God Is Good

Today I just want to share an excerpt from a poem I happened to come across that speaks to me in the midst of this foolish, frantic, fractured, frightful modern world, so cruel and so cynical.

Excerpt from "God Is Good" from Bees in Amber by John Oxenham, 1913.

God has been good to me and M.P. here in our little bungalow, and I am deeply grateful.  Gratitude is one of the secrets of happiness.

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Sunday Drive: Holy, Holy, Holy!

The Lessons Appointed for Use on the

First Sunday after Pentecost:

Trinity Sunday

Lyrics are found here.

Bonus:  Father David's sermon for today has a profound message for believers and unbelievers alike.  I recommend it to all my truckbuddies.

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Is My Dad in Heaven?

Pope Francis answers a little boy's question.

 

God is Love:  this is the Christian faith.  See Romans 8:35-39. 

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A Knock at Midnight

Midnight is a confusing hour when it is difficult to be faithful. The most inspiring word that the church must speak is that no midnight long remains. The weary traveller by midnight who asks for bread is really seeking the dawn. Our eternal message of hope is that dawn will come. Our slave foreparents realized this. They were never unmindful of the fact of midnight, for always there was the rawhide whip of the overseer and the auction block where families were torn asunder to remind them of its reality. When they thought of the agonizing darkness of midnight, they sang:

   Oh, nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen,
   Glory Hallelujah!
   Sometimes I’m up, sometimes I’m down,
   Oh, yes, Lord,
   Sometimes I’m almost to de groun’,
   Oh, yes, Lord,
   Oh, nobody knows de trouble I’ve seen,
   Glory Hallelujah!

Encompassed by a staggering midnight but believing that morning would come, they sang:

   I’m so glad trouble don’t last alway.
   O my Lord, O my Lord, what shall I do?

Their positive belief in the dawn was the growing edge of hope that kept the slaves faithful amid the most barren and tragic circumstances.

Faith in the dawn arises from the faith that God is good and just. When one believes this, he knows that the contradictions of life are neither final nor ultimate. He can walk through the dark night with the radiant conviction that all things work together for good for those that love God. Even the most starless midnight may herald the dawn of some great fulfillment.

This excerpt from Dr. King's great sermon "A Knock at Midnight" spoke to me this week, and helped me, here in my own particular midnight.




Honk to Grandmère Mimi at Wounded Bird.
Night street scene of Stanley, Virginia, by O. Winston Link, 1956.

The Presence of God

Which does not come often, nor can it be bidden - but is a great comfort when it does.

How Many Gays Does God Have to Make?

State Representative Steve Simon raises a question before the legislative committee considering a Minnesota anti-gay constitutional amendment this week:  How many gays does God have to create before you accept that He wants them around?

Listen to the World

Today is Maundy Thursday.  I always found the Episcopal service held in the evening of this day to be the most moving event of the entire religious calendar.  At the heart of it is the breathtaking concept of a God who, instead of simply demanding that humans make sacrifice to Him, beyond all understanding sacrifices Himself on their behalf.  A deep thought, and a stunning one.

And somehow in this sacrifice, as Christians piously believe, all the world is brought together, united in God and in one another, unbreakably, beyond all pains and perils, through all time and space and eternity.  Of course, Love is the reason; for God is Love.  And all that is not Love is not God, either.

Now your Head Trucker is no theologian, and I dare say no more on so profound a subject - which you may take poetically, if you please, or ignore.  But somehow today it seems fitting to share with you all this film I just came across for the first time:  The Listening Project.  A series of interviews with people all around the world, asking simply what they think of America.  It was made in the last years of the Bush regime, and perhaps some attitudes have changed since then; but even then, the surprising thing is that so many people have such a good impression of what America is - or should be, could be, can be.

I highly recommend watching the whole film, which you can see by instant view on Netflix.  I think you fellas will find it fascinating, as I did.  Growing up in the early Sixties in the deep South, I realize now that what we learned in school about the rest of the world was sadly limited.  We learned the names of the continents and the major countries and capitals, of course; and some scattered facts about various rivers and mountain ranges, and what grew where, and which nations had been allies in the world wars, or not.

