Weekend Blues

Saturday was like normal Saturday, nothing out of the ordinary. Life has actually been rather good to me as of late with little or no complaints, at least complaints that are not out of the ordinary. It was a rather nice warm sunny day much like the one last year and I spent it with my parents. Had a nice meal with my parents and was off to a new club that night. It was there that things started to become odd. It’s almost like the stillness of the waters and all of a sudden the boat slowly began to rock back and forth and it didn’t take long to realize how fragile often our satisfaction sometimes is when it’s not based on a foundation that is on firm soil. I went out that night with two friends, one of whom I had dated 10 years back. This individual invited friends of his to join us and one in particular brought his date with. As I sat there I began to realize this man I was sitting next too was the man my friend had dumped me for 10 years ago. When he looked at me and asked how I knew him I bit my tongue and said something pleasant. My instinct I assure you was not so pleasant. What was surprising was the reaction of seeing this individual after so many years and the inadequacy that still slumbers deep within the recesses of my thoughts came to the surface. Thoughts of not being good enough, thoughts of bitterness and resentment for something that in fact means nothing to me now so why do I still harbor such feelings.

The next day I awoke feeling rather good and lolled around my place until I finally went to the gym. Afterwards since I had gotten up so late I decided to go to church during the late afternoon service. When I got there I wasn’t really in the mood and in truth I had missed the last few weeks. I had melancholy thoughts of someone I knew a year ago as this was the day we had shared our first kiss. Again, things that are of little importance but for some reason I hang on to them. I remember sitting there and gazing up at a statue of Mary and wondered what is love, have I ever loved anyone...I mean really loved someone and they me? I looked at this image and saw a women who offered a gift of humility to the one she loved and in turn accepted his gift, with all the burdens that followed and lived out her life in gracious servitude for the one she loved and put aside the entire time here wants and knew her needs would always be met. I asked for that love in my life...to understand it and for those in my life, those who have touched me in a special way that we too would become gifts of love in a world that seems so dark at times.

That evening I logged onto a chat-line before a friend was to come over. This individual, a person I had not talked to for many months was on there. After awhile he must have noticed my profile as well because he blocked me so I could no longer see him. That sorta struck me and for some reason I felt a bit of frustration because of the rejection that stung in my heart. I guess sometimes it’s hard to let the past go because some seem to be more caught up in the romance of what might have been rather then realizing the truth of the situation. A Psalm that was read yesterday during the service I attended. It comes from Psalm 33, “ But the LORD'S eyes are upon the reverent, upon those who hope for his gracious help, delivering them from death, keeping them alive in times of famine. Our soul waits for the LORD, who is our help and shield.” How reverent am I being as I sat at this site meandering at the profiles that offer nothing but wounded individuals and I in some way participate in causing more pain as my motive was not love but was self-seeking. How reverent am I being by mulling over a profile of the man I had cared for and who seems to wants nothing from me? I could sit there and get angry with myself because just like with the man I dated 10 years ago we can’t control the lives of others. We cannot be responsible for the choices they make but what we can do is be a perfect example of love to them. In the case of the man from the chat-line I couldn’t really be his friend because I would want something more for him then what he was choosing for himself.

If our Lord is our help and our shield then why do we spend so much time battling the demons of our past? I suppose it’s our inability to have complete faith that prevents us…we try to take control of a situation and unfortunately if you are like me you have a knack for doing the wrong thing and later on regretting why you did what you did but then it was too late. Either way one thing I’ve learned this past year is it doesn’t really matter why people do what they do, that really isn’t my business. All I can do is make the best of any situation and realize I’m not responsible for other people’s choices only the ones I make. It still does seem hard to let go and sometimes I ponder why I make such a big deal of something that is so unimportant.

Today I get to work and a man I care for a great deal, a person who disappointed me greatly as he was very similar in many ways to both men above that I had dated. He just wanted to say hi. We never seem to say much to each other but every few months he drops a short note...perhaps it's his way of saying I'm still out here. At least I’m slowly learning not to take it seriously and not to beat myself up as if I’m not good enough. That is something I do a lot and always have. I have such low expectations of what I can get out of life and if things go bad I often sit around blaming myself when in truth I was not to blame in the first place. It’s sometimes funny to me why I do that, to be aware of something and find yourself doing it…very humorous at times.

