Spirit Prison

Today our Sunday School lesson focused on the doctrine of vicarious ordinance work and "redeeming our dead." After introducing the LDS doctrine of "Spirit Prison," our Sunday School teacher posed a question: "Are those who are in Spirit Prison all there because they are bad people?"

The answer was: No.

Many of those who are in Spirit Prison are there because they have not yet received the saving ordinances that need to be performed on their behalf by those of us who have bodies. He used a particular turn of phrase that struck me forcefully: "They are locked in there until someone unlocks the doors for them."

In that moment, I opened my journal and wrote: "I am in Spirit Prison."

*****

I know lots of Latter-day Saints would respond, "Of course you are not. You are excommunicated from the Church, but you have the power to rectify your own situation. All you need to do is leave your husband and go through the requisite repentance process, and then be re-baptized into the Church and have your priesthood and temple blessings restored. In fact, if you don't do this right now, knowing what you know and having the opportunity right before you, your opportunities in the next life will be greatly diminished. So repent and do it now!"

But the problem with that line of reasoning as I understand it is that my fullness of joy cannot possibly lie in "remain[ing] separately and singly" (D&C 132:17). Whatever I understand of "fulness of joy" I understand through my marriage with my husband.

The nature of that joy has become particularly poignant to me as we've begun to face the challenge of my husband's kidney disease together. I've realized there is something powerful and visceral within me that is willing to put everything on the line to fight for his life. I understand that to be "one flesh" with someone is much more than about having sex with someone. It is about having your life entirely intertwined with the life of another human being; to know that your whole welfare, temporal and eternal, is tied up in him.

To tell me that my only way out of hell is to leave my husband, is not showing me any way out of hell at all. It is only to point out to me what I understood most clearly in Sunday School this morning: that I am in Spirit Prison, and that I cannot get out on my own. Somebody else has to unlock the doors for me.

*****

It could be viewed as a cruel doctrine, this notion that the spirits of our ancestors languish in prison until we do the work to free them. Of course the early Saints did not see it as cruel at all. To the contrary, they saw it as compassionate and enlightened compared to the doctrine it replaced: the doctrine that all of those who died without baptism were banished to eternal hell. To the Saints, the doctrine of vicarious ordinance work was proof of God's justice and mercy.

Yet, the doctrine puts the responsibility for saving the dead squarely in the hands of lazy, egotistical, and imperfect humans. Is that actually a mercy after all?

Many Latter-day Saints have heard stories in Church of members who were contacted by dead ancestors or family members, through a dream or through some other miraculous parting of the veil. Their ancestors often contact them to remind them of their responsibility. 

I had an experience of this nature myself in February 2008. I awoke in the middle of the night, and sat up in bed. As I sat there, I saw quite clearly in the northwest corner of our bedroom a man. He had very dark skin, aquiline features, and wore clothing I recognized as African style clothing. He gestured to me, and then he vanished.

This encounter did not frighten me. Quite to the contrary, I was filled with tremendous peace and a sense of well being. This was not a dream. I was wide awake, sitting up in bed. I immediately got up out of bed and went downstairs to our living room. The feeling of peace and well-being lingered, and I got down on my knees and prayed for understanding about who this was and what this meant. And then the impression came very clearly to my mind that this was one of Göran's ancestors.

Another impression immediately came to my mind. We had recently attempted to make contact with Göran's biological father in Memphis, Tennessee by sending him a letter via registered mail. The letter had been returned to us unopened, and at that point we felt stuck. We weren't quite sure how to proceed. As I was praying to understand the meaning of the presence of the man in our room, it also came clear to me that we needed to try sending the letter again. The next morning, I spoke with Göran about it and told him it was urgent we try making contact with his father again.

It took us a few months to actually get around to doing it, but when we finally did, our second contact attempt succeeded. We finally met Göran's biological family for the first time in August of that same year.

There are a few things that intrigued me about this encounter. First of all, I thought it was interesting that Göran's ancestor chose to appear to me rather than Göran. Was that because, being a Latter-day Saint, he knew that I would understand the importance of making contact with Göran's family, both for the sake of the living as well as of the dead? But it also intrigued me that if Göran's ancestors were attempting to make contact with Göran, that they did so through his same-sex partner. Was that an acknowledgment that, on the other side of the veil, our relationship is recognized as having validity? Do Göran's dead ancestors see me as a part of the family?

Another interesting thing had to do with the timing. It was only later, in August 2008 when we finally met Göran's family in Memphis, that we learned that Göran's grandfather had passed away in January of that same year. Less than a month before the spiritual experience that prompted us to renew our efforts to find his biological family.

When we arrived in Memphis, I had a notebook with me at all times, and a copy of "Mac Family Tree" installed on my computer. By the end of our visit, I had assembled a family tree with about 350 names in it.

Whenever I hear lessons of the nature we heard in Sunday School today, I feel a bit guilty. It's been a while since I've worked on Göran's genealogy. And it bothers me that even if Göran and his family were agreeable, we couldn't do vicarious ordinance work for them because both Göran and I are barred from the temple.

Are Göran's progenitors gnashing their teeth right now over the uselessness of their descendents, including that white Mormon guy who married into the family?

But why speak to me in the first place if I'm so frickin' useless?

*****

I wept in Church today, during Sacrament meeting, particularly during the singing of this hymn:

Father in Heav'n, we do believe
The promise thou hast made;
Thy word with meekness we receive,
Just as thy Saints have said.

We now repent of all our sin
And come with broken heart,
And to thy covenant enter in
And choose the better part.

O Lord, accept us while we pray,
And all our sins forgive;
New life impart to us this day,
And bid the sinners live.

Humbly we take the sacrament
In Jesus' blessed name;
Let us receive thru covenant
The Spirit's heav'nly flame.

I don't know what to make of my current predicament. But what I do know is that my salvation is tied up with Göran's, and with his family's. I've had numerous other spiritual dreams and experiences that have confirmed that. So I can't be saved by divorcing him. This much I know.

But I also know that I'm waiting on the Church to unlock some door for me -- for us.

Together or Not At All

Yesterday in Sunday School we talked about the miracles of Jesus. We talked about how Christ communicated fundamental spiritual truths through his physical miracles. The healing of palsy or leprosy was not merely a statement of God's power over the elements (though it certainly was also that). It was also a symbol of how we find our wholeness in Christ:

Whether is it easier to say to the sick of the palsy, Thy sins be forgiven thee; or to say, Arise, and take up thy bed, and walk? But that ye may know that the Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins, (he saith to the sick of the palsy,) I say unto thee, Arise, and take up thy bed, and go thy way into thine house. And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; insomuch that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion. (Mark 2: 9-12)

But the one that moved me the most, was this one:

And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will... (Mark 1: 40-41)

It reminded me of my own experience with the healing Christ, kneeling down to him and beseeching him, "If thou wilt, thou canst cure my homosexuality," and receiving, in essence, Christ's response, "I will not; there is no need. But thy sins are forgiven thee. Be thou whole!"

