131. A MOST LOYAL FRIEND

From the Archives

(August 2005) Well, my last entry was jaded, so why not continue the theme here?

This afternoon’s topic is code writing, as in “special friend” or “buddy” or “most loyal friend” or any number of other phrases that do not, ever ever include the words “dyke” or “fairy” or “sexual being” or “love of my life.”

My pal at Duke U. just sent me the following obit from their local paper and I offer it up as today’s example of code writing.

What concerns me is the love and passion missing from this description. How many nights of unbridled passion did Mary Lee and A.C. share anyway? And why isn't anyone acknowledge it?

MARY LEE DENNIS, 85, died Saturday July 30, 2005, at her home.

She was born March 19, 1920, in Durham, NC a daughter of the late Kenneth and Irene Speed Dennis. Her sister, Edith Clair Dennis Hutchins predeceased her.

Once Mary had her high school diploma proudly in hand, she moved from secretary to relief worker to office manager in the Durham, Raleigh, Spartanburg, Jacksonville, Savannah, and New Orleans offices of Jefferson Standard Life Insurance over her 26 year career. She then worked for three years as Admitting Officer at Watts Hospital in Durham, NC before becoming Administrator of the Lenox Baker Children's Hospital for 11 years. She retired to Myrtle Beach, SC in 1962. Mary will be remembered for her love of the Ocean, her true listening heart, and her wonder and delight in each person she met.

Survivors include: her nephew, Fred Hutchins and his wife, Nan and her niece, Mary Hutchins Harris and her husband, Richard; great-niece, Sky Harris; a great-nephew, Sagan Harris and her most loyal friend, A.C. Glosson.

Sometimes I just don’t understand the complacency that seems so commonplace in our world. At ACT-UP protests, we used to shout “The whole world is watching!” but, you know, the whole world was watching that flimsy argument about the presence of weapons of mass destruction too and it didn’t matter a hill of beans that all those people in those other countries (and some of us in ours) were outraged.

The world seems alternately Machiavellian or just plain mean or greedy or filled with people on autopilot to me right now (and yes, I do recognize that even having the option to move through the world on autopilot indicates that you have more options than most and that you are wealthier than most and that you are also probably American). I listen to Bush’s jingoism and think, well, this is an interesting twist on Betty Friedan; am I living in a world in which we’re ALL tranquilized now and just nodding our heads in suburban agreement?

What does our complacency say about us (Medea asks as Pink Floyd plays in her head)? Are we so overwhelmed that we can’t bear to worry about one more unsolvable thing? Walking around with brains too filled with commitments and worries and obligations to comprehend the enormity of, say, our country’s dwindling economic status or those complicated economic theories or the fact that we're working longer and longer hours for less money—or is THAT why we're on autopilot in the first place?

I mean, who wants to ruin a perfectly good summer afternoon fretting about what will happen to Social Security anyway?

I don’t. But I do.

Sometimes I don’t like my fellow Americans very much. And then it becomes easy to convince myself that we are mostly a bunch of lobotomized drones who don’t care enough about democracy or our role in the world to be politically involved, to be outraged.

I also know that this is not true across the board.

Then someone does something decent and at possible risk to him- or herselves and I believe again that there may be hope for us.

So here’s what made me like human beings better today. After the plane crash in Toronto, survivors wandered onto the highway and drivers scooped them into their cars and drove them to the hospital without waiting for ambulances.

127. LIVE AS IF YOUR HAIR IS ON FIRE

From the Archives

(July 2005) Just went out in 99° weather to get my yard mowed so I can leave at 4 AM to attend my uncle’s funeral. He was only 52 and in great physical condition (we thought) before he dropped dead of a brain aneurism.

Sobering.

The service is at my grandparents’ rabidly primitive Baptist church in a tiny southern farming community and I am uncomfortable going there because the place is so blatantly homophobic. They’re southern first, though, so I know they’ll be distant but civil to me (unless I’m alone on some dark road when the judgmental rough boys come out to punish difference).

