inside a box truck.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Sunday, July 19, 2009
personal catapult: our homemade trebuchet
Catapult built with brothers and cousins at the family reunion.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Friday, July 10, 2009
Monday, June 29, 2009
it still matters...
I'd rather be writing about Michael Jackson at the moment. Instead, I'm greet by this first thing on this beautiful Monday morning. The day after the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, I've got to wake up to the news of police targeting a gay bar on this anniversary and assaulting patrons? WTF?
Really?!?!?
I've of two minds on this:
1) This isn't surprising or shocking. The idea that gay people matter less under the law is a message that is pushed aggressively from a thousand different directions in our culture. This is the specific point of all the defense of marriage act crap and every other stupid law about gay marriage. It has jack and shit to do with actual marriage. The point of the whole thing is to say, "Those people are... different." None of this protecting the children or sanctity of marriage or whatever other stupid idiotic crap people feed to themselves to feel a little less uncomfortable with their bigotry. Gay marriage shouldn't be the issue we all have to talk about. I couldn't care less about it in and of itself and would argue that we should be discouraging people from this institution rather than putting it on a pedestal and treating it all holy, but because it is used as a cudgel to beat us over the head and as an angle to codify our status as second class, less important citizens, I've got to fight for it. I at least have to fight against the anti gay marriage stuff, because it isn't anti gay marriage, it is (specifically and intentionally) anti gay people.
The reason police would expect that they can target this club and crack the skull of a patron is because they've gotten the message that gay people don't matter as much. That the law treats us differently, doesn't protect us the same as everyone else. And make no mistake, they aren't the only people getting the message. The economy is bad and people are unemployed and scared. Violence and crime will rise, and when a frustrated person is looking for an outlet for their anger, they often turn on the group they are told are worthless, are ruining this country, are threatening their marriage and their children. Gays aren't any of those things, but that is the message that has been pushed. That was a central message from republicans in at least the last three elections. bush won twice banking heavily on that crap.
A week ago, waiting on the dentist at Callen-Lorde, a community health center that focuses on the LGBT community but offers services to anyone, a lady stopped in the waiting room and began chastising us for being on our cellphones. I ignored her and kept reading my Lovecraft on my iphone, but one guy engaged her in conversation trying to be polite. She was rude and I was inclined to interject but know myself well enough to know that I couldn't enter this conversation without escalating things, and she seemed a little crazy and everybody knows you don't argue with crazy; you get away from them. After making a litany of disparaging remarks about gay people ("You all dress alike and look alike." -note, there were three of us in the waiting room, none of us looked remotely similar in dress or otherwise), she said her fake polite goodbyes and as she got in the elevator called us "faggots". This was in what is a safe space, a gay-oriented clinic. It kind of blew my mind and pissed me off, but she was just a crazy lady, happy to use our facility but just as happy to look down on those people helping her.
Later the same day, I went to midtown to meet my boyfriend for lunch. Walking back from eating, we had our arms around each other, sharing an umbrella in the rain. As we crossed the street in front of his building, someone stopped and rolled down their window to scream at us, "You should be shot!"
That evening as we got off the subway, we ran into a couple of our friends who live around the corner from us. They have a big back yard and I had some moonvine seedlings for them which had spent too long living in a cup on my kitchen table as our schedules had refused to coincide, so I invited them to come up and get the seedlings and check out my fire escape garden. As we crossed the street, from a passing car comes this greeting: "FAGGOT!" I live in New York City, don't look particularly outlandish and I've still got to put up with this shit, so no, it is not surprising that police in Texas are targeting gay people for violence during a raid.
2) On the other hand, I feel like we can fight back these days. Plenty of people comment that gay pride doesn't matter anymore, that the parades are silly or too commercial, that being gay is no big deal; but they are wrong. It might not be a big deal that Christopher Street fills up with gay people to the people who live in places where they can be out and open in their daily life without significant worry of harm, but it matters to people living out there in rural places or smaller cities or even here but in the outer boroughs. That people can walk down the street and say that they are gay is exactly why the people targeted in this raid can fight back. The police can't expect them to beg that their names not be mentioned or sign confessions and pay to get released as quietly as possible because we already march down the street and say that we are here and that they aren't alone and that being gay isn't a crime and isn't shameful. This shame was a powerful weapon once upon a time, and in truth, it still is in many places (it certainly was when I was growing up in Alabama), but its power becomes less and less each year.
