Gene Robinson, the gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire who stirred up controversy with his support of same-sex marriage, addresses sexuality and theology in his new book, “In the Eye of the Storm: Swept to the Center by God.” An excerpt.

Introduction
At just before eleven o’clock in the morning, on Saturday, June 7, 2003, my life irrevocably changed. Prior to that moment, I was just me — a priest of some thirty years, a father, a partner and son, and a follower of Christ. From that early summer moment on, although I didn’t understand or comprehend it at the time, my life would never be the same again.

It was never clear to me that I’d become a bishop of the Episcopal Church. What I did know, as best as I could discern it, was that God wanted me to allow my name to go forward in Episcopal elections. I supposed it was just to get the church to deal more openly and honestly with its gay and lesbian members. I hoped doing this would at least open the conversation about the full inclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people in the life and leadership of the church.

The atmosphere at St. Paul’s Church, Concord, on that summer morning was electric. The Holy Spirit seemed so palpably present that people spoke of the hair standing up on their necks. While the first ballots were being counted, you could have heard a pin drop, as people sat silently or knelt humbly in prayer. When the final result was read, announcing my election as the ninth Bishop of New Hampshire, a rush of wind swept through the congregation as people rose to their feet to applaud, cheer, laugh, cry, and rejoice. People who were there still refer to it as one of the most moving and powerful experiences of God in their lifetimes.

What followed could only be described as a storm —  to some, the perfect storm. My election focused a debate that had already begun about “two churches” within the Episcopal Church, a debate that had begun with the ordination of women nearly thirty years before. The storm continued at the 2003 General Convention of the Episcopal Church, where a majority of laity, clergy, and bishops would be asked to give consent to my election.

During that consent process, scurrilous charges of sexual misconduct and linkage to a pornographic website were brought forward in an effort to derail the church’s consent to my election. While those charges were being investigated, as I was sequestered away in my hotel room with my partner and daughter, the priest who would later become my Canon to the Ordinary brought me a piece of calligraphy that read: “Sometimes God calms the storm. And sometimes God lets the storm rage and calms his child.” A day or two later, I received a photograph from a fellow priest of the diocese — a weather satellite photo taken miles above a huge hurricane in the Atlantic. In the center of that terrible and fierce storm was a tiny pinpoint of blue calm. That is where I have tried to put myself ever since my life changed.

But the fact of the matter is that I cannot live in the eye of the storm on my own. I can’t get myself there or keep myself there. Only God can bring me to that place of peace and sustain me there. Only God can calm and soothe me when hatred and vitriol come my way. Only God can persuade me not to step into the powerful winds swirling about me; when I do, only God can keep me from being swept away by their destructive power.

Whatever mistakes I’ve made in these early years of my episcopate, I am to blame.

Whatever good I might have achieved or inspired, God is the reason. I have not gotten all this right, nor will I. But God has been very clear with me that whether I get it all right or not, I am his. Or as I often say to the people of my diocese, “When all is said and done, you and I are going to heaven.” And in comparison to that, everything else is small potatoes.

In my election, God seems to have done what God has always done: taken the least likely and least worthy persons and attempted to do extraordinary things through them. As Jesus reached out to the margins of his own society, to touch and save and empower lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, and all sorts of the marginalized, so God has reached out to the margins of our society and called one of God’s gay children to serve in this special way, at this most difficult time. It probably sounds arrogant to say it, but it is the way I’ve experienced it. I could be completely wrong — only time will tell — but I believe that I have indeed been “swept to the center by God.” Swept from the margins into the center of the storm — for God’s purposes and to accomplish God’s will. God is big in this, and I am small. God’s purposes are trustworthy and pure, while mine are faulty and all-too-human. But God has made the outrageous promise to take our wills and mold them according to his, to provide us with what we need in order to do God’s will, and to be with us to the ends of the earth. Without that promise and without God’s constant and ever close presence, I could not have withstood the storm of the last five years.

Since my election and consecration as Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003, one thing has troubled me most: the characterization of me by the press, the public, and the Anglican Communion as a single-issue, one-dimensional person. In the first fifty-six years of my life, I think I was known as a passionate preacher and communicator of the Gospel, lived out in my ministry as a parish priest, retreat center founder/director, program coordinator for the seven dioceses of New England, and assistant to the Bishop of New Hampshire. But since my election, you’d surmise from press reports that the only thing I care about is the inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered Christians in the church. While I do indeed care deeply about that issue, it’s only one part of my larger, more important passion: the saving grace of a God who loves us beyond our wildest imagining and who revealed himself in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

God has taken this drastic action so that we all might be free of the sin that paralyses us and keeps us from being all that God wants us to be. And why? For the reconciliation and redemption of the world.

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