The first counselor in our Stake Presidency was visiting our ward, and he concluded our Sacrament Meeting with some remarks about the importance of expressing affection to our life partner, and the importance of small gestures like holding hands. He spoke of how we can't be saved alone. He described that other person as a part of ourselves. All I can say in response is I know the truth of it from experience. I was so glad to see my sweet heart's smiling countenance when I returned home from Church. He got an extra warm hug from me. That's when we took the picture posted here.

I took account yesterday of how truly, deeply I love the Church. How I long to be a member of it! I realized -- I have long realized -- I would give almost anything for membership in it, up to and including my life, if that could make a difference. But I realized as well that I would give my life for the man in this picture too. There is no me without him.

The profoundest truths of the gospel -- love, hope and faith; patience, sacrifice, and humility -- I could not have learned without him. I would have shipwrecked long ago if I'd had to go this voyage alone.

So we have to be saved either together or not at all.

The Call to Heal (and be Healed) in Relationship

Recently I've been reading a book entitled African American Folk Healing, by Stephanie Y. Mitchem. This book has been particularly meaningful to me, because the author discusses so clearly and practically the damaging impact of racism on the psyche and lives of African Americans. And it has helped me understand at a deeper level some very important dynamics in my relationship with my husband and with his family.

I need to start out by acknowledging the impact of race and racism on my relationship with my husband. I am white and my husband is black. And I'm here to tell you that you can stuff your head full of notions all you want about how "race is only skin deep," and how race doesn't (or shouldn't) matter in a relationship, and so on and so on. I will say that it simultaneously does not matter / should not matter, and it matters tremendously and tragically.

There are a good many things in my relationship with my husband, in many day-to-day life chores and in the function of being married and caring for one another, where, yes, race has negligible to no impact. But I can also say that I've come to appreciate the fact that one of the greatest challenges or struggles in our relationship has been the fact that growing up in an Anglo-American home, I was raised with a set of assumptions that I have come to realize would have been completely different if I had been raised in an African American home. And I'm not just talking about attitudes toward race. I'm talking about attitudes toward things that have a profound effect on a relationship -- such as the attitude toward conflict.

Having been raised by an Anglo-American Mormon dad and a Finnish convert to Mormonism, I can say that one of the prevailing assumptions in our home is that all conflict is extremely bad. We were very, very squeamish about any manifestation of conflict. All yelling is bad. All arguing is bad. In fact, noise of any kind is bad. And so, in the home I was raised in, if any sort of conflict ever came out into the open, it literally felt like the end of the world was going to happen. And everybody's priority was to shove all manifestations of conflict back into the evil Pandora's box it came out of.

It's not to say that we couldn't / didn't deal with conflict. But we put a premium on dealing with conflict in ways that were superficially calm, controlled, and heavily managed. We were trained to put on a calm exterior even as the emotions were boiling out of control underneath.

I remember the first time I met Göran's African American family in Memphis. One of the things that immediately struck me was how noisy family gatherings were. People shouting! Loud laughter! Very emotional expressions of everything. In this setting, some shouting is bad, yes. Some arguing is bad. But sometimes, shouting and arguing is just how you express yourself and how you deal with a problem. Get it out in the open and deal with it! And then you can move on. And with Göran's family, noise is OK. In fact, I've noticed with Göran, noise is sometimes mandatory. I can sit around for hours in the house, with everything so quiet you can hear a pin drop. You can literally hear the air stirring. And as soon as Göran walks through the door, he says, "I need NOISE!" and he'll turn on some music.

Now, I'm not saying that there can't be African American families out there who think "silence is golden," or that there aren't Anglo-American families out there who love to mix it up. But I think that if I'm talking to a white friend about the overriding assumptions that governed how I was raised, he's going to be much more likely to relate to what I grew up with than a black friend. That's just the reality. And this is important, because those assumptions contribute to our assumptions about what is "normal" and what is "good." If I don't understand the culturally contingent nature of these kinds of assumptions, I'm going to be much more likely condemn as bad some of the basic assumptions that my husband comes at me with. That's not good for a relationship. So cultural differences of any sort always add challenge to a relationship. But they also make a relationship interesting and cool!

But of course in addition to just some of the basic challenges created by cultural difference, African Americans have had to deal with the unique burden of living in a culture that has one of the most virulent, toxic forms of racism the world has ever seen. One of the things that has helped me and Göran as a couple to come to grips with this has been when we've discussed the landmark study conducted by Kenneth Clark in 1954 that showed how little black children had a preference for white dolls; they thought black dolls were "ugly" and white dolls were "beautiful." Follow the link I've provided above, and you will see that fifty years later, we still have the same problem. To me, there's no greater demonstration that racism is alive and well today; it has not been swept away or overcome. Little black kids are still growing up believing that they are less attractive and less desirable or good than white kids.

OK. So if we consider what makes for a strong, vibrant, healthy relationship, we know that healthy self-esteem, self-confidence and self-love on the part of both members of a relationship are crucial. Having a foundation of love for one's self and belief in one's self is necessary in order to love another person. "If you can't love yourself, how are you going to love anybody else?" You also need healthy humility, a healthy sense of perspective and sense of humor about oneself, and an ability to put others first, in order for a relationship to work.

So if you understand this, it is possible to see how toxic racism is in a relationship between a white man and a black man. If the white man is functioning with unexamined attitudes of privilege and of priority (both because he is white and because he is a man), if he assumes (because society has taught him to assume) that what he has to say or think is always valuable and important and matters, then that man may not have the requisite skills of openness, perspective, and humility that will enable him to be a good citizen in a relationship. And if a black man is functioning with unexamined beliefs in his own inferiority... Well, you get the picture.

Now, ultimately, I believe the best cure for racism is the real-life, rough and tumble of actual relationships. A white man and a black man in relationship with each other don't have to be together very long before most of whatever stereotypes they may have held about whiteness or blackness get shattered, and they begin to relate to one another as human beings. In fact, they soon get to the point where they just don't even think of each other as black or as white. It's just John and Göran. True, true, all very good and true.