The police in Fort Worth are about to find out how organized and not scared the gay community is. It isn't surprising that this crime happened, but thankfully today it is equally unsurprising that there has been a swift and aggressive push back. It wasn't drag queens with rocks and bottles this time, but public protest, elected officials calling for investigations, local news coverage, blog postings, and I'm sure the lawsuits will follow. People can still try to spread the message that we matter less under the law and they can try to codify it (e.g. DOMA) but when we don't believe it, we feel empowered to tell our family/friends we are gay or to march down the street shouting it and we feel like we can fight back. So we will.
Really?!?!?
I've of two minds on this:
1) This isn't surprising or shocking. The idea that gay people matter less under the law is a message that is pushed aggressively from a thousand different directions in our culture. This is the specific point of all the defense of marriage act crap and every other stupid law about gay marriage. It has jack and shit to do with actual marriage. The point of the whole thing is to say, "Those people are... different." None of this protecting the children or sanctity of marriage or whatever other stupid idiotic crap people feed to themselves to feel a little less uncomfortable with their bigotry. Gay marriage shouldn't be the issue we all have to talk about. I couldn't care less about it in and of itself and would argue that we should be discouraging people from this institution rather than putting it on a pedestal and treating it all holy, but because it is used as a cudgel to beat us over the head and as an angle to codify our status as second class, less important citizens, I've got to fight for it. I at least have to fight against the anti gay marriage stuff, because it isn't anti gay marriage, it is (specifically and intentionally) anti gay people.
The reason police would expect that they can target this club and crack the skull of a patron is because they've gotten the message that gay people don't matter as much. That the law treats us differently, doesn't protect us the same as everyone else. And make no mistake, they aren't the only people getting the message. The economy is bad and people are unemployed and scared. Violence and crime will rise, and when a frustrated person is looking for an outlet for their anger, they often turn on the group they are told are worthless, are ruining this country, are threatening their marriage and their children. Gays aren't any of those things, but that is the message that has been pushed. That was a central message from republicans in at least the last three elections. bush won twice banking heavily on that crap.
A week ago, waiting on the dentist at Callen-Lorde, a community health center that focuses on the LGBT community but offers services to anyone, a lady stopped in the waiting room and began chastising us for being on our cellphones. I ignored her and kept reading my Lovecraft on my iphone, but one guy engaged her in conversation trying to be polite. She was rude and I was inclined to interject but know myself well enough to know that I couldn't enter this conversation without escalating things, and she seemed a little crazy and everybody knows you don't argue with crazy; you get away from them. After making a litany of disparaging remarks about gay people ("You all dress alike and look alike." -note, there were three of us in the waiting room, none of us looked remotely similar in dress or otherwise), she said her fake polite goodbyes and as she got in the elevator called us "faggots". This was in what is a safe space, a gay-oriented clinic. It kind of blew my mind and pissed me off, but she was just a crazy lady, happy to use our facility but just as happy to look down on those people helping her.
Later the same day, I went to midtown to meet my boyfriend for lunch. Walking back from eating, we had our arms around each other, sharing an umbrella in the rain. As we crossed the street in front of his building, someone stopped and rolled down their window to scream at us, "You should be shot!"
That evening as we got off the subway, we ran into a couple of our friends who live around the corner from us. They have a big back yard and I had some moonvine seedlings for them which had spent too long living in a cup on my kitchen table as our schedules had refused to coincide, so I invited them to come up and get the seedlings and check out my fire escape garden. As we crossed the street, from a passing car comes this greeting: "FAGGOT!" I live in New York City, don't look particularly outlandish and I've still got to put up with this shit, so no, it is not surprising that police in Texas are targeting gay people for violence during a raid.
2) On the other hand, I feel like we can fight back these days. Plenty of people comment that gay pride doesn't matter anymore, that the parades are silly or too commercial, that being gay is no big deal; but they are wrong. It might not be a big deal that Christopher Street fills up with gay people to the people who live in places where they can be out and open in their daily life without significant worry of harm, but it matters to people living out there in rural places or smaller cities or even here but in the outer boroughs. That people can walk down the street and say that they are gay is exactly why the people targeted in this raid can fight back. The police can't expect them to beg that their names not be mentioned or sign confessions and pay to get released as quietly as possible because we already march down the street and say that we are here and that they aren't alone and that being gay isn't a crime and isn't shameful. This shame was a powerful weapon once upon a time, and in truth, it still is in many places (it certainly was when I was growing up in Alabama), but its power becomes less and less each year.
