For Life Is a Journey: Reflections on Living

Ralph McFadden was married and raised two children. But in the mid-1990s, he decided that living with integrity meant living authentically, "coming out" as the gay man he was. In For Life is a Journey, author McFadden, a former pastor, denominational executive, and hospice chaplain, explores his own journey as he confronts the church's blindness to the damaging injustice of homophobia.

For Life is a Journey includes McFadden's reflections about claiming his identity as a gay man and "surfacing his soul." He is honest about the depth of grief and anger that accompanied the changes he was forced to make in terms of work, his marriage, family, and friends. Through stories, poems and reflections, he discusses the sense of betrayal and abandonment that he experienced when the church that had so profoundly shaped his commitments to peace, reconciliation, and justice, now rejected him. McFadden explores his concerns on social issues that affect people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. He also recognizes the internal changes that have occurred as a result of his journey toward authenticity and truth. From the struggling, the discovering, and the exploring came renewal and rebirth.