My only hope is that I will one day be able to love someone the right way, to be able to trust someone and have faith. It is that leap of faith that shows our love for God because our example of affection and devotion to each other is a mirrored example of the great love God has for us. I think in deepest sincerity that is why so many men out there seem so lost, constantly searching for something…always trying to take control because what they have isn’t really love but more a fractured reflection of what love should be and they find themselves constantly searching for something that will fill them up and often end up wasting life eating out of a dumpster instead of the great banquet that sit’s right before us.

Who’s really in control?

Who has not at one time felt the pain of abandonment, of feeling lost or alone almost forgotten by everyone around you even those you have loved. We have all in our own way found ourselves feeling helpless. We spend so much time trying so hard to find security in this world, so much time trying hard protecting ourselves from further disappointments and hardships that we sometimes loose track for what would truly benefit us in this journey of life because our eyes have been so narrowly fixed on ourselves rather than on the bigger picture of what is going on. So many times I have allowed myself to become distracted on what was around me and it’s almost as if I felt voiceless in a sea of inequality while lying in a tomb of hopelessness with lust as my only comfort.

On my spiritual journey I’ve slowly begun to discover that there is nothing in this world that is meant to satisfy us and it for that reason that any time we seek things the world has to offer we will always in the in the end become disheartened and unsatisfied. I keep hearing in my head to seek that which is above. It’s a familiar phrase taken from the third chapter of the book of Colossians. But what does this mean to seek what is above and why is that of any importance to me? The odd thing about Christianity is how opposite its teaching are to how the world lives and often its countercultural lessons come off sounding restrictive, almost prudish and very much outdated with how we live our lives today. In the end we often pick and choose from many faiths and teachings finding ourselves unable to commit to anyone discipline because we do not want to have to be held responsible for how we are living out our lives. I find many people who wear crosses around their necks do so because it’s nothing more than a piece of jewelry while others it has become a pious symbol but the Cross is so much more than that.. The Cross is a device of torcher and it is a constant reminder that life is not fare and it’s not easy and whatever the circumstance may be we all have to journey to this instrument of death on our accord so we can enter into the mystery with complete humility so as to fully appreciate the opportunity of what it means to co-participate with Christ. Often it is through our suffering that God is able to speak to us and it is through our example of what we do with this suffering that allows us to witness the message God desires others to hear.

We can take comfort however when we read that while Christ was on the Cross he cried out “Eli Eli, lama sabachthani.” Words that mean My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? It’s a familiar cry all of us profess at many times in our lives. But the truth behind this wasn’t that Christ cried out these words in despair but instead he united himself to our suffering and offered up a lesson that is as relevant today as it was 2000 years ago. Christ death wasn’t about Christ it was for us. His focus during his entire life and most especially on his journey to the Cross was one of obedience to the desires of what is above. We live in a culture that unsuccessfully tries to teach us to deny the truth of death. The addictions and attachments of this world are almost a denial for the truths of God. If we know in our heart that we are not meant to find joy in this world why would we live our lives trying to seek it out and in the end find only disappointment and sorrow because of our enslavement to our passions. The truth is we are not the most important person in the world and the world does not revolve around me or owe me anything. Our culture is too concerned with our personal self-esteem whose only focus is on our little problems. By limiting our view we are unable to see the bigger picture that we are not and never have been in control. My life is not about me. Any other way of thinking is nothing more than an illusion giving us a false sense of some control in our lives. Trusting God means to not be in control and instead of turning inward we take our eyes and we look outside our own personal problems. Life is all about love and love is everything to do with God. Love has everything to do with giving of your self to others and is never about self-seeking…love has everything to do with God whose message has always been that we are created to be a gift to one another and in doing so we love God perfectly. Life is a great plan that was laid out well before the universe was created. Nothing was randomly thrown together and everything has a purpose for being here. Everyone may not be the most important but everyone is important and equal in the eyes of God. Whenever our rights take away another persons right there is a grave injustice and a deep lie going on. When ever we take away another innocent person’s life we are not in anyway playing a role as martyr or hero.

