Young Stranger

Dialogues II

2012-01-24T09:10:00.016-06:00

Last night was my third session volunteering at Minnesotans United for All Families talking to people on the phone about the proposed amendment that would ban me and my husband from being legally married in our own state.

It was a rough night. A lot of folks I spoke to were gruff and impatient. One guy I spoke to engaged in an extended rant about how the fact that individuals of the same sex wanting to be in committed relationships disgusted him. I asked him if he knew any gay people, and he said he had nieces and nephews who were gay. I asked him if he had ever spoken to them about this issue and he said he hadn't and he didn't want to. I said, "It sounds like you think people choose to be gay." He said he didn't know, and he didn't want to know, and he didn't care to discuss it. I told him I was gay, and I told him about my relationship of 18 years with my husband, and I told him that all I hoped for was the same thing anybody hopes for: love, respect, and law that protects my family on the same basis that it protects anybody else's. I suppose the fact that I had been willing to listen to his views opened him up to listen to mine with patience. (And I acknowledge it took patience on his part!) I thanked him for taking the time to talk, and we ended the discussion amicably. Still, his harsh words had taken a toll on me. There were quite a few other conversations like that, many where I was hung up on after even harsher words. And by the end of the night, I was exhausted!

After the phone sessions, we reconvened as a group and debriefed. "This was a rough night for me," I confessed to the group. Fortunately, every night has not been like that one, and I don't anticipate most future nights will be either. "Still," I told the group, "I'm glad we're doing this. I feel very good."

I am glad that in this campaign we are focusing on the substantive issue of gay folks and their families. The question is whether or not to pass an amendment to the state constitution that would ban gay and lesbian couples from getting married. Marriage is already prohibited for gay and lesbian couples in Minnesota, which passed a "Defense of Marriage Act" in 1997 -- shortly after my husband and I decided to buy our house together. Passage or failure of this amendment will have no immediate impact on my legal rights. And the campaign could have chosen to focus on legalistic finery such as whether we really need an amendment to ban something that's already illegal.

Instead we are talking about marriage, and what it really means. When I ask people, "What does marriage mean to you?" They talk about things like "commitment." In fact, "commitment" is probably the number one response I get from people when I ask that question -- regardless of their attitude toward gay and lesbian people or their personal experience with marriage. That gives me a chance to talk about the fact that that's what marriage means to me too. This isn't about "changing" marriage.

When I ask people why they object to the idea of gay people getting married, the two most frequent responses are they believe homosexuality is unnatural, or they believe their religion is opposed to it. Of course there is nothing unnatural about me or the love I share with my husband. And I believe that if people search deep within their hearts they will realize that their religion demands treating others like they themselves would like to be treated. And I don't think any of the people I've spoken with -- even the ones who have told me stories about unhappy marriages and divorces -- would like an amendment to the constitution banning their marriages.

My religion taught me that if I lacked wisdom, that I should ask God, and God would "give liberally" and "not upbraid" for asking. (Yes, my religion -- and the Epistle of James, chapter 1, verse 5 -- teaches me that God is that kind of loving, generous being!) And the things that people in my Church said and taught about homosexuality just never seemed to actually make sense in light of my experience of my own homosexuality. That disconnect, that contradiction, seemed enough of a problem, enough of a "lack of wisdom" to permit me to seek greater light and knowledge from God himself -- from the person who made me, who knows my inmost parts, who understands me completely and who loves me unconditionally.

I have witnessed a similar journey on the part of my fellow Latter-day Saints. Those who have known me and loved me have recognized that the pat teachings, the packaged answers about what homosexuality was supposed to be didn't jive with what they knew it actually was in the lives of real people. In my life.

I think ultimately, at its best, religion doesn't ever give us packaged answers to life's difficult questions. Rather, it gives us a set of tools to wrestle with those questions ourselves and to find answers that make sense in the light of Love. And I believe that Saints who avail themselves of those tools will be surprised by what they learn.

Last night was difficult. But I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. And I will go back again and again and keep making those phone calls. And I encourage others to get involved, to do what I did. Because as difficult and as painful as this situation is for many of us -- and I acknowledge it is difficult and painful for people on both sides of this political question, this constitutional amendment -- this situation is a gift. It is a gift to every single one of us, because it gives us an opportunity to learn lessons about the nature of love, the nature of justice, and the nature of brotherhood and sisterhood. Regardless of how the vote ultimately goes, this particular challenge, this issue in this place and in this time is our chance to learn about the depth and breadth of God's love for us all, his children, and how we each need to work to manifest that love.

That we may come into an ever deeper understanding of that love is my prayer each and every time I pick up the phone to have one more conversation about a difficult topic. It may be difficult, but this is a conversation we need to have.

Learning from My Cat

2012-01-12T11:06:00.001-06:00

My cat, Tabitha, is probably dying of cancer.

We don't know for sure. She has some tumors growing on various parts of her body, and when the vet examined a sample under the microscope, she confirmed that they looked cancerous. Tabitha has lost her appetite, and we're only able to keep her eating by giving her appetite stimulants. Blood tests have ruled out non-cancer-related causes of appetite loss (such as thyroid dysfunction). Thousands of dollars more of testing would reveal exactly what the problem is. But the vet tells us that, at this point, it is most likely cancer, that the likelihood of a cure is slim to none, and that treatment would be costly without necessarily extending or improving her life. So we're just watching and waiting, doing what we can to keep her fed and making sure she's not in any pain.

This is really hard for me. We've had Tabitha for 17 years. She's always been "my" cat. I work at home, and a good part of every day, she sits purring on my lap while I work at the computer. (She's there now, purring away!) I can't really think too much about her not being with me any more.

Anyone who has lived in close quarters with an animal knows how incredibly intelligent they are. It's actually impossible for me anymore to think of animals as having an intelligence that is different in quality from the intelligence human beings have. Our cats definitely have reasoning, problem-solving intelligence. They are able to communicate very effectively with us, letting us know what they want, and finding ways to get what they want even if we don't want to give it to them! They are emotionally intelligent too. They have complex emotions and they express them.

As Tabitha's health has declined, she has sometimes looked at me in a very unusual way, as if to ask, "What's wrong with me?" I know people will say I'm projecting my emotions on her. But if you've lived with cats as long as I have, you know that they have many different, very expressive facial expressions. I can tell when she's mad about something. I can tell when she's content. But this facial expression is something much different. Perplexity.

Our other cat, Cleopatra, died of cancer about six years ago. When Cleo got sick, she pulled away. She would go hide in the basement. (Except the last night that she was alive. She sat down next to me on the couch and let me pet her all evening... Something she rarely did when she was well.) But just as people respond to the same kinds of adversity in very different ways, so do cats. As Tabitha has gotten ill, she's turned to me for comfort. She wants to sit in my lap more often, and when she sits there, she purrs louder. It's as if she's saying, all she wants from life at this point is to feel close to me.

One of the symptoms she's exhibited is frequent coughing. The coughs produce nothing -- no food or vomit or hairballs. Just a long, dry cough. It's painful for me to listen to. This morning, Tabitha had a fit of coughing, and then afterwards, she hopped back up into my lap and started purring again. And it was then I learned that she has a quality I really admire: patience. When I have to be away, she just waits for me in the chair where I work. She is able to experience pain or discomfort as a passing thing, and once it's past, she lets it go. I need to learn to do that better.

She also loves unconditionally. I need to learn to do that better too.

Dialogues

2012-01-10T08:29:00.001-06:00

I volunteered last night with a number of other folks for a very unique assignment. Those of us volunteering were gay and straight -- probably half of the group were straight people and half gay. We were men and women and there was a transgender person present. There were retirees and young students, and all ages in between. We had gathered at the offices of Minnesotans United for All Families. And our assignment was to call perfect strangers on the phone, and just talk to them about gay people, and about marriage.

Before the phone calls started, there was some discussion of what we would be doing. We were told that our assignment was mostly to listen and to learn. We were to ask questions. We were encouraged to share parts of our own story, mostly if it would help people to open up and talk. But the goal of the evening was just that -- talk. Dialogue.

We began by describing the constitutional amendment that would be on the ballot this November. We asked people about their views on same-sex marriage. We asked them about their feelings about marriage in general. We asked them about their experience with gay people and gay relationships. And we shared our experiences.

At the beginning of the evening, I confess I was nervous. The thought of having such intimate conversations with perfect strangers seemed very intimidating. By the end of the evening, after having had some incredible conversations, I was very encouraged. And eager to do it again!

My longest conversation of the evening was with a woman who stated at the outset that she opposed same-sex marriage. She also made it very clear that she felt some sort of legal recognition for same-sex relationships ought to be guaranteed. She just didn't think marriage. She talked somewhat about her religious convictions as a Catholic. She asked me if I was religious, and I told her I was. A Mormon. And I talked about my church's beliefs about marriage. But I also spoke about the devout Mormon members of my family, and of their support for me and my relationship. She told me about her marriage of many years to a wonderful husband. I and talked to her about my relationship of 18 years with my husband. There were some wonderful, beautiful moments in this conversation, where I felt a real connection with her, and she seemed to connect with me. At the end of our conversation, she reaffirmed her opposition to same-sex marriage, though she also reaffirmed her support for some kind of legal recognition. (It just wasn't clear what!) But I felt I had made a new friend. (Though we will probably never talk to each other again... In this life time at least.)

I also talked to a man who was retired and who had served many years as a scout master and leader in the Boy Scout movement. He was emphatic in his support for full equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. He was unequivocal. This was a right that everybody should have regardless of sexual orientation. It was just a matter of plain fairness. I asked a few questions to learn more about the nature of his support, and was amazed by his compassion and the depth of his commitment. I shared some of my situation, and thanked him from the bottom of my heart. He said he and his wife were both supportive of my situation, and would do what they could to encourage others to support us in the polls. I believed he would be an active and strong advocate, and I was deeply grateful.

Yes, there were a number of folks who were unwilling to talk about this subject. They let me know, and we ended the conversation politely. Even those (very short!) conversations were reassuring to me. It's OK. We can approach one another and seek to open up a dialogue, and it's not the end of the world if we don't dialogue. Nothing is lost. But so much is gained when are willing to be a bit vulnerable and approach people, and when people respond by being willing to open up and talk with us.

One of the things that was so powerful about this for me was the sense that I was participating as an active member in a polity, as a citizen. I was doing what a citizen should do, when faced with an important political decision. I was talking to other citizens. Dialoguing, deliberating, discussing. This is what citizens in a democracy are supposed to do. This is a powerful thing.

It was a powerful thing to learn that we can talk. And that we can -- even across differences -- listen to each other and even bond with each other.

If you live in Minnesota, I strongly encourage you to volunteer, to get involved. You can go right to the Minnesotans United web site and volunteer through there. Or contact me by email, on my blog, or through Facebook, and I'll tell you more. Come join me -- we can go together.

Whether or not you do what I did last night, I encourage you to have conversations of your own in coming months. We need thousands of such conversations in coming months, if people are to fully understand what's at stake in this vote.

Why Even of Yourselves Judge Ye Not What Is Right?

2012-01-02T03:10:00.010-06:00

I've been reading the New Testament lately. This time (this is something like my dozenth time reading it through from beginning to end) I've decided to read the gospels in order of composition -- at least, in so far as the scholars are able to discern order of composition. So I started with the Gospel of Mark, then moved to Matthew. I'm in Luke right now and then will move on to John. I'm also supplementing my reading of the four canonical gospels with other extra-canonical texts, like the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret Book of James, Dialogue of the Savior, the Gospel of Mary, etc. There's a book out, edited by Robert J. Miller, entitled The Complete Gospels that has a lot of these references together under one cover. This book includes a reconstruction of the so-called "Q" Gospel based on an analysis of the gospels of Matthew and Luke, and the so-called "Signs" Gospel based on a careful reading of the Gospel of John. Whether or not all of the assumptions these scholars made in creating these "reconstructed" gospels are correct or not, they make fascinating reading and are definitely useful.

The Complete Gospels provide new translations of the four canonical gospels, with footnotes that draw readers' attention to divergences between different available texts, highlight translation problems and provide historical or cultural context. The translation, the "Annotated Scholars Version," also represents an attempt to translate the gospels into idiomatic American English. So, for example, in Luke 12:59, what is translated in King James as "till thou hast paid the very last mite" is translated in the ASV as "until you've paid every last red cent." Despite having lost the solemn cadences of the King James version, this translation isn't obnoxious like the "Good News" translation, which sounds like a 1970s hippy version of the Bible. (Yuck! I can't bear that version.) The goal of the ASV translators was to tip off the readers when the original Greek is more edgy or colloquial (as it tends to be in the Gospel of Mark) or more eloquent and formal (as it tends to be in the Gospel of John), and it more or less works.

If you grew up like me never reading anything but King James, I highly recommend trying different translations, if only because I've found that it breaks me out of certain mental ruts. Sometimes a different translation of a familiar phrase will help me to see things I've never noticed before. Reading the ASV, there have been numerous occasions when I've been startled by a particular verse. I've found myself asking, "Does it really say that in the Bible?" I'll check it against the King James, and sure enough, it says that. But I'd never noticed it before, probably because I'd become so accustomed to reading the text in a certain way: to see certain words or phrases and ignore others. To see the text the way I'd been trained to see it. And the new translation bumped me out of the rut, and helped me to see words, phrases and meanings I'd never seen before, even having read it a dozen times.

*****

I experienced an example of this earlier today, in my study of Luke chapter 12. In verse 57, I found these startling words tumbling from the lips of Jesus, as he taught a rather unruly crowd on his way to Jerusalem:

Why can't you decide for yourselves what is right?

Say what?? That sounded like Jesus had just scolded the people for not thinking for themselves. And that didn't sound like anything I'd ever read in the Bible before.

So, as usual when I've stumbled across an odd turn of phrase in my ASV, I cracked open my King James to see what the seventeenth-century translators had made of this verse. (And to compare the ASV with the words I'd accustomed myself to reading!) I've used the KJV translation as the title of this post: "Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Sure enough, that sounds like Elizabethan English for "Why can't you think for yourselves?"

So the next question is, How can I have missed this every single other of the dozen or so times I've read the New Testament cover-to-cover?

When I examined it in context, it became obvious to me. This verse immediately precedes the following, which I'll quote in its entirety:

When thou goest with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last mite. (vs. 58-59)

Now, I've always read this passage rather literally. I'd always assumed that Jesus was here advising people to settle their disputes out of court. This passage had always sounded to me very similar to the Apostle Paul's admonition in 1 Corinthians 6: 1-8 that members of the Church should not sue each other. It also sounded to me something like Christ's teaching in 3 Nephi that "he that hath the spirit of contention is not of me, but is of the devil" (3 Nephi 11:29). I'd become so accustomed to reading these verses in that light, that my brain had more or less gone on auto-pilot as I approached the end of Luke chapter 12. I skipped right over the statement in verse 57, assuming that I already knew the moral of this story. It was the ASV that -- by throwing Jesus' words at me in a slightly different way -- had helped me to see what verse 57 actually said on its own merit, and in turn, to see the verses following in a dramatically different light.

Now, there's another curious verse earlier in this same chapter which should have prepared me to read verse 57 differently. It's a verse that has always somewhat troubled and annoyed me. It's the part in verses 13-15, where a man comes to Jesus and says, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." Jesus' response: "Who made me a judge or a divider over you?"

Now, this sounds very similar to what Jesus says in verse 57. Essentially, Jesus is saying to this man, You need to learn to solve your own problems.

Jesus doesn't leave him entirely without advice. He follows his retort with an admonition about the dangers of covetousness -- of materialism. He drives the point home through the parable of the rich man who built a bigger barn, and thought he could now rest easy because of all his material possessions. "But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided?" (v. 20). And the moral: "So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" (v. 21).

Now this is a powerful moral... And, again, that's what I'd always focused on in reading this section of this chapter of Luke. Those words "Who made me a judge or a divider over you?" always troubled me, because it ran contrary to the conventional view of Jesus among Christians. Most Christians believe that Christ is the ultimate judge of all of us. Wouldn't it be legitimate to turn to the Divine Judge incarnate in search of justice? Yet, here Jesus begins his teaching with the quip, You need to learn to solve your own problems.

So the discussion at the end of the chapter about settling with your adversary in the way before he takes you to the judge, I realized, is actually a kind of parable. Like all of Jesus' parables, it functions at multiple layers of meaning. On the one hand, this is indeed a teaching against covetousness, materialism, and contention. It is indeed a warning that if we can't find a higher road in the conflicts that naturally arise between us, the end result can be ugly. We can lose, and big time, when we fight each other rather than learn to make peace with each other. But, I also for the first time saw a different layer of meaning here.

This is actually also a parable about the dangers of surrendering one's personal moral judgment to an external authority. Jesus begins the teaching with an explicit statement: Why can't you learn to think for yourselves? The discussion of settlements and judges is actually a parable through which Jesus says, in essence, when you surrender moral judgment to an external authority, you become a prisoner. And you won't get out of prison till you've paid the very last mite (or as the ASV puts it, "every last red cent"). This is about the cost of regaining one's moral bearings, once one has surrendered one's judgment.

This runs so deeply contrary to the conventional image of God, in which we imagine that God despises independent thought. Here we see a Jesus who, twice in one chapter, demands that we solve our own problems and think for ourselves.

For Mormons, this shouldn't be shocking. We have a wealth of scripture that provides a corrective image of God; an image in which the central bone of contention between God and Satan hinges on the whole question of human agency. Satan was cast out because God insisted on a plan governed by human freedom. A plan in which we learn to grow and develop and think for ourselves.

There's a difference, of course, between thinking for ourselves and thinking only of ourselves. And it's precisely in this direction that Jesus points, when he accompanies admonitions to be independent with admonitions against contention and against materialism. The true way to spiritual maturity and independence is a way of putting others first, of accepting responsibility, of taking up one's cross. Luke 12 also contains a very interesting discussion in which Jesus acknowledges the difficulty of this way, when he says:

I have a baptism to be baptized with: and how I am straitened till it be accomplished! (v. 50)

(Compare with the ASV translation that puts it a bit more plainly: "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and what pressure I'm under until it's over!")

If Jesus was showing us the way forward into spiritual maturity, then this quote -- which might under other circumstances sound self-indulgent -- is his way of saying, This isn't easy.

But the way forward, if we take it, is a way of trust. That's what all these verses in this same chapter about sparrows and lilies of the field are all about. Jesus wants us to learn to judge for ourselves, to strive for moral discernment. But that doesn't mean we don't need to learn to trust in God in some very ultimate sense. In fact, the only way is to trust completely in God as provider. In other words to let go. That's the definition of faith.

835 Dreams

2011-12-11T16:46:00.022-06:00

This morning, I recorded my 835th dream in my dream journal. It actually appears in the journal as Dream #815, but there are exactly 20 other dreams that escaped my numbering system, either because I jotted them down in the dark and promptly lost or forgot about them, only to find them later, or because I wrote them down before the days when I actually started numbering my dreams in a journal. Some day, probably in the next year or two, I will record my one thousandth dream. And then I think I will throw a party. I'll invite anybody who ever made an appearance in one of my recorded dreams. I doubt George W. Bush or his dad will come to the party, nor Barack Obama, nor Thomas S. Monson, nor J.K. Rowling, nor that actor who played the Scarecrow in the new Batman movies. But if even half the people I know in real life who've made an appearance in one of my dreams show up, that will be quite the rockin' party!

Oddly, I have yet to have an actual dream about practicing yoga. That is really strange, because since mid-July, I've become something of a yoga addict. There's only been one week (the week of Thanksgiving) when I didn't make it to yoga class six times in seven days. (I typically go every day except Sunday.) I've recorded 68 dreams since I started practicing yoga, and in those dreams I've dreamed about work and home and teaching and church, bathing, eating, going to the bathroom, sleeping, sex. I've even dreamed about dreaming! I've dreamed about just about every activity and experience that plays an important role in my life, except yoga. Weird, huh? I'll let you know if I have a dream about yoga, but so far none.

I have a working theory about why that is. I think it's because yoga actually brings me into a state of consciousness that is similar to dreaming. (I said that I've dreamt about dreaming, so I guess that wouldn't rule out dreaming about yoga. More on that in a second, but...) In my experience, through the breathing and the physical postures of yoga, I actually do begin abandon the conscious mind and move into a more subconscious state of awareness. That's actually what they tell you you're supposed to do in yoga. My teachers encourage me to empty my mind and to focus. Actually, if you're doing yoga right, you eventually can't help it. The breathing and the postures are designed to stress your body and mind in ways that force you to empty your conscious mind and focus, if you are going to be able to continue. The achievement of that relaxed state of focus is the whole goal of yoga.

Often when I achieve that, I experience moments of pure ecstasy and inspiration, and it's not uncommon for me to re-experience dreams. Dreams that I have forgotten or partially forgotten sometimes come back to me with vividness and clarity during savasana, the resting posture we always take at the end of a yoga class. After I had experienced this a few times, I wondered if perhaps the state of consciousness achieved through yoga was not similar to or connected to the state of consciousness I experience when I'm dreaming.

My dreams about dreaming are actually exceedingly rare: I've recorded maybe 2 or 3 of them out of 835. And even these weren't technically dreams about dreaming, they were more what I would calls "dreams within dreams": dreams where you "wake up" from a dream, only to find you are still dreaming. So if my yoga practice brings me into a similar type of consciousness, that might explain why I haven't dreamt about it yet.

I recently read through all my dreams, from beginning to end. I've actually created an index of my dreams. When I have a dream, I record the date of the dream, I assign it a number, and I give it a title that is descriptive of the main character, activity, or theme of the dream. For instance, the dream I recorded this morning I titled "Universalism Debate," because the portion of the dream that had the deepest emotional resonance for me involved me trying to explain to people why I was not a Universalist. (I know, I am utterly bizarre.)

I also assign the dream a category or type. The dream type is determined by two factors: where the dream took place, and what type of role was played by the central character in the dream. (Usually I am the central character in my dreams; often it is someone else.) So, for instance, if I have a dream that takes place in Utah, and my father is the central character in the dream, I would assign that dream the "12D" type. (12 = dreams that take place "Out West," D = dreams involving a father/father figure. If I were the central character in the dream, but the dream focused on my role as a father or father figure in Utah, that would also be a 12D dream.)

All of this dream data goes into a spreadsheet I've been keeping. The spreadsheet let's me sort the dreams alphabetically or by date or by category. The main reason I reviewed all my dreams recently was to make sure I was happy with how I had categorized them. (Categorizing is a very subjective process, especially since some dreams have multiple locations and multiple important characters, and it can be difficult to figure out which are most important in the dream.) Once I had completed this review and updated my spreadsheet (with 800+ dreams, it took a couple of weeks), I generated some reports. I was curious if a statistical analysis of my recorded dream life would give me any insight. It did actually give me some helpful perspective about what kind of person I am.

One nice thing about having all my dreams recorded in electronic format is that it makes it much easier to do studies of dream symbolism. For instance, the other night I had a very striking dream (#812, "Queen of the Underworld"), which took place on a train that was speeding through the English countryside. If I wanted to research the meaning of the symbolism of being on a train, I could just do a word search on "train" or "railroad," and easily find every dream I've ever had involving a train.

So far, I've sorted my 835 dreams into roughly 250+ categories. Many of these dreams are unique -- the only type of dream of a particular category. For instance, my "Queen of the Underworld" dream is the only "15Q" dream I've ever had -- a dream that takes place in "the old world," and in which the central character (the "Queen of the Underworld") plays the role of "herald."

The most common dream category I've identified is the "3B" category: dreams whose setting is my immediate home or neighborhood, in which the central role is what I call a "communications specialist" role. I have a lot (a LOT) of dreams that involve me being a scribe/writer/communicator. I guess anybody who knows me well won't be surprised by that. Almost one in five (well, 17.49%, actually) of my dreams has this as the most important role/activity. And a little over one in five (21.44%) takes place in my home or immediate neighborhood. In roughly 3% of my dreams, these two dream elements intersect.

The more common dream settings and characters tell me about my "default" mode in life. These are the dreams I tend to find least interesting, because they are so common. But they are important, because they tell me most about who I am and what my concerns are in day-to-day life. The top four dream settings for me are: first, my immediate home/neighborhood (21%), second, downtown/work (15%), third, "out west" (California and the Intermountain West -- yep, I clock a lot of dream time in Utah) (9%), and fourth, a university/college or other institution of higher learning (8%). The top four main roles/main characters in my dreams are: first, communications specialist (17%), second, father/father figure (9%), third, researcher (9%) and fourth, fool/child (8%). (I spend a fair number of dreams being lost, confused, or desperately trying to find something!)

The more rare/exotic settings and characters are the most entertaining, partly because they are so unusual. They are the dreams that grab my attention, that I find "cool" and that I'm more likely to talk about with friends or family, or spend more time puzzling over and analyzing. The four rarest settings in my dreams are: first, the "Far East"/Pacific rim (0.8%), second, Heaven/a Heaven-like place (1.2%), third, outer space (1.3%), and fourth, Canada/"the Northwoods" (1.6%). (Yes, in my dreams I go to Canada slightly more frequently than I go to outer space.) The four most unusual main characters/roles in my dreams are: first, Jesus Christ/a Christ figure (0.4%), second, a "herald" (0.7%), third, someone in distress (0.8%) and fourth, God (0.8%).

In the past week I have intuited my angelic name while looking into the eyes of a long lost friend, used my power of flight to go in search of missing brothers in L.A., celebrated Seder with Jewish neighbors, witnessed the coming of the end of the world, exposed a polygamist plot being hatched by a corrupt Mormon mission president, hunted vampires in Eastern Europe with Göran by my side, and served as a military chaplain in Iraq, all from the comfort of my bed.

I guess when I do the math, it's slightly shocking how much time I spend recording and analyzing dreams. It's not just that it's good therapy, though often it is that, I guess (and a lot cheaper). I frequently have the experience of waking from a dream that on the surface I found rather alarming, only to puzzle over it for a while and, after taking a deeper look at its symbolism, being comforted or pleasantly surprised by the insight it offered into a difficult situation or question in my life. No matter how disturbing a dream may be to me, I've learned to get over it, and just write it all out, in all its gory detail. Sometimes it's the really weird, embarrassing stuff that holds just the key we need to understand something profound.

The day after Thanksgiving I had a dream in which I had decided that the disconnect between being gay and the world I lived in was too great, so I set off in search of a place on earth where being gay was normal. I decided to start looking in China (#801, "In Search of Gay America (in China)"). It was a sprawling dream that involved the heartbreak of leaving friends and family, getting lost in Shanghai (which, in my subconscious mind's feeble attempt at humor, had a quarter known as "Americatown"), struggling to get by in a place where no one spoke my language, but also occasionally being helped by angels in disguise (like a tall lesbian waitress dressed in white). The dream ended without me having found my destination, standing in a vast atrium in a glass building, near a fountain where the sun was shining down. A gay waiter (dressed in white like the lesbian) had led me there, and told me this was the place, but I still couldn't see it: just endless corridors heading off in different directions, and throngs of people coming and going. Maybe that was my subconscious mind's way of telling me that whatever we consider Utopia is not a place that we find ready-made for us, but a place we create through our choices.

That dream is a good symbol, though, of why I'm obsessed and fascinated by my dreams. It's about that life-long search to try to find myself in the place that's just right.

The Twilight of Atheism?

2011-12-09T13:41:00.016-06:00

I recently read The Twilight of Atheism, by Alister McGrath, a historian and theologian who has been engaged in the various public debates/discussions over "the New Atheism" in recent years. McGrath grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1960s and 70s, where the continuing bloody, religiously motivated fighting between Protestants and Catholics helped to convince him that religion was a plague on humanity and that belief in God a delusion that could only continue to fuel bloodshed and hatred. Through his teens and early adult years, McGrath was a committed atheist, embracing the view that humanity could only come of age and overcome past barbarism by shedding its religious beliefs and embracing a new age organized under the principles of rationalism and science.

In his later adult years, however, McGrath experienced a religious conversion. He became disillusioned with institutional atheism, which he saw as reactive and emotionally unsatisfying. Furthermore, in the few instances where atheism was officially promoted through state policy -- in the immediate aftermath of the French Revolution, and in the Soviet Union, Communist China, and later in various eastern bloc countries -- he did not see atheism bringing on a new dawn of humanity and freedom. Quite the opposite... In these states, when atheists in power were unable to rationally persuade believers to give up religion (or cooperate with their economic, social and political agendas), they resorted to coercion and persecution -- just like the religions they had supposedly risen above.

In The Twilight of Atheism, McGrath sees the high point of atheism as the roughly two centuries between the French Revolution -- which brought atheism out into the open as a viable philosophy -- and the fall of the Soviet Union -- which constituted the collapse of the first modern atheist establishment, and coincided with a trend of increasing religiosity, not just in traditionally religious countries (like the United States), but in the traditional heartland of atheism, in northern and western Europe.

McGrath argues that the stridency of polemicists like Richard Dawkins and Samuel Harris is proof that atheism is losing traction in the post-modern world. Classic atheism, McGrath says, was a philosophical commitment that insisted on the absence of God as a precursor for the liberation of humanity. It would involve a philosophical commitment the reverse of Voltaire's (in)famous dictum: If God existed, we should have to uninvent him. The hardline denial of even the possibility of God's existence was a moral necessity, even if we couldn't prove it. The extension of the label of "atheist" even to those who merely doubt God's existence, who aren't sure, those once referred to as merely "agnostic," McGrath argues, is a sign that atheism is in retreat. The hardline atheist position has lost its power to inspire and to convince.

McGrath argues that historically, atheism has appealed most strongly when religious institutions were most corrupt and oppressive. The birth of modern philosophical atheism took place in eighteenth-century France, where the Catholic Church was completely in bed with the stale and wicked Ancien Régime. In fact, corrupt Church-State establishments throughout Europe were vulnerable to criticism, and provided rich fertilizer for the rise of philosophical atheism all over the continent. By contrast, in the United States, where religion was disestablished and governments democratic, atheism never really took hold. Modern-day statistics tell the story. In France and Germany, the atheist population is close to fifty percent; in Scandinavia, a solid majority, around eighty percent; in Catholic Italy and Anglican Britain, around thirty to forty percent. In the U.S., one percent... Or about nine percent if you count people who label themselves as "agnostic."

McGrath argues that Classical Protestantism may actually have helped sow the seeds for atheism as well. Catholicism invited believers to experience God in the world around them, through ritual and sacrament, in the sensual visual, audible and tangible expressions of faith found in stained glass windows, in statues, in holy water and incense, and in music. Protestantism took all of that away, emphasizing the Bible alone and the rational, preached word as the only means to know about a God who was distant, and who no longer manifested himself miraculously in this world. From this distant, rational clock-maker God, McGrath suggests, it was a short step to no God at all, or to rationalism as God.

Old-line Protestantism, however, gave birth to Pietism. In Britain the predominant form of Pietism was Methodism. Methodism spread like wildfire in the Americas, becoming the predominant form of U.S. Christianity by 1850. When American Methodism started to go mainline and decline, it spawned other, more fervent movements: the Holiness movement which eventually, around the turn of the century, gave birth to Pentecostalism. A century later, Pentecostal and "Charismatic" Christians (Christians in mainline denominations who practice Pentecostal-style worship) number about half a billion worldwide. If growth in the Pentecostal movement continues at its current rate, it will eventually come to outnumber Catholics and become the predominant expression of Christianity in the world.

Pietism, McGrath argues, is the ultimate antidote to atheism, because it encourages the believer to experience, to feel and to see God alive and at work in their daily lives. Someone who has had personal experiences with God, experiences which have developed into an active and personal relationship with God, is very unlikely to find any atheist argument convincing, no matter how intellectually cohesive it may be. How can you refuse to believe in someone that you know personally? The fact that Pietism has been the predominant form of Christian expression in the U.S. is probably a second contributing factor -- along with the early disestablishment of religion -- to the low appeal of atheism on our shores.

McGrath does not take a hardline position against atheism. Atheism, he argues, has actually played an important role in critiquing religious corruption. The Churches, he argues, have responded to atheist criticism. They have taken a hard look at doctrines such as the belief that the unbaptized automatically go to Hell, and have revised or dropped them. Christian churches that once believed a state-church establishment was necessary to uphold faith have now accepted and embraced disestablishment and religious freedom. The Churches have also taken a good, hard look at their role in collaborating with various forms of political, social and economic injustice. What nineteenth-century atheists didn't expect has happened. Churches have evolved and changed and embraced positive social change. The Christianity that atheists critique, McGrath argues, is a "moving target." It's no longer the Christianity of the pre-French-revolutionary ancien régime, though, he suggests, many atheists continue to critique that Church. For that reason, atheists, McGrath ironically suggests, have become the main modern bastion of religious conservatism. Atheism will continue to play a valuable role in society, however, to the extent it remains ever vigilant against new forms of religious corruption.

In a recent post, in explaining why he has embraced atheism, Keith stated that atheism helps him to be "more intrinsically motivated to do good, rather than being extrinsically motivated by my church." This, to me, is a classic example of the way that atheism can actually bring a breath of fresh air to religion. Any careful reading of the New Testament will show that -- from a purely religious perspective! -- "intrinsic" motivation (desire to be loving, kind and compassionate because it's the right thing to do) must trump "extrinsic" motivations (fear of Hell or damnation, desire to be praised or viewed as a good person by others, etc.). This is a basic faith principle. Motivation matters in faith, and extrinsic motivations cannot save us. Yet, religious institutions get too easily wrapped up in the extrinsic motivational structure; they buy into legalism and hierarchy and pride. They easily become rigid and inflexible and intolerant.

When they do, if McGrath's argument is right, atheism will start to hold greater appeal to rank and file members of these institutions; and religious institutions will start to die.

I've continued to be struck by the truth of a line from Ockham's Razor, by Alan Michael Williams:

Every gay person in the LDS Church is fated to float in doubt and skepticism...

Why is this? Because there's no place for us in the institutional Church as we are, as we experience ourselves in the goodness of our created selves. There's no room for us to love, to connect, to find and build family and experience all the growth that comes from that in the way that works for us, that honors who we are and how we experience ourselves. As long as this is true, being gay and Mormon will be problematic.

Like Alister McGrath, I embraced atheism for a time. Perhaps a much shorter time than he did. As a youth and young adult, I had a vibrant prayer and spiritual life, and experienced the presence of the Holy Spirit. As an adult, it was my anger about the lack of place or respect for gay folks in organized Christianity that alienated me from the Church and even from belief in God for a time.

Like McGrath, I demanded a philosophically robust atheism. The kind that insists humanity must mature, must take responsibility for both the good and the evil we have done, and must open its heart in compassion to those who have been marginalized and oppressed, and whose marginalization and oppression has been callously justified as God's will.

I still believe that! But from within a perspective of faith. I've come to believe that faith -- trust in God -- is our best hope at achieving truly loving, just society. Like McGrath, I ultimately abandoned my atheism, and turned instead to a renewed, personal, immediate relationship with God, a God who has spoken to my mind and my heart, who has appeared to me, healed me, comforted me and taught me. Grounded in that relationship, I find a seemingly endless reservoir of love and patience for the very, very long journey ahead of me, and ahead of all of us. That road led me, for good or for ill, straight back to the Church.

I wish others could or would join me in that path. It's lonely sometimes. I have been so heartened by and so grateful for the emotionally and spiritually intimate friendship I've found with other gay Mormons who experience the Holy Spirit in their lives and who affirm both their gayness and their faith. There are a handful of us. It breaks my heart when I see the fervency of faith and love fade among gay Mormon friends. We are the leaven in the dough. What happens if we cease to quicken? We are the salt. What happens if we lose our savor?