But there's still an emotional and psychological foundation that doesn't get dealt with necessarily; and that can even shape and structure a lot of interactions at a sub-conscious level, in ways that have a potential at least to be very destructive. And I think there comes a point where you simply can't continue to function with a Shangri-la attitude of "let's all just hold hands and sing and everything's going to be OK." At some point, the monster of racism has to be unmasked in very self-conscious, explicit ways. It has to be dealt with.

Here's another news flash: The Past Is Not Just the Past. History -- even centuries-old history -- lingers on in the present. It influences us and affects us in the here and now. Whites don't like to acknowledge that, in many ways, the chains of slavery are still rattling in our psyche. I desperately want white folks collectively to consider what a powerful thing it would be for us collectively to do something to acknowledge it. We can say, "I personally never owned a slave. I disapprove of racism. But the culture I belong to is racist; and the founders of the country I am a citizen of held slaves; and I may have some ancestors who held slaves; and I want to take responsibility for making that right." Because God knows, our slave-holding ancestors and founders never made restoration for the wrongs that they did. And without restoration, can there truly be repentance? So maybe, just maybe, we ought to consider making restoration for what they did. Maybe, just maybe, this burden, this debt of restoration our ancestors left us is as much a part of our inheritance as all the good things they left us that we are eager to claim.

But those bigger cultural and social and political questions aside (bringing the political back to the realm of the personal)... I never understood why the way my husband takes care of his hair could be such an emotional issue. I never understood why figuring out what his name was and having the power to change his name if he wanted to was such a powerful thing. I never understood why holding on to mementos of his past is such a powerful, emotional thing for him in a way that it probably never will be for me. Why he documents every single thing in his life in photographs and scrapbooks and boxes. This book I've been reading on African American Folk Healing has helped me to understand how and why those traits of my husband may connect to deeper cultural issues related to race in America.

Which brings home to me the role that Göran and I need to play in relationship to each other as healers and healed. I am more aware than ever of the wounds that need healing. And if I am attentive, and if I pray for help from God -- the God who knows each of us better than we know ourselves, and who, I truly believe, can give us the key to overcoming racism if we really ask him for it and desire it -- perhaps I can be granted some insight, as well as the courage to follow through on the insight. I need to pray to God to give me a new vision, a different vision, a better vision of how love and relationship look restored and healed from the effects of racism and other "-isms."

Oh, yeah. Heterosexism is in the mix there too, something that complicates our relationship with each other. Heterosexism that rears its ugly head, for example, in the knee-jerk reaction I get from some people that every problem in our relationship must stem back to the fact that we are two men in a relationship (rather than two people in a relationship) and that the solution to our relationship problems, therefore, would be for us to give up on each other, to leave each other. That there is no value in the love we give each other, or in our attempts to care for one another.

As a Latter-day Saint, I take courage in the doctrine of Restoration (which is beautifully explained in Alma 40-42; and of which we see a powerful example related to the problem of race in Helaman 14). The doctrine of Restoration suggests to me that, through the Atonement, and with the Power of God, it is possible for us to envision a world without racism, without homophobia, without sexism, without all the "-ism's" that distort human relationships. We can imagine a history and a humanity without hate. And we can trust in some ultimate healing that is complete and total: human personality and human relationships healed of the pain and anguish and ugliness of sin. And some redemption of human history.

I think that in the eternal scale of things, there will have to be some restoration made for slavery. Our ancestors didn't make it. If we don't take responsibility to make it now, ourselves, I believe there will come a time when God will require it of us. Better to do it now, when we have a chance to do it of our own free will. To do so now would make better people of us than to wait until we have no choice.

I do approach the problem of healing with this fundamental hope. With this knowledge that we can and will be healed, if we put our heart, might, and mind to it, and if we ask God for help.

-----

(Thanks to our exchange student, Farzad, for the pretty picture, his image of our love!)

Contingencies

Today we're celebrating Göran's forty-sixth birthday in the city of his birth, Memphis, Tennessee. While driving across Memphis with Göran's Aunt Dottie, she mentioned that John Gaston Hospital, the hospital where Göran was born, was a "black hospital" at the time, reminding us that the America that Göran and I were born into was an America torn in half by segregation. Only a year before, I had been born in Provo, Utah, on the edge of a nearly all-white Mormon University campus, and was blessed by priesthood holders in a church that refused to ordain blacks. Who at that time would have predicted that a black child born in segregated Memphis and a white child born in Utah, in the bosom of one of the whitest churches in America, could some day pledge their lives to each other on the headwaters of the Mississippi?

This morning, as I was reflecting on what his life has meant to me -- how his love for me has transformed my life -- I also reflected on the battles fought and the sacrifices made, to make our life and our love possible. Rosa Parks refusing to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, black school children walking the gauntlet between rows of hateful, jeering white adults to attend school in Birmingham, Dr. King dying of gunshot wounds in the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. But also: drag queens standing up and fighting at the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, Harvey Milk running for public office in San Francisco, California. And always, ordinary people making quiet decisions to live their lives in harmony with a kind of love and a vision of justice that the powers that be and most of their contemporaries denied.

There were other, stranger contingencies that brought the stream of his life together with mine. My father's mission call in the late 1950s to Finland; my mother's conversion, and the correspondence that brought them together in the early sixties; my Finnish-American heritage which brought me back to Helsinki, Finland in 1986; so that when I decided to leave BYU and the Mormon Church after almost committing suicide that summer, there was a Midwest Finnish-American community connection that brought me first to Upper Michigan and then to Minneapolis. When Göran's mother decided to run away from Memphis with him and his younger sister, his father, his aunt, his grandmother and the rest of his family in Memphis were grief-stricken. He grew up in Iowa without knowing any of his family; and when he confronted his mother about their past, her refusal to answer his questions was a factor in his decision to leave Iowa, change his name, and follow his then-boyfriend to Minneapolis in 1987. Shortly after their arrival in the Flour City, he and his boyfriend broke up, but he stayed. In the early 1990s, Göran and I both used to go dancing at The Gay '90s, a popular gay bar in downtown Minneapolis, and one night he asked me to dance.

Life is strange and amazing and beautiful!

Eighteen Years Together

I think today on our eighteenth anniversary it's OK for me to acknowledge that there are lots of reasons why my relationship with my husband might never have materialized, or why it might never have lasted.

• My internalized homophobia.  (And the low self-esteem that comes with it.  The belief that someone like me doesn't deserve happiness in a long-term relationship.)

• Racism.  (Interracial relationships seem more common in the gay community...  Can the experience of homophobia help us "get it"?  But we're still learning how deep this challenge runs...)