But in memory, at least, it seems that time and again when we studied other countries, the gist of what we learned was that X was located here, which used to be a colony of Z, and was full of happy, peaceful natives carrying jars on top of their heads, or weaving baskets, or pulling rickshaws.  Of course, all such godforsaken, backwards people were in the gunsights of the Communists, who had nothing better to do than plot night and day to enslave happy, peaceful natives.  I suppose they were just mean that way.

Certainly we were not interested in disturbing all the happy, peaceful natives with their quaint little ways.  Though naturally, we would be glad to sell them all the Coca-Cola and transistor radios they could use - er, that is, I think we were selling radios, although every radio I saw came stamped with "Made in Japan" on the back.  Oh well, it was nice to think that the happy, peaceful Japanese natives had something productive to do, so they could stay all happy and peaceful, as good natives should.  Besides, what else could people living in paper houses do? 

At least, that's what teacher said.  And that lions roamed the streets of Johannesburg.  And at the heart of the British Empire - for so all our teachers called it, invariably - London was still pockmarked with bomb craters from the Blitz.

So deeply impressed upon my mind were these facts that years later, when I visited London at age 21, I looked eagerly for bomb craters everywhere I went, hoping to get a picture of one.  And indeed, when I returned home, a friend the same age as me inquired whether I had seen any bomb craters there.  Alas, not a single one, I had to report with disappointment.

Apart from all these inaccuracies, the thing that strikes me now is that all through those long, sunny, somnolent afternoons we spent poring over our social studies books and learning where all the different happy, peaceful natives lived, we never once were able to read anything written or said by one of them.  Our textbooks were fairly new - and I grew up in a small city, not the boonies - but they were all summary, and very little pertinent, current detail.

We kids knew there was a world beyond the oceans - it was the age of television and Telstar, air-raid drills and Sputnik and the British Invasion, for goodness' sake - but we saw very little of it in our books, and heard even less.  Where I grew up, television was never used as a teaching medium; except that once in a very great while, when John Glenn or some other astronaut was about to blast off, teacher would bring a portable set from home and let us watch the countdown live from Cape Kennedy.  Quite a thrill, even better than the Jetsons.

We did have school-provided record players and movie projectors, of course, and occasionally we would get to see an Encyclopedia Britannica film of some faraway land.  But even though they were welcome breaks in the scholastic tedium for us kids, they failed to give us a clear sense of the actual people living in those lands - all those quaint, anonymous, faceless, but happy and peaceful natives.  I remember one film we saw - it's strange what the mind retains, isn't it - was about Libya, of all places. 

Which in those days was a real nowhere place, where apparently nothing whatsoever had happened since the days of the Roman Empire.  I think we saw a shot or two of Roman ruins; and then about forty minutes of long shots panning across the trackless wastes of the desert, while in the middle distance, the droning announcer told us, some happy, peaceful natives swathed from head to foot in sheet-like clothing swept the desert with some American-supplied equipment to uncover all the land mines left over from World War II.  Through carelessness, I suppose; no reason was given why anyone would want to leave a lot of perfectly good land mines out in the middle of nowhere like that, but there they were, somewhere under the sand dunes.

No doubt there was the obligatory shot of the front end of a camel, and some more long shots of shrouded but happy, peaceful natives bustling around in some crowded bazaar, the way happy, peaceful natives always do.  And that was that.  All those educational films, even the ones in - wow, color! - were like that.  It was not the sort of education that would or could engender any feeling of common interest or brotherhood with all those swarming, bustling people in faraway, foreign lands.  Our young minds were much more intrigued with the thought of rocket ships and space travel, and whether we could be taking vacations on the Moon by the time we grew up.  Certainly we young Americans had no intention of living like quiet, mute, voiceless but happy, peaceful natives, sans rockets, sans television, sans cheeseburgers and french fries and milkshakes, even sans rock and roll.  Please.  How dull would that be?

Of course, nowadays - I do hope - young people learn a lot more a lot earlier about people in other countries, and that they are real people, just like us.  Or do they?  Well, now that I've digressed long enough, watch the trailer for The Listening Project, and see if some new insights come into your own mind about happy, peaceful natives our fellow human beings around the world.  Finally, the "natives" talk!  Will wonders never cease?

"I Came Out First to God"

Andrew Sullivan on faith, honesty, and grace:



Part of a longer interview at Big Think on blogging, politics, religion, and gayness - worth watching in its entirety.