There's joy in this path we can't find in any other, if only we can hang in there! There's a reservoir of strength and love in God that can renew and uphold us, and that fills us with sweet, sweet delight... If only we can trust that extra measure.

And yet... I can't blame gay Mormons for losing faith. That's a witness too. A negative witness, but a witness nonetheless. When institutions fail their own, the lesson of history is that people lose faith. This is a religious principle, not an atheist principle. Our lives touch other lives, for good... or for ill.

The Domino Theory of Gospel Truth

2011-12-06T12:41:00.010-06:00

Most Latter-day Saints are familiar with what I like to call "The Domino Theory of Gospel Truth." It's a hermeneutic that goes something like this:

If the Book of Mormon is true, then Joseph Smith must be a prophet.

If Joseph Smith is a prophet, then the church he restored is the True Church.

If the Church is true, and Joseph Smith was a prophet, then Thomas S. Monson must be a prophet.

If Thomas S. Monson is a prophet, then it's my duty to go out and make sure Proposition 8 passes.

I'm not a philosopher or an expert in logic, but I think it's not too hard to find flaws in these kinds of chains of reasoning.

Now, granted, truth does tend to cling together. Truths in one area support and lead to and illuminate truths in other areas. Everything is interconnected. Still, reality is far more complex than what the Domino Theory suggests.

I understand why Latter-day Saints find the Domino Theory attractive. Especially for new members or for young and immature members, the Domino Theory encourages folks to persevere in the Gospel even when their testimonies are weak and their knowledge is sparse. If the Domino Theory encourages one to work hard, to apply gospel principles, and to keep seeking light and knowledge, then it has served its purpose.

But the problem is, the Domino Theory just as easily becomes a faith crutch. It can actually encourage rigidity and shut down thinking and growth. "I have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, therefore..." Therefore, I should just march lockstep with what everyone else in the Church is doing. I should not think. I should not ask questions. If I encounter information that conflicts with what I think I already know, I should shut it out of my consciousness and deny it as untruth.

The other major problem is that the Domino Theory just as quickly and easily becomes The House of Cards Theory of Gospel Untruth. The House of Cards goes: if I find even one single significant error, then it all must be false. The whole thing comes crashing down like a house of cards.

People who are content to let the Domino Theory guide their faith can't shut out conflicting information forever. And conflicting information they will find in abundance, because their testimonies and their approach to Gospel Truth are far, far too simplistic. The more simplistic our world view is, the more likely the world is to come crashing in on us and disillusioning us. And this, by the way, is a good thing. Nobody is entitled to remain a simpleton forever. That's not part of the agreement we made with God when we came down here... Quite the contrary.

The Domino Theory of Gospel Truth is not only illogical, it is unscriptural. Just a few key texts on spiritual hermeneutics should suffice to make my point. The hermeneutic described in D&C section 9 suggests that reception of truth requires labor before hand, it requires wrestling, and it requires careful listening. The Lord in this section essentially says, “Garbage in, garbage out.” If you don't do your homework, no revelation. The apostle Paul said “Prove all things, hold fast that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5: 21); implicitly: "Prove all things, chuck that which is bad."

Alma 32, that great sermon on how faith and knowledge sustain and interact with one another, emphasizes how we learn truth by applying it, by putting it to the test. And Alma is at pains to point out that this is a process that only enables us to establish one truth at a time:

And now, behold, is your knowledge perfect? Yea, your knowledge is perfect in that thing.... (Alma 32: 34, emphasis mine)

Alma doesn't say, "Well, now you have a testimony of the Book of Mormon, so you don't need to work at establishing the truth of anything else. Now just do what I tell you to do without question." He says quite the opposite. His sermon on faith anticipates that the search for truth will be a lifelong quest. The Gospel that Alma describes is a gospel whose truth is established piecemeal, "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little" (Isaiah 28: 10-13 and D&C 98: 12).

To borrow another metaphor from Jesus, our testimony is like a house that must be built on a solid foundation (Matthew 7: 24-29). And an edifice of truth, like all edifices, is built one brick at a time. That's how I've approached my return to Mormonism. Yes, I had a very powerful experience in which the Spirit told me it was time to come back to the Church. I've learned to trust the Spirit in my life. The Spirit guided me in my process of coming out. It has guided me in every significant decision in my life, and those decisions have worked out for the best in ways I never could have expected or foreseen. So when the Spirit told me to go back to the Church – quite out of the blue – I was surprised, shocked, angry, worried. But I had learned to trust the Spirit, so I started going back to Church again in 2005.

Did that mean I automatically assumed that every single thing in the Church was true? No... I've slowly been rebuilding my testimony from the foundation up. I prayerfully reread the Book of Mormon. I incorporated daily prayer and scripture study into my life. I gave up pornography. I started living the Word of Wisdom. At each point, my approach was, let's try this, and see what happens. In the process I began to learn powerful spiritual truths. I gained insight into who I am, what my strengths and what my weaknesses are. I began to learn that, in terms of the principles of daily living, what the Church teaches is more right than wrong. I found the basic edifice of LDS faith to be sound. I found I could begin to build my life on it, and as a result I could become a better, happier, stronger person.

I've taken the same experimental/experiential approach to the teachings of Church leaders. I listen to the talks at General Conference in a spirit of , “Let's see what I can learn from this.” If I hear anything surprising, or if something is said that I find uncomfortable or that I need to wrestle with, I think, let's give this a chance and see where it takes me. If I try something and it doesn't work, well, then I've learned it doesn't work. Do I hold a grudge against the leader who said that? Well, maybe he meant well. Maybe that principle worked well for him in different circumstances, but it doesn't work for me. That's OK. He's trying to help, I'm trying to learn. In the end, we'll get there with patience and work.

But if it does work, I've learned something new that I wouldn't have learned if I hadn't been willing to wrestle with something uncomfortable or unusual.

Of course Church leaders occasionally spout homophobic crap. Fortunately, Boyd K. Packer's out-of-line comments were quietly removed from the record; official statements were made to contain the damage. And still, I've learned so much from Boyd K. Packer. He was a major formative influence on my youth, and on balance I would say for the good. His teachings have given me confidence in my ability to seek and receive answers to prayers. He's inspired me with a profoundly democratic understanding of how the Church works and what my role in it might be. I've learned much about love and courage and forgiveness and faith from Elder Boyd K. Packer. Has he said things that were probably uninspired and that injured me? Yes. Has he said things that were inspired and that have made me a better man by listening to and following them? Definitely. Boyd K. Packer will be the first to admit that he is just a man, that he is fallible. And he has also said from the Conference pulpit that we are as entitled to revelation as he is and that we are responsible to seek the Lord's guidance directly in evaluating the truth of all things. That's the Mormonism I believe in, and he believes in it too.

There's stuff that I've tried that failed spectacularly. I did the best I could with the advice President Kimball offered about homosexuality in The Miracle of Forgiveness. I went the road of 1970s and 1980s Church teaching on homosexuality. It did not produce the results claimed, and almost led me to suicide. I don't have to try that again. I've pretty much proven to my permanent satisfaction that Church leaders got it wrong on that score.

A sort of corollary of the Domino Theory of Gospel Truth is the Doctrine of Mormon Papal Infallibility. Now how many times do we have to say, Mormons do not believe their leaders to be infallible? This has been so well established in Church teaching that it's exasperating to have to keep repeating it. But both members and non-members proceed to act as if we believe our leaders are infallible. A sort of proof text of the (false) Doctrine of Mormon Papal Infallibility is the Wilford Woodruff quote provided in a footnote to Official Declaration 1:

The Lord will never permit me or any other man who stands as President of this Church to lead you astray. It is not in the programme. It is not in the mind of God. If I were to attempt that, the Lord would remove me out of my place, and so He will any other man who attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty. (Sixty-first Semiannual General Conference of the Church, Monday, October 6, 1890, Salt Lake City, Utah. Reported in Deseret Evening News, October 11, 1890, p. 2.)

It is worth noting here that Woodruff is actually speaking to a fairly narrow circumstance: a circumstance in which a Church leader deliberately lies with the intention of leading the Church astray. Please note Woodruff's repeated use of the word "attempts" here: "attempts to lead the children of men astray from the oracles of God and from their duty." That choice of words implies intention, a willful effort to discourage the Saints from obeying the Gospel as transmitted through scripture and the previous teachings of Church prophets. The full quote does not seem to address a situation in which a Church leader is unintentionally mistaken about something, in which a Church leader's knowledge of something is incomplete or inaccurate.

More importantly, the Wilford Woodruff quote must be considered in historical context. Wilford Woodruff said what he said in order to address the terrible confusion and doubt that had been created by the release of the Manifesto. Wilford Woodruff had to reassure the Saints that in ending the practice of plural marriage, he was not leading the Church astray. That was the context of that quote. The Saints had so come to view plural marriage as a bedrock, foundational principle of their faith, there were serious doubts that a prophet of the Lord could receive a legitimate revelation bringing it to an end. Woodruff was, in essence saying, perhaps with a bit of hyperbole, that he was not leading the Church astray in making this major course correction. Did he lead the Church astray in ending polygamy? That's a judgment bigger than one human being could make; but it's hard to argue that the Church hasn't prospered since then, in large part as a result of that course correction.

Does that Wilford Woodruff quote mean that we must take it as an article of faith that no Mormon prophet or apostle anywhere could ever teach a single untruth? That seems contrary to my understanding of how God works through mortals. But that's just me, testing one principle of the gospel at a time, building the edifice of my faith one brick at a time. The truth is, no leader of the Church ever could lead the Church astray, so long as its members continue to apply scriptural hermeneutics to the search for truth, so long as they are willing to work at and test and try all things, clinging to that which is good and rejecting that which is false.

I realize that many gay LDS have had their faith shattered because of the aforementioned erroneous teachings on homosexuality. I had my faith shattered for many years. As I stated in an earlier post, this has been a stumbling block for me and for many. Does it prove that the Church in its entirety is false? That we can't trust anything that is taught? Well, oddly enough, it is the broad principles of Church teaching -- that I am a child of God, that I have the light of Christ in me, that the Spirit will lead me into all truth -- that have healed the anguish caused by those false teachings, and that have enabled me to grow and thrive as a human being, as a son, as a brother and, yes, as a husband of a same-sex spouse and a father of our foster son.

I do have a testimony of the Church. But my testimony goes something like this: I've tried gospel principles. I've tested them in my life. And so far, they work. They've brought me joy, peace and blessings too many to enumerate and too great to repay God for. And based on what I've experienced, I'm willing to keep going, to keep seeking and listening to and following the Spirit.

On the Cost and Nature of Discipleship

2011-12-05T15:39:00.007-06:00

In my last post, I shared some of the sadness and the wrestling I occasionally experience because of my desire to be a member in full standing in the Church.

Today I read a text in the Gospel of Matthew that seemed to speak directly to this experience.

Matthew 20 begins with the parable of the day laborers, one of my favorite of Jesus' parables. In it, the master of a vineyard goes out in search of day laborers at various shifts throughout the day. He starts early in the morning and hires some laborers for "a penny." Then he comes back at "the third hour" (what we'd call 9:00 A.M.), then again at noon, and at 3:00 p.m. Finally, he returns nearly at the end of the work day... At "the eleventh hour" (our 5:00 p.m.). He finds laborers standing there idle, and he asks them: "Why stand ye here all the day idle?"

Their response: "Because no man hath hired us."

The master's response? To immediately hire them and put them to work.

The story gets really interesting when, at the end of the work day (which ordinarily would have been less than an hour later), the master pays up. Everybody gets the same pay -- a penny. Those who had labored through the heat of the day get a bit worked up... How come these guys, who showed up at the eleventh hour are getting the same pay as everybody else? The master puts them in their place. This, he says in essence, is how I choose to pay you. I'm honoring my agreement with you... You have nothing to say to these others. Are you upset because I choose to be generous?

Of course, what particularly struck me today is that perhaps this strikes the Lord as fair because it is not the fault of the day laborers that no one had hired them. They were there, waiting in the market all the day long, waiting for someone to hire them. They wanted work. (Does this sound familiar in today's economy?) Had someone hired them earlier, they would gladly have gone. When the master finally hired them, off they went.

Depending on how literally we want to read this parable as a metaphor of the Kingdom of God, we could look at the "day" as the period of history spanning the establishment of the Church of Jesus Christ, and the Second Coming, the final harvest. And maybe this is the Lord acknowledging that even in the eleventh hour of the Kingdom, not everyone who is willing and able to participate in its building will have been hired... Some of us won't be hired till the final minutes of the work day. Is that our fault? God forbid... When the Master sees fit, he will hire us, and our reward will be no less than others'.

But it makes sense to cross reference these verses in Matthew with the numerous revelations in the Doctrine & Covenants that boldly invite: "Therefore, if ye have desires to serve God ye are called to the work" (e.g., D&C 4: 3). I have always found these verses deeply comforting. If I'm willing to "thrust in my sickle," to live my life in faith, hope and charity, and bear my testimony, I'm laboring in the vineyard! There's no invitation I need from anybody, no labor contract needed, to do that kind of work in the Kingdom.

Later in the same chapter, Jesus reminds the disciples again of his impending imprisonment, torture, death and resurrection (vs. 17-19). While an earlier, similar declaration elicited denial from Peter, who couldn't seem to see past the bad part of this prophecy, this declaration elicited from the mother of James and John a request that, when he returns in glory, James and John be permitted to sit on his right and left hands. This was sort of the opposite error of the error Peter committed, and James, John and their mother are also rebuked. They were eager for the glory and the reward, but had somehow forgotten about the cost of discipleship. While Peter failed to see the resurrection at the end of the pain and death, James and John sort of missed the pain and death that stood between them and future glory:

Ye know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of, and to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

They (perhaps arrogantly) answered in the affirmative, and Jesus' response was, "Ye shall indeed drink of my cup..." But he then proceeded to a lesson about the nature of discipleship. To walk that road is not about claiming a glorious spot on the right or the left hand of the Son of Man. It's not about striving for preeminence of place or the satisfactions of power ("as the princes of the Gentiles," v. 25). It is about being the servant of all (v. 27). The Greek word here rendered as servant could just as easily be rendered "slave." If you would be great in the kingdom, in other words, get used to no rank whatsoever, get used to doing the shit jobs. If you think about exactly the work that Jesus did for us (dying the ignominious death of a convicted criminal on a Roman cross), he's asking of us no more than he did himself.

If our status is something like that in relation to the Church, perhaps we should count ourselves blessed.

Why Church Membership Matters -- and So Does Family

2011-12-01T10:46:00.012-06:00

This is something I perennially struggle with.

I go through periods in my prayer life where every day I pray to have my Church membership restored, to be fully reunited with the Church. This is something I really desire, and I think it's a righteous desire. I want to be baptized.

And I have done my homework and wrestled with the Church's current position that someone in a same-sex relationship cannot be a member. I have fasted and prayed and pondered and wrestled with the implications of this: i.e., that the fastest and easiest road to membership in the Church would be for me to simply "put away" my partner. (That's a nice biblical euphemism, isn't it?) I guess one way of looking at this is that for me, my entry into the Church would have to begin with an act of betrayal and abandonment. The end result of my fasting, praying, pondering and wrestling with this was a clear message from the Spirit that to do so, for me, would be a sin.

My bishop isn't pressuring me to leave my husband. He does feel that I am paying the price right now for past "bad decisions."

I have on numerous occasions received comfort through the Holy Spirit. My Heavenly Father does not expect me to fix this. My relationship is blessed by him, and is a good thing, and is part of his intention for me to be happy in this life and find eternal life in the next. And it is not my fault that to be in relationship with Göran means I cannot be a member of the Church. And the Lord will not withhold any blessings from me of which I am deserving, just because of circumstances that are beyond my control. He knows my righteous desire to be re-baptized and to enter into the Church; I've expressed this desire to my bishop. And I have received an abundance of spiritual gifts greater than anything I ever received when I was a Church member. And the Lord has blessed our relationship, helping to resolve my husband's birth certificate/passport issue, and reuniting us with his family in Memphis; and opening our respective families' eyes and hearts in such a way that they fully love and support us and honor our relationship and accept us both as full and equal members of our families.

So sometimes I have felt it was ungrateful to ask for more. And sometimes I have felt the Spirit quietly prompting me to simply be patient and wait on the Lord to fix this. It is his Church, and he will work things out in his own way. So sometimes in my prayer life I let go of praying to become a member of the Church, and I just express gratitude for the many blessings we've received. The blessings we receive are tailored to our unique, individual circumstances, and they might not make sense or be applicable in someone else's circumstances. Though like all blessings, they are conditioned upon our exercise of faith. That's how the Lord helps us to grow.

Recently, I heard about a situation of two gay men who are members of the Church and who are legally married, and who are now facing excommunication. It's not unlike the situation Buckley Jeppson faced some years ago. In Buckley's case, after a flurry of media publicity to the effect that the Church was about to excommunicate a legally married individual, his Stake dropped disciplinary proceedings against him and he was allowed to remain a member in good standing. As far as I know, to the present time Buckley remains married to a person of the same sex, and also a member of the Church.

Buckley's case is a little confusing to me. Does it mean that the Church is willing to violate its own principles merely for the sake of avoiding bad press? Or does it mean that there in fact is no reason why two members of the same sex who are married couldn't be members of the Church? On numerous occasions, I've invited my husband to go to Church with me. The Restored Gospel gives my life meaning and it has opened my mind and my heart in incredible ways, and I wish that he could experience what I have experienced. But my inability to be a member of the Church is a huge stumbling block for him. He says if I am allowed to be a member, then he will consider attending, not before. This is understandable (even as it breaks my heart). If Buckley's case in fact means that I could be a member, I wish my bishop and stake president could be informed about this.

The Church's current position is a terrible stumbling block for many -- I want to say the vast majority of -- gay men and lesbians. The price that gay men and lesbians have to pay to remain members in good standing is so high that only a small minority are willing or able to do it. And this creates terrible contradictions in their lives that has resulted in much pain, cynicism and loss of faith. This breaks my heart, almost every day of my life, every time I witness the light of faith going out in the heart of yet another one of my gay or lesbian brothers or sisters.

The Lord has taken and is taking good care of me; and I trust implicitly in the promises I've received from the Spirit that I won't be disadvantaged in any way due to circumstances beyond my control. But I believe that my situation is an anomaly. It's one of those many things in this world that is not right, and that will eventually need to be righted by the Lord.

Here are some reasons why Church membership matters, why it continues to matter and will always matter to me:

Baptism is the first ordinance of the Gospel. It is a visible, tangible reminder of the commitments we make to God.

A very Biblical metaphor of the relationship between us and God is the metaphor of marriage. The covenants we enter into with God have been compared in numerous places in scripture to the covenant of marriage. We are, in essence, married to God through baptism.

Göran and I lived together without marriage for a couple of years before we finally had a commitment ceremony in 1995. (In 2008 we were legally married in California, an option that was not available to us until then.) For many years, as a young gay man in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I felt bitter about the fact that legal marriage was not available to same-sex couples. I convinced myself that what matters in a relationship is the commitments we make in our hearts; that external ordinances and artifacts such as marriage ceremonies or certificates don't matter or make any difference. When we finally got married (it was Göran's idea to do so!) I learned how wrong I had been. The gathering with family and friends, the making of a public promise, and even (years later!) the state acknowledgment of that promise and the issuing of a certificate to that effect made a HUGE difference. These things deepened our commitments to one another in incredible ways.

It's the same with baptism. Right now I am, in a very real sense, "cohabiting" with the Church. My testimony and my desire for complete and total union with the Church does matter, it does make a difference, just as the love between two unmarried people does make a difference. But it isn't complete until it is sealed by the outward ordinance.

Being a member of the Church incorporates us into a system of accountability that helps us keep covenants. I long to be able to participate in that system, to be able to be held accountable by Church and priesthood leaders. This is a good thing. I do the best I can to live the gospel, but I need help from time to time, and the temptations to stray are greater when it's just me, by myself, trying to live the gospel on my own.

That's what I must do, I have no choice. I guess in some ways, when I do live a gospel principle, it becomes that much more powerful a statement because there is no system of accountability for me except my own conscience. For instance, Göran and Glen and I had Thanksgiving this year with Glen's boyfriend's family. (That was, parenthetically, a WONDERFUL occasion. We felt so grateful for this family that completely welcomed us and made us feel right at home around a HUGE Thanksgiving table with lots of other extended family present!) There was wine being served, and it was tempting to feel like I wanted to join everyone else. I felt a bit like an oddball. A common reaction I get from folks is, "gay, Mormon? why care about a glass of wine? are you crazy? etc." I wavered for a moment mentally; and I know, personally, that I wavered in a way I'm sure I would not have, if there hadn't been that doubt gnawing at the back of my head: "Oh, it doesn't matter. You're not a member anyway. It's not like you can be more excommunicated."

I know better than that, of course. While I don't condemn others' decision to drink -- I really, really don't! I simply recognize that their commitments are different from mine, that's all!! -- I know that my decision not to drink is an important symbol, and important statement of faith. The fact that it can come from within is a powerful thing. So I don't regret that I am placed in this situation. It allows me to grow in incredible ways!

At the same time, we need the Church precisely because human beings have weaknesses, faults and failings! Having the structure of public, outward ceremonies and commitments is a good thing. It helps us in the struggle with temptation. I am denied those public, outward ceremonies and commitments. Worthiness interviews, taking the Sacrament on Sunday morning, having and using a temple recommend, all important aids to faithful living that I am denied.

We should all eventually grow to a place in our faith where we don't need outward observances. If I understand anything about the Gospel, it is that the fullness of the higher law doesn't require these things. But to say that I don't need those things would be to assume that I've reached a state of perfection I simply haven't. I want and need those things.

Being a member of the Church means we publicly covenant to bear one another's burdens. Fortunately, my bishops over the past six years have decided that there was no reason I couldn't have a home teacher. So I've had a number of home teachers over the years; and I am grateful for the service they render me. But I want to be a home teacher. I want to give, I don't want just to receive. I have been blessed by the testimonies of others on Sunday morning. I want to be able to share my testimony. I have been blessed by what I've learned from teachers in Priesthood and Sunday School lessons. I want to be able to teach!

I can and do take advantage of opportunities for service -- occasionally participating in Church cleanings, helping ward members to move, volunteering in service projects (such as the flood relief that Göran and Glen and I all volunteered for under Church auspices a few years ago). I love these opportunities for service -- they make me feel good.

Though it hurts sometimes too. Sometimes I feel so incredibly lonely. I wept the last time I helped clean the Church. I was one of two people who had shown up, and I was vacuuming the hallway outside the sanctuary, and I just wept. I don't know how to describe it other than that I felt incredibly alone.

It makes a difference, when our service to one another is publicly acknowledged as part of a framework of covenant and love... Something I am excluded from.

I don't want comments on this post about how faithful I am, blah, blah. That's not the point. I try to be faithful. Sometimes I am not faithful, and I need the blessings that have been divinely prepared for us through the establishment of a Church to help us build and strengthen faith.

The Church is not perfect. If it were, we wouldn't be down here working out our salvation, we would be up in Heaven, with Enoch and his city of perfected Saints. The Second Coming would have been long ago, as Christ would have come to receive his Church as a perfect bride. No we are not there yet.

We are in process of getting there. This is the process: Us making a public commitment to one another to bear one another's burdens and to perfect our faith together. That's what the Church is.

I know I'm not perfect by any measure. Some people think they know exactly how and why I'm not perfect, because I'm "living the homosexual lifestyle." Their judgments may or may not be in accordance with God's... I don't presume to have any final word on whether their judgments are righteous; though I know the scriptures have reserved some pretty harsh words for those who do judge unrighteously and who withhold forgiveness. We all need to be careful on that score. Even if unrighteous judgments are made, well, that's to be expected among people still perfecting themselves! If we're blessed enough to see and understand that, well, we're doubly blessed!

Perhaps the greatest gift of the Spirit is to receive that gift of knowledge: that it's OK if we've often failed one another. The point is to get back up and keep trying. Every time I watch the film Finding Nemo, I weep when Dory (played by lesbian comedian Ellen Degeneres!) sings, over and over again, "Just keep swimming! Just keep swimming!" That more or less summarizes our obligation as disciples of Christ. Don't get distracted by the difficulty of the task. Don't get distracted by other's failings, or your own. You just keep trying to do what you know you need to do.

I want to be part of the process of perfecting the Church and perfecting myself. In order to do that, I need to make and keep public commitments: both to the Church and to my husband. Right now I am told that I must choose to break/betray/deny one in order to honor the other. But I know that the path to Zion does not lie through betrayal or denial of family or Church. It all needs to -- and I trust some day will -- fit together perfectly, lovingly and harmoniously.

But in the mean time, in this time and place, I am forced to accept cohabitation as the highest form of commitment I can make to the Church.

The Third Day

2011-11-28T13:33:00.011-06:00

Right after Matthew's description of Jesus' famous exchange with Peter on the subject of his divine identity (Peter: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"!), Matthew states that Jesus

From that time forth began... to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. (Matt. 16: 21)

Now it's unclear to me whether this teaching of Christ about his impending torture, death and resurrection came right after Peter's testimony or not. The phrase "from that time forth began" suggests continuing activity over a period of time, and also signals a semantic break with what came just before this statement in the text. But it's still significant that this is placed in the narrative right after the description of Jesus' open discussion with the disciples about his calling as the Christ, the Anointed.

When Peter said "Thou art the Christ," he was bearing a witness that had been impressed upon him by the Father through the Holy Spirit. As Jesus put it, "flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven" (vs. 17). After Peter bears witness of what the Spirit has taught him, then Christ discusses it openly. It is almost as if Christ waited to discuss it until this sacred secret of Jesus' divinity and calling could no longer be withheld from the disciples, until their eyes and hearts were sufficiently open for them to be taught it directly from heaven.

And still... Human fear, human doubt intervenes. We are so fragile!

Jesus told them what would happen to him, and in the telling there was both good news and bad news. The bad news first. I'm going to Jerusalem, and there, things won't go so well for me. And I'm going to be killed. But now, the good news. The third day after I am killed, I will be raised from death. Death cannot conquer me! (Matt. 16: 21)

Peter didn't even hear the good news part. He went straight for the bad. And that despite what he knew in his heart, despite what the Spirit had just impressed upon him in terms he could not deny, that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the Living God! What greater knowledge did Peter need in order to trust in Jesus, in order to lay all his fears to rest? But this is the Peter who walked a few steps on the water, and then sank as soon as he saw the waves...

Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. (vs. 22)

I'd always wondered about the vehemence of Christ's response until I read it today.

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men. (vs. 23)

If you deny my crucifixion, my death, then there's no resurrection to follow. No redemption. No life everlasting for anyone. And, focusing on the bad news, it would have been tempting to turn away from Jerusalem, to avoid all that pain and sorrow. That had to be tempting to Jesus; every bit as tempting as those moments when he was starving in the desert, and Satan offered him a little bit of bread, a little bit of unearned fame, a little bit of power... Maybe Jesus was flashing back to that trauma in the wilderness when he remonstrated, "Get thee behind me, Satan...!"

Peter succumbed to the temptation to doubt, to recoil, to be fearful. And that in spite of the marvelous testimony he had just born. The contrast is striking here between Jesus' praise ("Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in Heaven") and Jesus' condemnation ("thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men"). Ouch! It just goes to show, that to have a testimony does not make us perfect. We can know things, we can have seen things and we can have received remarkable witnesses of the Spirit. And we can still falter, we can still waver in our faith.

Jesus' response (in verses 24-26) is to encourage his disciples to move into and through their fear. You're afraid of the cross? I'm not going to deny there is a cross ahead of us. So deny yourselves, and take up your cross and follow me. Let's go through this together. For in losing your life, you will find it.

To take up one's cross is to renounce fear of the consequences. To deny oneself is to deny the ego, to deny that part of us that wants to control. Jesus says, in essence, let go of your need to control. Let go of your fear. Come on, follow me into the darkness, into your fear, and through it, over to the other side.

Where, he reminds his disciples again, there is glory and life everlasting.

For the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then shall he reward every man according to his works. (vs. 27)

Bad news? Good news!

I can relate to Peter here. I've had that experience of receiving a revelation of bad news and good news, and getting so wrapped up in the former I forgot the latter, and stumbled a bit. But life is full of these kinds of opportunities to grow! Faith is that journey that teaches us to receive the message in its fullness, and to find hope in the good news of it at the end, and to not be afraid of the bad in between. It takes patience to walk in faith. It takes patience and trust to get up when we stumble. And in the patience and the trust, we learn the pure love of Christ.

Our Home

2011-11-16T14:10:00.002-06:00

Today is a momentous day for me and Göran. As of today, our home is officially paid off. Our mortgage is paid in full.

The picture was taken in August 1996 when we signed the closing papers. It will be couple of months before we get the nice little piece of paper saying that the property is officially ours. When I scheduled the "pay-off" earlier this week, I was informed that we were paying a $46 fee for the county to re-issue the deed in our names, and that we should be able pick up the new deed at the county registrar's office some time around the new year. Göran is already making plans for a "mortgage burning party" to be held sometime next spring. Y'all are invited!

At a moment like this, it's tempting to go into raptures about "the American Dream." But we live in a neighborhood where a fair number of folks lost their homes a few short years ago, while billionaires were scrambling to make off with their life savings. I have friends and family who were not as lucky as Göran and I were... Who -- in pursuit of "the American Dream" -- took a chance and bought a dream home, only to have things fall apart. An ugly divorce. A lost job. And in the midst of that, trying to sell a home that had lost value in a market gone bust, and losing thousands.

In some larger sense that transcends U.S. law, the land our house stands on isn't ours. We didn't build the house. At best, it and the property it sits on are borrowed. Eventually, we'll pass it on, die, give everything back to wherever it came from. At best, we can only be grateful we have a place to stay, for now.

Göran and I were in the right place at the right time. We bought our house from friends who had bought dirt cheap and obtained grants to renovate, and who -- out of a sense of compassion or equity or whatever -- decided to sell cheap to someone who might not be able to afford a home of their own otherwise. We knew we were blessed. I still consider us more lucky than deserving.

So, we celebrate this moment with a sense of gratitude and hope, and a desire to share the love and sanctuary we've found here with others. If any of you are ever in the neighborhood, drop me a line! Stop by! All are welcome here!

Temple Attendance

2011-11-08T13:20:00.001-06:00

This past Sunday was our Stake Conference. As always, I was grateful to be able to attend; grateful for friends who gave me a ride, and friends who were there to be my surrogate Church family. As is often the case, there was at least some discomfort. Though I guess I've come to see the discomfort as a friend. It is there to help me to avoid slipping into complacency or taking things for granted.

Our temple president spoke about covenants, which he defined (he said, according to the "Greek definition") as a strong commitment through which we come to resemble the one with whom we have made the commitment. I reflected on the attributes of Christ: patience, compassion, sacrifice. I reflected on how I might cultivate those attributes in myself; and on what doing so would reflect about the nature of my relationship with God.

Our mission president spoke, and invited every member of the Stake to "call yourself on a mission." I reflected on my testimony; how it is the greatest gift that I have, and how it is the greatest gift I can share.

Those reflections filled me -- and fill me -- with peace and gratitude.

I found our Stake President's remarks, however, of greatest direct relevance to my own personal situation. He began with an analogy between physical health and spiritual health (he used his efforts to monitor his cholesterol as an example). He then asked us a series of questions, inviting us to ask these questions of ourselves as a way of monitoring our spiritual health. "Do you know God and Christ and do you listen to the Spirit?" was the first question. "Do you sustain the prophets and apostles?" which, he clarified, meant to listen to and apply their teachings in our lives. "Do you keep yourself pure and clean of the world?" "Do you strive to keep the covenants you've made?" He broke it out for us: being open and honest; practicing contrition and repentance; obeying the Word of Wisdom; and so on. This was all basically a reiteration of the temple president's message.

He reminded us that these were all basically temple worthiness questions, and he followed this series of questions with an admonition: Go to the temple frequently, because the temple is a place where you can find healing and revelation.

I determined to go to the temple. I know I can't go inside the temple. As long as I remain committed to my spouse, I won't be able to be baptized or receive a recommend. But I can at least go to the temple. I can pray and seek healing and revelation outside its walls if I can't inside.

He ended his talk with two more questions: "Are you willing to stand as a witness of Christ?" (He quoted Mosiah 18: 8-9.) And, "Are you willing to be an example?" And he followed those two questions by reiterating our mission president's message with the admonition: "Share the Gospel."

*****

The next morning, I knew I wanted to go to the temple that day. I texted a friend of mine, a member of my family home evening group. I told him what I wanted to do, and asked him if he would join me. Synchronicity! S. too had gone to his Stake Conference the previous day -- in the nearby St. Paul Stake. And he had had a similar revelation. Like me, he currently does not have a temple recommend. Unlike me, he is currently a member of the Church, and has been working with his bishop and is confident of his ability to get a recommend soon. But as of yesterday, neither of us could enter the temple. But we both wanted to go to the temple.

So I rented an "hour car" around lunch time, and picked S. up from work. We brought sack lunches with us. When we arrived at the temple, there was no one there. No cars in the parking lot. There was a person outside the temple, cleaning the windows. I parked the car so we could look at the temple while we ate. My eyes were drawn to the gleaming statue of the Angel Moroni on the steeple. We prayed together and we talked. After we had finished eating, we got out of the car and walked around the temple. The air was cool -- the forecast had predicted snow flurries, though we never got them. But it wasn't too cool for us to sit down on a stone bench outside the temple and share our testimonies of Jesus Christ and of his Church with one another.

*****

I have a little pocket charm. Göran bought it for me years ago as a souvenir from a trip he made to northern Minnesota. It's a little clear glass sun symbol that shimmers and reflects rainbow colors in the sunlight. I like to carry it around with me as a reminder of Göran's love for me, but also as a reminder of the Kingdom of glory that is likened to the glory of the sun. Its translucence reminds me of how I want to be a channel of light myself; how I want my soul to be pure and clean so that the light of Christ can shine through it.

The temple is like that to me as well. It is a place where I can go and be reminded of what I yearn for, and what I want to be. It is a kind of touchstone to me. I want to go there often.

It was such a blessing to be able to worship last September inside the Kirtland Temple. I look forward to the time when I can worship inside other temples of the Restoration as well. But for now, I was grateful for the presence of the temple -- a place that has been consecrated by the power of God, and dedicated to the building of God's kingdom -- where I could go to be inspired and be reminded and feel the Spirit and have my testimony strengthened.

*****

Yesterday morning, before deciding I was going to go to the temple, I began reading the Gospel of Matthew. I was fascinated by the genealogy presented in verses 1-17. There are a lot of very interesting things about that genealogy (the fact that it is a catalog of sinners as well as saints, not the least interesting of them). But what interested me most that particular morning was the fact that Matthew presented the genealogy not of Mary but of Joseph. Matthew goes on to emphasize in the ensuing narrative that Joseph is not Jesus' father by blood lineage. But Joseph's genealogy is presented as "the book of the generation of Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham".
In the Annotated Scholar's Version of Matthew, there's a note appended to verse 25, emphasizing that when Joseph gave the name "Jesus" to the child (in accordance with angelic instructions), the "act of naming the child is tantamount to adoption, claiming the child as his own. Thus, Jesus is the legal son of Joseph."

This somehow gave me hope. It reminded me that in the Kingdom of God, blood does not make a family. Faith and action do.

So I prayed for my family at the temple, as I did the first time I visited the temple a few years ago, with Göran and Glen.

