breathing

In the cold light of morning, things often look differently than they did the night before.

After a night's sleep, some morning coffee, a gently prodding yet compassionate note from a friend, I was able to regain the focus that had been so skewed last night. On the ride to church, I was able to do some thinking, and I came to some pretty profound realizations.

First, what happened last night was I got triggered. My past stuff got brought right to the surface in a very uncomfortable way. Once again I was a scared kid in the schoolyard, pushed and shoved by kids who fit in and laughed at by everyone, with no one to step in and protect me. Once again I was being bullied at home, humiliated and shamed, screamed at and threatened, and nobody -- no other parent, no grandparent, no aunt, no cop, no neighbor -- came to my aid. I would go outside afterward, knowing that the neighborhood had heard me scream and cry and be ashamed that I was bad and had been punished and they all knew. If I could hear their dinner table conversations in a summer evening from my bedroom, I knew they could hear me screaming and begging from inside my house.

The time I speak of, I was 11. It sucked.

So I was triggered by the idea of an adult who, in my mind, could do something to stop a kid from being bullied, but who did not.

And then there is the other side of that coin.

I am not a huge fan of the concept of sin, but I will use it in this instance.

The sins that weigh heaviest on my soul are the instances in which I could have stepped in to stop a bully but I did not, for whatever reason. I think I have told the story here about a young kid who wanted to wear an outrageous t-shirt to a political march, and some adults took him aside and pressured him to change his shirt so as not to offend anyone. They used their positions of authority as adults to bully this kid into conforming to what they thought he should be. I didn't intercede on his behalf, and it has eaten at me ever since.

So what I've got is a basic case of Freudian reaction-formation: what I cannot abide in myself, I shall loathe in others. I will hold others to a standard that I fail to meet. Ouch.

Oh dear. So it seems that my rage and self-righteous indignation last night are really all about my own shit. Well, ain't that a grand Sunday morning kind of revelation? Hmph.

The question that faces me now, as I begin my path as a minister who must be concerned with people's hearts and not an activist concerned with the often heartless world of politics, has to do with compassion and not judgement. The former will be my job. The latter will not. Nor, for the record, is it now.

How, then, do I arrive at a place of compassion without first wanting to smack someone soundly in the chops? How do I get to a place where I can meet a person where they are and lead them gently to where they can be?

Yes, kids are dying. Yes, this is urgent. But urgency on my part is not necessarily enough to overcome a lifetime of shame and fear in someone else's present.

There is much for me to learn.

Blessed be.

trembling with rage

I am home early from an event. A political fundraiser. Cheap, over-cooked spaghetti dinner and silent auction of items I didn't want and didn't bid on. Seated with a group of people from my old church - the one I left last spring, we talked politics and disagreed immediately. Let's just say we have very different understandings of what "liberal" means. I mean "liberal." They mean "centrist."

Then Mr. Political Big Shot walks into the room.

Mr. REALLY BADLY CLOSETED Political Big Shot. The one who votes for glbt people all the time, but who never has come out himself. Only I remember his early days, back before he was as big of a big shot as he is now, when he was casual about his gayness, when it was nobody's BIG SHAMEFUL SECRET and when I kinda respected him.

But then he got to be a kind of big shot in local stuff, and he ducked into the closet a little. Then he ran for bigger offices, and kept going further and further back into the closet until now, when NOBODY will talk about the BIG SECRET.

He's gay.

And that's great. I am too. Whoopee.

I am glad when people are happy with their orientations and identities and all. I am happy when people adjust and change their expressions as they grow and evolve, and I do my best to be supportive of all types of those expressions. Even if I don't get it, so long as nobody's being hurt and everybody's consenting, I won't much squawk.

Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, and just plain different kids are being bullied to the point where they think the only way to get out of that kind of horrific pain and loneliness is to kill themselves.

Kids are dying. Children as young as 12 and 13. Young adults of 19 and 20.

They are dying of SHAME.

That shame is something they are taught by us adults. We, as society, tell them that sex -- particularly non-straight sex -- is shameful and should be hidden. We tell them that being gay is not OK when we lie about who we are and whom we love.

To remain closeted in this time, when kids are dying, is to put one's own comfort, one's own personal motives -- whatever they may be -- over the lives of our kids. KIDS. CHILDREN.

We are grown-ups. IT IS OUR JOB TO LEAD. It is our job to SET A GOOD EXAMPLE. Not to reinforce all those shameful messages the kids are getting from too many other sources.

Dante said that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, stand idly by and DO NOTHING.

This is about protecting our children. I remember what it was like to be bullied and have nobody step up to protect me. At school it happened, and at home it happened.

And nobody spoke for me. It is a wonder I lived. It is a wonder I am as high-functioning as I am. I am lucky.

I won't out him. But I'll be damned if I'll shake his hand, either, or stay in a room where he is.

