Kharma Amos came out as a lesbian in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1990. She was 18 years old. It wasn’t the most accepting place or time.
Her entry into adulthood shaped everything that followed. As she told me around the fire:
“My entry into adulthood was one of resistance to hate. Of me and people like me being discriminated against in various ways at that particular time in history. And so, when I first felt a vocational call to ministry, it was in a context of wanting to show up with love in the world as a resistance to that which takes life away or others people who are marginalized.”
That call led to a decade serving as a local church pastor in a queer context, years of denominational work, and eventually to the Unitarian Universalist Church in Brunswick, Maine, where she now leads with a theology rooted in one foundation:
“Universalism, the history of Universalism is about love. About if there’s anything sacred, it’s about love. And there are none of us outside the grasp of that.”
This past fall, I sat with Kharma around a fire in my backyard. We talked about love and fear, queering norms, perfectionism and mistakes, and what it actually means to center love in a world designed around fear. What emerged was a conversation about the radical work of choosing love over fear, not as sentiment but as practice.
Queering Everything
One of the more powerful parts of our conversation was when Kharma talked about queering as a verb.
“The word has evolved and means different things in different contexts, but my verb is my favorite way. And it really is about deconstructing normative framework.”
Then she gave me an example that reframed how I think about the word. She told me about her mom, who is probably mostly straight, “but she’s queerer than some white gay men who are rich and married and live in a nice house on the corner. She, because she deconstructs normative frameworks.”
This stuck with me. What Kharma is describing isn’t about sexual orientation or gender identity. It’s about the willingness to question systems that aren’t serving people. It’s about asking whether the way things have always been done actually needs to be that way.
Kharma talked about how queerness had been powerful in her life “to be able to deconstruct all the inheritance, hang onto what’s good and maybe question the stuff and leave it behind if it’s no longer serving.”
Then she pushed the question further. If queering is about deconstructing normative frameworks, what does that mean for how we run organizations? How we make decisions?
“What does that mean about how we run a board meeting? Does that mean we don’t, we throw Robert’s rules out the window and think about more liberative models of how we are in relationship, or how we make decisions, or how we discern how we show up for each other.”
For men, this kind of queering is radical work. Because masculine norms are some of the most rigid and policed we have. Don’t cry. Don’t be soft. Don’t need help. Be the provider. Be the protector. Never show weakness.
What if we queered those norms? What if we asked: are these rules about what makes a man actually serving us? Or are they causing isolation, disconnection, and harm?
The Fear of Freedom
When I asked Kharma why people are so afraid to expand their definition of love, she said something that caught me off guard.
“Freedom is hard. I observe people, like there’s a fear of freedom for some folks... Freedom is sometimes harder when you can do whatever you want. Then you have to exercise discernment and make choices that you’re then responsible for.”
She compared it to the fear of expanding the definition of God. When you start questioning one thing you were taught, it threatens everything else.
“It’s like, I think I’ll use the metaphor of a Jenga. You stop, you question this thing and say, oh, I actually don’t actually believe that God sends people to hell. That’s a Jenga peg that comes out. Sometimes people are afraid with faith, if I start to question, it will all come crumbling down. And then what will I rely on?”
This is fear in action. When you’ve built your whole life on rigid beliefs, pulling out one piece threatens the whole tower.
“If that, then I’m actually responsible for making good choices on my own and not just doing what someone told me. I have to be more intentional. I have to think about it. That’s frightening.”
But here’s what Kharma showed me: love doesn’t require us to have all the answers. Love creates space to question, to try different ways, to learn from what doesn’t work.
When Being Right Matters More Than People
Kharma spoke about something that breaks her heart. Trans kids opting out of sports just to avoid the rhetoric and judgment.
“When being right about something becomes more important than the people who are harmed by the rhetoric, it feels like we’ve gone off the guardrails. We are not centering love if we are heartless about the impact of that on actual people’s lives, where it’s not a theoretical argument for young trans kids in Brunswick who just wanna, who self-opt out of sports to avoid that, even though it’s their favorite thing to do. Like that breaks my heart.”
This is where fear and love diverge. Fear turns complex human lives into abstract arguments we need to win. Love keeps us connected to the actual people affected by our choices.
For men especially, who are often conditioned to prioritize being right over being connected, this matters. Because winning the argument while losing the relationship is a fear-based victory that leaves everyone impoverished.