Life is hard and why is that we feel we should be exempt from the troubles of life? What makes us different? We are all going to die, that’s a fact. We all have been given the same amount of time as another but the difference is how you live out your life that defines you as a person. Nothing this world has to offer will bring authentic joy and peace. There is no liberty when we enslave ourselves to our passions. There is no justice when we live our lives for ourselves. When Christ stood before the soldiers and allowed himself to be bruised, humiliated and eventually murdered he did so because he saw the bigger picture and it was worth dieing for. You are wroth dieing for. I am worth dieing for. The prostitute on the street and the drug pusher in the back ally is worth dieing for…but often we can’t see it because we aren’t looking through the eyes of God but instead are looking through the lenses of society’s deceptions, that lie which teaches us that we have control.

August Fifth

With a discontented heart I yearn, for the one that seems to forever plague my mind
Simple thoughts blaze my heart of what was once but is no more
A year past since we first met with thoughts of you, me and the August sun
So discontented my heart still beats thumping loudly when I allow my mind to breath
With thoughts of art hanging on a string my mind wanders to the day we met, of buildings, people, your smile and the warm summer breeze

People wandering here and their but my eyes could not even stair
With eyes fixed on the one by my side I remember vividly that which I gazed
So dry I have been as of late trying madly to find that which is empty but still aches
But this feeling I abhor I cannot help but long once more
My heart still pounds when I think of you this day and wonder if this will be forevermore
With thoughts of what was but is no more I still hope and dream of holding you once more

Joanie loves Chachi?

Did Joanie Cunningham really love Chachi Arcola and if so did they find their thrill on Blueberry Hill? That is the question that has plagued the civilized world since 1980 when Chachi first revealed his true intensions to his love, the beautiful Joanie with a late night dinner preplanned on the advice from his conversation with Lori Beth. Last night once more this question arose as I lay in bed watching the newest VH1 reality show featuring our one time hero and the former Charles in Charge star Scott Baio. The show is titled “Scott Baio is 45 and Single.” It is about his journey to escape his past and to figure out why at the age of 45 he has run away from all his relationships. The show is obviously a result as a feeble attempt to resurrect a career of an actor that has long since drifted into pop-culture history but surprisingly as I watched I could relate in some way as his questions and the patterns of his behavior is not all that different then mine.

Baio has spent the majority of his life fearing true intimacy with women and seems to have a great deal of anger about never being able to escape his past childhood fame, the fame which pays for his lavish lifestyle. I have to take my hat off if I had one for those individuals who are so willing to allow the world around them the opportunity to dissect there lives and the poor choices they have made along the way. However that being said we have to also acknowledge there is a certain level of narcissism going on here but that’s another topic now isn’t it. Perhaps we should talk later on regarding the Paula Abdul show! Any way, as I viewed this show I could not help but start to review my own life and many of the choices I made along my own personal journey. As part of his therapy his “Life Coach” made Baio start to revisit his past and ask the women why they left him and what was it that made them leave. That would not be a question I’d want to ask men of my past but then again most of them wouldn’t say anything I already didn’t know…which is probably why I wouldn’t want to ask it!

He began with the first women he ever loved and then went on to visit “Joanie Cunningham” who was the women he lost his virginity too. “Joanie” talked about his short fuse and his inability to relate well to people around him…more or less she talked about his selfish outlook and his inability to work with people without becoming irritable. The first girlfriend pointed out that he actually went out of his way to try to keep a measure of distance between there relationship so as not to get to close. Baio repeatedly acted out destructively out of fear of opening up and trusting someone with his heart. On six different occasions he had intimate indiscretions with other women before she finally ended their relationship. I couldn’t help but feel as if the cameras at this time had turned on to me. While I never have cheated on a person I allowed myself to care for I have on many occasions prevented myself from getting close to men and usually allowed myself to sexually act impulsively with little or no thought to what I was doing until afterwards. I know this had more to do with fear of getting to close because the moment anyone ever suggested getting closer to me or said the forbidden word of boyfriend I usually ran for the door very quickly.

She went on to say that Baio was always “looking for the next best thing…there is no next best thing there is just the next thing.” Was this something I did? Without much thought I knew the answer already and sadly I know in my heart that true intimacy can never be based on physical attributes but instead on the emotional compatibility shared between the two lovers. There must be a common agreement between each partner that desires not for their own personhood but to become more like a humble servant who realizes their only desire is to encourage their partner to be the best version they already were. Love is all about what we know in our heart to be right and the conscious choice that we make with each other in regards to being a true gift of self-donation…it is that gift of choice that separates us from the rest of creation, it is that gift of choice that helps to realize only mankind has the ability to authentically love another because they are also the only one in creation that has the ability to hate. Life is all a choice my friends!

