Sick To My Stomach



SOURCE: http://bit.ly/QByOWw


I know many people don't believe the struggle for homosexual rights corresponds with the "civil" rights struggle of the 60s because, presumably, we CHOOSE our orientation (and UGH i hate the word "lifestyle" and p.s.: I remember being attracted to men at age 4, srsly), but the pictures and videos I've seen from Chicken Pride Day (thank you, Randy Rainbow) have made me feel dirty and numb and frustrated and sad and I hope one day they all look back with embarrassment like I hope the people above do.

 

(the thing i love so much about Randy Rainbow is he always does what i think we do best ...
plow through others' ignorance with a song and a tiara.)

Let's get over the issue of "civil" civil rights for a second (and the fact that this whole mishegas is a Seinfeld episode).  Let's get over the fact that (a) Jesus never says anything about homosexuality, (b) if you bitch about Old Testament laws against homosexuality then you BETTER be living the life of an orthodox and observant Jew and (c) this country is not run against the rules of the Bible, it's run against the rules of The Constitution ... (1) I don't think people in the US understand that there are TWO parts to the "marriage" ceremony because it is most often performed in a religious setting ... the civil part and the "religious" part ... the religious leader performs a blessing in the name of the religious institution and is also licensed to perform the civil part, which is why we hear, "By the power invested in me by the State of Bladie-Blah", I now pronounce you ...".  This "blessing" part was just proudly approved at #GC77 by members of the Episcopal Church.  (2) I'm tired of those opposed to same-sex marriage presuming we're all godless heathens (read: non-religious Christians), and (3) honest to fukcakes(tm, djs), I can't imagine anything more "conservative" than WANTING to get MARRIED ! and wanting to raise CHILDREN !  (and there's always that old chestnut: "If you want to put an end to gay sex, legalize gay marriage" hardee har har.)

Most importantly, though ... what the hell business is it of yours the kind of consensual sex I'm having (with a human being having reached the age of consent in the particular state in which the sex occurs within the CONfines of the statutes of the kind and SORTS of sex which may legally occur ... have I covered it for the Christianists?  thanks.).  Let's say that I have misunderstood, since 1973 when I began studying the Old and New Testament thoroughly, learning the languages in which they were originally recorded, burying myself in the cultures in which they were crafted at that specific time in herstory and passed down, all under the prayfilled guidance of whom I believe, within the confines of these "scriptures", to be "God"'s "Holy Spirit") that my specific creation as a homosexually orientated [sic] being is contrary to these writings and that my (rather flaw-free and legendary) practise of these attractions are disordered and an abomination.  What DIFFERENCE does it make to the United States Constitution.  Shouldn't it be illegal, then, for Atheists to be "married" because they're not being married in the name of God and Jesus Christ?  Shouldn't it be illegal, then, for any non-Judeo-Christian to be married because they're not being married in the name of Jesus Christ? and how all of a sudden are these Christianists denying that for EVER there have been Evangelical seminars (which, in my pentecostal past, I have attended and taught) that Mormonism is a CULT but it's okay to run an LDS Republican for president.

Let's cut the shit, people, and concentrate on important things like ending poverty and hunger, concentrate on providing healthy water to those in need, universal education and gender equality and health care for children all over the globe.  Maybe then all the energy expended on cursing the fact that God introduced me to the person God made specifically to join me to for a life of service in God's name could be used for good and not for hideousness.  Stop making me apologize for my existence.

Thanks for sharing, I'm sure, your Auntie Dasch

Jesus Falls the First Time

Picture source: http://bit.ly/xT9vwm

I promise I’m not trying to derail the solemnity of Lent with this post, this is all my personal, humble reflection, nor am I trying to deliberately contradict any of the observances in the Preface of Lent enumerated in its invitation ("... self-examination and repentance ... prayer, fasting, and self-denial ...  reading and meditating on God's holy Word..."), but I'm finding, in my advanced years, that I'm getting crotchety. People (read: MainStreamMedia, Christianists, and politicians) keep using broad strokes when painting definitions of ordinary matters, assigning absolutes to words which exist in a flux, and I’m pretty tired of being manhandled. I ran to the open, loving arms of the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America because I was promised the “three-legged stool”, the three-fold sources of authority in Anglicanism being scripture, tradition, and REASON as, it is said, these three sources uphold and critique each other in a dynamic way.

