Recovering from an Open House

I've had a busy couple of weeks (well, maybe more than a couple of weeks), and felt tremendous anxiety as yesterday approached. In order to force the issue of making progress on my kitchen renovations, I scheduled an Open House and invited the church. This means that the work that didn't get finished over Thanksgiving weekend really needed to be finished, and the house organized and cleaned up. With help from Will and Sheila, members of the church, my assistant Cheryl and Sheila's sister Connie, the work got finished . . . with minutes to spare!

I was pleased that I got the piano tuned. I don't play more than a few minutes a day, but having it available means a lot to me. And I was so happy after Thursday's staff meeting--at the house--that Amy sat down and played from memory a few pieces (while her daughter Alexandra slept and smiled).

I am terrifically excited that Jim Deitering was able to get over and move the gas line into the kitchen. This let me switch the refrigerator and the stove, and makes the cabinets formerly around the refrigerator finally accessible. The layout is still not entirely "mine," but the space is far more workable, and without the cost of totally redoing the kitchen. (I'll save that for a couple of years from now!)

I also was pleased to have laid out at least the tiles that will soon cover the three countertops. My next aim is to get them glued and grouted before Epiphany . . .

The Open House was affected by the snowstorm we had Saturday night and Sunday morning, but there was a fun and respectable showing. most of the food was purchased, rather than prepared from scratch, but it was just fine. And I cut down the oddly growing top of the damaged tree outside my kitchen window, and got from it an large "piano top" Christmas tree, which, when wired together, found good form and graces the living room.

After everyone left, I turned the lights down and sighed a bit. (I recall the moments in "Fanny and Alexander" when Grandmother on Christmas Eve seeks to weep . . . and it takes a few tries.) What finally brought the heaving tears was listening to Holly Near's "Somebody's Jail." Here are the lyrics. They speak to me.

Somebody's Jail
Words and music by Holly Near
© Hereford Music (ASCAP)

Just walking along, shopping for food
Stepping out of the line of fire when people are rude
Cheap stuff made in China, someone calls it a sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

Beat down in the market, stoned to death in the plaza
Raped on the hillside under the gun from LA to Gaza
A house made of cardboard, living close to the rail
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

(chorus)
And I feel the witch in my veins, I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul, The blood as I sing the ancient blue.
They burned in the millions, I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on, beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

The noise of elections, the promise of change 

The grabbing of power at the top, a day at the rifle range
Somebody's in danger, somebody's for sale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

(chorus)
And I feel the witch in my veins, I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul, The blood as I sing the ancient blue.
They burned in the millions, I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on, beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

(spoken)
It isn't a country, it's not on a map
The weight of the world on somebody's back
It's the clothes that I wear, it's the food that I eat
It's the women and the children living out on the street

It's the war at the border, the refugee camp
It's the child bride doomed to walk the ramp
It's the boot in the stomach, the slap in the face
It's the death that is handed out simply by race

Rape by the soldiers, abduction of sons
It's nuclear threat, the fascination with guns
Looks at the office, the danger at night
The one you call darling coming home for a fight

It's the AIDS with no borders, it's the African teen
It's the women all over simply going unseen
It's the arrogant posture, the man on the moon
It's the dying of need before the promise of soon

It's the millions who go without food and water
It's somebody's mother, somebody's daughter

(chorus)
And I feel the witch in my veins, I feel the mother in my shoe
I feel the scream in my soul, The blood as I sing the ancient blue.
They burned in the millions, I still smell the fire in my grandma's hair
The war against women rages on, beware of the fairytale
Somebody's mama, somebody's daughter, somebody's jail

Recorded on "Show Up," sung by Holly Near, Keyboards – John Bucchino, Bass – Jan Martinelli, Guitar – Nina Gerber, Drums – Paul van Wageningen

Well, I'm crying again, already. What a weepy, sissy boy!

Crisp and clear outside. Good morning! (And now I'm back to bed!)

A World AIDS Day Weekend . . . and a Date

I wonder why it is I seem to be able to be up on Mondays to blog?

The past weekend was a challenging one. I learned on Saturday morning that, rather than just serve as Co-emcee to the World AIDS Day commemoration at U of M/Flint, I was giving the Keynote Address. This made Saturday a little fuller than I had anticipated, and I was already running behind due to the move-in of the Valley School to our classroom building at UU Flint. (Lost my day off then and there.) I completed the Keynote, differentiating it from my sermon on Sunday, and then went downtown with St. Sebastian (a treasured painting by Michael McConnell) in tow.