Facebook Lepers

Today's text:
19-year-old kills himself after week of "toxic" comments

Your Head Trucker is blown away by the sermon preached this morning by Father Sean Mullen at St. Mark's Episcopal in Philadelphia, forwarded by my truckbuddy Dave up there.  Read the whole thing, which will make you smile and even laugh out loud in parts, but here's the magnificent conclusion:

But the tenth leper realized that Jesus had never texted him, hadn’t friended him on Facebook (and probably wasn’t even on Facebook!), didn’t write a blog, and in fact only ever wrote one thing in the sand, which got blown away by the wind. And looking back over his life, he could see that the best thing he ever did was to turn around on that fateful day, when Jesus healed him, and to fall at his feet and thank him. Because of the many things he could not figure out in life, he was sure of this: that he was a beloved child of God, and that he would never stop thanking God for sending Jesus, his Son, into the world.

In our own day and age leprosy is not so much of a problem as it once was, and yet we know this: you don’t have to be a leper to feel like one. This is the too-frequent experience of adolescent kids who begin to suspect that they are different because their hearts flutter in the presence of other kids of the same gender, which, when you are 13 or 14 or 15 and trying to fit in, feels an awful lot like leprosy, and you pray just as hard as you can that you can keep that part of you covered up, unexposed, because what would be worse than being known to be a leper, being known to be gay, when you are just a kid trying to fit in, and the wrong glance, the wrong word, the wrong move will send this rumor about you buzzing through space faster than you could ever control it, before you have even figured out how you are feeling, and before you have ever even felt what a kiss on the lips feels like, but the whole world knows, thanks to Facebook or Twitter, or whatever, that you yearn for lips you should not be yearning for: you are a leper.

And since this is the world we live in, by the grace of God such a kid might end up in front of a computer, not reading the idiotic, taunting, and unintentionally but nevertheless cruel posts of his or her peers, but watching instead the several videos that have been floating around this week of celebrities and normal people who very much want that troubled kid - who is feeling so low and so anguished, and so much like he or she can never be accepted by family or friends or the world at large, because he or she is just such a leper – to know that it gets better.

And wouldn’t it be wonderful if one of those videos featured a plain looking person, who grew up in Samaria, and who looked earnestly and sweetly into his camera and said something like this:

“I know what it feels like to feel like a leper, because I was one. I know what it feels like to be laughed at, ridiculed, taunted, and disliked for something you never asked for and couldn’t do anything about. I know what it feels like to want things to change, to yearn to be accepted, to be afraid that people everywhere will always know that you are less than you should be, sick, warped, broken, not right. I know what it feels like to be compared to an animal and to be treated like one.

“But one day in my life – a life in which I had always hoped that things would get better, but they never did – I met Jesus. I had heard all kinds of things about him, and I can tell you now that what I heard about him was more wrong than right.

“And on the day I met him, I just yelled out, from a safe distance, ‘Jesus, have mercy on me!’ I didn’t know what I was saying. And I didn’t know what he was saying when he said nothing more than ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests,’ which hardly seemed like a good idea since priests are often known to be not very kind to lepers. But before I took two steps, I looked down, and I was healed, so I turned back and ran to Jesus and praised his name, and fell at his feet to thank him.

“My young friend, you are not a leper. Nothing in you needs to be healed except your tortured heart, which has been so hurt that it has fantasized about leaping off of bridges. This alone needs to be healed in you – this idea that there is no other path that will work, no other option that is good, no other way to escape the pain you keep so carefully hidden inside of you, so no one can see it, and no one will know who you really are.

“But Jesus already knows who you really are. He made you, and he loves you. And he wants you to live.

“Turn around, my friend, and see him standing there, ready to do anything for you, ready to die for you. And hear him promise, with me:  It gets better.”

Wave and Water

Your Head Trucker isn't very well read in Buddhist theology; but here's something I found over on Sullivan's blog - and I like it a lot.

When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, the wave also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, "Some day I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing."

These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. A wave can be recognized by signs -- beginning or ending, high or low, beautiful or ugly. In the world of the wave, the world of relative truth, the wave feels happy as she swells, and she feels sad as she falls. She may think, "I am high!" or "I am low!' and develop superiority or inferiority complexes, but in the world of the water there are no signs, and when the wave touches her true nature -- which is water -- all of her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.

