Cruised by God

It has been awhile since I wrote in this blog, I have decided to come back slowly, committing only to a couple of entries a week. TO get me start, I am going to publish some poems of mine, here is my all time favorite:

Cruised by God on Route 3 by Chris Medeiros (May 31, 2004)

Driving down the highway, the sky is clear and open, the roadway is filled with tired travelers heading home.

My monkey mind darts from place to place,

Is there money in the checking account?

Will I ever find love?

Do have enough gas?

Am I too fat?

A shiny silver pick-up drives by me.

The driver’s face is clear and chiseled, his strong arms and broad shoulders thickly outlined by his deep green tank top.

For the smallest moment, his mouth, his shining blue eyes, his deep dimples, look at me and sparkle,

 He drives on.

My face grows hot, my skin flushes.

Electric Goosebumps rise on my flesh.

My groin tingles.

I smile.

In the blink I feel handsome, sexy,

My mind stops.

My body feels

Someone sees me.

I remember, it was you again.

Another of your thousands faces I too often forget to notice.

You have returned to show me that you and your creation are beautiful.

You remind that my flesh is good, my body is holy.

I too often forget that I am made in your image, my body reflection of your joy.

 A radiant beauty beyond compare.

The Life and Death of One Good Man

This past weekend I gathered with some of my dearest friends I have to attend the Tunbridge fair and the small town of Tunbridge VT. I started going five years ago, though many of my friends had been going for years.

Four years ago it was an especially important fair, though at the time, none of us knew it. It was the last time a very dear friend to us, Rob, would be with his friends. I was so blessed that after losing touch with him for sometime I really got to spend some quality time with him that weekend, it was amazingly special to me at the time, then hearing that he died just a few hours after I had been with made it all the more tragic…and magical.

For months after his death I listened to this song several times a day.

When I Get Where I'm Going by Brad Paisley and Dolly Parton

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYHT-TF4KO4&feature=related

Lyrics: http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/paisley-brad/when-i-get-where-im-going-16148.html

Rob was a military man, an outdoorsman, a man devoted to his parents and sisters and brothers, a good friend, and a man of deep passion and love. He had a deep hearty laugh and a strong firm hug. His death was sudden and completely unexpected. It really impacted this small group of gay men in VT who loved him dearly.

Rob lived a full and rich life with close family and good friends, but, like many gay men of the boomer generation, couldn’t bring his worlds together and lived closeted deeply divided life. His life ended somewhat accidentally, but the closet killed him as surely as if someone had killed him with gun. I know it has forever made me think of all the closet doors that are closed so tightly, of the scores of men and women around the world barricaded behind high walls that are built with the bricks of depression, alcohol and drugs. If you want to read the whole story, see the book Injustice and the Care of Souls: Taking Oppression Seriously in Pastoral Care by Sheryl Kujawa-Holbrook and Karen Montagno, I wrote chapter 19 on pastoral care with gay men and I used pieces of the story of Rob’s life and death to talk about the many issues gay men face and about the issues pastors and counselors should take into account if they really want to help us.

http://www.amazon.com/Injustice-Care-Souls-Oppression-Seriously/dp/0800662350

Personally, his death is perhaps one of the single hardest things I have ever been through. I would say it took my most of a year to feel like myself again, though after the first few weeks were over I hid the depth of feelings I was experiencing from most of the people around me. Few of my friends or family heard me talk about Rob even though I had known him for many years before he died. Perhaps the closet he lived into blended into our relationship too. I know that closet door kept us like two ends of a rubber band, stretching far apart and snapping back together over and over again over many years.

I can’t completely explain why his death hit me so hard and frankly I don’t want to. Sometimes, when we try to explain everything, we rob the experience of its authenticity and power. When we reduce something down to an “explanation” rather feel the experience of it, something is lost.  If you have ever taken a seashell or a rock home from a beach you know what I mean. It is never as wonderful and beautiful as it was on the beach.

I know that his loss, the loss of this kind, good man, very fundamentally changed me and how I think and feel. His death happened right as I entered my 40’s, at a time when many of us begin to realize that we are around the mid point of our lives, the place where there are as many years behind us as head of us. Seeing him again after a long separation, only to lose him in a matter of hours was a hard reminder of how fragile hope, love and life is for us all.

I learned many lessons through the experience of knowing, loving and losing Rob, but rather than try to sum it up, I hope some of what I have posted here tells more of the story.

The End of Summer (for Rob) by Chris Medeiros

The end of summer approaches.

The days grow shorter, the air cooler.

The bears know the long winter is coming, and they play in the September sun, relishing in the dwindling days of sunlight, celebrating the sheer joy of time with friends before the long winter’s sleep.

The leaves know too, they explode with their brightest and most beautiful faces before they brown and the fall away.

The September clouds grow and cover more and more of the once summer…now fall… indigo sky.

We celebrated the last gasp of summer together, never imagining….

I knew about the shorter days, the cooler air, bright falling leaves, and the growing clouds, but I didn’t know the how much the fall wind would take…

Winter is not yet here, yet there seems no warmth anywhere,

The nights are cold,

In mourning, even the thickest wool blankets feel threadbare against my skin.

Winter will come and be colder without you.

It is so hard to believe there can ever be spring…and yet….spring will come

As the calendar marches on and the winter clouds will thin and float away

When the spring sun melts the ice and warms the cold earth and I will remember how you could melt my blues and grays away with a look, a smile, a hug

When I feel the warm breeze will remember your open heart

I will feel spring again

I will remember you

I will smile

But in my heart,

Even on the clearest spring day,

The sky will never be as blue as your eyes.