I think my cranky nature this Lent is due to the, er, vibrant, um, discourses during this election cycle with so many people pontificating with very little forethought or consequence to their words, and many of these absolutes are being attributed to this being I’m in contact with, God, these teachings I study by this Rabbi, Jesus, and this movement I espouse, Christianity.

Ahem. Sorry.

The topic of my assignment is The Third Station in The Way of the Cross, Jesus Falls the First Time. The collect at this station reads:

O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers, that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright: Grant us such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers, and carry us through all temptations, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BOS, '94)

The tradition of The Way of the Cross fixes Jesus with three “falls”: he falls on stations three, seven, and nine. In earlier iterations, there were Seven Falls and they were considered less literal falls and more pauses, depictions of Jesus coincidentally being prostrate, or nearly so, during performance of some other activity like some of the current stations, Jesus meeting his Mother and Jesus consoling the women of Jerusalem.

I’ve watched a lot of folks for a lot of years practicing many different “brands” of Christianity, in praise and in worship, and sometimes there is some propensity for some, especially during Lent, to adopt a “pious” attitude which is almost dramatic, like, as if they have to “act” repentant like they’re being filmed. That’s dreadfully Judge-ie McJudge-ster of me, I know, and I promise I’ll repent … it is Lent, after all. But I think Lent makes people do silly things, like, the “I’m giving up chocolate” kids or the sackcloth-and-ashes kids who are determined to read the entire Bible during Lent or to me, the saddest of all, the kids who feel so overwhelmed by all the perceived impositions and restrictions of Lent that they give up and do nothing and then feel horrible about themselves the entire time.

Then as if all of Lent’s judgments and restrictions aren’t bad enough, we are being bombarded lately with declarations of what is “holy” and what is “right” and what is “Christian” and what is “American” and what is “patriotic” and what is “traditional” and it’s driven many to self-loathing and destructive behaviours, even to the point of suicide, and it’s kept many people from coming home to God because they HEAR they SHOULD be ashamed and that their love and homes and children are not valid and that their desires are sin when, in fact, they were knit perfectly this way in their mother’s wombs. I just want to scream at the top of my lungs, “ENOUGH!”

Before I came to scriptural terms with the gift of my same-sex orientation, I read unfortunate translations of the Bible and was in a continuous shame spiral. I thought for years that every time I found a man attractive I was “in sin”. I was decades in to my healing upon my first few visits to St. Luke’s and I distinctly remember the sun from the windows streaming through the smoke, and listening to Bobby’s beautiful bass reading a long passage, and seeing this guy a few pews up who I thought was mighty cute, and I started dreaming about the matching outfits we would wear at the Easter vigil, and wondering if we were too old to have kids, and devising the order I was going to introduce him to my friends, and what what WHAT ?! and a wave of the ‘ole SHAME came over me. I was thinking inappropriate thoughts and sinning in church! Same-sex attraction is intrinsically disordered and Church is an inappropriate place for such musings! Then I looked at the altar and saw women priests who mirror the Jewish women of the first century, Christianity’s first priests, and I remembered where I was and I shook myself  silly and remembered that my dreaming was exactly what intrinsically ORDERED people have been doing for time immemorial. Church is the PERFECTLY appropriate place to weave the fantasies of my marriage because all my life God has had it in my heart that one day I would find a man who was as in love with God as I am, and one day I would be sitting with him tucked under my arm while we listened to a Sermon while we worshipped God in the house of God among our spiritual family in our home parish. It is meet and right so to do !

