Category Archives: Politics and Culture

Episcopal General Convention Rejects Moratorium on Gay Clergy, Supports Transgender Inclusion


I’m proud to be an Episcopalian today.

The 76th General Convention of the Episcopal Church USA is meeting this week in Anaheim, CA. You can follow all the news about General Convention at our official website, EpiscopalChurch.org. (Stop by and say thanks to St. John’s parish member Solange De Santis who edits Episcopal Life Online.)

Yesterday the House of Bishops approved Resolution D025, which affirms that “any ordained ministry” is open to gays and lesbians. The amended resolution now returns to the House of Deputies for approval, defeat, or further revision. D025 was first introduced in the House of Deputies as an apparent response to the last Convention’s Resolution B033, which recommended “restraint” in consecrating bishops whose “manner of life” challenged other churches in the Anglican Communion.

Read the full story at Episcopal Life Online.

In other news, General Convention is also discussing various resolutions to make the Episcopal Church more welcoming to transgender Christians. Today, the House of Deputies voted by a large margin to add “gender identity and expression” to the ministry canons regarding non-discrimination. This year marks the first time that General Convention has conducted such an in-depth study of trans issues. Follow Rev. Cameron Partridge’s TransEpiscopal blog for detailed updates.

When we say “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You”, we mean it!

Other Sheep Memo on Gay Marriage and Religious Liberty


The tireless Rev. Steve Parelli and Jose Ortiz of the GLBT Christian outreach ministry Other Sheep are touring Southeast Asia this month, with stops in Nepal and Thailand. Earlier this week, they held a seminar in Kathmandu for 26 pastors, where representatives from Nepal’s Blue Diamond Society also spoke. This resource web page is aimed at Nepali pastors but will be useful to GLBT-affirming religious leaders in other cultures as well.

One of the resources I found especially interesting was Steve’s paper titled “How Baptist Doctrine May Obligate the Evangelical to View Same-Sex Marriage as Primarily a Civil Matter and a Matter of Individual Conscience”.
This paper was first presented at the 2006 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society.

Steve discusses American Baptists’ history of support for religious freedom and church-state separation, a point on which Roger Williams split with the Puritans in colonial times. The American Baptist tradition emerged in opposition to their European forebears, including Luther and Calvin, who were more comfortable with using civil authority to enforce obedience to doctrine. Steve then argues that since legalizing gay marriage does not infringe on the liberty of conscience of those who oppose it, evangelicals should not seek to write their Bible-based views into law. Excerpts:

…In a written statement to his congregation on Sunday, Nov. 5, 2006, Ted Haggard, who recently resigned as president of the National Association of Evangelicals, said of his same-sex relations with a gay escort, “I am guilty of sexual immorality.

“There is a part of my life,” he says, “that is so repulsive and dark that I’ve been warring against it all my adult life. … From time to time, the dirt that I thought was gone would resurface, and I would find myself thinking thoughts and experiencing desires that were contrary to everything I believe and teach. . . . the darkness increased and finally dominated me. As a result, I did things that were contrary to everything I believe. … the deception and sensuality that was in my life . . . need to be dealt with harshly” (New Life Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado, website).

Ted Haggard’s remarks are timely and relevant. First, he tells us that his same-sex attraction existed for the duration of his adult life, increasing more and more and finally dominating. Secondly, he tells us, twice, that his homosexual desires and acts are contrary to everything he believes and teaches, and that – on the basis of his belief system – his homosexuality is repulsive, dark and dirty. Thus, his views on homosexuality are sectarian and his sectarian views must trump his own personal life-long homosexual experiences. While this may be true for Ted Haggard and the evangelical Religious Right he represents, this does not hold true for other gays and lesbians (whether evangelical or not) who have reexamined the church’s teachings in light of their life-long adult homosexual experiences and have, in contrast to Ted Haggard’s faith and practice, submitted scripture to reason, experience and re-interpretation.

The question this paper addresses is this: can Ted Haggard vote his conscience in a ballot initiative to ban gay marriage without wrongly violating the conscience and liberties of others who according to the dictates of their conscience do not find homosexual love repulsive, nor dark, and neither contrary to or dependent upon scripture. Ted Haggard can judge himself according to the dictates of his conscience. But, can he impose the same standard upon the conscience of others through the use of civil law? The 17th century Boston Puritan, Rev. John Cotton would answer, “Yes.” Roger Williams, his contemporary and theological opponent would answer, “No.”
…

****

…In the matter of gay marriage, the question, for a democracy, is not “What is right?” but rather, “Who should determine what is right: the church, the state, or the individual?”

