Likewise

I found this quote on
Susan's blog today:

No one can know what goes on in the soul of an afflicted person. No one can know what secret inner ripening can come from suffering and sorrow. All we know is that every individual's life is priceless - that each is dear to God.
~ Christoph Probst

A variety of sources had some strongly-worded responses to my blog yesterday. I've thought about them overnight. There are some points that I want to clarify.

I actively choose to see the good in people, to see the imprint of God in each of us, and to remember and recognize that every individual's life is priceless. I might screw up a lot, but that's my basic motivation.

I don't think that seeing the good in people, or choosing to love people, *while maintaining my healthy boundaries*, makes me a weak person or a neurotic people-pleaser.

I don't choose to wear my afflictions on my sleeve. I've had difficult hurdles to overcome in my life, as many people have. I'm not better than anyone else because of those hurdles. If anything, they've made me more aware of the suffering of others, and called me to love people more, not less.

My father used and uses his detailed knowledge of theology, Christianity and world religions to trip people up, to argue, to sow discord, and to prove himself superior to all others. He uses semantics like a scalpel to peel the skin off of people's hearts and minds and dreams. I never want to be someone who uses their knowledge of God like a battering ram, like a war engine, or like a smart bomb.

If all of this makes me a weak person in anyone's eyes, then so be it. I want to be rich with weakness, if it means that I can still see people, even my enemies, as precious.

How strong is grace?

As an intermission to my story of 10 years ago, which is a story hanging in the background of all I currently am and do, I have to stop and ask a question this week, take a deep breath and step back and quiet myself.

I have a number of friends, who are still good friends, who think that all expressions and forms of homosexuality are sin. They believe that if you aren't actively "struggling" against being gay and seeking transformation into a straight person, what they see as being "truely repentant," then you're rebelling against God and are not really a Christian. Or rather, you think you're a Christian but you're not (by their standards).

These friends also fervently believe that if you just pray enough and read the Bible and "walk the walk" that same-sex desires will disappear and be replaced with heterosexual desires: but only if you really want them too. If you really want to change, then you can change. You can convince yourself of anything if you just try hard enough. And if you fail, well, it just means that your faith in God isn't strong enough. Keep working on strengthening your faith and someday you'll be straight and perfectly-aligned with God's plan for your life.

I'm still friends with these people because I see their hearts; they honestly mean well and think that by believing what they do that they're loving me. I would also like to think that there's a mutual respect between us, not because we necessarily agree on all points of theology but because we're brothers and sisters in Christ.

But how far does that respect go, exactly? On either side? If I were to get married at some point to a same-sex partner, would they end their friendship with me? If they were to advocate transformation by forceable means, like "re-education" camps for children and young adults (which are becoming increasingly popular), could I still be friends with them? From our very different, yet perhaps parallel moral seats, at what point do our senses of injustice and outrage interfere with our ability to be brothers and sisters in Christ? How strong is grace in us?

I do not want to be someone who has friends and relationships with people who all think exactly the same way that I do. I do not want to live in a cultural microcosm. I do not want to automatically react in fear or anger to people who have different views than me, especially if those views threaten or offend me. I want to continue to be someone who is committed to dialogue and conversation. I want to continue to be someone who is open-minded and is able to grow intellectually and spiritually.

Big Church

It's the summer of 1995. Sitting on the crisply-patterned grey carpet of the wide hall, I can hear and feel the reverberations of roughly 6,000 voices raised in song. Just through the wooden doors across from me is the main auditorium, not a sanctuary --- an auditorium. There is a huge stage there. There are gigantic screens for projected images. There are plush movie-theater-style seats. There are worship leaders with perfect hair and gleaming teeth. There are immense glass windows that let in the sparkling light of day, or at night show the glow from mansions over a hill, across a busy multi-lane road. There are healthy tropical plants in tasteful pots. Everything is in its prime. Nothing is old or worn or used.

I can move seamlessly down the suburban conveyor belt from my climate-controlled house to my air-conditioned car down smooth roads, past strip malls and SimCity subdivisions. I can ignore anything unscripted from the seat of my comfort, the heart of my ease, I can roll in to the Big Church on padded beliefs and never leave the sweet mellow place in my head.

For behold, I am the chosen, a representative of a carefully targeted marketing demographic. I'm happy with my subscription, aren't you? This is the best content-provider I've ever attended. Once I plug in to a small group and get connected, all of my needs will be fulfilled. We'll do life together in weekly installments. It'll be a "God Thing."

Or will it?