The Commemoration was quite different from any I've attended. It was held in the Happenings Room, a pretty nice, if cement block institutional, half-round room with a crackly sound system. Seats were set around tables, and the buffet was a real "groaning board" of sandwiches and crisp breads and hummus and sweets . . . Ken from Good Beans catered the affair, which was funded by the LGBT center at U of M.

The people who came arrived as families. I was happy to sit with Pedro, a leader of a support group at the Wellness Center, and his sister and a bunch of young men who had just come from a Central Michigan University football game. At other tables, mothers and their kids were present, and the mix of skin colors was far more representative of the disease and its impact.

This was not your crowd of single white gay men in Boston!

My speech was directed more toward those gay men who were not present. As I spoke, I wondered if I was entirely off-base. Yet I saw that the program included a great variety of folk with different ways of sharing, and as long as I kept my speech short, I thought it would be fine. (And I think it was.)

The candlelight vigil outside was appropriately brief. It was cold and windy, snow-on-the-way, and Rev. Allen Biles' prayer combined Protestant orthodoxy and a little New Age thought in an inclusive way.

I went on a date, my first date in nine months or so, after the Commemoration. I was a little surprised that my date didn't come to World AIDS Day, but I guess I shouldn't have. Very few gay men came. But I was pleased to have my date show up in his truck and wiling to bring St. Sebastian back to the church for Sunday morning.

We went to the Mongolian Barbeque on Miller Road, a couple of miles from my house, and had a pretty pleasant time. I'm not going to share the contents of the date (I really do hold some things to myself!), but will say that we kept it brief with promises of something in the future.

I wondered Sunday whether there would be many people in church. Mid-Michigan was under Winter Storm Warning, and there were predictions of treacherous driving and encouragement for people to stay at home. As it were, the roads had some slush on them, but the major arteries were salted, sanded and plowed, and while we had a small crowd at church, it was no where near the emptiness I anticipated.

The service itself was a little cluttered. Through a series of missteps and miscommunications, the contribution banks that were to have been handed out on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, and then again on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, were still waiting to be distributed. And so the Children's moment became not about children and HIV but about Guest at Your Table boxes. Because the Valley School news was so impossibly fresh, I invited the Chair of their Board to speak for a moment and be welcomed and hailed by the congregation. And because our Music Director is crazily finishing her first semester of graduate school AND singing in the Nutcracker, our musical connections have been unharmonious, let me say.

But the center of the service was a presentation on HIV/AIDS. I was surprised at how emotional a subject it was to become, especially when talking about some of the spiritual questions around HIV, I was overwhelmed with feelings when I spoke about the condemnation some religious leaders gave to those with HIV; about how perverts deserve their fate, and how AIDS is God's judgment on our immoral society.

I was trying to celebrate the work of Rev. Rick and Kay Warren and their HIV AIDS Conferences at Saddleback Church, and how they are coming under fire from some Christian evangelicals for the invitation to allow a variety of voices to speak about the struggle against HIV and AIDS. That Warren is willing to say that he believes that any sexuality expressed outside of marriage is wrong, yet still he wants to be effective in the real world, and that Jesus himself is his example, causes him to consult with gay organizations about effective community building strategies in the fight for popular HIV education. I wanted to celebrate this . . .

But the thought of my own Leonel once praying, "Almighty God, Heavenly Father, I repent entirely of all of my life," filled me with grief. This sweet, spirit-filled, Jesus-loving man, feeling so condemned that he must repent of everything . . . this was overwhelming to me, and I needed to stay in the pulpit, silent, tears streaming down cheeks. I fought through the words of Paul: "Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord."

I selected that text for Leonel's funeral in April 1996. What was amazing at his funeral was to hear from Padre Julio, the Jesuit from Spain who became Leonel's confessor in his final months, that in Leonel's last conversation he said, "I may be dying, but I am conquering." And I would say, "more than conquering." Somehow, in his final weeks, he moved from self-condemnation to self-acceptance, and when I think of that, I am enraged at the religious condemners who, it seems to me, know nothing of the spirit of creation, and saddened by loss.

Yesterday afternoon's meditative Peace Prayer service, hosted at our church and "arranged" by me although made real by the people who showed up, gave me time to decompress a bit. The evening Yoga class by Sue Kirby made me unkink some of the knots in my body and person.

I am thinking that I need some "away" time today, away from people and away from immediate responsibilities. I will teach a Bible Study tonight (and the next two Mondays) and am pleased that Rev. Beth Rakestraw will be my partner in this. More tomorrow . . .