Today’s evangelicals are bringing the wrong question to the public square. Evangelicals are addressing the question, “What is right?” When Robert Gagnon says “for any given homosexual person hope exists for forming a heterosexual union” – that directive addresses the question “What is right?” and belongs in the pulpit not in the capital (Myers & Scanzoni 2005: 126.)

It is the Baptists who have historically brought the right question to the public square. And so it must be now. In the matter of gay marriage, the question is, “Who should determine what is right: the church, the state, or the individual?” The historical, Baptist answer is the individual and therefore the state must defend liberty of conscience.

Why the individual? Because gay marriage “does not interfere with the rights of conscience.” That means, my right to a gay marriage does not interfere with your right to refrain from a gay marriage. So then, gay marriage compels no individual, whereas a ban on gay marriage is “compulsory heterosexuality” (Eskridge 1996: 143), and in the words of 17th century English Baptist John Murton: “The foulest of crimes is to force people’s bodies to a worship whereunto they cannot bring their spirits.”

Finally, gay marriage “does not violate the [civil] laws of morality and property” (Justice Samuel Miller) (Gaustad 1991: 44). Same-sex civil union in place of gay marriage is an expression of intolerance, discrimination and oppression. And according to Ted Jelen, professor of political science at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, “Identification of religious principles with political values can be considered a violation of the First Commandment as well as the First Amendment” (Jelen 2000: 94).

Testimony Needed by July 10 for Massachusetts Transgender Rights


The Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality, the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition, and a number of Massachusetts faith communities are gathering testimony to present in support of the transgender anti-discrimination bill now pending before the state legislature. I just received this message from Rabbi Riqi Kosovske from Northampton’s Beit Ahavah synagogue:

There is a hearing for the bill called ‘An Act Relative To Gender-Based Discrimination & Hate Crimes’ (House Bill 1728 / Senate Bill 1687) before the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, July 14th. What is most needed from transgender people and allies alike who support this bill is written testimony (in the form of letters)– especially from people and communities of faith such as clergy, congregations, lay leaders, individuals, and other groups.

We are encouraging people to please write a one-page letter and submit it to the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition at te*******@*****pc.org. If you are writing as a person or community of faith, please also send it to Orly Jacobovits, Community Organizer & Community Educator at Keshet, at or**@**********ne.org. The Interfaith Coalition for Transgender Equality (ICTE) will submit a packet of faith-based testimony to the Judiciary Committee to show how much people and communities of faith support this vital civil rights bill.

All letters are needed by Friday, July 10 so they can be presented to the legislators. Feel free to forward the information in this letter if you know of friends, family or colleagues who would be able to write a testimony letter.

For more information about how to write and submit testimony, please visit www.masstpc.org/legislation/testifyinwriting.shtml.

Makoto Fujimura: Beauty and Justice as Companions


The Christian magazine Relevant has posted a short interview with visual artist Makoto Fujimura, founder of the International Arts Movement. About the genesis of this movement, which seeks to create a dialogue between the worlds of faith and avant-garde art, Fujimura says, “I found myself isolated from the creative communities as a Christian and from the Church as an artist. But I became convinced that the ‘gap’ I fell into was actually a culturally significant arena (some call it the ‘critical zone’), a kind of an estuary, a rich mixture of faith-infected cultural waters with many strange, beautiful creatures swimming about.”

I especially liked this exchange toward the end of the interview, where Fujimura responds to the oft-stated objection that art’s traditional concern with beauty is a frivolity that we can’t afford in a world full of injustice:

Relevant: Reading your essay “Why Art?”, I was reminded of Zbigniew Herbert’s poem “Five Men,” about five men executed by firing squad. Herbert says at the end of the poem, basically, “I am aware of the men’s execution, so how can I justify writing poems about flowers?” His answer is that the night before the execution, the men under death’s sentence talked about prophetic dreams, automobile parts, girls, vodka—in other words, the everyday things of life. Herbert concludes his poem: “thus one can use in poetry/names of Greek shepherds/one can attempt to catch the colour of the morning sky/write of love/and also/once again/in dead earnest/offer to the betrayed world/a rose.” What is your response to those who have trouble justifying artistic pursuits in a world with so much inequality and injustice?