Have been pondering the picaresque poet and co-blogger Demiurgicgpoet's experience showing up queer at her southern family's church for a funeral and boy is her story familiar. It’s so odd to be around people who insist that you are condemned because you actually choose to—to paraphrase Mary Oliver—let the soft animal of your warm body love whom it loves.

But what else can you do and still remain true to your self?

The Baptist compulsion to silence differing worldviews, to cast people with ideologies that disagree with theirs as evil is familiar to me. And Baptist women just confound me. (Well, as do Muslim women. Or Catholic women, for that matter. Or any women who embrace a tradition that places them in a subordinate position and choose to participate in retrograde religious traditions that insist that they “submit graciously” to men.)

These traditions confine women to marginal positions, then the men in their lives point to this marginalization as evidence of the women’s presumed inferiority.

This is the legacy I inherited and I still ponder what it is that keeps women who have other options in such a confining space.

I’ve never been able to explain the whole Southern notion of family honor to nonSoutherners either, but reading about Arab culture is familiar too.

Honor, in this culture, "requires that women give up their individuality in order to maintain the reputation and prospects of the men in their lives. This turns women into communal property, so that their lives don’t actually belong to them but to their families, their tribes, and sometimes even their nations." (That’s by gorgeous best-selling dyke author Irshad Manji, from The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith.)

I learned early on that I’d have to either put myself out of my misery or find the wherewithall to break the damn silence and talk about how oppressive it is to grow up rabidly Baptist (or rabidly anything that minimizes our whole beautiful selves)—and this probably explains why I tend to create fictional characters who yearn to escape their oppression.

So yeah, I know what it will be like to return to Baptist Town USA as a queer who publicly rejected the Baptist sledgehammer that so many of the people who will be at the funeral used to try to pound me into a particular shape ...

... and don’t even get me started on this Supreme Court nominee who has a record of seeking to weaken the separation between church and state. This guy can tip the scales, people, and that scares the living crap out of me and makes me want to mail copies of The Handmaid’s Tale to every thinking citizen of this country.

•

No big surprise, but I have been thinking about death and relationships today.

Buddhist philosophy recognizes samsara, or the endless cycle of suffering. All gain ends in loss according to this principle, yet we continue to compete and fabricate a chain of desire that keeps us in samsara. That which we gather, we will lose. Our pleasure will eventually lead to pain. Or “Gain and loss are meaningless preoccupations that we use to foster the illusion of a permanent self.”

Sigh.

Buddhists advise that, after becoming familiar with the truth of our impermanence, we should practice sitting and living as if our hair were on fire.

LISTENING TO: ani defranco croon fuck you and your untouchable face. Fuck you for existing in the first place. (yeah)

READING: J-14 Style Summer Special. This is a sad, sad magazine aimed at fourteen-year-old suburban girls and one day soon I will quote from select articles.

105. SOMETIMES I PLAY THE MAN IN BLACK

From the Archives

(June 2005) Sometimes I play the man in black. Or at least some people called me that, or Johnny, or Cash, after I played a gig the other night. They gave me this nickname because I wore black and tended to look down at my guitar or just groove with myself like that when I wasn’t singing. Funny. They believe this was some cool look that I adopted but, actually, it’s because I’m shy.

My youngest brother is lead singer in a band and sings his first few songs with his eyes closed for the same reason. I had no idea he was even shy though—he’s certainly not around me—till I commented on the fact that I like this approach because it feels as if he’s absorbing his audience then inviting us all in. This got a big laugh out of him before he told me the truth.

So I guess this is a confession that will be familiar to introverted bloggers, but I become an actor playing myself when I need to perform in uncomfortable situations such as, say, a professional cocktail party or an awards setting or the first few weeks of teaching a new course or on stage or when I describe my art in the academic terms that folks expect to hear—basically, in environments in which there’s an expectation that I present myself in a certain way, which just makes me feel uncomfortable and pressured.