--Thich Nhat Hanh

Of course instead of saying "return to nonbeing," one could say "return to God" and for my money, arrive at the same place:  the end of all strife and all striving; the perfect fulfillment of every desire in that Love that moves the stars - as Dante put it:  the glorious, eternal Beatific Vision.  Eternal rest.  The peace you long for in the depth of your heart, even though you might call it by another name.

Sullivan says the same thing I'm trying to express, in his own way:

I have two intuitions about what happens when I die. The first is that I cannot know in any way for sure; and I surely know that whatever heaven is, it is so beyond our human understanding that it is perhaps better not to try an answer. The second is that I will continue to exist in my essence but more firmly and completely enveloped in the love and expanse of God, as revealed primarily in the life of Jesus.

I guess you can believe there is nothing there (atheism/agnosticism); or that there is something there into which everything dissolves - human and divine - which is a kind of non-material unity of love and compassion (Buddhism). Faith gives me the hope of the Christian alternative to both, that we will remain who we are, the unique objects of God's love, and yet part of such a miraculous sea of divine love, we will be both ourselves and yet far less limited by ourselves, freed from the sin that keeps us from knowing one another, forgiving one another and loving one another and loving God as parent, child and spirit. . . .

So I do not believe our consciousness is utterly different after death than now. I believe, with Saint Paul, that this is the same divine experience, but through a glass darkly. I believe it is Love, because Jesus showed me so. And I await with great fear because I am human and I await with great hope because of the incarnation and resurrection of God in human history.

To philosophize is to learn how to die.

To believe is to hope for light in the face of "some blackness coming toward us."

The thing is, it's a mystery we can sense but never prove. Guess we'll all find out the straight of it when we get there, huh boys.

Sex and the Sacred

Rich Heffern in the National Catholic Reporter:

Why is sexuality so precious? “Because it is the great enabler,” writes Diane Ackerman, “that allows us to commune with every aspect of being alive, with people and objects, landscapes and cities. One needs love to feel harmonious, to feel part of the rich landscape of one’s life.”

To say that sexuality is just an animal instinct, an obstacle to holiness, is to say that sexuality has nothing to do with our humanity. But in fact our sexuality is an integral part of our personal and interpersonal identities. From childhood it looms large in our lives, and we must deal with it one way or the other. Thomas Moore, in his best-selling book The Soul of Sex, writes:

We have a habit of talking about sexuality as merely physical, yet nothing has more soul. Sex takes us into the world of intense passions, sensual touch, exciting fantasies, many levels of meaning and subtle emotions. It makes the imagination come alive with fantasy, reverie and memory. Even if the sex is loveless, empty or manipulative, still it has strong repercussions in the soul, and even bad sexual experiences leave lasting, haunting impressions.

There is an ancient wisdom, even within the Judeo-Christian tradition, that maintains that sexuality is primarily spiritual, possibly the single greatest source of spiritual vitality in the human psyche. Sexuality is a mode of interaction with divinity.

The Old Testament’s Song of Songs describes the relationship between Yahweh and humans in the most gloriously sensual and erotic images and poetry. Catholic mystic St. John of the Cross used sexual intimacy as the effective analogy for understanding intimacy with God. St. Augustine referred to the cross of Christ as a marriage bed, intimating that our sexuality has infinite redemptive dimensions. . . .

In short, our sexuality is a rich source of religious experience, a great and holy mystery that brings beauty, meaning and divinity to our lives. Human love is a shape taken by the love of God.

Honk to Andrew Sullivan.

The Only Solution Is Love

I'm still planning to finish my series on Becoming a Not-Man that I blogged a few posts of last fall.  It was quite an exertion, writing those; yet through the act of writing, some connections and realizations became more clear.  Beneath the surface of daily life and my homemade diversions, I'm still meditating on those things, and I'll write more when my thoughts are ready to see the light of day.

