Gay Pentecostal Atheist

Monday, November 6, 2017

Next steps

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 11/9/16)

It has been about a year and a half since I started this blog. I initially called the blog "A Year of Service" and used it as a place to explore how the theme of service has been unfolding around me. At the time, I had just recognized service to others as an organizing concept that was permeating my entire life - both professional and personal. That realization came as a big aha moment for me and I felt the need to live with it and examine it thoroughly. The learning that has followed has been incredibly dynamic. I feel like these past months have been unique in my life, probably the longest period of inspiration and change I have ever experienced. And while dynamic, this time of change has also been both progressive and orderly because I approached it with the intention to learn and think reflexively, actively seeking connections, looking into emerging realizations, wrestling with those things that made me uncomfortable, and moving myself ahead.

Looking intently at my life as service has required me to be more quiet in the presence of others, to listen for their needs and to compare their needs and my responses to keep track of how I'm serving. Often, my own needs intrude on this process. Sometimes I'm in the presence of someone I fear will betray me because of things they may believe. Who knows what motivations go unspoken? Am I really safe here? My determination in this process means I have learned to sit patiently with my own needs when they come up. Instead of distancing myself from potential danger, I sit still. I keep listening. My fear is inner pain so I sit with that pain for a bit and go back to doing the work at hand. This act of patience and centering has become almost a reflex and it seems like a kind of magic. I say magic because I sense the practice is directly tied to enormous changes in my life but the connections remain below the surface, just out of sight.

What are these changes? I've found a way to navigate around the beliefs and expectations of people of different faiths - at work, in community settings, and in my own family. These are often people who I would have avoided a few years ago because of the threat they could pose to me - Catholics, Pentecostals, Baptists, members of the Disciples of Christ church in my neighborhood. By navigate, I don't mean getting along. I mean interacting deeply with them while paying close attention to my own vulnerabilities. Because I can talk with them and work with them, I'm able to engage with them on a deeper level about their own interior lives. And somehow, I've felt safe enough to begin adapting those parts of their experiences that seem reasonable to me. I'm taking their wisdom and using it as building blocks to rebuild my own inner temple. I'm reclaiming the life giving parts of my religious heritage. And last month, after two years of visiting, dialogue, and engagement, I joined the neighborhood church - not as a repudiation of my past, but as a revealing of the the next steps of my journey. Finally, the joy all this brings me has convinced me that my story, although still in progress, may be useful for others. There are a lot of queer people like me in the world, damaged by exile, but still seeking unity.

What a time of change! Momentous changes! The biggest change of all though, has been the healing. There is a myth in our culture that we must be tough, keep a stiff upper lip. Focusing on our pain makes us weaker. This hasn't been true for me. Opening myself to my pain and to the pain of others has strengthened me, enabled me to approach others fearlessly. It is all these others who have held the tidbits of information and inspiration that I am touching. They have extended welcomes to me, invitations, trusting me as I trusted them, but often trusting me first. I'm under no illusions about my old wounds. They are permanent and healing will always continue as a process. But the healing that has come to me has already been abundant. Some days I just cry over it.

So where am I going with all of this? Service as a big part of my core identity seems to be well established. I'm comfortable with that. Now, as a result of these explorations, I have found a new footing in life and the question arises - how shall I proceed? It is time to develop new interior goals and to create strategies for living those out in the world. My most pressing need right now is a coherent personal world view that unites all the different ways my consciousness exists in experience. I have a wealth of resources at my disposal and I feel ready to continue clawing my spiritual birthright back from those who tried to take it from me.

Several times during the past summer I attempted to write posts about my atheism, to explain it, and to situate it within my ongoing development. I found this difficult because it did not fit comfortably into the themes of service I was considering. It fits here though, so I anticipate addressing this soon, and more.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Framing choices through grace

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 8/22/17)

Grace is one of those concepts I've been exploring lately. Why would an atheist even care about that? Isn't it a religious term? Maybe, but I don't think it has to be.

Lately, I have been drawn to this concept as a way to frame experiences. It is part of a broader attempt to reconsider realities and experiences that are larger than facts. Love is one such experience. It cannot be subjected to scientific testing, but I doubt anyone who experiences love would say it isn't real or consequential. Like love, grace is abstract, not something to be proven or disproven. It exists, or doesn't, in the experience of the individual. If we accept that love or truth or community are concepts open to consideration by an atheist, why not grace?

So, what do I think grace is about? It's a tough call and I've had a hard time locking it down but when I find myself unexpectedly in a very meaningful situation that produces dramatic, positive, long-term changes in my life and psyche, my experience of that whole process feels like it could be called grace. One of the most important examples of this for me in the past few years was standing in the street at Shaw and Klemm, in front of Vonderitt's mother, as she cried over the loss of her son. I had no business being there. They are not my family, the shooting was not on my block. My motivations for going were vague. I could have seen her on television, as most St. Louisans did, but the effect would have been quite different. Experiencing her grief, not as an image on a screen, but in a community of strangers, all grieving, was heart-rending to me. The chain of events that followed, and to which I opened myself, is still playing out and it has carried me deeper into a love of us all and into a greater desire to find a just world.

What was positive about that experience? Obviously, not the death or grief. Vonderitt and his family paid a terrible price. It was a hideous and wasteful thing that happened. Rather, the key for me is that in the middle of that terribleness, I opened myself up and that act of opening allowed other things to follow. If that is grace, then grace is not easy. It does not arrive on the doorstep one day, gift wrapped as a happy cosmic surprise. Grace is a process that comes with struggle and pain. I've lost a lot of people I thought had been friends since that night in the street - people who couldn't go with me into the new places I was heading. Sleepless nights, worry, conversational struggles, deep self-questioning, all have been part of the process.

But through all of that communal pain and personal struggle, I found opportunities to uncover truths previously hidden from me. Opportunities for love, learning, gratitude, emerging from the absolute worst situations. I have found a more whole version of myself and I am deeply grateful for that. Maybe this reaching towards grace is our species' salvation - our choices, our work.

I do not think grace is inevitable. I opened myself up this time, but I witnessed so many others close themselves a little tighter. The opportunities for grace are fleeting and, if not seized immediately, they may slip away forever.

A man who attends my church passed away recently after a long illness. His memorial service at the church was attended by his male life partner of many years, our church family, and many non-religious members of the LGBTQ community. During the memorial service, a conservative brother of the deceased made a brutal anti-gay speech. Apparently, this was a continuation of years of abusive behavior directed at the deceased and his partner. The diatribe derailed the memorial, angering and demoralizing the entire audience. Many of the people present, both church members and general public, had previously experienced family and religious disinheritances around queer identities. This foolish man did a lot of damage and re-opened old wounds for many.

Sadly, he had already missed years of opportunities to experience the grace embodied by his gay brother. Perhaps the dark side of human relationships, our constant propensity to separate ourselves from others, is the opposite of grace. What if, instead of tormenting his relative for all those years, he could have seen in his brother the image of the marginalized Christ? What if instead of making his last months more difficult, he had responded to his brother's suffering in light of the suffering of Christ? How sad to claim to be a Christian and to have missed that Christ's suffering was the suffering of relationships, the exclusion from those he considered to be his people.

A moment of grace, or a lifetime of moments of grace, was missed. No matter how hard the work is, I hope I never let that happen to me.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

The sound washed over me

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 8/22/17)

Yesterday I stood on the porch of a coffeeshop in Hermann, Missouri watching the eclipse with a small knot of employees. As we marveled and chatted quietly, the katydids striking up an evening chorus in the background, I began to think about all of us - Americans. I thought about how we are such different people - different places, different politics, different struggles, different needs, fears, beliefs, loves. And yet millions of us were all staring up, together, letting the things that divide us recede into the background for a few minutes.