From Rob’s Memorial at the home of Ivan and Mongo, South Royalton, VT October 1, 2006

I first met Rob several years ago in Provincetown. We had an instant rapport. I just couldn’t resist that easy smile and that natural charm. From the first words over fours ago in Ptown to the last goodbye in the living room of this house hours before he passed away, Rob was in my heart.  For so many reasons, we fell in and out of touch over the the many years we knew one another. We often went for months, without seeing each then somehow magically, the universe would snap us back into each other’s lives again and again.

I feel blessed that on the last weekend of his life, we found other again and got to see all the wonderful changes in him as he came back home to Vermont. Rob was home, happy and the most comfortable in his own skin I have seen. Neither of us realized how short that reunion would be.

I am so grateful to have had Rob in my life, he taught me so many things. Rob had a way of being so real and so down earth, in a way doesn't come easily to everyone. Rob reminded me that basic simple things, like good friends, good food, strongly laughter and sitting in the sun can be the most joyful things in the world. Rob took me camping for the first time I have ever been and I learned the bliss of listening to birds, walking in the woods, feeling the breeze and just being with someone you care about, doing nothing in particular.

Rob had few expectations of people, yet gave to the people cared about with an open heart. Rob was not always a big talker, especially about his feelings, but he taught me that you can communicate more genuine love with smile, a hug and most importantly the way you live your life and any words can ever express.

To say I loved Rob is not enough. Rob was “home” to me, as warm, loving, familiar and natural a part of my life as anyone has ever been to me. If we are very lucky in this life, we encounter a few people, perhaps a handful, who we love and trust instantly, whose souls we recognize as bonded to our own, people who enter our hearts as fully and naturally as blood flows through our veins. Rob was always that for me. Rob and I were lucky to have a home in our dear friend here Ivan as well.

All of us are so lucky to have Rob in our lives in some many ways we did, our friend, our brother.  There were many homes for Rob.

The “home” Rob came from and maintained in relationship with his family. People as good and decent as Rob don’t just appear out of nowhere, they come from love. Anyone who knew Rob at all knew his deep love for his family. Perhaps his own personal demons kept him from sharing parts of his life with those he loved, but in no way did that ever altered the depth of his love and commitment to his family. From his family, Rob developed his hard working nature, integrity, strength of character and generosity. All of these things drew wonderful people around him all of his life.

The other major home for Rob was his family of friends, especially those that gathered around this place. Ivan and Mongo, created this place of love and that is and has been home in some way to many of us.  All of Rob’s friends helped him, through simple the act of friendship, to come to love and accept himself more and more. When will all lost that remarkable man, he had changed. He was miles from Rob I met in Provincetown, who was always figuratively and literally looking over his shoulder. During his last few days on earth, Rob was laughing and celebrating with dear friends in this place, with people who he loved and who loved him very much. I hope that we all have the gift of our last days being so happy and filled with love.

The other for Rob home the natural and beauty of the trees, the forest, the sky, the wind, the place Rob's soul always lived and always will and that is where I will always look for him.

Sybil, RuPaul and the magic closet we can all have

Many of you have seen the TV movie Sybil with Sally Field about a woman who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID (formerly called Multiple Personality Disorder.) In the film, the main character has many well developed and distinctive personalities. Similarly, you may also have heard of a woman named Truddi Chase wrote a book called “When Rabbit Howls” in 1987 about her experiences with the same disorder. Both of these women suffered terrible repeated physical and sexual abuse as children. While many looking at DID from the outside may it as a height of mental illness, if can actually be viewed as a defense against madness. One theory of DID, it was it is a phenomenon that occurs among very creative people and that this people split off as a way of not going crazy. The abuse, and the memories of the abuse and the complex emotions around them are too much for one person to handle, so the creating of different personalities is away of shuttling memories and emotions into different parts of mind so that the trauma is not to overwhelming.


DID is at the extreme end of the spectrum of a group of conditions called dissociative disorders. Very seldom do people have discreet personalities like Sybil and Truddi Chase, but a much larger group of people suffer from a variety of dissociative disorders where parts of themselves, their personalities, emotions, memories are “split” off from one another. These people may have gaps in memory, sudden mood swings or emotion disjoints, like crying but not feeling sad or feeling extreme emotion but lacking the ability to express it clearly or openly. There also people who act and even appear completely different in different situations or with different people, but they do not have fully separate personalities. These can arranged on a long spectrum from at the more functional end the closeted lesbian who is one person in the gay world and another with her family to, at the totally pathological end, the decorated fire chief who is a well respected member of the community but has a secret life torturing and killing prostitutes.

As some of you know that this week I am starting a year long extensive study in Existential-Psychoanalytic Therapy as I slowly work my way back to seeing psychotherapy clients again. I am a little nervous about the class (this isn’t light stuff and requires a lot of self analysis) but I am much more excited, than I am nervous. I am sure my experiences in that group with fuel some VERY interesting blog postings during the coming year.! What interests me it the approach of this professor and this group is the philosophy behind this class. We will be exploring what we call mental or psychological disorders as very human ways of seeing the world. Not all ways of seeing the world are equally healthy or functional, but nevertheless they are human. Some are personality styles, common differences among people, but others, like those on the disassociate disorder spectrum can paralyze peoples lives and stop, hinder or blunt lives. Some people learn to split themselves off so well, in a way that is so natural to them, that it is almost second nature. At an extreme, thesen people aren’t even sure what their real self is because they are so split off they stop being able to imagine themselves as whole. When these get extreme and limit the way people function in life or block their ability to be happy, therapy and sometimes medication are good and necessary aids to helping people get their lives back under some control.

Yet, from styles to disorder, there are things we can learn from trauma and disassociation. Don’t we all have memories or bit of memories we don’t understand? Haven’t we all had trauma and suffered some abuse in some way? Don’t we get depressed and have mood swings? Don’t we all split of parts of ourselves, consciously and unconsciously, at different time with different people?

So why am I concluding my closet series talking about this?

