Queer is too Complicated

I don't see why it all has to be so frigging complicated, this whole queer thing. I mean I just wanna live my life, with a fine woman to share it, and then go about our business. What's the problem? I don't ask other people about how they like to have sex, and for many of them I don't even want to imagine it. I'm a good mother, I pay my taxes, manage my own little business, go to church, hell, I even drive the speed limit and read the bible (though not at the same time). So what's the problem?

Why is being queer even an issue? Well, of course there is dreaded biblical issue of sodomy. Excuse me, I lived as a straight woman for many, many years and, let me tell you, straight men love sodomy (even if women do not). So if straight men love it so much, why do they get their nickers in twist about men doing it? Why do they even care? If they don't want to do it with a man, fine, why worry about the ones who do? And what does this have to do with lesbians at all?

I remember one of the many occasions my mother was coming down on me about the "homosexual lifestyle"...oh let me take a moment for that little jewel "The Homosexual Lifestyle." Being a homosexual is not a lifestyle. My lifestyle is being a single suburban mom and small business owner in a midsized southern city. A life style is something like... oh, how about retired couples that live in an RV and drive around to campgrounds where they set up little strings of lights around their 8'x10' patio and wear fishing hats with hooks in them, sweatshirts with animals on them, and watch TV outside. Now that's a lifestyle. Or say how about those guys (and gals) that work all week in some boring job and on Saturdays or Sundays when the weather not too wet they squeeze into black leather chaps and vests with little chains between the buttons to cross over their beer gut, clamber up onto their precious Harley to ride around the country roads, gathering in a neighborhood pub to drink beer and look at each others women. Now that's a lifestyle (and not bad one, I've tried it). But being a homosexual is not a lifestyle. Homosexuals are people with whatever lifestyle they make for themselves, many of which I totally don't get. Like the women who live with three gigantic smelly dogs and five cats, most of whom sleep in their bed, what is it about the pet thing? Or women who get together at each others houses to watch sports on TV every weekend, drink large quantities of beer, gossip and smoke in car port, and play softball on Tuesday nights. And please, don't get me wrong, all that is fine, I've lived that lifestyle too. It's just not my "homosexual lifestyle." I'm a book reading poetry writing church going nerd mom, and I like it!

But back to my homophobic mom story. So I explain, with my heart racing, that "if you feel that way mom then You shouldn't be a homosexual." Seems pretty straight forward (pun intended) to me. So, she replies, "well that's like saying if I'm a murderer it's okay as long as I'm not murdering you." Reality Shift! Does that make any sense to you? Well bottom line, what I heard was that my loving was being equated with murder. Why does this have to be so complicated?

So this week I heard about the (formerly) right Rev. Ted Haggard (such an unfortunate name, one cannot over estimate the power of a bad name). He still thinks about sex with men but he's still not gay. Then I read a blog about a Christians who seek out help among other Christians who are struggling with "SSA" (same sex attractions). What a great way to meet queer chicks- huh? Forgive me, that may have been mean spirited. Speaking of mean spirited, I laid awake the other night composing a reply to a shockingly crude misogynist comment posted under an article about the Icelandic Prime Minister who is a lesbian. Why do people need to go there? I finally decided it was beneath me to go there but it would have made a clever little joke on my part, I must say.

So well, now that I have that little rant out of my system, at least for the moment, the point is about tolerance. I would like to see acceptance, which goes beyond tolerance, but I would be okay with tolerance. And for all my fussing I am actually very blessed by the level of tolerance I actually do experience in my life. Perhaps because my "lifestyle" is so ordinary, I have had very very few situations in which I personally suffered harassment due to being a homosexual. One time I recall laughing with my daughter (she wasn't laughing by the way, just me) and telling her "Sometimes I forget I'm a lesbian." She dryly replied "No, mom, you never forget you're a lesbian. You just forget the rest of the world isn't." Hahaha, I still love that! And I guess it's true. I just trundle along, and turn a deaf ear to most of it. (Actually, one of my ears is going deaf. I wonder if that is why?).

But I think I had too. I came out in a such a shocking way. I was married for 16 years, had the nice home, the two children in private school, the professional jobs, the Mercedes (I do miss that car), the whole blahblahblah. Then I got involved with, of all people, one of my cousins, we met at family reunion! (You might be a redneck if...) So I was suddenly the adulterous lesbian and the horrible mom in front of my entire evangelical family, four generations, on two continents! Then I went on to live in with my very butch partner the same neighborhood as my former husband, go to the same soccer games, and the same professional associations, in the same small town suburbia-ville. I had to just hold up my head, zip up my black leather jacket, and march on. So that is all I can offer. I'm just living my own homosexual lifestyle as best I can. The church of god neighbors eventually got used to it, and I'm working on my tolerance of denim skirts with sneakers and long hair that needs a trim real bad.