*****

My testimony doesn't depend on things in my life being perfect. It doesn't depend on the world being a perfect place to live. It doesn't depend on the Church or its members or leaders being perfect. It certainly doesn't depend on me being perfect.

When our family home evening group met last month, I think I felt inspired to say something along the lines of, "The Church can only be as perfect as its most imperfect member." And my brothers both giggled a bit at that saying, and J. said, "Well, knowing myself, that's not very perfect." And S. and I both echoed his sentiment with hearty Amens in relation to ourselves. If we desire to be forgiven, we must forgive. Or, in order to receive forgiveness, we must cultivate an awareness of our need to be forgiven. As soon as we are aware of our own sins, the need to judge dissipates, and the hunger for communion increases.

My testimony is an invisible touchstone, like my pocket sun charm, like the temple, pointing me in the right direction. Pointing me in the direction of faith and repentance, hope and steadfastness, love and labor.

The temple is at its best a symbol of the perfection of the Kingdom, in advance of our actual perfection. Patience and love are the virtues that will enable us to eventually realize that perfection.

And Should I Die Before I Wake...

2011-11-04T11:30:00.001-05:00

Today I had my annual physical.

I always very much enjoy these, partly because I use it as an occasion for reflection, not just on my state of physical health but on my state of spiritual health as well. I like that my doctor asks me very broad questions -- about how things are going at home, with my spouse and our foster son, my activities, my diet, my emotional state. He asks me about eating enough veggies and brushing my teeth and wearing seat belts and bike helmets. He asks me about sex. He wants to know how I feel about myself, my sense of self-worth. I like that he's not just taking blood and urine and feeling my lymph nodes, but that he sees my health as being interconnected with everything I do and am in life.

It's the closest I get to anything like a worthiness interview. As I reflected on the questions my doctor asked me, I found me asking myself some worthiness-type questions. I found myself reflecting on my state of spiritual health. Lately I have found myself wishing I could have formal Church worthiness interviews. If an annual or bi-annual physical is a good idea, why not an annual or bi-annual spiritual? I guess it's assumed -- at least from the point of view of Church policy -- that because I am in a committed same-sex relationship there's no point in ever checking in on my state of spiritual welfare. (It's hard to avoid feeling like that's a statement that I'm hopeless/worthless/not worth the time and trouble, as long as I'm in a same-sex relationship? As a point of spiritual health, I try not to dwell on thoughts like that.) But that certainly puts it on me to conduct regular self-exams, I guess.

But I digress...

Today, as the nurse was taking blood and urine samples, she asked me if I had a written "Health Care Directive." I asked her what this was, and she said it was a written statement about what kind of treatment I would like in the event that I am unconscious or unable to communicate or unable to make decisions for myself.

I told her that, no, I didn't have a written Health Care Directive.

She asked me if I'd like more information about preparing one, and I said I did. So now I'm looking at this form that asks a bunch of really hard questions.

Now, part of the problem answering these questions is that I would be basing my answers on a lot of suppositions about an experience that I simply have never had. It's fine and good for me to say now, "If I have a terminal illness, I don't want you to take any measures to revive me if I have a heart attack." I can say that now, but how can I possibly know that's how I will feel when I'm actually in that situation? Wouldn't it be possible -- likely even! -- that no matter how I actually feel about this in some vague philosophical sense now, that once I'm actually in that situation I might have a completely different perspective of the problem, and change my mind?

I remember having conversations with my mom about this when I was a kid. My mom was a nurse for many years, and a very good one. She actually worked in a kid's terminal ward at one point. And she's witnessed people of all ages passing away. And so I felt like she had some special insight about this. From my mom I've inherited the conviction that when God is ready for me to die, there are no special measures that anyone will be able to take to prevent me from dying. I will die. But in the meantime, if God has put the knowledge and means at our disposal to preserve life, we should take them no matter what.

I also spent a fair amount of time with my grandmother in the last years of her life. Grandma lived to what we generally think of as extreme old age. She died at the age of 102. And even though it was difficult for her to communicate toward the end, the time I spent with her was a gift. Her life was a gift to her whole family, right up until the very end. And I came away from that feeling that life is always a good thing, even under diminished circumstances.

But then, I wasn't in Grandma's shoes. I wasn't on a feeding tube and oxygen. I know it was extremely difficult for her. I know she missed Grandpa, and was really anxious to rejoin him on the other side of the veil. And I know how important physical activity and exercise were to her, and how difficult it was for her in those last months when she couldn't even walk. She was getting lung infections from the feeding tube, and I know at least one family member who thought we should have taken her off it.

I don't know.

I'll be thinking about these questions in the next days and weeks, and probably putting together a written health directive. I'm curious if others have thought about this, and if any of you have any ideas... I'm open here, trying to figure things out. Any insights that anyone has would be much appreciated...

Of Veils and Tests

2011-10-21T12:44:00.001-05:00

I once had an interesting philosophical discussion with my brother about the nature of moral tests.

I have, over the years, come to the conclusion that many of the moral tests we face here in this life are tests in which God deliberately keeps us in the dark about certain things, to see how we will respond if we think things are a certain way.

I've expressed this idea to my brother, a philosopher who teaches at University of California Riverside, and he has taken issue with me. He told me that without complete disclosure, without full knowledge of the conditions of a moral test, we cannot truly be tested. God will judge us and judge our moral decisions based on what we knew at the time that we were being tested.

Now, I like my brother's idea. It certainly appeals to my sense of justice. It doesn't seem fair that we should be judged on the basis of decisions that we made without complete knowledge. Or if we are judged, our lack of knowledge when we made those decisions needs to be taken into account. It needs to mitigate the final results of the judgment.

Nevertheless... While I believe there certainly are the kinds of moral tests my brother speaks of in this life, I cling to the nagging suspicion that tests of this sort are actually fairly rare. My reasons for insisting that God tests us by keeping us in the dark about certain key things and watching to see how we behave are philosophical, experiential and scriptural.

My philosophical reason for believing this is based on the simple fact that the human condition is governed by ignorance. Compare, first of all, the total knowledge of any one individual -- even a very smart and well-educated individual -- to the sum total of human knowledge. Take everything that person thinks he or she knows, and filter out all misinformation. That person will know only the smallest fraction of everything it is humanly possible to know, everything that human beings, collectively as a race, know. Now compare the sum total, the collective knowledge of all human beings who have ever lived, everything that is gathered in every book that has ever been written, everything that's stored somewhere on the Internet (filter out all the misinformation! which probably ends up deleting something like 99%), and then compare it to the sum total of everything that can be known. All truth that is out there in the Universe to know, past, present and future. (This is the D&C 93: 24 definition of "truth.") If we believe in an omniscient God, that would be, basically, everything that God knows. And I think we must agree that the collective knowledge of humanity is only a small fraction of the truth of all things. So any given individual -- the person who is making all important moral decisions in life, the person who is being tested -- is making every single moral decision of any consequence based on the tiniest fraction of the tiniest fraction of the truth. From a purely philosophical perspective, one must conclude that human beings as decision-makers decide mostly in the dark.

You might argue, Ah, but the moral decisions that I make are of limited scope! They are limited to things and people and interactions that are well within the scope of my knowledge, no matter how limited that knowledge may, in the grand scheme of things, be. Yes, But... I would argue that there are certain things that we don't know, that we can't know, that have a huge impact on moral decisions even of limited scope. For example, what happens to me after I die? What do I know of this? My brother's favorite philosopher, Heidegger, has had a lot to say about what we can and cannot know of this, and of the impact that this lack of knowledge has on moral decisions. If I knew that my life would completely end at death, if I knew that there was no part of me that continued on, no immortal soul, that would completely change how I behave in fundamental ways, across the board. The same is true of how it would change my moral choices if I knew that there was life after death, if I knew my soul was eternal, if I knew there would be some kind of final judgment before the throne of Christ. Most people act as if they know, but they in fact don't know. So the moral test is conducted in conditions of ignorance.

Is it that part of the moral test involves seeing which set of unproven assumptions we are willing to go on? Is it to allow us to set the terms of our own test...? But I digress...

My experiential reason for believing this is simply because of what I know about my own moral decisions. I know at some fundamental level that I go through life making the bulk of my decisions based on gut feelings about things. I often discover that things I thought I knew, that played an important role in making some past decision of considerable weight were actually just plain wrong. I am often forced to make a decision quickly because there's some time limit built into the decision, and I am often in a situation in which a decision that must be made now would be much easier if I had certain facts at my disposal, and despite my best efforts to obtain those facts, I don't have them, and so... I make a decision. Based on a guess about what those all important facts are or how they will unfold to me at some future time. I'm often aware that information I would like to have, I simply cannot obtain. And so I must intuit, and go from there.

My experience, in other words, seems to confirm what I posit philosophically... That I am a being of limited knowledge and limited intelligence, who am forced to make decisions very much in the dark about things of ultimate relevance to my decisions.

I have also observed that, while I often make decisions in the dark, the consequence of any decision I make is to obtain more light. I've learned that life decisions are very often a kind of trial and error process. And it is possible to look at life as something whose end goal is, after all, not to judge us, but to educate us. So every decision, bad or good, that I make is, well, all good. It's all part of the process of getting more and more hands-on learning. But I digress again... (or do I?)

Finally, there are my scriptural reasons for believing this. And here I've already somewhat laid the groundwork for this by pointing out that philosophically we posit that we live mostly in the dark, but the scriptures purport to be a source of divinely inspired light. From a philosophical point of view, I might ask, "But how can I know that the scriptures are what they purport to be? How can I know they are true?" I'll leave that weighty philosophical question aside for the moment, and say that by my own process I've come to accept the scriptures as trustworthy.

LDS scriptures in particular present a picture of the human condition in which the state of darkness we posit philosophically and confirm experientially was intended by God. According to the scriptural account of mortal life, we all entered this life by way of a veil of forgetfulness. And we are separated from ultimate knowledge of God and eternity by a veil that -- though occasionally briefly parted -- for the most part remains firmly in place. God purposely set it up this way. God purposely thought that the best way to test us would be to see what we do and how we react when knowledge of ultimate truth is veiled from us.

Now we can choose to try to live close to the veil. That is generally what I try to do. I've had some really remarkable spiritual experiences. I've experienced at least a partial parting of the veil on numerous occasions. I can say, based on those experiences, that there is a different state of awareness when we are in the midst of experiencing that parting of the veil than there is before or after the parting. In the midst of that experience of the divine, it is like dwelling in pure light. There is nothing like it. It is life-changing. After the experience is over, we are in darkness again. We still have the memory of the light; of how it made us feel, of how it transformed our awareness, and of how it transformed us. But in the absence of that experience, we are forced to live off of its memory. We are plunged into the darkness again, and are forced to make our way in the dark. So the parting of the veil doesn't alleviate us of the basic conditions of mortal life. We still need to struggle with doubt and darkness. And this is why it is possible to see and experience incredible things, and to eventually turn away from what we've experienced. We can lose our grace. We can lose our testimonies. Unless we continue in prayer, faith, good works and repentance.

*****

Now, I think this is generally a disquieting thing to reflect on. It requires humility of us. Humility as in: I don't know, so I won't judge you. Just do the best you can do. I will try to do the best that I can do. We're all doing the best we can here, under difficult circumstances.

I find there's a natural human tendency to want to deny that there are important things that we need to know that we just don't or can't. There's a natural human tendency to want to deny that we could well be wrong about everything that matters, everything that's important. To acknowledge that possibility, forces us to live in a certain way that, I think, is more gentle, is more careful, is more compassionate. But we generally prefer certainty (and the arrogance that comes with it).

So Mormons -- despite what our scriptures teach us about the conditions of mortality -- have a tendency to want to insist that we of course know all the answers. And if we personally don't have a direct pipeline to God, our leaders do. "Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets," etc. The typical exegesis of this Amos text goes: "We have living prophets, so we know all of God's secrets, if we just do exactly what they tell us." Well, OK. But I think another valid exegesis of this is to confirm what I've said about living close to the veil. Yes, God parts the veil for us occasionally. But this doesn't change the fundamental conditions of the test of mortality. Making decisions in uncertainty.

I was reading this morning in the Book of Mark, chapter 6. And there was a particular turn of phrase that caught me, in verses 51-52. These verses were speaking of the twelve, and they say: "they were sore amazed in themselves beyond measure, and wondered. For they considered not the miracle of the loaves: for their heart was hardened." In other words, even though the twelve had -- just the previous day! -- experienced the miracle of the loaves and the fishes, they had already forgotten, or perhaps even never understood, its significance. Now the twelve were Christ's chosen leaders, the leaders of his Church, and here is as clear a statement as any that even they did not fully understand something crucial about Christ's nature and about his mission.

What particularly intrigued me though was the turn of phrase, "their heart was hardened," which reminds me of the story of Moses and Pharaoh, and that disquieting phrase repeated several times in Exodus that "the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart." There are definitely texts in the Old Testament as well as the New that suggest that God sometimes keeps certain information from us in order to accomplish some grander purpose. God wanted to demonstrate that it was by his power, and his power alone, that the children of Israel were freed from slavery in Egypt. So God hardened Pharaoh's heart, so that Pharaoh would make things as difficult as possible. Only then would the conditions be right for God to liberate the children of Israel in a way that they always and forever would acknowledge that it was God and God alone who freed them.

Similarly, Christ's true nature and his true mission seem to have been veiled from the minds and hearts of the apostles. There were momentary partings of the veil, as when Peter, James and John witnessed the transfiguration. But even these temporary partings eventually faded into the uncertainty of memory. The twelve were genuinely shocked, overwhelmed, and surprised when Christ appeared to them alive and resplendent, three days after they had buried him in the tomb.

*****

I have often had a discussion with other Mohos about the challenges of being gay and Mormon. I have stated elsewhere, and I'll state here again, that I've had numerous very powerful spiritual experiences in which I have plead with God to help me understand why I am gay and how that fits into his plan. And I've received personal revelations on this score that have helped ground me in my path. They haven't answered all my questions; nor do they alleviate me of the responsibility of struggling in the dark, so to speak. But I do feel certain that my gayness is an integral part of my eternal being; that it is a natural and very good part of who I am, and that my relationship with my husband Göran is blessed by God; and that someday, we will all have a full understanding of how my gayness and my family fit into the grand scheme of things. This has been of great comfort to me.

And I am not the only one who has had these kinds of experiences. Over the years, I have been able to connect with other gay LDS -- and even non-LDS -- who have had similar spiritual experiences.

But then comes the question: If we know this, how is it our leaders don't know? How come the Church still treats us as unclean? How come the Church says that our homosexuality is a mortal affliction that will somehow evaporate in the next life, so we need to remain alone, celibate and single in this life to avoid the pollution that comes from homosexual relationships? How can the Church's official teaching and understanding be so at odds with our experience? And if I have a testimony, how am I supposed to deal with this contradiction?

All I can say is that scripturally, there is precedent for the Lord veiling our understanding in a variety of ways. Just as the Lord had a purpose in veiling his true identity and mission from the twelve until he was ready to fully reveal it after his resurrection, the Lord, I believe, has a purpose in veiling understanding of this aspect of human sexuality from the Church until such time as we -- collectively -- are ready to receive a full understanding of it.

In the meantime, lives are in the balance. Individual gay men and lesbians have lost their lives over this -- are losing their lives over this -- because of the intense pain and uncertainty created by the Church's condemnation of something that feels not at all like a temporary, mortal "affliction" to us, but like a core and good and key part of who we are. So we have an immediate need for understanding and knowledge on this. And I think that if we try to live "close to the veil," if we humbly seek understanding from the Lord on this, we will receive what we need in order to live and thrive and fulfill whatever missions the Lord has individually for us to fulfill. So I guess that's a way of trying to resolve the contradiction.

Could I be wrong about this? Well, part of the whole point of this essay is that, yes, absolutely I could be! Nothing, no personal revelation certainly, could alleviate me of the fundamental conditions of the tests of mortality, which involves walking mostly in darkness by faith. I'm doing the best I can to find as much light as I can and to live by it. And I find that the love and the light I have experienced in my relationship with my husband and in being true to him and caring for him nurture hope and faith and patience in me. And I find that the love and the light I experience at Church and in staying as true as I can to the Gospel also open things up in my life, they help me to be a better, more loving, more patient person overall. So I can say that it feels right to affirm both my testimony of the Gospel and my relationship with my husband together, simultaneously, as part of a whole. But I may yet learn many great and amazing things that will totally change my perception of everything. So I have to learn to accept my limitations with some humility and openness and patience and trust that God will unveil things to us in a way that will work toward some ultimate good.

A Rabbi Talks with Jesus, and a Mormon Christian Reflects on "Brother Joseph"

2011-10-16T10:12:00.000-05:00

My fairy god daughter Daphne had to write a report based, at least in part, on her reading of this wonderful little book by Rabbi Jacob Neusner, A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (Doubleday, 1993). After reading her thoughtful paper, she allowed me to borrow the book. It's a quick read. I was able to finish it in about three sittings of about an hour per sitting (about as long as it takes me to read one of Original Mohomie's blog entries).

Rabbi Neusner, in a way that is perhaps a model of respectfulness, carries on a conversation with the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. He argues with Jesus, specifically about the Sermon on the Mount. For the rabbi, argument is a high form of respect, a form of honor. Rabbi Neusner honors Jesus by arguing with him. He takes Jesus seriously enough to think deeply about what he has to say, and to reflect on the implications of what Jesus has to say for him and his family and his nation. And ultimately the rabbi disagrees with Jesus. He explains to Jesus why, after all, he will not follow him, why he chooses instead to let Jesus go his way, while he returns home to his wife, children, dog, and garden, and goes on with his life as he had lived it before. Rabbi Neusner hopes that at least one effect of this encounter is that it will encourage Jews to be better Jews and Christians to be better Christians. He hopes for greater respect between Christians and Jews. But he does not expect ever to become a Christian.

I encourage folks to read this book. It seems timely, especially for Mormons, given that high profile Christian leaders are accusing us of belonging to a "cult." I suppose we're long used to the slur that we are not "Christian," or rather, the denial that we are "Christian" being used as a slur. (It's one thing to acknowledge that Mormons are not Christians in the same way as Protestants and Catholics, and another thing to defame us by denying us the Christian label we apply to ourselves.) I think Rabbi Neusner's book is a model for how people of differing beliefs and values can talk to one another about their differences.

The rabbi's argument hinges on Jesus' statement, in the Sermon on the Mount, that he came "not to abolish [the Law and the Prophets] but to fulfill them." Rabbi Neusner thinks that Jesus does in fact abolish some fairly important aspects of the Law and the Prophets (the Torah). Jesus' teaching, he argues, has no place in it for the "we" encompassed in the revelation of the Law on Mount Sinai. Jesus' morality, he argues, is a too-individualistic morality of the heart. It includes teachings that are potentially profoundly anti-social ("do not think that I have come to bring peace on earth..."). His abolition of the holiness code, the rabbi argues, makes irrecoverable any sort of sacred "now" in a Kingdom of God on earth. Yes, he accuses Jesus of other-worldliness, of looking too much forward to a Kingdom of Heaven after death, rather than a this-worldly Kingdom of holiness. ("Holiness" for the rabbi means emulation of God in the here and now.)

For me, however, the most electrifying part of Rabbi Neusner's argument came when he insisted that it is ultimately impossible to separate any evaluation of Jesus' theological positions from Jesus' claim to divinity. More shocking, the rabbi came to this conclusion through a close reading of the Sermon on the Mount. There has been a tendency, the rabbi acknowledged, to want to separate "the historical Jesus" from the dogma of the Church. Many people -- Jewish and liberal Christian alike -- hold the view that Jesus must obviously have been a "great moral teacher," but that he could never have actually made any claim to divinity. The apostle Paul is accused, in this account of Christian history, of inventing the expiatory atonement theology that required making Jesus into a God. Jesus himself would never have made such claims.

But Rabbi Neusner argues that if you look very closely at what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount you cannot conclude anything different than that Jesus is putting himself above the Torah. The rabbi makes some very close comparisons of what Jesus says to some of the great commentary on the Torah from the Mishnah and the Talmud, and he acknowledges that much of what Jesus says sounds very much like what you would expect from a classical teacher of the Torah. But there are points where Jesus makes critical departures from the Torah, departures that, he argues, undermine its integrity as a divine commandment. And it is at those very junctures where Jesus places himself at the center of any Christian moral system. Without a divine Jesus, there is no sense in which Jesus could possibly have come to "fulfill" the Law and the Prophets. Without a divine Jesus, the rabbi essentially argues, Christian morality comes apart at the seams; and it certainly can make no claim on the loyalty of Jews, who must reject Jesus in favor of the Torah.

This is simultaneously the boldest and most humble part of Rabbi Neusner's argument. He never anywhere impugns Christians' belief in the divinity of Christ. To the contrary, he says in essence, if this is what you believe, you have no choice but to follow Jesus' teaching, even -- or especially -- where it contradicts the Torah. But, he simultaneously points out, it is impossible to gloss over the significant differences that separate Jewish and Christian moral teaching and theology. At some point, Jew or Christian, in evaluating the claims of Christianity you must decide what you think about the person of Jesus Christ, and that will make the difference between whether you "follow Jesus" or go some other way.

I found these arguments particularly relevant to the debate over whether Mormons are Christians. A lot of that debate hinges on Mormons' particular beliefs about the nature of man and the nature of God, and whether Mormons believe in Christ's divinity in the same way as Nicene (Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox) Christians. By Rabbi Neusner's criteria, I think it is impossible to conclude anything but that Mormons are indeed Christians, and very solid Christians at that. That's a conclusion I find myself startled to accept. I've always been happy to concede that Mormons, if they were Christians, were not Christians in the same way as other Christians. (I've never particularly worried if other Christians thought we should be excommunicated from the family of "Christian" communions.) But from the point of view of Judaism, from the point of view of the question, "Do you see Jesus as greater than the Torah, and do you subordinate all other moral considerations to the imperative of following Jesus?" Mormons most definitely are Christians in no fundamentally different sense from anyone else who claims that label.

At the same time, just as the person of Jesus forms a kind of crossroads dividing devout Jews from devout Christians, the person of Joseph Smith, Jr. becomes a similar kind of crossroads dividing Mormon Christians from every other kind of Christian. Either Christ was divine, along with all that implies, or he was not, and there's no meaningful Christian "system" if he wasn't. Either Joseph Smith was a prophet, or he was not. And just as many students of Christian history, embarrassed by claims of Jesus' divinity have tried to make Christ a "great moral teacher," so many students of Mormon history, embarrassed by Joseph Smith's claim to be a prophet, have tried to make the prophet Joseph into a great "theological innovator," or a "moral reformer" who sought to reframe Christian theology for American modernity. But, I would argue, there's no meaningful Mormon "system" if the prophet Joseph did not literally speak with and receive authority from God. "Mormonism" comes apart at the seams if Joseph Smith was just a theological innovator or reformer.

When I attended the Affirmation Convention in Kirtland, Ohio, I was particularly intrigued by a lecture I heard there on Mormon history delivered by Community of Christ historian John Hamer. His lecture boiled down, I think, to the notion that different branches of the "Mormon movement" could be accounted for in relation to their acceptance of successive revelations of the Prophet Joseph. At the very core of Mormon belief, you have "Restorationism," the idea of the need to "restore" the "primitive," ancient Church of Jesus Christ, as established by Christ himself in the meridian of time. At this level, Mormons look very similar in their belief to other radical "restorationist" Christians (like the Campbellites or certain kinds of Baptists). Acceptance of the Book of Mormon and of the divine calling of Joseph Smith is what separates "Mormons" from other restorationists. On the other hand, the "Nauvoo theology" -- polygamy, theocracy, temple sealing, and the King Follett theology regarding the divinity inherent in human nature -- is what separates Latter-day Saints from the Community of Christ. The Community of Christ was ultimately constituted of those Mormon communities that rejected Brigham Young's leadership; and the main bone of contention in relation to Young's leadership was the Nauvoo theology. (It's why Emma Smith ultimately aligned herself with the "Reorganization"... She never could reconcile herself to her husband's polygamous teaching.)

This is why, ultimately, as much respect as I have for the Community of Christ, as grateful to them as I am for their compassionate moves toward greater inclusion of GLBT folks, as much as I love individual members of the Community of Christ, and as much as I honor their testimonies and their profoundly Christian commitments, I can't see myself joining the Community of Christ. For me, there's no making sense of Joseph Smith's calling as a prophet without coming to full terms with the Nauvoo theology he revealed. And at that crossroads that divides me from other Christians -- at that all-important question regarding the divine calling of Joseph Smith the prophet -- I am firmly decided on the point that Joseph Smith was indeed a prophet of God, with all that that implies. For all my human frailty and sin, and for whatever judgment I may come under to acknowledge it, I cannot retreat from the conviction at the core of my being that Joseph Smith was a revealer of divine truth and a restorer of divine priesthood. I must come to terms with that in all its fullness, let the chips fall where they may, even if to do so ultimately condemns me.

Whatever conflicting emotions I may have about this, oddly, the one emotion that comes to the fore is gratitude. I am thankful to know what I know, to know it with every fiber of my being.

I cannot possibly judge or condemn others for what they believe or do not believe. I cannot speak for what they know or the ways in which their consciences may hold them responsible to that knowledge. It is too awesome a responsibility for me simply to be obedient to my own conscience to try to account for anyone else's. And my conscience commands me to love others completely and unconditionally, to seek their happiness and welfare as I would my own. So I am grateful to people of conscience everywhere. Rabbi Neusner, thank you. My Christian friends who think I'm slightly crazy for being Mormon but love me anyway, thank you. My friends in the Community of Christ who extend a loving welcome to me as a gay man and as a "Mormon," thank you. My LDS brothers and sisters who don't know what to make of me as a gay man, but who love me and are willing to wrestle with me and on my behalf, thank you.

Expecting... Again

2011-10-13T09:03:00.000-05:00

Saturday was my birthday. Göran baked me an incredible, super fantastic chocolate chocolate chocolate cake. His gift to me was a love story, Habibi, by Craig Thompson, a book I couldn't put down until I had read it cover to cover. I want to read it again... and again... It is so full of wonderful, incredible stuff, and taught me so much about the gift of love Göran and I share, and my responsibility to everyone else I share this beautiful planet with, and what it means to be a child of God and to be human.

Glen has been thriving in college. He's been living independently for a little over a year now, and is doing so well. On my birthday, Göran and Glen and I had a great time at a nearby apple orchard, going for a hay ride, eating cider brats and apple pie, visiting the petting zoo, getting bitten by little black gnats, and successfully avoiding any actual apple picking. We are so proud of Glen. I love him and miss having him around the house, though we are usually able to spend time with him every week or two, and I find I don't cry when I see little reminders of him around the house quite so often as I did in the months just after he moved out!

We had promised Glen that we wouldn't take in any new foster kids for at least a year, until we were sure that he was doing well and successfully living on his own. We wanted his bedroom to be available in case he needed it! We're satisfied now that he's well on the road to independent living. (Glen insists he doesn't want to subject himself to our rules again!) So last night, we met with a social worker for about an hour and a half to fill out paper work for our foster care licensing renewal, and we are finally actively looking for a new placement again.

I feel a great sense of peace about this. In the month of November, we will finish paying off our house. We will own it free and clear. We have been blessed with material prosperity and good health and a loving relationship. So it would seem supremely ungrateful not to share that with another child in need.

We're expecting again!

Obedience as Principle of Creation

2011-10-04T08:33:00.004-05:00

Lately I've been reading the Book of Abraham, and a few verses particularly struck me as I read the fourth chapter this morning:

And the Gods watched those things which they had ordered until they obeyed....

And the Gods saw that they would be obeyed, and that their plan was good....

And the Gods organized the earth to bring forth the beasts after their kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after its kind; and the Gods saw they would obey....

And the Gods said: We will do everything that we have said, and organize them; and behold, they shall be very obedient. (Abraham 4: 18, 21, 25 & 31)

This all brings me back to a Sunday School lesson taught by a member of our Stake Presidency years back, that made a profound impression on me. He was using D&C 121 as the text, particularly a phrase in verse 46: "and without compulsory means it shall flow unto thee forever and ever."

Unfortunately, the worldly understanding of the principle of obedience has become imbricated with the notion of compulsion, force. Worldly governments coerce or force obedience with armies, police forces, jails, torture and corporal/capital punishment. But that is a satanic principle. (Something that the Book of Moses develops, in chapter 4:1-4.)

The idea of obedience in itself, in its purity, is actually an expression or manifestation of the principle of freedom. The concept of obedience requires the possibility that the one obeying may go a different way than to obey. When we obey, we willingly collaborate out of trust and love. In this account of creation in the Book of Abraham, we see creation as a kind of divine dance. The gods (it's a collective endeavor! one in which we participated!) say, "OK, elements, let's do this!" Then they watch (!), as it's the elements' turn to respond. The elements obey; they join in the dance. They move, they coalesce, they cooperate! And marvelous things happen!

In my practice of yoga, I've learned that a similar principle operates within my body. My mind says, "Move! Hold! Breathe!" And then it watches, to see if my body will obey! Sometimes it does so more perfectly than others. Obedience takes practice.

This life is that wonderful opportunity for us to develop the discipline that enables us to join the divine dance. God calls to us out of a deep hunger to create joy. "This is my work and my glory—to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man [and woman!]" (Moses 1: 39). "Adam [and Eve] fell that men [and women!] might be; and men [and women!] are, that they might have joy" (2 Nephi 2: 25).

Yes, we make mistakes! Yes, we frequently fail miserably and fall flat on our faces! (That's happened to me a couple of times in yoga class!) This life is our chance to get back up and try again! Keep trying until we get it! Until we enter into the dance of joy that the gods -- that our Heavenly Parents -- have invited us into!

Choices and Relationships

2011-10-03T09:43:00.007-05:00

Recently, the committed relationship of two friends of ours came to an end after 15 years. This morning, in my email in-box was a message from another good friend, announcing the end of his relationship of 3½ years. Earlier in the weekend, a friend of mine texted me to let me know that a relationship of several months was now over. Over the years, we've had many friends who've gone through break-ups or divorces. Sometimes both partners in the relationship have been friends of ours, and we've had to negotiate the challenges of preserving our friendships with each, even as their relationship with each other ends.

Whenever this has happened before, I've observed mixed emotions. The anguish of loss is almost always accompanied by relief that a difficult -- perhaps impossible -- situation is finally coming to an end. People wrestle with the hopes and aspirations they had for the relationship at one point or another -- usually including the hope that it might have been a "forever" relationship -- versus the recognition of the ways this particular relationship fell short of that aspiration. There's usually a kind of grieving that accompanies this recognition. Sometimes the grieving includes cynicism about relationships in general; sometimes it includes shame and feelings of guilt or inadequacy.

The truth almost always lies at some paradoxical intersection of the various conflicting emotions. It is possible that a relationship simultaneously facilitated growth (in some areas) and stagnation (in others). In any relationship, we are (with rare exceptions) both the victims of bad choices made by our partner, and the perpetrator of mistakes that harmed our partner and us and the relationship. (It's seldom useful to try to figure out how much we are the former vs. the latter.) No relationship is predestined to end. Any relationship can be preserved if both partners are willing to make the requisite shifts in perspective and to act on their shifted perspectives. At the same time, no relationship is required to last. Ultimately, a relationship begins or aborts, grows or fades, endures or ends based upon the interrelated choices of two people. We choose what we want, and consciously or unconsciously we go for it, with consequences.

It should go without saying that no matter how committed one partner is to a relationship, a relationship is only possible if both are committed.

Is a relationship the be all and end all of existence? I guess the answer to that question always, always depends on the person answering it. Relationships always have the value that we invest in them. They can be of eternal significance, of incalculable worth, capable of rewarding any effort to preserve and nurture them. Or they can be of contingent worth, mere temporary stepping stones on the much greater journey of self-discovery, needing to be let go once we have outgrown their usefulness. Or they can (paradoxically) be both.

I think if a couple manages to live long enough together, they actually experience several different relationships with each other. The relationship I have with Göran, of which we recently celebrated the 18th anniversary, has actually been at least four different relationships that I can name. In a very real sense, in order for us to stay together, we've periodically had to let go of an existing relationship, renegotiate, and accept the terms of a new relationship. We've had to learn to accept that as time went on, we grew and became different people, and we had to be willing to enter into a relationship with that "new" person.

The different relationships Göran and I have had have included: (1) the passionate, idealized, romantic relationship of our early years; (2) the "shared yoke," the trials and difficulties and challenges we somehow managed to support each other through once the blush of romance faded (working through my depression and unemployment; his family and identity issues); and (3) the time of trial as our relationship reached "middle age," as each of our faults and inadequacies became increasingly apparent to the other, our illusions about each other and ourselves and the relationship were shattered or withered, and we had to decide, with eyes fully open, "Do I still love this person?" (Or, more importantly, "Do I feel worthy to be loved?" The questions are interrelated.)

In the third stage, Göran and I have each gone through significant transformations. It is as if our relationship has been a cocoon from which we now emerge as different creatures. He is stronger, more self-confident and assertive. He finally knows who his family are and has answers to questions we've been trying to answer for over a decade. He has a much stronger sense of who he is. And my sins and failings have taught him to be more self-reliant. He is, in many ways, the opposite of what he was when we first met. I, on the other hand, have "discovered religion." I've abandoned many axioms I once accepted as rock solid, and accepted others. I've lost a sense of myself as the center of my own universe. That's part of what confessing God is all about. So in significant ways, we're switching places. I used to be the confident one, he the more dependent; now I'm having to learn the nature of my own dependence, while he spreads his wings. It's not easy!

I believe that in this third stage, we each caught glimpses of what our life missions are. We began to understand what it is we are called to do for the rest of our lives. We increasingly found ourselves in parenting/mentoring relationships with the next generation. And so in the new and fourth stage we are entering, the question becomes, How can we facilitate the other accomplishing his life calling? In a way, this part of the relationship is as perilous as any that came before it. We could easily spin off, putting mission before relationship. Or we could find out how mission and relationship are interconnected. After all, our relationship has always been the home base from which all learning has been made possible before. It's been the framework within which we've each learned who we are by studying ourselves in the mirror of the other.

What if Göran and I had broken it off at the end of relationship (1)? This happens often enough... So many relationships end once the initial electricity goes from ecstatic jolt to modest current. There's still energy flowing, but if you're addicted to the "jolt," you'll pull the plug and go in search of the big charge again. We could have ended it at the end of relationship (2) as well, once we'd made it past some of the early challenges of life and felt like we didn't "need" each other any more. Stage (3) has got to be the hardest. How does a relationship survive when you've become disillusioned with each other? When you've become disillusioned with yourself? I think this is where so many long term relationships end. These are the break-ups that happen after 15-20 years of shared life. And these are perhaps the most painful. But with disillusionment comes truth, so it's hard for me not to get excited about the potential for stage (4). I'm not sure what I would do without the bedrock of affection and shared experience we have after eighteen years together.

If we break off and seek a new relationship, do we pick up where we left off with the new person? Or do we have to start over at stage 1? What do we learn if there is no new person, or rather, if the "new person" is just ourselves?

In the eternal scheme of things, I'm still far too young to answer any of these questions. I suspect the answer will be different for each person and each relationship.

I'm painfully aware of my own inadequacies at the moment. But I am cautiously hopeful that that awareness can be fertile soil for good things.