While I go wait for my friends at the food court, can I be anything other than dazzled? Can I feel anything other than privileged? Isn't God amazing to have provided this space so that more seekers can feel comfortable when they find Him?

I snapped right into their shiny program with a tight click. I had found my place again after all those lost years. I could forget about all the bad stuff, pretend that it didn't even exist. Erased by the blood of Jesus. I was a new-born creature again in the Lord, and I could start over. I could realize my potential, my true self as seen by Him. I could grow in Christ and do His work, and in such a nice environment too.

There was a new ministry starting though, a different kind of church: a small church within the Big Church. It was mostly people my age, twenty-somethings, but it was open to anyone. The new pastor said that it was more about an attitude than an age group. Right there it was different than the Big Church, which was so concerned that you be in the proper place. It was something they hadn't tried before, this postmodern experiment.

It would alter the safe, fundamentalist life that I'd taken refuge in and turn my world completely upsidedown. But not in the ways that you might suspect.

no more and no less than friends

There is something divine in deep friendship between men (as in deep friendship between women) that the other sex cannot fully understand or know, a love that can be passionate but not sexual, similar to a brotherly or fatherly bond but different. It's a unique relationship, something sacred. The relationship between David and Jonathan in the Bible is an articulate example of this type of brother-love-friendship.

Contemporary American society and its underlying morality, rooted in the theology of the Puritans and other early Christian religious refugees to the United States, loves nothing better than to categorize everything through a lens of sexuality or non-sexuality. There is an overemphasis, a focus of microscopic intensity on sex and the naked human body. In our obvious avoidance of it we draw ever more attention to it, such as when former Attorney General John Ashcroft covered the female art-deco statue "The Spirit of Justice" with $8,000 curtains to shield the American public from her scandalously bare breast.

I find it ironic that the liberal cultural movements of the past century, including but not limited to the feminist and gay movements, that have sought to separate themselves from the traditionally closed-minded, bigoted, racist, ignorant, etc. culture, still unwittingly operate and act on the same compulsion to label and categorize based solely on sexuality.

For instance, the need for historical justification or precedent has been very important to the gay movement. Instead of relying on scientific study and research which has provided a far more rational base for understanding human biology, psychology and homosexuality, very often gay leaders and activists will point to historical relationships between men whom they perceive as being homosexual. Wherever there is a perceived "closeness" between men, they are quick to say, "See! They're gay! There's a historical precedent!" As if historical precedent somehow equals legitimization?

Quickly, close friendships between men become suspect, as if men are incapable of supporting friendships with any emotional depth, intimacy
or honesty without the relationship becoming sexual. The story of David and Jonathan in the Bible becomes distorted through this lens. Any male closeness is labeled as a sign of homosexuality by the traditional culture and the gay movement. One side is overeager to keep men from "becoming" gay by stopping any "inappropriate" inward or outward show of emotion or affection, and the other is overeager to prove that gay men are everywhere, under every rock and bush. Men who are biologically straight, yet are naturally inclined toward close friendships with other men, are forced to choose: enforce rigid, quasi-Victorian/Puritanical boundaries of emotional distance, or admit to themselves that they are gay or bisexual *only* because they crave the company of other men. This is a great disservice to the entire society. All men should feel free, gay or straight, to enter into friendships with other men that are not pre-judged and pre-determined by hypersexualized, distorted gender stereotypes.

Maybe it's a maturation process. As the hysteria over homosexuality hopefully dwindles in this culture, perhaps straight men and gay men will not be pre-judged as to the nature of their friendships. Gay men, in my opinion and experience, can more freely form these deep friendships with other men because they don't have to put up with the "straight fear" of being labeled as gay. They are gay. They're free from that homophobic peer constraint. They can be no more and no less than friends. Not that there aren't more Davids and Jonathans in the world, but they have a harder time of it in America. Don't you think?

book meme

I was tagged by Susan over on Visual Voice
to answer some bookish questions... so why not?

1. Total number of books I've owned: Hmmm, that I've *ever* owned? From a wee tot to now? That would be a mountain of books indeed. Thousands. I currently own... more than I suspect, I'm sure. I don't know, there are so many. Plus, I don't want there to be a finite number of books. I want to forget about some of the books I own, so that I can delightfully rediscover them at a future date.

2. Last book I bought: I picked up a number of books at Myopic Books which is my favorite neighborhood bookstore. I found a nice 1935 hardcover edition of Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia); a paperback copy of Sabriel by Garth Nix, which I will use as a reading copy to lend out to people; a small volume of Pablo Neruda's love poems, in Spanish... no publication date but looks/feels like late 60s/early 70s; and a good hardcover book by Ursula K. LeGuin, The Beginning Place...