I laid in bed that night thinking about what she said and I assure you these thoughts are not new to me as I have done a great deal of reflecting with my past but still I couldn’t help but wonder what would my life have been like if I would had realized this sooner. If I had not spent so many years seeking out pleasures that only offer some solace for brief moments and or a couple years. What if I had not compromised my inner desire that I had at one time before I became so self-seeking inside? Would I have been in a real loving relationship with someone who was emotionally supportive towards my needs? Do I even understand what is love…have I ever felt it? We all say we have been in love but what is love really. It’s such an easy word to say but with what actions have I lived out those words. What was it really that keeps people such as Baio and myself in this position that keeps our hearts so captive that we don’t allow ourselves the chance to let someone in finding instead the simple fact we have dated the same person over and over and the only thing that has changed is the names.

Baio had a hard time listening to what she had to say. He was embarrassed at how he had cheated on her with his actions and most importantly with his heart. It was hard to look up and see the pain you caused and often we do what he did…we get up when it’s uncomfortable and leave so we can put it out of our thoughts and later on letting ourselves instead of dealing with it we make cheep excuses for our choices. I should title this “Craig is 38 and Single.”

Tiny Tim in the land of Egypt

Do you sometimes feel like you are Tiny Tim and are confused as to what life is asking of you? We live in a world that pulls us in a thousand directions and often we end up feeling stretched, tired and in the end powerless because few prosper and those that do have no problem flaunting it in our faces leaving us feeling as if we are lazy failures. Life seems for most people a never-ending series of tribulations with few reprieves leaving us little time to tend our hearts or our needs let alone the needs of those around us. We can all understand this and have all felt it to one degree or another in our lives but you know in the solitude of our problems we find what is often called the twofold order of knowledge. The first is natural reason, which is the object and the other is Devine faith; the object is one of truth attainable by reason, Devine faith however is the mysteries hidden in God, mysteries in which we have to believe and which can only be known to us through Devine revelation.

There are not many words in our culture that seem to trip easily off the tongue and many such words leave a fowl sound to the ear. We can picture over weight preachers in $1000 suits telling us to have faith in God and give to there ministries. We envision women in fine furs with faces that are so worked over that after awhile you aren’t sure what’s real anymore because they seem to resemble a gazelle more then a human being proselytizing to us that God blessed them because of their faith and since I don’t have a shinny new BMW or have house in the nicer part of town it can only mean I’m a person with little or no knowledge and understanding of what faith is. There seem to be so many people with many ideas of what faith is and how it is a loop hole for God’s bountiful blessings but I am not sure if many people really do understand what faith means because the word has completely become misused. First what does the word mean? I’m a plethora of useless lingo so I shall tell you. (Pistis, fides) are Hebrew words in the Old Testament that are translated as faith in English and essentially these words mean steadfastness. But in classical Greek pisteuo was used to signify believe so basically it says trusting in God is faith, and faith is belief. But the question becomes now believe in what? Believe in a God that allows man to suffer? Believe in a God that seems week and powerless, often so quiet that we aren’t even sure he cares? It’s an easy word to say but I ask you…what are we to believe in, certainly not someone that doesn’t seem to love me because I’m alone, lost and confused…plus there are starving little children in Africa. God certainly can’t be trusted! Belief is an objective statement because it’s hard to say for a fact it is true because it is to most a revelation of the mystery of the Devine plan of God through creation. What I find amusing is how easy it seems to say we are a people of faith until that moment when God asks something from us. God in his infinite wisdom has given man free choice and allows us to co-participate with him. Christ is the eternal example of this gift in the analogy of the Bridegroom who gives up his entire self for his bride and we through our relationships, both intimate & professional, offer up ourselves as a groom would for his bride in a gift of self-donation. We are called to give what we have, the gifts God has allowed us to have, and share with others. If you have two coats, give one to the poor for example. But what’s interesting is how we are so trained to selectively hear what is easiest for us. We let this opportunity to be a gift of love, a gift to end suffering for another to be muted because we feel our greed is more important then their need telling ourselves we work hard and they are lazy, or it’s not my problem so I don’t need to worry about it…plus they wouldn’t learn to stand on there own two feet. It’s not so much God doesn’t hear our cry its more that we don’t listen to the opportunity of the Spirit. The decent of the Holy Spirit is the abandonment of our selves to the will of God. To take a risk on what he is calling us to do. God calls us to love everyone yet we usually seem to only love people that are easy to love. God is calling us to let our bodies mean something, to be a gift to another but we allow ourselves to be enslaved to our own desires and care little about what we are emotionally doing to those around us or the part we play in the destruction of there lives. God calls us not to hate yet we seem to have no problem holding judgmental thoughts towards others letting our hearts to be filled with death while we sit in the shadows filling the ears of others with gossip, malice and hatred…ideas that are nothing more then words of disdain based on our ignorance and fear, our lack of faith in God.