• Religion.  (Do I need to comment on this one?  Why am I still having to fight for the right to marry the person I love?)

• There are so few gay people in the world.  (Our marriage pool is about ten to twenty times smaller than it is for straight people!)

• The culture of promiscuity in the community where we met.  (As if the gay marriage pool isn't already too small, it makes it even smaller when you subtract the folks who have given up looking for Mr. Right in favor of Mr. Right-Now.)

• The pervasive assumption that relationships like ours just can't last.  (When we reconnect with friends from a long time ago: "Oh, you two are still together!  Wow!")

• Family members who don't treat the most important person in your life like family.  (Thank God our immediate family members got over this early in our relationship.)

• Economic stress, communication issues, trust issues, etc.  (Yes, of course we get to struggle with all the stuff that conventional straight couples struggle with too.)

• Fear.  Yes, it's the opposite of love (not hate).

OK, so I should also celebrate all the things that have conspired to bring (and keep!) us together!

• Just plain, dumb, luck.  I simply don't believe relationships are predestined.  Heck, nothing about anything in this world is predestined.  Children don't starve to death because they're predestined.  And people are certainly not predestined to be alone.  But if that's true, then I have to acknowledge that I am just plain lucky -- I was in the right place at the right time and somehow in spite of myself managed to meet the most incredible man and have him see something in me.  I still just so often wonder, why me?

• Passion.  I still cry when I see him dance.  He's so incredibly beautiful.  I wish I could dance like that!

•  Mystery.  Ultimately, I think, you decide to make your life with someone because another human being is a mystery to you, and you see something in that person that makes you feel the mystery is worth sticking around long enough to solve.  Hint: the mystery just keeps getting deeper!

• He was there for me when I needed him, and I was there for him when he needed me.  Sometimes (not always) the storms of life bring us closer together.  Sometimes when the world turns against you, you have no choice but to turn to each other.  Somehow we remembered that even when we thought our heads were going to pop from all the stress, we needed to muster enough calm to help shelter the other.
  

• Somehow our love outgrew our selfishness and our fear.  There are a lot of selfish, fearful reasons we get into relationships.  But somehow, eventually, you discover the other, and you realize that the best thing you can possibly do for yourself is to give him something worthwhile.

• Forgiveness.  If you live with someone long enough, you will eventually fail the one person in the world you never ought to fail.  Sometimes those failures can be epic.  It takes courage to recognize what you've done and try to set things right, but it takes even more courage to forgive.

It's been worth it.

My Forever Family

Sometimes it is in the moments of our greatest happiness that we must also confront our greatest fears and our greatest pain.

This has been a big summer for my family, full of triumphs.  Our foster son graduated from high school.  More importantly, he was accepted into one of the  most prestigious Universities in our state, and was able to secure sufficient financial aid to guarantee that -- so long as he works hard -- he will be able to complete all four years there, preparing him for the career of his choice.  He's transitioning out of foster care and into independent living, which is a goal all of us have worried about and worked hard for.  In doing so, he's beginning to accomplish all the highest hopes and dreams that every parent has for a child.  We are so proud of him.  We are so excited about what he's accomplished so far, and what he will accomplish going forward.

As a family, we achieved another extremely important goal.  As the culmination of a nine-year-long process of finding Göran's birth certificate, establishing his identity and connecting with his birth family, we were finally able to go on a trip abroad that we have been longing to make almost as long as we have been a couple (over seventeen years)!  Thanks to that little piece of paper -- a birth certificate! -- we are able to defend Göran from arbitrary denial of health care, employment, and travel.  It grants us civil and legal rights that we both need in order to take care of each other.  By traveling abroad, Göran and Glen were able to experience the mind- and soul-expanding possibilities that can only come from experiencing the world from an entirely different cultural perspective.  Also, I was finally able to introduce them to a branch of my family that has been an integral and important part of my life.

This was what was most significant to me about our trip.  I can't even begin to say how important it was to me to connect with my uncles, aunts and cousins, and to revisit places where I learned some of the most important things about myself, and people who helped me learn those things.  I wanted my family over there to meet my husband and our son, to see and know who and what I have become with Göran and Glen.  I wanted to meet the new members of my family over there -- children and spouses of cousins -- and see who and what they have become.  That is why I desperately wanted the language to be able to communicate with them more freely and fully, why one of the most important aspects of our trip was to be able to speak Finnish, to be able to tell about my husband and his struggles, and our son and his progress, and to hear and understand the changes and journeys of my family members over there.  I had to (wanted to!) struggle with a sense of loss too...  The fact that these people who are so important to me have been so distant for twenty-three years!  I never again want them to be so distant for so long.

For me, this was all only the latest chapter in my own journey of personal integration -- bringing all the different, disparate strands of my life, all the things that have remained separate and unreconciled, back together into a harmonious whole.  Body and soul, mind and spirit.  Family is about that, about integration.  Every member of the family is unique, with individual experiences, perspectives, and history.  This is true, regardless of the nature of our relationships.  A father and son share so much in common, and yet can be so different from one another as to be mutually incomprehensible -- to sometimes make war on each other!  A brother and sister can have the same mother and father, and yet look and think and act and feel so differently from one another that they might as well have come from different planets.  So let's not even begin to get into the differences that separate an African-American, Memphis-born man whose family have been in the U.S. for as long as there has been a U.S., and a Finnish-American Utah-born Mormon whose roots in this nation are no longer than five generations and as short as one generation.  And yet, despite that we are each -- all of us, brother, sister, mother, father, lover, spouse, child -- so different as to sometimes seem virtually alien to one another, there is no joy in remaining apart, remaining alien to one another.  Our only joy is in finding unity that binds us through our differences, so that our differences become incorporated into our sense of who we are.  So that our difference makes us stronger, more compassionate, more powerful.

There are times when I feel Göran and I have achieved a unique kind of unity, a bond so intense that when he is pricked, I bleed.  And yet, a couple, no matter how close, is constantly in movement, constantly experiencing growth and change.  Each part of the couple is experiencing his or her own growth and change, separate and unique from his or her partner!  So closeness in a relationship is never something you take for granted.  It is something you always work on, something you always build.  Something that requires constant course-correction, constant listening, constant communication!

So those seemingly innocuous things that we do...  Going for a walk.  Playing a game of monopoly.  Sitting next to each other in church.  Crossing the Atlantic and visiting a different country!  It sounds like fun!  And we have in our culture -- especially in our puritanical American religious cultures -- a tendency to denigrate "fun" as not serious, as unimportant.  But it is in the simplest of moments -- often the times when we are being the least serious -- that we are doing the most important work.  We are creating bonds, connections and a love that forges us together, that turns the chaos of difference into the harmony of family.  So a family summer full of momentous and important and innocuous and seeming unimportant things -- graduations! parties! family reunions! summer vacations! -- it's joyful and fun and Oh So Important.