I think we all are different selves with different people and I don’t always think it is a bad thing. I might talk about them same topic at work, with my mother and with my friends in very different ways. I “perform” the roles of son, co-worker and friend in different ways. Different clothing or costumes both change the person wearing the clothes and may change how people who see them treat them. Clergy people learned long ago that their vestments can allow them to feel powerful and holy and radically change how people treat them.

Of late I have been slightly addicted to two shows created by one of the most famous living drag queens, RuPaul, on LOGO, Drag Race and Drag U. I am not a drag queen and have never felt a pull toward that, yet I love these shows! They show that, using clothes and makeup people can access and express parts of themselves that they don’t normally. While Drag is different for different people, for many effeminate gay men, drag is a way of taking the very thing that they were teased about and turning on its head and creating strong, clever, sarcastic and powerful characters for themselves. They come bigger than life. The show Drag U is a very interesting show because the whole objective is to invite biological women, who have felt ugly and powerless, come on the show enroll in “school” to have drag queens can teach theses women how to create a drag persona and become more powerful and confident, to find their inner Drag queen. Drag takes the idea that women are weaker and powerless and turns it on its head to create powerful, almost superhero-like human beings.

As I stated in the other postings on this blog, I think in general the closet is a terrible place. Not being able to be who you are is destructive to the closeted person and those around them. However, there are many ways that being different things to different people at different times is very functional and a very good way to explore different part of yourself that aren’t always easy to access. Drag is only one good example. So is dressing up or down in ways you aren’t used to. If you are always in T-shirt and jeans type, look for something dresser that you like, and try that once in awhile. If you are never in jeans or t-shirt, try that! Institutions create dress codes and uniforms because they understand that you can push people into both behaving differently and have people treat each other differently just using clothes.

Clothes, however, are not the only way to access different parts of the self, there is makeup, voice, ways of walking, posture…in other words, theater! If you have something scary you have to do in life, pretend you are a strong confident person, create a character, give him/her a name, a history, a walk and an attitude. Pretending/performing/acting are actually ways to explore even more real parts of ourselves, of our potential. If you walk into a situation pretending to be confident, acting like a character that is different from how you normally think of yourself, that act of that performance is actually a part of the real you!

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1ngkw_rupaul-supermodel_music


The closet can be a locked prison where people are trapped in or lock themselves in or it can be a place of potential liberation filled with magical options that make life more interesting and powerful.

Are you in a spiritual closet?

The spiritual closet refers to the ways we can split off our spirituality from our lives, and our families and friends.

The image of what it means to be a good solid American encourages the spiritual closet, especially if you don’t fit that image (and nobody fits it totally.) To be an ideal American is to be a generic Protestant with a belief in God, and who attends church semi-regularly. The good American does not get too passionate about his or her faith. Even in our churches, talking about our personal beliefs or experiences with the divinity is not encouraged, especially if they seem to contradict what is taught in church. A good American also doesn’t follow their faith to the letter, but also never seriously questions their faith. Good Americans are mildly Christian (though Roman Catholics are suspect)….maybe Jewish…but anything else isn’t seen as quite American. As the US population adds more Roman Catholics and Muslims to its ranks this is changing, slowly, however the idealized, slightly secularized, American protestant is a persistent idealized image in the American psyche. Take for example, the office of president, religion MUST come up in every election. Did that ideal play any part in John McCain not choosing Jewish Joe Lieberman as his running mate? Do you think that a presidential candidate who was Hindu or an atheist would have a chance in an election today’s America? Remember, in the US we have had exactly one non-protestant president, JFK. Just think of how the false belief that President Obama is a Muslim has spread fear and hate of the president throughout the US.

Here are a few examples of the spiritual closet, but there are many, and I daresay, dear reader, you likely find others from your own life.

• A college professor who follows the teachings of ‘Amma’, the hugging guru of India, but hides that fact for fear of being mocked by his colleagues and fear it will lessen his creditability as an academic. Following a spiritual practice that is new or far form the traditional religions might mean her coworker sees her as “flakey” and “ungrounded.” Those perceptions can have very real concrete consequences with regard to things like promotions, committee appointments, tenure debates, etc.

http://www.amma.org/
• A gay man who attends church regularly never mentions to his faith to his other gay friends, effectively creating another closet. Among large segments of the LGBT Americans, seeing that opposition to equal rights for LGBT people is VERY often religiously motivated, has not only turned away from religion, but views it as oppressive and dangerous. These people might view a LGBT religious person as a kind of spiritual Uncle Tom. 

Church of the Poison Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVzAH0FtNwg

• A Roman Catholic couple decides to use the pill because they don’t want to have anymore children. They don’t feel guilty about it; in fact their marriage feels stronger, their family closer and more loving since they started. They see this reality, not as something to be explored or put in dialogue with Catholic teachings, but it is their own falling short, therefore something to be ignored and hidden away.

• An orthodox Jewish woman gets married and has children with an orthodox Jewish man who she no feelings for, even though she is in love with a reform Jewish man. She has been taught that good orthodox girls can only marry good orthodox men no matter how they feel. She can’t accept that her feelings or believe that her genuine love can possibly be in dialogue with her faith. She is never herself with her family, and the family is never as close as it could be. Sshe is often depressed, hopeless, and feels disconnected from others.

As I see it, there are two sides to the spiritual closet, the "in-door" and the "out-door."

The “in-door” is the closet where we keep our spirituality hidden from others. It is the story of the first two examples above.

In the so called “intellectual” northeast being a person of faith can be viewed negatively. People will hide their spiritual beliefs from others so they will not be viewed as ignorant, superstitious or old fashioned. Those who are followers of traditional religions can be viewed as old fashioned and too traditional. They can be seen as dull and not creative. People who follow eastern or more new age spirituality can be viewed as ungrounded and superficial. If you take a yoga practice too seriously, you’re a hippie, if you don’t eat meat on Friday during lent, you are old fashioned. Someone might also choose to be closet if their religion/spiritual practice is very different from others around them. There might be some huge disadvantage being “out” such as in the case of being the only Muslim in southern bible belt town or the only Baptist in a small, almost completely Mormon, Utah town.