We looked up at the source of all our lives, in wonder, in awe. Just being children for a few minutes.

And then a bubble of pure, incomparable brilliance bloomed out the back side of the moon and hundreds of people behind me, out of sight on the riverbank a quarter mile away, burst into screams. The sound washed over me and my hairs stood on end. And I thought of the sound in videos of the Boston Marathon bombing, the Ariana Grande concert, all the other horrific times when people become an organism, moving and wailing together.

But this time was different. It was joy, it was almost like worship. And I shuddered for joy too. We were made for this. Why can't we make this thing happen more often?

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Wednesday, November 9, 2016

"Stewardship is giving of what you have"

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 11/9/16)

This morning I woke up feeling dizzy, disoriented. Maybe I've been feeling dizzy for a while and I'm just now noticing. During the post-nomination campaign, I cycled back and forth from feeling doomed by a Trump win to feeling delivered by a Clinton win. On election morning my chest was as tight as a drum and I breathed shallowly. Then I found the live-stream from Rochester, NY showing thousands of pilgrims visiting Susan B. Anthony's grave and leaving their "I Voted" stickers on her tombstone. The reverence and pride in their voices was the change I needed from the poisonous tone of the election. I left the live-stream open on my screen as I worked and by noon I was thinking "Now THIS is America. THIS is who we are, not all of that negative stuff." At lunch break I took some time to meditate on history's curve towards justice. The battles are always difficult, but good seems to trump discrimination and ignorance over and over. By the end of the day, I was feeling confident about the outcome.

Then the election happened and this morning I was dizzy. Clearly, we have become a nation of hate. We vote for people we don't respect in order to spite other people we don't even know. Discrimination is our most treasured privilege. Maybe all the progress we have made will be lost. Perhaps it has all been for nothing. We are deplorable, stupid, small and we deserve nothing.

But, of course, the truth is that America is both of these, at the same time. Our baser natures manifest as we injure, discriminate and kill our neighbors. Too many of us actively seek to harm others. Even greater numbers of Americans refuse to acknowledge the damage we do. Sometimes we protect our ignorance above all else.

At the same time, those ideals that lift us and drive us to be better are still here. But they have no permanent existence in the material world. Fairness, justice, equality, truth -- they aren't like rocks or trees or houses. You can't touch them and they don't have an address. Our government buildings, neutral stacks of marble, can't contain them. They cannot be set in stone, inviolate for all time. They only exist inside our human hearts. Occasionally, they bubble up into the real world in the shape of a law that helps someone. And then later, that law might be taken away. But the core of what is good about America only exists inside of us. People of good will, we are the keepers of America and we are the only ones who can pass this goodness on to the next generation.

Laws can be erased. Rights can be interrupted. We can be hurt. That is one truth.

The other truth is, this year, millions of us made our ideals visible as we campaigned, drove voters to the polls, voted with our hearts and heads, and visited the Anthony grave. This cannot be taken away by an election. Our flame burns even while we despair. It cannot be quenched.

In a few days, once we've rested, let that flame come back up. Tend it. Feed it a little direct action. The world needs us now more than ever before.

*The title of this essay is a sentence I heard during a meeting at Compton Heights Christian Church tonight. Sometimes I think of my own service in terms of success/ failure. It's good to be reminded that doing the right thing doesn't necessarily ensure success and failure doesn't always indicate an unworthy effort.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Service is plural

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 10/23/16)

It takes only one person to identify a social problem. Sometimes, that one person can imagine a workable solution. But implementing the solution? Making it permanent? This takes a team.

I don't have a lot to say about this so it will be a short post but this may be the most important lesson I have learned from working in my community: no two teams are alike and as much care must go into constructing the team as into any other aspect of the project.

We installed a quarter acre of prairie restoration along Hwy 44 a few years ago. That project worked because we rallied hundreds of allies including neighbors, local politicians, city departments, non-profits and grant funders. That team was able to accomplish the planting, publication of the project, community involvement and continuing support. As the project has aged the original team has contributed a little less each year. This year we began building a new team that is aligned with the evolving needs of the project. We no longer need community volunteers to dig holes. Instead, we need botanists to monitor specific species. We need public relations work. We need a specific piece of maintenance equipment. New needs, new team.

Similarly, the Shaw Memorial Forest began as a project requiring a lot of neighbor support and manual labor. We accomplished that by writing tree grants and inviting neighbors to plant a free tree for a loved one. The project has been a smashing success so far. As we look towards the beginning of the third year we anticipate changing project parameters. Planting and watering will be minor needs for the future. Mowing the grass and developing the public experience of the forest will become the main needs. That will require a large mower and small group of people who are passionate about memorials, place making and perhaps the Shaw neighborhood. Whether or not these people like to dig holes is immaterial. New needs, new team.

Both of these projects began as the idea of one or two people. They would have never gotten off the ground without our strategic efforts at team building. By the same token, the projects will fade away if we can't master the art of team succession. Stay tuned.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Sunday, June 26, 2016

Sacred gardens

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 6/26/16)

I was asked by a coworker to write an essay about my connection to nature for our workplace newsletter. The essay is next month's contribution to an ongoing series called The Green Corner. I started doing just that -- writing about how I had developed a connection with nature -- but it became something else entirely. It morphed into a statement about service to nature and to people and where I see myself located between those two things. I'm thankful for the opportunity to work that out on paper because it helped me formulate some new thoughts on my work. The ecology projects I'm carrying out are acts of creative love. Here is my essay:

Why do snakes look so weird? Why did birds evolve to fly above the ground? Why are they both so different from us? I don’t know those answers but the more we look at nature the more variation we see. It’s almost as if difference is valued by the creator, or natural selection, or both.

One of my favorite trees is called devil’s walking stick and I will never forget the day we met. As a child, I spent a lot of time in the woods and thought I knew all the trees and shrubs and forest flowers around me. One fateful day I ventured off my usual rambling trail and lost my footing in a pile of dry leaves at the top of a steep slope. As I slid down I reached out for a nearby trunk to slow my descent. The thorns greeted me first so I let go! When I eventually stopped sliding downhill I faced the stinging pain and wondered what on earth I had just encountered. What was that thing with those ridiculous thorns? Could trees even have thorns like that?

On my next trip to the library I found the tree in a field guide. It is a small tree, no more than 10 feet tall, and its leaves are lush and tropical. In spring the tree is topped with foamy clouds of white blossoms. I learned that the spines covering its trunk protect it from deer that would otherwise eat it to the ground and from smaller mammals that would climb the tree and devour its fruits. I learned that mammoths and mastodons may have been warded off by those spines in the distant past. The spines help the tree reserve its fruits for songbirds and, in return, they scatter the seeds far and wide.

This information transformed my dismay to respect. When I next visited the tree and reflected on its story, its script on the stage of life, my respect became admiration. Devil’s walking stick is uncommon and few people know that it exists. As we continue to replace woods and fields with roads and shopping malls it will become even more uncommon. I wonder how many other wonderful things have already vanished along with their stories, unknown and unloved, victims of our carelessness.

One day shortly after these events I came home from school to the sound of heavy machinery and chainsaws. The 100-acre woods I had known as my own Eden was being cut down. The landowner made a few thousand dollars from the timber and put that money into an investment account. By the next spring, the creek had filled with silt. The leaves and flowers carpeting the ground had washed into the creek or died. Large erosion gullies appeared everywhere. The birds, the crayfish, the garter snakes, the butterflies, the devil’s walking stick, the 200-year-old beech tree with exposed roots forming a big chair high over the creek – all my friends – had disappeared.