In the end all faith calls us to do is to take the courage and make the first step in the direction of what you know in your heart God is calling you to do. Psalm 27 reminds us, be strong, let your heart be bold, put your hope in God and Psalm 130 reminds us that we are not alone, that God’s presence is there and all we need to do is wait, to watch for it like the coming of the dawn. But this isn’t easy is it, but then if it were would it be faith? Just because we approach something with the right intensions doesn’t mean people will value it. Just because we have enthusiasm and passion for something doesn’t mean others will share our thoughts. To begin a good thing isn’t enough. We must have the depth of commitment to carry it through to the end. It is here my friends in the obstacles of life that we have to begin our journey with Christ to the cross. We need to keep our eyes focused on the things that are above and not allow the limitations and blindness of those around you to cover your eyes from the truth and belief that God is God and the Devine creator does notice you and does desire what is best for you and that might mean that we have to be willing to remember what we feel is best for us might not be what would make us a clearer image of God.

It is good to remember that not many around you will join you or help you but still you move on. There will always be setbacks but you have to remember the oppressor never voluntarily gives freedom to the oppressed. If you want anything in life you have to be persistent. The oppressor means to dominate you and will never willingly give you up. Those around you will not necessarily want to listen to you because often those who are wrapped up in their own lusts and desires will have deaf ears and offer nothing but resistance. The lessons of Moses and the great exodus out of Egypt teach us that when you leave repression you will always find tension. When we get to the Promise Land we will find giants, those illusive adversaries that wait in the shadows to strike at us to take us down…to sidetrack us from what is being asked of us filling our heads with lies and deceptions…many distractions, but it is here in this overwhelming place that we find the gift of faith, the belief that God, the one who created you and me and laid out with perfection the creation of the universe balancing everything perfectly in total harmony is standing next to you and I loving us as a Bridegroom for his Bride willingly offering himself to us and all he is asking us is to trust him, to believe…to have faith. We must remain steadfast so God can be God and we learn our place in the grand scheme of creation. That we are made to be the image of God…God is NOT an image of us! Freedom my friend comes from humility. Do you find it interesting that society around us tells us we won’t be happy unless we live a certain way, dress a certain way, drive a certain car or live in a certain location. We live moment-by-moment for own lusts and ponder why we stand here craving more and always feeling like this wasn’t enough. We wonder why we look to porn or cheap sex and are left hungering later for something more, something real but always going back to what is familiar…can you not see the bondage you have allowed others to place you in. Can you not see how the few around us have exploited you and made you a slave to your flesh and in the end not trusting in God…instead we place our faith foolishly in ourselves, hording our money and possessions, living our lives to fill our lusty desires and this always leaves us wanting more? 1 Corinthians 13:13 says, “So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” These are three interrelated features of Christian life, more fundamental than any particular chrism. Love can only exist if we have faith and hope…without either of these you will never have or understand love. Love is trust, it is belief in the other person…it isn’t a prenuptial agreement and it isn’t based on self-seeking attitudes. Love is trust and belief and that is why it’s so scary. If you trust and believe in the other so much that you are willing to give yourself to them fully and completely you become vulnerable but it is here that you become a gift of self…and this revelation when you look through the eyes of faith is the blue print of all our relations with creation, not just limited to those we love. That is love…and this is what faith means.

