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

This blog is a year-long meditation on the path I'm traveling right now. Everything I'm involved with seems to be some form of service to others. I didn't consciously choose service so how did I get here? Where am I going next? Is this just a phase? Is this a place where I can spend the rest of my life? I hope to arrive at some answers by next April!

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

This blog is a year-long meditation on the path I'm traveling right now. Everything I'm involved with seems to be some form of service to others. I didn't consciously choose service so how did I get here? Where am I going next? Is this just a phase? Is this a place where I can spend the rest of my life? I hope to arrive at some answers by next April!

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

This blog is a year-long meditation on the path I'm traveling right now. Everything I'm involved with seems to be some form of service to others. I didn't consciously choose service so how did I get here? Where am I going next? Is this just a phase? Is this a place where I can spend the rest of my life? I hope to arrive at some answers by next April!

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.

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.

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.

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.