And you know what? I won't vote for his opponent, but I sure as hell won't vote for him, either.

Kids are dying. It's time to get over yourself. Come out! Kids are dying.

The next dead kid is on your hands, Mister Big Shot.

St. Patrick's Day

Today is the day that is marked worldwide with green beer and unnaturally-colored other things in celebration of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland. It was not until I was in high school that I realized that Ireland does, indeed, have snakes. That the "snakes" St. Pat drove out of Ireland were the pagans. Oh. And in the times of the middle ages, "drove out" means evicted from traditional homelands or killed. Suddenly this is not such a happy holiday. But there's green beer, right?

St. Patrick taught the pagans about the holy trinity of father, son and holy spirit by using the shamrock's three leaves. I guess it was just dumb luck that the Celts already had the Celtic Cross as part of their symbolism. The Catholic Church simply adapted what was already there and used it to represent their god instead of the four directions of the earth and sky as the pagans had. Talk about appropriation of cultural stuff. You'll hear my lecture on druids and yule trees and the appropriation of those traditions in December.

So this is also the day that I was brought home to live with my family from my birth family. I was 8 months old. It was 1966. My birth mother was living with her six children (two other fathers) and she left to go find a better opportunity and then planned to come back and move the whole crew. I think it was Rhode Island where she went. Anyway, she did not leave us in adequate care, and the child welfare people came in and made ready to scoop the kids all off to foster care. Somebody knew somebody who knew my father's family, a call was made and he came and snatched me away home before the others were seized and split up.

I arrived wearing nothing but the diaper on my bottom and whatever clothes I had on me. My father turned me over to his sister and his parents and went out. It was St. Patrick's Day, after all. There was serious drinking to be done.

So my aunt watched me while Nana and Grandpa went shopping. They got a crib and a high chair, a baby spoon and cup and some bottles and 10 dozen diapers and some clothes and some jars of baby food, and the new washer and dryer arrived from Sears in the morning.

My aunt was in her first year of teaching, maybe. That or her student teaching year. She called her friends to come over and see the surprise she had. "We get to keep her" she told them.

Um, babies don't usually work that way, they cautioned. Well, this one's going to.

And through some minor subterfuge, class warfare and bullying, they did get to keep me. My father's family knew lawyers and were better educated than my mother's family, and were better educated. She did not know what her rights were with regards to me, and when my grandmother stood blocking the entrance to the door and said she needed a court order to see her daughter, my mother believed her and went away. Whatever legal advice she was able to get encouraged her not to fight my (marginally) more affluent, better educated, better connected father's family. My mother did not see me again until I was 29 and I went looking for her.

So St. Pat's is a time of weird emotions for me. There is the long-seated, cultural history of oppression of my Irish forbears by just about everybody who ever marched across that patch of green earth, and there is the clusterfuck that is my own personal history. At 8 months old, I was a pawn, or maybe a treasure, but either way, I was a thing, a possession, a not entirely pleasant (although not entirely unpleasant) bundle of needs. I was the first grandchild, which helped enormously in my new home, but I was the bastard child of the no-good eldest son and a low-class woman of loose morals. She was married, you see, but her husband ran off. Then she had two other children with another man, then he went to jail. Then my father came along and she had me.

In a small town, everyone knew my story, and I am sure it was a source of enormous shame for my grandmother. But I was the first grandchild, so I think I got a pass. Dad, however, did not.

But that is another story.

So today I feel ghosts. Ghosts of Ireland, ghosts of shame, ghosts of families lost, connections severed in infancy that were never able to fully mend in adulthood. I suppose if I think about it enough, it explains a lot of my current mental and emotional stuff as well as the stuff I have worked through in the past couple of decades. I've done a bunch of work, but some hurts leave scars that will only fade, but never disappear. Today is one of those days when those scars ache and burn. I am reminded of what was, what happened, and what a long tough road it has been.

Do not get me wrong. I know others who had longer and tougher roads than mine. I am not interested in pity, from myself or from anyone else. It's sort of like Veteran's day. Every soldier is a veteran. None of their experiences was good, but nobody compares who had it worse. They all just acknowledge each other. This is what today feels like for me. It is the day when I am most aware of the battles I went through.

But. I have much to be grateful for this morning.

The sun is shining, I am awake and almost ready to go to work. I have a truck that will take me there, and a body that will do what needs doing today. There is a corned beef dinner at my church at noontime, and I will go there and be among people who are happy and who care about me, and that is a wonderful feeling. I have been in much worse situations over the years. Where I am here and now is really quite wonderful.

Monday, some steps, and money issues

Up early, swallowed some pride, got some help, did an estimate, offered some advice, did a favor for a friend, had a nice visit and yummy lunch, and headed home. Over all, not a bad day. Tomorrow will hold some similar kinds of plans. Probably some humility in the morning, followed by some work stuff, and then some recovery work. Not much glory on the agenda, but that's okay.