It’s difficult to explain the sadness I felt but the loss of that place was very real to me. While a part of my sadness was selfish, a longing for the woods I loved so much, there was also grieving for the rich web of life that was extinguished there. Even as a child, I knew that the birds could fly away but the crayfish and the shiners in the creek pools could not. They died with the trees. I didn’t have the words for it at the time but now I can say the place was sacred. The animals were sacred, the trees were sacred. The wood was a temple where I went when I needed to pray. I always found quiet and I always encountered god there. I was a part of that place and the whole thing was sacred.

I can’t get that wood back but I still have a deep connection with nature. It is like a language learned through experience and reflection. It’s not a commonly spoken language but anyone can pick it up. I spend my evenings and weekends giving lessons by engaging my neighbors in habitat projects.

A year ago I was invited to design the country’s first Transgender Memorial Garden, a garden dedicated to the memory of transgender people who have been lost through acts of violence. I admit for about five minutes I wavered, wondering what people would say if they knew I had affiliated myself with the transgender community. But I was not put here to separate myself from others or from nature. The natural sacredness in the world includes us in all our variations. So I accepted and I designed with trees and flowers of eastern Missouri. I talked with the community about the native beauty that still exists, hidden and overlooked, in our alleys and waste places and how we can bring that back to life in the garden. I brought along my old friend, devil’s walking stick. The symbolism is not lost on the community: unknown and disregarded by many; with a name and thorns that present a façade of danger; yet beneath it all the complexity and intense beauty that can come with a struggle for survival.

I can’t speak for this community but I heard their stories of loss. They too have been cast out of Eden, out of their families, out of their churches, and all too often out of life itself. They have been told they are not sacred. I don’t know why people who are different trouble us so much. We are all part of the same family of life, infinitely varied.

In response, I drew a sacred landscape and filled it with native trees that are strange, formidable, unapologetic and almost entirely unheard of. The garden has rapidly become a haven, a pilgrimage site where people flock together to meet, grieve and share life. As knowledge of the garden spreads the trees are becoming a small part of the story of the transgender community in St. Louis. Often I sit apart and observe how the trees are anchors, even in their youth, connecting the community to this soil. They form a sacred structure - real, true, beautiful, millions of years old - while around them the people transform their lives and bodies. The garden is sacred. The people are sacred. The whole thing is sacred.

I was asked to write an essay about my relationship to nature but I can’t separate the trees from the people. The only way I can go back to my sacred wood is by taking people with me. When I see beauty in nature and beauty in people I am there in spirit. The world is an amazing place full of variety we’ve not yet appreciated and stories we haven’t yet heard. I look for it and look at it in order to honor it. I’m going to keep looking and talking and holding because I don’t want any more of it to slip away.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Wednesday, May 11, 2016

Like sunflowers that look towards the sun...

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 5/11/16)

"Like sunflowers that look towards the sun and as a compass needle seeks the pole, so your minds should always turn to the Lord."

Conferences, p.29

St. Mary Euphrasia

This quote came across my screen today at work. Mary Euphrasia is the founder of the order I work for and Melinda, our Mission Effectiveness Coordinator, regularly sends us inspirational quotes from ME's writings. I always read them and from time to time the quote will resonate deeply with me or will spark an old memory or lead me off into a rewarding avenue of thought. I guess that isn't all that difficult to do since I live so much in my own head, but Melinda has a genius for selecting a phrase or quote that contains so much good stuff.

When I read the quote I thought 'well, that's me!' My mind constantly turns to god all through the day. It's certainly not the same god that I grew up with. It's not a supernatural smiter or miracle worker. I don't really know what god is but I am like that sunflower. Why do I still do that?

And then I thought of my mom and I remembered the stories she told of the time when I was a baby when she and dad took me before the church and dedicated me to god. Of course I don't remember it but she always spoke of the dedication with pride.

One Sunday just a few weeks ago a young couple at Compton Heights Christian Church brought their newborn to the front of the church and Pastor Jacque held the baby and dedicated it before the congregation. It was a moving ceremony but it didn't last very long. It seemed more a way to bring the child into the church family than a dedication of the child's entire life to god. Afterwards I thought about the other infant dedications I witnessed while growing up in the church. From what I remember they all seemed brief, not that remarkable. My dedication was probably not that different.

What I'm realizing for the first time is, regardless of what actually happened in the ceremony, its meaning was huge to my mom. I can't remember her ever speaking of my siblings' dedications but then I'm the first born. When she talks about my dedication she always says "We dedicated your life to God."

I suspect my mom saw parallels between her experience of my birth and dedication and the Bible story of Hannah and her son Samuel. Hannah couldn't bear children. She prayed so earnestly at the temple that her behavior violated the customs of how women should behave. God gave her a son, Samuel. In return, she took him to the temple to live as a servant for the priest Eli. My mother lost two babies before I was born. When I was born the midwife said I was dead too. The umbilical cord was wrapped tightly around around my neck and I wouldn't breathe. Apparently I was grey all over, not pink. After much prayer I began to breathe. Mom must have prayed many prayers before my birth. Perhaps she made a deal with God, like Hannah, to dedicate her first born to service.

Unlike Eli though, I was not forced into the ministry. While growing up I heard lots of other adults voice the expectation that I would become a preacher but neither mom nor dad ever said that. Consequently, I never felt that I had to become a preacher. Instead, what I felt was an extraordinary closeness, a personal relationship to God, a blessedness even, from childhood.

Did the retelling of the dedication story over the years do that to me? Has my face constantly turned to god as a result of the expectations set up by my mother's experiences? Those may sound like positive outcomes, but there is also a darker side. I was taught explicitly that I would always have access to supernatural help. Did the dedication represent a bargain? Have I always expected reciprocal gestures from god, a reciprocal amount of attention to my needs? This is a question I have never thought to ask myself before but when god didn't answer my fervent teen-aged prayers that he make me straight we went through a break up of monumental proportions. Of course. How could it have been any different?

A lot of answers I seek are still inaccessible to me. Maybe they will always be beyond my reach but of what use is it to complain about parental actions and unrealities taught to children? After all this time there is only the sorting through of the remaining threads, the making of meaning in the midst of my reality. I certainly have not been dealt with harshly and I'm beyond complaining. This world of beauty would be much less beautiful without the call I hear and to which I respond.

When god called out to Samuel in the night he misidentified the call. He ran to the priest Eli and said "Here I am". Eli's contribution was to teach Samuel to identify the call to service as the voice of god. For a few years now the world has been calling out to me. There is so much to do, so much need among people and among the creatures of creation. I have heard the call and have responded but where does the call come from? Is it coming from the earth? From my neighbors? From within my self? From god? Can the answer to all those questions be yes?

Right now I am playing with the idea that god can be understood as the totality of our love and existence - nothing less than that and nothing more than that. I know the Bible says god is love but I'm still having a hard time seeing past the old image of god as the supernatural ass kicker in the sky who doesn't exist. I'm mulling this over in my mind and attending church and seeing which parts do and don't match. In the meantime, there is a lot of work to do and I continue to answer the call. Maybe it doesn't matter where the call is coming from. Speak; for thy servant heareth.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Friday, April 8, 2016

At the Start

(Originally published at "A Year of Service" 4/8/16)

I suppose anyone who begins a project of considerable length must also give an account of why the project has been undertaken lest somewhere along the road to completion they forget the original purpose. In this case, this blog is my meditation on the path I'm traveling right now. That path has evolved into a satisfying blend of work and leisure where nearly everything is some form of service to others. It's not the path I ever envisioned for myself and I certainly didn't consciously plan for it. So how did I get here? Where am I going next? Is this a place where I can spend the rest of my life?