3. Last book I completed: Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen. I'd been meaning to read this for years (one of the forgotten books tucked on an obscure shelf) but it took Sarah mentioning to me that she was reading it to kickstart my curiousity again. It was well worth the kickstart. It's a beautiful, deceptively short, pithy little book on spirituality in a secular era. I will be thinking about it and returning to it for some time to come.

4. Five books that mean a lot to me: (Not listed in order of favoritism)

1. The Bone People by Keri Hulme
2. Brave New Girl by Louisa Luna
3. The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin
4. The Cinnamon Peeler: Selected Poems by Michael Ondaatje
5. American Primitive by Mary Oliver

4b. What are you currently reading: I always read several books at once... I'm reading St. Francis of Assisi by G.K. Chesterton and Flesh and Gold by Phyllis Gotlieb.

5. Which 5 bloggers am I passing this on to? (If they want to and have the time!)

deliberately random thoughts
drifter
the tao of jeremy
full contact faith
theospora

walking

I knew the backwards and the forwards of that new town planted on the flat prairie, the brick alleys and dirt paths, shortcuts across campus and behind buildings, through vacant lots and empty parks, past trees and creeks, ponds and hills, all nestled between corn and soybean fields.

I walked and explored, found nooks to sit and think, and began to write about all of the stuff crammed deep in my head. I wanted to know the history of this place too, why it sent its roots down to bedrock, what made it restless and tick. I memorized what most people never noticed. I knew the stones in the creeks hunched and humped like mossy old men, and the cracks in the asphalt parking lots like life lines, love lines on the palms of hands. I knew the wiry, seasoned oak trees and the old elderberry bushes better than the people at first, because they were kind and consistent wood.

Every day at twilight the crows would rise from every tree in the city and fly, great dark clouds calling each to each across the wide sky.

I would walk up Lincoln highway to the crumbling downtown, which had seen better days. The faded, sun-baked facades advertised businesses long shuttered. Freshly painted upstarts tried to tart up storefronts with bright lights and banners, but it was like dressing a corpse up in a clown suit. There was an air of age and decay that couldn't be so easily swept clean.

I'd invariably end up at Vagabond Books, run by Vagabond John. As thick and sturdy as the oak trees I knew but with wild, bleary eyes and unruly greying hair, he lived up to his name. Wearing worn denim overalls, he'd sit behind the dusty glass display cases that served as a counter, heavy arms folded and a gruff, expectant look on his face.

The store was piled high with teetering bookcases filled with books and assorted oddities, restored antique lamps leaning against taxidermied critters, collectibles and junk. Most often I would lurk between the bookcases looking for that perfect volume, and listen to John talk and gossip with customers and acquaintances.

There was once a beautiful post office that graced a prominent corner of the city. It was removed, like old things often are, and a Walgreen's sprang up, spring-loaded, squeaking and shiny and cute, like a plastic Barbie doll rising out of the sea when instead you'd expected Aphrodite. Progress nibbled at the edges of town, rendering all manner of things efficient and user-friendly, but not beautiful.

In summer the country roads outside of town bloomed with blue chicory and frothy white queen anne's lace, purple scotch thistle and asters, and great waving bunches of rogue sunflowers, escaped from someone's long ago garden. Red-winged blackbirds balanced on stalks, poised and bobbing, quick eyes looking for insects.

The song of birds, flower's bloom, creek's chuckle, click of crickets, light of moon. Walking to the sound of the long wind running over miles of grass to greet me made all of life bearable, all the hard days somehow worth it, the journey never lonely.

amber

When I returned home from college that first year, I had to explain to my mom and dad why I withdrew from most of my second semester. The truth wasn't an option (I'm gay, I was almost hit by a train, God may or may not hate me but the Christians certainly do) so I opted for the next best explanation (I had a nervous breakdown, maybe I should start seeing a therapist). This was an emotionally manageable story which dealt with my overwhelming, paralyzing fear of discovery but didn't resolve any of the turmoil going on inside me.

All of my energy went into managing a facade of normality; I wanted this to blow over as soon as possible. I knew that I wasn't going back to the Christian university, so I applied and was accepted at a large state school within an hour and a half drive of my parent's house. I reconnected with some of my best friends from high school and told them some of my experiences, but not everything. I kept the train and the doctor to myself, hidden, scars that I was ashamed to reveal to anyone.