Cold this morning, but the sky is becoming a shining blue. Some fluffy clouds. And the dogs next door are barking. A good sign.

Good morning.

Stress Tests

I am on my way to my second day of a cardiac stress test my physician requested. Yesterday was the day that the tech injected so e radioactive material into a vein, gave me a tall cup of water to drink and sat me in yet another waiting area, and then strapped me onto a very narrow bed around which a mechanized camera rotated to get good shots of my heart (while I was at rest) from many angles.

Today is the treadmill test. I used to walk a treadmill an hour a night three or four times a week when I lived next to the Boston Sports Club in Copley Square. But that was a long time (and many pounds) ago.

Right now, I just want to eat! I ate sensibly yesterday, and avoided caffeine all day. I developed a bit of a headache as the day went by (could be a virus that's going around, could be caffeine withdrawal) that persists now. I can't eat until after the test, and I've been asked to delay by blood pressure medication until after the test.

Before the test, I have one additional stressor. The Valley School is moving into our classroom wing at UU Flint today and tomorrow, and I am telling the 12-step groups that the room they've been using (and overwhelming) is now going to be an art class and cafeteria from 8 to 5 each weekday. This will mean that our lunchtime AA group and a Tuesday-Friday morning group will need to move to our larger Fellowship Hall for the next six months, and that other groups will need to pack up all their materials after each meeting. (These are not, in my mind, unreasonable requests!) But it does mean change, and people have a hard time with change.

Well, I'm off to the morning AA group, and then to the cardiac center. And then breakfast!

Cold out this morning, and a dark dark. Sunrise will happen at 7:44, says my almanac. I'll miss it today, just as I keep missing that last raking of leaves . . .

Good morning.

Screenplay and Children's Book

There's a screenplay inside of me waiting to get out.

I could say the same about any number of writing projects. The lecture series I'm preparing that I wish could be a book. The play for children that I wrote twenty years ago that my brother Paul and I need to make into a picture book. (Could it be finished for 2012, the centenary of the "Bread and Roses" strike?) The memoirs of living in a bicultural, bilingual couple, and being immersed in a "foreign" family. The performance art piece on breaking up and losing a great mother-in-law.

I love going to the movies, and it was while watching "Dan in Real Life" that I thought about this idea for a screenplay based on my grieving group experience a decade ago. The screenplay, if merely recapitulating that experience, would, I think, be bound by its time, nostalgic, quaint and untrue.

The experience of the grieving group was nothing if not deeply true. All the men in it were men who had lost their partners to AIDS. All had tested negative for HIV. Each, upon entering the group, was a mess. Most, but not all, left healing.

My screenplay would conflate the year of telling my own story--and the story of losing Leonel--again and again with the story of my year of discernment about going to seminary. That year of discernment was one of overcoming my breakup from Dan, that is, Dan completely surprising me by leaving me to pursue, and later marry, Doris. I visited several ministers that I respect and decided that the only way I could discover whether seminary would work for me (or not!) was to step into the water and wade right in. I decided that six weeks was the amount I needed to tolerate to intuit with any degree of certainty whether my fascination with seminary indicated a "Call" from God (or the Universe), or whether it was just some pathology of mine that sought attention.

I have imagined conflating that story of recover and discernment with my year of being in a purposeful group of men. The group was a place to tell my story--our story, Leonel's and mine--over and over until it lost its power to entirely derail me. The group was simple, with just a couple of rules. Every time a new person joined, he told his story. Every time you heard someone's story, you'd tell your story. We expected to be in the group for about a year, being with one another during all the anniversaries (first Christmas alone, your own first birthday since his death, and his birthday without him around, the anniversary of his final decline and death . . .). We'd listen and jostle and challenge and laugh. And we'd give at least two weeks notice before leaving, so we could say "thank you:" to the group, and each other, and then goodbye.

Jane was the facilitator of our group. She was a social worker who didn't know some of the psycho jargon of the seminary ("CPE," for example--Clinical Pastoral Education), but who really knew people. She speculated that she must have been a gay man in a previous life, she was so in sympathy and synch with our group. She seldom spoke, and whenever she did, it was exactly the right thing.

Jane was confrontive with me in a very helpful way. She'd hear some comment, usually something self-disparaging, and ask a question about something I had said three weeks earlier that she thought might have some relevance to my own words or mood. And she was always right.