Many of my day-to-day activities can be described as service. Indeed, I think of my job as service. It brings in an income but much of what I do involves developing and maintaining relationships with people in the workplace. I wouldn't be there if I weren't providing some significant service to my employers. My tree planting and other gardening activities are enjoyable for me but they are service as well. Hopefully, at least some of these trees will exist long after I have disappeared from the planet. I'm also hopeful that some of my neighbors enjoy my efforts and may themselves be inspired to protect and improve the environment. So while gardening is my passion, it's also become much bigger for me. It produces results that benefit the people around me and people who are yet to be born. If I'm successful, my efforts also provide some protection to our brother and sister species.

I plan to use this space to record and develop my thoughts about how service is shaping my life. Over the past couple of years I've begun to recognize service as an emerging new reality, the lens through which I now view myself. I'm unsure why service did not beckon to me when I was in my teens and twenties. I've always given generously of my time to others, but unlike so many youngsters, I never spoke about my future or my calling as one of service.

To see how meaningful service has become to me at this time in my life leaves me with questions. Why did I not recognize the value of service as occupation earlier? Why has it become so important this late in life? How will this new self image as servant affect my choices? Is this just a phase? So, as always, I need to explore these questions and writing as I go will help me impose order on the noise.

A YEAR OF SERVICE

Sunday, March 22, 2015

What's in a name?

Since I named this blog Gay Pentecostal Atheist a couple of years ago I have received a fairly steady stream of reactions to the name itself. Those generally fall into one of two camps: (1) Awesome!!!! and (2) I know you and you are NOT an atheist.

In light of the steps of my journey in the intervening time frame, perhaps it is time to revisit the label. What do I mean by that? Am I actually an atheist? What does the term "atheist" mean? Where am I going with this?

First a bit of reflection: I believe that we are all journeying, regardless of the signs and labels we hang on ourselves. Thank goodness, we can discard and pick up different signs as we move along life's path. Wouldn't it be horrible if we couldn't do that? Perhaps that is one of the benefits of living in a linear time frame. So what's that label Gay Pentecostal Atheist about? At the time I put those three words together I was in a very specific place. I had already dealt with questions of sexuality for years and after more than a decade in a wonderful, life affirming love relationship I had reached a place of deep understanding in myself about that part of me. There is no doubt that I am gay, whether god-given or otherwise. But I, like many people my age and older have struggled to see how gayness can exist in a godly life.

In fact, I moved into adulthood suddenly on a May evening in 1988 but only after I began a deliberate process of separating from and rejecting the Pentecostal god of my parents. I needed to do this to resolve the internal conflict between the good I knew was in me and the evil I had been taught was in me. I had to do this to survive, to find some clarity. A few years later I was able to look back and explain my journey in this way: In order to survive I had to kill god. That explanation honored the fact that I had spent at least 10 unproductive years surrendering myself to god and accepting internal conflict as a personal fault. My teenage years were spent in prayer and it was prayer without resolution, without healing. So I found myself at a decision point: kill god or kill myself.

Who are you after you kill your god? How does one then live a good life? If even god himself is false what can be trusted? Who can provide rules for good conduct, models for proper behavior? I think a lot of gay kids from conservative religious backgrounds go through the yo-yo phase where they abandon all the rules and then struggle through a morality void. They have to work hard to regain a more meaningful grounding. I know it was a slow process for me. I probably never lost the core value of kindness to others but most everything else was up for negotiation. In that process of testing boundaries and building a new morality for myself I probably found a lot of comfort in reminding myself of the failings of religion. Pentecostalism, in particular, is rich in failings so there is plenty of fertile ground for ex-verts to find fault.

So I found solidarity in the ranks of atheism. One of the strengths of atheists is their ability to recognize and call out hypocrisy. This resonated with me and, hey, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. I never quite fit in with the atheists though. I wasn't angry at god (even though I had to kill him), but in the process of building my own morality I came to believe that he didn't actually exist outside of people's minds. I put a lot of really hard work into my new morality so, of course, I wouldn't want to give some distant god the credit for that. Then I discovered the sentiment attributed to Voltaire: "If God did not exist we would have to invent him."* That really resonated with me and it still does (although for different reasons) now.

However, I never stopped quoting scriptures in my head. Any regular Bible reader knows how remembered scripture can explain things, how it can comfort and support you in times of need. Eventually I found myself to be a scripture quoting atheist. After a few years I no longer felt the same relevance in that old idea that I had killed god in order to live. I have kept a journal since I was eight years old and part of my process has always been to look at old journals every few years, to review decisions and outcomes.

No doubt that reviewing helped me eventually revisit my killing god explanation. I found myself thinking more and more about one specific event recorded in May 1988: a prayer I prayed on one particular day. This was the day when the unnecessary guilt in me had grown to match my will for life, the day I might have killed myself but instead grew up. This prayer concluded two tearful, prayerful days spent hiding in my bed, in a dark room, in a lonely college dorm room. I was 19 and on this day I decided to be a man, make a real world decision and to then live with it. This was when I first accepted that all the praying in the world wasn't going to change my nature and that to continue to ignore the obvious was an even more basic transgression than being gay. Remembering the prayer I prayed helped me re-name this day as the day I stepped out in faith. In those last moments of dusk before I rose from my bed I prayed something like this: "God I don't know what's going to happen next but this can't continue. I'm going to find out tonight what it means to be gay. I don't know if you will go with me or not. I don't want to leave you and I don't know if or when I'll come back but your word says you will never leave me..."

It was very much an unfinished prayer because I had no idea what lay ahead. I just knew I couldn't stay where I was. I sat up on the edge of my bed, in silence, in dark, for a few minutes. Then I got up, dressed and went out into the world. So after a while I was able to remember this moment not as a defeat but as a really pivotal and trusting decision that there was a future for me but I would need to discover it. The story changed from "killing god to survive" to "stepping out in faith into the unknown".

I eventually fell out of love with atheists. In my experience many atheists are in a place of anger. The public figures we are most aware of as atheists seem to be fighting against religion and against the concept of god. Their discourse doesn't honor the good that lives in religion, the beautiful impulse that comes out of human souls. There seems to be little or no place in atheism for an inner life. What I came to realize a decade ago is that I still have an inner life. Even though I can't find something that is real out in the world that I can label GOD, my inner need for the god-like stuff, for meaning, for context, for love -- that's all very real. I also have allowed myself in recent years to revisit the songs, the rituals and the scriptures that brought me such comfort as a child and sometimes as a teenager. I discovered that the comfort felt real and true even while god remained unreal for me so I decided the need was real too.

How do you satisfy a need when the original solution was a made-up figment of someone's imagination? Does the need exist as a product of believing the hoax? Once I have recognized the conundrum, can I live an authentic life without exploring it? Am I running from or am I running toward?

Then I found myself in a serious crisis a few years ago. This is the kind of crisis that ruins lives, ends marriages, breaks people forever. I needed to pray and I found myself unable to pray. I couldn't bring myself to pretend that someone out there was hearing me and I couldn't pretend to believe just in case someone was listening. So I just prayed from my heart and I directed that prayer back into my heart. I needed help so I sought it as authentically as I could, as an atheist, just where I was. I prayed something like: " I don't know if you're there. I have no faith at all that anyone is there. But I need the kind of strength I used to get when I prayed before." I'm still praying a version of that prayer and it still feels like the most authentic thing I can pray because I truly do not believe in an old man in the sky. For so many reasons. But the prayer is authentic and it feeds my heart.