Anniversary of July 27

Mysteries, they're everywhere, everyday. So many unexplained interconnections. A few minutes ago I read a message written yesterday, reminding us that it was the anniversary of the murderous shooting at TVUUC six months ago. I had forgotten that anniversary, yesterday at that time I did not think of it at all. Instead at that time I lay in bed, in pain and weeping bitterly, in a deep horrible darkness that had come on so quickly. I did not understand where all the pain had come from, out of nowhere, the hide under the covers headache, the eighty year old aching joints, and cramping, but none of that matched the desolation, hopelessness, and even the old demons of suicidal thinking that I had hoped were banished for good. I know these things happen to me sometimes, and I knew it would pass, which it did. I came here to write about how I got through that, how I prayed my way out of that dark place again. But before I came here to write I found that reminder of our tragic anniversary. I believe my body and my soul remembered, and heard the remembrance of our community. We are so much more interconnected than we realize.

I remember learning about trees in a forest that produce pheromone type chemicals and use them to communicate with each other in some mysterious way (what do tress gossip about?). But whether through detectable chemicals or through as yet undetectable flows of energy we are all communicating all the time. Our being is radiating out of us and our neighbors are flowing through us, even the dead with whom we hold connections continue to communicate with us, I believe. We can be swept away in the storms of our communities, even of our histories. We stand in the current of all that energy, flowing like a great river, and if we are trying to flow in a new direction, sometimes it is hard.

Yesterday when that darkness was coming on I did decide to go and pray. I am blessed to work at home and take time for myself when I need to eat or sleep or pray. Before I could even begin though it became much, much worse. I don't fight the weeping and pain, I only fight the siren call of death himself. I remembered my several cousins who committed suicide and attempted it. They did not have children waiting to be picked up from school, such mundane salvation. Finally I called out to my Goddess for help. And I found myself thinking thank you, that one silent prayer. But what was it I was thanking for? Oh yes, I remember now, it was little things, the heating blanket on my shivering body, the shelter of house, the few small contracts I have left now, on and on I could only pray thank you, thank you, thank you. And so, as mysteriously as that darkness fell, it passed. I took a hot salt bath and moved along, hunger and thirst keep coming even in the dark, and so we press on.

When I felt better I prayed again asking what is wrong, what do I need to change? And she answered, just wait, continue on, and wait. So I shall, press on with the business at hand and wait on her grace. At least I have learned that these dark spells, and I think spell is the right word, are not representative of who I am and what my capabilities are. If I were to believe in that self, I would see me as crippled by arthritis, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, and deadly mental illness. But I know that is not who and what I am. That is the effect of a shadow that fell over me. And today I see that it was the shadow of a murderous anniversary that defiled my sanctuary. Instead I remember that I am safe and I am able, I am joy and I am able. It is a mantra, a sanctuary of prayer unceasing. When the darkness falls indeed it seems hopeless to find a way, stumbling and cold. But that is only the night, it is not me. I am the light and the light casts out darkness. So I am able again today.

The Glow Melts Fast

It seems like the basics, struggling over the basics, never goes away. After one of those blessed but brief periods of light in my mind, in my soul, I am contemplating the basics, love, humility. Over the weekend I had some joy, some peace, some faith, and some love, like a feast, like manna falling from heaven, like bright beautiful snow, clean and breathtaking. And all these words are trite, so inadequate, so over used, so over burdened with other meaning. But nonetheless the moment of light has past, twilight and shadow return. It always does. But I can look back at that short glow, pick up the memory of it, rub it with my fingers, and look for cleavage lines where it breaks apart.

Yesterday I was sitting in church in the midst of the glow that had been rising for a day and night. I could feel the pillar of light on my head and my hands were hot and tingling with the power of the spirit moving. I looked over at the "friend" who sat down next to me. He is really an acquaintance, and I have struggled a bit with him, with the creepy factor. Some people just have that creepy factor. And I actually think he is a fine peaceful fellow, but for me, he's seemed a bit creepy. He did ask out my girlfriend a couple of times, that didn't help, and he didn't mesh with her either. But yesterday, he looked different. Yesterday he sat close enough to be within the glow I had. I took a shine to him. And since I usually get the creepy thing, I noticed how odd it was that he seemed just fine to me in that moment, so fine that I loved him. Not the "move into my house and make babies on me" kind of love, but I loved him. It was a quiet "you are just fine, and I am just fine beside you" kind of love that doesn't need to go anywhere, or do anything, or get anything, or make anyone feel any response at all. It was so powerful that the spirit rose up my hands, my cadaverously cold hands, the spirit made them hot and flowing with energy. The energy was so much I had to pour it out into someone, right there in church with the preacher preaching stories about Icelandic hildefolk and Georgia teenagers. I leaned over to my momentarily beloved friend and asked, "May I put my hand on you here," on his shoulder. He nodded and I did. The heat and energy flowed into him. I imagined he could feel the healing power. Later he said he appreciated how warm it felt, and I guess that is all, maybe he even thought I was a bit creepy. But for that moment it was a fine thing for me to love this acquaintance as I had not before and it was enough for me.