The police in Fort Worth are about to find out how organized and not scared the gay community is. It isn't surprising that this crime happened, but thankfully today it is equally unsurprising that there has been a swift and aggressive push back. It wasn't drag queens with rocks and bottles this time, but public protest, elected officials calling for investigations, local news coverage, blog postings, and I'm sure the lawsuits will follow. People can still try to spread the message that we matter less under the law and they can try to codify it (e.g. DOMA) but when we don't believe it, we feel empowered to tell our family/friends we are gay or to march down the street shouting it and we feel like we can fight back. So we will.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Michael Jackson reported to be dead...
wow.
There is a longer, more thoughtful post somewhere in me that will come out later, but for now let me simply express disbelief. And sorrow. He might have been crazy and something of a monster, but he was our monster. I'll elaborate on this idea later (note that I don't mean it as a criticism, or perhaps as more of a criticism of us than of him), but for now, I need a shower and another beer. I also need sleep but I think I'll just let that wait.
So long, MJ. Thanks for all the entertainment.
There is a longer, more thoughtful post somewhere in me that will come out later, but for now let me simply express disbelief. And sorrow. He might have been crazy and something of a monster, but he was our monster. I'll elaborate on this idea later (note that I don't mean it as a criticism, or perhaps as more of a criticism of us than of him), but for now, I need a shower and another beer. I also need sleep but I think I'll just let that wait.
So long, MJ. Thanks for all the entertainment.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Way beyond the norm...
I'm not the biggest fan of the HRC. At least here in New York. The national organization is mostly just concerned with the issues of wealthy gays who already have a lot and want more. It is a bit too corporate and plastic, sort of a collective attempt at best-little-boy-in-the-world ("If I'm smart/pretty/talented/happy/rich enough, then they will like me!"). On a local level, I feel like they are more relevant. Their ubiquity is reassuring and that there is any kind of gay political organization comforts me when I'm back in Alabama.
So mostly I just ignore them. Then I readTowleroad this morning and see this quote from a NYT article on the upcoming "Bruno" film:
Whatever. Telling an artist to explain his intentions and tell the audience how to feel is gross. Either it does what he intends or it doesn't. I'll give the HRC a little slack (even thought that statement is beyond the pale stupid) because it appears to just be a statement given for the article, but reading the comments following Towleroad's post got me a little riled up. One commenter started off with, "...he's also perpetuating a stereotype that goes far beyond the norm." This gets right at the heart of what irritates me about the HRC and so much of the marriage focused activism: the idea that we are supposed to be normal. I'm all for the message that gay people are people, too; that we are fully human and have dreams and aspirations and complex emotional lives. We aren't just cartoons or sex monsters. But at the same time, I'm not normal and don't want to be. I think the desperate attempt to telegraph that we are normal too is corrosive, both to us and to the society in general. Being on the outer fringes is a gift that we shouldn't be so quick to give up. Society doesn't need us being just one more group of functional automatons. Instead, we serve society better in shaking up the precious order and making people feel a little less like they are the only strange or absurd characters out there. Our great gift isn't that we can be just like everyone else but rather that we remind of the complexity and complication of the human condition. We can't be just like everyone else. And we shouldn't have to be. This isn't just a song that we should be singing to ourselves: you (all of you) can't be just like everyone else and you shouldn't have to be. That we are all different and that there is such a mix is beautiful, not a weakness. Perpetuating a stereotype that goes far beyond the norm is exactly what more of us should be doing. Fuck the norm. It isn't the straight-acting gays running around Washington trying to be what they think the bigots would rather we be who are advancing the rights of gay people; the drag queens with their heels and the nelly kids coming out in middle school are a thousand times braver and more progressive.
Bruno is going to be ridiculous. It is supposed to be.
So mostly I just ignore them. Then I readTowleroad this morning and see this quote from a NYT article on the upcoming "Bruno" film:
We strongly feel that Sacha Baron Cohen and Universal Pictures have a responsibility to remind the viewing public right there in the theater that this is intended to expose homophobia,” said Brad Luna, a spokesman for Human Rights Campaign.