This approach usually works, but it can make me feel like a fraud sometimes....

Anyway, this just in from Drummer X:

...Just wanted you to know that I truly enjoyed playing with y’all again and wanted to thank all of you for asking me to be a part of this. This was a hard concert on me and I didn’t really realize it until the night of the concert. As I heard the “people of god” minister, priest, rabbi , and other religious leaders read their equal-marriage speeches and then listened to the y’all sing as pictures of queer ceremonies were being shown, I realized about 300 people had just seen pictures from mine and Cary’s wedding, but who had never seen them, because it is against god’s laws, is my own parents and family.

Thank you for putting this gig on. You guys don’t just sing, you guys make a difference in our community.

As always, one of your biggest fans.

Drummer X

SANG IN SHOWER: Another embarrassing one: I got a brand new pair of rollerskates. You got a brand new key....

READING: one of my handwritten cookbooks because a pal asked for my smoked salmon/goat cheese strata recipe

BEST OF SPAM: possess the hypocrite • they are not indifferent to us

POSSESS THE HYPOCRITE. I like that.

47. KEEPING IT CASUAL

From the Archives

(March 2005) All right, this is too good not to include in toto. Diana Cage—one of several sexpert columnists in On Our Backs—wrote “Hook Up and Hang Up: Some Tips on Keeping It Casual.” Here’s the column:

There’s a myth in our community that dykes don’t have casual sex. We’ve heard the jokes about U-haul, and they aren’t exactly untrue. We’ve all had lovers suggest cohabitation after a few dates, we’ve probably even done it ourselves. But there’s a lot to be said for the single life, and casual sex can be lots of fun if you’re doing it right. Staying single for a period of time, whether it’s several months or several years, is a viable choice, and I for one highly recommend playing the field for a while as a way to get to know yourself and figure out what you want. Tell your coupled-up friends to back off with the hook-ups; you’re here to get laid and take names, but not necessarily settle down. Here are some tips to help you find that great trick, fling, fuck-buddy, or friend with benefits.

get ready, get set, go
Get yourself ready. Get over your ex, let go of your baggage, and love yourself! You’ll never get laid until you learn to love your body. I’m sorry, but that’s the facts, ma’am. We are all hot—it’s not about what size you are, or what you are wearing. The more you love yourself, the more everyone else will love you.

what do you want, anyway?
How can you find satisfaction if you have no idea what you find satisfying? I’m not suggesting you rule out entire groups of the sapphically inclined, just set some parameters. If you really like to party, you probably won’t click with a clean and sober babe. If you want a one-night stand, then a woman with marriage on her mind is going to frustrate you. Once you know what you are looking for, it will be easier to find.

learn how to talk about sex
This might just be the most important tip of all. You’ll never have a truly satisfying sex life or a partner that understands you, if you can’t discuss sex openly and honestly. Take the plunge and state your needs, both in terms of desired relationship and sexual desires. Even casual hook-ups deserve to know what you’re thinking, and how can the hot butch you picked up know you want her hard cock if you don’t tell her?

be a girl scout
And by that I mean, be prepared. My friend Odessa never leaves the house without a safe sex pack in her purse. Stuff gloves, lube, and condoms into your coin purse. Feeling ready for sex makes you feel sexy, and you’ll be ready when inspiration strikes.

check out the internet
Community bulletin boards like craigslist.org, and friend networking sites like friendster.com and myspace.com are an unintimidating way to meet girls. They feel like a community, so it’s less daunting than making a move on a complete stranger. Click through friends of friends of friends until someone strikes your fancy, or ask a friend for an introduction.

leave the house
Girls are everywhere. Turn on your gaydar. Make eye contact with the cashier at the health food store. Ask her leading questions and listen for a “we” to ascertain whether or not she’s partnered. Then move in for the kill.