I think this year I feel it more instructive for me to take a lead from the thought of “Jesus pausing” and not of Him “falling” … which puts me in mind of the contemporary meaning for the Psalm’s Selah, a pause, a breath to weigh the gravity of what was just heard, what is settling on our spirit. To reasonably self-examine – not to the world’s standards but the standards of what Jesus said were the greatest commandments: to love God and love our neighbor; repentance  – for all the times I fall short under the weight of those enormous requirements; prayer –that I would hear only God’s voice and not the world’s when examining myself; fasting – from all the negative garbage coming at me from the world; and self-denial – from pity parties I throw for myself when God tasks me and I-don’t-wanna! And to always remember that strength and protection as may support us in all dangers comes from reading and meditating on God's holy Word, truly an instant spa treatment which replenishes us and fills us and rejuvenates us with peace and joy and love, which will carry us through all our temptations and allow us to relax in self and reach out to serve.

(this post was written for my church's Lenten Blog which can be found after the jump)

My beloved child, break your heart no longer.

"My beloved child, break your heart no longer.
Each time you judge yourself, you break your own heart.
You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality.
The time has come.

Your time.

To celebrate.

And to see the goodness that you are.
You, my child, are divine.

You are pure.

You are sublimely free.

Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you.

If one comes, even in the name of 'Truth', forgive it for its unknowing.

Do not fight.

Let go.

You are God in disguise and you are always perfectly safe.
Do not fight the dark. Just turn on the light.
Let go and breathe into the goodness that you are."

Swami Kripalvanandaji (Bapuji)

as copied from
“Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha”
by Dr Tara Brach, PhD

TED Conferences. You need them.

Your auntie dasch is SEW popular with the populace, especially during the holidays, but something disconcerting keeps happening ... I posted something on my Google+ feed and have been mentioning the contents of the post oot and aboot at some Holiday Swarees of late and, in casual convo, referencing it and other things I've viewed on the TED YouTube Channel and people have been asking me what it is ! I mean well-read-person after finger-on-the-pulse person and they have no idea what I'm talking about with the TED Conferences!  Sew, chilrens, please to let auntie school you, in case you don't know.


TED stands for "Technology Entertainment and Design" and it is a global set of conferences formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading" through "inspired talks by the world's leading thinkers and doers".  My introduction to the site was through this video:

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

 She's LITERALLY a brain surgeon and she LITERALLY, with a PowerPoint Presentation and an actual brain in her hands, walks you through what it was like, from inside and outside, to have a stroke.  It is one of the most amazing things to which I have ever been a witness.  From TED.com:

The annual TED conferences, in Long Beach/Palm Springs and Edinburgh, bring together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes or less).

My Google+ post referenced a newish series called TEDx Conferences:

Created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” the TEDx program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis

I posted there about this FASCINATING woman, Suzanne Braun Levine, who is writing about "Women in Their Second Adulthood.  She is a "writer, editor and nationally recognized authority on women and family issues and media [who] was the first editor of Ms. magazine and the only woman editor of the Columbia Journalism Review".  You see, your auntie dasch is d'un certain âge, don'tcha know ... that's French for over the hill ... and I'm finding so many parts of her concept speaking to deep parts of my spirit and I found her TEDtalk (below) so interesting because, as she says on her website, "Thousands of women in their fifties, sixties and seventies are living – and defining a totally new narrative. ... we are the first generation who reach 50 and have the possibility of as many years ahead of us as we have lived ..."  I realised if I keep living like I am, I'm not going to live as long as I have and the end part of my life is not going to be too pretty.  I really need to take serious responsibility for my body and in the below clip she says something that has not only healed me viz. diliberately unemploying myself from my last job, but challenged me for the upcoming year:

For many of us it takes a year or more to disengage from structure and habits. It takes time to shed the emotional and psychological baggage of a lifetime ... That's what we do in the "fertile void" ... In the Gnostic Gospels Jesus is reported to have said, If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth is what will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you. The Fertile Void is where that choice is made....

So, anywho, please do yourself an enormous treat, both mentally and spiritually, and take the time to poke around all these sites ... I think they're going to lay a firm foundation for the upcoming year.

Thanks for sharing, I'm sure,
your auntie dasch

What's Morally Wrong with Homosexuality

I have been thinking about this for absolutely years and wished someone more eloquent than I would address it.  Tonight, praise God, so many things came together.