What I call the “out-door” closet describes hiding the experiences and insights you have gathered in your life from being in active dialogue with your spirituality. Many people believe that the tradition, ritual, rules, etc, of their spirituality are the “real” truths and their lived experience must always take a back seat to the tradition. In the scenario above, the last two examples are of the “out-door.” Even though their experience of using birth control is actually a very good one in the context of their marriage, they would not dream of putting that truth up against the Vatican teaching on birth control. This line of thinking says that church must be right and the lived experience must be wrong.

I will never forget something someone once said in a class I was taking “most people would rather believe in a good religion where they fall short than believe they might be right and their religion might be wrong.” We somehow feel more in control blaming ourselves rather than an unjust teaching or bad doctrine.

It is the spiritual equivalent of what happens to battered children, namely surviving trauma. From birth through childhood children are dependant on those who parent them for everything from love to food. The child’s nature means that s/he will do everything s/he can to survive and thrive. Children need their parents to love and care for them, no matter how abusive those parents may be. Children who are abused have to love their abusers to survive. The problem comes when they grow up and they can’t out grow loving the abuser. Often times they then find themselves in abusive relationships because those kinds of relationships they feel loving to them. It is the same reason I think parents who stay in an unhappy marriage “for the sake of the children” aren’t doing the kids any favors…but that is for another blog entry…

I think many of our religious traditions have abused us. As adults we know better, yet we do nothing, because the religion can’t be wrong, only our experience can be wrong. Even when our experience tells us that a piece of doctrine is wrong, we doggedly bury that knowledge, so that we may continue to be “loved” by that faith.

During the course of my seminary education I was quite amused by the hubris implicit in the conclusions of theological debates in the early Christian church. During those times, different Christian groups debated things like the trinity and the exact nature of humanity and divinity of Jesus. What amused me was that somehow, these questions were “settled” by the councils of the church, never to be questioned again. Somehow, at sometime, somewhere, somebody looked at all the different views of trinity and Jesus’ nature and decided which were right and which were wrong; end of story.

Now perhaps you can do that in science to a degree, you can have a hypothesis, test it and come up with a scientific law or theory, but in theology? To me, the task of every spiritual person is revisit all the questions of their faith as if they were exploring them for the first time. I don’t believe that we should ignore history and tradition, but nor should be assume the conclusions of the past must be our conclusions and must be the higher truth.

Take for example slavery. It is quite clear that the bible, at the very best, says nothing negative about slavery as an institution. At worse, the bible appears to support the institution. While slavery in America was a different institution than the one that existed in biblical times, many preachers who supported slavery before and during the civil war in the US used the bible to support their case. Quite honestly, it is very easy to build a strong case for the institution of slavery using the bible. In order to hold on to the bible as a spiritual tool and do what is right and just, you have bring our own sense of right and wrong to the reading of the bible…That is coming OUT of the spiritual closet, that is saying this holy book and the sacredness of human wisdom and experience MUST talk to one another.

One often heard saying is that one should never talk about politics or religion. One of the reasons is to avoid uncomfortable conversions and conflict, but I believe we also avoid these discussions because we are uncomfortable discussing the spiritual. I think that many people are much more uncomfortable talking about their personal experience of the divine than they are about sex. Part of this is because we have not learned to respect and learn from the spiritual differences among people. We don’t know how to be both passionate and committed to our beliefs without somehow degrading someone else who believes completely differently. Some people think that it is impossible, that if you are really committed to your faith you can’t believe someone else could also be right.

I have to say, I couldn’t disagree more.

I think that one can be committed to a spiritual path, all the while acknowledging that in the realm of spiritual exploration there is ALWAYS more to learn and that learning is a spiritual task. The only way to deeply explore your faith is to know it could be wrong and be willing to let it go. Working a seminary, I have seen this process happen again and again. As seminary students begin to study the work of different theologians and learn different ways to study the bible, they find the way they think of their faith is radically shaken. While I have seen this cause people to change faiths or give up on religious faith altogether, more often than not I see people retain their faith, but with new eyes. They mature and “come out.”

We can live a life of a faith without being rigid; we can learn a healthy spiritual humility that is both more open and flexible. We have the option, the ability, to bring all of who we are to our spiritual explorations. We also have the option of seeing our faith, our spirituality less as membership in club and more as tool we have at our disposal to explore and uncover the truths that live in our experiences on this earth.

My favorite way to revision faith is music... thank you Bobby McFerrin

23rd Psalm- written for his mother


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9fzWq-d8jU

..it's one life, so you better like what’s in your closet…

It takes a lifetime to become the best that we can be, we have not the time or the right to judge each other, one life, so you better like what’s in your closet!- Gloria Gaynor in the spoken forword to the song “I am what I am” (not shown in the video lonk above). The song was also used in the Broadway musical "La Cage Aux Folles."

This is the first in a series (three postings) about the closet. In today’s I want to focus on the traditional understanding of the closet for gay people as a way of referring to those people who do not disclose that they are gay. Then in second posting, I will talk about what it means to be closeted spiritually and in the third I will explore using the of the closet metaphor (and a few other images) as a basic way of understanding human life and personality for everyone.

I want to start with original understanding of the closet as it applies to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered) people. The clooset is a place where things can be hidden behind a closed door where no one will see it. When I think of this image I often think of a place where all the crap you have can be shoved behind a door where no one can see it. The closet always seems like that the undesirable, the dirty, the evil secret. Thinking of horror movies, closets are mysterious places where dangerous things hide that, if released, could destroy everything..