To live with faith means we need to realize even if we have escaped Egypt and crossed over the Red Sea there will be moments where we will enter a wilderness and still we go on. What are you willing to lay our life down for? What are you willing to humiliate yourself for? Life is filled with people with passion, and people who will not let the oppressor hold us down, but these gifts of individuals instead find their voice in the humility of there actions by laying down there lives in faith so God can use them as his mouth peace. Faith must work with compassion and nonviolence. Violence will only create more violence and to find freedom means we have to be willing to be objects of love, we have to be willing to offer ourselves up as groom to the bride and that means we place ourselves in a position where we will be rejected. Even if a groom offers himself to the bride that does not mean she accepts but he does not force himself on her, just as God does not force himself on us.

Pride 2007 II: Love is it a choice?

I was looking at the float picture from my last entry and kept seeing the word love all over the boxes and of course shirtless men trying to come off sexy and desirable. But what is love? Is it little more then an amorous moment in our lives or does it express warm attachment and enthusiasm that comes from a strong affection or devotion for another. Love is passion but more importantly it’s also a choice. This doesn’t mean that our feelings will always remain the same everyday for the other but it does ultimately mean we are a gift of self-donation to the other through good times and through the hard times. I believe it is difficult for most because being fallen in nature we limit what love should mean and can mean finding those around us incapable of being a true gift of love. But it’s the unique gift of choice and the ability to make a commitment that is the singular difference between us and the rest of creation. People cannot be so easily dismissed because no one is replaceable even if we live in a culture that tells us differently. We all have something special to offer that makes us unique, precious and irreplaceable.

Often in my past I have found myself compromising the person I was to be something I’m not. I suppose that is something most of us can relate too. We defend our behavior and place limitations on love as we express ourselves with actions of “sexual liberation” but what is hard for me to handle sometimes is whenever you compromise what love means in the end you find yourself lonely or sad. The question I keep asking myself is if I am a gift of self-donation to another and in turn they give the gift of themselves to me how can we be lonely? I believe we become lonely because in those moments we have turned our gaze on ourselves, living out actions that are self-seeking in nature. To me, how I was raised, God is love and the reciprocal gift of self to another is an expression, an image, of how God loves us. We actively co-participate with God as we image him fully in how we express our bodies. When we have relations with another we are in actuality just outwardly renewing through creativity our commitment to each other by offering in humility the gift of self. By allowing ourselves to search out intimacy by means of self-gratification we limit the opportunity to experience fully what love actually is. Love is not selfish and it is never self-seeking but is always a gift of self to another. However often in my life I settled for a false love because I desired intimacy but my heart was so bruised that I only allowed myself to do such actions in a controlled environment. In the end it hurt me by limiting my vision of what love can and should mean. Selfish actions like this always in the end leave me longing for more and I became enslaved to my member.

It gets hard sometimes being alone. It’s hard to crucify the old man to embrace the rebirth of the individual we were created to be. It often seems easier to live in the illusions that those around us have normalized then to live out our lives with a sacrificial gift of self. We let our heart envy those around us but when you look at our culture you see so much promiscuous behavior that I have often wondered what is it that I’m suppose to be envying so much? I find it so amusing at times how jealous I get over the pig-pens others live in because our culture has lifted them up to be the embodiment of who we are suppose to be. I make no quorums of my sexual past and realize clearly the damage I have done to myself and damage I have caused to others perpetuating this behavior that first made me prey then predator. I feel a great sense of shame at times when I begin to slowly realize what damage I have played in other people’s lives because I was self-seeking. The choices others make are not my responsibility but what I do with my body is my responsibility. I still wonder why we find it so arousing to hurt other people, to have relations with innocent men taking from them something that is precious and beautiful and perverting it and leaving their hearts wounded and often broken with little or no understanding to what they just did. Why do we objectify ourselves and wonder why in the end no one sees us for who we are? So many of us are intimate with those who are married or dating others, paying little attention to the pain we are playing out in there spouses heart. It’ almost as if at times we also view a partnership between two men different then that of a straight couple and we wonder still why the culture around us doesn’t understand gay relationships. What role are we playing out in demonstrating to the world around us that we understand what love is and we too can live out an expression of love with our actions?