I think I started thinking about my old problem when I read this article about an interview Anne Rice gave to her gay son, Christopher, a bestselling author and former Lambda Literary Foundation Chair, where she discusses why she left the Catholic Church.  I LOVEUH Christology, it's like one of my favourite parts of my study of theology, and I gotta give Anne mad props for Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana which are FANTASTIC studies of Jesus' childhood and coming of age.  One of the best things about this series is Jesus' entire family already knows he's The Christ, they have hidden all of the treasures the Magi have gifted them, and they're waiting for the time when he will eventually become King.  I love it especially as it's one of the only novels which explores the Holy Family in such a rich way when in other novels, like The Last Temptation of Christ, which I love everything about except for that fakakta ending, have Jesus as a troubled teen and the Holy Family frustrated and poor and scared of their son.  (and p.s. if you too love the study of Christology, one of my darling galfriends, Elizabeth Kaeton+, is having quite an experience in seminary right now studying this very thing quite intently, so you may want to follow her too.)

Ms. Rice said something which I found naïve, which didn't surprise me as every time I watch an interview with her I'm always reminded of Chrissy Snow ... like she's completely fried. Here's the quote which started this whole thing:

The main reason I think Christians and Catholics are going through this crisis with gay culture is they cannot face the reality … that good, wholesome, productive gay people exist in all walks of life…

and I thought what I've thought for years:  you. are. wrong.  They don't give a crap about us as people.  All this talk of a full and balanced nuclear family is crap too.  Seriously, how many two parent families can any of us point to.  Oh, maybe possibly two parent families at this moment, but how many steps of steps of steps is this one, how many people are "just" living together raising kids and how does this rhetoric make beautiful ! loving ! single mothers I've worked with all my life who are like Action Figures to me as they make such dailry sacrifices to make the IMPOSSIBLE happen and raise some of the most beautiful children walking around today.

No.  ALL they are doing is IMAGINING the sex that gay men are having with each other. Sorry.  That's the bottom line.  And it SCARES them.  Because maybe it makes [them] feel funny where they go to the bathroom, if you know what I mean.  NO ONE is thinking about us as people with souls walking around (and when they do they pull out that old "love the sinner/hate the sin" malarkey)

and then tonight on the way home I was listening to NPR and THE most remarkable and disturbing documentary came on (can you call an audio broadcast a documentary?) called State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement <which shines a light on the stories and strategies of the white opponents in Mississippi during the '60s, including their extraordinary tactics used to battle integration—and the legacy they left.>.

Alarming audio of radio and television broadcasts from The Citizens’ Council, where Mississippi whites organized a broad network of citizens groups to enforce racial segregation. Their goal was to maintain white supremacy and The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission which was both a propaganda machine and a spy agency. It kept extensive files on anyone suspected of civil rights involvement.  I know that these are memories from my very lifetime and I know that I remember these events CLEARLY as they were discussed and argued around our family tables, as I was bussed to an all black junior high school populated with damaged children from surrounding federal housing projects and I lived through race riots in our county's school system and lost one of my dearest friends to a suicide right after one.  What was so jarring in this documentary was to hear these "normal" people and "normal" preachers say these HORRIBLE things which, a few years earlier, the entire country believed to be true about persons of colour.

I don't know what I think about comparing the LGBT experience to a Civil Rights struggle.  It's so touchy and while I know I did not CHOOSE to be homosexually oriented I CAN choose to live a closeted life, as we had to in the past, I could CHOOSE not to refer to Snoodles as my husband in my workplace (and anywhere else I'm flapping my yap) and these are not choices persons of colour have ... they must walk out the door wearing their difference (which begs the question difference from WHAT ! old WHITE men, THAT'S what lmao).  But I DO know that I hoped, listening to this broadcast, that one day people will be as appalled by the anti-LGBT rhetoric which flows over us now as I was listening to these bigots.

AND THEN, bless God, I come home to a post from one of my faves bloggers.  It's a video of John Corvino, The Gay Moralist.  I'll let the post and the jump tell the rest.  God bless us, everyone.