Fujimura: Art does not necessarily provide answers to inequality and injustice, but provides a vision of the world beyond them. Giving a rose in rebellion against de-humanization is a simple act, but repeated by the thousands, like in the case of Princess Diana’s death, it can be a powerful demonstration of humanity. I do not believe there is a strict dichotomy between artistic pursuits, or of beauty, with justice issues. Both beauty and justice require a foundation of the ethics of love, and are the twin pillars of the City of God. When Mary anointed Jesus with the expensive jar of nard, she was intuitively recognizing, with her act of beauty, the injustice Jesus is about to suffer. The extravagant gesture, and the disciples’ response “what a waste,” was met with Jesus’ commendation that “wherever the gospel is told, what she has done will be told.” Both beauty and justice must be practiced together to truthfully engage in human conflicts, because it is not just about the “rights” of a person only, but about the possibility of human flourishing in general.

I blogged about another interview with Fujimura at Image Journal last year, here. Visit the artist’s own blog here.

An Affirming 4th of July Message from State Sen. Stan Rosenberg


Massachusetts State Sen. Stan Rosenberg (D) represents Hampshire and Franklin counties, including our hometown of Northampton. He sent this July 4th message yesterday to the members of his email list. It also ran as a column in today’s local newspaper, the Daily Hampshire Gazette.

At the State House, in the House of Representatives chamber, hangs a mural entitled “Milestones on the Road to Freedom in Massachusetts.”

This painting, by Albert Herter, depicts five scenes from our state’s history. For me, the most poignant of these is the image of Judge Samuel Sewall, his head bowed in shame as he seeks forgiveness for his role in the Salem Witch Trials and the execution of 19 innocent people in 1692.

The caption beneath this panel of Herter’s mural reads: “Dawn of Tolerance in Massachusetts.”

We have indeed come a long way since those days, when fear and superstition held sway over our system of justice. But over the centuries many people, far too many, have suffered as our society struggled to fulfill its noblest, yet apparently most vexing, promise – the promise of equality. Our history is replete with examples of how certain groups of people have been defined by the majority and then vilified and subjugated because of their differences. From the execution of “witches” in Salem, to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, from the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of Native Americans, to the stinging discrimination felt at one time or another by all minorities – blacks, Jews, women, gay men and lesbians, Hispanics, the poor, the list goes on – our efforts to achieve equality have all too often collapsed before the notion that it is somehow permissible to deny justice and equality to those perceived as “the other.”

The good news is that America is, and will continue to be, a work in progress, much like the individuals we encounter everyday. The best news is that the forces for equality eventually, eventually, prevail.

Five years ago, Massachusetts stood alone as the birthplace of marriage equality in America. Today, five states have joined us in providing full marriage equality, while nine others allow some form of legally recognized same-sex union. Such victories have not come easily, or swiftly, or without sacrifice. But they have come, and more will follow if people of fair and open minds persevere. The forces for equality eventually prevail.

I am proud to have been a member of the Legislature that helped start this national movement, not just because it marks the beginning of the eventual end to another form of injustice, but because it marks what I consider to be another milestone on our road to freedom – the eventual end to identity politics. As a foster child who grew up as a ward of the state, as a gay man, as a Jew, I understand what it’s like to be cast as “the other.” I rarely discuss these facets of my character because I don’t practice identity politics. I practice policy politics. And I firmly believe that we will never fulfill our potential as a just society until we embrace the principle of equality for all and adhere to it as fundamental, immutable policy.

Eventually we will. Our past, I believe, is prologue.

When the debate over marriage equality began on Beacon Hill, only about a quarter of the state’s 200 legislators favored extending marriage rights to all adults. Given such a daunting task, the forces for equality might have been forgiven had they chosen to stay silent, to continue to live in the shadows. Instead, scores of non-traditional families, the courageous “others,” shared their lives and their stories and reminded us that any law that violated a person’s civil rights, that crushed a person’s dignity, that tarnished a person’s self respect, would be unworthy of the world’s oldest democratic institution. They reminded us, quite simply, that we’re not so different after all.

