With Wonder: eight queers tolerated by Jesus

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

19 Oct 2021 - Photos courtesy of publicist

Billed as "a love letter to God from the LGBTQI+ community of colour," the documentary With Wonder introduces the audience to eight queer POC struggling to reconcile their personal faith with their sexuality. Each has a fascinating story, and each has to struggle to achieve some form of balance. Surprisingly all are compassionate towards their respective faiths and seem content, at least on camera, to accept being tolerated while dreaming of being accepted. Director/producer Sharon Lewis frames With Wonder with the story of Montego Bay's first Pride celebration in 2018. That footage, and its powerful narrator Maurice, is interspersed with talking head interviews from around the world. The structure is a little unwieldy and disconnected, but the individual segments are riveting and the Montego Bay Pride storyline pays off with a twist that is all the more moving for being gentle and underplayed.

While Maurice, a gay man, is charming and insistent, the stellar character, D'Lo, contributes a stand-up routine, complete with enthusiastic audience, that is as scathing as it is hilarious. D'Lo is trans and his journey is the most acutely observed, despite being mined for punchlines. Like all of the interviewees, he grew up in a strict faith and an even stricter family. And like all of the interviewees, he used his personal relationship with Jesus to pray for deliverance from his desires (with D'Lo also praying for deliverance from his gender begging, "Turn me into a real boy"). A majority of the interviewees grew up in families that were heavily involved in a church with two having a father figure who was a minister. Both were soundly rejected by their family but remain, at least on camera, more ruefully sad than bitter or angry. All of the interviewees are infinitely more 'turn the other cheek' than 'an eye for an eye.'

With Wonder made me uncomfortably aware of my privilege. A white cis man with a negligible religious upbringing, a church condemning my sexuality just gets my back up. I explored various forms of faith, I had the middle class luxury of a buffet instead of just communion wafers, and eventually settled on a non-binding sense of an interconnectedness that may or may not (probably not) involve an overseeing deity. Jesus was a prophet, a myth or fairy tale designed to help us live better lives. If he, or any god, were to start speaking to me directly, preaching inside my head, I would have a psychiatric evaluation immediately. So I found it hard to understand why none of the interviewees didn't just, metaphorically, burn the fucking church to the ground and spit on the ashes. My partner, who was raised hardcore Catholic, understood perfectly and found With Wonder triggering.

My culture, my place in my family and my chosen family, does not depend on adherence to a set of supposedly divine rules. And if I were to be cast out, I have places to land safely. With Wonder begins and ends with a Rev Winnie who is a queer priest of the MCC ilk. She preaches that God is love and that he, all appearances to the contrary, loves the gays. To many people that is apparently comforting but, alas, it comes off as a crutch. Why invest in a system that has worked to exclude and condemn us? The stark image of the practical and jovial lesbian Phyll tearing up when talking about her mother still not accepting but only tolerating - "I don't usually cry unless I've broken a nail" - is as heartbreaking as the tears shed by MCC Rev Jide when recounting his father celebrating Nigeria's draconian anti-gay legislation. With Wonder made me angry simply because some of these poor queers were so accepting of the unacceptable as inevitable.

With Wonder works hard to put each interviewee into context but Maurice, because of the Pride framing device and his articulateness, gets the most background. We understand his choices, the real danger he is in, the way he deals with his parents, and his drive to make queer Jamaicans visible and accepted. But then, as he himself says, he has the privilege of leaving Jamaica if he needs to. He has already built a life elsewhere. He chose to return to Jamaica. He is driven to work for change. D'Lo, quips a blazing, turns his very personal journey into a universal one. His emotional catharsis in a Trader Joe's is so contagious that it leaps off the screen and into one's heart. Everyone's coming out story is different with slight variations leading to variable outcomes. Mixing religion in makes it even more volatile. How does one learn to live in an institution that considers them a sin? Watching the eight try to decide how to conform or reject or work within for change, is rich material that With Wonder doesn't resolve. Or explain why their religion is so crucial to the interviewees. But it does make one think and opens a window into a world that otherwise I would never have ventured into. Or tried to understand.