I was determined and had convinced myself that Everything Was Going To Be Just Fine. The summer was speeding by. I was going to a new college in the fall and I was excited to forget the old and start over again.

Midsummer, a high school friend of mine threw a party at her house. Her parents were out of town, and my friends and I had the whole place to ourselves. The liquor cabinet was fully stocked; there were all types of hard alcohol and beer... I had little knowledge of alcohol other than a single beer and a few sips of wine, so it was a new experience. As soon as I got to the party, one of my friends poured me a mixed drink of Southern Comfort and orange juice. It was so good! As soon as I'd finished the one she'd given me, I headed to the kitchen to find more. There was a nearly full bottle of Southern Comfort that had just been opened, and the carton of orange juice in the fridge. I grabbed a big water glass out of a cupboard and filled it half full of juice and half full of the dark honey-colored Southern Comfort. It still tasted good, but had an edge of bitterness. I drank it all down very fast and then poured myself some more. Everyone was laughing and having a good time in the living room and outside on the porch. I started feeling flushed, slow, time moving slower and slower. I had never felt that way before; I was drunk! I thought it was funny, these strange and new sensations.

So I went back to the kitchen. I poured most of the rest of the bottle of Southern Comfort, straight, into a big plastic cup. I stood there in the kitchen and drank it all down in maybe a minute, maybe two.

I stumbled back to the porch where everyone was hanging out. The porch lights were bright and summer moths and mosquitoes swarmed around them. I remember thinking, fumbling over the words in my mind, wow, it's like, like everything is... receding but I'm still standing right here. Still standing. Right. Here. Then it all stopped, and I was stuck in static, hazy amber. Then darkness.

That's my last memory.

Snip. Like a film editor cutting out an entire scene and letting the celluloid strip slip to the floor, I lost about 16 hours of my life.

From darkness I drifted back up, gradually coming back to awareness. A dim, blind awareness, full of intense pain. All of my limbs were numb, my breath shallow, searing heat beating inside my skull. I could hardly move. When I managed to open my eyes I couldn't focus on anything. Suddenly I was bent double with violent nausea, but there was nothing left, dry heave after heave, my mouth swollen and the stench of vomit thick in the back of my throat.

I was in the den of my friend's house, on a pull-out bed. My friends had put me there, not knowing what else to do, not wanting to call parents or ambulances, not knowing how much I had had to drink. They'd watched me during the night to make sure I didn't choke on my own vomit... it's all they knew to do. And more disturbing to me, I found out later, they'd had a direct, all-access, ringside seat to view the contents of my subconscious.

Snip. After time stopped, my body still continued to move about of its own accord. With the marionette strings of my mind cut and my conscious, tightly-controlled demeanor gone, it was like a switch had flipped. Without my skin I was a raw nerve of pulsing fear. I screamed and cried and vomited, yelling that God hated me, everyone hated me, that I was going to Hell. I was utterly terrified and sobbing and inconsolable. And then I passed out. My friends carried me into the next room and put me to bed. It was a waking nightmare for them too. What had happened to their quiet, shy friend? What could possibly make someone be so afraid?

I was a lean, skinny guy, and had no alcohol tolerance. For the amount of alcohol that I drank, I'm not sure why I didn't die. We did the math. I drank the equivalent of 12 to 15 standard 1.5oz shots of 80 proof alcohol in about 20 minutes.

It took me well over a week to recover; I was so very sick and weak. There's nothing my parents could have done to punish me that hurt worse than what I had done to myself.

Except now I had this gap with no memory. Just the confusing details of what my friends told me that they had witnessed, the screaming and fear that I couldn't remember. But now I knew it was there. I knew that even if I went off to this new college and pretended everything was okay, that I was just pretending. That it was more than just the doctor and the train. There were memories I didn't want to see or acknowledge or name.

So I pushed it all down again, below the amber and the darkness. I stood on the squeaking lid and I jumped up and down and made sure it was good and shut this time, no flying open at awkward moments ever again. I was determined and Everything Was Going To Be Just Fucking Fine.

not exactly a news flash

I haven't spoken to my father in 6 years. This is not exactly news; anyone who knows me well knows what an abominable creature he is. I've also written about various experiences of mine with him, and posted them on this blog.