In the end, marriage equality won the support of 75 percent of lawmakers, a stunning and remarkable turnaround. The forces for equality eventually prevail.

As we celebrate this Fourth of July and all the freedoms we enjoy, we should pay special tribute to the people whose names are lost to history who helped make our Commonwealth a community, a work in progress, a welcoming place for all good people of good will. We once hanged “witches” in this state. From that injustice, at least according to Mr. Herter, we learned tolerance. Because of what began here five years ago, eventually, eventually, the time will come to add a new panel to his mural, maybe one entitled “Dawn of Equality in America.”

Postmodernism, Judicial Empathy, and the Bible


Law professor and Milton expert Stanley Fish changed my life one semester in 1995, when he co-taught my First Amendment class at Columbia Law School. By demolishing the liberal-modernist ideal of perspective-free knowledge, Fish showed me that I could commit my life to my nascent Christian beliefs in the absence of airtight intellectual proof. At the same time, his writings on legal interpretation convinced me that I didn’t need to seek another form of false certainty by ignoring the role of personal experience in how the Bible is read.

In a recent New York Times column on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court nomination, Fish makes some important points about judicial “empathy” and multiculturalism that are, as usual, relevant to Biblical hermeneutics as well:

…[I]f a judge’s understanding of the nuts and bolts of the legal machinery is itself interpretive, the sympathies and allegiances she has will be in play from the very beginning of her consideration.

That is what Sotomayor’s critics are worried about. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Alabama) complains, “She seems willing to accept that a judge’s rulings may be influenced by the judge’s personal backgrounds or feelings.” But whether this is a matter of concern depends on just what Sotomayor is imagined to be accepting. Is she accepting an account of the way human beings invariably perform? Is she endorsing a psychology? Or is she accepting a view of how judging should be done? Is she endorsing a method? Is she being descriptive or prescriptive?

If Sotomayor is being prescriptive, if she is saying, “I will actively (as opposed to involuntarily) consult the influences that have shaped me at every point of decision,” she is announcing a method of judging that invites Sessions’s criticism.

But if she is being descriptive, if she is saying only that no one can completely divest herself of the experiences life has delivered or function as an actor without a history, she is announcing no method at all. She is merely acknowledging a truth (as she sees it) about the human condition: the influences Sessions laments are unavoidable, which means that no one can be faulted for viewing things from one or another of the limited perspectives to which we are all (differently) confined.

In fact – and this is what Sotomayor means when she talks about reaching a better conclusion than a white man who hasn’t lived her life – rather than distorting reality, perspectives illuminate it or at least that part of it they make manifest. It follows that no one perspective suffices to capture all aspects of reality and that, therefore, the presence in the interpretive arena of multiple perspectives is a good thing. In a given instance, the “Latina Judge” might reach a better decision not because she was better in some absolute, racial sense, but because she was better acquainted than her brethren with some aspects of the situation they were considering. (As many have observed in the context of the issue of gender differences, among the current justices, only Ruth Bader Ginsburg knows what it’s like to be a 13-year-old girl and might, by virtue of that knowledge, be better able to assess the impact on such a girl of a strip-search.)

Stonewall Anniversary Thoughts: Everyone’s Marriage is Queer


Today is the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in Greenwich Village, typically cited as the first uprising of the gay rights movement. I wasn’t born yet, and I didn’t get a clue for another 30 years, so I had to learn everything I know about it online. (It pisses me off that the third Google result for “Stonewall” is a website called “Stonewall Revisited” which offers “Help for gays and lesbians to leave a homosexual lifestyle for Christianity”. Trademark tarnishment lawsuit, anyone?)

The progressive Christian website Religion Dispatches put out a special “Stonewall” issue of their e-newsletter this weekend. Two articles there reflect the tension between mainstream acceptance and preserving a minority group’s unique culture.

Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., a religion professor at Georgia State University, laments that although our popular culture tolerates and sometimes even celebrates the existence of same-sex couples, two fundamental institutions–marriage and faith communities–largely remain closed to them:

Greenwich Village has a rare beauty in the early summer, when the days tend to be breezy and nights are still cool. I have never seen the place better kept, each and every park and thoroughfare brilliantly manicured with flowers and spices positively exploding into an orgiastic display of midsummer colors. Most all of the storefronts were painted in rainbow patterns that beautifully set off the gardens. It was the summer solstice. And it is the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall riots that symbolically announced the birth of a gay rights movement in the United States, rights for a community that would no longer be ignored. Quite suddenly, coming out of the closet meant hitting the streets….