In the meantime, however, Andrew Sullivan has, eloquently, put his finger on the heart of the matter; and it's always reassuring to hear that these deep, deep wounds have not been suffered by me alone, that I am not the only bloodied veteran of the terrible battle for self-respect - a battle that, unlike Jacob's wrestling with the angel of the Lord, is never truly finished:

It's hard to explain how the gay man's psyche survives childhood and adolescence and early adulthood even in a completely tolerant society. To feel unworthy in the depths of one's being is a wound that takes decades to heal and courage to face. Many young gay people feel it; more to the point, in my view, many young gay people will always feel it - because being different in such a profound way from one's peers as one grows up is inevitably isolating. To live in a world where all the institutions are designed for the other, and to navigate a path through that, is really tough. So, yes, happiness can be elusive or too easily bought.

But this is life. It is tougher for many gays than straights, but not always. And this is the human reality: men die and they are not happy, to go all Camus on you. We have to suck it up and deal with it, and realize how insanely lucky we are to be born as homosexuals in one of the very few periods in time when we haven't been targeted for murder or jail or unmitigated obloquy.

I don't think I would have gotten through intact without God, my friends, my family and my husband. The first matters. The double bind for gay kids is that the refuge I believe they need - a loving God to heal and protect them - is actively hostile in many faith communities. And so the internal isolation deepens, even as the search for faith is often the most tenacious among those the churches deem unworthy of it. The temptation to drink or do drugs as an alternative is very strong - and, frankly, not entirely unhealthy in moderation as a way to find moments of transcendence or escape or perspective.

But in the end, the only solution is love. I believe that all love comes from God, but whether you do or not, love is still tangible in the human and natural world. Alas, we gay men have taught ourselves so powerfully how we are unworthy of such love, and afraid of it, that we seek it in all the wrong places or grab simulacra of it we then use to punish ourselves.

God's Control Panel

Honk to Joe.My.God. for posting this bit of hilarity (enlarge to get the full effect):

But there's also a serious point to be made from this.

If this is your concept of God, please - throw it out, it stinks.  This is utterly childish and primitive; better you should be a cool, logical atheist than believe a preposterous superstition like this.

Which, alas, so many people do believe:  a child's God, a genie, a thunder-maker, a cosmic sadist.  An arbitrary, unloving deity with no more compassion or conscience than a two-year-old.  And thus, such people utterly, utterly miss the point of every faith worthy to be called a religion.

Better not to believe in any kind of God at all than to believe in one like that:  a pyschological projection, an embodiment of brute, unreasoning force.  A fulminating, tyrannical Wizard of Oz behind an impenetrable curtain.  A devil, not a god.

But I submit for your consideration these words, which in your Head Trucker's opinion, come much closer to the heart of what religion means than what many people call by that term:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.  But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; that ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven:  for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.

For if ye love them which love you, what reward have ye? do not even the publicans the same?  And if ye salute your brethren only, what do ye more than others? do not even the publicans so? 

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect. 

(from the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5)

Note the difference between this picture and the cartoon:  a loving, merciful Father who sends the needful blessings of rain and sun upon both the good and the evil - for all humankind are His children.

And we, His children, are all brothers and sisters here on this little blue marble.

Just a thought.

Sunday Drive: You Are No Accident

Father Geoff Farrow:

The Prophet Jeremiah says, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you” and “before you were born, I consecrated you” (Jeremiah 1: 5.) Do you believe that about yourself? Do you believe that you are not “an accident” that your life has value and purpose? You are unique, gifted with a combination of talents, intellect; life experiences and attributes which no one else on earth possesses.

The two commandments [i.e., love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself], which Jesus teaches his disciples, serve to integrate us. First with our self. First, we must appreciate that we are created by a God who is love, a God who does not make mistakes, and a God who does not make trash. You are not defective, you are not disordered, and you are not deformed. Your gender, your eye color, the pigmentation of your skin, your intellect, and your sexual orientation is all willed by the Creator. You are willed by the Creator and the fact that you live and draw breath at this very moment is willed by the Creator.

The Creator has also created each other person on this earth as well as all other creatures and the planet and cosmos which sustain life. We are part of a larger organic whole. To hurt another person, creature, the planet, etc; is in fact, to hurt you. The consequence of hurtful decisions and choices creates a ripple effect in other lives and in the whole of the created order.

Once we learn to love and accept our self, we begin to move to greater personal wholeness and integrity within our self. We begin to see and actualize our yet unrealized potential. We begin to learn from errors of judgment. We become more sensitive to the hurts we have caused others and learn to ask for forgiveness and to avoid hurting others in the future.