There is a screenplay inside of me, and it wants to be let out. I wonder what it will take for me to get to a place in my ministry where I can sense that doing that writing is, indeed, ministry. That it could be helpful for other people and for me. I wonder what it might look like (feel like, sound like) to set aside serious time to do my writing as I let the church and its people run its own affairs?

I think I've been working under the understanding (misunderstanding?) that this won't happen until I am in a larger church, and I am trying to grow that larger church now. Clearly this morning scribbling feels like part of my process of testing myself about my abilities as a writer and, especially, my ability to set aside time to work on the craft.

Time is rushing by, it seems, both this morning (I need to be on the road in 15 minutes, and I haven't showered!) and in my ministry and life. Could I get that children's book done (and marketed) by 2012? Will my lecture/sermon for Des Moines be as polished as I'd like it to be by W. E. B. DuBois's birthday? Might I get that performance piece finished--and performed by someone else, I think--in even a semi-public reading?

Or should I just go back to school with its structure?

Blue sky this morning, beautiful, clear. Haven't looked at the weather reports. The radio went on (went off?) in the other room and I am ignoring it rather well. The shower calls.

Good morning.

After Thanksgiving and Beowulf

I didn't get home (Rhode Island, that is) for Thanksgiving. On Monday last, I began to come down with a terrific cold, but couldn't pay much attention to it. I pushed through completing tasks and preparing for Tuesday evening's Board meeting at church, and decided not to set out toward New England on Tuesday night (thinking that I'd probably get only as far as London or Hamilton, Ontario that first night), but rather would just sleep in on Wednesday, If I left by noon, I could join the driving masses on the New York State Thruway and Mass Pike on Wednesday and expect to get to my sister Donna's house by midnight (depending especially on the two international border crossings, but also the traffic).

Instead, I woke up on Wednesday to find that I was really quite ill. I prepared to go to the drug store to get some medicine (and again to consider and reject homeopathy), and noticed that again an enormous amount of radiator fluid was on the floor of the car (in front of the driver's seat), and knew that I would not be driving that car 1,300 miles without seeing a mechanic.

So I stayed in bed on Wednesday, and slept in on Thursday until after noon. On my couple of trips to the toilet, I saw the snow falling (masking my unraked leaves!), and turned up the thermostat a couple of degrees. Took my medicine. Drank some fluids. Stayed in bed.

Late Thursday afternoon, I was feeling quite a bit better, and I stopped in on my neighbors Linda and Lucy and their boys. They had guests--Sheila and Jennifer and Linda and Dorothy--and I arrived at the end of Thanksgiving dinner. I ate more than I had hunger for, and enjoyed a couple of glasses of Beaujolais. (Feed cold, starve fever??) Anyway, I lasted far longer than I thought I would, and even enjoyed one of Sheila's famous games.

Even on Friday, I considered setting off for New England--but I gave that up when I realized how tired I was (and how crazy an idea that was!). So I had a good conversation with my mother instead, and told myself I'd call my brothers John and Paul (which I have yet to do).

On Sunday, I went to see the new Beowulf film with Lucy and her older son and his neighbor friend. We went to the 3-D version (I mean, wasn't that the point?) and enjoyed ourselves. The eerie animation melding real faces onto perfected bodies and action sequences ranged from stunning (I loved all the gilt effects around Grendel's mother and her realm) to sickening (the oozing slime off of Grendel's skin) to amusing (all the machinations to hide Beowulf's genitals). Some of the cinematography was confusing (why may Beowulf have quite nice nipples, and Grendel's mother none?), some forced repetitive and distracting effects that were far from thrilling (the swords and severed limbs thrust at the audience); but all in all, it was a satisfying movie that made me want to pull out my Beowulf and read it again.

I loved that some moments linger in my memory. Why was the heart of the enormous dragon so small--just the size of the human heart? I thought of my own dragon-ness, the things that set me off and make me a fire breather. The wastelands that I have created in my emotional and relational history. What dragons have I sought to slay, and who has seen me as a dragon needing to be dispatched with?

The fantail of the dragon under water spread into the exact shape of the fantail of the seductive mermaid that distracted one of Beowulf's earlier accomplishments heralded by others but remembered by some as failures. I wonder about my own failures, in history and every day, and about how I so crave flattery, recognition and attention. I hope to place my public and private failures into perspective, and hope, even, to become detached from the high and low emotions that accompany my failures--and my successes.