There are many ways to understand the closet. Part of what inspired me to do this blog was realizing that when you really look at things up close, they are more complex than our first snap judgment might indicate. In different places and at different times, the closet has been a place safety for many people. In recent times, this country has become a safer place for LGBT people in general, but there still many places where being out of the closet can mean you are at huge risk for your safety. If you are child or teen and your parents are homophobic, the closet is a means of survival. LGBT teens make up a GIANT part of homeless teenagers and of teen suicides. If you are in college and your homophobic parents pay the bills, you might lose your chance at a college education if you come out. In this great country you can still legally be denied a job or lose a job for being a LBGT person. Outside the US there are places you can legally be imprisoned, tortured or even killed for being LGBT and being closeted means living to see another day.

The closet is a place where all LGBT people have been in at some point. Let’s face it, we are all pretty much raised with the assumption that we are straight. I think that is changing, but for the most part it is still true. At some point nearly LGBT person has to say to someone else that they are not straight and “come out.” Except in cases where the closet person is working against LGBT people politically, religiously, etc. I don’t believe someone should be pulled out of the closet. This is a highly personal and individual process. I remember a graduate school professor once telling me that a therapist should take care not to go around ripping away people's security/safety banket suddenly, people's defenses have to be respected before the client and therapist can build an alliance to help the walls come down..People need to do things in their own time, often with help from friends, loved ones and good therapists.

All that being said, that does not change the fact that I think the closet is a psychologically, politically and spiritually a very dark and negative space. We need less closets in our lives for the sake of our health, the well being of our loved ones and justice in our world. Psychologically, the consequences of staying in the closet over the long haul are gravely damaging to the individuals involved, their families and friends, and society as a whole.

We all have closets, things about ourselves that we hide from other people; that is simply a fact of life. However, hiding one’s sexual identity is fundamentally unique and different from hiding other secrets. I believe that our sexual identity, whatever it may be, something at the core of what makes us human. My philosophy of psychology is based on relationships. I believe our relationships with others are basis of who we are as people. I believe we are who we are because of how relate to others, from the day we born onward. While I do not believe all relationships are based in sexuality, our sexuality is at the very base of our humanity.

Our sexual identity, straight, LGBT, etc. isn’t about sex as much as it about the type of person you can love in a way you can love no one else. No matter how hard a gay man tries, he can never fall in love with woman in the same way he can with a man, it is simply isn’t part of his nature. A snake may want to fly, but it never will.

Being in the closet is a heavy burden for the closeted person. It is like someone who has a beautifully wrapped birthday present but who refuses unwrap it because the wrapping is so beautiful. Yes, the box stays pretty, but the potential, the very reason it is a gift, is buried.The closet requires hiding, lying, and constant monitoring one's self. It is living  a life that never feels completely safe, totally authentic or the ability to feel emotional truly close to the people in our lives. It is also a burden for the families and friends around the person. By its nature, the closet creates an unknown, an elephant in the room. A family with a closeted member will always be limited in how close people in that family can become to one another. When a basic truth about how someone loves is hidden, it is not destroyed, it lingers, hanging in the air and it changes every relationship around it.  In world of the closet, the relationships between the closeted person and those they care about are always less than they were meant to be.

The closeted person at some level knows why their relationships with their family and friends always has some degree of a shallow, shadow-like quality that never quite feels real , but it is even sadder for those around the closeted person. They feel an emptiness and distance, but never know exactly why. The closet prevents a real closeness between even the closest family and friends. The closet creates a false sense of peace and calm that tries to take the place of depth and authenticity, but never can. Avoiding conflict takes priority over connectedness. Being closeted means remaining fragmented in your relationships, never feeling quite whole and being unable to make deep real connections to others. It also means that you condemn those you love the most from ever being close to you or to one another.

Politically, the more people stay in the closet, the harder it is for people to understand that gay people are human and deserving of human rights. Within the community of out gay people, the closet is often thought expression of oppression. Closeted people are often thought of negatively among “out” LGBT people. They are thought of as, at best oppressed, and at worse, suspect. Closeted people are seen as either not doing their part in the noble struggle for LGBT rights or they are seen as working against LGBT people in order to protect themselves. Out LBGT people see that the more people stay in the closet the harder it is for people to see that we are not evil, immoral, or all that much different from straight people.

It is one thing to think about “gay rights” and “gay people” it is another to have to deal with gay father, mother, sister or brother. It is easy to be against same sex people getting married, it is quite another to not believe your sister should have the right to marry the person she loves. People in the closet keep up the myth that gay people are “other” people.

Finally, spiritually, I believe that humanity and the divinity are images of one another, or to put it another way, we are all created in God’s image. What I love about that idea, is how many ways we are created, different races, genders, bodies, temperaments, etc. I believe we come into this world as an expression of the divine and our lives are meant to unfold in ways to uncover truths about the humaniity and divinity for the world to see. Christians talk about “Christ consciousness” and the Buddhists talk about our “Buddha nature” as ways of understanding how we live our lives are icons, our experiences as living examples pointing to the nature of God. I believe that coming into this world as a LGBT person means to be a specific face of God. Living our lives with honesty, openness and integrity and exploring the potential for love is the life we were meant to live. We are meant, by our creator, to be whole, happy healthy people, living that kind of life is a prayer, a way of showing the world something of God.

Coming out of the closet is risky, difficult, and not without very serious consequences for many people. This essay is a call for all of us to build a world where being in the closet is a relic of an oppressive past. This is a NOT condemnation of individual people who are closeted, but call to all of us to be constantly working to build a better world all the time. If we create a world without closeted LGBT people we make this world a place where people are less psychologically fragmented and healthier relationships with the people they love, where politically we are clear that justice for all is really justice for all. We are clear that LGBT people are made in the image and likeness of God and without their openness, the picture of God and of human nature is painfully incomplete. We are all meant to shine our light, to shine our love through the lives we live...