We learn to become a living reflection of the Creator who is love itself. Who has moved beyond self to create others and me. We begin to see all of the created order and being ordered towards love, towards reintegration, towards potentials, which can only be realized in and through the other.

Sex is designed by God to require us to move beyond the self. If you look at the physical act of sex, it teaches you something of what is suppose to happen between two people in an intimate encounter. You undress, for intimacy to occur between two people it requires you to undress. Not just physically, but also emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. You reveal yourself to the other. Your true self, with all of your strengths and weaknesses. Your hopes/dreams and your fears and what haunts you. You become vulnerable to the other in this moment and they to you and the wonderful occurs when the other accepts you “as is.”

Lovely words, lovely thoughts, Padre. Perhaps I would find it easier to put faith in them if I hadn't spent years listening to these very sentiments being read out from the pulpit already.

And then the preacher turned the page and began, "Do you not know that the effeminate and men who lie with men shall not inherit the kingdom of God? . . ."

Which put the lie to everything he had just said. And left me sitting on the edge of the dark and terrible abyss.

Jesus, Gays, and Texans

Andrew Sullivan, a devout Catholic, has posted this today; the story's from a couple months back, but still pertinent:



MCC churches in North Texas have put slogans like these on billboards in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.  Which has annoyed the hell out of Bible-believing Christianists.  But perhaps it will make some people stop and examine what it is they really believe, and consider whether their thinking is consistent and compassionate, which is always a good thing.

Would Jesus discriminate?

The early church welcomed a gay man.

Jesus affirmed a gay couple.

Ruth loved Naomi as Adam loved Eve.

David loved Jonathan more than women.

Your Head Trucker spent many years reading and studying and researching the Scriptures on this point, looking desperately for a loophole, a window of hope that God loved me too.  And that search will run you crazy - and I do mean crazy - after a while.  Because that Bible was written down by straight men to serve their purposes and their view of the world and of God.

I don't have time today to go into all this deep subject.  And I don't want to step on anybody's toes, who have found a way to interpret the awful homophobic passages differently.  But it is true beyond any doubt that Jesus himself is not recorded as saying anything at all about same-sex love, one way or another.

And after many years of trying to reconcile the truths I was taught in church with the truth within me - the goodness and rightness of my own identity and feelings and nature - I finally came to realize that God, if God exists, is much bigger than the Church.  And much bigger than the Bible.

I haven't renounced my belief in Christ; I'm an Episcopalian-on-hold as I've explained before.  But to make a short conclusion, here's where I am now:  God is above all things and beyond all things; yet God is also very small and very close.  God is that light of goodness and peace inside you and me and everyone; anyone can be in touch with it, you don't need creeds and scriptures and rituals to find it, and you don't have to go searching in some holy place. 

It's already there inside you; and in a certain sense, you are the holy place yourself, the temple, as it were, of spirit.  And so am I, and so is every man and woman, though we can blind ourselves from perceiving it.

And that inner light is God, and God is Love.  It's important to pay attention to it, and not just our feelings and thoughts and bodies:  it's part of those things, but something else too.  More than that I can't say.  But that helps me. 

What helps you?

Manners and Miracles

Andrew Sullivan quotes atheist Christopher Hitchens:

Usually, when I ask some Calvinist whether he is really a Calvinist (in the sense, say, of believing that I will end up in hell), there is a slight reluctance to say yes, and a slight wince from his congregation. I have come to the conclusion that this has something to do with the justly famed tradition of Southern hospitality: You can't very easily invite somebody to your church and then to supper and inform him that he's marked for perdition.

Well, no, of course not.  That would be rude.  Along with so many other things that damnyankees our friends from the frozen North just don't get about the South is that in these parts, rudeness is an even greater sin than atheism.  We learn that at our mothers' knees.

Atheism is very much the vogue now in the blue states, it seems; and believe me, I do get the why of that.  After half a century of living here, where old times are damn well not forgotten, and the terms Christian and American are considered to be exact synonyms - it's quite plain to me that religion as commonly practiced has very little to do with God, and everything to do with man.  And this conclusion is readily confirmed by even a cursory survey of other cultures, other peoples, from the earliest times down till now.

Though of course it's always easier to see the principle at work in other cultures, not our own.