I'm praying for my friends right now too... Those whose relationships are ending... I pray for them to grieve well and to learn. I pray to be an adequate friend to them. And I am looking to them as teachers too. Whatever becomes of our "relationships," none of us are islands, neither in our singleness nor in our relatedness. Specific relationships are just part of a web of relationality within which we all exist, within which we all learn and grow, and within which we all have a responsibility to nurture and care for one another.

Obedience/Love

2011-09-22T10:38:00.007-05:00

I had a powerful experience yesterday in yoga class.

Anyone familiar with yoga understands that the practice involves putting your body into postures that produce various forms of physical stress. Now there are right ways and wrong ways to do the postures, and often in yoga it's possible to experience added stress because you're doing the posture the wrong way. Instead of finding that place of perfect balance and harmony, you muscle your way through it -- and muscling your way through yoga becomes really exhausting really fast.

Of course, if you do yoga in a classroom setting, as I do, you have instructors who are constantly telling you what to do. Telling you to assume this position or that position, and also giving you pointers, tips on how to do the position right. "Fire up your quads! Lock your hips forward! Pull your belly button in to your spine! Lift your chest! Pull your shoulders back away from your ears!" And so on. (Yoga has taught me that there is power even just in the way we stand -- if we stand a certain way!)

Our instructors are often giving us so many instructions, it is easy to miss some of them. We tend to focus in on one instruction, figuring out how to follow that one instruction, but completely missing another instruction given right along with it. So it seems like every day at yoga I'm learning new things about postures I've already done dozens of times before. I'm learning how a posture I thought I was doing right, I've actually been doing wrong all along. So I'm learning and constantly adjusting. I have to accept that each new yoga class is in a way like starting from scratch.

So yesterday I was in class, and we were doing one of my least favorite postures. And as I was in this posture, sort of suffering and sweating, and praying for it to end, I heard the instructor say, "Release all tension in your arms and your back. Just hold tight with your hands and kick back! Your whole body except your legs should be completely relaxed." I think I'd heard this instruction at least a dozen times before. But now I realized fully for the first time ever, I had never actually followed this instruction. Every time I'd ever done this posture before, I had always tensed my shoulders, my chest, my arms. Now it finally sunk in. Hold tight with my hands, kick my legs hard, and relax everything else. So I did it, and all of a sudden, the posture was completely transformed! My shoulders relaxed and slipped down, and all of a sudden I was breathing fully and easily, and I felt this wave of relief move through my whole body. And I had this wonderful moment of pure illumination when I recognized: I Finally Understand This Posture! Wow!

It was a moment of spiritual illumination too, because I immediately understood the parallel between this experience in yoga and the larger spiritual principle of obedience. I recognized that God gives us commandments because he wants us to be strong and to experience our full potential. The commandments seem hard sometimes. There's lots of them, and we have a tendency to focus on certain ones, and miss other ones that are equally or more important. And so, figuratively speaking, we get into these postures that are extremely difficult. And we're not quite doing it right, so we just muscle our way through in order to make it work, and that hurts even more. But if we keep working at it (and there's no progress without working at it, so even doing it wrong is better than not doing it at all) eventually we have that "Aha!" moment when we realize, there's just that one simple adjustment we need to make, that one thing we need to do, and then all of a sudden everything falls into place. And we find our true power.

Yoga has certain broad principles that can guide its practitioners in getting into that groove, finding just that right posture. For example, in yoga, it is very important to learn how to breathe, and how to focus on breath. Similarly, there are broad principles in the Gospel that can guide us, and help us figure out how to make course corrections: principles such as love, forgiveness, trust, nonjudgment. (Yoga incorporates these principles too!)

The whole purpose of the commandments -- and this is what the Spirit spoke to me in yoga class yesterday -- is to teach us how to love, fully, completely, and without holding anything back. God's whole design for us is to help us become beings of perfect love. Obedience to God's commandments, in some ultimate sense, is the flip side of love.

Now obedience is impossible without trust. We cannot and should not obey someone we do not trust. We won't obey somebody until we are convinced that the person we are obeying loves us and desires our best interests, and also unless we believe that this person knows what he or she is doing. I've developed a level of trust with my yoga instructors that enables me to show up at class every day, and be willing to do some pretty difficult, physically stressful stuff, just because someone tells me to do this or do that. And my trust has been rewarded with strength and a feeling of physical well being.

So I understand how those of us who have been deeply wounded by the Church (and I have been deeply wounded too!) might be afraid of the Church. If we experienced grievous wrongs, it is natural to want to put some distance between ourselves and those who have wronged us, and then to want to stay away. Maybe some of those wounds can never heal in our life times. So maybe some of us GLBT folks who grew up in the Church and came of age in the 60s, 70s and 80s will never be able to experience sufficient trust to go back. Trust can be stretched pretty far, but once it is broken, sometimes it is impossible to restore no matter how hard one tries. So I understand why so many of my generation find it difficult if not impossible to imagine any sort of a positive relationship with the Church.

Some of us feel similarly betrayed by God. Though I would argue that it was never God who betrayed any of us, but rather a false image of God that was presented to us by fallible people.

The principle remains: in order to progress into the state of perfect love we all aspire to, we need to learn obedience. Obedience is a very, very good thing, and can help us to learn and grow in extraordinary ways. It can be a golden road to spiritual growth. If you have found the iron rod of the Spirit leading you through the mists of darkness, then all that remains is to listen to that, and to trust it and obey it. Obedience to God first and foremost outweighs all other kinds of obedience. Though I believe that obedience to God eventually leads us back into spiritual community, into the Church, where we can learn other kinds of obedience and trust and mutual submission.

And if you haven't found that iron rod of the Spirit (or if you're lacking your own Spirit Liahona), if you still feel lost, you need to find that. I think the best way forward, when we don't know who or what to trust, is to look around us. Who are the people in our lives who best seem to personify perfect love? Those are the people who are most likely to be building their lives on a foundation we can trust. Those are the people we can start to emulate, whoever they are, whatever religion they are, wherever we can find them.

If obedience leads us to perfect love, love can also show us the way to true obedience.

On Keeping the Spirit

2011-09-21T10:00:00.001-05:00

This is the text of the talk I gave at the Affirmation convention devotional, delivered Sunday, September 18, 2011, in the Kirtland Temple.

We all already know everything that we need in order to have the Spirit in our lives. We need the desire to return to God's presence. We need the patience to face our old selves, our sinful selves, and to begin the day-by-day work of making a new us. We need the humility to accept that there are things we do not know, that we need to learn, that only God can teach us. And we need to trust that if we open ourselves to God, that he will teach us, often through those we least expect to learn from.

Most of us in this room know what it is to be split in two, split between the part of us that yearns for human intimacy, and the part of us that yearns for spiritual community. Many of us in this room have wondered if, perhaps even at some point decided that, life could not go on when we feel split in two that way. Too many of us not in this room, no longer with us, have acted on that decision to end life. We know what it is to feel utterly alone, to realize that those who ought to care most about our souls will never understand. We know what it is to feel the light of our faith flicker out and go cold.

There came a point in my life when I decided that it must be some kind of sin to believe in God, that there was special virtue in forging ahead through life without him, finding my own meaning, free from the dilemma that came with devotion to a God and a Church that taught me someone like me couldn't truly exist. There came a point in my life when I believed it would be impossible to believe again, because I had seen too much, I knew too much, I had gone too far to believe in God any more. God was like Santa, and once you'd figured out he's not there any more, there was no going back.

But I have come to understand that my unbelief was a kind of blessing from God. I have come to learn that there is no faith possible without the grace of God. Faith is beyond our mortal grasp. It is too high for us. It eludes our best efforts to obtain it. Faith is a gift from God, such that when we receive it, we know from whom it comes. So the unbelief too is a gift. It is that state in which we must find ourselves before we can truly apprehend what kind of gift faith is.

After Moses spoke with God on the mount, “the presence of God withdrew from Moses, that his glory was not upon Moses; and Moses was left unto himself. And as he was left unto himself, he fell unto the earth. And it came to pass that it was for the space of many hours before Moses did again receive his natural strength like unto man; and he said unto himself: Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed” (Moses 1:9-10).

We each need to learn this for ourselves, in our own way. And our sojourn through faithlessness can be a similitude of our whole journey here below through mortality, outside of the presence of God. If we lack the gift of faith, we have a chance to see what we will do, to see what we are made of when we think we are alone, when we think we are not being watched. And it is a chance to come to our own appreciation of what our limits are, what our works are compared to the works of the Maker of the Universe.

When, after living for many years without faith, I found myself in the presence of the Spirit again, it was a bitter moment. I was confronted with the failure of my best efforts to make something meaningful out of my life and to find a true, meaningful love. But that confrontation was also a moment of pure joy and peace and hope; real hope, a completely new and genuine hope found on the other side; after the despair, after the darkness, after the struggling on my own and the failing. The Spirit presented me a choice: I could start to make the kinds of changes in my life that would allow me to have a more constant companionship with him, or I could continue to struggle on my own.

I resisted at first, because I did not know what kind of changes I might have to make. Would I have to leave my partner?

But the Spirit encouraged me, reassuring me that I would find joy and peace if I followed its promptings unconditionally, that I would find the strength and encouragement to do what I needed to do, and that I needed to learn to trust the Lord. Ultimately, I realized that this is what I needed and desired in my life, more than anything else. And so I began to build my life again on the principles of faith and repentance. And that has opened up in me a well of life everlasting.

I said that we each already know what we need to do to have the Spirit in our lives. And this is very true. I cannot tell any of you what you need to do to have the Spirit, partly because what you need to do might be very different from what I need to do. I now have a basic rule of thumb in my life which is that if something is driving the Spirit away, I need to stop doing it whatever it is, no matter how trivial. If something is enhancing my ability to feel the Spirit and receive personal revelation, I need to keep doing it. And I need to be attentive. I need to spend most of my prayer time listening to the specific instructions and commandments that the Lord has for me, for John, here in this time and in this place. And then I need to do them.

But if my relationship with the Spirit is very personal, I can still talk about three broad principles I've learned in trying to keep the Spirit in my life. I will be grateful if the Spirit can use my insights to give someone else here this morning some insight – even if our paths end up being very different from each other.

First, restraint, renunciation, and moderation are good things. Our ability to sacrifice is directly related to our capacity for love. Living the Word of Wisdom, honoring the Sabbath Day, and dedicating one tenth of our income to the work of the Lord can be living symbols, reminders to us and to others of our commitment to live close to the Lord and to follow him. Avoiding pornography, and being chaste in our thoughts, and in our words, and in our actions can heighten our sense of the sacredness of our sexuality and enhance our relationships with our significant others. Caring for our bodies through moderate eating and exercise habits; living within our means and spending less rather than more; being attentive to the impact our lifestyle choices have on the environment; can all be ways to practice attentiveness and sensitivity. And an attentive, sensitive life is a life open to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. Everything we do has an impact on ourselves and on those around us.

Second, if we are hungry for knowledge of spiritual things, we can be filled with the Spirit. If we make time each day for prayer and scripture study, we will begin to make connections, to see how, yes, every word in scripture has a direct relevance and meaning to us, to our particular circumstances. We will begin to know the truth as it applies very directly and personally to us, and the truth will begin to set us free. Most of us in this room have been deeply, deeply wounded at Church, so Church is a difficult place for us. Many of us are disfellowshipped or excommunicated. Church can be a frightening place for us. But if Church is more difficult for us, then so much greater are the rewards of facing our fears, and of cultivating the hope and charity and patience that it takes to wash our face and our hands, and put on our Sunday best, and show up in a spirit of love and reverence and humility, with a desire to learn. Though I have often sat alone in the pews, I have never been alone. The Spirit been there with me, by my side, a warm arm of fellowship around me, whispering truths of peace and love I never could have learned anywhere else. If we open our hearts, and have the courage to go, Church attendance can become the brightest time of our week. It can become something that we do not merely out of a sense of duty, but something we hunger for.

Third and most important, love is the beginning, the middle and the end of the law. There is no law, no commandment greater than the commandment to love. If our love is modeled after the love of Christ, we will not ask if those we love have treated us kindly, if they have loved us first, if they have understood us or stood by us. Even if those we love hate us, our love has the power to transform both us and those we love. Love shifts our view of the world around us, of the Church, of our neighbors, of our families, of ourselves. It teaches us to act into our greatest collective and individual potential, to above all seek Zion, the pure in heart.

I could not begin to be capable of this kind of love, until I experienced it firsthand from a loving Savior, who reassured me through the Spirit that whatever wrongs I had done, whatever sins I had committed, whatever anger and hate I harbored, he loved me perfectly and purely and completely. I was perfectly and purely and completely forgiven. In the warmth and light of that love and forgiveness, there was no wrong another could commit against me that I could not forgive. Whenever I have been tempted to hold on to anger or judgment or condemnation, I have remembered that pure love of Christ for me. I can only retain a perfect sense of his love for me, so long as I am willing to forgive, completely and unconditionally.

If we have experienced rejection and misunderstanding and hate, we are blessed! Because we can never know if we are capable of the kind of love Christ taught if we were always accepted and understood and loved by others.

The Spirit's mission is to sanctify and transform us, to make Saints out of us. And our ability to receive the Spirit and become Saints is not based on the acceptance we receive, either individually from Church or family members, or collectively from the Church as a whole. It is based on our willingness to enter into the path that Christ showed us.

We can be a light to each other, to our fellow Saints, and to the world. And we can experience a peace beyond all earthly peace, a love beyond all earthly love, a light beyond all earthly light, a joy beyond all earthly joy, and perfect companionship with One who loves and knows us perfectly.

That we might all enter into that perfect peace, love, light, joy and communion I pray,

In the name of Jesus Christ,

Amen.

Is a "Big Tent" Gay Mormon Movement Possible?

2011-09-20T14:20:00.012-05:00

Yesterday I posted about my experience at the Kirtland Affirmation convention. This was really a spiritual mountaintop experience for me. And, trust me, not just because I was asked to speak at the devotional. For me, what was most powerful was being able to associate with other gay men and lesbians who have a deep love for the Church and who have testimonies of the Gospel. The experience with the choir was amazing, our director was amazing. The heartfelt prayers, singing LDS hymns, the testimony meeting, and being in a sacred place were what made this conference so meaningful. And the fact that I could be there with my husband, that I could be open about and talk about my love for him, and about being gay. For the first time, my husband was open to and responsive to my faith; he showed an interest in Mormonism and support for my expressions of faith that I've never seen before. And the hospitality of the Community of Christ people played a role too. I felt totally loved and embraced by them; and that was no small part of the power and beauty of the time I spent in Kirtland. I felt like I found some new brothers and sisters who affirm me both in my gayness and in my faith as a Latter-day Saint. At Kirtland I had an experience of wholeness. I could be both gay and Mormon.

Or could I?

This morning I found an angry message in my email in-box from an Affirmation member who was furious about yesterday's post. His message said, among other things:

Your blog posting about conference was predictable. I was only asked to read it by someone else. Your criticism of Affirmation members who don't believe in what you believe in lacked respect and reminded me of the elitist shit I experienced in Church. Affirmation is for BOTH types, ppl. who still believe in the Church and those who don't....

I, sincerely, hope Affirmation doesn't continue to exclude those who don't believe in the Church, as I'm noticing it has begun to. If so, I'll be one of the many long-time members who'll leave. And, at the low rate of consistent new members that Affirmation has, that'll kill off an org. that's meant for all.

The end of his communication, which I won't quote here, was hurtful, though clearly written in anger. I responded personally and privately, and I'm still waiting to hear back from him. I'm hoping we can resolve our differences and still be friends.

Yet, though this was a personal email, and I still want to try to resolve our personal issues personally, I wanted to post and discuss his criticisms publicly because I'm aware that others feel the way he feels, and because I want to try to discuss some of these issues more broadly with people who -- for whatever reason -- disagree with me.

First, I wanted to address the complaint that statements I made "lacked respect" for "Affirmation members who don't believe in what [I] believe in." Regardless of how what I said may have come across to people, I feel utmost respect for all members of Affirmation -- those who believe as well as those who don't. So I feel bad and want to apologize if I said anything in a way that comes across otherwise. I categorized myself as an unbeliever for a good many years, and my doubts were honest doubts. I've been on both sides of the faith/doubt divide, and I don't discredit anybody who's on the doubt side. I understand why gay men and lesbians are alienated from and angry at the Church, and I also understand why honest people of all sexual orientations reject certain teachings/beliefs of the Church.

Having evaluated and lived with my doubts for many years, I eventually came to a place of faith that has been incredibly empowering. It's natural for me to want to share that empowerment with others, to point out that there are ways past doubt, back into faith again. This is no less natural than the desire unbelievers in the blogosphere seem to have to share their views with us "unenlightened" believers. Everybody thinks they're right, or they wouldn't think what they think. Fair enough? I'm not sure if that's "elitist" or not. But if we're having any sort of conversation at all, isn't it because we're committed to the notion of a free exchange of ideas? That isn't disrespectful is it? So long as we acknowledge the right of each to exist and hold opinions different from one's own?

I think the difference between me and this person boils down to a question alluded to in his remark that "Affirmation is for BOTH types, [people] who still believe in the Church and those who don't."

He says this. Everyone says this. But someone honestly looking at the history and make-up of the organization will acknowledge -- and I don't think this is just me! -- that at best both types have co-existed uneasily within the organization, and for the most part the believing types have ended up feeling there wasn't much of a place in the organization for them. I haven't taken a scientific poll, but based on the experience I have had, it seems most members of the organization consider themselves ex-Mormon and feel hostile toward the Church. And I've experienced a culture of ridicule for those who do believe ("how can you possibly believe...!") and who practice (being made fun of because I don't drink alcohol or coffee, for instance). I personally know and am aware of many believing gay Mormons who simply do not feel welcome at Affirmation. Many have tried it, and not come back when they experienced the prevailing culture of doubt, anger and ridicule. Many more have not even tried it, based on what they've heard.

OK, so believers definitely don't feel at home in the organization. And apparently, according to this individual (and other individuals), if the organization attempts to sponsor activities that will attract believers, unbelievers will feel "excluded." In his words, "I, sincerely, hope Affirmation doesn't continue to exclude those who don't believe in the Church, as I'm noticing it has begun to." "Exclude" is a strong term, and it's not technically true. I assume he means is that he feels unwelcome. But if he feels unwelcome because this year Affirmation chose to organize a conference that might be more appealing to believers, then there's a problem with his original statement that Affirmation is supposed to include both believers and non-believers. If the organization only ever sponsors activities that appeal to non-believers, and if the non-believers get pissed off and boycott whenever the organization does something that appeals to believers, clearly the organization can't be inclusive of both.

After reading through this person's email, I actually felt terrible. It was not my intention to disrespect anyone. I felt really happy about having been able to participate in a conference where I felt fully and wholly affirmed -- both in my faith and in my sexuality. So my post was meant as a celebration, not as a snub.

This person didn't specify which parts of my post he thought were "critical," "lacking respect," or "elitist." But in reading through my post, I can see how certain statements could be read that way:

Why have an organization of GLBT Mormons, if it doesn't include fostering a positive relationship with the Church and fostering a genuinely Mormon spirituality?...

Given the sea change taking place in the Church right now, and the growing understanding of GLBT issues among Mormons and the greater acceptance of GLBT members, will Affirmation have a future if it continues to position itself as an ex-Mormon gay organization?...

At least three different Affirmation leaders had told me before the conference that members of Affirmation were boycotting the conference this year because it was "too spiritual."... Perhaps the fact that it was in Kirtland this year had the opposite effect as well; perhaps it attracted individuals who yearn deeply for that spiritual connection.

I can see how some of these (and perhaps other) statements taken out of context could be seen as critical or disrespectful or elitist. All I can say in my defense is that I have really been trying to honestly appraise the organization and determine if there's a place for me in it. I said in the post that "I've always been careful to check that 'outsider' perception [that most Affirmation members are non-believers who are alienated from and angry at the Church] against the perceptions of active Affirmation members themselves." Is it not fair simply to ask: Is this a fair generalization? And when numerous committed, long-time members I've spoken with not only agree that it is a fair generalization, but accept that it applies to them personally, then is it not possible for me to discuss this generalization and its implications not just for the organization but for me personally, without being accused of being "disrespectful"?

So, stressing again that I have utmost respect for people who disagree with me (on all sides of this issue!), let me point out that this exchange highlights a fundamental problem for Affirmation as an organization. And I hope that pointing this out is not taken as a criticism of anybody. It is simply pointing out that perhaps we cannot both have our cake and eat it too.

GLBT folks who consider themselves "ex-Mormon" or "post-Mormon" or "non-believers," however they want to put it, will look to an organization like Affirmation mainly as a kind of "recovery" space. Right? Is that unfair? "Recovering Mormons." Their interest in Affirmation is its potential to connect them to others with similar background who can relate to that experience of having formerly been Mormon, and of having grown up gay in that context. Other than that, they have no desire for any significant connection with Mormon faith, spirituality or institutions. All of those things feel toxic to them, and they have no desire to be exposed to it, because it brings up too much painful stuff. Or, at best, maybe if they're further along in their healing process, they're simply indifferent to it. It does nothing for them and feels boring or like a waste of time.

GLBT folks, on the other hand, who consider themselves still LDS or Mormon or "believing" or "practicing" or however they want to put it, will look to Affirmation for something completely different. They will want Affirmation to help them find answers to difficult theological questions. Like, how can I reconcile my sexuality with my beliefs? What do the scriptures really say about homosexuality? Is there a future for me and my significant other in the Celestial Kingdom? How does the Gospel apply to me in my situation? They will want to connect with others who have testimonies of the Gospel, and they will yearn for contexts where they can both express and live their faith, and feel affirmed for who they are as GLB or T. They will feel like a gay religious organization needs to be religious, or it's a waste of time, because if all I'm looking for is gay-friendly social events, there are already plenty of secular gay organizations that will affirm my gayness. There are also plenty of non-Mormon spiritual organizations -- for Quakers, Lutherans, members of the UCC, etc. None of these groups have problems accepting ex-Mormons. But I personally need something that affirms me both as a gay person and as a Mormon -- which is not something that any other organization does.

OK, so you've potentially got two sets of people with needs that seem to run directly contrary to one another. An organization that plans activities to meet the needs of folks in category A will very likely end up turning off or even offending people in category B. On the other hand, an organization that plans activities to meet the needs of folks in category B will likely turn off or offend people in category A.

This is why conflicts over the role of alcoholic or caffeinated beverages in Affirmation events has been so contentious in the past. It's really kind of emblematic of this problem. Category A folks see nothing wrong with drinking in moderation, and certainly see nothing wrong at all with coffee or tea. In fact, for them, drinking wine, beer or coffee is sort of symbolic of their liberation from every other constraint of faith they find irrational. They like to imbibe because it makes them feel free. And so they get really offended when folks in Category B might suggest that if Affirmation is a gay Mormon organization, it might be inappropriate to serve alcohol or coffee. This can become a really shockingly emotional issue, something to which I can testify, having been ridiculed on numerous occasions for my decision to order a ginger ale when every other person at the table is ordering actual ale. And, by the way, most of my non-Mormon or never-Mormon friends would consider it totally gauche and uncouth to tease me for something like that, but ex-Mormon friends feel no pain at all. The emotional issues around this are clearly a "Mormon thang."

So let me again, as I did in my last post, simply pose the question: Is it possible to have a "big tent" Mormon organization that includes both believers and unbelievers? Or are our respective needs too incompatible for us to coexist within the same organization? The question is not intended as a criticism. It's asked in all honesty, with a desire for a factual, honest answer. Because if the answer is No, and if Affirmation feels that it must cater predominantly to those in Category A, then I must, with sadness, say that those of us in Category B need another organization.

I say with sadness, because I have a genuine love for every single person I've ever connected with at Affirmation (or in any other gay Mormon context for that matter). As a human being, at a very human level, I don't care what you believe or don't believe. I never have. I don't judge you. I don't disrespect you. I have fun fellowshipping and laughing and crying with you. I love you. I honor the journey you're on. I've experienced too much pain in my life around all these issues to think any less of you for having made whatever decisions you needed to make to survive.

If you think I judge you just because I am a believer, that's your stuff. You deal with it. Because I don't judge you. I really don't care what you do so long as you are happy. I do what I need to do to feel whole, to integrate my spirituality and my sexuality so I can survive and thrive.

Maybe we can have a big tent. Maybe we can have one organization that meets all our needs. And maybe it only seems like we can't because we haven't figured out how to love one another the right way yet.

And if that's the case, I'm still willing to give it a try.

Kirtland

2011-09-19T13:57:00.022-05:00

I didn't quite expect to feel the way I did, and to experience what I did.

This past weekend I was at the annual Affirmation convention in Cleveland/Kirtland, Ohio.

I arrived Friday night, in the middle of the opening reception. It was great seeing (and getting hugs from!) old and new friends! Right after the reception was over, there was a first rehearsal of the Affirmation choir, which was preparing to sing at the Sunday devotional, to be held at the Kirtland Temple. My friend Chuck, who lives here in Minneapolis, recruited me to sing! I almost didn't sing with the choir. I'm kind of an introvert, really! But I realized I didn't have any really good excuses not to sing, and part of me really wanted to do it, so I let Chuck persuade me. And I'm so glad I did!

We had a skilled choir director, J., who knows how to motivate, and had some great techniques for bringing out the best in our singing. More importantly, she has a deep love for the Gospel, and was full of the Spirit! We began and ended rehearsals with heartfelt prayers offered by choir members. And J.'s testimony came through in little inspirational talks about the meanings of the hymns we were singing. Her love for each of us choir members shone through in everything she did and said. In fact, thanks to J., singing in the Affirmation choir was probably my favorite aspect of the conference.

Saturday there were a series of workshops, held at the Hilton Garden Inn in downtown Cleveland. I attended two sessions dedicated to the topic, "The Future of Affirmation." There I spoke frankly about my sense that Affirmation has developed a reputation for having a membership and leadership that is largely alienated from and angry at the Church. I have to say at the outset that I've always been careful to check that "outsider" perception against the perceptions of active Affirmation members themselves. Whenever I have, however, Affirmation members have themselves confirmed the perception of Affirmation as an organization that consists mostly of "ex-Mormons" who have little or no desire to retain any kind of relationship with the Church. That perception was again confirmed in the discussions I participated in at the conference, by a preponderance of individuals who essentially said, "Yes, I am angry about what the Church has done to me/to gay people. And no, I have no desire to have any relationship with the Church any more. The Church is something that used to be a part of my life, but I have no desire for it to play any significant role in my life any more." One participant in the discussions said that if Affirmation started to put any sort of emphasis on having a more positive relationship with the Church, that he would likely leave the organization, and, he suspected, so would many others.

I posed two questions. First, Why have an organization of GLBT Mormons, if it doesn't include fostering a positive relationship with the Church and fostering a genuinely Mormon spirituality? Present at one of the discussions was Jill McCrory, President of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. She talked about AWAB organizing prayer meetings and Bible Studies, etc. I said that I didn't see much of that kind of activity in Affirmation. Unlike members of other gay religious organizations, Affirmation members didn't seem to have much interest in actually practicing the religion practiced by their straight counterparts. I talked about getting teased by Affirmation members, for instance, because of my desire to live the Word of Wisdom. (Apparently, the whole question of having alcohol, coffee and tea at Affirmation events has been a contentious issue in the past.)

My second question was, Given the sea change taking place in the Church right now, and the growing understanding of GLBT issues among Mormons and the greater acceptance of GLBT members, will Affirmation have a future if it continues to position itself as an ex-Mormon gay organization? As the Church becomes a more accepting place, won't more and more GLBT members prefer to stay active and connected to the Church if they possibly can, and won't Affirmation grow increasingly out of touch with the needs of those kinds of members? That question generated a fair amount of discussion.

One individual said he didn't want Affirmation to start "pressuring" him to go to Church. I'm not sure how he got that out of my question... For me, it is not a question of "pressuring" anybody to do anything. It's about providing support for those who do desire to remain connected to the Church.

The final workshop I attended was related to this whole question. The workshop consisted of a dialogue between Hugo Salinas and David Baker on the issue of whether the Law of Chastity could apply to same-sex relationships. The discussion revolved in part around the question of whether same-sex couples should adopt the same norms and values that exist in the Church for heterosexual couples. I posed the question: Is there value in sexual self-restraint? I clarified that I understand that excessive repression is unhealthy. But so is promiscuity. Are there principles built into the Law of Chastity that it makes sense for same-sex oriented individuals to adopt? This was a lively and fun discussion, that stayed on an upbeat note throughout. I hope Affirmation will continue to have many discussions like this.

But after the workshops began the most meaningful part of the conference for me: the time we spent in Kirtland, Ohio. A bus drove conference participants to "Historic Kirtland," owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and to the Kirtland Temple, which is owned by the Community of Christ. There we participated in tours of the sites, and heard a lecture on the history of the Mormon movement given by John Hamer.

The lecture emphasized the structural and doctrinal evolution of Mormonism. It highlighted the various schisms, and the effects that structural and doctrinal evolution of the movement had on different groups of Mormons. In the process, we learned a lot about the Community of Christ, and it's relationship to the LDS Church. It was a fascinating lecture!

At the LDS visitor center, we were greeted by a number of elderly missionary couples, who divided us into two smaller groups and then took us to various sites. The stream in the picture here was used for baptisms. The Saints would dam the stream up until the water became sufficiently deep to baptize by immersion. Later, they showed us saws that were used to cut the ice in the winter, for winter baptisms!

This is the Newel K. Whitney Store. We also took a tour of the Whitney home, where we learned a lot about life in 1830s America, and what life was like for the Saints in Kirtland.

The high point of that part of the tour for me was when they took us to the upper rooms of the Whitney store where the School of the Prophets was housed (a much smaller room than I had envisioned), and (pictured here) the room where Joseph Smith worked on the inspired translation of the Bible, and where he received a number of important revelations that are now canonized in the Doctrine & Covenants. At times, the tour was very emotional for members of the group. J., our choir director, wept as we sat in the School of the Prophets.

The tour of the Kirtland Temple itself was particularly poignant for me. I had been asked to speak at the devotional on Sunday, and had been anticipating this for some time, wondering what it might feel like to speak from the same rostrum where Joseph Smith and so many other early Church leaders spoke. The accounts of the temple dedication, of course, also described this as the place where Christ himself had stood. When the Community of Christ tour guides brought us into the assembly hall itself, and I saw the pulpit where I would be standing, it's hard to adequately describe what I felt. Awe. Longing. Reverence. Sadness. Gratitude. The welter of emotions took me by surprise. It was almost overwhelming. I think many members of the group there felt similarly conflicting emotions.

Göran arrived Saturday evening, after the tour. I wished he had been able to make it to the tour, but he wasn't able to get off early enough Friday afternoon to travel there with me. Göran did make it to the banquet Saturday night.

(There might be some strange rumors floating around on the Internet about me donning a geisha dress and wig and performing some kind of dance instigated by Hugo Salinas during the entertainment portion of the banquet. I cannot confirm or deny any such rumors, and certainly won't post any photographs!)

Sunday morning we arose early, put on our Sunday best, and got back on the bus for Kirtland. At 8:30 a.m., I went to the third and final choir rehearsal in the Kirtland Temple itself, while Göran met up with Jon Jon to explore the Kirtland Temple visitor center.

After the choir rehearsal, a testimony meeting was held in the Kirtland Temple. This was the high point of the whole weekend for me. After the opening prayer and hymn ("I Know that My Redeemer Lives"), one by one, conference participants stood up and started bearing their testimonies. Some shared powerful spiritual experiences. All spoke frankly and poignantly about their feelings about the Church and the Gospel, and their feelings about being in the Kirtland Temple. Part of the power of the experience was to be in a place that has played such a central, formative role in the history of the Church, and that is still used as a Mormon place of worship. For those of us who have been excluded so long from bearing our testimonies in a Mormon place of worship, this was unbelievably powerful. (I cannot thank the Community of Christ enough for their hospitality.) Rarely have I felt the Spirit so powerfully present.

Göran was there, and so as I bore my testimony, I was speaking mainly to him. I talked about our relationship, and all the ways he has supported me, and how difficult it was for him to see me go back to the Church, largely because of his desire to protect me. I spoke from the heart about my feelings for the Church -- first the intense pain and trauma I had experienced as a young adult, and then my alienation and anger, and then my surprise on learning at the age of 42, that I actually had a testimony. And I spoke about feeling the Savior's presence in the Kirtland Temple, and what it meant to me to be in that space. And I shared my perception that what I know about Christ and his Atonement and about the Restoration of his Church is so much larger than me or any one of us -- a sentiment that several listeners audibly and visibly assented to.

After I came to my seat, Göran gave me a gentle hug and a kiss, and put his arm around me. As other gay and lesbian Mormons stood and bore their testimonies, and spoke of their love for the gospel and their love for the Church, I experienced a growing sense of surprise. Some, true, spoke of their sense that their calling in life had now taken them beyond the LDS Church. But most didn't. Most testified of the continuing power of the Restoration in their lives. What was happening here? Had anything like this ever happened anywhere, much less at an Affirmation convention? There was just such a spirit of gentleness and peace, and tears were flowing like a river. And I was so grateful that Göran could see. I wasn't the only one. There was something powerful here. Maybe hearing others' testimonies, Göran could finally understand why this meant so much to me.

I have been in a state of amazement since that moment. Is there some new work of the Spirit here?

The devotional was at 11:00 a.m. The choir sang "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing" and "The Spirit of God Like a Fire Is Burning." (It was.) Bill Russell, from the Community of Christ, spoke about GLBT inclusion within his own community, and shared his hopes for reconciliation between the Community of Christ and the LDS Church. Then I spoke on the subject of "Keeping the Spirit in Our Lives." The next speaker was John Behn, the father of an Affirmation member. He shared his testimony, and told about the spiritual experiences that led him to love and accept his gay son unconditionally. Then Joanna Brooks gave the final talk, telling of her journey as a GLBT ally and committed member of the Church.

It was all sort of overwhelming. Kendall Wilcox was there with his film crew, documenting some of the conference (though they were not permitted to film inside the temple). They also interviewed me and Göran after the devotional. One of Kendall's photographers was weeping during the devotional -- though he later protested that he never gets emotional at these kinds of things! This was just different. The LDS missionaries from Historic Kirtland were there too. The conference organizers had invited them to come, and they graciously accepted the invitation. One of them was weeping as well. As were many, both on the stand and in the audience.

I felt deep, deep gratitude and amazement for the conference as a whole, for all the big and small miracles that happened in the choir rehearsals and performance, during the historic tours, and during the testimony meeting and devotional.

At least three different Affirmation leaders had told me before the conference that members of Affirmation were boycotting the conference this year because it was "too spiritual." They felt uncomfortable attending a conference that was organized around the Church historical sites at Kirtland. Perhaps the fact that it was in Kirtland this year had the opposite effect as well; perhaps it attracted individuals who yearn deeply for that spiritual connection. I've never seen so many lesbians with testimonies! The stories shared by the lesbian sisters (including our intrepid choir director, J.) were the ones that made me weep the most!

Perhaps it was something about that place that put us in touch with our deepest spiritual yearnings, that gave individuals permission to open themselves up to feelings they'd been too afraid to come in touch with.

Whatever it was, I want more.

My Body

2011-09-12T09:40:00.001-05:00

I've been practicing yoga now for almost two months. In addition to participating in the classes (and practicing postures and breathing on my own), I've been reading a book by a teacher/practitioner that has allowed me to learn more about the philosophy and spirituality undergirding the physical practice.

I'll say at the outset that my practice of yoga has been a profoundly spiritual experience. I have had a number of startling and powerful spiritual experiences, on the mat, in the classroom. And my practice of yoga has also deepened my prayer life and my spirituality off the mat, in my personal prayer life and in my day-to-day living.