…The lifestyle, the identity, is generally accepted now, especially in the generation that has come of age since Stonewall. The whole thing is generational, and that generational kind of tolerance has been achieved after a fashion.

But what does it mean? What does the alchemical magic that turns private sexual activity into a public lifestyle, and then into a social identity, do to the politics of sexuality? Ironically, it turns thoughts to marriage, and not only because it is summertime in New York, and the solstice is upon us.

“Gay marriage,” for a variety of complex reasons, is still the sticking point. Many people—and I overheard this several times in the snippets of conversation inspired by the anniversary on the quiet streets with storied names, like Bleeker, Houston, and Gay—many people happily grant an individual’s freedom to do what he or she wants behind closed doors.

But churches, mosques and synagogues have open doors, at least in theory.

Marriage is a public statement, and it requires a kind of recognition that goes far beyond tolerance. That is harder to grant, harder for gays and lesbians and others to win….

Meanwhile, in the same issue, Nick Street, a journalist who is the LGBT Contributing Editor for Religion Dispatches, suggests that gays and lesbians have become homogenized in the quest for social acceptance, not measuring up well to the bohemian cross-dressing outcasts who started it all:

…The Stonewall riots of late June 1969—as well as the Summer of Love two years earlier, the Woodstock music festival two months later and the debut of the Cockettes at the Palace Theater in San Francisco the following New Year’s Eve—are examples of what Hakim Bey, a queer anarchist social critic, calls the Temporary Autonomous Zone.

“The TAZ is like an uprising which does not engage directly with the State,” Bey writes, “a guerilla operation which liberates an area (of land, of time, of imagination) and then dissolves itself to re-form elsewhere/elsewhen, before the State can crush it.”

Bey’s idea trades on the observation that orthodoxy of any kind—legal, social or religious—is essentially a living fiction, a collective hallucination. Groups that participate in this illusion take its abstractions for reality, and within that margin of error the TAZ springs into being.

And before it can be captured or commodified, the TAZ vanishes, leaving behind an empty husk. Think of Burning Man (or perhaps the Jesus Movement).

The anarchic spirit of the TAZ inevitably calls forth a violent response from those who tend the shadow-fires of orthodoxy. Crucifixions, witch-hunts, and inquisitions embodied this impulse in our historical past, and the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy during the Consciousness Revolution of the late 1960s also bore its mark.

As did the 50,000 deaths that Ronald Reagan abided before he uttered the word “AIDS” in public.

Today, queer culture is not so much a vector of this spiritual enlivenment as it is a passive beneficiary of it. Rather than dismantling the master’s house, many of us prefer to beseech the master to loan us his tools so that we can construct a tasteful adjoining cottage and two-car garage.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I should hasten to add. Stability has its virtues.

But we have lost sight of something that the most keen-eyed queerfolk of the Stonewall era clearly had in view: the circumstances under which human beings can flourish are innumerable, and cultivating an orthodox view of human flourishing inevitably leads to the oppression of nonconformists and the spiritual degeneration of the culture that oppresses them….

Street has a point, but in making it, he perpetuates some harmful stereotypes of his own. As my feminist consciousness grows, so does my appreciation for GLBT subcultures and queer theory, as well as the carnival of misfits that is Pride. Five minutes of shopping for baby clothes reveals how thoroughly we’re indoctrinated in gender stereotypes from birth. The gay community’s visible diversity of sexual personae shocks us into questioning the naturalness of these sex-role straitjackets which shame both boys and girls into suppressing one side of their personality.

So I’m all for resisting conformity. I just get so very sick of seeing the equation of marriage with conformity.

Do you actually think the dominant culture values marriage? It values heterosexual couplings, and maybe weddings, to the extent that they’re an excuse to buy stuff. But the actual work of growing in harmony with another person, of shaping your lives to be a joint project of service to one another and the community, is vastly undersold. The joy of an ever-deepening connection that involves two people’s bodies as much as their souls is nearly invisible in the mainstream media.