But there was a moment a few days ago, when all of that seemed to come crashing down.  Why?  Because everything that matters in life is a product of faith.   And faith is invisible.  Faith is like Peter walking on the Sea of Galilee.  What keeps him from sinking into the waves and drowning, even within reach of his Savior?

Family is real, because we believe in it.  Because we proceed in trust that it exists, that it has value, that we can count on it.  And there are a million things out there in the world -- in that big bad world full of grandeur and wonder and excitement and truth and love, but also full of hate and falsehood and ennui and blindness and degradation -- there are so many things out there that will tear us down and undermine us and make us believe that we are unworthy and less than.  There are things out there that might cause us to doubt that the things that really count in life, that really matter are even really real.  The world is hard that way, which is one reason we need families to help take care of us and to take care of.  But even our greatest resource, our families, can support us only through that act of faith which enables us to believe in them, to trust that family is real.

So my son, who has been our son for three years, is facing not one but two or three enormous transitions.  He's starting this whole new chapter of his life where he starts college.  But he's also moving out of the house (into a college dorm).  And those transitions are extremely difficult.  Anyone who's seen a kid go off to college knows how painful that transition is, how you wonder if anything will ever be the same again.  How you wonder if you're actually losing someone.  When of course you are not!  But it can feel like it!  And it feels like it because in those transitions we are reminded that the ties that bind us are built of simple things!  Summer vacations!  Bike rides!  Sharing a meal!  And relationships -- like all the most important, best things in life -- are invisible!  So transitions are scary.

And my son is making, not just this college transition that is made by so many other kids in so many other "normal" families.  He is making a transition that not very many kids make -- out of foster care.  So he wonders.  Once the state-sponsored obligation is over, once there's no longer a file full of documents in some bureaucrat's office saying that we have some kind of formal relationship with each other, does that mean we are no longer family?  Our son was beginning to be afraid.  He was beginning to mourn the potential loss of everything that has come to mean so much to him.  And at our -- at his! -- moment of greatest triumph!

So a few days ago, we had another one of these conversations where he was disconsolate.  Terrified.  He doesn't know if what we have is real or not.

Now I can only think back to that very first moment, when he walked into our house for the very first time, and our hearts melted.  We felt bonded to him almost from the very first time we met.  We knew, by some invisible, interior, but nevertheless incredibly powerful means, that he was part of our family.  And I came to know that we would be a family literally forever.

And so my reassurances to my son become a sort of testimony-bearing.  My telling him what I know and how I know it.  And an admonition to him to have faith, to be faithful, to act in accordance in the world with what you know to be true deep inside, with that invisible place known as the heart.

To be a family and to love is an act of faith.  It is to face the chaos of reality, it is to face difference and very real conflict, and it is to face doubt.  It is to stand up and face everything that tells you you are not a family, you cannot possibly be a family and it is to say, No you are wrong.  Our love is invisible, but it is real.  You may not see us as a family, you may not see a family in us.  But we are.  And you can't prove it to anyone but yourself, ultimately.  It is not real to those who don't share faith with you, who don't keep faith with you.  But that does not ultimately matter, because it only is to those for whom it matters most.

Now, see, this is why in my humble opinion all the fussing and fretting and whining and campaigning by all those good, decent, respectable religious folks against gay marriage and against gay family is indicative of one thing.  And it is not indicative of their faith.  No, this kind of campaign does not come from a place of faith.  Because if my love for my spouse and our love for our son could possibly touch them or take anything away from them, to me that suggests that they never had anything to take away in the first place.  If, after all they have done to deny me my sense of family, they have failed to deprive me of the love and faith and hope that it takes to make a family, how on earth could our mere existence take an iota away from them?  To me this says that they are overcome by the world, that they have already lost faith in the very institution that they claim to value most.  And in their desperate attempt to shore up something they don't actually in their heart of hearts really believe in any more, they are attacking me and my family.  And they are doing so in the worldly realm that they apparently think matters most.  They're trying to make us unreal as a family by legislating us out of existence.

From the moment I came to realize that family is an act of faith, I became free of the anguish such a campaign ought to cause me.  Because I began to realize that precisely because the things that matter most are invisible, precisely because they are a matter of faith, a political, legislative campaign cannot touch me at the innermost, most vital place where I am and move and have being.  Sure, they can make things difficult for us.  They could take things away from us.  But we can only lose that which is most important to us if we let them implant doubt in us.  If we stop believing.  If we let their lack of faith become our own.

It's not that outward things aren't important.  I support and will continue to support legal, same-sex marriage for the same reason I long for harmony within my family.  I will support it for the same reason I learned Finnish and hungered to communicate with relatives living on the other side of the globe.  I will support it for the same reason I support political campaigns to deal with hunger, to educate the disadvantaged, to protect the environment and to promote peace and safety.  I support same-sex marriage because I long for reconciliation of all the differences that make us unique so that we can in some sense be a unity, so that we can in some sense be one.  Not just as individuals in individual families, but as individuals in a single great human family.

I have faith in that too.

Pictures!

I promised to post a few pictures from our vacation in Scandinavia, so here they are...

This is me with my parents at the Helsinki Cathedral, explaining to them my theory about the church's iconography.

Göran and me on the train.  We resorted to train travel in southern Finland, but rented a car the last half of our vacation while visiting family in North Karelia and driving to Lapland.

One of my favorite drinks is piimä, a kind of Finnish buttermilk.

In Stockholm, I found this interesting steeple on the Engelska Kyrkan (English Church).  No, not the Angel Moroni.

The reason we went to Skansen, a big open-air museum in southern Stockholm, was so I could see the summer house of Swedish scientist and visionary Emmanuel Swedenborg.  It was in this simple, one-room cottage he had many of his visions and held many of his interviews with angels.

 

This is how I attended the royal wedding celebration of Princess Victoria of Sweden.  If you know anything about what it means to be a Finn, you will understand what a magnanimous gesture this was.

I waited for four hours to get this picture of Prince Daniel's hand in front of Princess Victoria's face.

There was a lot of schlocky romantic stuff all over Stockholm, as part of the general wedding festivities.

This photo was taken at midnight, behind the cabin where we were staying in Varislahti, Finland (where some of my mother's family are living).  This is what it looked like from about 11 p.m. until 2 a.m.  Then the sun would rise again.