<The Morality of Sex, gay & straight from Father Geoff Farrow

This morning I had a conversation with my former professor of Moral Theology at Saint John's Seminary. He shared with me this video that I, in turn, am now sharing with you. I hope that you find it helpful.>

In Defense of My Congregation and My Devotion to Social Media

We were treated to a typically wonderful and stirring Sermon today, The Third Sunday in Epiphany 2011.  The Gospel text was Matthew 4:12-23 and Mother’s reflection anchored on the statement, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people”, Jesus calling his first disciples in Matthew’s Gospel this week, and Mother introducing some new ministries to our parish involving the “big bad ‘e’ word, evangelism”, and a couple of new eCommittees which are forming almost immediately.  (Surprising to me that we should need committees for evangelism when the full legal name of our national church corporate body is the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America but then again I’m just a simple typist with a Theatre Arts degree from an agricultural college.)

In speaking about fishing for people, Mother drew an analogy to St. Luke’s being an aquarium and I was struck by one of the things which brings me to a transcendent praise of god in the physical space of our sanctuary (I know you know this one) which is the way in which the sun’s light streams through our beautiful Chihuly windows … I found it an appropriate and vivid comparison.  She brought up ways in which one fishes, the use of lures and baits, tides and times and how we could use Social Media and other tools in our new eLife.  (My husband told me he heard a sermon on these texts at this week’s PFT and the meditation was less on how one fishes today for individual fish versus the use of a net to catch at once as many and varied fish as possible … hmmm … “there’s more at the door …”)

I was surprised, though, that Mother quoted some statistics about how, historically, Episcopalians are shy in sharing their faith, in inviting people to church and how she is excited that our aquarium is so attractive with its outreach programs, local visibility and cultural offerings which bring floaters inside to swim around to test our waters.  I know I’ve always been a bit “praise god”-y all my life but where I was taken aback was that, in finding the Episcopal Church, I don’t know that I’ve ever been more vocal in inviting people to my church because, after YEARS and YEARS of praying and searching, I finally have a home ... a home I can point to and be proud of and a home that TRULY believes that the god many of us reference actually says to me(!), "Come! Eat! Rest! I MEAN it! I'm PROUD of you!" … a branch of a mainstream organized religion which tells me I was made wonderfully and specifically by god’s hand, stitch by stitch, exactly the way I am and it’s not just “okay”, it’s “normal” and “good” and I am perfect and, in this environment, I am able to flourish and continue to perfect myself with every single one of god’s blessings and encouragement.  I think so many of us who FINALLY, after searching for so many years for a rich god-centered community filled with praying, spirit-filled people, are so proud and relieved to be a part of the vibrancy of this collective consciousness that all we DO in our “real” lives is say to everyone, “ohmuhguh you’ve gotta come to my church!” and I have had a great many people I know from disparate areas of my life visit us there.

I also continuously praise god for the marvelous and rich community we have online as congregants through FaceBook.  One of the things I was meditating on before the celebration of the Holy Eucharist this morning, hearing again my girlfriend Janet saying a couple of weeks ago, “I LOVE our parish!”, was that if it weren’t for FaceBook I wouldn’t have such deep and intimate relationships with so many people I go to church with because we’re all basically such terribly shy people. For me, navigating coffee hour chatter, even brunch cocktails, is not as nourishing as sharing our daily walk, our praise reports and our prayer requests which are so easily found in Status Updates and the knowledge of this daily walk, I feel, helps to propel each fresh meeting from chatter to "soul talk" because we’re each caught up on the little and the big things and are able to talk on an entirely different level.  For me it adds a richness that "how are you, have a good week, see you next Sunday" is never going to offer.

Add to this the excitement of meeting friends of friends on fire with the love of god and, on top of that, very spiritual non-churchy friends who are also FaceBook friends who participate in our conversations.  I believe we have created an entirely new kind of eChurch.

I felt pretty good about my participation in the FaceBook eLife and I think we’re all doing a pretty great job at Living Out Loud as we are urged in today’s Gospel, right?  I think I became defensive about parts of this Sermon because I’ve been feeling lately that after ten years in the same job which is not truly my life’s passion that I’m just not doing enough to get unstuck and I’m wasting my very true talents.  And yet I know from experience and from study that god needs me exactly where I am at all times.  So I shall continue to pray and wait and listen and now, maybe, I need to start Living Out Loud at 11 … “it’s one louder, innit …”

Here endeth my personal lesson ;-)