be aggressive
We’re all shy. We all fear rejection. Get over it. My friend Ana moved to San Francisco from Boston and didn’t know a soul. I took her out dancing a few times and she decided she’d go ahead and put the moves on ladies she liked. Next thing you know she’s got girls fighting over her on the dance floor. She’s a chick magnet. All because she figured out that girls really want you to make the first move.

keep it casual
If you’re set on staying single, don’t spend the night with your lover. This isn’t about settling it, it’s about getting it on. Resist the urge for a romantic brunch in bed. Don’t send sweet emails during the day and whisper sweet nothings into the phone in the evening. Make a sex date and stick to it.

deliver the perfect kiss
Want to get a girl in bed? Learn to deliver the perfect kiss. You’ll never get a chance to debut your rug-munching, cock-swinging, smut-talking skill set until you’ve sucked her in with that first cunt-soaking kiss. A great kiss is slow and hard, with lots of tongue and soft lips. Make eye contact, lean in, and start slowly. Your lips should meet before they part. Start with a lot of soft lip action. Then slip your tongue over and between her lips. Pull back every so often and switch back to soft lip kissing. Nibble, bite a little bit, but don’t bite hard until you know she wants it. Use your hands. Grab her hair, touch her face. Master the kiss, and the ladies will be lining up.

LISTENING TO: “Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies,” performed by Maybelle Carter

READING: pulp

SINGING IN THE SHOWER: I guess, if you get sent to enough Sunday School classes, then it doesn’t matter if you don’t believe in a physical God at a conscious level. All I know is, I hear the word lamb and there my brain goes associating the word and making it real in some way. And all that serves to introduce the fact that I guess my conversation with my mom about her Easter service was percolating in my brain because, this morning, before I even realized it, I was singing “Jesus Walked This Lonesome Valley” in the shower.

30. WE’RE HERE. WE’RE QUEER. WE’RE NOT TOURING THE WHITE HOUSE!

From the Archives

(March 2005) What three people, living or dead, would you most want to have dinner with and why?

One of my answers is “Randall Terry, so I can poison him.”

Next question: “If you were on a crashing plane, who would you most want in the seat beside you?”

Several of my pals said their lovers, but I wouldn’t want my lover to die just for my comfort. My answer, again, is Randall Terry—because then the stinker would die.

Filmmaker Lori Hiris was in DC shooting her award-winning abortion-rights documentary “With A Vengeance” back in 1988 when I first became aware of Randall Terry and the movement he stole from his wife.

My direct-action group followed and actively opposed Terry in various cities across the US, although most of us were queer and a few of us believed that this weakened our agenda (since abortion rarely affects the LGBTQ population directly).

I won’t go into the merits of that argument here—since it seems obvious to me that legislation denying control of your body to one segment of the population must be opposed by groups that work to oppose other laws restricting what we do with bodies—but will say that most of our direct actions centered around AIDS.

We protested at NIH seeking more research money. We chained ourselves to the doors of Congress to demand more research money. We staged die-ins on Pennsylvania Avenue to call attention to the number of people who die daily from AIDS. We held candlelight vigils in front of the White House.

My all-time favorite action, however, isn’t abortion-related at all and was only peripherally AIDS related.

Nope. Urvashi Vaid or Sue Hyde or someone with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force reserved the park across the street from the Corcoran Museum and then we wheat-paste the city with posters inviting everyone to Mapplethorpe's cancelled show at the museum. Lots of people showed up too and we projected his art onto the exterior wall of the museum that cancelled his show.

My other all-time favorite protest moment was actually an off-the-cuff event that occurred between actions. A group of us were walked by the tourists in line to tour the White House and there they were in their khakis and topsiders and Oxford shirts, staring with discomfort at our black leather jackets and Doc Marten roach-stompers and ripped-up Levis. Then Scott said "We’re here. We’re queer. We’re NOT touring the White House!” and, well, that became our impromptu chant to the uncomfortables.

