No Ordinary Child

When Jacqueline Ley's 23-year-old son told her that he was gay, she was shocked and hurt. Her fundamentalist Christian background told her that homosexuality was sinful and that her son had placed himself beyond the pale.

One of the things that she came to learn, however, was that 'beyond the pale' is where we find Christ in the deepest and most compassionate sense; that God incarnate chose to suffer outside a city wall.

This book of reflections on a mother's journey from craving 'normality' for her child to celebrating him as a blessedly extraordinary creature of God is not only a chronicle of a remarkable change of attitude. It is also an argument for letting go of our preconceptions about other people - often those nearest and dearest to us - and acknowledging that what God plans for their lives may be something greater and more mysterious than we can ever imagine.

A reader's comment:
A comment on setting aside homophobia - about 12 years ago attending university Chapel at McGill in Montreal, during a period when I had been struggling to understand homosexuality, a line in the Iona Eucharistic liturgy popped out at me... THAT WE ALL MAY BE UNITED IN THE HUMAN RACE OF JESUS CHRIST! I made peace with homophobia in that instant, it was and remains a conversion experience - as Christians we engage in semper reformandum or lose our edge. Have read only part of the online text of JL's book, but wish her the best of God's blessings. Wish I had a son like hers.
Maurene White, Montreal