So I think about how little I have loved in this lifetime of seeking love. Even my blessed babies came to me cloud of postpartum depression so intense I had to seek help for fear of hurting them, how they howled and never would go away. But in time it passed and for twenty years I have loved them more than anything, anyone else in the world. But still even with them, there are so few of those moments of loving with complete peace, with a total willingness to be, to just abide with the beloved. I am rent apart by passion and requirement, by reciprocity and planning. There is no peace in that busy noising feign at loving. So how did I get to be this age, with this history of "lovers" and find that when love visits she is a beautiful stranger, I do not know her name and I have no wine suitable for her lips? I recall my mother and her mother and her mother, whom I knew even into adulthood. They weren't very good at it either I think, at least not so it showed anyway (forgive me). One grandmother in particular I think really struggled for love, especially to get it, but even to see it, to do it, to give it, to be it, practicing hard, a pharisee of loving. And I know Jesus gives big credit for trying. But I'd like to get it, I mean really "get it."

I think it is the craving, that damned craving, that is cleavage line where it breaks apart in my hands. When I carry around some long list of what I want and think I need, when I hold up the cardboard image of expectation comparing it with every face, when I push forward my cardboard placard of the self I'd like for you see as me, well, then, the little baby loves are ground under foot. I bite my hands and pull my hair while they cry.

Craving, I want so much. I want....well my list probably looks something like yours, especially if you have breathtaking sex near the top. And even when I get that, it seems all the effort and drama is just to take me to those moments of afterglow. It's the glow, that is what I am really after. And I got Glow, all weekend, in moment after moment with strangers and friends and aquaintances. It came, like snow, bright and clean on everything, making it all so breathtakingly beautiful, a world shining, shining.

Though it melts fast I remember. I remember.

"I am home"

"Are we there yet?" is the quote I placed on my profile here. It makes me laugh. "Drive faster, drive faster."

This week I began something new, and so I return here to begin anew speaking in this public space of the net, where so many speak that I wonder who is heard. The new beginning that I have this week is to lead a regular church meeting, gathering with other lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LBT) women. Such an awkward phrase, and perhaps an awkward group. We laughed at ourselves, a church full of misfits at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church (TVUUC). It is good to laugh at ourselves; it is a make-yourself-at-home sort of feeling.

"Are we there yet?" Perhaps we are, at least for a moment now and then. When our women's group met we talked about a reading from Thich Nhat Hanh's book, "No Death, No Fear." Master Hanh is 83 years old this year, a star that will soon go out, from this realm anyway. In this book he says "I have arrived, I am home, in the here, in the now." He asks us to memorize this "little poem" and speak it to ourselves often. "I am home." I want to feel at home, in my skin, in my mind, in my family, my church, my community, in the world. Usually I don't. Many of us, especially us misfits in the eyes of the world, don't feel at home.

What does it mean to be at home? We say "Make your self at home" when we want to be hospitable. I think it means: you can take your shoes off, and rummage around my frig for a beer and a snack. Several years ago I hosted some of my (then) partner's family as house guests and I wanted them to make themselves at home. But they never did. If I didn't serve them food, they did not eat. They were nervous and so was I. It was a long hard visit, though we all meant well. I do not know why I couldn't make them feel at home. It is not as simple as it seems. For me, to be "at home" means I can be plain, say what I think, go braless, and take a nap if I am sleepy. Maybe I wasn't plain with them, maybe I wasn't okay with their plainess.

Often when I think of going home I think of heaven, or as Master Hanh would say, "The Pure Land." Do you know the old spiritual song, "This world is not my home, I'm just a-passing through"? That is how I feel, not belonging here, waiting to go home to the spirit realm. But it is not time, I am still here, alive in this lonesome world, spiritually a homeless person. Master Hanh goes on to say:

"The Pure Land is not somewhere else; it is right here, in the present. It is in every cell of our bodies.... What we carry with us determines in which dimension we dwell."

Are we there yet? "I have arrived, I am home, in here, in the now." So now I am building a little realm of home, of heaven, within this life of mine. It may be a trailer in tornado country, but it is a start.