•

Another protest memory: Randall Terry held a rally in a football field near Baltimore to “defend” abortion clinics, so we planted liberal activists with walkie-talkies at the rally and at key clinics nearby. Then everyone raced to the targeted Baltimore clinic as soon as Terry identified it.

The Operation Rescue folks had already formed a circle three rows deep around the building when we pulled up—they do this so that, when one person is arrested, another person can move into that person’s spot and the group can continue to hinder access to the building—so we immediately formed a perpendicular line to thwart any more rings of their circle.

I wound up at the front of the line, standing right beside the anti-choice people, who shoved us and yelled at us and held photographs of fetuses and gold crosses in our faces and screamed that we were murderers.

My agenda was to break their line nonviolently but, as one woman with a big gold cross continued yelling and splattering her spit in my face, my agenda expanded.

I stood awhile, trying to think calm thoughts and considering the various ways I could go about getting her and her spit out of my face, then I arrived at my plan. Then, the next time she stuck a fetus photo in my face, I licked her arm and smiled at her.

Oh how I wish I had a photograph of the repulsed look that spread across that woman's face! It was a very effective non-violent action though, since she didn’t come near me again.

Eventually the so-called rescuers started singing “Amazing Grace,” then knelt to pray. I seized the opportunity and stepped across the line of anti-choice people and into a karate horse stance (which is very stable). Two men immediately punched me in the back of my knees and a third jumped onto my back in an attempt to knock me over.

My face and arms and leg scraped down the clinic’s brick wall, which tore my pants and skin, but I somehow managed to stay upright, thanks to my good stance ... and thus effectively broke their line and ended their protest once the people in front of me were all arrested.

(ha ha assholes!)

I got home late and discovered a message on my answering machine saying that my mother had attempted suicide once again. I hopped a Greyhound to travel down south and wound up seated beside a nice, silver-haired Alabama woman who looked vaguely familiar.

The woman was a talker so it took me a while to realize that she was one of the so-called rescuers who had screamed “murderer” at me all morning.

On the bus, though, she was very grandmotherly toward me, asking if I needed someone to talk to (remember, my face was banged up), if I was going back home to my fambly, if I wanted some of her orange, if someone would be there to meet me when our bus pulled in after midnight.

I guess context is everything, huh?

28. IN THE ABSENCE

From the Archives

(March 2005) Good poems comfort me, remind me that, in the midst of great change, there is a core me that knows how to survive even if I am temporarily overwhelmed.

I like this poem because it reminds me of my ability to take in a deep breath when life is overwhelming and to stand in that hard wind that will, ultimately, heal me if I listen carefully to myself:

IN THE ABSENCE
by Kathleen Lake

In the absence of Christ, one must become
one’s own hands, moving
one’s self tenderly
through all the shapes that pain takes.
Whatever you thought you knew, your hands
will forget it for you,
remembering only the hollows
and lilts of your lonely body
which quietly holds its own
story, and waits to be heard.
So when you are listening
at last, your hands will be holding
that wordless quality your mother’s had
which changes everything and nothing.
And in this luxury the marrow
of your bones
will finally speak.

So I was warming up my lunch a few minutes ago and thought about all the crappy food I ate before I finally realized that, if I wanted to eat delicious food on an ongoing basis, then I was just going to have to learn how to cook.

I moved out on my own as a teenager and had no clue how to cook because I had very carefully avoided learning how. Why? Because I was sick and tired of family members telling me that I had to know how to cook just because I have a clitor!s. I was also naive enough to believe that cooking is just not what lesbians do.

The downside to this willful ignorance is that, for years, my skill set was limited to frying eggs and making salads and warming up processed food.

And the stuff did not taste good.

(Well, the fried eggs were okay.)

These days, I am a serious cook who can cook up a gourmet meal in a flash. I also make up recipes on a regular basis. (I'm not a good baker though, because I dislike following recipes.)