Whatever. Telling an artist to explain his intentions and tell the audience how to feel is gross. Either it does what he intends or it doesn't. I'll give the HRC a little slack (even thought that statement is beyond the pale stupid) because it appears to just be a statement given for the article, but reading the comments following Towleroad's post got me a little riled up. One commenter started off with, "...he's also perpetuating a stereotype that goes far beyond the norm." This gets right at the heart of what irritates me about the HRC and so much of the marriage focused activism: the idea that we are supposed to be normal. I'm all for the message that gay people are people, too; that we are fully human and have dreams and aspirations and complex emotional lives. We aren't just cartoons or sex monsters. But at the same time, I'm not normal and don't want to be. I think the desperate attempt to telegraph that we are normal too is corrosive, both to us and to the society in general. Being on the outer fringes is a gift that we shouldn't be so quick to give up. Society doesn't need us being just one more group of functional automatons. Instead, we serve society better in shaking up the precious order and making people feel a little less like they are the only strange or absurd characters out there. Our great gift isn't that we can be just like everyone else but rather that we remind of the complexity and complication of the human condition. We can't be just like everyone else. And we shouldn't have to be. This isn't just a song that we should be singing to ourselves: you (all of you) can't be just like everyone else and you shouldn't have to be. That we are all different and that there is such a mix is beautiful, not a weakness. Perpetuating a stereotype that goes far beyond the norm is exactly what more of us should be doing. Fuck the norm. It isn't the straight-acting gays running around Washington trying to be what they think the bigots would rather we be who are advancing the rights of gay people; the drag queens with their heels and the nelly kids coming out in middle school are a thousand times braver and more progressive.
Bruno is going to be ridiculous. It is supposed to be.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Friday, May 22, 2009
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Friday, May 15, 2009
Heaven isn't real.
(written earlier in the year while still at sea...)
I can't stop listening to "Oh, Heaven Isn't Real" by David Karsten Davies. I'm listening to it mindlessly, drawn to it because it is so happy and cheerful. Something about it is just absolutely joyous.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something in the sentiment which also draws me to it.
Sometime last week I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air that was about a modern heretic. I'll have to look the guy's name up later, but the long and short of it is he was an evangelical leader who after some soul searching found himself facing down a belief that everyone will be welcomed into God's presence in Heaven, that it isn't a matter of being saved or not, but rather that Jesus was a sacrifice for all, not just a gate to let the right people in and keep those others out. I've got to say, he's one of a very few Christian leaders I've heard in a long time who made anything that resembled sense when he spoke. The episode was more about how everyone else flipped out when he shared this shift in understanding. Without Hell, lots of people just weren't interested anymore.
How 'bout if you take out Heaven, too?
My childhood was extremely religious. Thankfully, my parents and the other people around me in my family translated this fervor into reaching out to other people. All other people, no matter what. This ecumenical openness and kindness towards all humanity is the part of Christianity that I continue to hold onto and appreciate. Please excuse me if I recount a short history of personal religiousity.
Among my earliest memories is a memory of coming home from church filled with the music. I mean that somewhat literally. I'm guessing that I couldn't read, but I remember looking at the sheet music and images of angels with trumpets coming out of the page and really feeling like singing was making a joyful noise. It all made sense for a brief moment. Why we sang, why people went to church, why there was any church at all and why anyone should worship God. Because of how that song felt, the angels with their trumpets that came in the music and touched this small child, this is why we do all this. The word 'holy' made sense. This, unfortunately, was a brief memory. It isn't repeated, though it was seared into my consciousness. It is this feeling against which I still measure all religious experience. If it leans towards that beautiful connection with the unknown, then I'm all for it. It is doesn't, well, most doesn't. If it seems against that, then I'm bound to be venomous (as I am with most politically religious ass-hats).
Most of my early religious life was spent feeling ripped away from this and having people try to convince me that all kinds of other criteria was important for the salvation of my eternal soul. I prayed and read and tortured myself with trying to reconcile everything to be found in the Bible. Reconciling the text in the Bible with the text in the Bible is a foolish task. Anyone who says they can, particularly with any remotely literal reading of it either hasn't read very much of it, has a very selective and sieve-like memory, or a particularly gifted imagination. It doesn't reconcile literally. If it did, we probably wouldn't spend much time with it. Trying to reconcile it with daily experience can perhaps be more instructive.
Our daily experiences don't make much literal sense either most of the time. So finding something in that expansive text to relate to or bolster what you want to believe isn't the most difficult task. The difficulty comes in being consistent. Actually, consistency isn't the biggest concern for me these days, but once upon a time, it was a dire concern. Anyway, point being I traveled along my own little spiritual journey. I tried to make this text and my life and the world as I experienced it all make sense. How does it all work?