I've been told by well-meaning people that in order to truly forgive him, I need to reestablish a relationship with him. Which, from my point of view, would put me in a position to be abused and rewounded all over again, because that is what he does. He's a master manipulator. He's mentally cruel by nature. He wants a relationship with me not for my benefit, but so that he can present the false reality to his friends, family and colleagues that he has a relationship with his oldest son again. I'm just a prop, a last component that will complete the tidy tableau he's designed for others to see. I know this because that was my function for about twenty years, so how exactly would that change now?

There's also the fact that he has succinctly stated his views on homosexuality in public forums, that it not only profanes but perverts the image of God. He also compares it to bestiality, saying that homosexuality strikes at the essence of what it means to be human. As you can imagine, as both a Christian and a gay man, his zealous stance doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in me that he's capable of a rekindled relationship.

Most of my friends are like, excuse me? Did we hear you right? They're shocked that I would even consider a relationship again after all that he's done to my mother and brother. But I'm not interested and never have been in doing the easy thing when it's not the right thing. I've wanted to make the honorable decision, even if he has never dealt honorably with me.

So as Father's Day swings past, the annual questions rise: Should I make contact again, and what would that do to my life? I've been so protective of what I've regained over the past 6 years, untainted and uninfluenced by him. My mind hasn't been clouded and anxious, constantly worried that he's going to be angry and disappointed with me. I don't want to give him any more material that he can save up and use against me. I don't want to give up the peace and the confidence that I've so carefully built out of his absence.

dreams of cities

1.

There is a city.

It is cold and stone, metal veins pulsing with bitter fuel and fire. But this is only in the grey marrow, in the spaces between the walls, in the wormed out hollows of cellars. On the surface it is all candy and neon, skin dancing with color and youth.

It appears to live, but it is a necropolis.

It is the last road, the only one left, the desperate path when all ways are closed.

It is the last hand of the last game, and it knows it.


2.

There is a city.

There is an ache, a want in each of us that has no name, only a place: this place.

Without the city, we are scattered seeds, lost, blown in the wind, caught in strange currents, taken away from ourselves. We become less than what we could be without you, O City.

The tips of your furthest branches stir the rarified gas at the lip of space, and your roots caress the dull red rock at the edge of the core.

No part of our world is unknown to you. No part of us is unknown to you, O City.


3.

There is a city.

It is ancient and new, all at the same time --- buildings coming down, buildings going up. All is in flux, ending and beginning.

Once, when I was walking to the library after school, I took a shortcut over one of the wide bridges that span the Fox River. I ran down the crumbling cement and iron stairs that extend down from the bridge to Walton Island, a narrow strip of land with scraggly trees in the center of the river. A damp breeze blew from the dimness underneath the bridge. I saw an old man sleeping behind the foot of the stairs, curled up on the cool cement in the shade. At least, I thought he was sleeping. I hurried on, not thinking about his motionlessness, the sense of stagnance, his stillness in contrast to the rushing brown of the river.

Afternoon fishermen in worn lawnchairs had camped out along either side of the island, poker faces not revealing whether they had caught any fish, or hoped to. They were focused on their serious game and barely registered my passage. They didn't seem happy, just driven, bent to their purpose.

As I reached the end of the dirt path, about to set foot on the small arch of the Iron Bridge which led at last to the library, I glanced up to my right into the low boughs of a box elder tree. A flock of parakeets busied itself in the spreading branches, green and yellow and blue, twittering and chirping, as normal as if they were native. Which they were not.

They were living jewels cast in feathers, serendipitous anomalies thousands of miles from the jungle. They were living sentences on the paragraph tree, and they spelled out: anything is possible if you know how to see. Even someone like me can follow the brown river down to the sea, and leave the sleeper and the fishermen behind. Even someone like me can follow the dirt path to the edge of the island, and roll back the dark, blank ceiling of the sky to find fiery stars.

theological worldview

Hi everyone. I do have another piece that I'm in the middle of writing, but in the meantime I thought this was a pretty interesting quiz. I'm very proud to say that I'm 0% Fundamentalist!

You scored as Emergent/Postmodern. You are Emergent/Postmodern in your theology. You feel alienated from older forms of church, you don't think they connect to modern culture very well. No one knows the whole truth about God, and we have much to learn from each other, and so learning takes place in dialogue. Evangelism should take place in relationships rather than through crusades and altar-calls. People are interested in spirituality and want to ask questions, so the church should help them to do this.

Emergent/Postmodern
68%

Neo orthodox
68%

Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
61%

Modern Liberal
50%

Classical Liberal
43%

Reformed Evangelical
32%

Roman Catholic
21%

Charismatic/Pentecostal
14%

Fundamentalist
0%

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