Here are the menfolk, all watching football.  (This match was England vs. Slovenia.)  In Finland, the men were all watching the World Cup, and the women were all talking about the Swedish royal wedding.  Göran and I were comfortable in both worlds.

Göran and our nephew Christian, who specialized in making goofy faces for the camera.  We called it "the face."

We timed our visits with my cousins, uncles and aunts in eastern Finland with the big midsummer's celebration known in Finland as "Juhannus."  The religious significance of "St. John's Day" has to do with the fact that midsummer comes exactly six months before Christmas, and John the Baptist, the prophet who prepared the way for Christ, was born six months before Christ.  The pancake-like "lettuja" are a special Juhannus food.  On Juhannusaatto or St. John's Eve, Finns light a big bonfire and celebrate late into the night.

It's been twenty-three years since I've had a chance to visit my family in Finland.  Growing up, we would go every two or three years and I would spend the whole summer.  It was very emotional for me to see beloved aunts and uncles and cousins again, and to meet cousins' kids for the first time.  See that big smile on my face?  I'm very happy in this picture.

My cousin Mika is one or two years older than I am.  He was the cousin I probably spent the most time with on those long summer visits.  It was so good to see him again!  (And meet his wife and kids!)

On our drive through Lapland, we had to be careful to watch for reindeer.  They don't seem to pay much attention to cars, and routinely meandered down the middle the road, stopping traffic and attracting photos!

This photo was taken at midnight in Kilpisjärvi, Finland.

I had this brilliant idea that I was going to go for a swim in the Arctic Ocean.  I changed my mind after wading into it and realizing how freezing cold it was.  (I would have done it if there had been a sauna...)

On our way back from Lapland, we stopped in North Karelia again to spend more time with family.  Here I'm holding music for two of my cousins, Pekka and Kari.  They were playing from the top of the old mine tower in Outokumpu, as part of the city's summer music program.

Our last night in Finland, Göran and I went for a walk in a part of Helsinki we hadn't explored yet, and we ran across this advertisement.  I'm not sure how I feel about Helsinki promoting itself as a destination for gay tourists.  Maybe I would feel better about it if Finland would grant equal marriage rights to same-sex couples, like its neighbors Sweden and Norway.

We loved the restaurant Zetor.  The desert we had there -- fried cheese melted in cream and topped with cloudberry jam -- was worth the price of the plane ticket to Helsinki.

So this was the gay bar we checked out.  It seemed to me like there were a lot more lesbians than I usually see in American gay bars.  When Göran and I were dancing, we (or I should say he) had a lesbian cheering section.  This woman who had really had about six too many was kind of hitting on Göran.  She seemed really offended when I interposed myself between them, and took him by the hand and introduced myself as his husband.  (Göran, on the other hand, was really relieved.)

OK, so here's a perfect example of what left me feeling kind of ambivalent about gay pride in Finland.  Why is it advertised in English?  Why call it "Pride" instead of something more logical and native, like "Homo Sisu"?  Maybe it's just me, but it almost makes it seem as if gay pride is put on for the benefit of English-speaking tourists.

This stained glass window in the Tromsø Cathedral (in Northern Norway) sort of perfectly captures some of my theological ruminations during our trip.  Finland was converted to Christianity by Swedish ristiretkeläisiä, by "crusaders" whose main method of persuasion was the sword, and who used Christianity as an arm of the state, to undergird the authority of the Swedish monarchy.  I found it fascinating that this Norwegian Church, instead of portraying a crucified Christ like most other European churches portrays a triumphant Christ at his Second Coming.  At the top of the window, the hand of God is portrayed, with light streaming down to represent God's interventions in human history.  Below the Christ (not visible in this photograph) lies the carnage of human war and genocide, and Adam and Eve, as representatives of humanity, reach upwards to receive Christ again as the restorer of peace and love.  I'm not a fan of the way Christ is physically portrayed here.  He seems too abstract and ghost-like to me in this portrait; I want a Christ who is concrete and physical; I want the reality of the eternal realm breaking into the ephemeral mortal...  But I still like the basic idea behind this image.  If I were an artist designing a church window, it is almost certainly the theme I would choose.

What a Waste of Theology

The Vatican condemned the blockbuster movie Avatar for promoting nature worship.

I was talking to Göran about this, and he said, "What a waste of theology!"

He couldn't have captured my feelings more precisely.

Dance!

Last night, Göran and I attended his law firm's holiday party.

Göran is always the life of the party at these events. He's an amazing dancer, and so there's usually a line of women wanting to have a turn dancing with him. At my sister's big fat Greek wedding, all the Greek grannies were begging him to give them dance lessons. Last night was no different. At one point, everyone on the dance floor just stopped to stare at his performance. At the end of the number, they all burst into applause, including the band!

I on the other hand have the proverbial two left feet. I've always been kind of physically awkward. Learning to dance was painful to me as a youth, despite the special, personal lessons I got from a Young Women's leader who took pity on me. I basically learned to dance because it was a social requirement of Mormon youth. My only "B" at BYU (dragged my GPA to 3.98, darn it!) was the ballroom dance class I took.

After I came out of the closet, I took more of an interest in dance as a way to get to meet guys. For a while, I had a crush on a guy I used to go to Country Western night with. (After he and I stopped dating, I promptly forgot how to two-step.) The first thing Göran and I ever shared together was a dance, at the Gay Nineties, a downtown Minneapolis gay bar. While we were "courting," we went out dancing about once a week. Once we moved in together, however, I lost interest in dancing. I'd found my man, no more need to dance. At the annual firm holiday parties, I usually indulged him for a couple of dances, and then tried to figure out how to convince him to go home as soon as possible.

But last night was different. When the dance music started, I felt a certain kind of itch. As usual, the women started lining up, taking Göran out to the dance floor. And I realized... I wanted that dance. Before long, to his surprise, I cut in, and he was all mine for the rest of the evening. We danced fast dances, slow dances. He was still the star, I was still the stumbling fool, but I was having fun. I couldn't get enough. Finally, he was the one who had to beg for a break, so he could go take pictures and mingle with some of his co-workers. But soon enough I was dragging him back out the dance floor again. We were there until 1:00 a.m., when the very last dance was played.