Of course, I rolled around with all the fun little philosophical questions. If God is great, why does he let people die and all that stuff. What do I have to do to get into Heaven? How can he let people go to Hell who never had a chance to get saved? Why couldn't I have enjoyed some of the more fun sins for years without knowing any better before I got saved? If I make it to heaven, but know that other people are burning and tormented forever, then could it ever be heaven? If I am someone who could enjoy this while others burn, why would I belong there?
I'll spare some of the details, but edging up against a mental breakdown that was heavily influenced by a crisis in faith, instead of going over the edge, I stepped back. I'll go ahead and allow it religious terminology, so, if you will, we can call it being born again. This is a fair way to describe the transformation. And it was a transformation.
More than anything, it was letting go and releasing some of the weight that I had carried around. Particularly the moral weight and all this religious crud that I'd spent years piling on. It was partially both reaffirming and completely renouncing my identity as a Christian. It was certainly renouncing all the crap which other people spent years loading into that identity. I was never comfortable with it being an identity based on either I'm-going-to-heaven or you're-going-to-hell, and let's be honest, that's what most evangelical religious identity is based on. Which is stupid and is kind of an asshole-ish way to approach life. So all that was happily out the window.
All along, really the only thing that kept me tied at all to any type of religious identification was that early touchstone, the feeling from that early memory. I had felt sort of shut out from that for years, and I knew this transformation was real when I could touch that place again. I recognized it and knew it when I found it. This is the peace that passes understanding. Most people want nothing to do with it. They want the peace that is everything in its proper place. This is why people do dumb things like vote republican.
The closest I can come to describing the change is that I came to a point, a sort of realization, that I should just shut up with all my praying so fervently to understand everything and for everything to be in perfect order and to make sense. We'll call it being put in my place, and I suddenly felt both emboldened and humbled and to a certain sense like, "What business do I have even praying at all?" Telling the Almighty what you think should happen or what you'd like to happen or even just asking what he/she/it/them thinks is kind of presumptuous if you think about it. I reconciled the desire to still reach out communicatively by reducing my prayers to "wow." and "thank you." (demure punctuation and lack of capitalization intentional; an exclamation point still seemed a bit big for my britches)
I can't begin to describe how much more beautiful the world became, how much more I liked other people and myself once I got to this place. I like to think that it is apparent in my life, this joy and happiness, but I'm sure it isn't always. I was so dour and uptight before though (but I hid it well). This is slowly making its way back towards something resembling a point.
There was a time when I would have been scandalized and horrified at the existence of this song. I would have probably deleted the file, destroyed the cd if I could get my hands on it, prayed for the singers and everyone who had heard the song, and pleaded on their behalf for God to help them and change their ways. Honestly. This would have seriously rattled me.
Which misses the whole point. The song is happy. It is joyous even. So what if it is blasphemous? My old self would shriek at such heresy, but it is the old self that was further from joy and peace than the current self. I was so ready to be derailed and find darkness. Now I don't have time for it. I started writing all this when I realized how much I liked this song and how it would have bothered me in the past. Trying to put a finger on what is so different, I asked myself if I believed if this song was true or not: do I believe that heaven isn't real?
This is so literal and limiting; I can't even consider it a reasonable question. What does it matter or not? Of course it is and of course it isn't, too. I'm always looking for the beautiful and a more full experience and chances to let myself be a vessel for making a joyful noise, but am I expecting some big fat reward at the end of life for being such a just right the way God wanted person? No. That doesn't sound appealing, but I don't have much time for the question either way. I'm going to do my best to embrace and love and try to treat everyone better than they deserve and smile and spread joy where I can and mischief too. I'm going to embrace the sad and tough stuff too and I'm going to say my prayers, "wow." and "thank you." This doesn't have the least to do with trying to get to heaven. If there is a way to get there, I can't imagine it looking different from this, but the point is that this is just the way I want to move through the world. Why would I do it differently?
Back to the preacher who let go of Hell. It scandalized and fractured his megachurch (is there a grosser word in the english language?) for him to relinquish hold of belief in a literal place of eternal punishment. How toxic do people's minds have to be that this is a thing they want to cling to? Would giving up a literal belief in Heaven also rock people so terribly? How much of most Christian faith is wrapped up in wanting to "be in that number"? Do so many people live their lives based so heavily on some final end goal?