And yet - and yet.  Despite all the evidence of humans fashioning God(s) in their own image, time and again - and despite all the evidence of an apparently indifferent universe - still, what the glib atheists overlook, like the glib religionists, is the evidence in their own hearts - a truth within that no microscope can ever reveal.

Feelings are not facts; I know this.  I'm talking about something that lies much deeper than the ebb and flow of emotion:  a Something that glows faintly at the end of the corridors of consciousness, a white pebble at the very bottom of a long, dark well.  Something I can perceive but not grasp, always there, still and patient and good.

And then beyond that, there are those few, those very few times in life where Something greater than me, and definitely not me, has directly intervened in my life, and effected a good result that I could not accomplish at all, myself.  I'm not talking about the cozy, cloying Jesus-came-and-sat-on-my-couch-and-talked-to-me kind of things you read in some silly religious magazines; nor am I talking about ecstatic visions or angels crashing through the ceiling.   That's so amateurish, so Hollywood.

No.  A miracle, when it happens, is the most ordinary thing in the world.  Seamless, smooth, and silent.  You are bumping along through the minutes of your life, this and that happening as usual, and then one time a certain thing happens, or doesn't happen.  That's all.  Though the effect, the result, is much to your benefit, or someone else's.

The most ordinary thing in the world.  As it should be.  One minute, standing in the familiar confines of your own kitchen, you reach your ladle into the jar and dip up a cup of water.  You turn around, and dip up another cup:  wine.  Just like that. 

No horns, no bells, no voices.  Just wine.  Just like that.

As you would expect, if you stopped and thought about it, from Someone to whom matter and time are simply draftsman's tools.  A master artist leaves no trace of his minor corrections.

Not an everyday occurrence, far from it.  And not something I can command, not hardly.  In my experience, these corrections, if you will, come only at the extremities of life, the moments of most desperate need, and not always then.  But sometimes they do come, invited or not.

None of which, I realize, will make the slightest sense to anyone who has not experienced the workings of a higher power.  Some atheists - such is the fallible human condition - are as shrill, as obnoxious, as some fundamentalists, and use evolution in exactly the same way that the other camp uses the Bible - as if that explains everything.  (Hint:  it doesn't; neither the one nor the other.)

And yet - this is not merely what I believe, but what I know from concrete experience.  Not meditation, not theorizing, not ecstasy - but cold, hard experience.  Like holding a pebble in my hand:  an unremarkable reality.  And yet from another point of view, quite remarkable and quite real.

There are myths, religious and otherwise, and some of them are lovely, and some of them are useful - for children and for adults.  And then when all the myths are said and done, there is still to be learned the incomprehensible, inexpressible reality of things unseen.  Something known to thoughtful, humble people throughout all times and in all lands.  Something far above and beyond all creeds, doctrines, and scriptures.

I don't know much, but I know that much.

Photo swiped, with apologies, from rayraydel at flickr

Lovelight: When You Kiss Me

What Shania sings about, I wish for every one of you, pardners . . . .



There's something I want, I need, to say here tonight, for what it's worth.  Something that's on my heart, stuff I believe in the depths of my being.  Maybe somebody out there needs to hear it, I don't know.  But here goes.

Don't ever let anyone - anyone - tell you that loving another man is "not in the service of life."

It's hate that kills.  Not love.  And it's real easy to tell the difference between the two.

Hate draws a line to keep people out. Love draws a circle to bring them in.

Remember this always:  Love is Life.  No matter who or how you love . . . when you do, you give them Life, and Life returns to you.  To love and be loved is what we were put here for.  There is no life apart from love. If you aren't loving, you aren't living.

And beyond that - God is Love.  A great mystery at the heart of all things.  More than we can understand.  But that's all you need to know right now.

When you love, and spend yourself upon another, you are the hands and face of God.  The word made flesh.  Light out of darkness.  Eternity in a heartbeat.  Solitude extinguished.

It's what you were born to do.  So get on with it.

Goodnight, guys.

Sunday Drive: The Good Shepherd

Just sharing a picture and a verse that have a lot to do with my concept of the ultimate goodness at the heart of the universe:  mercy, compassion, self-sacrifice, the most tender love.  Bigger than the Church.  Bigger than the Bible.  Much bigger than anyone can imagine.  And yet so small and so simple in action.