And all this is making me hungry, so I’ll leave you with a report on the best bumper sticker I’ve seen in a some time: “Jesus was my co-pilot / But we crashed in the mountains / And I had to eat him.”

9. WELL SAVE MY SOUL!

From the Archives

(March 2005) I’m a contributing writer to our local independent newspaper and wrote an article about how strange it was to return to my grandmother’s tiny farming community and her Southern Baptist church for her funeral.

Most of my family still lives in one of the most conservative states in the south and that was where I returned with my manly haircut and nose ring and urban garb for this funeral. And I waxed poetic about this experience in the paper—delved into how strange it is, when you think about it, that otherwise sociable people in a community with little variation are stopped dead in their tracks by difference, that those same women who get up early to cook food for a wake, who hug strangers who visit their church, who grew up pampering you and doting on you and calling you sugar are leery of you now because you deviated from their norm.

Now I don’t know if it’s this way in other rural communities but, in Southern Baptist ones, difference is dangerous, is wrong, is something to be suspicious of, cured. And conversion drives the Baptist faithful (whose newest plan, incidentally and according to my mother’s mission magazines, is to convert the Mormons).

And try to convert me they did. My grandmother’s preacher—who stared at me with contempt when I stuck out my hand for a handshake—knew immediately that I was the granddaughter who had long worried my grandmother, the queer one, the one who left town as soon as I scraped together the resources to do so and rarely returned. He told me that my grandmother died worried for my soul because she knew I’d burn in Hell.

I drove home thinking about how odd the accident of family is—how strange it is that I give leeway to people I would otherwise never endure simply because I’m tied to them by blood and know we’ll circle into and out of each others' lives for as long as we breathe.

And I thought about the fact that our family tree includes all these details about my grandmother’s five children, her sixteen grandchildren, and her eighteen great-grandchildren, but not a word about the woman I’d been partnered with for, at that point, six years—the person I most considered family.

And I thought about the power of naming something, of just choosing not to record or acknowledge a reality. And I wrote about this whole strange experience in a public forum.

I don’t feel that I was disrespectful of my family, but I did write about how strange it felt to always be Other: to notice the silence that always follows even the most casual declaration about my life if it includes a reference to my partner; to know that, in my nieces' and nephews' eyes, I am not the whole and interesting person that I am but am, instead, their queer old-maid aunt, a stranger they define by my love—about how strange it is to not belong with the people you’re bound to by blood, and to have to, instead, form your own chosen family with people who never even knew you as a child.

The newspaper is just getting around to posting their archives online and this is one of a few of my articles they’ve posted so far. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s little farming community has an unusual name and I used it, so a parishioner in her church discovered my article only a few months after the funeral. He shared it with the church and my family and it apparently caused a big scandal and definitely prompted fury within my family of origin.

(OMG What will they do when the, um, novel comes out?!)

Now no one would accuse my aunt Betty of being a kind woman. She’s never been able to sustain a relationship for more than a year and is, really, just a bitter and bigoted person.

My most enduring memory of her is this: every Christmas Eve of my childhood, she passed out purple mimeographed pages of revised carols (that smelled good) for us to sing. Then she very carefully gathered these pages back up (which means that I never managed to snag a copy of her songs, although I’d love to have one).

The Christmas carols in the old Baptist hymnal are just not Baptist enough for Aunt Betty, so she reworded them for the benefit of her family's souls.

Here’s the first verse of the only one I can remember with certainty:

On the first day of Christmas my true lord came for me, but I was not re-e-eady....

Then, yes indeedy, we go on a merry, instructive holiday journey through Hell.

Aunt Betty sent me the following letter after reading my article, along with two heavily highlighted paperback books about the sin of homosexuality:

Dear Niece,
I didn’t get a chance to talk with you alone at Christmas and don’t know if your mother told you or not, but a church member read your newspaper article and gave me a copy.