Kharma offered a critical question for discerning love from fear: “For whom is this loving?” If we’re only considering what feels loving to the people we already care about, while ignoring who’s being left out or harmed, we’re being self-serving in our pursuit of love.
And love, she reminded me, requires presence.
“Love is what turns us towards connection... There’s a tenacity of presence that’s required if I really mean what I say about love and connection.”
The Fear of Not Being Loved Enough
Midway through our conversation, we talked about perfectionism. Kharma mentioned working with progressive, well-intentioned people around trans inclusion and pronouns. Many of them are afraid they’re going to mess up.
“It’s white supremacy culture of perfectionism,” she said.
Then she said something that gets at a root fear underneath so much of our striving:
“Love is like, if you know that you are loved as a human who inevitably makes mistakes, then you don’t have that kind of wrack anxiety about it. So, there’s massive fear of not being loved enough. I think that’s opportunity too.”
This fear, the terror of not being loved if we’re imperfect, drives so much of how men perform masculinity. When we believe we must be perfect to be worthy of love, we get trapped in fear-based performance. We can’t rest. We can’t be vulnerable. We can’t make mistakes.
Understanding that we’re already loved as mistake-making humans creates freedom to be authentic. To try. To fail. To learn. To be human.
Naming Fear Takes Away Its Control
When people express slippery slope fears about change, Kharma’s approach is to listen and ask questions.
“When I talk to people and they do, and they have that slippery slope, if well, if we do this, then this will happen and this will happen, and then we’ll lose everything and we won’t be safe. And like it’s a spiral of fear that happens.”
Her strategy?
“Try and listen and ask more questions about where the fear is coming from. And in that conversation, that’s it. If you can name the fear that’s half the battle, if we wanna use battle language. I don’t think humans in general are great at being able to name the source of fear. And to be able to name it is the first thing in getting it, like, taking its control away.”
This offers practical wisdom for working with fear. Instead of trying to eliminate it or shame it, we can learn to name it and understand where it’s coming from. This is exactly the kind of practice that helps men move from being controlled by unacknowledged fear to being able to work with it consciously.
From Individualism to Interdependence
Near the end of our conversation, I asked Kharma what we need to queer in ourselves and our communities to create a world where more of us are leading with love.
She talked about deconstructing individualism and moving toward interdependence. About recognizing how much of our lives are transactional, and how that doesn’t really serve us as people.
“Sinking into relationships, sitting around the fire and allowing space to breathe and cogitate and listen and take to heart and know that you, there’s gonna be another fire the next day. Like there’s a pace to this that feels more humane than our capitalist way of working right now.”
She talked about the importance of having conversations that “make the drop from head to heart.” And about not leaving the circle when we disagree.
“The avoidance of conflict is another characteristic of white supremacy culture and love tells us to turn toward one another even when it’s hard and not reject one another.”
Then she said something that captures the scale of what we’re talking about:
“It’s really important work that starts really low and close. It’s close work. We have to be proximate.”
The work of choosing love over fear isn’t abstract. It’s about being proximate to other humans. It’s about bearing witness to lived experiences that are different from our own. It’s about recognizing that the systems harming others harm all of us.
Why This Matters
This conversation is part of my Heart-Strong Adventure, a year-long exploration of where love and fear show up in our world, especially in the lives of men.
Kharma’s journey, from resisting hate in Tulsa to leading with love in Brunswick, shows what becomes possible when we choose love over fear. Not as a nice sentiment. As an actual practice.
It’s about questioning the norms that aren’t serving us. Recognizing that freedom requires discernment and intention. Centering the actual humans affected by our choices instead of abstract principles. Understanding that we’re loved as mistake-making humans. Learning to name our fears so they don’t control us. Moving from individualism to interdependence. And staying proximate, even when it’s hard.
For men, who are so often conditioned to reject these ways of being, this work is essential. Because the fear-based masculinities we’re handed don’t just hurt women and marginalized people. They hurt us too. They keep us isolated, performing, disconnected from the very things that make life worth living.
Kharma’s invitation is simple: What if we centered love? What if we tried it a different way?
If Kharma’s story sparked something in you, I’d love to hear about it. And if someone comes to mind who might need to hear this, please share it with them.
Because the stories we tell each other around the fire have always been how we change.