Love Continued...

So, did the last posting leave you all in the blogosphere thinking I had given up on romantic love?


Well, I didn’t.


I still believe in love, but I believe differently. Brace yourself for the metaphors…

I believe that love is an invitation. I had a therapist once tell me love was inviting someone to dance. I have never forgotten that; think it quite a beautiful idea.

I think that love is a signal, an invitation, a sign, perhaps even an icon. It is a map to a destination, but having the map is no guarantee you get to the goal.

Love is first most important ingredient in a recipe, but it isn’t the only one. If goal is the cake of happiness in a happy healthy relationship, then love is the flour in the recipe. It is essential, perhaps the most essential, ingredient, but alone it isn’t enough make a cake. (Yes, I know, very McArthur Park)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaZim6ybvdA


So I no longer believe that if people are really truly in love it means that they will definitely have great relationship in the future. For love to lead to a happy relationship, love needs a lot help. There are so many other factors that aren’t about love, but are about human relationships. People have to be committed to working hard over the long haul. People have to be willing to deal with the ebbs and flows of sexual attraction over time. People have to know that the person they love will definitely change, sometimes in unpredictable ways. People have to willing to share with one another the most deeply personal, difficult and embarrassing parts of life. People have to be willing to pay the price that can come when being in a romantic relationship someone changes other relationships in their lives.

I think that far too many people get into long term committed relationships too quickly.

I think people need to really take the time to get to know someone before committing to them. I think marrying/partnering at young age in our post-modern world in is simply silly. I think people should experience a good long period as a single adult, before committing to someone else. Get to know yourself before you commit to someone else! Get to know someone before you commit to him/her!

As for the old standard of not having sex before marriage I think it beyond ridiculous. It was an old, very sexist, custom that has ALWAYS applied to women more than men (few people have ever been upset that a man wasn’t a virgin on his wedding night!) and was clearly about men being sure that his property was “new” and that any children were HIS offspring.

In today’s world the notion that ANYONE would make a commitment to another person before having a sexual life with them is foolhardy. If you committing to a life with someone and sex is part of that life, isn’t important to know if you are sexual compatible? I say people should LOTS of sex before marriage so you know this is person you would like to have LOTS of sex with in the future! Sex is not the only, or even the most important part of love, but it is a part of love and should not be easily dismissed. No one should put up with a bad sex life. As stated above, sex ebbs and flows between people, but it is always something people will revisit again and again.

I think that too many people get married/enter a committed relationship in general. Is it so wrong to live your life without a partner? Is it so wrong to know that being in a long term relationship isn’t right for you?

At 44, I would honestly still LOVE to be in a long term loving relationship, but I have no regrets. I have loved my life as I have lived it and I am not sure there is much I would change. I want to be with one special person, and yet, if it doesn’t happen I attend live, love and enjoy my life just as much as if I sharing with one special someone. There other kinds of love, friends, family, pets (hey Sammy, you finally made the blog!) that have always filled my life with joy and I hope always will.

What is Love anyway?

Those of who Loved the 80’s understand the title and the picture, wisdom from the Howard Jones…

I wondered what would happen if I really combined my psychological and theological perspectives and my experiences as a middle aged man on my own ideas of romantic Love. I don’t think my ideas (ideals?) are that much different from most Americans.

I was originally going to call this “I don’t believe in Love anymore, is that so wrong?” but then I decided it was too harsh and actually not really true.

What is true is that my particular mid-life crisis seems to really be focus on the meaning of romantic Love. At mid-life a lot of us get reflective, perhaps philosophical, perhaps wise, perhaps depressed. In the middle of our lives, many of us feel compelled to put the experiences of half of a lifetime in contrast with our long held concepts, ideas and values. Sometime people write great books or bad poetry, some change their religious or spiritual beliefs, some people find new, more satisfying careers, others have meaningless affairs or buy sports cars. It is an opportunity for great insight and wisdom, though honestly sometimes it just feels like the rug is being pulled out from under us with nothing to hold on to…

For most of my life I was sure… really sure… that when I really fell in Love, when any two people really connected, everything would work out…it would have to, it was party of “the plan.” I believed Love had a magical power you count on that made everything just right. It could easily be said I had a faith in Love that was VERY similar to religious faith.

Over the years, when that belief didn’t pan out, I could always explain it away. When I first came out, I was sure I would fall in Love soon and live happily ever after. When that didn’t happen I was just sure I hadn’t met the right guy “yet.” Love required patience. Then a couple I knew, who seems perfect for each other admitted infidelity I was shaken. I was very disillusioned, but still believe it was an aberration, and Love would find away. When I first met a couple who had an open relationship and that shook me, but still I believed in Love. While personally I have always known myself to be pretty much a one guy guy, I came to believe that monogamy and non-monogamy are choices in relationships that are less about morality and more about the personal nature of the people involved. Anyway, I came to see that either option could find Love and Love would make everything OK, and real Love would still win out and change everything

I really believed (and I think a lot of Americans still do believe) that once you found true Love, your life would make perfect sense. As if by magic, true Love would transform everything and everyone would live happily ever after. I believed that once you really made that connection, it would be the beginning of eternal happiness and you would either understand the meaning of life, or would stop caring about it.

But, then slowly, as the years went on and on the doubts crept in more and more and got harder to shake off. When my father and my friend Rob died within a about a year of one another, I was devastated. Afterlife or not, I was not prepared for how real their losses would be to me, how real the sense of never seeing them in the flesh would feel. I really shook me, gave me doubt about what Love was, and how exactly Love was “eternal.”

