bring her flute.
 And she said, “Sure.”

And Kirsti felt very at home there—at Saints Peter and Paul.
 It’s a Jesuit parish. She plays the flute.
 So she plays the flute. We play music together.

Brianne: That’s amazing.

Terry: I’m also a singer-songwriter. We’ve been doing that for 20 years. I did a CD.
 She’s also been a music partner and co-writer of songs with me.

And now we’re down at the Jesuit parish—and I don’t have to be in charge.
 We just come. We’re a team. And it’s amazing.

We had a wedding in 2003. We designed it ourselves, and it was extraordinary. People were coming back and taking the program because, you know, we knew how to create events—and it was really, really beautiful.

We had all the attendees there, like in a Quaker service, to be the witnesses. They took vows in the middle of the service and all signed afterwards. I can tell you what our vows were:

Kirsti Jane Reeve and Teresa Geralyn Gonda have gathered our friends and family here in the presence of God to celebrate the marriage joining our lives and families. We promise to unite our lives as we enter the sacred covenant of marriage.

We vow to cherish, honor, and support each other, striving ever to be loving, patient, and loyal partners. Together we will meet life’s joys and challenges, nurtured by our union. We will use our talents and our dreams to create a most extraordinary song of service to love, drawing from God’s love within. We pledge to endeavor always to help those in need of comfort.

As a family, we will weave a tapestry of celebration, sanctifying the cycles of our days and the seasons of our lives. May the Spirit protect and guide us in our life’s journey, blessing our hearts with happiness and wisdom, and our home with friendship, abundance, and peace. And may we always share these blessings with our family, our community, and all who dwell on Earth.

We've always seen this relationship as a ministry—our own little religious order of two. We had a priest afterwards who came to talk to us, just to apologize for what the Church had done. 

It was during COVID, so we ate out on the deck, and he heard our story. He accompanied us. He validated that God had brought us together. There’s so much about the story I haven’t told, and he just affirmed it. He said, “However, you’re meant to be good friends.” And I could respect that.

Our discernment says otherwise. But again, I mean, we were nine years long-distance. Sex was never a big part of our relationship. It was not the foundation. It was this very holy, mysterious grounding. I mean, from the very beginning—from day one—there was just something like, you’re meant to be right here.

Brianne: From my observation—because I’ve read the Bible like two or three times all the way through—every time there’s any sort of same-sex situation in the Bible, the problem that the Church, or St. Paul, had with it was that it was lustful, almost hateful, 
 
 

Terry: And about power.

It was a power thing. Right? Either servant to master, or a situation of dominance. He also says that people were throwing away a natural thing for something unnatural. But there’s been no “throwing away” of anything here. 

Brianne: The natural is natural. Same thing with male–female relationships—if it’s a rape situation or something abusive, that’s not good either. 

Terry: Right? Like Lot’s daughters getting him drunk—that's how the church wants us to act? I don’t think so.

And the medical society only acknowledged that there is such a thing as sexual orientation in the 1970s. 1972, I think, is when they said, “Eh, it’s not a sickness. We’ve been treating people like it was a sickness, but it’s just a thing.” That was, like, three seconds ago.

And the Catholic Church only just put in the catechism that there is such a thing as sexual orientation—and that orientation itself is not a sin. That just happened, as far as the Church is concerned. Three minutes ago.

So you kind of have to say: if that’s true—if society, if medicine, if we ourselves have only just become aware that part of God’s design includes a different orientation—then you have to conclude that the Bible has nothing to say about homosexuality. But it has a lot to say about heterosexuals acting like homosexuals. Because that’s all they knew: everyone’s heterosexual, and anything else must be against nature.

And now we know that part of nature is this other bit.

So Scripture has zero to say explicitly on that. And like you said, everything to do with power dynamics—not using sex in a holy way. If you believe sex is only for procreation, then sure, you can say what you want to say about gay people. But if there’s anything unitive—any other purpose to sex—then we have to open the question. At least discuss it.

We wrote Father Dan a 14-page paper on our theology of sexuality that included all of this. It wasn’t like we were just being disobedient. We were saying, “Here’s what we understand.” We know the Church’s teaching. We know the science. We know the theology. And this is what we believe, and why.

All laws really come down to: Love God with everything you are and love your neighbor as yourself—which means you have to love yourself. So all the other laws have to kind of point to that.

I think the lesson of my story, as I’ve had to put it together, is a couple of things.

For me to develop—for me to have thrived and then become a fruitful member of society—well, part of the discernment that we didn’t talk about is this: when you’re discerning, after learning about scripture, teachings, science, praying, and all of that, and you come to terms with something and take action, you’re not done with the discernment. Because Paul says the next thing you need to do is look at the fruits.

So, what are the fruits of that? And we’ve been told what the fruits of our young adult ministry were. We grew leaders. We saved lives. People felt joyous about Mass and kept coming. They loved our music, they loved the energy. There were people who said they stayed Catholic—ironically, young adults who stayed Catholic—because we did. They saw us as role models for marriage. Even some conservative Catholics.