This shouldn't baffle me. I was a religious nutcase. Earlier tonight, one of the memories that came uncalled from the vaults was of me writing in the inside of the cover of a Bible that I was giving as a gift to a boy I was smitten with. It wasn't a love letter, to be sure, but maybe it also was. It was jointly an attempt to reach out to him and an attempt to save his mortal soul. It is painfully embarrassing to look back at. Thankfully I can't remember what I wrote, but you can be sure it was dumb and embarrassing. The point is, I should remember what it is like to feel so powerfully that my eternal life hinged on what I did in this temporal plane. And as far as all that goes I can, but also I don't think fear of Hell or of not getting into Heaven was ever a motivation for me. I've always been inclined to think that anyone doing something out of fear or for reward doesn't really have anything which resembles faith anyway.
I can't stop listening to "Oh, Heaven Isn't Real" by David Karsten Davies. I'm listening to it mindlessly, drawn to it because it is so happy and cheerful. Something about it is just absolutely joyous.
I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something in the sentiment which also draws me to it.
Sometime last week I listened to a podcast of Fresh Air that was about a modern heretic. I'll have to look the guy's name up later, but the long and short of it is he was an evangelical leader who after some soul searching found himself facing down a belief that everyone will be welcomed into God's presence in Heaven, that it isn't a matter of being saved or not, but rather that Jesus was a sacrifice for all, not just a gate to let the right people in and keep those others out. I've got to say, he's one of a very few Christian leaders I've heard in a long time who made anything that resembled sense when he spoke. The episode was more about how everyone else flipped out when he shared this shift in understanding. Without Hell, lots of people just weren't interested anymore.
How 'bout if you take out Heaven, too?
My childhood was extremely religious. Thankfully, my parents and the other people around me in my family translated this fervor into reaching out to other people. All other people, no matter what. This ecumenical openness and kindness towards all humanity is the part of Christianity that I continue to hold onto and appreciate. Please excuse me if I recount a short history of personal religiousity.
Among my earliest memories is a memory of coming home from church filled with the music. I mean that somewhat literally. I'm guessing that I couldn't read, but I remember looking at the sheet music and images of angels with trumpets coming out of the page and really feeling like singing was making a joyful noise. It all made sense for a brief moment. Why we sang, why people went to church, why there was any church at all and why anyone should worship God. Because of how that song felt, the angels with their trumpets that came in the music and touched this small child, this is why we do all this. The word 'holy' made sense. This, unfortunately, was a brief memory. It isn't repeated, though it was seared into my consciousness. It is this feeling against which I still measure all religious experience. If it leans towards that beautiful connection with the unknown, then I'm all for it. It is doesn't, well, most doesn't. If it seems against that, then I'm bound to be venomous (as I am with most politically religious ass-hats).
Most of my early religious life was spent feeling ripped away from this and having people try to convince me that all kinds of other criteria was important for the salvation of my eternal soul. I prayed and read and tortured myself with trying to reconcile everything to be found in the Bible. Reconciling the text in the Bible with the text in the Bible is a foolish task. Anyone who says they can, particularly with any remotely literal reading of it either hasn't read very much of it, has a very selective and sieve-like memory, or a particularly gifted imagination. It doesn't reconcile literally. If it did, we probably wouldn't spend much time with it. Trying to reconcile it with daily experience can perhaps be more instructive.
Our daily experiences don't make much literal sense either most of the time. So finding something in that expansive text to relate to or bolster what you want to believe isn't the most difficult task. The difficulty comes in being consistent. Actually, consistency isn't the biggest concern for me these days, but once upon a time, it was a dire concern. Anyway, point being I traveled along my own little spiritual journey. I tried to make this text and my life and the world as I experienced it all make sense. How does it all work?
Of course, I rolled around with all the fun little philosophical questions. If God is great, why does he let people die and all that stuff. What do I have to do to get into Heaven? How can he let people go to Hell who never had a chance to get saved? Why couldn't I have enjoyed some of the more fun sins for years without knowing any better before I got saved? If I make it to heaven, but know that other people are burning and tormented forever, then could it ever be heaven? If I am someone who could enjoy this while others burn, why would I belong there?
I'll spare some of the details, but edging up against a mental breakdown that was heavily influenced by a crisis in faith, instead of going over the edge, I stepped back. I'll go ahead and allow it religious terminology, so, if you will, we can call it being born again. This is a fair way to describe the transformation. And it was a transformation.