Then there was watching the relationships of people in my life. No offense to any of you reading this, but over time, I came find fewer and fewer relationships I really envied. I watched relationships I knew (gay and straight) turn bitter, anger or empty over time. Some of those relationships ended, some did not…frankly I am not sure whether I am sadder about the relationships that ended, or the ones that stayed together. Found myself looking at some of these relationships and being disillusioned that the people in them weren’t willing to work harder to stay together. Looking at others, I thought how much happier everyone could be if both parties just moved on and left each other. I have seen people cling to a relationship because the idea of being alone or causing any conflict were too much to bear. I have seen people given up on partner too easily, with no patience, strength or willingness to weather a storm.

Then there are my broken romances. I won’t give too many details, to protect myself and both the innocent and the guilty. Needless to say, I have felt like I was in Love probably 3-4 times in my life (that number changes depending on how my selective memory works on a given day and how deeply I am willing to look back) and believe I have actually been really been in Love, exactly once. Whatever has been true in my romantic life, Love did not make everything better, clearer or easier and here I sit, a single, yet not totally unfulfilled, 44 year old man.

So what do all these reflections leave me thinking about the nature of romantic Love…stay tuned for the next posting…











.

Do Liberals have any morals?

One charge that conservatives will often level against liberals is that we don’t have morals. Many conservatives believe that anything goes for liberals. Liberals are often charged with being totally relativistic.

While I don’t agree with that charge, I can understand where it comes from. At our worse, liberals are too nice, too careful not to offend and too anxious to include everyone. The reality of life means that we make choices and people get left out. I also believe that the word “non-judgmental.” is over used. Life is about making good healthy judgments and decisions and we should not be shy about it

I also think we liberals have given up (or perhaps been robbed of) the moral high ground. Conservatives have been successfully able to paint themselves as “the real Americans.” (I have started working on a future posting about how we American have become totally polarized in our thinking, stay tuned.)

If liberals are ever going to fight this, we have to be wiling to talk about morality and not be ashamed or allow ourselves to feel “less than” the conservatives.

Here are a few places I recommend we start:

• Strongly clear laws and punishments for rape and sexual assault.-This country is a mishmash of laws and enforce on rape and no one seems to get anger about this, it is time someone did!

• Domestic violence- Still in 2010, in places all over America, domestic violence is viewed as a “family” issue and not prosecuted anywhere near as much as it should be. Liberals should be pushing for strong enforcement of laws that protect women and children especially. I am definitely of the school that because someone has given birth to or fathered a child, it doesn’t make them a parent.

• Gay rights- LGBT people should have full and complete access to marriage and adoption of children. We have to stop settling of separate but equal and the state by state bullshit. It is wrong that adult Americans anywhere in this country can’t marry the person they love…period. Gay people are good parents to children study after study has shown, and it is not a social experiment!

On the below two liberals should call conservative to the table and demand they acknowledge the problems, and then work together toward solutions.

• A frank discussion on race and class in this country- The reality is that poor and working class people, and members ethnic and racial minorities are arrested for more crimes, go to prison more often and for long sentences than white wealthier people, but we are often afraid to ask why and what can be done. I think liberals have to force conservatives to address this issue. Conservatives have been very good at stirring up fear and hate by throwing out words like “quotas” and “entitlements.” I don’t have solutions but I want conservatives to acknowledge these statistical facts. I want to hear their “solutions.” Given that statistics show that in few short years more Americans will be non-white than white, this is an especially important discussion.

• Every child in America is entitled (yes entitled!) to a good quality public education regardless of where they live, who their parents are and how much money their parents have. Inter-city Black and Hispanic kids should not have to sit in over-full classrooms with few resources because of where they live. Just like the above, I don’t have a solution, but I want conservatives to acknowledge the problem and if they have solutions propose them then HOLD them accountable to see if they work.

I think the biggest problem is that liberals have allowed conservatives to set all the questions and liberals have only responded. It is time liberals asked some of the questions and demanded conservatives respond to them.

Love, sex and too many channels and nothing’s on.…

When I started this blog I said I wanted it to be about human relationships. I really meant that broadly, from family to friends to co-workers to lovers and to all those relationships we have that don’t easily fit into a category. However, if I am really honest, love and sex are the things that fascinate me the most about the human condition. I don’t think I am not alone.

More and more I hear stories or simply know people who are in some kind of romantic partnership/relationship that isn’t exactly the fairy tale loving supportive totally monogamous cultural idea we have in our culture.

There are all kinds of open relationships and polyamorous relationships and each with many different rules/versions. There are long term monogamous relationships. There are long term relationships that either were always sexless or became sexless. There are non-romantic life partners, people who share a life, become family to one another, but sex isn’t part of the equation. There are relationships where one partner has sex with other people and the other partner has no idea. There are relationships where one or both parties have sex outside the relationship and have an arrangement without ever saying a word. There are relationships that stay together for the security and stability (“stay together for the kids” or “I don’t want to be alone” or “I can’t disrupt the family”) even though the parties involved don’t love each other. I could go on and on. There are people who have stopping loving their partners, but can’t bear the thought of being alone or the loss of security so they stay together.

I really work hard not let my prejudices and cultural baggage cause me to judge relationships that seem odd to me or that I would never be part because of my own personal likes and dislikes. I have always maintained that if people are open and honest with one another and no one is hurt, how people arrange their romantic life is no one’s business. Of course some of the configurations I describe above don’t involve being honest. That seems to present moral and ethical problems, and yet I have met people in these situations. Sometime their situations are just as dysfunctional and crazy as they seem to be and other times there are circumstances than make the morality much more complicated.

One trend I see, and I am not sure if I view it as psychologically healthy or not, is people no longer assuming, looking for and even trying to be, with one person for a lifetime. Some have more than one life partner. Others have split the functions of a relationship over several people, one for sex, one for romance, one for friendship, etc. I heard someone referred to as a secondary partner the other day. I thought to myself, would being a secondary partner be satisfying? Some people say it perfect for them, they keep their independence and have someone they like and respect in their lives. But what is like to choose to be with someone for whom you are always number two?