Instead, we’re largely served a glamorized picture of singleness as perpetual youth, and promiscuity as self-empowerment. We see this in the adult entertainment that most men consume, and in TV series that continually break up their characters’ romances in order to keep the storyline moving forward without pushing the characters to evolve beyond our initial impression of them.

As Garth says, “We fear change.” Marriage is change. It means you’ve moved on to another stage of life, and unless you believe in heaven (and to be fair, a lot of gay people have been told they wouldn’t be going there), you might be afraid it’s all downhill after thirty.

My husband and I aren’t trying to be countercultural or conformist. Butting heads with the dominant culture is just something that happens when we support one another’s attempts to develop our unique gifts, regardless of how society gender-codes those traits. Okay, so I do the laundry and cook dinner while he fixes the computer and removes large bugs from the bathtub (he doesn’t kill them because he’s a Buddhist). But he also gets up early to shop for bottle sterilizers on the Internet while I’m writing my novel about gay men in love. I pick out the onesie with sequins because I want a fabulous son, and Adam puts it back because he read a baby-care book that says they’re unsafe. But we both agree that Disney is Satan and electronic toys are his tools of destruction.

Living mindfully within the institutions of a patriarchal society is hard work. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Instead of this dead-end debate over whether gay marriage is assimilationist, let’s work to make everyone’s marriage a little more queer. There’s no necessary association between a lifetime commitment to your true love and a retreat into apolitical consumer contentment. Think about gender: which traditional roles suit you, and which feel confining? Can your partner help you appreciate all the roles you play?

I worry that the theme of “marriage makes people lose their edge” indoctrinates us into choosing an abstraction over a connection to a real person. This is fundamentally the same bait-and-switch perpetrated by religious conservatives who tell gays and lesbians to sacrifice their lovers in favor of the abstraction of personal righteousness, or obedience to (one interpretation of) Scripture. So…

Just do your thang, honey!

    

Poetry by Conway: “Flicker Out”


Correspondence with my prison pen pal “Conway” has been irregular this spring because of the ever-shifting regulations that can cause mail to be blocked without warning. His latest letter shows that he continues to take refuge in his art and to help others do the same.

Several of his poems have just been published in “Paper Thin Walls”, a magazine produced by the Artist Pen-Pal Mutual Aid Project. This project is one of the social justice initiatives from the BuildingBloc Arts Collective, which is also sponsoring a touring exhibit of prisoners’ art, titled “Our Dreams Don’t Fit in Your Cages”. From their website:

BuildingBloc is a collective of artists dedicated to using art to explore
the social inequalities in our society. Through experimentation,
collaboration, and performance, we inform, provoke, and inspire ourselves
and our audiences. We aim to spark dialogue, to create and sustain
relationships between artists and community organizations, to support
existing struggles for social justice, and to erase the boundaries between
art and activism.

In a letter I sent Conway in March, I confided my concerns about a friend in trouble, and my frustration that I couldn’t do more to help her: “I wrote a poem about it this morning but poetry is empty compared to taking action in the world. Or is it? Is poetry second-rate action, the last resort of the powerless, or does it create change?”

His response, in this month’s letter:

I believe that as a blossoming poet myself, I can faithfully say that (for sure) each poem that I write. Creates a change in my growth & understanding of this world and even if Nobody ever reads these scratchings that I’ve tried to conceive; painting pictures with words. That at least I have taught myself to define this world in this moment, and basically that is my first duty. To understand my place and to act accordingly with my fellow travelers.

Once more, my long-distance friendship with Conway has brought me back to my core mission. Options are distracting. When there’s no motive for writing except soul-survival, one sees that this is the motive that breathes life into poetry, the one truly essential objective.

Flicker Out
by Conway

When, one jealous Moon
gathered its courage (prepared to die)
refused to share anymore, twilight Sky.

It was a last ditch-
gilded dream
another early, end of things.

Feeling betrayed
by a star’s bright glow
another globe was caught up
before it really could know.

Like a thief contesting desire
lurking through church
to own everlasting fire.

While another Heart, fell from its perch
unclad night slept fulfilled–
nuzzling against the hurdles
of squandered adolescence.

Despite this Roaring avalanche
there was not a sound
or whimpering illusion
to be swept along.

No one to miss
or hear the splendor,
the desperate kiss of dawn.