The fruits are abundant. So there’s that piece: the Church should encourage and support good discernment. That is a healthy Church. That’s my dream for the Church.

The other is mystic theology.

When we go into Mass, we have prayers with mystical union language. It needs to do the hard work of drawing people more toward a mystic theology than a shame-based theology where we all “suck.” Adam and Eve sucked, God is transactional, you have tit-for-tat, and so we screwed up and somebody had to pay for it. That’s a very compelling theology—I get it.

You walk up to someone and say, “Listen, you know you’re going to hell, but do you want to be saved?” And then there’s all this love and shiny stuff, and a guaranteed escape. It’s very compelling.

But there’s a harder, messier, mystical theology where you’re drawn toward something—not because you want to be saved from eternal damnation, but because you’re moved toward unity with the Divine and with one another. And building on that. It’s a creative, generative faith.

It’s sort of both there right now, but it’s really messy. And a future Church has to figure out how to let people be where they’re at in their faith journey.

I’m now thinking that the third phase of Write Me a Mass—maybe the first phase was writing a mass setting and then realizing that I’m writing a mass with my life. That I write my beloved a mass—a celebration from a mystic standpoint.

A love note from me to my beloved.

I dream that something like my firing—and this whole polarization—needs to go away. This exclusion and judgment and gatekeeping needs to melt.

And, you know, Pope Francis is really modeling this for all denominations—bringing everybody together at the synod and being ecumenical, saying we all need to journey with each other.

We need to talk to one another, accompany one another.

My life has been shaped by sitting in the mess as a Catholic, a lesbian, an engineer, an artist, and a pacifist who works for the Army. I could either crumble, or learn how to sit in the mess and thrive.

And so it has shaped me.

I didn’t just wake up, get fired, and become some sort of holy, angelic... you know, “Oh, look at me, I forgive everyone.” No. It’s a lifetime of sitting in the mess. And those months prepared me for what happens to people who just get hijacked and are gone by the afternoon.

Gone tomorrow.

That’s an entirely different story than mine. But this—this is a story I get to tell. And it has the fruits we’ve talked about: sitting in the mess with grace, praying for your enemies so you don’t have any, so you’re transformed. Living the root of the Gospel.

At least let me say this Gospel shit works.

I mean it. I have no bitterness.

A lot of my community still does. But we formed an organization out of the ashes, and I’m the lead pastor now—of my former Catholic community, in some ways. Many of us are in other churches. So, we’re not a “new church,” but we are trying to actually live this reality.

We’re growing lay preachers. We have women in leadership. We’re trying to be ecumenical. We’re focusing on the climate. We’re building a network around Detroit, across parishes and denominations. That’s why we’re having this conversation—joining with St. Philip’s, trying to build the beloved community in a way that helps parishes link with one another.

So we’re not competing with parishes—we’re building connective tissue around the hard stuff.

Brianne: And maybe you were supposed to be taken out, so we could spread that.

Terry: I mean, I’ve helped the community. What if the two years after grieving is story management?

What if the story isn’t “Oh, poor us,” but instead: the Holy Spirit said, get out of your nice little cocoon.

Exactly—all you white, middle-class people—and go spread your seeds.

So that when we draw the strings back to each other, we’re bringing people with us, and creating a network.

That’s a much easier story to live with. Because a story that says we’ve been wronged leads to bitterness. I don’t think that takes you anywhere. But a story that says we scattered this reality—this collaborative, joyful way of being Church—and spread seeds from this priest’s network of ministries, and now we bring people back with us?

That makes you want to network.

Brianne: Right? And I think it’s amazing that you are both an engineer and a mystic. That’s incredible. 

Terry: To be mystical, you’ve got to be able to be conceptual.

Structured isn’t my strong suit. I have to work really hard at it. If you’re highly structured and don’t have much conceptual ability, it’ll take work.

But you can rewire your brain through contemplative practices. You know, sitting in meditation, focusing on your breath, letting go of the concrete and just being present. Your brain will be rewired. You will learn how to see another place.

Mystic theology is about leaning into:

You will show me the path of life and guide me to joy forever.
 I am not a victim. I am your presence in this world.
 You are always right here, and you always love me.
 In you, I live and move and have my being.
 Your will be done.

Thank you so much for allowing me to hear your story—and for everyone else who will hear it.

Well, thank you for sharing your story, your vulnerability, and for listening.

OUTRO:

Thank you for joining me on Loving the Imperfect. If you want to know more about Terry and her work, you can visit her at www.terryganda.com or www.servantsentrance.com. I’ll put a link to both in the show notes. Servant’s Entrance is her inclusive outreach community of music and lay ministers, as mentioned in the show.

Also, my documentary Not for Sale: A Witness Story, about gentrification in Detroit’s historic Corktown neighborhood, has gone live on YouTube. You can watch it for free—I'll link to it in the show information.

That concludes Season Two. I hope you enjoyed it and that it was valuable for you in some way. If you have any suggestions for what you'd like to hear on this podcast, please email me. You can contact me through my website at www.lovingtheimperfect.com.

Thank you again for supporting the show all this time and for listening. I’ll see you in a couple months.

Thank you. Bye-bye.