So, it is all the variation healthy? Are we as a society only beginning to explore the broad range of relationships and this is the beginning of that exploration? Or, thinking psychologically, have people just become more and more fragmented and healthy boundaries so rare that they have to spread their needs out over a broad range of people because the pain, the risk, the vulnerability of working on being more than one thing to another person is too much? Have people learned, in a rapidly changing world and sky high divorce rates that you can’t put all your eggs in one basket? Is it healthy to realize your partner can be all things or do we sell our relationship short by finding ways out rather than working hard on them? Do some people stay in unhealthy relationships far too long than they should?

It seems to me people give up on each other easily this days. If the sex isn’t good, open the relationship, if the relationship isn’t good but the sex is, stop thinking of your partner as a support one and turn to someone else for emotional support.

This isn’t primarily about sex for me, is about honestly, depth and intimacy, very hard tasks in any relationship. The health of a relationship isn’t based on the “sex rules” but good communication and an intimate connection. There are healthy monogamous relationships, healthy open ones and healthy polyamorous relationships and unhealthy versions of the each.

Relationships obviously have ebbs and flows, so I don’t believe in perfect ones, have we become a culture with so many options that we forget that there are people attached to those options? Is in the relationship equivalent of “so many channels and nothing’s on TV?”

The sad thing is people do too many things in relationship to stop the pain but not deal with hurt behind the pain. It is like putting Novocain on a big open wound, nothing gets better, but the pain goes away for awhile.

I have no answers here only lots and of lots of more questions. Do people give up on each other too easily? Do people stay in unhealthy relationship too long? Do people turn to others to avoid turning to one another when relationship get tough?

Dear Mother of God, my hair!

Today’s posting is inspired by two facebook posting I saw today. I think these two are related, but for now (so I don’t spend all of this beautiful day in the house at the computer!) I am just writing about both of them, if anyone wants to comment on possible connections, I would love to hear it!

The first posting that inspired me today (re: pushed my buttons!) was a friend posting about her son having to cut off his mohawk so he could be serve as a altar boy. Someone else commented on her post “ …. learned a valuable lesson, a mohawk or serving at church. He made his decision and I applaud it.” I then posted “Jesus weeps- I hear tell that about two thousand years ago the follows of some radical teacher were these dirty unkempt fisherman and these women of questionable reputation that people didn't want to sit next to in the synagogue...how little things have changed. I thought church was about worshiping God and understanding the teachings of Jesus, not worrying if one is dressing appropriately so as not to offend someone else's sensibility of how people are supposed to look on the altar.”

Apparently, if you want to be part of this church there are rules about your hair, and I am guessing your clothing. I can hear my father’s voice raging about the hypocrites in church and how church was just another place where people went to make judgments about others. I remember trying to convince my Dad that the spirituality the church should be leading us to was so much more than these things. While I hope that is true, Dad’s observation is also true.

About ten years ago I used to wear an earring. During that time, I spent one summer working for the Episcopal Church in Panama. I was invited to preach one Sunday, but I was asked to first remove my earring. (That same church seemed VERY uncomfortable with asking the female students in our group to preach on the altar…I don’t think these are unrelated.) Somehow, my appearance, my self-expression has not compatible with preaching. Even though I never once talked about being gay with anyone in the church in Panama, one of the priests made in clear that the earring would push the “gay” button with some people in the congregation. They never once asked me what the message of my sermon was, but they were very concerned with how I would look to the congregation. It is just me, or were their priorities turned upside down?

At churches, mosques, synagogues, Hindu temples and other places of worship around the globe people spend so much time looking at each other or what the people leading the worship look like that they forget they are there to look upward to the divine and inward into their own heart. Don’t get me wrong, I think people coming together reflect on divinity and explore the ways to healthy, morally upright relationships with the other people is a very good thing. However, being upset or judging how the others look or choose to present themselves in worship/meditation/reflection not only seems to miss the point, it actually seem to spoil the whole reason for coming together in the first place.

I understand a little better why Dad stopped doing to church….

The second posting was by a former employee of mine reminding folks that for many Orthodox Christians today is the feast of Dormition of the Theotokos. I won’t explain the details of this feast in huge detail here, but feel free look it up; Wikipedia has an interesting summary, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dormition_of_the_Theotokos

This feast is a different version of story Roman Catholics tell in the feast of the Assumption of Mary. It is about the death of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her relationship to the divine. I LOVE the way my friend put it on her facebook page, “Happy Theotokos day everyone! We are all called to be mothers of God for God is always needing to be born!” That statement both talks about the relationship of all woman (and I believe by extension all people) to God and also calls to mind the idea that these feasts are only references to one event several thousand years ago, but can windows, icons, pointing to a reflection on the nature of our ongoing relationship to God.

In Catholic and Orthodox theology, Mary isn’t simply the human mother of Jesus, but she is referred to as “the Mother of God (Theotokos.)” This has historically has been at the annoyance of some more protestant Christians, who think seeing Mary as any other than the human mother of God is heresy.

Yet the idea of “Mother of God” is very very ancient. The feminine in the nature of God was very common around the world and definitely in ancient Middle East and in Judaism. If you want to know more, check out Merlin Stone’s very important book When God Was a Woman or spend a few minutes on the internet and you find many more resources. http://www.amazon.com/When-God-Woman-Merlin-Stone/dp/015696158X

For me, this is one interesting way of seeing something of the feminine in the understanding of God that exists within the Christian and Jewish traditions. Unfortunately, these concepts have been twisted by history and culture to convince women at their ONLY scared place is in the home as mothers. How limited, how sad! To me this is disrespectful to women and to the idea of motherhood. Fortunately, these concepts are so full and rich that we can look beyond (Above? Below? Underneath?) the sexism imbedded in such a limited interpretations.