So I have come to a place that does not fit comfortably with some of the major paradigms of our society. I am gay but I am moral. I am atheist in belief but I am drawing on the strengths of my Pentecostal cultural background. None of this makes any sense at all but I still exist. These three things live together in me and my existence is sufficient evidence that there can be a gay Pentecostal atheist. If you can't understand that join the club. Understanding isn't the only game in town though. Reality often surpasses understanding.

Monday, January 26, 2015

The four faces of Shaw

Its been a while since I've sat down to write anything, mainly because there has been so much to process lately and the old squishy bio-RAM has been working overtime! After the death of Vonderrit Myers and the ensuing protests many of our neighbors here in Shaw stood up and joined the ranks of the righteous and the outraged. Lots of others responded differently, trumpeting the most racist of sentiments and turning all opportunities for thoughtful discourse into argumentative Round Robins of name calling, self-centered whining and downright bullying against those they saw as their opponents. Most of us just hunkered down like little baby birds, hoping the storm would pass soon. What once seemed to be a peaceful neighborhood full of kindly neighborly folks has turned into a cesspool of cliques, some of which remind one strongly of St. Louis from the 1950's.

But maybe that's just me. Maybe the jerks were just as jerky last year but, for whatever reason, I ignored all the warning signs and I've actually been surrounded by jerks all along. Anyway, let's look at what Shaw actually seems to be in the light of this new spring -- in the spring after so many of us got angry, behaved like children, refused to show compassion and ignored our neighbors' pain as loudly as we possibly could.

They say a crisis shows you what you're really made of and is that ever true in Shaw! This crisis has laid our reality bare with near X-ray clarity. As revealed by recent events, Shaw is like a body whose organs are in revolt, a corpus whose limbs take independent directions, a being with no agreed upon sense of direction. From my point of view there are four main groups of people in Shaw and none of us are on the same page. If you do not find yourself in this list then you may live in Shaw but you are an outsider. There are a lot of us here too.

Those who hold the most power in Shaw are a diverse group but they in no way represent all of Shaw. I call them the Old Standards. These people are invariably and strongly linked to St. Margaret of Scotland church and school. Many of these people have lived in Shaw for decades and they are almost exclusively white. In collective, this group has always been in control of the most important political and fiscal decisions in Shaw. They often run the neighborhood improvement association to one degree or another. They use the association, the alderman, city government and the courts to redistribute property ownership in the neighborhood. Perhaps the most visible effect of this group's power over the last 30 years is the transfer of about 20% of Shaw's housing stock from rental property to single family ownership. This group is used to making the big decisions for everyone else and they don't take challenges to their power kindly.

The secret weapon of the Old Standards is the undeserved social status that comes with residence on Flora Place. Not all Old Standards live on Flora Place but many do or have in the past. Those who live elsewhere in the neighborhood often strive to buy on Flora Place. At social events and in meetings of the neighborhood association Flora Place residents generally receive a certain amount of kowtowing from the other, less worthy residents of Shaw. Street of residence, religious affiliation and race are the three most important qualifications of an Old Standard. You might become one if you can provide two of those qualifications, but you'll be lucky if you do!

The Old Standards are often supported by the Reliables, a sizable but shrinking number of off-Flora working class whites. Some of these people have spent their whole lives trying to fit in with the Old Standards and never quite make the grade. Others accept their inferiority and settle for supporting the shady class structure imposed upon the neighborhood by the Old Standards. Quite a few of the Reliables have either given up on this fool's errand or were never really into it in the first place. These are the people who repeatedly rise to the occasion in times of crisis and actually do something worthwhile! They provide the rest of us with inspiration and hope for the future. Reliables are generally good folks with good intentions and some actively work for change but too many of them remain silent when they should be sharpening their pitchforks.

There is another group of people in Shaw who have been here even longer than the Old Standards and the Reliables. I call them the Neighbors. This group is made up of the African American families who anchor nearly every block in the neighborhood by virtue of their longevity here. In many cases four or five generations of these families live in and around Shaw. Their matriarchs have been here since time immemorial. Many of the Neighbors own their homes but younger family members tend to rent. The Neighbors all seem to know one another and they form a network of care and support that flies completely under the radar of the Old Standards. The Old Standards don't know (and don't seem to want to know) any of them. When the Old Standards are not ignoring the Neighbors they are doing their level best to get rid of them - one family, one house at a time. BTW, the Neighbors don't seem the least bit impressed with the Old Standards.

It's hard for me to imagine how a place could include two groups of people so separate and isolated from each other. In fact, it might be closer to reality to say that there are two Shaws - one white, one black, coexisting uneasily, seldom interacting, seldom even acknowledging the other except when forced together at a court hearing. It's rather like an old episode of Star Trek where two star ships exist at the same place and time but in different realities.

Of course I am generalizing but this is, in broad strokes, the reality I encountered when I moved here 15 years ago. Some of this has become clear only in the past few months, but most of it was readily apparent on Day 1. There are no significant bridges between the Old Standards and the Neighbors. Never have been, never will be. Some of the Reliables have coexisted more easily with some of the Neighbors but overall there's not much going on there either.

During the past decade a very important fourth group has emerged in Shaw. The Newbies are quite diverse when it comes to religion, race, and political bent. Early arrivals were mainly from out of state but in recent years they have been joined by an increasing flow of local suburbanites. The Newbies are mostly younger and better educated than Shaw's entrenched groups. They tend to have more money than either the Reliables or the Neighbors.

For me, this is where it gets really interesting. If anything is to ever change for the better in Shaw it will be because the Newbies make it happen. Many in this group are uncowed by the Old Standards and they bring a real desire to live in a just society and the energy to work towards it. Our streets were crowded not just by Ferguson protesters this fall, but also by Shaw Newbies.

Unfortunately, success is in no way assured. Quite a few of the Newbies are as racist as any of the others here. As Newbies buy homes on Flora Place they seem to be falling hook, line and sinker for the same sham promise of meaningless social status that has plagued that street since it was built. Other Newbies are poised to join the ranks of the quiet Reliables - good of heart but more concerned that the neighborhood looks good to outsiders than that it becomes a place of justice. The poison vat that passes for our neighborhood social media website has become what it is largely through the inability of some Newbies to really hear one another and through others' unwillingness to rock the boat.

So what can be done to change this place for the better? My hope is that the Newbies vote -- in every election. I hope Newbies pay attention to how power is meted out and how decisions are made in Shaw and the 8th Ward. I hope the Newbies realize that while we work, eat our dinners and watch our TVs, there are a handful of people who are deciding the fates of so many of our neighbors. What do you want this place to be in the next 10 years? Are you going to trust that the right things will get done for the right people without your input? Shaw doesn't exist as it does by accident. Our own little apartheid regime is the result of lots of those decisions getting made by a few people while the rest of us sat around and trusted our leaders to do the right thing. As you know, they haven't been doing the right thing - not by a long shot. If they had, we wouldn't be where we are now.

Most of all, I hope the Newbies resist with all their might the tendency to join one of the entrenched groups in Shaw. As you come in your hundreds, do not become an Old Standard or a Reliable or a Neighbor. Instead become a bridge. Shaw has about 5,000 homes. That is 5,000 different families. Imagine what a wonderful Shaw this would be if we had 500 real and permanent bridges. Imagine what that would do for our children and for our city. Imagine what it would do for all of us.

Monday, December 1, 2014

All this church going is having an effect on me. I don't know if it is making me harder or softer but I think it is making me stronger.

Monday, July 28, 2014

Becoming a gay Pentecostal atheist

When I was a child I was very involved with Jesus. Pentecostal children are expected to obey their parents and avoid sins that would embarrass the family in front of church members. Other than that, intensive participation in the church is not really expected until you grow up, get married and start having kids of your own. There are plenty of counterexamples of course, and those few children who are especially tuned in to Jesus are often encouraged to begin “preaching” at an early age. I was tuned into Jesus but, thankfully, my parents didn’t push me to preach. Instead I was allowed to follow my own interest in the piano and by the time I was in my teen years I was the church pianist.