I find that I am still healing. I told some friends today about some of the support I got to my blog posts in the past week, about how Jen in Denver lit a candle at the same time we were having a candle-light church service here, and I started to cry. I didn't fight it, just told the story, let the tears flow, and mopped up when I was done. It seems to be going that way. I am not fighting the feelings. Which for me is a pretty big deal. I spent a lot of time and energy trying to avoid my feelings, so just letting them be is remarkable.

I have some work to do on myself these days. I need to address my relationship with money. It is a huge scary thing for me to undertake. I need to apply the same kind of effort to this endeavor as I do to my sobriety. I am tired of being broke. I am tired of owing people. I am tired of the anxiety associated with this stuff. I dearly hope I have had enough. I need to apply the tools I learned in my recovery program to the problem at hand. I need to come to grips with what I am powerless over and what I am not, I need to know where and how to ask for help, and then I need to do that. And then I need to take areal and meaningful inventory of my behavior and feelings around money. It's going to be a big job, but it needs doing and each day that passes is more time I spend on the unhealthy side of this equation. And I would like to think I have had enough of that.

I also need to deal with this stuff if I am going to have any credibility when it comes to being a financial fund raiser. How can I tell members of a church or a non-profit how to raise money, how to be transparent, how to get over their shame and secrecy issues when it comes to money if I am unable or unwilling to discuss my own affairs frankly? If I am going to seriously think about creating a business where I help groups and organizations raise money, I need to be able to speak honestly and with integrity and authority.

So, tomorrow I start anew on this journey. That's the plan. I shall report as I am able. It may or may not prove to be compelling reading, we'll have to see what I discover.

Shame

Shame is one of those things that I love to talk about but that makes other people squeamish. Shame is to blame for so much of the deceit that exists in today's world.

I have been having an interesting conversation of late with people about coming out - meaning telling people in your life that you're queer. So many people fret so much about it, and fight so long to avoid that moment of truth when you say "Mom, Dad, I'm gay." And the reason they anguish and moan is because of shame.

We are taught early on to be ashamed of our bodies and their functions. Toileting activities are not to be discussed, unless everyone involved has had too much to drink. Sex is another thing we are taught carefully to be ashamed of. Aside from being an occasionally undignified experience, there is really nothing shameful about sex, pretty much no matter how you do it.

But shame drives us to hide things that are natural. Things that are hidden are unfamiliar, and things that are unfamiliar are frightening. It is no wonder that the Christian Civic League folks get so worked up about gay stuff. To them, we are as foreign as though we were dropped here from outer space. They can't even talk about the sex that they're having, never mind what anybody else might be doing. Good grief.

I think we should create a program to get people comfortable with sex. The idea, the concept, the act, and all its variations and accessories. Betty Dodson did ground-breaking work in this area, but has largely lapsed into semi-retirement. Oh, she still does stuff, but does not have the workshop and lecture schedule she once did. Hell, one can hardly blame her - she's been at this stuff for something like 40 years. But nobody has really picked up where she left off. Susie Bright is good, but seems to focus more on politics and age of consent stuff that makes me uncomfortable than anything else.

Nobody seems to want to talk about shame.

We are ashamed of our bodies.

We make up names for our vaginas: "down there", "coochie", "hoo-hoo", "pussy", "twat", and all the rest. I'm not a cast member of the Vaginal Monologues. You want more euphemisms, talk to one of them. We make equally silly names for our breasts, which do double duty as post-partum nutrition source and pre-coitus recreational area. We call them "boobs", "titties" and a handful of other silly things. There seems to be some kind of fear (shame) around the word "breast" and the concept of a woman's breasts. Why the fear? Why the shame? What horrifies us so much about a piece of our anatomy?

Judgement and morality play a twisted role in this as well. Random assignations of nature play a part in how a woman is perceived by society. A woman with large breasts is widely viewed as more sexual than her lesser-endowed sister. Large-breasted women hold more appeal to men (broad brush here and I know it - work with me) and are seen as having a more vibrant and sensual sex life, while women with smaller breasts are steretypically portrayed as bookish, bitter and shrill.

Is it because breasts can be a source of pleasure that we get freaked out? OR, is it because that pleasure is generally sexual in nature that we go batshit?

If you think "vagina" gives people fits, try working "labia" or "clitoris" into a conversation sometime and see how quickly people start stammering and changing the subject. It's much the same with "penis", "scrotum", and "foreskin." Try it sometime. People go nuts. Even when you are talking, in an intellectual way, about what makes people uncomfortable. They can't even discuss their discomfort. That's sad.

There are a hundred different directions I could take this thread. There is so much more to be said and explored. I guess I will ask now for reader input. If all three of you would please offer some kind of comment or suggestion, I'd appreciate it. I'd like to write more, but need something on which to focus my thoughts. Please help me out.