The glitter of the realm of Grendel's mother still haunts me. How it grew and grew, how gold inhabited one son but not the former, how it all ended in the sea, in the fire, in the earth. I worry, daily, about my own financial status, about bills owed and the long time it is taking to get caught up, about the folly of investment in real estate and my inability to invest my time in finding relationships that will sustain my private side, in Michigan. Recognition and flattery, glitter and facade . . . where does this all lead?

Bright gray sky today. Chill in the air, but the snow is melting (and the leaves are back!)

Good morning!

Qigong and Worry

Sunrise today at 7:22 a.m. Overcast, but a bright, rather than dull, gray. Fresh after a good sleep.

I went to bed last night full of worry. Yesterday my wallet was stolen early in the morning, and I didn't discover it until after church. Last night, as I was calling credit card companies, I learned that gas had been purchased, that a purchase of over $500 was several times denied at Target, that a couple of $100 purchases had been made at Meijer . . . happily I was able to cancel all my cards, although now I need to replace my drivers license, get a new health insurance card, and wait for my new debit card. And get those charges reversed.

And I only had $40 in my wallet.

Rats.

I rose this morning to do twenty minutes of qigong at sunrise, facing east. When I am regular about this practice, which I rarely have been since I moved to Flint, I love the heart balancing poses that conclude the routine. Leaves a smile on my face, and gets me ready to DO things (even the laundry I'm finally going to throw in the washer downstairs).

The past few days have been very productive (that is, energetically focused on producing). Weekends are like that with the public focus on Sunday morning each week, and trainings and actions on Saturdays and Sundays when many people are available for our public work. Add to that a very emotionally draining (and reinvigorating) Memorial Service for Jon Owen last Friday, and an overnight trip to Indianapolis for the Heartland UU District Board of Trustees, I've been very "productive." And pretty satisfied.

The Veterans Day service was quite special. I felt a little more in control of the unity of the service knowing that it would be very diverse due to the number of people speaking. Four veterans spoke during the service, Dr. Van who served in the Army in Korea, Linda Kilbourn who was in the Navy during the Mercury space flights and the early 1960s unrest in the Dominican Republic, Linda Campbell who was in the Navy throughout the 1970s, and Steve Urdy who was an Army paratrooper in Grenada and the first Gulf War.

I had asked that people address why they joined the military, and it was interesting to learn that while one person was fulfilling a family obligation (men in Steve's family had served in the Army since the Spanish-American War), others saw the military as a way out. Linda K got out of Flint and finishing high school; Dr. Van got out of going to jail for drunk driving; Linda C. got out of Oklahoma. All felt that there were positive things they learned in the military, and positive characters that were shaped there, learning leadership and accountability and service. Some said that they had been brainwashed in the process, but never lost their ability to see beyond the rhetoric; and all resisted the conforming culture. "Serving my country" had great meaning, and a copupole of people lamented that today, with the elimination of the draft, we don't make social demands on young people, and we wage war without their being an evident social cost of rationing, for example, or even paying for the wat, which is now entirely being paid for "on credit."

The congregation responded deeply to each testimony and to the service as a whole. In a training on building one to one relationships within our congregation, I asked people to share what was great about the service, and people talked about seeing that issues are not "black and white," that people are multi-dimensional and deeper than we would easily know, and that there is great value in being a community where a diversity of experience is welcome. I was so happy to help us see that our narratives are richer than our issues.

I'm optimistic about the possibilities at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Flint and the creation of a local organizing ministry for our neighborhood, our people and our city.

Time to pray, to shower and to do some wash. Good morning.

Tough Few Days . . . Ahead

Up early this morning to check something out in my car. Hope the fix I made is sufficient for a few days.

This afternoon: Jon Owen's memorial service this afternoon. Sad, but many people are ready to share a few thoughts, and we'll have some eclectic music.

Then: drive to Indianapolis for a Heartland District Board of Trustees meeting.

Tomorrow: I'll miss the Michigan UU Social Justice Network Summit, being held at UU Flint.

Then: I'll miss the emma's revolution concert we're co-sponsoring with Woodside Church and Redeemer MCC. But I'll get to drive back from Indianapolis . . .

Sunday: Morning service thanking veterans.

Sunday afternoon: 1:1 training to create a Local Organizing Ministry (go FACT!)

Later: Genesee County PFLAG panel on bullying

Then, on Monday: Membership Committee meeting and then lead a training with the Flint Human Rights Commission on Hate Crimes against LBGT people . . .

Whew. I am so overbooked. There are other important things that are being overlooked.

Blue sky just beginning to appear,

Good morning.