While other children were barely able to sit still in church I was listening to sermons, singing hymns, praying with fervent intensity and actively seeking a meaningful relationship with god. I was a bit different from the other kids around me. Even outside of church I was overly engaged with spiritual pursuits. At school I hid in the library during breaks and study hall. As the librarian's aide I took advantage of my private office to play gospel music on my little cassette player and gather spiritual strength to get me through the school day. I occupied my time on the bus with reading the Bible. If I’m being honest, this was as much an attempt to avoid interacting with the other kids as an exercise in piety but you can digest a fair amount of religious content during twice daily one-hour trips. After school I spent afternoons and summers exploring the woods, running with the family dog, reading books and doing homework, all the while in some form of prayer or meditation. Prayer was a constant for me and I probably didn’t go more than a few hours without talking with god during my entire childhood.

I didn’t know it then, but I wasn’t a preacher or church musician in the making. I was just gay. Gay people usually have a mystical side to their personality and many cultures make great use of that quality. Sadly, ours does not (yet). Instead, people all along the queer spectrum are excluded from religious life in multiple ways. In my case I was told, and believed, that being gay was a demonic possession that would separate me from god, family and a meaningful life. This falsehood was so central to our Pentecostalism that it blinded me to my true nature for many years. This violent belief still permeates Pentecostalism and American society in general. The result is wounds so deep and lasting that thousands and thousands of young people lose their lives while struggling to be authentic to themselves.

Over the years I have miraculously avoided much of the sexuality shrapnel while watching friends and acquaintances fall all around. I don’t enjoy evoking war imagery but it seems authentic to my experience. Today the noise around queerness has quieted considerably, at least for me. I know what I believe and I’m comfortable with my existence in the world. It doesn’t hurt that the world itself is becoming a bit more sane with respect to sexuality and gender issues.

My childhood was a blessed time. I loved Jesus and he helped me through the troubles of adolescence and the teen years. And then, unexpectedly, my spiritual life was shattered in the process of coming out. I lost the ability to really talk with god because I lost trust in god. My most fundamental relationships fell apart - my parents deserted me, friends rejected me and the authority figures at my college indicted me. More importantly, the relationship I had with god could not absorb the challenges posed by my emerging identity. In the process of figuring out how to be an authentic adult I found that I had to leave god behind.

Perhaps things would have turned out differently if I had encountered good role models. I did know a couple of Pentecostal people who were gay but I didn’t want to be like them. They were laughed at and scorned and were tolerated only because they pretended to be straight. Everyone joined in the pretense when they were present and later laughed at them behind their backs. I knew I could never live like that, denying reality, pretending to be other than what I am, pretending that no one else knows who I am. Most of all I didn’t want to be part of a community of believers who acted like that. The role models I saw around me were untenable and my solution was to create my own brand of atheism.

My atheism has always been a Pentecostal atheism. By that I mean that I've continued to seek truth and authenticity. I do that through an introspective and recursive interior conversation that is a lot like the prayer process I used as a child. In fact, I still pray once in a while but I don’t really believe that there is anyone listening. I pray when I need to. I pray when I need that kind of comfort. I pray because I still believe in the value of some of the religious experiences of my childhood. I can’t inhabit those experiences in the same way I did as a child, but I don’t run from them. Instead I take what I can defend and what I can use and discard the rest. Learning to pray in this new way has been a blessing and it has been on my terms.

Pentecostalism is much more than a religious experience. It is a culture that emerged from the working class struggles of the late Nineteenth Century. Once you peel off the anti-science foolishness and the political bullshit of the culture wars it is easy to see its roots extending back to Colonialism and the Enlightenment. At the core of Pentecostalim are the principles of self determination and personal agency. The struggle of my life has been to use those principles to bend that culture towards my experiences of biology and personality.

Anthropology tells us that every culture has its shortcomings and contradictions. Each culture has imbedded within it rules that produce designated winners and preordained victims. Our saving grace is that all cultures change and individuals can shift the rules. None of us gets to live in the Garden forever. We must make the future out of what we are given.

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

I was kicked out of Rhodes College for being gay

Well, sort of. I was kicked out in an unofficial way - the "we hate you and we will make your life hell until you go" kind of way. But it was Rhodes College and I was fully and completely gay.

To be fair, it was a long time ago. 1991 is (doing the math) -- OH SHIT -- that's 22 years! Correction: it was ages ago.

I often think about my experience at Rhodes but it rarely occupies my mind for long. Today was different. It came up in conversation with a friend this morning. I don't know what we were talking about but it was apropos to the conversation and for some reason the pain of this old event seemed particularly fresh to me and I have dwelt on it off and on all day.

I burst out of the closet like a tiger through a flaming paper hoop. My idea of gradually introducing the idea was to show up in Russian History II wearing shiny teal polyester pants, a burgundy red button up shirt and matching red eye liner. Fair dues though, I had been working up to it for nineteen years and this was, to me, just another small step towards self-realization. Window dressing, if you will.

That was the spring of 1989. By that fall I had tired of shiny polyester and was growing impatient with eye liner as a means of self expression. I was reading The Advocate and going to the sad, sad gay bars of Memphis on the weekends. I was also searching for allies on campus. I found a few potentials but scared them off with my brash openness, my inability to blend in. I didn't lose much sleep over that though.

Probably the smartest move I made was to seek counseling services on campus to help me sort through the major issues I was having around the need to cram my Pentecostal self, my gay self, my blue collar self, my high-academic-achieving self, my searching self and my lonesome self into one consciousness. This worked well for me. I could talk to someone and they got paid to listen. In the process I came up with the questions that lay beneath my growing pains and I figured out the answers to a lot of them.

My next smartest move was to fall in love with a guy old enough to be my dad. Jay was HIV positive and didn't bother to let me in on that secret until we had been dating for several months. I decided we should get married. I am typing this as a nearly 45 year old man and, yes, I am cringing as I type. Back then I was 19. Don't even ask what was going on in my head. If you imagine the worst cluster fuck of co-dependency, insecurity and naivete, you're on the right track. That isn't the point of this story though. I've worked through most of that. The point is my decision to marry led me to the campus chaplain, Steve.

Steve was not ready for me. He was open minded though and, after some prayer and study, agreed to enter into a period of couples counseling with us both. He didn't promise to marry us. He said he would work prayerfully with us and see where that led. Over a period of a couple of months he learned a lot about gayness and we learned a little about couples counseling. Steve took us at face value, never judging, never disrespecting in spite of his inexperience. In the end he agreed to perform our commitment ceremony in the Voorhies Chapel.

It was Fall semester, 1990. We dressed and drove to the chapel. Our guests arrived early. My dear sister Rebecca was there. The chaplain arrived fifteen minutes early with a grim look on his face. The college president, James Daughdrill, had summoned him and delivered the news that if we were married he would be fired. Jay and I made the decision in less than a minute. Steve has stood by us through this process and grown with us. We would not be responsible for the loss of his job. The wedding party followed us back to Jay's apartment in Midtown where we ate the wedding cake and had drinks. It was not a celebration.

Since coming out I had faced several threats and confrontations on campus. My dorm mate moved into a different room. My dorm room was vandalized repeatedly. After our wedding was scuttled the abuse intensified. Obscenities were hurled down to me from windows as I walked across campus. A couple of times things were thrown at me. I was a leper in the Refectory. I received death threat phone calls late at night.