I realize something has shifted for me. I have found a new balance between body and spirit. It's not just that I don't drink alcohol or caffeine any more, which I've noticed helps me sleep better and leaves me with more energy. It's that I have begun to pay more attention to important boundaries in my life. I respect the intimacy between me and Göran by paying more attention to my thoughts and my sexuality. I have cultivated the habit of listening to the Spirit, which in turn has taught me to listen to people, to listen to Göran, and helped me be more in tune with his needs. And that has drawn us closer together. In regular Church attendance and prayer and scripture study, I have dwelt on and received witnesses of God's love for me, of the forgiveness of my sins, which in turn has given me patience and confidence and happiness, which in turn has turned me outward to others. I feel better than I have ever felt in my life before. And it makes me want to dance! It makes me feel incredibly lucky to be madly in love with (and to be loved by) one of the best dancers in the Twin Cities!

As we danced from Saturday night into early Sunday morning, I wondered for just a fleeting moment about the propriety of dancing on the Sabbath. I promise, it was just one fleeting moment, because as soon as the thought entered my mind, I thought of Brigham Young and the Saints dancing into the wee hours of the morning in the Nauvoo Temple. Dance at its best, at its holiest, is a magical interplay between body and spirit. It is where those two aspects of our eternal souls both rejoice at the same time. That is what it was for me, at any rate. I thought, I'm glad I'm a Mormon and not a Baptist! I'm glad I hold a faith in which all things are sacred to the Lord, where no laws are temporal, where perfect joy comes in the union of body and spirit forever and ever.

Fortunately, my ward meets in the afternoon, so Göran and I were both able to sleep in together. After rising, I enjoyed my morning routines with renewed appreciation. Prayer is a physical act of kneeling, bowing one's head, holding one's body still. Eating breakfast and taking a shower are spiritual acts of caring for the temple in which my spirit dwells. Putting on a shirt and tie and suit (which I don't wear to our "business casual" workplace!) helps me prepare mentally and physically to enter the sacred space of worship. So does bundling up and walking a mile and a half through the snowy cityscape, across unevenly shoveled sidewalks to the ward meeting house. There are half a dozen ward members I could call, who would gladly swing by to pick me up and give me a ride. But I need that thirty-five-minute walk in the morning. I need the prayer and preparation and peace that it affords me.

As I walked that walk, I remembered our dance. Body and spirit, perfect joy. I am blessed.

Göran

Göran and I met at the Gay Nineties, a popular gay bar in downtown Minneapolis. We had seen each other there on numerous occasions before. I always thought he was cute, but was too shy to ever introduce myself to him. He too had seen me there and had wanted to meet me, but he too had been afraid to talk to me. He was the one who finally broke the ice one night and asked me to dance.

Later that night, I asked him if he wanted to spend the night and he agreed. We left the bar and started walking. He thought I was leading him to my apartment, while I thought he was leading me to his. We ended up lost in the warehouse district before we realized what had happened...

Göran says he was sure from the first night we met that he wanted a relationship with me. I was not so sure. At the time, he was homeless, staying in a downtown Minneapolis shelter. If he could have, he would have spent every night of the week with me. That was too intense for me. We dated for about two months. Then I decided it was too much too fast, and broke up with him. Göran was devastated by the break-up. He had been so sure we were "meant" to be together, he couldn't believe I had ended it. He called me once or twice, hoping to rekindle the relationship, but I made it clear I didn't want to see him any more, and he stopped calling me.

That first night when I met Göran, I was still in pain from a recent break-up at the end of a six-month-long relationship. I was not the one who had initiated the break-up. That relationship had followed another six-month-long relationship which had also ended when my boyfriend broke up with me. In both of those relationships, I had felt certain at some point that I had met "the one." By the second break-up, I had become pretty disillusioned about the possibility of a lasting gay relationship. I began to buy into some of the rhetoric that was common in the gay community about marriage being a bourgeois, oppressive, heterosexual convention, and that gay folks shouldn't even try to emulate it.

For the year following my break-up with Göran, I led a pretty promiscuous lifestyle. At a certain point, I had convinced myself that I did not really "need" a relationship. My emotional needs would best be met through close, non-sexual but intimate friendships, and my physical needs would be met through one-night stands, cruising on the beach or at the gym, and so on. But after almost a year of that I began to realize how wrong I had been. I had plenty of friends, but still felt incredibly lonely.

Göran and I met by chance the following spring, at a meeting organized by the University's GLBT student association. Göran was there representing the gay fraternity, Delta Lambda Phi, and I was there representing the GLBT grad students group. As soon as he saw me, his eyes lit up. Something stirred in me too. Before the meeting ended, we exchanged phone numbers and had set up a date.

At that point I decided I had explored enough. One of the things I realized is that I had certain needs for intimacy that simply couldn't be met outside of a relationship in which two people commit to each other and try to forge a life together. And if I was going to make a go of forging such a common life, Göran was the one with whom I could do it. Göran had never given up hope on me. He claims that something deep inside had always told him we were meant to be together.

At the time, I was a member of the Northwoods Radical Faerie community, and on the board of stewards of Kawashaway Sanctuary. A number of faeries had decided they wanted to create a communal living arrangement in the Twin Cities. In August 1993 Göran and I became founding residents of the "Faerie House."

Creating a common life together was a challenge at first, because Göran was working evenings at a restaurant, and I was busy during the days teaching and finishing my Ph.D. We cherished what time we had, usually late at night, in between my classes during the day, and on weekends. Our favorite pastimes included snuggling on the couch together and eating ice cream while we watched Star Trek; walking and talking and riding bikes together; playing Dungeons and Dragons twice a month with some of our best friends; camping in the Northwoods with the Radical Faeries; singing together in the Twin Cities Community Gospel Choir. It was Göran's idea to start going to Church. We found Lyndale United Church of Christ, a church community where we could worship and learn together, where we were welcomed and embraced for who we were, and where our relationship was celebrated and supported.

In the early years of our relationship, Göran was reigning queen at the Gay 90s (he actually held the title "Miss Gay Nineties"), and performed there regularly in the show lounge as Miss Tasha Marie Monet. Tasha sang a lot of Natalie Cole numbers. But occasionally, Tasha's alter ego "Tangie" came out on stage, a hot little number who wore platinum blond wigs, miniskirts, and an attitude. I was drafted as the drag bag carrier, so I got to go behind stage and meet the other drag queens as they got ready for their numbers. I think Göran liked showing me off to the "sisters"! I loved sitting in the audience having him sing love songs to me and me alone. Of course it was the man under the dress I was in love with! Every once in a while we still hear one of those old songs on the radio and remember that that was "our" song. At the time, Göran was also president of the gay fraternity Delta Lambda Phi, which just goes to show, you can be queen and president at the same time.