I'll also add that I see a broad correspondence between the fundamental principles of yoga and Latter-day Saint teaching/belief. Mormons are profoundly committed to the principle of the fundamental unity of spirit and body. We recognize that "the spirit and the body are the soul of man" (D&C 88:15) and that "spirit and element inseparably connected, receive a fullness of joy" (D&C 93:33). Yoga honors this connection between the physical and the spiritual. And it links the physical practices to spiritual principles, the "Yamas" and the "Niyamas." The physical practices are intended to develop the kind of discipline and spiritual insight that will better enable the five moral restraints of nonviolence, truthfulness, nonstealing, moderation and nonhoarding (noncovetousness?), and the five observances of purity, contentment, zeal/austerity, self-study and devotion to God. I have found yoga as a discipline has been helping me to clear away many physical and mental and moral distractions that inhibit my prayer life and interfere with my ability to live the teachings of the Church. It has granted me greater insight into some of my own limitations, and has offered me a format for working on those limitations, and thereby deepening my love and commitment to my Savior and my Heavenly Father. So for me, yoga has actually provided me some spiritual tools to deepen my faith as a Latter-day Saint.

Yoga has been doing that partly by teaching me about my relationship with my own body. This has been invaluable to me. I have begun to experience some incredible healing of deep, deep injuries in the intersection between physical and spiritual.

For instance, one of the first things I became aware of through the practice of yoga was how my everyday posture was fundamentally fearful and protective. I began to realize that I walk and sit and stand in a way that is sort of drawn into myself, hunched over. Head down, shoulders drawn in, slightly bent forward. I've always sat with my legs tightly crossed, my hands or arms crossed. As if my whole life I've been trying to make myself smaller and less visible; and as if I've been trying to cover or protect my vitals. Standing up tall with my spine at its full height, with my head high and my shoulders back, I realized, has always made me feel vulnerable, so I've basically spent my whole life ducking, trying to avoid being seen.

The physicality of yoga has brought me in touch with something else more fundamental and profound. I've always had an aversion to sports, to physicality. I've never liked sports -- either watching or playing sports. And though I've always enjoyed physical exercise, I have never engaged in the kind of discipline that would actually build physical strength. Yoga does that. In two months of practicing yoga, I am slowly finding myself able to accomplish certain physical feats I never would have dreamed possible. I am finding my body has physical strength and flexibility I never dreamed I could have -- even when I was twenty-five years younger! And for the first time ever in my life, yoga is putting me in touch with the power of my physical body.

This, I realized, is what I've spent much of my life protecting myself from, hiding from. I was afraid of my own body, and the power in my body. I was afraid of the sexuality that was connected to that physicality and that strength. And I'm beginning to be aware of the distortions that that fear created. Because we can try to hide from our physicality, but it won't go away. And if we're hiding from our physical selves, we're not developing a healthy relationship to our physical selves.

So, for instance, I've always, since teenager-hood, struggled with masturbation. I honestly don't think the masturbation was a bad thing. It was the one connection I really had to my own physicality, my physical body. And I think at some level, through masturbation I was trying to figure myself out, figure out the link between the spiritual and the physical. It was also, I now realize, a way of closing myself off from what seemed very threatening and frightening to me: relational sexuality. I've always felt like, in or out of relationship, I had to have this private sexuality, this private relationship with my own body.

But as I've developed my yoga practice, I've found the urgent need I'd always felt for masturbation sort of evaporating away. I don't know how to say it other than that I find myself developing a different kind of relationship with my body, as I've begun to appreciate the goodness and power and strength inherent in my body. I don't know how to describe it other than to say that I feel like I'm finally furnishing the house of my body and fully living in it, and it feels very, very good. It's enabling me to let go of physical compulsions and anxieties and just be me. I feel like I'm really breathing for the first time ever.

And that's another example... My asthma is going away. Maybe it's just that the breathing exercises in yoga are expanding my lung capacity, so the asthma affects me less? I don't know. But I am breathing more fully and deeply than I ever have before in my life. And that alone feels like a physical miracle to me.

Yoga probably isn't for everyone. I'm not necessarily recommending it to everyone. I think what is fundamental is finding some kind of practice that permits us to deepen our relationship with our physical bodies. Last night, I met with my gay Mormon Family Home Evening Group, and D. was saying how important dance had been to him as a way of exploring that physical/spiritual connection. So people might find that connection through dance, or football, or whatever.

But I am incredibly grateful that I have found that connection, that I am finding that connection and continuing to deepen it and learn from it. It's not something I have to force myself to do, like going to the gym. Going to the gym was a chore. But this I hunger for, and I am incredible grateful for.

A Foretaste of Zion

2011-09-11T13:02:00.000-05:00

Today in Sunday School, the teacher shared a very intimate, painful story, as an example of the healing that is possible through the Atonement. Later, she told me she hadn't been planning to share the story, and was a bit surprised at herself having shared it. I said I wished such sharing were possible more often; I wished people felt safe enough to be able to share in such a way. And she said, sometimes its not even a question of whether others will accept such sharing, it's a question of being able to process one's own feelings about something in such a way as to be able to even speak about it.

We sat next to each other in Sacrament Meeting. I felt as if a real bond had been created between us through our discussion of pain, and sharing, and of the miracle of healing we have experienced through the Atonement, and of the presence of the Spirit as we discussed such things in class. I am so grateful for this sister, for the loving kindness, the sweetness she has always shown toward me.

I'm often so aware of my status as an outsider; I'm reminded of it every time individuals are sustained in callings and I can't raise my hand; whenever the Sacrament tray passes me by and I can't partake. I've always felt the Spirit at Church; I've always felt like I belonged in some spiritual sense. But still...

But this sister has always made me feel deeply as if that didn't matter. She's made that inner spiritual reality of belonging visible and objective through her loving kindness toward me. And that was manifested to me this morning as we sang the hymns together -- the way our voices harmonized.

As we sang the Sacrament hymn, I looked up around me. I saw the bishop and his counselors and the speakers singing together up on the stand. I looked around me. All these people I know as people, people I know in their quirks and individuality; some very present, some distracted; yet, all gathered. I watched the priests breaking the bread, one of them reverently singing the hymn along with the rest of us from memory. ("In humility, our Savior....") I felt this tremendous love and forgiveness washing over all of us, as one body. It didn't matter where we'd been. Somehow that love would unite us. Somehow we'd find a way to all get there together. We were each trying in our own way the best we knew how, and the grace of God could cover the rest. And there was this sister, singing with me; our voices blending beautifully together in praise of the love of Jesus.

I was overcome by the beauty of it. I had to stop singing for just a moment, to catch my breath, and steady my voice.

I'm glad I was in Church today!

The Spirituality of Fun

2011-08-12T02:08:00.000-05:00

I guess I grew up absorbing a kind of Calvinist ethic that says fun is frivolous and meaningless, and only work really matters. Or maybe I've internalized a more general Western Christian discomfort with any sort of pleasure, this idea that matter and the flesh are bad and must be subordinated to the spirit, and having fun is giving too much license to the flesh. Or maybe I have also absorbed the ethic of liberal guilt, which says that because there is so much poverty, misfortune and suffering in the world, it's somehow wrong for me to take (and enjoy!) an extended vacation. Anyway, it seems there are many reasons I can (and subconsciously do) choose to deny myself a month of work-free, agenda-free fun on vacation with my sweetheart. At some level, I know the anti-fun impulse is a lie or a distortion. But it takes a certain amount of spiritual discipline to actually let myself relax, and let my vacation be what it is supposed to be.

This essay is part of that spiritual discipline. I'm writing this mostly to remind myself of the reasons why fun is important, and why guilt about having fun is destructive. And if my thoughts are helpful to any other fun-o-phobes out there, all the better!

Fun is important because people matter and because relationships matter and because our bodies matter. In theological terms, the fullness of joy God intended us to have includes having a physical body along with the pleasures that affords us. It also includes being connected to the human family through intimate relationships. I remember reflecting on this after General Conference a while back, when President Monson concluded with some remarks to the effect that it was important for the Saints to cherish the time that they have with family. He reminded us that in mortality, we only have each other for a brief moment, and we need to make the time that we have with each other count.

Of course work matters too. Work does lend life meaning, but only within a framework that values bodies and relationships! Only within a framework in which fun also has meaning and value. Work and fun are part of the same complex. And of course justice is important. It is terrible that we live in a world where people lack basic necessities. I'm aware that the majority of people in the world aren't as privileged as I am, and lack the resources that make it possible for me to travel and have fun for a month with my spouse. So part of my work -- part of all of our work -- needs to be about creating a world of greater compassion and plenty. Justice matters because relationship matters. Justice, like work, derives its meaning in a framework where pleasure has value. So Emma Goldman stated a positive truth when she said, "If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution!"

Yesterday, Göran and I were walking around in downtown Copenhagen. Göran has this fascination with European royalty. (Maybe it's because of the deprivation he grew up with? Or maybe it's just that he is a retired Queen?) At any rate, in every western Scandinavian capital (in Stockholm, Oslo, and now Copenhagen), a significant portion of our time has been spent visiting and touring royal palaces. So we had just spent some time at Amalienborg Castle, and then had wandered up to visit the Little Mermaid statue. (Having seen it, I don't get what the big deal is. How did this become the symbol of Copenhagen? There was a huge line of tourists there, waiting to get themselves photographed in front of the Little Mermaid. Is the Little Mermaid really to Copenhagen what the Eiffel Tower is to Paris? Really?) Anyway, the weather wasn't cooperating... We decided to take care of some errands, but were finding it impossible to find a department store in downtown Copenhagen. I was getting tired of royal palaces and touristy statues. And it had been cool and drizzly all day, and Göran and I had been doing a lot of walking, and our feet hurt and we were cold and he and I were both getting crabby.

And it's in moments like this when doubts about the value of "fun" can take on a certain gloomy power. It was at this moment that I found myself starting to feel guilty about having spent all this money to come here and do this. But it was also in this moment that I was saved from the gloom by the realization that this man I was tramping up and down cobblestone streets in the rain with in some strange foreign capital really matters to me. He has infinite worth, and so does the relationship I have with him, and it doesn't matter really where we are or what we're doing, not to me, really. We could be anywhere: Timbuktu or Shanghai or downtown Minneapolis. But he wanted to be in Scandinavia, and that's why we rallied the resources and made the time to be in this particular place. So I took a deep breath, and I remembered to be grateful for everything I have, including this vacation, and including him.

I stopped and told him, "Before we can do any other errands, we need a pastry!" So our hunt for a department store turned into a simultaneous hunt for the perfect Danish pastry. And we eventually found both at the same time. There's a gigantic department store in downtown Copenhagen called "Magasin." It's quite possibly the biggest department store I've ever been in. And there's a food court in the basement. We found a pastry shop there and I ordered a Chokoladebolle and Göran ordered a Walessnitte, and we collapsed at a nearby table and just melted into the deliciousness which is Danish pastries. Things got better after that. We just needed to remember to have fun.

Life is short. And it is precious. And President Monson was right: in mortality, we only have each other for so long, and we need to enjoy each other while we have the chance. Life at its best is always laced with the tragedy of loss. So there is a moral imperative to enjoy what we have while we still have each other. We need to make these moments count, to take care of ourselves and others.

So take care of yourselves, and have some fun today!

Gay Pride, Stockholm Style

2011-08-03T14:32:00.003-05:00

Last year when Göran and I took our first vacation abroad together, we spent a week in Sweden. We didn't realize until after we'd scheduled our trip that it just so happened we would be in the Swedish capital the week of the royal wedding between Princess Victoria and Prince Daniel. (No wonder it was such a challenge finding a hostel with a room for the entire week!) Quite without meaning to, we managed to end up in Stockholm during one of the biggest national celebrations in recent memory.

This year, by a similar stroke of luck, we ended up in Stockholm the same week as Stockholm's annual Gay Pride celebration. We didn't plan it that way. But in the airport, Göran was browsing through the tourist brochures on the wall near the information booth, and he found a couple of brochures for "Stockholm Pride": August 1-7. Here we are.

Last year, I remember seeing a poster for Gay Pride in Tampere, Finland, and I remember feeling a bit disappointed that it seemed so Americanized. (The poster was in English, and I somehow wanted Finns to come up with a more native name for the festival than "Pride.") Of course, what did I know? We weren't actually able to attend.

But now this year, we landed in a major European capital the week of Gay Pride, so in between some of our other sightseeing and shopping and eating, we've periodically dropped in on the festival down at Kungsträdgården and Sergels Torg and taken in an event or two.

But here's the thing...! First of all, in Minneapolis, Gay Pride still feels like this celebration put on by The Gays. In Stockholm, it feels completely different. It's more like a celebration the City puts on, with the gay community. The first thing we noticed when we arrived in Stockholm was that there were literally rainbow flags everywhere. Adorning all the major streets, including the main thoroughfares leading up the Royal Palace. Hanging down in all the major shopping malls and all throughout the shopping district in the Gamla Stan ("Old City"). Adorning all the public buses.

When you enter the Pride Festival area, there's a sign that reads (in Swedish): "Welcome to Stockholm Pride! You are now leaving heteronorms behind!" But ironically, when we entered the park, it seemed to us that there were more heteros than homos. We felt safe being as gay as we wanted (which amounted to holding hands and showing other gentle forms of affection in public). Apparently, the heteros were OK with dumping their heteronormativity.

Earlier today, Göran was getting a bit peaked from lack of food, so we stopped at "Max," the Swedish equivalent of McDonald's. While chowing down, we overheard a conversation between a Brazilian tourist and two young Swedish women. The Swedes were telling the Brazilian about the Pride Festival, and encouraging him to go check it out. "Are you two girlfriends?" the tourist asked. "No, no! We're just friends," they replied. Earlier in the week, as Göran and I were walking down the street with a rainbow fan in hand, another woman with a young child approached us and wanted to know where we got the fan, and where she could get a Pride program. In Stockholm, Pride is a celebration for everyone, gay or straight.

The Church of Sweden has an exhibit at Pride, which in Stockholm would be somewhat analogous to the LDS Church having a booth at Salt Lake City Pride. (Chew on that for a while!) The booth was adorned with various affirming slogans like "You're the best!" More importantly, they had posted a few theological sound bites as well: "The greatest of all is love" (quoting I Cor. 13: 13) and "A new commandment I give unto you: Love one another" (John 13: 34).

I will tell you, it is actually kind of an incredible feeling. In the U.S., Gay Pride still feels polemical. We're reminded of this by the routine protesters who show up with signs that read "Homosexuals will burn in hell!" and "God will never allow science to find a cure for AIDS." None of that here. Here, Gay Pride is a communal statement on behalf of the entire polity. Here, Swedes are essentially reminding themselves and the gay community that gay Swedes will never have to go it alone. Everyone -- from the Royal Family down to every guy on the street, including the state (which recognizes our marriages) and the Church (which eagerly reminds us that God loves us) -- stands with us.

That truly feels amazing.

Tak så mycket, Sverige!

Take Care of Yourself, Take Care of Others

2011-07-29T09:00:00.001-05:00

If you don't take care of yourself, you can't be much use to anyone else. It's impossible to spread happiness to others, if you yourself aren't happy.

It's not that we should be self-centered. There's a difference between selfishness and self-care. It's just that we need to eat right, sleep well, get exercise, breathe, enjoy rest and quiet, and spend time laughing with friends. We need to be able to express love and feel loved. This is all part of the care and feeding that every human being in the world needs, that is more or less the human birthright.

In fact, I suspect that most selfishness in the world is at least in part the by-product of a failure to care properly for and feed the self. Because if our souls are well tended, how could we substitute something as spiritually thin as the hoarding of wealth for something as spiritually rich as sharing?

So if you are tired, rest. If you are weak, stretch! If you are lonely or in pain or depressed, call a friend. If you feel ashamed or guilty, don't beat yourself up! Forgive yourself. Take one step at a time back toward the light. Whatever the next step is, is the only step you need to focus on right now. Learn to trust that if you truly want to do better, God has already forgiven you completely.

Whatever time and energy we need to take to water the garden of our souls, to sun and feed and weed it till it begins to blossom freely, is time and energy well spent.

If you're to give the world some flavor, make sure your salt has savor! If you want to be able to love others, love yourself.

I'm getting ready to take some time off, on a much needed, long-deferred honeymoon with my sweetheart! See you when I get back! And in the meantime, take care of yourselves!

Urim and Thummim

2011-07-21T10:50:00.001-05:00

I've always been fascinated by the Urim and Thummim. Joseph Smith described them as two crystalline stones, through which it was possible to receive revelation and light from God. The Book of Mormon makes reference to them as well as playing a role in translating the records of the ancient Jaredites. In my own prayer and scripture study, it gradually became clear to me that the scriptures themselves are a kind of Urim and Thummim to us.

Alma refers to the scriptures themselves as "very small means [by which] the Lord doth confound the wise and bringeth about the salvation of many souls" (Alma 37: 7). The scriptures are physically small, and -- with the benefit of modern e-book technology -- are getting smaller all the time! I've got a whole library of scriptures on my Kindle -- not just the LDS standard works, but the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Library, the Books of Enoch, the History of the Church, the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, the Discourses of Brigham Young, and so on and on.

The scriptures are fascinating as physical, historical artifacts. They tell us much about the times and places that produced them, and offer a wealth of physical, material and historical information, if we know how to glean such information from their pages. Many scholars have, in fact, devoted their lives to studying the scriptures as historical documents. But to look at them solely in this fashion is, in essence, to reduce them to physical objects alone, having no more than mere physical interest.

The reason the scriptures are so vitally important to us is precisely for reasons that have nothing to do with reading them in this fashion. When we approach the scriptures in a spirit of prayer and faith and hope, the scriptures are able to transcend their mundane physical nature. The Spirit can use the stories, ideas and principles in the scriptures to open our minds up to heavenly and spiritual worlds previously inaccessible. Through the scriptures, the Spirit can help us to see humanity and creation in the context of their fullest potential; and to see ourselves in our own fullest potential. The scriptures, in other words, become a physical vehicle, a physical means by which the Spirit can open up wider understandings to us than are available just in the letter of the scriptures. In this sense, the scriptures are, like the Urim and Thummim described by Joseph Smith, translucent: light shines as much through them as from them.

In order for the scriptures to function for us in this translucent fashion, we too must, to a certain extent, be translucent. The light of the Spirit needs to be able to shine through us. Much in life of what I think of as "sin" are distractions, that cause is to forget what's important. Sin is like junk that clogs up our mind and body, preventing this light from passing through. Just like the actual Urim and Thummim, just like the physical scriptures, we ourselves are physical beings with transcendent capacities. If we think of ourselves as Urim and Thummim, as crystalline beings through whom the light of God can shine, then sin is basically like dirt on the windows of our soul.

I used to look at sin as a violation of some rule that God gave us; and so when we commit a sin, God punishes us by taking the Spirit away. But I realize now it isn't so much like that. It's not so much a sinful act per se that we're being punished for. It's that sin has emotional, mental and spiritual ramifications.

If I'm addicted to porn, for instance, my mind and Spirit, instead of turning to God, are looking for the next sexual thrill. So there's an aspect of dissipating valuable time and energy on things that won't lift me up. And there are the emotional after effects; the empty feeling that accompanies the impersonal, anonymous sexuality that porn offers; the disconnect that comes from looking at the body as a piece of meat rather than as the temple of our spirit and our intelligence; the cheapening of actual, real relationships that occurs when we start comparing our own bodies or the body of a loved one to the artfully posed and airbrushed and "perfect" bodies in the magazines and videos. These are all real effects I've perceived in my own experience with porn.

Recently, I've taken up the practice of yoga. In the last seven days, I've taken eight yoga classes and have experienced an incredible sense of well being through this practice. One of our instructors talked about a "detoxifying" process that is a part of yoga. The emphasis is on being silent, being present, being attentive to spirit through the vehicle of physical movement. The practice of yoga can be emotional. I've found that as I've practiced it, occasionally very strong emotions come up that have literally brought me to tears. The yoga instructors periodically remind us that when such emotions come up, we need to acknowledge them, then let them go, and then ground and center ourselves again in the present.

This practice is like the process of repentance. (I suspect, like any disciplined spiritual practice -- including prayer and scripture study! -- yoga can help us with the process of repentance.) Repentance is basically getting our life back into appropriate postures that enable life-giving light and energies to flow through us unhindered again. The various things we do as part of the repentance process -- asking forgiveness, making restitution, and then forgiving ourselves -- will help us deal with the toxic after effects of sin, help us deal with unpleasant emotions that darken the windows of our souls.

I don't think we can do this successfully in a judgmental way. In fact, judgment -- both of ourselves and others -- I would class as a sin. I dare say -- if I were to rank sins as superior or inferior -- that judgment is a worse sin than using porn. Porn is maybe a physical or emotional sin. Judgment is a spiritual sin -- far more weighty. Judgment darkens our minds more effectively, I think. It shuts us down and discourages us from moving just at the moment when we need to be moving freely. Judgment of others always leaves a residue of judgment on ourselves, and will ultimately shut us down more effectively than it shuts down others.

I've come to realize we can tell sin more effectively by its effects than we can by comparing our lives against the various laundry lists of sins we can find in the scriptures. What is sin to one person might not be sin to another. Only we, ultimately, are in a position to know what darkens us and what leaves us clearer.

It has really helped me to understand that our lives are less about accumulating things -- even accumulating intangibles such as knowledge -- than they are about becoming. When I remember this, it helps me to brush aside the distractions and focus on what is most important.

Yoga

2011-07-15T14:42:00.008-05:00

About a year or so ago, a friend of mine persuaded me and Göran to take a yoga class with her.

It was actually this amazing (and kind of emotional) experience for me. At the time, I almost published a blog post about it but ended up not publishing it because of a lot of conflicted thoughts and emotions I had about it.

A key point in the experience was where the instructor told us to clear our minds of everything in the past and everything in the future, and to just be present, here, in the now. In the moment he told us that, however, I was very aware of how important, as a believing Mormon, the interrelated concepts of memory, history and the past are. What flashed through my mind was an awareness of all the times in scriptures where the Lord admonishes the faithful to "remember": remember their covenants, remember their history, remember who they are. Everything that I am, everything that matters to me, I thought, depends on my ability to stay grounded in memory. So I wasn't sure I could allow myself to do what the instructor was asking me to do. It was an emotional moment. I think I started to cry.

Despite my emotional issues, the experience was amazing. It definitely pushed me to my physical as well as emotional limits. In fact, I'm sure the fact that I was being pushed to the edge physically had something to do with the emotions I was feeling. I did as many of the exercises as I could. I spent a fair amount of time in the "child's pose," the position we were instructed to take if we were too tired or felt unable to try some of the more advanced positions. The instructor was really incredible. He was great about creating an environment in which it was OK to try and fail. His whole approach was, Maybe you won't be able to do this position, or hold it very long, but there's nothing lost in trying. Occasionally, he would come by and gently reassure me by placing his hand on my back, or helping me with a particular posture. And always reminding us to focus on our breathing... Really important in yoga.

It was definitely this intense experience that I had a longing to repeat, even though I wondered if the "philosophy" that was being presented in class was compatible with my faith as a Latter-day Saint. I've given it a lot of thought on and off in the intervening year.

That was my one and only experience with yoga until yesterday. A member of my gay Family Home Evening group was encouraged by a friend from his ward to take a yoga class with her, and he became hooked. So he's been pestering me to try yoga again with him. We took a "sculpt" class yesterday -- very physically rigorous.

This time, there was no talk from the instructor of letting go the past or the future. Just a work out. She was basically just telling us what to do, what physical postures, what moves, etc. It was kind of a combination of yoga and an aerobics class. Still, there came a point -- especially as I was beginning to reach my physical limits -- where I found my thoughts naturally gravitating toward my life, and big questions about who I am, and what I really desire in life. A funny thought came into my head, mostly focused on how exhausted I was starting to feel, and how some of my muscles were started to feel fatigued or achy. I thought, "This is sort of what it's like being a gay Mormon." I mentioned it to J., on the mat beside me, and he sort of smirked, we both sort of laughed a bit. But at the same time, the thought triggered deeper emotions. I was aware of everything I am, and everything I desire deeply, including full acceptance and inclusion in the Church. And I started to cry again.

I do think, however, I've found a kind of resolution to the whole issue of being "fully present" versus the importance of "remembrance." I think there is a way in which memory is only necessary within the realm of the temporal. Memory is important to us now. Memory is important because there is a now that is somehow separate from past and future. But, as best I understand, the scriptures also make clear that God inhabits a realm in which there is neither past, present, nor future; in which all things are present. And as I have come to understand it (partly through the experience I had yesterday), this is the realm we were being invited to enter by my yoga instructor a year ago. I was being invited to be present with the me that just is; the me I have become; and not the me that is filtered through my intellect. In the day-lit conscious mind, there is an ego constantly trying to living up to some expectation of myself, there is an ego holding on to certain ideals of how I see myself and how I would like others to see me. And this ego, for the most part, is far too limited; our conscious will and desires too often hold us back from our full potential. As far as I can tell, much of God's involvement in history has been to try to break down human ego. (That's what the whole concept of repentance is about.) So I understand how it is necessary to try to free ourselves from that, from ego. And one way to do that is to spend time grounding ourselves not in a mundane now, but in a transcendent now that is the totality of everything we were, everything we are (in the mundane now) and everything we will be in the future; in the same transcendent Now that is present always to God. Spending time reflecting on that wholeness, and reflecting on the ways I already abide in it is a powerful thing, something I've decided I really need to do more often.

Remembrance is important. It has to do with the fact that we are related -- connected -- to God, to all our brothers and sisters, to every living soul, to all creation -- which the concept of covenant holds. Yes, we must remember our covenants in the time-bound realm. But in the eternal realm, we are our covenants. When we enter into the realm of completion, where we have become, there's no more need to remember.

There was a point, yesterday, at the end, where the instructor invited us to pray. And I did, freely and joyfully. This yoga class was this amazing experience, and something I've decided I want to participate in regularly.

I'm going again this afternoon!

Grace

2011-07-14T10:47:00.005-05:00

OK, here's another analogy of grace.

When I was a young child -- I believe about 5 or 6 years old -- we moved from our inner-city Rochester, NY apartment to the suburb of Greece. Our parents had completely packed and cleaned out the apartment, and we were literally on the verge of leaving. My parents apparently needed to pick up some food and other supplies before we left, and since their errand wasn't going to take longer than 10-15 minutes, they decided to leave me and my little brother Mark alone at the apartment.

Somehow I was not aware of the fact that they were just running an errand and were going to be right back. Either they told me, and I wasn't paying attention, or they figured the errand would be short and so they didn't need to tell me.

But in my 5- or 6-year-old mind, I knew we were moving to a new house. And so when one minute I was playing quietly with my brother, and the next I looked up and realized we were all alone, I simply assumed that my parents had decided to make the move without us, abandoning us at the apartment. I started wailing, and when I started wailing, my little brother started wailing too.

At that point, I realized it was just me and my little bro, and I needed to take care of him. And I'd remembered hearing somewhere that in case of an emergency, you can dial zero on the phone and the operator can help. So that's what I did. I picked up the phone and dialed zero, and I was in the process of explaining (through my tears) that my little brother and I had been abandoned by our parents, when my parents arrived through the door with a sack full of groceries.

I still have a perfect picture in my mind of me standing there on my tip toes (the wall phone was a bit of a reach for me), sobbing to some strange female voice on the other end of the line; and then the rush of relief and joy when I heard the door click open and saw my parents' faces.

In that moment of aloneness, which couldn't have been more than a few minutes, to me it had felt like we had been abandoned for good. Of course it wasn't true! Even as I was dialing emergency assistance, parents were rushing home to reassure us.

The grace of God can be like that. When we are without it, it can feel like we've been abandoned forever. We can feel utterly low and alone and lost. But if we just wait, we will feel it again, and in abundance. And when God's grace, as communicated by the loving, peaceful presence of the Holy Spirit, is upon us, we feel whole and complete and as if nothing ever lacked. When we have the Spirit, we realize that even when we felt alone, we never truly were alone. We realize that the pain we experienced in the preceding night actually had a redemptive purpose; we can even be grateful for the pain. I think that ability of the Spirit to heal and transform past pain into present understanding and joy is what is meant in the Book of Revelation when says that in the end, after every trial and tribulation, God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes (7:17).

The ability to wait in patience is, I think, the definition of hope. Hope is resting in our knowledge of God's perfect love for us -- even when we don't or can't feel that love. There have been times in my life when I've been able to rely mostly on love, times when my greatest source of strength has been my faith. Lately, it seems, I've had to rely more on hope, probably the least understood of Paul's cardinal virtues. I'm glad it's there.

Faith/Doubt, Part II

2011-07-12T13:56:00.010-05:00

I guess I'd say that I've always relied mostly on my relationship with the Spirit as the foundation of my faith. Since I've been old enough to think rationally about belief -- and for me, I think that was about when I reached the 7th grade -- I've always more or less understood that there were certain intellectual challenges related to religious belief. (The 7th grade is when one of my best friends in High School who happened to be an atheist started to debate the existence of God with me during our lunch breaks.) I've always understood that there were contradictions within the scriptures, or between certain cherished religious beliefs and what we can learn through science or history or other disciplines. And I've always been interested in exploring those contradictions or challenges, and reconciling them where possible. But my faith has never reposed on the need to resolve all contradictions or challenges or ambiguities. Rather, my faith has been strong when I've had a good relationship with God, and when I've lived in a way so that I can feel the Spirit in my life. As far as the intellectual challenges go, I'm willing to defer resolution; I'm willing to wait and see how things go; and not lose my salvation just because I don't happen to have intellectually pleasing answers to all my questions at any given moment.

Again, it's not that I don't value intellectual exploration of issues related to belief. For instance, when I was in Utah last week, I bought a book entitled Mesoamerica and the Book of Mormon: Is This the Place?, by John L. Lund. Will I buy all his arguments? Probably not. I'm curious to see if I do. Right now I'm reading The Refiner's Fire: The Making of Mormon Cosmology, 1644-1844 by John L. Brooke. Some of the information in this book I find challenging (he's certainly writing from a perspective of non-faith), but I'm also finding things in it that are strangely confirming of my belief in the Church. This is basically the only kind of stuff I read, and I read it all the time. Someone once asked me when was the last time I read anything but non-fiction, and I honestly can't remember. My devotion to the Spirit does not correspond to a devaluing of science or history or anthropology or other similar disciplines that may on occasion seem to compete with or contradict religious belief.

I've read broadly enough on LDS history and theology and textual criticism of the Book of Mormon and so on that I can safely say there's no skeleton in Mormonism's closet that I'm not fully cognizant of. Oddly enough (in some people's minds, maybe) I credit Fawn Brodie with my renewed testimony of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Even though it was more or less her intention to destroy his reputation as a prophet, it was while reading No Man Knows My History that I felt the Spirit testifying to me about him, as I pondered the question: Why would he give himself up and go to Carthage? So I'm sort of a believer in letting folks learn whatever they want about the Church from whatever source (even South Park or The Book of Mormon, the Musical!), and letting them make up their own minds.

I'll say that a lot of things people might learn about the Church that could throw them for a loop don't bother me for two reasons. First, I'm not bothered because I know Church leaders and members aren't perfect. God works perfectly well through flawed vessels, or even through vessels that -- to our eyes -- seem broken. (This is what it means in the Book of Daniel when we compare the Church to the "stone that was cut out of the mountain without hands.") Second, I'm not bothered because the unconventional does not frighten me. (I say this both as a believing Mormon and as a proud, openly gay man.) So polygamy or magical beliefs or whatever other rabbits you want to pull out of the hat of Mormonism don't worry or embarrass me.

I consider reason more or less a friend to orthodox belief because in my increasingly old age I've learned to be humble enough (some would say "credulous" enough) to keep an open mind and accept that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my (or anyone's) philosophy. I am an orthodox believer because I have the Spirit in my life, and because it works. Living by the Spirit and accepting the testimony of Jesus has made my life better and has made me a better and happier human soul.

OK. Anybody who regularly reads my blog knows this about me already. But recently I had an experience that shook me somewhat. I was having a conversation with a faithful LDS friend about Church history. This friend well knows my orthodox (if unconventional) commitment to the LDS Church. And somehow in the course of the conversation there was discussion of the fact that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy (news to my friend) and the (to my mind fairly well settled) fact that Joseph initially practiced polygamy without Emma's knowledge or consent (shocking, very upsetting news to my friend). Now I've lived with these "facts" and more or less made peace with them long enough ago in my faith journey to have forgotten that they ever upset me. But upset me they did, deeply and profoundly, when I first learned them.

Now the friend in question is someone I love deeply. He is also someone whom I would describe as having experienced profound, positive life changes as a result of his association with the Church. His testimony of the Church has been the rock, the foundation, that has enabled him to face some pretty terrifying demons in his life and come through victorious. I would go so far as to say that the Church has been the primary social force for good in his life. And this conversation that I had with him has shaken his faith in the Church profoundly, to its very core.

Now I remember I went through three stages in terms of dealing with Joseph Smith's polygamy. Stage 1 was, "He can't possibly have done what he did to Emma and be a true prophet of God. I cannot possibly believe in anything Joseph Smith did or said any more." I continued to read Church history and struggle with this issue, and eventually I got to Stage 2, which was, "Maybe he was a prophet of God, but what he did to Emma was wrong without any question. If he was a prophet, he was a flawed prophet whom God was able to use to establish the true Church in spite of his flaws." Sometimes, to be honest, I think I'm still in Stage 2 with this. Though, as I've continued to read and ponder, I've come to feel more comfortable with Stage 3, which goes something like this: "Maybe God did command Joseph to take plural wives. Maybe God was trying to stretch the Church and push it to a new conception of marriage and relationships that went far beyond our conventional wisdom on this subject. And maybe in an ideal world, Joseph would have been up front with Emma and with everyone about this from the beginning. But he knew how people would react. How he feared they would react was, in fact, the way they did react. Emma freaked out. Outrage about polygamy was a contributing factor in the events leading to the prophet's assassination. So maybe Joseph had good reason for revealing what the Lord had commanded him only slowly and carefully, even to his wife." With Stage 3 I've even been able to consider that Celestial relationships will likely require extraordinary selflessness of us, a kind of selflessness that the practice of polygamy did in fact require of the Saints who practiced it. Whether I find myself in Stage 2 or Stage 3, some sort of faith is possible. Faith (in an LDS context, anyway) was not possible as long as I was in Stage 1. Which is definitely where my friend seems to be with this right now.

So at some level I feel very bad. Did I do something terribly wrong, by casually revealing to this person some information that has really shattered his faith? My faith eventually recovered from this information, which is part of why I hold to an ethic of believing that it is ultimately not healthy to withhold information from people. But what if my friend's faith doesn't recover? What if he loses his testimony? And what if all the good things that have come into his life as a result of his faith are lost? What if, for instance, he lapses into addiction again without the rock of his testimony to help him resist temptation? Am I responsible for that? So I've really wrestled with this a lot. It's been very painful for me. It's always been my desire to strengthen faith, never, ever to undermine it for anyone.