At some point I requested a meeting with Daughdrill to discuss the difficulties I was facing on campus. He refused to meet with me and instead sent a dean to run interference. I was told that no one had committed any crime but to let them know if that happened. The dean informed me that Daughdrill was very busy and would not be able to meet with me.

My grades took a nose dive. I was unable to study, concentrate, couldn't physically relax on campus. I was unable to get an appointment with my advisor, the chair of the Political Science department, until I caught him in the hall and pushed the point. When I explained my situation he did not seem surprised and was not helpful. In fact, the air in his office had a distinct flavor of disdain. I got the message.

As my life became less comfortable on campus I spent more time off-campus. By Christmas Break I had moved into Jay's apartment and my transition away from school was complete. That is how I went, in five semesters, from having high hopes of academic success at a highly regarded private college to being a college drop out. That is how I was kicked out of Rhodes College for being gay.

According to their website, Rhodes now has an LGBT Working Group and a nice little anti discrimination policy here. The school is still affiliated with the Presbyterian Church (USA) and that denomination has recently published a lengthy and carefully constructed statement about same sex marriage.

Apparently there has been some growth within the denomination and on the Rhodes College campus. I would like to visit again some day and see whether the on-the-ground reality matches the online presentation.

I would also like to reconnect with Steve. Aside from a couple of boyfriends, he was the first adult man I interacted with on an equal footing. His practice allowed me to see myself as a man. I hadn't gotten that previously from my dad or from men at church or school. That meant a lot to me then and it still does today. I would like to thank him for that.

Sunday, July 7, 2013

Questionnaire

This poem is published in Wendell Berry's 2010 volume Leavings. I read it yesterday morning and must have re-read it four or five times during the day. It is a very sneaky poem, beginning with an obvious easy question and gradually working up to one of the most basic (and ignored) conundrums of life as a member of society.

“Questionnaire”

1. How much poison are you willing

to eat for the success of the free

market and global trade? Please

name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and

the flag, how much of our beloved

land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces

the mountains, rivers, towns, farms

you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,

the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Of course, no one would kill a child for energy or an ideal. If the child is in front of you and you know her name, you will not kill her. You might step between her and the bullet and give your own life. Lots of people have.

What if you do not know her name, see her face? What if her existence is within a small rectangle on a monitor and you are at a command center thousands of miles away? Her parents are Afghanis? Does that make the killing any easier?

I'm burning babies every day as I drive to work. Their ashes are invisible to me; I do not examine my exhaust pipe.

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

The letter that will probably get me fired

Background:
I teach part time at a community college where my division (anthropology) is combined with the psychology and sociology divisions. The rivalries between members of the departments are at times divisive and fierce. The rivalries are mostly over meaningless bullshit. This morning I received an email from a colleague that said "YAY". The email was in response to an earlier email from the department chair stating that anthropology would be moving to the history department. Said faculty member has a long list of historic gripes with the other members of our present department. Having just arisen and still waiting on the coffeemaker to belch forth my morning sanity I hit 'reply all' and said "I wonder if the adjuncts will be treated like janitors there too?"

Well, the shock and awe that followed was monumental. You would think that we adjuncts had been hidden in a closet all these years. Various full timers upbraided me for "attacking" and "causing pain" (Boo-fucking-hoo). Others showed me various levels of support in person and (in one case) by email (brave since that is admissible in court and there is no more reticent sub-species of Homo sapiens than your run-of-the-mill college professor).

Further background:
I have in the past received special dispensation to attend departmental meetings, participate in specialized faculty training and development (you know, the basics of professional life) - but only because I made a fuss. Adjuncts are normally excluded from these things.

Below is the letter I wrote this afternoon after thinking more on the topic. I am surprised at the depth of emotion I am still feeling.While I live this on a daily basis, this email was my first time discussing it in a public forum. I do not broach all the issues faced by the adjunct work force but I think I hit the high lights. If you teach full time at an institution of higher learning in the US your department is likely functioning exactly as I describe below. Please think about it.

----

Some days I feel like an animal with his leg in a trap.

I should explain my outburst. I was in a good mood this morning so when I read ___’s email I was a little off guard. I have always kept my thoughts to myself because if I speak my mind I risk losing my job. Unfortunately, I failed to guard my thoughts this morning. Since I have opened this can of worms in public it is only fair that I clarify my thoughts in public and leave no doubt about where this is coming from. After all, the inequality I am speaking of is being acted out publicly every day, by each one of us.

I have been teaching anthropology classes at _______ for seven years. I have been unable to find a full time job. It is also clear to me that there is no chance of a full time position being created for me at _____. At the same time, the longer I spend in this menial job, the less suited I am for any good job outside of academia. What has changed for me during the past year is my realization that the _____ job position descriptions are highly inaccurate. The adjuncts are not filling temporary positions. The positions are full time. It is the humans filling the jobs who are temporary. It really, really sucks being a permanently part time human.

We all know about the low pay and no benefits when we accept these jobs. Maybe a lot of adjuncts think there is a full-time job just over the horizon. I thought I would find one. I have seen just enough adjuncts getting hired into full time jobs to keep my hopes up. As I have sought jobs and watched the teaching labor market it has become apparent that colleges all over the country are trimming their course offerings and replacing retirees with the permanent part-time positions. At the same time, graduate schools are pumping qualified applicants into the teaching market like a 24-hour sausage factory.

I know that none of this is your fault. I also can’t forget that your office, your computer, your vacation leave, your sick leave, your maternity leave, your sabbaticals, your expense accounts, your salary, your professional support, etc., are all paid for with funds that are generated by the work of my large underclass. I learned all about inequitable economic systems as a college student. Is it any surprise that I would experience existential angst once I realize that I’m mired neck deep in one without an apparent resolution or even an apparent avenue of escape?

What am I looking for? When I ask myself that question I go through that sociological checklist of things that people get from their work: money, status, sense of belonging, a mission. I know there is no money or status associated with being an adjunct. What’s left? I love to teach so I have a mission that has sustained me this long. The sense of belonging is largely absent. A number of people have voiced their support to me today and I really appreciate that. Of course everyone has always been very nice to me and I find that invaluable. The problem is that I have no role other than providing low cost labor to a faceless, dehumanizing system.

I’m not one to complain without offering solutions. In my neighborhood organization there are no temporaries or full-timers. We all play a role based on our interests and abilities. I help manage an annual budget of about $2 million and organize a number of public events, direct actions, and community building activities every year. No one “invites” me to a board meeting because I AM a board member. I have a specific role in the organization.

I appreciate being “invited” to _____ faculty meetings but it also underscores the fact that I don’t really belong there. I have no role. Who decided that the people who teach 75% of the classes here, who generate the lion’s share of the revenue, have no role? Who decided that we aren’t interested, aren’t able, aren’t qualified to share in the governance of the organization? When I’m feeling trapped I don’t chew on my leg like an animal. Instead I look for meaning and meaning is the thing I’m lacking in this job.

I apologize for getting all political and making everyone uncomfortable. I didn’t intend to storm the Bastille when I got up this morning. I don’t envy any of you full-timers. You have those positions because you are highly qualified. I don’t feel especially singled out for marginalization. I am a part of an enormous group of people in exactly the same position. Many of us are also highly qualified but we are never going to find full time teaching jobs because the numbers just aren’t in our favor.

I do think you full timers, especially in the social sciences, have a moral duty to be aware of the political and economic landscapes of our discipline. I know you teach Weber and de Tocqueville but how much consideration have you given to how that applies to our own field? Even more importantly, please consider how our jobs (and lives) can be made a little bit more meaningful as our slice of academia (and apparently all post-secondary academia) continues to adopt the corporate model. We’re all a bunch of smart people. Why are we so behind on this? I love to teach and I want to continue teaching at _______. The crappy pay would be more bearable if I was more of a colleague and less of a servant.

