Surprise! You came to the website created by a gay dude and the first thing he’s written in detail about is centered on The Wizard of Oz. Or maybe you don’t get the connection.
When one of my friends came out to me back in the late 90s (when all of us Baptist college boys were all suddenly coming out), he said, “That’s right, I’m a friend of Dorothy.” I was clueless and had to have it explained to me. I still don’t really understand the gay connection with The Wizard of Oz. All I know is that I enjoyed the movie and loved watching it on television when it came on every year.
It was The Wizard of Oz that also first taught me that the book is almost always better than the movie. I’m not sure I even knew that the film had been based on a book, but I remember finding The Wonderful Wizard of Oz in the library of West End Christian School in Hopewell, Virginia when I was in third grade. (The school is still in operation, but I wonder if that book is still in the library given the way things have changed since the early 80s).
The book was so much more expansive than the film I had seen many times on TV. Did you know there was a Good Witch of the South? And you finally get to learn where all those different colored brick roads lead from Munchkin Town, instead of just the yellow one that leads to the Emerald City. Most people do know that the slippers Dorothy wears in the book are silver and not ruby. Silver slippers would have looked good in Technicolor, I’m sure, but not nearly as good as ruby slippers!
At the City Gate
But what I did not recall until I was in my mid-40s and in seminary, was a very specific thing about the Emerald City. In the book, Dorothy and her friends – her little dog, too – had to put on eyeglasses with green lenses in them before entering the city, and those eyeglasses were locked to their heads.
“…if you did not wear spectacles, the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would blind you!”
Who wouldn’t want to keep their eyesight? Especially if you’re living in or visiting a place that is so glorious, so bright, so perfect, so blessed, so pre-ordained for greatness! Those glasses are for our protection and for the common good. So we all see how good we have it. Such a system as was set up in the Emerald City would also help ensure only authorized people were inside the gates. Citizens, residents, workers, and visitors all must wear the glasses. There are no exceptions. The glasses are locked to everyone’s head and they can only be removed when they leave. The Guardian of the Gate has the keys.
The Glasses Come Off
After the Wizard is unveiled as a simple man from Omaha, he tells Dorothy that he missed the green fields of Nebraska so much that he decided everyone should see the green he missed so much. When he had the Emerald City built, the Wizard required everyone to wear the glasses with green lenses. Then he tells Dorothy the most interesting thing:
“…my people have been wearing green glasses for so long, most of them think it really is an Emerald City.”
the Wizard of Oz
Just this leaves a lot to unpack and discuss from multiple angles including theology, sociology, social justice, economics, gender, sexuality, and more. Which just points to how intersectional everything is. Because it’s much easier (and always more fun) to judge others, let’s just talk about the glasses others wear. How about those MAGA glasses? All you have to do is look at social media for a moment or two and see that so many people are viewing the world through a particular set of lenses. And many people who are hard core MAGA adherents continue to be even when they’re given evidence that they’re looking through lenses that have been imposed upon them. Safety, comfort, familiarity, tribalism, nostalgia are all powerful things that keep lenses locked on us because we do not want to deal with the reality of life unfiltered.
Some glasses cannot be removed: gender, sexuality, ethnicity. Others come and go. What is important is what we do once we realize what glasses we’re wearing and how they affect the ways in which we view the world and people around us. My glasses of whiteness cannot be removed, but my glasses of White Supremacy can (though it’s unlikely I’ll be able to get rid of them completely in my lifetime) as I learn and grow and shed my biases and prejudices.
There is so much more to be shared and discussed on this topic, but I believe if we just start thinking about the glasses that are locked to our heads and how they’ve impacted the way we’ve perceived ourselves and the world around us, we will make the first steps toward being more authentic and vulnerable with each other.