What I did do was make my friend promise not to make any snap decisions about his Church membership or activity as a result of having learned this. I bore my testimony to him. I told him that there is no question in my mind that Joseph was a true prophet, and the Church he restored is true. I encouraged him to keep reading and learning. I gave him a few titles of books... Donna Hill's Joseph Smith: The First Mormon, Richard Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling. And, yes, Fawn Brodie's No Man Knows My History. Remember, I got my testimony reading that book, even though I would say I presently disagree with many of her conclusions. I had to let her arguments sit with me for a while, think about them, and weigh them against information that others had to present. And I weighed them as well -- ultimately -- against my own testimony. Against my experience with the Spirit, and my experience with the Restored Church.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." But ultimately, as my friend and I have spent much time discussing recently, I want to believe and I must believe that "the glory of God is intelligence."

Faith/Doubt

2011-07-09T14:29:00.000-05:00

Last night, a group of people I'd mostly never met face-to-face humored me by showing up at my parents' home here in Springville, UT, to participate in what I had haphazardly called a "Gay Mormon Family Home Evening." Up until about an hour or so before people started showing up, I really wasn't quite sure what exactly we were going to do, or even if anybody would show up to eat the chips and veggies my dad and I had bought for the occasion.

I say people humored me, because I'm sure a number of folks showed up mainly to socialize (and not even necessarily with me!), and I insisted on starting and ending with a hymn and a prayer even though I knew some folks who showed up are not into that. And in between the socializing (which started around 7:30 p.m. and didn't end till 1:00 a.m.) we sat in a circle and took turns telling a little bit about ourselves, whatever we wanted to tell. And so the things people shared ranged from the mundane to the sublime, and there were stories of faith and doubt (and neither faith nor doubt), all intermingled. That, to me, was actually quite amazing.

The big happy surprise of the evening, for me, was the arrival of Kiley. I think she was actually the first one to RSVP on Facebook, so that was a big happy surprise from the moment she messaged me a few weeks ago to say she was really looking forward to it. I told her (only partly tongue-in-cheek) that I was amazed she was coming because I thought she was pissed off at me. And she said something to the effect that if she occasionally gave me that impression, it was only that the messages of faith on my blog hit too close to home for her. Which, if I had to summarize how I feel about her blog, would be very close to what I'd say about her. I understand the doubt thing, not just because I've been there, but because when I'm honest, I have to confess that the doubt is always sitting there, just at the threshold. Which is why it felt so good to actually see the real flesh and blood Kiley, and give her a great big hug, and to smile and see the smile on her face, and recognize that whatever we express of doubt or faith on our respective blogs, in the flesh we're something like a brother and a sister and much, much closer to each other than our words might make us out.

I recently received a confession of doubt from a close friend. He was weeping, because he felt like his faith and his life in the Church had been a great, big lie. He had confronted some uncomfortable truths about Church history that literally rocked his world, and he didn't see how faith was possible for him any more. I've never seen someone so utterly bereft and heartbroken. He wept and hugged me and trembled like a child.

And it occurred to me, as I was reading this recent post by Andrew, that people have this tendency to act as if the line between doubt and faith is this static boundary, which we are either on one side or the other of. When someone expresses doubt, if we've ever felt doubt, we act as if that person is where we once were. If someone expresses faith, and we no longer have faith, we act as if we were once "there," as if we've "been there, done that."

But there is no static boundary, there is no static realm or dominion of faith or doubt. Our lives are like a mountain road with a lot of twists and turns, valleys and vistas. And our faith is like that bend in the road just beyond an outcropping of rocks that lets us see miles all around us in the valley. We can sit for a while and enjoy the view. But when we move beyond that point (and move on we must, because our lives are a road we must keep walking), of course we lose the view we once had. Now we're on a stretch of trail where we can see nothing but steep walls hemming in our view, and a path that disappears after a few dozen meters. No vista any more. But it doesn't mean we didn't see what we saw earlier in the journey. It doesn't mean that previous vista was false. And if we stay on the journey, eventually we'll catch another vista again. And when we do -- when, once again, we can see the valley stretching out below us for miles away -- it's no longer the same vista we had before, but a completely new and different vista, one likely with a larger perspective than the earlier one. Even that perspective will eventually have to be abandoned if we want to keep growing.

So a normal, healthy, growing soul passes through faith and doubt, which are not so much opposed to one another as interconnected phases of the same journey; a journey which could not exist without both. When a person of faith wrestles with doubt, he's not "returning" to doubt, he's moving forward. We may wrestle with doubt at many phases of our lives, but doubt is never the same. It's always a different twist in the road. And faith reaffirmed and re-embraced is never the same faith. It's always a maturer faith, more refined by the doubts that preceded it.

Yes, Andrew, faith is relevant. But only so long as we don't define faith as the things we supposedly know -- the static, unchanging facts -- that make us moral beings (which is sort of how you've defined it in your essay). For me faith, in some profounder way is the journey, even when I'm passing through darkness and doubt. Because in those moments when my view is cut off, I've learned to keep walking, knowing that as long as I don't stop moving, I'll eventually see more clearly again.

Doubt represents the hard-won acquisition of indispensable truths. We should never jettison those truths, and so in a real sense, we never jettison those doubts. They just get incorporated into the larger understandings we acquire further up the path. That is why I ultimately can't bring myself to argue with someone who doubts, to try to convince them that they are wrong. At some profound level, I do not believe they are wrong, and to persuade them they were wrong would be to send them in the wrong direction, backwards instead of forwards.

That's why I was so happy last night. I loved that feeling in the room last night, as I sat there conversing till early this morning, that sense that wherever we are, we're all in this together.

"Because I'm Gay"

2011-07-08T01:16:00.002-05:00

Earlier today, I went to Salt Lake. I dropped my sister and my friend E. off at Temple Square, and then went to meet a couple of friends for lunch. (Meeting friends = happiness!) After lunch, I headed back for Temple Square.

We went to the Visitor Centers -- first South then North. As much as I enjoy the historical stuff about the building of the temple at the South Visitor Center, my favorite place to be is in the room with the Christus statue in the North Visitor Center. I love that there are seats there where you can rest and meditate. I never go to Temple Square without taking time for that. I found a seat, and began to contemplate the statue, to contemplate creation and the work of Christ, and let the peace that comes with such contemplations fill my soul.

A couple of sister missionaries saw me taking in the Christus. The flags on their name tags showed that one was from the Ukraine, the other from Mexico. I assume they took one look at my dress -- a summery south asian shirt with a beautiful blue embroidered pattern and a colorful necklace -- and assumed I was not a member. It was a technically correct assumption, though, of course, the truth is a bit more complicated. After complimenting my shirt, they offered to take a picture of me with the Christus. (This is part of the picture they took.)

They were sort of making a typical missionary pass at me, trying to convert my interest in the Christus into an opportunity for a deeper religious conversation. I thought I would head them off at the pass by explaining that my friend and I attended the Lake Nokomis Ward in Minneapolis. They didn't let me off the hook. "So... Are you a member?" the Ukrainian sister asked. She did most of the talking. I surmised she was the senior companion.

"My friend is, but I am not," I admitted. "Though I guess you could say that I am as active in the Church as it is possible to be without being a member."

She looked a little puzzled. "How long have you been attending?" she asked.

"Six years," I said.

"Why haven't you joined the Church yet?"

"It's complicated," I smiled politely.

They weren't satisfied. "But why?"

"Because I'm gay," I finally clarified.

"Oh," the sister frowned. "I see."

"My husband and I will be celebrating our 18th anniversary in August."

"You are married? Really? When did you marry?"

"We married legally in California in 2008."

She frowned. "Oh, well that won't work. You can't join the Church."

"I know," I said. "That's why I've been attending for six years without becoming a member."

Both their faces registered frustration.

"Why do you attend Church then?" the Ukrainian sister asked.

"Because I feel the Spirit there. Because it helps me live my life the way I would like to live it. Because I have a testimony of the gospel."

She shook her head. "How long have you been this way?"

"As long as I can remember," I replied. "I've been aware of my attraction to others of the same sex since I was eleven. I was fourteen when I figured out this might mean I was gay."

"Oh," she frowned. "Did you want to change? Have you tried to change?"

"Oh, yes. I prayed, I fasted. I tried to live as faithfully as possible. I wanted God to change me. But it never worked out that way."

"How long did you try to change?"

"Eleven years."

"Oh." Sighs and more frustration.

"But what about your parents? What do they think of this?"

"This was difficult for my parents to accept at first. But they know me. They know what kind of a person I am. They love me and they love my husband, and they accept him as a member of the family."

"You don't want to leave him."

"No," I replied, "I don't want to leave him."

The sister frowned and shook her head again. "That won't work at all."

The sister from Mexico tried a different tack. "What brings you happiness?" she asked.

"My family. My faith."

At that point, the conversation sort of sputtered to an end. Neither of them seemed to have much more to say. I checked my watch, and noticed that we had less than ten minutes to get to the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, where we were going to watch Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration. My dad had recommended it.

"I need to go..."

The Mexican sister smiled at me. "You want to see the movie..."

"Yes," I replied.

"Well," she offered, "Just keep going to Church. Just keep doing your best."

"I know," I smiled.

Revisiting the Past

2011-07-07T11:13:00.000-05:00

I'm here in Utah, visiting my parents without Göran, but with a friend. So my friend is sleeping in my parents' guest room, and I'm sleeping in the basement in my brother Joe's old room. But it just so happens that the bed I'm sleeping in is the same bed I slept in all the years I was growing up.

It was an old bunk bed, purchased when my brother Mark and I were small children. When our family moved into a bigger house, and Mark and I were able to graduate to our own bedrooms, the bunks were separated, and I continued to sleep in it as a single bed until I graduated from high school and went to BYU, and then on my mission. I continued to sleep in the bed for a while after my mission, and then when visiting parents for summer vacation. I think the last time I slept in it was the summer of 1986.

It's funny how a physical object can bring back intense memories. I saw the Strassenburg Planetarium sticker I must have put there when I was still a pre-teen, which brought me back into a completely different mental world full of dinosaurs and astronomy. (Well, maybe not completely different!)

Last night I was remembering how this bed was the place where I spent at least a third of the first half of my life -- sleeping, doing homework, studying scriptures. Dreaming. And... masturbating. And feeling guilty. And praying. No -- pleading with God. A bed is an intimate place.

It's strange to be back in that bed now, and remembering. Remembering the wrestling, the conflicts, and the coming to some kind of resolution, some kind of peace. It's strange having a concrete reminder of the path that's brought me to where I am now.

Göran was here for one night, and neither of us sleeps well separate. So Göran crawled into the single and we slept peacefully intertwined. The following morning, I woke up and knelt next to the bed to pray while Göran was still sleeping. That was a moment of realization too, symbolic maybe of the ways in which the most significant aspects of my childhood -- my faith and my hope -- are still with me. But added to it is a larger perspective, the fuller life that is possible with family and experience and compassion.

God just keeps adding. Nothing is ultimately lost. Everything is still there, inside my heart. Even the old pain is sweet now because it helped make me who and what I am, leaving me nothing but gratitude.

Gay Mormon Family Home Evening, Springville, UT

2011-07-03T21:32:00.000-05:00

Göran and I arrived in Utah yesterday morning. We're here visiting family. This time, we brought along my friend E. (a member of my ward) so that he and my sister could get to know each other better. Long story! Saturday and Sunday we were in Roosevelt, attending the Northern Ute Pow Wow and spending time with in-laws. Earlier this evening, I went for a long walk with my dad, having a heart-to-heart talk.

Being with family is magical for me. I feel so peaceful, happy and relaxed. My family are the coolest people -- every one of them. There's no one else I'd rather be with. And I feel like here I'm more me than I am anywhere else. Göran is part of the family too, which is part of being able to be me. I love watching him interact freely and intimately with my parents, siblings and in-laws. I love seeing him appreciated and loved fully and without reservation by my family. And here, the spiritual half of me is validated as well. I participate in family prayers and can talk about spiritual things with my parents. We had a little family home evening, and my dad asked me to give the lesson -- which felt wonderful to me. My family is the one branch of the Church I am not excommunicated from. So to me, being here with them feels to me like what I imagine the Celestial Kingdom will be. This is my best taste of eternity.

Tomorrow, after a family July 4th cookout, Göran is heading back to Minneapolis, while I and my friend E. will stay until next Sunday. It feels weird... It's the first time Göran and I will have gone on a trip together and then had to part ways. I'm not sure how I feel about it. It will be hard for me to say goodbye to him tomorrow.

But the cool part will be staying here with family and also -- I hope! -- being able to connect with blogging and other friends here in Utah.

To that end, I've planned a little "gay Mormon family home evening" for this Friday, July 8, at 7:00 p.m., at my parents' place in Springville, UT. The purpose will mostly be to share stories and socialize over refreshments. If you are in the area and are interested in coming, please email me through my blog or contact me through Facebook! If we haven't met, I would love to meet. If we've already met, I would love to see you again...

Given for a Principle

2011-07-01T08:59:00.010-05:00

As part of my daily scripture study today, I read D&C section 89, "The Word of Wisdom." In verse three -- at the end of the preamble written by the prophet -- I was particularly struck by the phrase "given for a principle." The Saints usually focus on the phrase "principle with promise"; we usually focus on the health benefits that come from following the injunction to avoid alcohol, nicotine and caffeine. But it seems to me that the prophet invited the Saints to look at this revelation as more than just a health code; to see the social, moral and spiritual principle underlying it. So this time around, I read it to see if there was a larger pattern that might be applied in other areas of our lives.

The beginning of the revelation proper is verse four, which warns against "evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days." The revelation then proceeds, in verses five and following, to discuss a series of products and their healthy and proper uses. The evils and designs at issue have to do with the ways in which American capitalism subordinates all human values to the profit motive; how it exploits human needs and desires by fostering addictive behavior; how it uses clever techniques to create extraneous needs and desires, to persuade us that we want things we don't in fact need at all and that may in fact be bad for us. That's why the Word of Wisdom is presented in the form of an explanation of what humans in fact need, and how the world's goods supply those needs in a healthy way when used properly. Proper use is a central principle here. The goods at issue here are not in and of themselves harmful. The concern is misuse of good things.

When we consider the history of American capitalism since 1833 when this revelation was received, how our entire economic system has been possessed by mass consumption and mass marketing spinning ever out of control, it gives added significance to the phrase "evils and designs which do and will exist... in the last days." Whatever concerns the early Saints may have had about the evils of Demon Rum, they seem, to me, dwarfed by the mayhem of the wars and world-wide ecological disaster that are the unintended side-effects of oil-driven industry. The Word of Wisdom does have something directly to say to the modern meat industry, about which a good deal more could be written -- whether we're talking about the destruction of rainforests for the production of South American beef, or the toxic ecological effects of concentrated, mass-scale hog farming, or the cruelty of the poultry industry, or the health effects of McDiets. The bottom line is, we live in a society where something on the order of half a trillion dollars a year are invested in mass marketing, in order to get us hooked on fast food, fast cars ("zoom! zoom!"), pornography, stylish clothes, and hand-held electronic devices, all with very questionable effects on human lives, human relationships and the ecology of our planet.

Pornography, to me, is a classic example of our our economy works, and how the Word of Wisdom exposes the evil underlying it. Humans have a legitimate need for love and affection, and sex is the physical dimension, a physical expression of that most sacred need. Pornography commodifies that need, and sells us sex in a way that can't possibly meet that need in a humanly satisfying way. We become "addicted to love," substituting pictures of sex acts for human relationships, and in the process distorting the human relationships themselves. And our economy uses pornography to sell us chewing gum and cars. Has anybody else noticed how common it has become lately to sell clothes -- usually really expensive clothes -- by presenting pictures of people who aren't actually wearing any?

The Word of Wisdom, I think, humanizes us by reminding us that all the world's goods have a proper use, and warning us against a system that would use our own fundamental needs and urges against us, to get us buying stuff without thinking whether or how we actually need it.

A Funny Sort of Anniversary

2011-06-30T17:40:00.001-05:00

Two of the missionaries assigned to my ward came by for a visit today. They had been strongly encouraged to do so by my friend Mary. Oddly, I had had a random encounter with the missionaries from the Cedar Lake Ward last week. And even though I had told them my complete story, they thought it was a good idea to encourage the Lake Nokomis missionaries to talk to me. So I just accepted this missionary visit as something that had to happen, since it was coincidentally coming from more than one source at the same time.

I began by apologizing to Elder B. and Elder H., as I was afraid they might consider their visit to me a waste of time. I told them how I'd come to know Mary, and they told me why she seemed to think it would be a good idea for us to meet. And I told a little bit about my "situation."

In the process of explaining that, it occurred to me that Göran and I will be celebrating our 18th anniversary in August. This August will also be the 6th anniversary of the spiritual experience that brought me back to the LDS Church. So, this year, I'll have been a believing/practicing Mormon for one third of the time Göran and I have been together. That feels significant to me. Six more years, and I'll have been a "Mormon" for half of our relationship.

I guess at the beginning of this particular leg of the journey I wondered... Would it -- could it?? -- last? Would I, at some point, decide it was pointless to try to maintain any sort of relationship with the Church? How far could I go with this? Or, alternatively, would my relationship with the Church stress my relationship with Göran to the breaking point? (That only ever seemed a risk during the first year or two of my activity in the Church.) But somehow, I am still in relationship with the Church, and still in relationship with Göran, and in fact I'd say both relationships are thriving.

Göran sent me an "I love you!" text message during my meeting with the elders. (He knew I was meeting with them after 2 p.m.) I was actually surprised how little he was bothered that I was meeting with them.

After the missionaries left, I texted him back, "I told the missionaries all about you and showed them your picture. They would love to meet you!"

He replied, "Um which picture?"

I replied, "The drag picture. I told them you were my wife."

That immediately got him out of text message mode and into phone call mode. "You did not!" he gasped. We laughed together until tears were streaming down my cheeks. It felt good.

The truth is, even though I can't be a member, even though there are extreme limits on the degree of participation that is allowed me, the Spirit is abundantly present in my life as a result of my willingness to do what I can do. My life is enriched and deepened by my faith. And my faith is giving me resources I desperately need in my life right now. I've always felt like I've gotten extra blessings from the Lord to make up for what I can't do in the Church. Meanwhile, Göran and I are discovering new dimensions of our relationship we never knew existed. I feel closer to him now than I ever have. And we're getting ready to foster parent again, now that Glen seems to be thriving on his own.

Life is strange and cool.

Same-Sex Marriage a Major Theme at Pride Twin Cities 2011

2011-06-27T21:08:00.008-05:00

A member of my Family Home Evening group joined the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus a couple of months ago, so our Pride activities this year included supporting him by attending a Gay Men's Chorus concert Saturday night. Earlier that day, Göran and I (and other members of my FHE group) went to Loring Park to look at the various Pride exhibits.

Sunday morning, Göran and Glen were marching in the parade as part of the Delta Lambda Phi contingent, so I met up with some friends -- including J., a member of my FHE group -- to watch the parade. It's the first time in some years that I've actually watched the entire parade from beginning to end!

There were 133 different official contingents. I was particularly interested in the contingents that focused on the issue of same-sex marriage. There were more than a few.

The DFL ("Democrat Farmer Labor") city council members marched as a contingent, and made this statement about their support for same-sex marriage.

So did the Minnesota ACLU.

Of course, Rainbow Families/Family Equality Council was there too, and can be counted on to march with a strong pro-marriage-equality message.

A major focus of OutFront Minnesota this year will be working to defeat the constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage that will be on the ballot in November 2012. I've joined OutFront's Faith Steering Committee to strategize and work with other people of faith in Minnesota on this issue.

Project 515 is a Minnesota-based organization specifically committed to the issue of marriage equality as well.

OutFront Minnesota and Project 515 have joined with a coalition of other organizations under the Umbrella of Minnesotans United for All Families, which is organizing the campaign to support same-sex marriage. I made sure to stop at their booth during the festival in the park to sign up and stay apprised of the various efforts they'll be organizing in coming months.

In the park, I encountered a couple of other groups working on marriage equality as well, like Winning Marriage Equality and Marry Me Minnesota. WME appears to be the brainchild of Denny Smith, a Minnesota teacher and father of a gay son. "Marry Me" has organized to support same-sex couples who are suing the State of Minnesota for the right to marry. (OutFront is encouraging Minnesotans to pursue a legislative strategy for winning marriage equality, rather than a litigious strategy.)

I ran into my friend, Patrick Scully, a Minnesota performance artist and founder and artistic director of Patrick's Cabaret. (He's hard to miss at Pride, because he's so frickin' tall!!) He was wearing a banner congratulating New York on its legalization of same-sex marriage. On his back, he had the Target Corporation logo superimposed on a Rainbow Flag, with a bloody knife stuck in the middle of it. Patrick had used a real, plastic knife and special make-up effects to make it look like he'd been stabbed in the back. It was his own personal effort to hold Target responsible for its betrayal of the GLBT community when it backed arch-conservative, anti-same-sex-marriage candidate Tom Emmer for governor. (Emmer lost to DFL candidate Mark Dayton.) The last I saw Patrick yesterday, he was lying down on the lawn near the Target booth at Pride, with a bevy of security guards standing around him, trying to figure out what to do with him. I wonder if he succeeded in getting arrested?

(Worth noting here, parenthetically at least, that yet another conservative opponent of same-sex marriage has publicly admitted he was wrong, and has come out in support of same-sex marriage.)

We didn't get home till after everything was shut down in the park, because Göran and Glen were both helping with the Delta Lambda Phi booth. When we did, we finally got some well deserved Sabbath rest, and rubbed each other's feet in front of the television, while watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. (Getting geared up for the final installment in July by watching all seven movies!)

But there's plenty more walking we'll need to do, before all is said and done.

Why "Mormonism" Will Ultimately Liberate "the Gays"

2011-06-23T11:43:00.006-05:00

Andrew recently offered a post explaining why he thinks "queer theory" holds more promise for the gay community than "GLBT activism," grounded as it supposedly is in "essentialist" or "essentializing" approaches to sexuality. Of course, there are plenty of LGBT activists who subscribe to "deconstructionist" "queer theory," so I'm not sure it's quite accurate to characterize this as a question of queer theory versus GLBT activism. However, it's probably* true that the vast majority of gay men and lesbians in this country -- including activists -- subscribe to what he would characterize as an "essentialist" approach to sexuality. I.e., You're either gay or straight (or bisexual). We just "are" this way.

Now, what's interesting is that queer theorists themselves seem to be at least a little bit troubled by the fact that their views of sexuality seem to converge with the views of the extreme, homophobic Christian right, which insists that homosexuality is an illusion/delusion, that sexualities are completely socially constructed and are, in essence, whatever we want them to be. What I find a little bit troubling (apart from the fact that this view of sexuality doesn't actually seem to correspond to the real-life experience of the vast majority of gay men and lesbians), is that in order to get around this itsy bitsy little problem, queer theorists will in turn argue that the problem with the Christian right view is that it insists on there being a right and a wrong. Take morality out of the equation, and it doesn't matter how polymorphously perverse our sexualities are. We have a right to do whatever we please, so it shouldn't matter if there's no such thing as homosexuality. There's no such thing as heterosexuality either. So there!

That view of sexuality is "liberating" for about two seconds. Usually the two seconds can be lengthened out to four or five years if you're in some cutting edge liberal arts program at a major secular University. It is liberating precisely until you realize, as a gay man or lesbian, that you do in fact find the most fulfillment in a loving relationship with a person of the same-sex, and despite all your efforts or wishes that that not be the case, it is. And so some queer theorist telling you that you're supposed to revel in your polymorphous perversity, and some Christian right therapist telling you that your homosexuality is due to your fear of connecting with your own masculinity or a Satanic deception -- none of that helps in the least. What helps us is what helps everyone else in the world: love, freedom, acceptance, community, commitment. And guess what? Morality.

There's a reason why the vast majority of "queer" folk take a more essentialist perspective for granted. It's because it fits with our experience. And it works best for us. Now I'll grant that the inner workings of sexuality are likely complex. I'll grant that just because the sun appears to rotate around the earth doesn't mean that it in fact does. Just because I have to rely on Newtonian mechanics to ride my bike and go about my business day-to-day doesn't mean that Einstein was wrong about time and space being relative. Nevertheless, the sun still rises every morning outside my eastern window, and I still organize my day around the very Newtonian clock hanging on my wall. Einstein isn't particularly helpful for running my life. And queer theorists (not to mention Christian right therapists) are a long way away from showing that their speculations about the nature of sexuality are anything like natural law. Eve Sedgwick is no Einstein (even though she's almost as difficult to read).

There came a point in my life where I realized that in order for my life to have a meaning, it needed a center. I spent a lot of time and energy searching for that center. I tried to find it in academics, in humanism, in political activism, in artistic endeavor. I certainly tried to find it in my relationship with my husband. I pondered whether a meaningful life could even be possible if it was centered merely in the self, in myself; though that's always seemed least promising of all. My best efforts to make sense of my life and find a center in anything but God ultimately failed.

The most meaningful parts of my life -- including my coming out and coming to terms with my sexuality, and the establishment of my relationship with my husband -- were the parts of my life that literally had been touched by God. And so opening my heart to the Spirit, and accepting the Spirit's invitation to "come home" was ultimately simply an acknowledgment of that fact. And it was the single most liberating act of my life.

I am willing to say that opening my heart to God would and could be liberation enough. But as I followed the Spirit's invitation to "come home," and to enter as fully as I could into the path of faith, without self-condemnation and without fear, I began to learn that the Restored Gospel offered very specific hope and liberation to me as a gay man that I didn't see anywhere else.

For one thing, it quickly became clear to me that religious traditions, like Protestantism, that are rooted in a scripture-based authority paradigm, will never be able to resolve the problem posed by homosexuality in a satisfactory manner. All they will be able to do is engage in a never-ending argument about how the scripture applies to homosexuality; an argument that becomes increasingly irrelevant as historical/textual criticism of the Bible undermines people's faith that what the Bible may or may not say about homosexuality really matters anyway. This is not helpful to gays. But a revelation-based authority paradigm, in which human beings seek wisdom directly from God, in which human beings are in a dynamic, historically contingent and ever-evolving relationship with a living and eternal God, a God who is progressively revealing to them line upon line and precept upon precept the truth of their own natures, and the truth of God's nature as revealed through them.... This holds promise.

Religious traditions, both eastern and western, that hold that spirit is somehow beyond and/or superior to matter; that hold that physical existence is a trap or a delusion or tainted with sin; these traditions couldn't really help me either. Perhaps I could find peace in some path of asceticism. My husband has frequently accused me of being a "monk," of having too little interest in material things. It's probably true that without him, I would be living something like a monk. I was seriously tempted by monasticism in my mid-twenties. But ultimately I realized that while I might find "peace" in this approach to the spirit and the flesh, I would never find what is best captured by a turn of phrase in Section 93 of the Doctrine & Covenants: "fullness of joy." Namely, that thing that we find in the eternal union of "spirit and element, inseparably connected."

Our bodies are real, and they matter. And they are good. Very, very good. And it is God's intention, according to "Mormonism," God's "work" and God's "glory," to enable us to enter into that fullness of joy. My fellow Latter-day Saints may not understand what my relationship with my husband means to me (though it's not that difficult to understand, if you are happily companioned, it's not that huge of a leap of imagination). They may believe that my homosexuality is somehow the flawed by-product of a sin-filled creation; that God would never intend to make me this way because to do so would undermine his whole plan for creation. But what others know or don't know can't determine my happiness, nor does it set the limits for what God can and can't do. And God is in my life, so I have it on good authority that my life is headed toward something very, very good.

So I choose to be patient, and to walk down this path step by step. The only reason at this point in my life I might trade up what I have for whatever elusive dreams reparative therapists or queer theorists might offer me would be if I somehow abandoned the connection to the Spirit that has so filled my life with faith, hope and love in recent years.

But what would be the point in that?

__________

* I don't have any survey data to back me up on this. My impression that the vast majority of gays and lesbians hold more "essentialist" views of sexuality is based on personal observation of many, many friends and acquaintances, and involvement in a wide variety of gay organizations. In fact, I dare say that the only people I know who insist on a more "deconstructionist" view of sexuality are people in academia.

Notes on Eternal Family

2011-06-20T08:39:00.003-05:00

Jotted down in my little scripture study/church meetings notebook

Family

1) A family has different types of members -- like a body, like the Church! -- with different roles, functions, gifts and callings

2) Families are extended, and complex: mother-father-child is a cell, a unit within the family; it is not the family

3) The Earth has a history and a destiny which cannot be fulfilled without every member of the human family playing his or her destined role. Humanity in its entirety is the largest, most complete expression of family: the family of Adam and Eve. The timeline for the fulfillment of that destiny is known only to the Father.

4) We each need family to grow and develop into our full stature.

5) Friendship/Love is the most fundamental power/force driving/creating/sustaining family.

*****

Last night, after we dropped Glen off at his dorm, Göran and I watched the Israeli film Eyes Wide Open, which tells in a very straightforward manner the story of two gay Orthodox Jews living in Israel, and the unexpected love that grows between them. One is married, the other is not. It's a beautiful, thought-provoking film.

The film lays out with wonderful clarity the theological challenge related to same-relationships. There's a scene in which a rabbi states -- as a general principle -- that abstinence is a sin. God has created a world full of beauty because he wants us to have joy. That is the purpose for which God created the world. To set oneself apart from that, to refuse to partake of the joy God offers us is a sin. The main character in the story, Aaron (the gay, married man) takes issue with the rabbi. Man is supposed to struggle. Without struggle and self-discipline, life has no meaning. That about sums up the theological divide between gay Christians, and Christian ex-gays.

Later in the film, when the rabbi questions Aaron about his relationship with Ezri (the younger, unmarried man), Aaron explains that Ezri makes him feel closer to God. Before meeting Ezri, he explains, he had been dead inside. He had once been dead, now he was alive. Ezri had given him life. Ultimately, however, when the community threatens to cast Aaron and Ezri both out of the synagogue, boycott Aaron's butcher shop, and force him and his family out of the community, Ezri leaves, order is restored, and Aaron grieves silently and alone. In a very poignant moment in the film, Aaron is praying silently in his bedroom while his wife observes, "I know what you are praying for."

The film certainly left me reflecting on my relationship with Göran, on the truth that it is my relationship with him that has enabled my heart to open itself up to God. It is in my relationship with him I believe I experience the fullness of joy for which God has created all of us.

*****

All too often, convention is just another form of human pride and stubbornness. It's our excuse, our rationalization, our justification for things that, in the broad scheme of love and justice, would otherwise be indefensible. So often in scripture, we see God acting against convention, working through outcasts, undermining the wise, the powerful and the self-justified.

The question for us is: Am I on the side of Love, or on the side of its denial?

Scattered Father's Day Thoughts

2011-06-19T12:39:00.005-05:00

It's not supposed to be this way. This morning, I was sitting on the pew, waiting for Church to start, waiting for Priesthood opening exercises. I was sitting alone. Men were spread out all over the sanctuary. I was feeling a bit sad. I thought, "It's not supposed to be this way. I'm supposed to have family and friends sitting right next to me, their shoulders brushing against mine, reminding me that I am loved, and that whatever it is I have to face, I can face it with them."

I felt the Spirit's presence saying, "Until things are the way they're supposed to be, I'm here for you."

I felt better, knowing I could find the strength to keep the faith and help make things right.

Family is me too. Our priesthood lesson was on the doctrine of eternal family. There was a lot of talk about one man, one woman, etc., etc.

Something stirring deep inside told me, Family is me too. I shared a story about how, when my grandmother's parents died in the great Spanish influenza epidemic in 1919 and 1920, their life-long bachelor uncle took in the eight orphaned children and raised them as his own. That sparked a discussion about how family is bigger than just one isolated male-female coupling and their children.

The teacher warmly thanked me for my comments after class...

It's personal now. Ward leaders asked me to participate in a special, six-week-long family history class, so that's been my Sunday School last week and today.

Individuals in the class were asked to talk about their family history research experiences. I thought, OK. This is personal now. I can't get by on vague generalities any more. This is about me. Real family. My real family.

I told the story of how Göran's mom had taken him away as a child, how he didn't even learn her real name until years after she died, how he only just met his father again for the first time about three years ago. I talked about our three trips to Memphis, Tennessee since then, meeting and getting to know members of his family. Looking at family books and Bibles and photos with them, and starting to put together a family tree that right now reaches back to George Washington's day.

Because I love them. Sacrament meeting was all about Father's Day. It was a good meeting. There were good talks.

I was thinking about Göran and Glen. Glen is spending the weekend with us, to celebrate Father's Day with us. I thought, Here I am separated from my family on Father's Day. But this is helping me. This is me working at becoming a better man, a better husband, a better dad.

I was anxious to get home afterwards. Some youth were standing outside the doors of the chapel with cans of A&W root beer to which they had affixed the label "POP." They didn't give me one. I wasn't sure if it's because I'm not considered a dad, or because I left the chapel before they were ready to hand out the Father's Day tokens. I'm not going to worry about it too much.

My friend E. stopped me at the back entrance. "Are you OK?" he asked. I noticed he had a can of "POP" in his hand.

"I am, I'm great," I said.

His brows furrowed. He grabbed me warmly by the arm and stared at me skeptically. "Really?" he asked.

I looked him in the eye, and I calmly said, "Really. I am. I'm great. I just want to go home now. I want to be with my husband and my son. They're waiting for me. It's Father's Day."

"OK," he said, his voice still not letting me off the hook. "You go be a father. I'll call you later today."

I walked out the back entrance feeling really great that I have a friend who really cares, who really wants to make sure.

Dads. Plural. Glen's idea for Father's Day was a road trip. So we've rented a car, and we're driving down to southern Minnesota. He wants both of his living foster dads to be with him while we visit his father's grave.

Göran and Glen are in a jovial mood. They had a great night's sleep... They were still sleeping when I got home from Church. We had breakfast together, while Göran told us about a strange dream he had about a drag queen battle royale. Glen is going skydiving next month, and we shared our skydiving stories with him.

I'm feeling really, incredibly lucky. I love Göran so much. I love our foster son so much. I'm so proud of what an incredible job he's done in his first year of college. What an amazing young man. I miss him terribly. I see him once a week, but still I miss having him here under our roof. Life feels like it's the way it's supposed to be when we're together. We're a complete family again.

I have this prayer that is more or less constant, whenever I think of him. It goes, Let him be happy. Let him have all the best things in life. Let him have everything he so richly deserves. Make him everything he can be. Let him live into his full stature. Let him have a life full of love.

Happy Father's Day, everyone!

It's What We Can't Know that Gets Us

2011-06-18T10:06:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking a lot lately about one of Andrew's posts. I also read this on-line NY Times article about fervidly ex-gay Michael Glatze. What struck me most in thinking about both posts is the ways in which we seem to be driven by our uncertainty.

Andrew was commenting on a debate over at Wheat and Tares about the nature of the Spirit -- how believers tend to emphasize the experience of the Spirit as something totally unique and ineffable, while unbelievers tend to write it off as emotion and wish-fulfillment.

But here's the thing about the Spirit. When someone tells me they "feel the Spirit," I of course can't possibly know exactly what it is they are feeling. They can describe it to me. I can try to compare my own feelings to their descriptions. But ultimately I can never know if what I am feeling is exactly what they are feeling or not. Ultimately, I'm left having to figure it out for myself. I have to make my own judgment call as to whether what I am experiencing in a particular situation is "just another feeling," or whether it is something transcendent, the result of divine Presence and activity.

Now, I do believe there are some objective criteria by which we can judge the presence of the Spirit. I have received revelations that have been objectively validated. I also believe that we can tell a life is being worked on by the Spirit when we see signs of moral amelioration; when we see growing patience, courage, honesty, and selflessness; in a word, when we see the blossoming of Love. So I look to other criteria as proof that the Spirit is at work besides just externally unverifiable feelings. Nevertheless, I acknowledge that one "chooses" criteria. Whatever criteria we accept as proof of the Spirit's presence, the fact that we can and do choose to be persuaded by certain criteria and not others does seem to point to the possibility that we experience the presence of the Spirit because we choose to experience it. There's really no getting around that.