So; In the mornings mist
among abundant bird’song,
this sacrifice too, was forgotten.

The face of a Soul disgraced
sufferingly stares, beyond vanishing sight
trembling through tonight.

As that once flawless jewel
now shares–
nothing; Nothing at all…

Healing for the Holidays


Our culture’s secular holidays (and rapidly secularizing religious ones) can bring up complicated emotions when your family doesn’t look like the ones in the magazine ads, or when your feelings about them can’t be summed up by a Hallmark card. Jim Palmer’s new article for RELEVANT Magazine, “Fatherless Day”, offers wisdom for healing from a troubled relationship with a parent. An excerpt:

Separating pain and suffering

If you experienced abuse, rejection or abandonment from your father, the normal human response is to feel deep hurt and pain. But how you interpreted that abuse, rejection or abandonment can lead to unnecessary suffering. For example, I interpreted my father’s lack of involvement and interest in my life as evidence that I was worthless. I concluded that his rejection was all about me. The truth is, it had very little to do with me—it was all about him.

As a child or young person, when we first experience hurt with our father, we don’t have the capacity to reason through it accurately. For all practical purposes, when a father doesn’t express love and affirmation to his son or daughter, they conclude they are therefore not worthy of love and affirmation. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. in Psychology to see that a person who views themselves this way will suffer deep emotional anguish, which is likely to sabotage their life and relationships.

“Healing” means identifying the false messages you took on board as a result of the hurt experienced from your father. These could include feelings of self-hatred, irrational or unfounded fears, and all kinds of self-defeating and destructive patterns of thinking about yourself, life, God and others.

The truth is sometimes hidden within a web of lies. The reality of your value, worth and identity may be buried deep within a maze of falsehoods you adopted about yourself in hurtful experiences with your father.

Depersonalizing the hurt

I’m not talking about denying the hurt you feel with respect to your father. What I am saying is that you may only be operating with half the picture. Here’s what I mean. No little boy says: “When I grow up, I want to be a dad who hurts and wounds my children. I want to reject them, abuse them, abandon them and damage them for life.” Damaged, wounded and hurt people damage, wound and hurt others. That’s not an excuse, but it means that any child could have been inserted into your place, and the damage, wounds and hurts would have still been afflicted upon them by your father.

My father had a troubled relationship with his father. My father experienced the horrors of war. My father worked two jobs, barely keeping his head above water. Who knows all the dreams he gave up along the way. My father carried all kinds of hurts and wounds I know nothing about. My understanding of my father is woefully incomplete. There is some healing that comes when this truly sinks in. It doesn’t eliminate the pain, but it helps you to absorb it.

One of the most common miracles Jesus performed was healing the blind, which I believe was partly Jesus’ way of emphasizing the significance of seeing things clearly. In Matthew 6:22 Jesus said: “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light ”(TNIV). In other words, seeing things as they truly are is the bedrock of freedom.

…

My mother recently gave me a stack of old black-and-white photos of my maternal grandmother’s family, taken in the 1940s and 1950s. I knew some of them as distant middle-aged and elderly relatives, others mainly as characters in my mother’s stories. They were a large family of Polish immigrant Jews on New York’s Lower East Side, with all the dreams, struggles, loyalties and emotional wounds that one would expect in such a group. But it wasn’t until I arranged the pictures into a chronological narrative that I really began to see these people, not as good or bad minor characters in my own story, but as individuals with inner lives of their own–inner lives that, sadly, I’ll never know.

Like a family album on a much larger scale, the Bible can help us depersonalize our immediate conflicts. Its stories move back and forth between domestic dramas and historical patterns, all the way up to the clash of Good and Evil at the cosmic level. We learn that our personal story has resonance as part of a greater one, and this can give us more compassion for the other characters and patience to see how it all works out.
 

Queer Families Speak Out in “13 Love Stories” Video Project


13 Love Stories is a multimedia advocacy project that tells the stories of families adversely affected by Prop 8, the California ballot measure that took away same-sex marriage rights. The project was organized by the UCLA Art/Global Health Center. It includes videos narrated by 13 GLBT couples, who talk about their commitment to one another and their children, and how the lack of marriage equality puts their families in financial and legal jeopardy. This video montage, with a soundtrack from Jason Mraz, is a good introduction to their inspiring narratives.