Saturday, November 3, 2012

What is the most important thing in life for you?

That is a really difficult question for me; it has taken several decades for me to have an answer that I feel comfortable with. I do have an answer now - loyalty.

I have had other answers in the past but they always felt a bit like whichever tattoo design I was considering at the time - cool, thoughtful, even true - but not really worthy of engraving into my flesh.

Loyalty is not my latest catch phrase, not something I just started thinking about a few days ago. When I say that loyalty is the most important thing in my life I mean that the pattern of my life, as it has played out so far, is one of connections and separations that can each be labeled as either loyalty or disloyalty.

Every so often I have an extended period of life review to reconsider past decisions, get myself grounded and look toward future actions. My most recent life review has been in progress for a couple of months now and the verdict is in. The one thing that I treasure in my friends is loyalty. The few times I have severed a relationship, a lack of loyalty has been at the core of that decision.

I will explain with one story, maybe one of the most important in my younger life. When I was 19 I met a beautiful young man, about my own age. I was a college student, gingerly stepping out into the grown up world. Ron was a beautiful country boy with a quiet masculine demeanor, a roguish sense of humor and the simpleness of most of the other country boys from western Tennessee. His tan hairless skin was always charged with electricity and he was as elusive as heck. When we were together he had a talent for being fully present. His attention was like a laser beam and even though he was no intellectual heavy weight, he held my attention night after night.

The thorns on this rose were two-fold. He smoked pot and was uneducated. I knew then that we were an unlikely match but my heart was set on him in a singular way. I have always been too clever by half so eventually I looked elsewhere for serious companionship and we enjoyed each other's bodies intermittently for a few years.

I took a job waiting tables at a shitty Mexican restaurant in Memphis and soon struck up a friendship with a young waitress, Autumn. In one of life's weird coincidences, Autumn turned out to be the younger sister of Ron's best friend and next door neighbor. I had known Autumn's older sister for a couple of years before meeting Autumn on the job.

Eventually Autumn and I moved two thousand miles away to Oregon on a whim one summer. Our boredom with Memphis life was so overwhelming that a one-way Greyhound bus ticket sounded better than anything going on in Tennessee. I eventually ended up in northern Idaho, filling my life with adventure, romance, discovery and self-discovery.

Ron and I had not spoken much before I left Tennessee but I immediately began to miss him. I called Ron about a week after leaving town to inform him of my excitingly spontaneous adventure. He was so angry and I could tell that under the anger was hurt. We never spoke again.

Eventually though, after a few years in Idaho, my thoughts returned to Ron and I began to wonder what I had lost. Were our differences really so fundamental? Had I given up the one true treasure that had fallen into my lap so many years before?

My heart began to turn towards home. I decided that I would finish my college degree in Tennessee and get on with the business of being a grown up. If I said that finding Ron was not one of the contributing factors in returning to Tennessee I would be telling a lie. He was somewhere between the back of my mind and the tip of my tongue - not really sure where exactly.

I rented a U-Haul truck, loaded up my furniture and pets and headed across Montana. Somewhere in Wyoming I pulled off onto a farm road and slept that first night with the sound of coyotes and wind in my head. At first light I was up and back on the road. A couple of hours later I stopped to fuel up. I pulled back out onto the highway with a gas station coffee nestled into my lap, ready for the new day, hopeful and expectant. A car full of boxes and blankets pulled into the gas station just as I turned left back out onto the highway. I was still a bit sleepy so I must have been mistaken, but the face behind the steering wheel was Ron's.

I have since learned that extraordinary coincidences are not as uncommon in life as you might think, but at the time I could not conceive of the possibility that Ron was moving west just as I was moving back east. I knew it could not be true. I had seen his face and yet I didn't turn the truck around to check. It was just too unlikely.

By the time I reached Nebraska I was sure I had lost Ron a second time. There would be no turning back, no way to find him without knowing his destination. And besides, there had been another man in the passenger seat. If Ron had been in that car, and if he was moving west, I had lost him for again and to another man.

Autumn had long since returned east and we had stayed in touch so when I got back to Tennessee we talked often and I poured out my heart to her regarding Ron and my longing to find him. She thought the encounter on the highway couldn't have been Ron but she said that neither she nor her sister had heard from him in years. Apparently there had been a falling out between Ron and the sister at some point and they were no longer friendly.

The next couple of years were pretty dreary for me. I worked a difficult job that I hated and lived like a miser to save enough money to finish my undergraduate degree. My thoughts often turned to Ron and I developed an ache in my heart. I realized that leaving him without a word was unforgivable. I had loved him in my heart but assumed that I could always find him when I needed to. Now I couldn't find him even to apologize.

Then came the internet. One of those early search engines eventually rewarded me in the most cruel way with Ron's obituary. I still can't think about that very often. In truth I can't fully remember where I was or exactly when I stumbled across that bit of death-dealing. I think my mind has created a half-assed firewall against that day. I can only remember that it happened.

The obituary was posted on a personal blog page by "a friend" so I emailed the blogger and explained that I too had been a friend and that I did not know Ron had died. He replied to my email with a phone number. Upon calling the number, I learned the most dreadful news of all.

Ron had never left Memphis. During my time in Idaho Ron had become infected with HIV and had developed AIDS. He had died only a few months before and I had been living in the same vicinity as he for a few years. Even worse, this friend (unknown to me) knew a great deal about me. During our phone conversation I learned that Ron had been intensely in love with me. He would pour his heart out to this man about how he had loved me but had never told me of his love and how I had left him. This stranger recited the details of my appearance over the phone, my facial features, my abundance of body hair, my mannerisms, my speech patterns. He knew stories of some of the crazy escapades Ron and I had gotten up to all those years before.

As you can imagine, this revelation seared my soul and I shared my pain with my commiserating friend Autumn. She was, as always, a reliable shoulder to cry on when I needed it. That was about 12 years ago now. From time to time, the story of Ron and my selfishness came up between us and eventually Autumn tossed me one final bombshell.

One day, probably in 2006, Autumn admitted that she had not been ignorant of Ron's whereabouts when I returned to Memphis. She had known about his HIV status and had even talked with him, but hadn't told him about my return. Autumn decided to lie, in her words, to protect me from getting HIV from Ron. In all this sad tale, this is the most capricious and cruel twist, at least from my point of view.

I suppose she lied for understandable reasons. Her intention was to protect me but I have never felt thankful for that. Having lived out in the big bad world on my own for quite a while now, I have managed to avoid lots of trouble on my own. I'm not helpless in the face of danger and I wouldn't have been in danger of dying from contact with Ron.

A couple of years ago Autumn and I had a large disagreement about something completely different and parted ways, but our split was already waiting to happen. Both Ron and I had longed to see one another again and I know we could have found resolution for our relationship. Autumn stood in our way, mute, until all hope was gone.

I couldn't trust her after 2006 and you can't be friends with someone you don't trust. I believe Autumn did what she thought was best, but she didn't act as a loyal friend. A loyal friend would have counseled me, perhaps even cautioned me, but would have then trusted me with my own decisions.

I admit to having blindsided more than one so-called friend with a loyalty test from time to time. When I sense that a friend isn't a real friend I do something outrageous, something sure to provoke them into showing me whether they will take my side or abandon me when the heat is on. I prefer seeing a person's true colors to living with doubt. That technique has saved me a lot of grief over the years.

I never gave Autumn a loyalty test. Instead, she blindsided me with a lie so enormous that I can't forgive her. And I can't see it as anything other than disloyal.