More than anything, it was letting go and releasing some of the weight that I had carried around. Particularly the moral weight and all this religious crud that I'd spent years piling on. It was partially both reaffirming and completely renouncing my identity as a Christian. It was certainly renouncing all the crap which other people spent years loading into that identity. I was never comfortable with it being an identity based on either I'm-going-to-heaven or you're-going-to-hell, and let's be honest, that's what most evangelical religious identity is based on. Which is stupid and is kind of an asshole-ish way to approach life. So all that was happily out the window.
All along, really the only thing that kept me tied at all to any type of religious identification was that early touchstone, the feeling from that early memory. I had felt sort of shut out from that for years, and I knew this transformation was real when I could touch that place again. I recognized it and knew it when I found it. This is the peace that passes understanding. Most people want nothing to do with it. They want the peace that is everything in its proper place. This is why people do dumb things like vote republican.
The closest I can come to describing the change is that I came to a point, a sort of realization, that I should just shut up with all my praying so fervently to understand everything and for everything to be in perfect order and to make sense. We'll call it being put in my place, and I suddenly felt both emboldened and humbled and to a certain sense like, "What business do I have even praying at all?" Telling the Almighty what you think should happen or what you'd like to happen or even just asking what he/she/it/them thinks is kind of presumptuous if you think about it. I reconciled the desire to still reach out communicatively by reducing my prayers to "wow." and "thank you." (demure punctuation and lack of capitalization intentional; an exclamation point still seemed a bit big for my britches)
I can't begin to describe how much more beautiful the world became, how much more I liked other people and myself once I got to this place. I like to think that it is apparent in my life, this joy and happiness, but I'm sure it isn't always. I was so dour and uptight before though (but I hid it well). This is slowly making its way back towards something resembling a point.
There was a time when I would have been scandalized and horrified at the existence of this song. I would have probably deleted the file, destroyed the cd if I could get my hands on it, prayed for the singers and everyone who had heard the song, and pleaded on their behalf for God to help them and change their ways. Honestly. This would have seriously rattled me.
Which misses the whole point. The song is happy. It is joyous even. So what if it is blasphemous? My old self would shriek at such heresy, but it is the old self that was further from joy and peace than the current self. I was so ready to be derailed and find darkness. Now I don't have time for it. I started writing all this when I realized how much I liked this song and how it would have bothered me in the past. Trying to put a finger on what is so different, I asked myself if I believed if this song was true or not: do I believe that heaven isn't real?
This is so literal and limiting; I can't even consider it a reasonable question. What does it matter or not? Of course it is and of course it isn't, too. I'm always looking for the beautiful and a more full experience and chances to let myself be a vessel for making a joyful noise, but am I expecting some big fat reward at the end of life for being such a just right the way God wanted person? No. That doesn't sound appealing, but I don't have much time for the question either way. I'm going to do my best to embrace and love and try to treat everyone better than they deserve and smile and spread joy where I can and mischief too. I'm going to embrace the sad and tough stuff too and I'm going to say my prayers, "wow." and "thank you." This doesn't have the least to do with trying to get to heaven. If there is a way to get there, I can't imagine it looking different from this, but the point is that this is just the way I want to move through the world. Why would I do it differently?
Back to the preacher who let go of Hell. It scandalized and fractured his megachurch (is there a grosser word in the english language?) for him to relinquish hold of belief in a literal place of eternal punishment. How toxic do people's minds have to be that this is a thing they want to cling to? Would giving up a literal belief in Heaven also rock people so terribly? How much of most Christian faith is wrapped up in wanting to "be in that number"? Do so many people live their lives based so heavily on some final end goal?
This shouldn't baffle me. I was a religious nutcase. Earlier tonight, one of the memories that came uncalled from the vaults was of me writing in the inside of the cover of a Bible that I was giving as a gift to a boy I was smitten with. It wasn't a love letter, to be sure, but maybe it also was. It was jointly an attempt to reach out to him and an attempt to save his mortal soul. It is painfully embarrassing to look back at. Thankfully I can't remember what I wrote, but you can be sure it was dumb and embarrassing. The point is, I should remember what it is like to feel so powerfully that my eternal life hinged on what I did in this temporal plane. And as far as all that goes I can, but also I don't think fear of Hell or of not getting into Heaven was ever a motivation for me. I've always been inclined to think that anyone doing something out of fear or for reward doesn't really have anything which resembles faith anyway.
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