OK, now let's consider another seemingly totally unrelated concept of "gay identity." When I was first starting to deal with my own feelings of "same-sex attraction," I experienced a similar dilemma. Yes, I had certain feelings -- very powerful feelings! -- but did those feelings make me "gay"? Were my feelings the same as the feelings of someone else who identifies as gay, or were my feelings something of an entirely different order? Am I really gay, or am I mistaken? This is why so many of us find "coming out" narratives so compelling. We study these narratives for clues about our own internal states. It is part of a critical process of figuring out who and what we are.

The question posed by the "ex-gay" movement really is, Can anyone have gay feelings? It actually denies that anyone can. It calls the belief that anyone can be gay or have gay feelings a delusion. So we've got a similar divide here to the divide between people who say that the Spirit is something unique and true and totally ineffable, and those who say the Spirit does not exist, that it can be explained away as "just" emotion or psychology or wish fulfillment. We have people denying the reality of gayness, and then we have people who insist that there is something distinct, something unique, that gay people are fundamentally different from heterosexuals in some basic way.

And interestingly, when individuals who once identified as gay cross that dividing line and insist that they are not and never were gay, many folks in the gay community respond by wondering if those people in fact were never gay. Maybe they were bisexual. Maybe they were experimenting or confused or something else besides gay.

But it's a question we will never/can never answer. Because we simply can't know what's going on inside of somebody else. Our personal, individual experiences are ultimately incomparable to the experiences of others. We can listen to all the testimonies we want on Fast and Testimony Sunday. We can read all the coming out stories we want in XY magazine. Or we can read all the secular humanist explanations of the psychology of religion. We can read all the ex-gay literature on the psychology of homosexuality we want. Ultimately, we are left in ourselves to decide what it all means to us, to figure out which narrative makes the most sense in terms of explaining our own experiences, our own feelings.

One reason I love the Gospel of Thomas is because of its nuanced analysis of interiority. The Jesus of Thomas makes the case through parable and paradox that the only things we truly can learn are the things we learn from no one else. It is the ultimate tract on pneumatic Christianity. It shows us how to honor that process within ourselves, and how to respect it in others.

I read the militancy of a Michael Glatze as an inability to cope with the fundamental, existential insecurity that is at the root of any human identity or choice. We are better served by the humility that acknowledges an ultimate lack of knowledge. In religious terms, we call it "faith."

Without that humility, it is impossible, I think, to achieve the compassion that needs to be at the heart of whatever it is we as a human species are about. Without that humility, our faith devolves into intolerance and tyranny.

Acknowledging our uncertainty, on the other hand, frees us in the only way that any truth can be capable of freeing us. It frees us to receive and to love.

Ten Steps to One

2011-06-15T10:52:00.003-05:00

There's a Muslim hadith (a traditional saying attributed to the prophet Muhammad) in which God says, "O My servant! If you take one step toward Me, I take ten toward you." The basic idea behind this saying is not different from the basic idea in the parable of the prodigal son, where the father, upon seeing his lost son at the gates, runs full speed to meet him and bring him home.

I have experienced this overflow of love in God's dealings with me. Looking back over my life, I occasionally feel a sense of shame about the many mistakes I have made, and about my life-time of rebellious, self-justifying attitudes. I have often wondered, Why me? Why would God care about me any more, when I disregarded him for so long? When I still make mistakes? And yet, I have experienced this extravagant surfeit of divine love. When I have made the slightest move toward God, God has always immediately been there, encouraging me, sustaining me, walking not just toward me but with me. I have been so blessed, and not because I deserve it.

God showers us with blessings, and yet... And yet, God cannot bless us if we will not first at least take that one step. First we must move at least enough to show God (and to prove to ourselves?) that the intent of our heart is toward him. At some level, God knows that no blessing he can give us will have meaning unless we ourselves are willing to receive it. "For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive not the gift? Behold, he rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift" (D&C 88: 33). We have to exercise at least that particle of faith required to open our hearts to receive whatever gifts God wishes to bestow upon us.

I have experienced this recently in a very personal way. I've been experiencing a very difficult, very painful trial of faith recently, the details of which I really can't discuss publicly. At times, I've felt like I was entering into a tunnel of despair. I could feel the darkness closing around me. I worried that I was going to sink back into the depression that haunted me as a young man. I was beginning to experience again that same numbness, that emotional paralysis.

But I'm not the same man today that I was some two decades ago when I was on the verge of suicide. Today I know at some very deep level, in a way that I did not -- could not! -- know then, that God is there for me, that God will never fail me. I know this from trying him again and again and again, and never yet having been failed by him. And so in the face of this most recent challenge I got down on my knees (in the face of this challenge I get down on my knees daily), and I asked God for help, knowing that what I needed from God I would receive.

And the Spirit did speak to me and tell me what I needed to do. As always, there were things God needed me to do. It would not be easy at first. It would not be comfortable. I would have to endure loneliness. I would have to stretch myself and do things beyond what I would initially have thought myself capable of doing. But -- the Spirit assured me -- if I would do the things being asked of me cheerfully and with faith, I could always count on the Spirit's sustaining presence, and I could soon expect the Lord to bless me and my loved ones and open up doors of assistance and encouragement and relief. In short, God would make a way for me. And in fact, that is exactly how it has worked out over the last few days, and how it continues to work out. It seems that for every step I take God does indeed carry me forward ten steps.

Each time I have to do this, I learn something more about faith, about how faith works. And I learn to trust that it will always work this way.

I was having a chat yesterday with a fellow gay Mormon friend. We were discussing the fact that many gay Mormons have become utterly discouraged. So many have left the Church and in essence are saying, "I'll consider coming back, once the Church changes."

But that is not how faith works.

Faith works when we take that initial step. Yes, God will take ten steps toward us, but God expects us to take the first step. Unfair? Absolutely not. This is the only way we can prepare our hearts to receive whatever blessings God has to bestow on us. We need to stretch. We need to exercise faith.

We need to take fearless inventories of our lives and recognize that if we want things to be different, we need to act differently. Even little things that we do have transformative power. If prayer is not a part of our life, getting down on one's knees and asking for help can be a life-changing event. If we are not studying the scriptures, a little daily scripture study can open up wellsprings of unexpected wisdom. If we are not going to Church, going that journey on Sunday morning from our doorstep to the pews might sometimes feel as momentous as the Saints' journey from Iowa to the Great Salt Lake. It may take at least as long as that journey for our journey to begin to change us. But we cannot expect the world around us to change until we are willing to change ourselves. And I can testify that if we are willing to face whatever challenges it takes to become more faithful, when we really need faith, faith will not fail us. God will hear and answer our prayers.

But it starts with us.

The True Meaning of LGBT Pride

2011-06-06T10:09:00.006-05:00

It's the month of June, which means LGBT Pride will be celebrated in many different localities throughout the country. For Mormons in general, and gay Mormons in particular, this prospect arouses emotions that run the gamut from fear and loathing to anticipation and joy... Depending, of course, on your perspective.

A few years ago I attended Church with my parents in Springville, Utah. It just so happened the Sunday I was there, during Sunday School a member decided to report on what he had recently witnessed at the San Francisco Pride parade. He told a lurid story about public nudity and sex. Of course the point of his story was to reinforce the trope we've all heard about homosexuality being evil and satanically inspired, and gay pride being a sign of public wickedness that precedes the end times, and gay rights activists being the kind of people who call black white and who call evil good, etc.

What was interesting to me was how my parents reacted. After Sunday School was over, my dad specifically mentioned to me this guy's description of two guys engaging in public sex at the Pride Parade. Of course Dad thought the public sex was terribly inappropriate. But he basically said that these are the kinds of behavior that people engage in when they feel utterly rejected and unloved by their family and their church, and when they have unhealthily low self-esteem. Dad felt certain that if the young men who had been engaging in this act had felt the love and support of family and church friends, had they been encouraged to see their sexuality as an aspect of the wholeness of who they are, they would never have engaged in this kind of shocking public display. He understood it as an act that came from a certain kind of rejection, and the desperation that rejection inspires.

Dad saw with crystal clarity how moral behavior exists in a contextual framework. More importantly, he wasn't about to let someone quote a few isolated, unhealthy acts out of context for the purpose of issuing a blanket condemnation of all gay people, all gay relationships, and the entire gay community. It was so cool to me that my dad so totally got that on his own. Actually, both my parents completely understood what was going on, and both of them found appropriate ways to immediately reassure me of their unconditional love and of their understanding and support.

As a postscript to that incident... I also understood that the person who told this very lurid San Francisco Gay Pride story was not necessarily a bad person. He certainly had witnessed some shocking behavior. The problem was, he had no context for interpreting it. My parents had a context for interpreting his experience that he didn't have: their experience with me, their gay son. Because we understood the context of this man's story, AND we also understood the context of his reaction, we were able to react in a way that was not defensive. Frankly, I was also assisted in my reaction to this situation by the reassuring, comforting, calming presence of the Spirit.

When this man told his story, instead of getting up and walking out of the room -- which I felt a strong desire to do! -- I stayed. I continued to attend the rest of the meetings at church with my parents, including a priesthood lesson taught by the same man who had recounted this episode. It was a good priesthood lesson, and I realized this man had many positive qualities, and I said so to my dad afterwards. That provided a context for my dad later to speak to this man about me -- about his gay son -- in a way that might help him have a different context for his understanding of homosexuality. And dad was able to do this in a way that was loving, non-confrontational, not defensive, and more likely to reach and touch this good but uninformed man.

Yes, there is stuff that goes on at Pride that is reflective of spiritual brokenness, and that is not positive or functional. I have often felt ambivalent about Gay Pride, less because of nudity/semi-nudity and emphasis on sex (which actually is increasingly rare), and more because of the commercialism and materialism (which seems to be a bigger and bigger thing lately). I stopped attending the block parties many, many years go (long before I became active in the Church again) because I'm uncomfortable around large groups of people, especially when numbers of them have been overindulging in alcohol. Lately, I also hate that Twin Cities Pride conflicts with Church. I would like not to have to choose between attending Church and participating in Pride. For me both acts express an important part of who I am and what I believe in. But that's another story.

There are aspects of Pride that I do participate in and that I believe in. The basic idea of Pride itself is about promoting healthy self-acceptance that enables us to live up to our full potential. Overall, the parade and festival are an opportunity for religious, social, civic and service groups to come out and celebrate the diversity of the community, and the elements of the community that make us stronger. Of course we can and should participate in the stuff that is reflective of the best values, and pass over the other stuff.

A gay LDS friend recently emailed me and shared a story on this count, a portion of which is worth sharing here:

I [had volunteered to help out with Pride and] was involved in cleanup and take down of tents, railings, etc. of the festival site... We worked long hours and weren't done until near midnight. There was a retired couple, husband and wife in their 60s, working along side us. They had traveled several hundred miles to volunteer to support their daughter who is a lesbian. They worked cheerfully right until the end. It was a privilege for me to be there, in an atmosphere of cooperation, tolerance, and unconditional love. I had a very good feeling, tired tho I and most of us were. Are gay people the new "Samaritans" of our time... to be looked down upon, despised and derided? Or are they people with needs and hopes just like anyone else, who can and should be supported to help them improve their lives?

As a gay guy... who is striving to rebuild his spirituality after thinking he had to abandon it, experiences like that BUILD me, not the opposite. I live in a rural area with few LDS and even fewer functional LGBT people. I feel a healthy emotional/social/spiritual lift from being part of this... the part that is RIGHT for ME. It helps take away the cravings and feeling so alone, and wanting to act out in ways that are harmful to me. I've had numerous discussions with my bishop about my homosexuality. He was quite concerned when I told him I was doing volunteer work for Pride. His attitude noticeably softened when I related the above experience to him.

I was really moved by this friend's account of LGBT Pride, which reminded me that we have the power to make Pride a positive thing if we want, by getting involved in constructive ways, and reinforcing the values that mean the most to us. The best way we can celebrate Pride is to do what we can to make it reflective of us, of our pride and our values and our love for one another.

Recently, I was having a conversation with a fellow local gay Mormon, and we were wondering if we shouldn't try to organize a Pride contingent of active Mormons -- both gay and straight. Why couldn't we march together and find some way to make it our own unique statement of love for others, and of our commitment to the Gospel?

Anyone else game?

Drag Family Reunion

2011-06-04T11:39:00.007-05:00

No, this post is not about me bringing my beloved better half to a Wrathall family reunion in drag, though Göran and I used to joke about that. Göran actually passed as a woman for a while, selling Avon cosmetics in Iowa. (True story!) So we used to have this hilarious fantasy in which he would come to my family reunions as "Tasha Monet," and then we would fit in with all the other heterosexual couples! Except... OK, he's black, and so we'd still be scandalizing everyone with our interracial relationship. So I guess we couldn't win! That was the joke... We've gotten plenty of laughs from it over the years.

But no, this is about a different kind of drag family reunion. To understand this, you have to know that when Göran and I first met back in 1993, he was the reigning queen of The Gay 90's, the biggest gay bar in Minneapolis (and possibly in the world -- it's a HUGE bar). Any way, he was this drag performing sensation, and I was just this nerdy grad student. (I just noticed, drag and grad have the same letters.) Göran would do these big shows, and I became his personal valet, carrying his train of bulging drag suitcases, bringing him drinks, and ordering the cabs. I was his "trophy husband." He'd show me off to the other "girls" and say, "Have you met my boyfriend John?" and then relish the gleam of envy in their eyes. Those were the days.

It was kind of cool to be allowed backstage into the inner sanctum of drag queendom. I mean, really. How many people in their lives get to enjoy the fierce and catty camaraderie that can only be experienced when drag queens don't have their wigs on yet? It definitely made me feel special to be dating a drag queen. And then, when I was sitting in the audience and "Tasha Marie Monet" came on stage, she always lip-synced the love songs to me and me alone. It was as if I was the only one in the audience. That made me feel special too. Every once in a while, I hear one of those songs and a rush of memories and emotions come back.

Anyway, that was many, many years ago. After Göran and I had been together a few years, he gradually relinquished his role as Gay Community High Priestess (that's what, in fact, drag queens are). It was a lot of work to do drag! He got tired of the late nights and the smoke-filled clubs and cleaning up the "drag bag explosions" the next day. (Yes, the house was always a frickin' mess after a drag show! Clothes, make-up, wigs everywhere!) He eventually gave it all up in exchange for the joys of full-time marital bliss. We were trying to figure out the other night when exactly he did his last drag performance. Some time in the mid-1990s.

But every once in a while, we would run into some of his old drag friends. Last summer, for instance, Reuben and Melanie, friends of ours from the Lake Nokomis Ward, took us on a 60-mile bike trip to Hudson, Wisconsin and back, and who should we run into but "Sofonda Peters," working a hot dog stand (of all things). As a boy, of course. (Sofonda is in this picture on the left.)

Anyway, Sofonda called Göran a few weeks ago and told him that as part of a benefit for the Minnesota AIDS Project, a few drag queens had decided to try to break the Guinness world record for largest drag performance. They were trying to round up every drag queen they knew in order to get them all on stage at once in a great big, lip-synced, choreographed dragstravaganza. They were calling it "Night of 100 Drag Queens." Göran agreed to participate.

And last night, it was like a great big, Drag Family Reunion. All the old queens gathered with the young queens, and they had a shindig to end all shindigs. They didn't quite make it to 100 drag queens on stage. Only 57 ultimately made it into the performance. But that was still more than enough to break the previously standing Guinness world record of 30 drag queens. That doesn't seem like much of a world record to me, but I guess it's really hard to coordinate drag queens. Like herding cats. But really super catty cats.

It was such a strange experience for me. So much has changed in my life since those old days when Göran was Miss Gay Nineties. The thing that struck me most poignantly was how lost I felt in those days when I first started tentatively exploring the gay club scene. It was disorienting. Everything in that scene was so completely at odds with everything I'd been brought up with in a tight-knit, devout Mormon family and community. It was as if I'd been scooped up by space aliens and dropped on a different planet. Everything was simultaneously exciting and amazing and... Also a betrayal of everything I thought I'd been raised to believe in. It felt quite lonely... Last night I heard Sofonda reminiscing about those days, and her recollections of me confirmed my remembrance of myself. I was out of place, odd, vulnerable.

But last night I was not lost. I was surveying my past lostness from the vantage point of one who is found again. And I was aware of the rampant lostness sprawled out there all around me. It's not, I realized, a moral thing. It's not the casual attitude toward sex, the boys walking around in their undies, the alcohol, the rampant materialism. Those are all just symptoms. What it is, is a knowledge thing. It's the not being quite sure who you are, or what your purpose is in life, or where you are going. It's looking at the material surface of things, and mistaking it for the spiritual heart of things. It's being disconnected from family, from faith. (Partly because so many of us have been excommunicated from all those things!)

I also realized, however, that of all the things the gay community has going for it, it is the drag queens. They are not part of the problem of lostness, they are part of the solution. If there is a force for moral redemption that is native to the gay community, it is them.

After the event was over, I borrowed a friend's car and chauffeured a few of them home. (I was back to being the drag queen's valet again!) They were all drunk as skunks. (Good thing their valet was a practicing Mormon, to get them home safe.) They were reminiscing about the old days, and remembering some of the queens who aren't with us any more. I was actually weeping last night, remembering "Andrea Muffy St. Clair," who passed away from AIDS-related complications a few years ago. I was listening to them talk. And laughing, because you can't be around drag queens and listen to them talk and not laugh. It's one of their saintlier qualities. And I was aware of this deep, deep, profound love. These old queens had a bond and a love and a respect for each other that is quite unique. I guess that's why the worst sin in the drag queen code is a lack of respect.

And I also realized that they are self- conscious guardians of a much larger code. A code that includes morals like: Know thyself. Love thyself. Stand tall, no matter what anybody says about you. Be fabulous. And don't be afraid.

It Doesn't Help to Attack My Marriage

2011-06-02T08:45:00.006-05:00

Recently, I was recruited by a friend in my ward to help organize the ward talent show. It was a great opportunity for me to be involved in the social life of the ward to an extent I am rarely offered. Being an event organizer gave me opportunities to interact with folks in settings I normally wouldn't interact. It deepened a number of friendships; it demonstrated to me how much love other members of my ward have for me. Which is a nice thing to know when you often feel as marginal as I do. I contributed my own act to the talent show, a little piece I wrote about my mother. I got lots of positive feedback on the piece from many ward members. Because it told about my mom's growing up in Finland during World War II, and because it wove her story with my grandparent's stories and my own story, one ward member in particular got very excited about the piece as a sort of "family history moment" and thought it ought to become a tradition at future ward talent shows. The general verdict was that the talent show was a smashing success! (It was fun!) And so it felt really, really good to be involved in something folks regarded as fun and a success, and to be able to participate in the ward far more than I almost ever, ever am able to. I felt happy and satisfied about my relationship with my ward in a way I haven't in a long time.

There was a down side, however. For every action I engage in at Church, there is an equal and opposite reaction from my husband. It's almost as if his happiness with me exists in inverse relationship to the extent of my involvement with the Church. So the fact that I needed to attend Church three consecutive Sundays in a row in order to circulate sign-up sheets, and attend a few week-day organizational meetings resulted in something of a row. In order to appease him, I had to promise to give him a few Sundays for the ones I had spent at Church, which I hate. Damn it! Why can't I just go to Church as often as I want? Especially when all he wants to do on Sunday morning is sleep in? This is a real source of anguish for me. I really long to go to Church and sometimes I just can't because of Göran. I've more or less come to accept this with a certain amount of patience, to accept it as a trial the Lord has seen fit to inflict upon me in order to test my faith. Still, it is difficult.

At any rate, this same friend who recruited me to help with the ward talent show also asked me to help him out by printing a questionnaire for singles in the ward. He wanted me to bring it to Church two Sundays ago, and I had to tell him that unfortunately I couldn't make it to Church, because this was right after the talent show, and for the sake of peace at home I needed to stay at home. Yes, it was killing me to have to tell him this. I hated everything about it. But it is what it is. This is what I have to live with.

This friend then launched into a rather uninformed diatribe about my marriage, and announced that he would "no longer support" my relationship with Göran. In fairness, I've been experiencing some stress lately due to issues that have nothing to do with my relationship with Göran; and he assumed that the stress was the result of "marital trouble." So, he was kind of going half-cocked on the assumption that Göran and I were on the verge of breaking up or something similar. I guess it's an assumption many Church members would be inclined to make about a same-sex relationship.

At any rate, the point where my friend announced he could no longer support my marriage was where the conversation had to end. I simply ended it by saying, "I understand how you might have misinterpreted the stress I'm under. But you have no idea what's going on between me and Göran, and it's not what you think." He sent me a few more text messages that showed he recognized he'd gone a bit too far. I realized he felt badly, but his comments had hurt deeply and I didn't want to talk any further, except to send him a few text messages pleading with him to simply be patient with me and try to understand. We eventually met and discussed it over lunch, and mended things, for which I am very, very grateful. Because this is a dear, dear brother to me, and I want my relationship with him to be right.

At our lunch I explained to him that Göran's opposition to my involvement in the Church may not be fair, but it is eminently understandable. He is black, and he knows all about the Church's history of excluding blacks from the priesthood and the Utah Church's sordid support for segregation. Not that, by virtue of his African ancestry, Göran should be any more outraged by the Church's racist history than any other decent person of conscience. But let's just say that the sting of my eagerness to affiliate with the institution is that much more personal for him. And that's just cream for the pie of the Church's anti-same-sex-marriage activism, and the fact that if the Church had its way with me, we would no longer be a couple; the fact that in the eyes of many in the Church, we are not and never will be a couple. That's two big fat strikes. And I explained to my friend that tirades about how he can "no longer support" my marriage can only become strike number three.

Göran is a good, sweet, generous man, very creative and loving, and with an impish sense of humor. Anyone who knows him understands immediately why I love him. And despite the sand in the gears over the issue of my relationship with the Church, we have a very happy marriage that grows only happier as we continue to mature personally and as a couple. The problem introduced by my involvement in the Church has been an opportunity for us to grow; and we have grown. Göran refuses to be convinced of the Church's merits, and I can't fault him for that, except by way of trying to prove him wrong through a life improved by my involvement in it. I expect him to see the light some day, if only enough to let me attend every Sunday and sing in the choir, and maybe even come watch me perform at a ward talent show once in while. (He definitely did not attend this last one.) I understand his attitude even as I am anguished by it. I simply don't know what to do.

I wish he could know what's going on in my heart, all the ways in which my relationship with God, and the context the Church has provided for growth of that relationship, has deepened my love for him, has deepened my appreciation of just how precious our relationship is.

Similarly, I wish folks in the Church could understand that it was his love for me that nurtured me to the point where I could hear the voice of the Spirit again after years of depression and anxiety. I wish they could understand what our commitment to each other has taught me about commitment in general, including the kinds of commitment required by faith. I wish they could see that all the good things that happen in their marriages, all the things their marriages give them that make life worth living and that give faith meaning, all work that way for me too in my marriage. And it just doesn't help anything or anyone to attack my marriage. Not one iota.

I guess a little more patience, a few more miles in this odd path...

Temptation

2011-06-01T15:57:00.003-05:00

The urge to disobey rules which have been externally, coercively imposed is not temptation, it is resistance. Temptation is only comprehensible within the framework of covenants freely entered into. In order for a covenant to have meaning, it must not only be freely entered into, but with full knowledge of the nature of the covenant. When two parties enter into an agreement, and one party fails to provide critical information that would change the nature of the agreement and that might, if disclosed, dissuade the other party from entering into the agreement, that is not a covenant. That is a fraud. But when we have all the information necessary to make a particular covenant, and when we freely agree to abide by that covenant, then and only then can we experience temptation.

Oscar Wilde famously said: "The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it." But a life without temptation, and without resistance to temptation is a life without meaning, without growth, without structure, and ultimately without joy. That is because the promises we make, make us! When we make a promise, any promise, the very nature of it means we will sooner or later encounter a situation where it might be temporarily advantageous to abandon our promise. If it weren't so, there would be no need to make a promise! And it is those situations where the seriousness of our promises is tested. It is those situations where we get to see how much we really meant what we said, and whether we are the kind of people who are able to keep promises. When we succeed at these kinds of tests, we begin to build character. Our life begins to take a form that is shaped by our intentions, our desire and ultimately, our love.

So temptation is a good thing! When we experience it, we know that we are making something of ourselves! We are choosing, and being true to our choices. Nothing is more tragic than a life in which we drift along, never letting anything more than the contingencies of each moment determine our choices. Granted, there is a kind of freedom we can experience as drifters. It can feel good to let go of everything, to hold on to nothing, to let life take us where it will, like a leaf on the current. Maybe we all need to experience that kind of freedom at least for a time. But eventually we learn that a life lived too long without commitments is a life devoid of the deepest satisfactions. That's what Mormons think of as a "telestial" life. But even the liberal UCC prays for God to protect us from a life of "aimlessness and sin."

Temptation can be painful. But if you think about it, the more painful the temptation, the better it is at shaping our character. It is the really, really painful temptations that force us to decide what it is we really want in life. And we can only surmount such temptations with a grander view of ourselves and our life's purpose. That's why prayer, meditation and scripture study are so important. Any kind of spiritual practice is, effectively, a urim and thummim to us. It helps us see ourselves and our world in a larger, more timeless perspective, a perspective that will provide us the knowledge necessary to make the kinds of promises worth making...!

When we experience temptation, we sometimes feel dirty, we feel bad. We feel as if we must be weak or immoral to experience temptation. It is not so. Temptation means only that we are alive, and that we are on a journey that is worth going on!

I said earlier that temptation is only meaningful within the framework of covenants, and that covenants can only be made under conditions of knowledgeable consent. All of us, if we live long enough, will have the experience of making a commitment under one circumstance, only later to learn and to grow and to acquire knowledge that sheds new light on our circumstances and our promises. This is a natural process, and it is a good process. In a religious framework, we can look at this in terms of lower laws and higher laws; telestial laws, terestrial laws, and celestial laws. We begin at one place, and we make a series of promises within a more limited framework. And those promises shape our character, allowing us to grow and learn. Eventually, we come to a point where the old promises no longer make sense. New knowledge requires renegotiation. We enter into and accept higher laws and make higher covenants which become a new framework for character growth. The times of transition can be disorienting. They can even feel very much like times of temptation. But they are something of a different order entirely.

But wherever we are in the journey, temptation does not leave us. If anything, temptations become more challenging and more painful as we become more sensitive to the nuances of choice available to us, and as we become capable of handling greater challenges... We don't need to seek temptation; indeed, it's usually wise for us to pray for God to keep us from it for as long as possible. But temptations will come, and when they do, we should ultimately be grateful for them. I know I am.

Why Same-Sex Marriage Will Strengthen Marriage for Everyone

2011-05-27T16:22:00.004-05:00

Marriage is about love, family and commitment -- for everyone. If we look at the specifics of how marriage strengthens and protects loving commitments and provides a more secure framework for home and family, we'll see how and why extending the social recognition and the legal protections of marriage to same-sex couples strengthens everyone's families.

1. Coercing same-sex oriented individuals into mixed orientation marriages is a formula for heart-break and marriage failure. One of the major reasons opponents of same-sex marriage offer for their position is that they believe it is God's will for everyone to be in heterosexual marriages. By denying same-sex couples the social approval that comes with marriage, they assume, opposite-sex marriage will be upheld as the social ideal and more individuals will feel drawn to enter into those kinds of arrangements.

While no one is forcing anyone to marry an opposite-sex spouse against his or her will, this is a subtle form of social coercion/pressure whose end goal is essentially to promote mixed-orientation marriages, the vast majority of which fail. This social policy is, in other words, almost calculated to increase the likelihood of divorce for large numbers of couples.

It is in the best interests of our society to promote stable, lasting pair-bondings. Allowing same-sex marriage as an option helps to remove the social stigma on homosexuality. It will encourage same-sex oriented individuals to come out of the closet and pair bond with (marry!) other same-sex oriented individuals. This is what opponents of same-sex marriage do not want. But, it is nevertheless in society's best interests, because it will reduce the likelihood that closeted individuals will enter into inherently unstable unions with persons of the opposite sex. It will correspondingly increase the likelihood that they will form lasting commitments with persons they are attracted to, and who are attracted to them.

Same-sex marriage will decrease divorce and increase family happiness and stability for everyone!

2) We are individually and collectively stronger when we are members of a family. Families are the oldest form of social insurance there is. Being married means you have someone to rely on if you get sick, if you lose your job or if you experience any other form of misfortune. That someone is there to take care of you not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually as well. Often when we experience tragedy, the thing that plays the biggest role in helping us get back on our feet again is the emotional support and encouragement we get from someone who has committed to be our yoke-mate for life. I know this has been true for both me and Göran. In our going on 18 years together, there have been times when one or the other of us has been down and out, and the other has been there as number one cheerleader and supporter.

Opponents of same-sex marriage would prefer that if gay people can't be married to a member of the opposite sex that they be single for life. But in whose best interest is that really? Certainly not in the state's interest. When a person who is alone falls, who is there to help pick him up?

Individuals live in families, families live in societies. If an individual falls, if he has no immediate family, extended family is expected to help. If extended family is non-existent or ineffective, then it falls to the larger society. Forcing gay people to be alone weakens the fabric of society. Because Göran and I have been able to help each other over the years, we are stronger, we've been able to become resources to others. In recent years we have become foster parents, able to provide a loving home to children who have fallen through the cracks of society. So, the fact that we exist as a family unit means we can provide resources to help care for others, to become part of the social safety net.

Any one of the personal crises that Göran and I have faced could have proven deadly. That fact that each of us was here for the other increased the likelihood that we are both here today. And we are here today as a family unit that is capable of contributing to our neighborhood, community and state. And so society is stronger.

Same-sex marriage makes all of us stronger.

3) Marriage promotes morality and makes us more spiritually sensitive. Refusing same-sex couples the right to marry essentially sends a message to gay folks that the normal rules and expectations of sexual morality don't apply to us the way they do to everybody else. It also sends another, subtler and more damaging message: that gay people are inferior to heterosexual people. That we don't deserve stability, love or family. That we are inherently morally inferior. This damaging message encourages just the kinds of reckless, immoral behavior that the opponents of same-sex marriage claim to oppose. By legalizing same-sex marriage, we send gay folks the message that they are expected to abide by the same social norms, the same morality that we expect of everyone else.

When Göran and I got married, it had a huge psychological impact on me. I became aware of a profound responsibility to my significant other. It changed the way I thought about myself and about my sexuality. Committing myself to my husband and being willing to bridle my sexuality in a way that honors my love for him and my commitment to him has changed my life in so many ways for the better. In many ways, those commitments paved the way for me to come back to the Church. I believe living in a way that honored my love for him made me more sensitive to the promptings of the Spirit.

It is those spiritual benefits of the kind of love and commitment that can be fostered in marriage that I personally consider one of the greatest benefits of marriage. Though, for obvious reasons -- such as social stability and the reduction of sexually transmitted diseases -- providing a social framework that discourages promiscuity and encourages sexual morality among gay men and lesbians is also a benefit that strengthens not just the individuals involved, but society as a whole.

Let's tell our stories. If you are straight, why is marriage valuable to you? How would same-sex couples marrying spoil marriage for you? How would it weaken your marriage? If you're gay, what have you gotten from your relationship with your same-sex spouse? How has it strengthened you, made you a better, happier, more complete person?

Come, let us reason together!

The Fight Over Marriage Comes to Minnesota

2011-05-26T09:00:00.004-05:00

It hasn't been fun watching the same-sex marriage debate roiling other states. Until now, the gay marriage debate has been an abstract issue for Minnesotans. Previous efforts to amend the Minnesota state constitution were stopped in the legislature. But in the last election, Republicans took over the Minnesota state legislature (even as they lost the governor's mansion), and now Republicans in the legislature have put an anti-gay-marriage amendment on the ballot for 2012. (The voting in the legislature has been almost totally along party lines, with only a couple of Republicans joining Democrats in opposition to a marriage amendment.) So now we get to have a public referendum on same-sex relationships.

Recent polls are showing that a majority of Americans favor same-sex marriage, and a a majority of Minnesotans oppose banning same-sex marriage. Both sides claim polling data in Minnesota that supports their position. And as we know from the Prop 8 campaign in California, public opinion can change in the course of a campaign. So for these reasons, and also because Minnesota is currently seen -- both by gay marriage opponents and by gay marriage supporters -- as a bellwether for the nation, it looks likely that national organizers on both sides of this issue will get involved here. Which means we could be in for a fight, and it could get ugly.

This is not something I am constitutionally capable of sitting through on the side lines. Even if I wanted to keep silent and let others fight this fight, every molecule in my body would force me to my feet, to get out of the house, and to open my mouth. Bottom line, I'm getting involved. I've joined the Faith Steering Committee of OutFront Minnesota.

The mood of many GLBT folks here is gloomy. Many do not look forward to having the merits of our lives, our love, and our families publicly debated and demeaned in the way that only politics can demean.

But I am not gloomy. I am glad, and I am excited. Public opinion is evenly divided which means we can win this. And I believe that, since we live in a Democracy, the only way a lasting resolution of this problem will ultimately be brought about is not in a court, and not by executive fiat, and not even in a legislature, but by the voice of the people. Minnesotans now have an opportunity to discuss, not legal finery or constitutional procedure, but substantive values and real lives. If we do this, if we talk about our lives, and about why love, family and commitment matter to us, we will win.

Gay folks are a small minority everywhere, so it is frightening and dismaying to have our lives, our rights, and our families voted on by majorities. But our opponents aren't bigots, they're just afraid because they don't understand. If we stop looking at those who oppose same-sex marriage as our enemy, and start looking at them as folks who just don't know us well enough yet to be our friends, we will find the voice that will enable us to tell our stories in a way that will reach and touch real people and make a difference. If we just have patience and faith, and if we show kindness, we will find friends in unexpected places.

We must not be fearful, and we must not be dismayed. We must find the hope and the courage that only love can inspire.

If you live in Minnesota, and, gay or straight, you want to help, let's talk!

Destiny and Desire

2011-05-25T11:49:00.003-05:00

Not all wants, needs or desires are equal. Some things we desire for a time, and then our desire wanes; we lose interest in what once we felt we couldn't do without. Some things we desire, we never lose want of; they give us joy that is unending. Some things we desire are very good for us; they nourish us. Some things we desire are not good; they harm us. Some things we desire are not necessary; we may pine for them and ache for their lack, but sometimes we might be better off without them. Sometimes unrequited desire makes us better and more human. Some things we don't just desire, but are more like needs than desires. Without them, life is unhealthy and unhappy and, ultimately, unbearable. There are things we desire, the lack of which dehumanizes us. Included in this last category, I would put things like love and freedom.

When we experience a desire, it can be difficult to know which kind of desire we are experiencing. Which desires in life should we resist or repress, which should we bridle or channel, and which should we pursue wholeheartedly?

I want to exclude from this discussion things that I would describe as explicit needs; things that we can't do without for very long and remain alive. Without air, we will die in a view minutes; without water, in a few days; without food, in a few weeks; without clothing and shelter (depending on the environment), within a few seasons. It is interesting to note that it is possible for us to lose desire for these things if we lose our desire to live.