In August 1995 Göran and I had a wedding ceremony, to which we invited friends and family from all the various diverse communities Göran and I belonged to. University professors sat next to Radical Faeries. Drag queens sat next to gospel singers. Mormons, Protestants, Catholics, Jews and Rastafarians were all part of the mix. My parents, my grandmother, and my little sister Anne were there, and were able to meet my partner's mother (who was still alive at the time), his step-father, his sisters and their families. The potluck reception was hosted by our best and oldest friends in the Twin Cities, Sam and Lee.

It had been Göran's idea to get married. Numbskull queer theorist that I was, I resisted the idea at first. I was still on this 'why-would-we-want-to-emulate-heterosexuals?' kick. Göran didn't have to work too hard to convince me though, as I was indeed head-over-heels in love with him, and I couldn't say no to anything he really wanted. But after the ceremony, I became a full-fledged convert to the institution of Gay Marriage. The ceremony definitely changed things for us for the better. There is something about getting up in front of 115 of your closest acquaintances, friends, and family, and vowing before God that you promise to love, nurture and protect one another, so long as you both are able. Something very important clicked into place for me that day.

Our financial and living arrangements gradually improved. After a string of awful jobs (including a couple of telemarketing gigs), Göran finally got a steady, good paying job as an administrative assistant at a law firm, with normal hours that allowed us to spend more time together. The summer of 1996 a friend of ours in the TCC Community Gospel Choir moved to Portland, Oregon and asked us if we might be interested in buying her house. I had at one point sworn that I would never buy a house. Just as I had once shied away from a commitment to Göran, just as I had resisted the notion of marriage, I resisted home-buying because it felt like too much of a commitment. But my friend asked me to come look at her house, and as I did, I realized that this was where Göran and I belonged. I called him at work and said, "I think we're buying a house." After getting over the initial shock, he expressed his ecstasy that I had finally come around to another of his life-long dreams. Within three days we had signed a purchase agreement. In August of 1996 we moved into the lovely home where we still live to this day.

Göran and I are about to take yet another step, make another commitment that I resisted for years, and that has been one of his life dreams. We have put in papers to become foster parents. We arrived at this decision after research, discussion and soul-searching. The Spirit has made it clear to me that this is the best commitment we've made yet. The kids we parent will likely be teens who have come from difficult homes, situations of abuse or neglect. The agency we are working with will be training us, and will provide ample support. But please still pray for us!

In the last fifteen years, Göran and I have passed through many tests of the nature of our commitment to each other. We've been physically assaulted (Göran had three teeth broken by gay bashers). His mother came back into his life -- into our lives -- and then as suddenly, she died; and we grieved together. We've been present at Mormon family reunions, with attendant discomforts and struggles and joy. We've argued (rarely). We've hurt each other (impossible to measure the depth of the hurt). We've asked and received forgiveness. We've cried together and then finally laughed together again.

After fifteen years, he's still the only person I never get tired of being with. He was there to celebrate the completion of my Ph.D. and the publication of my book with me. I have been his editor and number one supporter as he wrote the first draft of his very first novel. With the exception of work, his karate lessons, and my attendance at the LDS Church, we are as inseparable as Mormon missionary companions. People who know us say they can't imagine one of us without the other. We still send each other flowers. We email each other love notes. We meet every day for lunch. We can't make it through the work day without a call from the other, just to say "I love you." We talk to each other in cat language. Meow, meowmeow, meow. (Disgusting, I know.) We pine for each other when a conference or business trip separates us for more than a day. Neither of us find sleep possible in a bed where the other isn't curled up beside.

He's the one who tends the lovely garden in the small patch of lawn next to our house. He's been out there weeding and planting practically every day this summer. He's the one who has skillfully arranged and decorated every corner of the house we live in. (I'm hopelessly straight-acting when it comes to interior decorating.) He makes gorgeous jewelry to adorn me and remind me of him. He brings beauty into every aspect of our lives.

Once not too long ago we were at the home of our friends, Sam and Lee, and Göran was coming down the polished wood stairway from their second floor. His socks slipped on the bare wood, and he fell and landed on his tail bone. He landed in just the wrong spot, on the corner of a step. He was in extreme pain, so bad he could barely walk on his own. As my friends and I were trying to help him, I fainted. I saw the pain on his face, I heard his groans of agony, and I suddenly felt nauseous, lost my breath and went all pale and wobbly, and then blacked out. Göran and our friends later all thought it was tremendously funny and had a good laugh at my expense. Göran said, "Some good you'll be if I'm ever in trouble again!" But that experience made me realize, we are viscerally bonded in a very profound way. What hurts him, hurts me.

After all that we've lived through the greatest challenge to our relationship has been my return to the LDS Church. I have had to come to terms with what my testimony of the gospel means for our relationship; whether my path of reconciliation with the Church means that our relationship should end. That has been frightening and painful to both of us. But even now as I write this, the Spirit is there, whispering reassurance to me; promising me that all will be well; warning me that the worst sin for me would be to leave him; reminding me that the real temptation is to mistake grand gestures and the approval of others for righteousness. Despite the reassurances, it's painful when the Church and community I feel Spirit-led to align myself with seem so certain that yoking myself with him means our damnation. All I can do is offer my testimony, and ultimately seek refuge in the Spirit, who has led me this far.

Göran went with me to the LDS Church once while we were visiting my parents, who were living at the time in Massachusetts. This was back in the days when I was still very alienated from the Church, and we were going more or less to humor my parents. Apparently we caused some major ruckus because somebody saw the two of us very innocently holding hands during the Sacrament Meeting. (Actually, the wife of my parents' bishop at the time thought it was quite sweet!) Mom and Dad never invited us to go with them to Church again, at least until recently, when I have really wanted to go. But now Göran refuses to have anything to do with the Church. He didn't even come to see me sing my solo last February.

Göran saw me struggle for years with depression. He heard from me stories of rejection and insensitivity by Latter-day Saint leaders and friends. He heard the stories of how at one point in my life, my faith created such a huge conflict in my heart and soul that it literally almost led me to commit suicide. He knows the Church's history with blacks. He's seen the bad side, the dark side of the Mormon Church. So I understand the anger he feels about it. I understand his incredulity that I could ever want to have anything to do with such an institution. He hasn't experienced the good side, the bright side, as I have. He doesn't have a testimony like I do.

But it is the nature of love to take those things that are divergent and to harmonize them. Not homogenize them. Not wipe out the differences. Love blends the differences in such a way that something extraordinary, new, inimitable and beautiful is created. It is for this, I believe, that God created within each of us -- gay and straight -- the drive toward intimate love. It is so that deep within each of us there might be something to keep us struggling past all the differences that cut us off from each other, all the centrifugal forces that pull us apart.