I was hurt, to say the least, that you would do this to us and to Mother’s memory.

It was briefly discussed at Sunday evening’s service (the last one I attended) that Mother’s gay granddaughter had written an article.

I am sorry that you feel the way you do, but I happen to love our community, our church, and our people.

I have become a Christian, and was librarian and on the flower committee. I placed many books in the library in Mother’s memory, as she taught a class there for many years.

I’m not one to argue with anyone about religion—however, it is every Christian’s duty to attempt to witness and save the souls of those they love.

There are some people I hope to never see in Heaven, but you are not one of them. It grieves me and breaks my heart to think that those I love will not get there.

I’m even tempted to tear a page from my Bible and send it to you—please read 2 Timothy, chapters 2 and 3.

In Christian love,
Aunt Betty

Sigh.

LISTENING TO: Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Before You Were Born" (Before you were born someone kicked in the door. You are not wanted here; get back where you belong...)

READING: Paradise Garden: A Trip Through Howard Finster’s Visionary World by Robert Peacock with Annibel Jenkins

3. WAS JESUS AN LGBTQ-FRIENDLY CAPRICORN?

From the Archives

(March 2005) People are funny today and I suspect it’s because this vacillation between gorgeous spring weather and cold-ass winter days is getting to us all.

First, an editor whispered to me in the local java joint “Ever seen the same student here twice? Me either. I think they’re all really aliens.”

Then, as I was waiting to pay for my coffee, someone behind me said “Excuse me” and someone else replied, “Excuse you? I can’t even explain you.”

And all this before noon!

I’ve also been making carpooling arrangements for an upcoming statewide LGBTQ leadership planning session.

One thing I learned at the last session is that local progressive religious leaders have formed a religious coalition for marriage equality. The MCC pastor who was describing their work said that the coalition came about because local leaders understand that effective movements in the south require religious, political, and legal components.

This group currently includes 250+ pastors and other church leaders, many of whom are straight and all of whom believe that “the most fundamental human right, after the necessities of food, clothing and shelter, is the right to affection and the supportive love of other human beings.”

They oppose “the use of sacred texts and religious traditions to deny legal equity to same-gender couples.” They also strategically place straight white preachers in their media spots.

I grew up way down south in the land of cotton and still have trouble fathoming the fact that many southern metropolitan areas now feature at least a few LGBTQ-friendly Baptist churches. I mean, just ponder that reality for a minute.

The Southern Baptist church I was raised in was so rabid that conservative Christianists can still give me eye tics when they begin talking about their god. In fact, I’ve told more than one such person that I am allergic to their god but the fact of the matter is that I’m allergic to their narrow monochromatic version of god and I get really annoyed when they presume to have the right to tell me what I am supposed to believe.

My father is an enigma to me in many, many ways, but one blessing is that he was a free-thinker in a community that was nearly devoid of philosophical variation and I was the child born with my father’s philosophical bent.

He spent much of his free time reading philosophy and talking about it with me so, even as a child, I believed that the Christians got it all wrong.

God is a verb, not a noun, in my book and she always has been.

Discovering personification only cemented this view in my mind. Jesus is an idea, an ideal, a whispered message reminding us of the importance of recognizing and maintaining a common vibe, a world community, connection. No more high or low, babycakes; we’re all in this stew together—including us LGBTQ folks who frighten the straight-and-narrow Christianists so.

Jesus’s message, to me, is about nurturing these connections and respecting each other and tearing down those artificial walls that divide our common family. This makes much more sense to me than some white-bearded old patriarch sitting up on a cloud somewhere just waiting to punish people for masturbating.

LISTENING TO: Lucernarium: Paravi lucernam Christo meo, performed by Chants De L’Eglises Milanaise
READING: Rodale’s Successful Organic Gardening (springs a’coming!) and re-reading Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart and Muriel Rukeyser’s Meaning of Poetry