A lot of discussion in relation to homosexuality centers around the question of whether intimacy (emotional and physical), touch, and sex go into the category of "need" or not. I think the case can certainly be made, and has been made. Infants deprived of touch will die. That certainly seems to point to a need. Without mental and emotional health and happiness, without intimacy, touch, and love (or, for that matter, other intangibles like dignity and freedom), we can lose the desire to live. That's why the problem of gay Mormon suicide bears on the question of whether a healthy intimate relationship is a legitimate need or not.

But for this discussion I want to set that argument aside. I want to acknowledge that at least some people find ways to live -- and even live well -- without human intimacy. And at least some of these are not necessarily people who are extreme introverts or who are asexual. Some of them may have what we consider normal desires for touch, sex, intimacy, and relatedness, but who have found a spiritual path that enables them to do without these things. This is rare, but it's possible. And of course, religious conservatives will tend to point out that since it is possible, if homosexuality is a sin, then it is desirable for the Church to encourage homosexuals into this path; to provide role models and structure that will enable us to find that path.

So let's suppose that sexual/intimate relatedness is not a need. Let's just look at same-sex relationships from the point of view that they most obviously present themselves to us, and from the point of view most universally agreed upon from a religious point of view: from the point of view of desire. And I'd like to look at desire from an experiential perspective: what I've learned about desire through the hard knocks and triumphs of life.

At some point in our lives, we each have to answer the question: What Do You Really Want? What is the one thing you want that you're willing to subordinate all your other wants to? I'm not sure if there's any one point in our lives where that question presents itself quite so neatly, nor where we are quite clear-headed enough to answer it from deep in the heart. Or maybe the little choices we make in life are our way of answering that question. The little decisions are our way at chipping away at that big question; our way of deciding what we think is possible and what we think is impossible, what we want, and what we have no interest in.

I do believe that if we can answer that question, and answer it honestly and unclouded by fear, we will have understood our true natures, and we will have understood what it is our destiny to become. Salvation or wholeness, I think, is to enter into that destiny in its fullness. So we can't really be saved or whole until we really know with a perfect knowledge what it is we want, and until we pursue it with an eye single.

But the problem is, rarely do we have the kind of mountaintop experience that enables us to see all things with perfect clarity and to know our place in the grand scheme of things. Or, correction! We do! But not until after we've struggled alone in the dark for a while, without feeling like we know much of anything.

In my experience, the only way we have of feeling our way forward is through the daily practice of listening that prayer offers us. Faith can be like a compass that points us in the general direction we want to go; it allows for some straying off course once in a while, it permits periodic course corrections. But it requires some overall consistency to get to the right place in the end, because when you have a journey of 10,000 miles, you're going to have to log a lot of days' walking in order to get close. We can see the mountain from the distance; it's often obscured by the local scenery, by twists and turns in the road. Any given path might take a sudden turn in a direction we didn't anticipate, and we can't know if it will swing back around. The compass -- which we access by listening to our heart in the stillness -- is the ultimate guide when we get lost. And the way the compass leads is to point us in the direction that "feels right." Not always the direction that "feels good," though they sometimes coincide.

So, listening to my heart and listening to the Spirit eventually led me into my relationship with Göran. After eighteen years or more of building a life together, I find this deep, deep reservoir of joy in it, that doesn't seem to have a bottom. It overwhelms me sometimes when I experience that joy in anything close to its totality. I realize the lessons we have learned together have been incredible, unlearnable in any other way. And I see a path forward that promises more learning and joy without end that I can discern. Even death looks like just another twist in the road in comparison with that love. I'm now high up enough on the mountainside to look back down and trace my path, to see clearly where I was once lost and where I got found again.

From that perspective, it seems like there are only two kinds of desire: the desire for things fleeting, that take me further from the deepest, most meaningful, truest desires of my heart; and the desire to be full, to be whole, to complete myself and to fulfill my destiny. Whatever is in the latter category, I've discovered, can't possibly take me further away from God, because it relates profoundly to the me that is a child of God. What I do know is that if I had listened to other voices, including some very well meaning ones, had I not paid attention to my own compass and followed it, even when others were telling me that to do so would lead me away from God, I couldn't be where I am now. And that is a very, very good place.

Jesus Showing Up in Unexpected Places

2011-05-23T10:00:00.032-05:00

Saturday I had a conversation a neighbor. This neighbor, P., is a man perhaps in his late fifties or early sixties, tall and thin, with a full shock of curly, white hair and a well-trimmed beard framing an attractively rugged face. Like many in the Powderhorn neighborhood in South Minneapolis, he lives a simple, down-to-earth lifestyle. He likes talking to and sharing with his neighbors. He drives a car that's falling apart but gets him where he needs to go. He loves gardening, even in the rain. He is a self-described political progressive, and does not think of himself as particularly religious. Nevertheless, our conversation turned somehow to the topic of Jesus, and not in the usual way of such conversations.

P. proceeded cautiously, asking a few questions to feel out my own views on the topic. I think it came up in the context of my mentioning that I had just finished a semester of teaching at United Theological Seminary. He started out by mentioning a few books he had read recently about Jesus by John Dominic Crossan and Matthew Fox. He wanted to know if I was familiar with their scholarship, and what I thought of them, and what I thought of Jesus.

I told him more or less what I said on the last day of my American Religious Histories class this past Thursday, when one of my students asked me to discuss my personal thoughts about religion and history. I said that history as an academic discipline can only ever scratch the surface of reality. What we can know of God, we can learn best only directly and personally, and until we have that view, we can understand only dimly the relationship between the world of spirit and the mundane world apprehended in the academy. It took me a bit of ambling about in that vein to finally work up the courage to flatly state, "I believe Jesus is the Son of God, and the Savior of the world."

P. listened attentively and respectfully. I asked him about his interest in the topic, and he casually let drop that he himself had had some recent personal encounters with Jesus that had motivated him to want learn more about him. That raised an eyebrow or two on my part. I asked him if he would elaborate. What exactly did he mean by "encounters" with Jesus?

He seemed hesitant to go further. He was worried he might offend me.

"If you knew my full story," I explained, "You'd know there's nothing you can possibly tell me that would shock or offend."

He proceeded to tell how he was a practicing Wiccan. While at "Witch Camp," he had sensed the presence of Jesus. Jesus, P. explained, had been quite insistent, insinuating himself into a setting that had explicitly intended to exclude him. P. described Jesus as "gentle but persistent." Among other things, he imparted a message of love, and had urged P., among other things, to start reading the scriptures to learn more of him.

Up to this point, though P. had read books by modern Jesus scholars, he had not yet gotten around to reading the Bible itself. He confessed that he didn't actually even own a Bible. He asked for advice about which version of the Bible might be most readable for someone who had little to no experience with the good book. I told him the version didn't particularly matter, that he should just start reading it, and that if he didn't own his own copy, I was happy to give him one as I had a few extra.

He then wanted to know what he should start reading first. He'd already decided he might not be able to handle most of the Old Testament. I seconded his instinct to start with the New Testament, specifically the Gospels and the Book of Acts. I told him that once he'd read at least that much, it might be worthwhile to read at least parts of the Old Testament. I encouraged him to start with Genesis, and then, if he was up to it, Isaiah.

Because his desire to read scripture stemmed from a personal experience with Jesus, we started talking about the scriptural witness of the resurrection. I told him something of my own experience, and I told him about an Episcopal priest I once worked with who had witnessed the risen Christ. I told him about Joseph Smith. And I told him that the oldest texts in the New Testament are the Pauline epistles, which include the oldest direct, first-hand accounts of Paul's experience with the risen Christ, and Paul's descriptions of other first-hand accounts. By the time we were done, he seemed eager to read any account of Jesus he could, so in addition to giving him one of my spare Bibles, I gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon (showing him where he could find 3 Nephi) and jotted down some bibliographic information for texts where he could get a hold of other non-canonical gospels like Thomas, Phillip and Secret Mark, as well as re-constructed texts like "Q" and the "Signs" gospels.

When we finally shook hands before he went his way, he commented how odd it was that at just the moment when he had been thinking about these things, somehow "the Universe" had arranged for him to run into me. I always enjoy how that works.

But more fascinating to me is how I have experienced in my own life or witnessed in the lives of others God working very directly and personally with us. God speaks to us in a language and in a way that can reach each of us exactly where we are, and can guide us in a way that is specifically tailored to our individual life experiences and needs. I can't imagine missionaries of any denomination taking it upon themselves to go seek converts at "Witch Camp." But obviously Jesus himself didn't have a problem with it.

R. Crumb's Book of Genesis (2009)

2011-05-22T09:45:00.003-05:00

R. Crumb may today be best known for his role in the underground comics movement, and for his creation of pop cultural icons like the "Keep On Truckin'" comic, Devil Girl, Fritz the Cat, and Mr. Natural. The life of the American ex-patriot (now living in the south of France, where I served my mission for the LDS Church) has been portrayed in the 1994 eponymous film, Crumb. But it is quite possible that after his contributions to pop and underground culture have been long forgotten, R. Crumb will be remembered for his contribution to theology in the form of his graphic portrayal of the Book of Genesis.

The irony of this is captured in Crumb's own introduction to what is, in my humble opinion, his chef-d'oeuvre. "Every other comic book version of the Bible that I've seen," he writes, "contains passages of completely made-up narrative and dialogue, in an attempt to streamline and 'modernize' the old scriptures, and still, these various comic book Bibles all claim to adhere to the belief that the Bible is 'the word of God,' or 'inspired by God,' whereas I, ironically, do not believe the Bible is 'the word of God.'" Nevertheless, he has, "to the best of [his] ability, faithfully reproduced every word of the original text... [venturing] to do a little interpretation of [his] own, if [he] thought the words could be made clearer, but... [refraining] from indulging too often in such 'creativity,' and sometimes [letting] it stand in its convoluted vagueness rather than monkey around with such a venerable text." Nothing is left out, not even the "begats," and everything from the Creation, to the Fall, to the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, to the Israelites' sojourn in Egypt is portrayed with breathtaking literalness. The result is something simultaneously shocking (the cover warns: "Adult supervision recommended for minors") and captivating, a theological tour de force.

Readers familiar with Crumb's oeuvre may doubt his intentions in putting the first book of the Bible into comic book form. Crumb himself admits that his initial intention was parody. But, he claims, as he got deeper into the task of illustrating Genesis, he found himself awed by the power of this ancient text to enthrall so many millions of people across such extremely diverse cultures, over the span of millennia. Ultimately he realized he needed to take the text seriously, and portray it as literally and faithfully as possible. And in doing so, he has created something unique, and has made a contribution to the field of biblical studies for which future faithful will undoubtedly thank this iconoclastic unbeliever.

Many undoubtedly will not thank him at all. I'm sure this book has made it onto a fair number of believers' banned books lists (or will, as soon as more folks become aware of it). But I love it, and find it compelling, moving and even spiritual. I appreciate the linguistic and visual research that went into recreating the lost world of the Old Testament. More importantly, I love the way it brings Genesis to life, the way it confers vibrancy on passages I long considered unreadable, and would have considered unillustratable. It sheds completely new light on the entire text from beginning to end. Indeed, it is eminently readable as a new "translation" of the Bible, rendered in pictorial form.

The most powerful aspect of the book, simultaneously the aspect most likely to attract denunciations of heresy, and, I think, the aspect of greatest interest to Mormons, is his portrayal of the central character in the Book of Genesis, God himself. God is portrayed very literally as an exalted, omnipotent and omniscient man. He literally walks and talks and interacts directly and personally with all the other major characters of the book. His long, flowing hair and beard, and larger-than-life stature are portrayed in stylized manner to emphasize his radiance and power, but also to amplify the very human emotions of delight, love, anger, sorrow and mercy expressed in God's physical postures and facial expressions. The end result is powerful and -- for me -- strangely reverent. God is taken seriously here, and becomes humanly accessible and personal in the way he only can if we are willing to take Genesis (and other scriptural texts) literally.

I recommend this book for any serious student of the Bible. If R. Crumb's Book of Genesis offends, it offends for the very good reason of upending our conventional (and Bowdlerized!) notions of God and morality. It offends for all the very good reasons we ought to be offended by the Bible, and R. Crumb has done us a service if he has forced us to dispense with our sanitized notions of what the Bible does or does not, should or should not say. Read this book, but be warned that it is Genesis "graphically depicted" with "nothing left out!"

Why I'm Not Making Fun of the May 21 Folks

2011-05-20T11:50:00.000-05:00

Some of you may not have heard that some folks anticipate the rapture tomorrow. They've done their best to get the word out, and have generated some media buzz, mostly derision.

While I don't necessarily share these folks' beliefs, I'm not laughing at them. That is because part of me secretly hopes that the beginning of the end could be tomorrow. Frankly, I'm eager for Jesus to arrive. I actually pray for his coming, as I believe all Saints should.

I've read these folks' arguments about how they can know it's happening May 21 -- despite Jesus' pronouncement that "ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh" (Matthew 25:13) -- and I don't buy it. I don't buy it mainly because of the moral Jesus himself draws from this pronouncement: "Watch therefore"! The reason Jesus hasn't announced the deadline of his coming is because we are expected to be ready at all times. Read the whole parable of the virgins (Matthew 25: 1-13) and see if that isn't the conclusion you draw as well.

But I'm not making fun of these folks, and I won't laugh at them if they are disappointed on Sunday, May 22, because to a certain extent, I share their hope. I'm tired of war and wickedness, hate and fear. I'm eager for Jesus to move us on to the next stage. I'm ready and waiting.

But I also accept the burden of trying to make my own heart and this world more ready for his reign in the meantime. I accept the responsibility of trying to make more peace, more love, more hope. I accept that if God wants to try my heart (and my patience) a little bit longer, I must oblige him.

Waiting for Jesus to come again isn't about sitting on my back side and counting down the seconds until his arrival. It's about working. There is work to do! That's what faith and faithfulness is all about.

No Respecter of Persons

2011-04-26T10:50:00.004-05:00

Sunday night I dreamed that I overheard a conversation being held in whispered tones between my grandmother and some other women in my family. They had apparently just discovered that my grandfather's father had been a man of African ancestry. This was, to them, a scandalous discovery.

In my dream, after overhearing this conversation, I found a photograph of my grandfather and studied it. I thought, his nose did seem rather broad, his lips rather full for a man of northern European ancestry. His skin seemed a bit darker than my grandmother's, whose ancestry was mostly Swedish. Now, with this new information, looking at his face in the photograph I could see it. He obviously had some African ancestry. Which meant, so did my father, and so did I.

In my dream, this provoked intense reflection on my part. Had this been known, my father and my grandfather would not have been permitted to hold the priesthood. Had their priesthood been invalid? My father baptized me in 1971. He ordained me to the priesthood in 1975. (Three years before individuals of African ancestry were permitted to hold the priesthood in the LDS Church.) If my father's priesthood had been void and invalid because of his race, did that invalidate my baptism? Had I ever truly been a member of the Church? Had I ever actually held the priesthood? What about the people I baptized before and during my mission? Were they no longer members of the Church? What about those they may have baptized and/or ordained, and so on?

*****

In my dream, these reflections didn't upset me. They merely left me with a sense of awe at how totally this little bit of previously buried information could upend what I thought had been the major foundations of my life and identity, and that it could have such far-reaching ramifications for so many other people in my life. I was not who I thought I was, and fundamental truths about my life, it turns out, were not true.

Actually, the more I reflected on it, I found myself experiencing a strange kind of delight at the fact my husband and I did not, after all, have a "mixed race" marriage. (My husband is African American.) I love Göran's family in Memphis and am in awe of his heritage, in awe of the struggles of his ancestors for freedom and dignity. At some level I found myself feeling satisfied that we could now share this heritage in a deeper way.

As my sleeping consciousness merged into waking consciousness, other interesting thoughts danced across my brain. My grandfather was born to a woman who became a plural wife after the Manifesto. (This is actually true.) Now for the first time, I found myself wondering about my legitimacy in relation to that fact. The first wife in that marriage had lived in "the big house" with my great-grandfather, while my great-grandmother (the second wife) had lived in a smaller house out on the farm (also true). I had actually learned about this as a teenager, overhearing a hushed conversation between my grandmother and some of my aunts. Somehow that (true) event merged into the dream reality; the farm house my grandfather had been raised in had become slave quarters, and I had become a descendent of slaves.

*****

What is the meaning of this dream? Do I have a secret wish to have my whole Mormon history somehow declared null and void, so that I can experience a deeper intimacy with my husband? (When I told Göran about this dream, I thought he'd laugh at me, but he was actually fascinated by it.) This dream, as I said, provoked in me a kind of awe. This was one of those dreams that sort of haunted me throughout the day. It left me feeling prayerful. And in the stillness as I prayed and reflected on it throughout the day, the Spirit instructed me.

I was impressed with the wickedness of the world. The more I pray and ponder on and think about the ban on ordaining African Americans that began some time after the death of Joseph Smith and ended in 1978, the more I see it as a product of the racist attitudes that saturated American culture during roughly that same period. There is a constant danger that human beings, rather than letting the revelations of God challenge our conventional understandings of the world, will assimilate the word of God to our own ways and our own understandings; and that we will fashion idols out of them. Attitudes of racial chosen-ness and superiority is one of the more common idols...

I was impressed with the fragility of my ideas of who and what I am. My identity, my self-understanding, is so wrapped up in worldly ideas. This is why, I suppose, after the Lord revealed himself to Moses, and then showed him "the world and the ends thereof, and all the children of men which are, and which were created," Moses' response was, "Now, for this cause I know that man is nothing, which thing I never had supposed" (Moses 1: 1-10).

I realized how precious God's presence in my life is. I realize how easily I could lose that presence if I let myself get caught up in pride, if I start thinking too much of what I think I am. God is no respecter of persons.

I am grateful that, if I turn to him, I can hear his voice whispering to me through the veil, every day, every minute if I will. That, I realize, is the true foundation of my life. Everything else is like a dream that will fade away when we wake up at the final dawn.

My Time Among the Catholics

2011-04-23T10:29:00.001-05:00

I've posted on my Religious Histories blog about my experiences learning about Catholicism while on my mission, and later while spending time in a monastery exploring celibacy.

Happy Easter!

Possibilities

2011-04-20T18:46:00.003-05:00

We are one family. That's the first thing we have to understand in order to begin to wrestle with the great problems of life, death, and faith.

A student thesis I read in the past week discussed the fact that until the moment when we experience our own death, we can only know of death by observing it in others. (This is an key theme in the philosophical thought of Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, who provided some of the main inspiration for this student's theological reflections.) I was fascinated by the notion that human beings seem to need to understand the nature of death in order to make meaning of their lives.

And yet, the true nature of death remains obscure. Much human activity -- the philosophers point out -- is geared toward avoiding having to deal with the question of the nature of death. Many of us simply live in denial about death, acting as if we will live forever. But those who reflect on the nature of death recognize that it presents different possibilities. This is where it gets interesting.

Death may be a final, absolute end of existence. It certainly appears to be that, when we observe it in others. Years ago, shortly after Göran's mother died, we saw her body. She had passed away less than 24 hours earlier, so her physical form was exactly what it had been when she was still alive. But I remember remarking how utterly still she was, how completely quiet and unmoving she was. It was a stillness such as I had never observed in a human being. It was a shocking experience, almost. It looked like Lettie Ruth, but I was very aware that it was not Lettie Ruth any more.

We know that eventually, once a person dies, what we see of them becomes subject to complete dissolution and dispersion of their constituent elements. Eventually there is nothing coherent that remains. So what we observe of death presents the possibility of a complete end, total annihilation of the human being.

The truth is, however, not knowing death in the first person, not having experienced it ourselves, we cannot conclusively say that death represents a complete end of consciousness or existence for the person who dies. So we are presented merely with the possibility that death represents an absolute end.

What evidence do we have that death does not represent an absolute end? There are individuals who have been clinically dead and been resuscitated, only to recount striking experiences that they had while their bodies appeared to be lifeless: seeing their bodies from above, traveling to other places, encountering and conversing with intelligent, benevolent beings, and having their lives changed after their return.

There are also individuals who describe having encountered the spirits of deceased loved ones: either feeling their presence or even having seen them. I and other members of my family have had both kinds of experiences. My maternal grandfather, for instance, who was never a member of the LDS Church, claimed to have witnessed his deceased daughter wearing a "beautiful dress," close to his bedside shortly before he passed away himself.

There are also certain kinds of religious experience, such as the vision described by Joseph F. Smith in Section 138 of the D&C, or such as the vision described in Revelation 20: 12 ("I saw the dead, small and great"), in which the dead are perceived to have an existence beyond the grave. Individuals may also have spiritual experiences in which they anticipate the likelihood of their own existence beyond their own death.

I'm not sure how widespread such experiences are. My sense is that these kinds of experiences are common enough, though not, perhaps, a majority experience, at least in our culture. However many have had these kinds of experiences, and however powerful and meaningful as they may be to those who have them, they are still nonetheless merely suggestive of the possibility that there is some spiritual aspect of ourselves that lives on beyond the dissolution of our bodies. To those who have had such experiences, possibility may feel more like probability or certainty, though depending on the nature of the experience, there may still be room for doubt. Certainly to those who have had no such first-hand experiences, they can be no more conclusive than whatever we might speculate about the nature of death based on our observation of it.

What fascinated me, on reading my student's account of Heidegger's and Derrida's views on death, was their insistence that human beings are, in essence, suspended between possibilities. Assuming one is intellectually honest, one can deny the possibility of life beyond death no more than one can deny the possibility of death being some kind of absolute end. It was these philosophers' perception of this truth about death that led them to see death both imbuing life with its sacredness and making us aware of the uniquely individual nature of each person's life.

The fact that we can experience no one's death but our own, reminds us that we can experience no one's life but our own! Among gay Mormons, I frequently see gay men and lesbians who desperately want someone else to give them clear, unambiguous guidance about what decisions they need to make in their lives with relation to sexuality and the Church. This question, in essence, is: What will secure the greatest happiness for me, in this life as well as in eternity? There are lots of subsidiary questions: Am I an eternal being? And if so: Will I be gay or straight in eternity? Which is another way of asking: Will happiness with a person of my own sex in this life deprive me of potential happiness with a person of the opposite sex in the next life? Or: Is my happiness in the next life continuous with, or is it at odds with, my happiness in this life? Heady questions, when, the philosophers insist, it's not possible really to get past death itself. But there are this worldly questions we ask too, like: Can I be as happy in this life with a person of the opposite sex as I might be with a person of the same sex? And so on.

Part of the reason the gay Mormon blogosphere is so compelling to us is because we seek answers for ourselves by observing the lives of others. Within the gay Mormon blogging world, it is possible to find (almost) every conceivable life choice. And we can try to judge the happiness of others in an attempt to guess what might make us most happy.

The bad news, from the point of view of the philosophers, is that this won't help us. Our life is utterly unique in the sense that it is the only one we can experience. I can't experience anyone else's life. I have no way of knowing whether their choices make them happier than my choices have made me.

The good news, from the point of view of the philosophers, is that this really doesn't matter. What makes someone else exquisitely happy may in fact not make me happy at all. So we may accept the responsibility of living our lives, knowing that it is ours to live. It is our sacred gift, and belongs to no one else.

Still, I want to say we are connected. Our stories do tell us something: about possibilities. Because we are one family, because we are brothers and sisters, others' experiences are sacred to us, even if they don't grant us the kinds of certainty we wish they would.

And life could not be so sacred, or so meaningful if it were not granted us in this way that it is: interconnected with the lives of others even as it is suspended in the midst of infinite possibilities.

We Are All Pioneers, Laborers

2011-04-16T09:39:00.001-05:00

Real faith cannot be bequeathed. It cannot be taught. It can only be discovered.

There may be eighth generation Mormons, but there are no eighth (or even second) generation Saints.

Every person in the world for whom faith is real has had to come to it on his or her own. And there is no accident of birth, no physical, no mental, no spiritual condition, no inheritance or lack thereof, that gives anyone any sort of head start. If you think that your faith is something you got from your parents or even your Sunday School teachers, then you don't have the kind of faith that can ultimately save you.

Real faith cannot be accumulated. We can't pile it up like riches, to be deposited today and drawn on tomorrow. There is no wealth of faith, no treasure we can lock away and save somewhere.

Faith is like manna. It has to be gathered fresh every day. It has to be eaten and digested while it is fresh, or it does our bodies no good. Yesterday's manna will turn to ash in our mouths.

So in the kingdom of God, there is no aristocracy. We are all working class. We are all miners. We are all field hands. We are all weavers or smiths or millers. But the ore we are mining, the field we are sowing, the cloth we are weaving, the metal we are working, the grain we are grinding is our own hearts. It is ourselves. We are the raw material and the end product of faith.

Everything that resides in us -- our desires, hopes, and dreams; our big and little questions; our sorrow, our pain, our weakness and our failings; whatever gets us out of bed in the morning, our joy, our laughter, whatever gives us pure, unadulterated happiness; our loves and our one great love; our grief; our dullness and our intensity; our aches and longings, requited and unrequited -- all of it is grist.

That is why being gay cannot possibly exclude us from the Kingdom of God; nor can the loving bonds we form with one another, the relationships we build with one another that make our lives worth living! Our lives, our loves, our families are where faith dwells! These are the things without which faith is useless, because we would have nothing for faith to give meaning.

If we have been shut out, disinherited, excommunicated, we are blessed. Because the first step in the journey of real faith must be to abandon or to be stripped of our illusions. If we think we have, we have nothing. If we know we have nothing, we have everything we need.

I yearn for this for us.

Surrender

2011-04-15T09:03:00.001-05:00

When I was a kid taking swimming lessons for the first time, I remember learning how to float. At first I was really nervous. I didn't believe it was possible for me to float. I seemed to have proof of it: when I jumped into the water, I'd sink right to the bottom. How could I float? When the teacher told us to try to float, I'd struggle. I was afraid of the water rising up over my face. I'd tense up and wiggle, thinking that would keep me at the top of the water, but of course it didn't. It wasn't until I could relax, and let go. Stop trying. That's when I learned that if I just calmly let my chest and my stomach rise, the water would hold me just enough to keep the water from covering my face. I could float if I just surrendered.

When I do my morning stretching exercises, I've learned the same thing. I've never been good at touching my toes. My legs are long in comparison with my torso, and I always thought toe-touches were impossible for me. When I tried, I'd get to a certain point and the backs of my legs would start to complain, and tell me I couldn't do it without bending my knees. I'd tense up, and I just couldn't do it. But then finally one day, I learned something. If I exhaled as I started to reach, my body naturally relaxed. Instead of tensing at the point where my muscles were really stretching, I'd relax into the stretch, and suddenly, the toe-touches were easy, and actually felt good! I guess I've discovered that my body can do amazing things, if I stop thinking so much about it, and just let go.

Spiritually, it works the same way. I've discovered that "the natural man" is not about desiring sex or material things. Those things have a valid place in a life that is lived in the fullness that God intends. Rather, "the natural man" is the desiring itself, the wanting, the scheming. I can desire very spiritual things (to sit at the right hand of Christ) and my desire can still corrupt me. Perhaps worse than my desire for material things or physical release. It's the conniving to get what we want, what we think we need. It's when we figuratively take life by the throat and demand, "Pay me that thou owest," when the way of truth would be to seek first the kingdom of God, and let whatever we need be added unto us. It's not by worry, Christ taught, that we can add an inch to our stature, or turn a white hair dark. The lilies of the field don't toil, but God arrays them nonetheless.

That's why the most profoundly religious act was in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Christ said, "Not my will, but thine be done." It was in that act of surrender.

We can get so lost in our desire. This morning, as I was reading in the Doctrine & Covenants, I ran into this excellent counsel to David Whitmer:

You have feared man and have not relied on me for strength as you ought.... You have not given heed unto my Spirit, and to those who were set over you, but have been persuaded by those whom I have not commanded. Wherefore, you are left to inquire for yourself at my hand, and ponder upon the things which you have received. (D&C 30: 1-3)

We lose the Spirit when we calculate.

It's a simple act, this letting go. It's hard to do with our heads, though. We usually have to breathe, to exhale, to let go. Our hearts know how to let go better than our heads. God will let us fight and struggle, and drown! In order to let us learn for ourselves how to let go and be sustained, to float! In order to grow, to stretch, we must learn to relax.

Why So Gay?

2011-04-13T11:51:00.017-05:00

There's been some discussion in the Moho Facebook group about the terms Same-Sex Attraction (SSA), Same-Gender Attraction (SGA), Homosexual, Gay, Queer, etc. Whatever words we might use to describe men who love men and women who love women.

I guess we'll be perennially condemned to have this discussion over and over again. That sort of comes with the territory of belonging to a despised minority. My perception is that as people become more comfortable with who they are, they become less preoccupied with what they call themselves.

I've never been a fan of the SSA and SGA terms. My gut level response to the terms is, it's about so much more than mere "attraction." Other words that I'd use to describe the feelings I feel toward men would include "connection" or "bonding." Furthermore, SSA and SGA tend to connote mere sexual attraction (though there's no reason why they couldn't connote more). And I'd really prefer a word that speaks more to the totality of feeling a connection to men that includes social, emotional and spiritual components, as well as a physical component.

Of the available choices, I guess I still prefer "gay." But that deserves to be unpacked too. If I prefer it, why that term as opposed to something like "SSA"? I mean, the bald meaning of the word is "cheerful" or "happy." Does this mean I'm never sad? Taken literally, it could be kind of silly as a self descriptor.

However, words are symbols. They are short hand. As short hand, "gay" is not a bad word, because cheer, happiness, exuberance, or gaiety is definitely what I feel in the company of men. I like a word that says something positive about how I feel about being whatever it is that I am that has to do with my desire to be pair-bonded for life with another man. I like that the word is not sexually oriented, that it doesn't single out my sexual attraction as the trait that defines me.

I also prefer the word gay because it has a history of being used by people like me to self-identify. Of the available choices, "gay" is one of the few words that hasn't been imposed on me and others like me by some medical or religious establishment. The history of a word often has more to do with its acceptability as a descriptor than anything else. That's one reason I believe "queer" will never be widely accepted, and other words like "faggot" will remain almost universally rejected.

And that's ultimately what the use of words needs to boil down to. It is disrespectful to insist on calling people by a name that they themselves are uncomfortable with. It is respectful to call people by the name that they have stated a preference for.

There are, for instance, at Church, some folks who insist on calling me "John Wrathall." I don't object to that. I will never make a fuss about that. That is my name. But the only reason it is my legal name is because I live in a society that makes it difficult and costly to legally change my name, even though I consider myself married, and even though my marital name would be "Gustav-Wrathall." "Gustav-Wrathall" is the name that I have chosen to signify that I have intertwined my life's fortunes with a man whose name prior to our relationship was "Gustav." "Gustav-Wrathall" is the name that we both have chosen to signify our commitment to each other and the mutual life we have chosen to build together. So I have a preference for that name. I have used it to describe myself for almost two decades. And my feeling is that -- whether or not people regard my relationship with Göran as valid -- if they have respect for me as a person, they will refer to me by the name I (we) have chosen: "Gustav-Wrathall".

It's a little more challenging when we're dealing with terms that are used to describe large numbers of people. Not everyone who might be described by the term "gay" likes the term "gay."

In my experience, the vast majority of people who are "same-sex attracted" prefer the term gay -- especially once they have come to a place of self-acceptance. We tend to embrace terms like "same-sex attraction" when we still feel tentative and uncomfortable with this aspect of ourselves. People who use terms like SSA or SGA tend to do so in order to minimize the "same-sex attraction" and distance themselves from it. That in itself says something about the terms.

I've never felt that being gay "defines" me in any way. I am many, many things: a human being, a male, a Finnish-American, a historian, right-handed, a paralegal, partnered; I am loving, spiritual, intellectually curious; I am many, many things. And gay. But I don't feel any need to distance myself from my gayness or minimize that aspect of my life. I am gay. My gayness is what it is. At different times in my life, my gayness has seemed more or less important, depending on what issues I happened to be dealing with at that time in my life. It was a huge issue when I was coming out; at other times in my life, it hasn't really registered. It is neither the most important nor the least important aspect of who and what I am. It just is a part of me, like my right-handedness.

But because many people do feel conflicted about being gay, and because this is a difficult issue, I think we are called upon to exercise sensitivity and charity when speaking or writing about this. In any given situation, I try to pay attention to what terms people are using, and then I try to match my language to be sensitive to their feelings and concerns. Because ultimately, showing respect and having unhindered dialog is more important to me than insisting on being called "gay."

Whatever you choose to call me, I am what I am.

O Love That Glorifies the Son

2011-04-11T09:57:00.006-05:00

Here's another never sung gem from the LDS hymnal, #295:
O love that glorifies the Son,
O love that says, "Thy will be done!"
Pure love whose spirit makes us one --
Come, fill my soul today;
Come fill my soul today.

O love that binds our family,
O love that brings my heart to thee,
Pure love that lasts eternally --
Come, fill my soul today;
Come fill my soul today.

O love that overcomes defeat,
O love that turns the bitter sweet,
Pure love that makes our lives complete --
Come, fill my soul today;
Come fill my soul today.

O Lord, give me the will to mend;
O Lord, change me from foe to friend;
Dear Lord, sustain me to the end --
Come, fill my soul today;
Come fill my soul today.

I've sometimes heard it suggested that the love that binds two people together -- the love that brought my mom and dad to marry each other, or the love that has inspired me and Göran to make our lives together -- is somehow qualitatively different from the Divine Love, from the Pure Love of Christ, from the love that God feels for us and the love that motivated Christ to die for us.

Deep down inside, I've always known that wasn't true. I've always known that was a lie about the nature of love -- a lie told out of fear. I've known it because of the kind of love I feel for Göran which -- yes! -- could inspire me to give my life for him. There's something deep and profound that connects us. It's a love that was born, true enough, in superficial romance, in "attraction." But beginnings are always that way. By simple means great things are brought to pass. Attraction, desire led us to make promises. That's what attraction and desire are supposed to do! Our attraction, our desire, sings us a song of what could be if we have faith. So we make promises. And the fulfillment of faith is in the keeping of promises, day by day, week by week, year by year, until I can barely believe we're coming up on two decades together. And like that sunrise on a cloudy morning Elder Bednar spoke of a couple of weeks ago, one fine day it dawns on me, there's something powerful there. A love that would inspire me to give all for him. A love that looks and feels so much like the Divine Love, it's hard for me not to apprehend the love Göran and I share as a sacrament, as an embodiment of the Divine Grace.

This hymn testifies of the unity of loves: the love that says "Thy will be done" and the love that binds my family is one and the same. The hymn says that the love that binds our family is also "the love that brings my heart to thee." I know how true this is for some very personal reasons. It was only when my love for my spouse reached a new level of commitment that I suddenly found myself hearing the voice of the Spirit whispering so clearly to me in August 2005. My love for Göran, my faithfulness and commitment to him, led me back to God; and my love for God, my faithfulness and commitment to God, led me back to Göran, in ever more profound circles of love and commitment.

But these loves -- of God, of family -- are connected to other loves too: "love that overcomes defeat," "love that turns the bitter sweet." This sounds more like hope and faith. But hope, as the prophet Moroni reminds us, we cannot have without faith, and we can have neither faith nor hope without love (Moroni 7: 40-48).

Finally, the love of family that turns our hearts to God, the pure love of Christ that fills our hearts with faith and hope, are manifested in the final love mentioned in the hymn: the love that gives us "the will to mend," the love that changes us "from foe to friend." This love makes us peacemakers. It makes us agents of change in the world around us to create harmony and peace where there was discord; to return patience for anger; to return love for hate.

You can't deny one without upsetting or undermining all the others. It's all one love.