So many try to rationalize our choices saying what we do in our private life affects know one and doesn't harm anyone. Not true. Everything we do affects others and in the end affects everyone. When we fall there pain is my pain and when they triumph there joy is my joy. We are all one family interconnected in so many ways through so many people. I am not defined by my past. It has made me who I am today but it’s what I do with it that defines me as a person.

Pride 2007

As I was perusing past the many vendors in the park this past weekend I did a great deal of reflection of my first Pride event back in 94. I was a young man out of college and had just ended my first relationship finding myself in a place where I was exhausted with feelings of betrayal and uselessness resulting in an over zealous attitude to compensate my personal worth with destructive actions of self-exploitation in the hopes to try and cover up a broken heart. I remember that Pride as if it was yesterday. I can recall the warm summer breeze and the endless blue skies. The streets were flooded with thousands of people and the atmosphere seemed almost euphoric with thoughts of camaraderie. I didn’t feel alone but found great comfort in the masses of people sounding me, leaving me with almost a sense of normality in the sameness I shared with those around me.

As I strolled around the park the seemingly endless stream of people remained dressed in their colorful attire. The booths were filled with interesting provocative themes as well as corporations self-promoting their organizations. The organizers of the event still proclaimed the park to be an atmosphere that fosters tolerance and acceptance as well as promoting an environment that is family friendly. They were selling an array of trinkets from picture frames and lingerie to insurance policies and grocery products all the while professing this is done in a spirit that promotes their support for the gay community. As always there were endless parties and orgies with bars flooded with shirtless men drinking gallons of alcohol all the while dancing on pedestals searching the crowds with eyes full of lust. However something has changed over the years. Perhaps it’s like a bunch of holidays and after awhile you can’t distinguishes one from another but I believe it’s more then that. Somehow what had changed for me was how I saw these individuals.

I started pondering what does it mean to be proud? Living proudly means we have a proper self-respect and display an action of being very pleased with our self-esteem, however pride can also mean a pack of lions, but that is another analogy I won’t touch on today. What was it about this past weekend that gives reason for being proud? Do I see before me a showy or impressive group? I was raised with the belief that in some way we are all an evangelist of some sort. Heralding the good news by preaching and living out what it is we believe to be true, or at least what we want to convince ourselves as truth so as not to add conviction to our motives or actions. This is a day of reminding the world around us of our demand for equality. I’m reminded of others that went before us men such as the great Martin Luther King Jr. While he didn’t have any glow sticks or leather chaps that showed off his tight round buttocks he through his actions demonstrated to America the inequality of man envisioned in the Declaration of Independence. Through his non-violent protests and his willingness to humble himself as Christ he was able to co-participate in the mission of his faith. With his actions he brought redemption in many ways to the people of our country. White America had an opportunity to hold a mirror up to their faces to see if they image Christ in being a true and authentic gift of self to the community around us.

I am very mindful of the persecution and hardship we as gay men and women have had to endure often in the solitude of our own hearts. I understand the feeling that I am not living up to the potential of who I am and that my life is a mockery of my beliefs. I understand how disappointed we can be dating men and allowing them to use us, to participate in what seems to be an unending carousel that has left us burned-out with a heart that is so hardened by our actions and those of others that we don’t even know how to be a gift of love anymore. We have a creative and undeniable uniqueness, a gift that separates us. Each person is irreplaceable and yet we spend so much time sitting in the shadows of our thoughts yearning to be the image of a man we were created to be but instead allow ourselves to mirror a culture that is trying to keep our personal dignity down by further repressing us by limiting our actions to be controlled by an incessant need of self-gratification.

All I can say is to continue on your quest to find yourself! Do not be afraid to struggle and remind yourself that you are not alone even if society around you is so willingly ready to tell you that you are a freak, somebody that isn’t valued or wanted…a man who will never understand what it means to be a man. No matter where you are or what you have done remember we belong to a much larger community that isn’t separated by our sexuality.

I hope that we all realize to find ourselves, to find purpose, love, and hope means we have to become willing examples of humility and lowliness which often can only come from being prepared to be humiliated for what we know to be true. We have to be my friends a gift of self even to those who mean to do us harm. Remember what you do and how you behave affects everyone and nothing we do harms no one. We are all going to die for something in life. We are all serving a master of some sorts. I ask you what are you willing to die for and why? When I walked around the park all I saw was people who were willing to die for themselves and not for those around us.