If you go seeking it on the mountaintops or amid the starry depths of the heavens, you will never find it. Yet it is closer than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. Something within you. The ground of all our being.

Love is its name. Seek within your heart, and ye shall find.

I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and I'm known by my own; even as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will hear my voice. They will become one flock with one shepherd. 

My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me:  and I give them eternal life; and they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand.

The Gospel of St. John, chapter 10

In Today's News

Political shocker: Reuters reports that the revised marriage-equality bill was defeated by just two votes in the New Hampshire House of Representatives, although the Senate approved it. One of the voices raised against the amended bill was that of gay Republican Steve Vaillancourt. Figures. The bill now goes to a joint committee for further negotiation.

And the Christian Science Monitor has a miscellany of interesting articles, none of them gay-related, but all of them thought-provoking:

- A review of Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, by veteran NPR religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty. A quote:

‘God’ may not be, as the atheists have it, a delusion – but perhaps a conclusion driven by the math of the universe. [R]ather than dispel the spiritual, science is cracking it open for all to see. It seems to me that the instruments of brain science are picking up something beyond this material world.

- The Republican National Committee abandoned its attempt to pass a formal resolution asking the Democrats to call themselves the Democrat Socialist Party. The roommate laughed out loud and didn't believe me when I told him this, but I'm not making this up. Geez. Those RNC lamebrains have no clue what a real socialist party even looks like - and it's sure not the Dems, who I have to say are starting to work my nerves with their pussyfooting around.

- The RNC also got a pass today from the Federal Elections Commission, which ruled that Sarah Palin's dress-to-impress $150,000 Neiman-Marcus wardrobe was A-OK with them, because the money came from party funds, not contributions. BTW, she's hard at work on writing her memoirs right now - don't you know that will be a hoot to read?

- A professor of media economics writes an insightful opinion piece on "why journalists deserve low pay": in this age of bloggetry and twitteraciousness, journalists must adapt or die, giving consumers value-added expertise and information that they can't get for free just by surfing the 'Net.

- And the U.S. Senate voted 90-5 to impose limits on how bad the credit-card companies can jerk you around. About damn time, too; the last 20 years, the conniving, money-grubbing, effing Republicans have let the credit and banking industries screw consumers mercilessly. If you don't read any of the other stories, do check out the list of what the legislation will specifically do (and not do) to protect you, if passed by the House as expected.

A Telling Jest

I must say in all seriousness that while I respect any serious religious decision, I have the greatest admiration for women and gays who remain in the church despite the grief they get from the official church.

I am a convert, at the age of 30, and as I like to say that as a straight white male the Catholic Church is a natural fit for me. I could even grow up to be pope!

This quote by Catholic author and journalist David Gibson in the Washington Post jumped out at me. If you go read it in context, you will see that he is making a little joke.

And yet - he's not joking. He's stating a very significant truth: the vast majority of churches are run by and for straight people, and historically that means straight men.

I've blogged a couple times before about how, when my husband died, the scales fell from my eyes about our good Christian friends and neighbors - about how coldly and cruelly I was treated - about how the most churchified people were the most callous.

I won't rehash that whole story here - you can go read it in the Blue Truck archives if you like - but it really did bring home to me the fact that we gays are simply not wanted in church.

Church is specifically designed for the straight people. If you aren't straight - you simply don't belong there. And you are wasting your time trying to fit in, as I tried for 30 years - because you will never fit in; you're gay.

Maybe there is an exception here or there. Maybe in some particular locales in the blue states, it's different.

But I stand by what I just wrote. If you are gay, you don't belong in church. They don't want you.

Starting as a young teenager, I searched and researched the Scriptures for years, trying in vain to find an out, a loophole, some indication that God put a word of love and care for gays in the Bible.

But that search will run you crazy - it did me, for a time. Because He didn't put that word, that note of mercy in there.

This hurt me a lot; until it dawned on me the reason why: the Bible was written by and for straight men.

Straight men who made God in their own image.

Much more I could say on this topic - and some of you may have differing views - but I'll stop right there for now. Except to say that in a quiet, interior way, faith remains important to me; but I've come to realize that God is much bigger than the church, and even bigger than the Bible.

And God is Love.