Diversity Sunday

The following is the text of a little "personal sharing" I did today in church:

Hi, my name is Joel, and I’m pretty gay. I say “pretty gay” not because I’m ashamed of the term (at least not anymore) but because, as with most things, I believe that sexuality and orientation are more fluid than our often rigid and polarizing society suggests.

Having said that, I identify as a “gay” man at present - and, let me assure you, it’s been quite a journey getting here. I can tell you of years spent in repressed angst, emotions doing everything they could to break through the walled-off surface; of sitting in church silently affirming condemnation of “those” homosexuals; of spending 19 years of my life not feeling I could be wholly honest with anyone and another several years in unhealthy closeted relationships; and of lying awake nights in college, actually afraid of being “left behind” when all the other more perfect and obedient souls were raptured away. Through all of this, I had yet to become aware of one of the greatest ironies of all - that if ever there was such thing as “sin,” it is the detachment from self, from the obvious piece of God placed directly in each of us. Put another way, the “hell” that exists when you are avoiding your own self is very, very real.

I’ve lead a pretty intense life so far. Most of my twenties were spent running either toward or away from something - I’ve seen the pyramids of Egypt, Sydney’s opera house, Rome’s basilica,the mountains of the Dominican Republic. I’ve been skinny-dipping in Tahiti, wandered Paris at midnight, and witnessed the atrocities of 9/11 in Manhattan. I’ve worked on Broadway, on cruiseships, in classrooms, and on tractors; walked into celebrity-filled parties, out of record contracts and through doors that, in hindsight, seem absurd. I have stories to make all of you mothers cringe - of homeless folks shooting up heroine daily on the steps of my Harlem apartment, of a man dying on my doorstep in Boston, and of roadtripping across this country with strangers. More than once.

And through it all, for some reason, I’ve continued to work in churches. I know that a big reason for this is because it’s an environment in which I’ve been comfortable, at least in some respects. However, I also believe that my incredible draw toward the spiritual realm led me to stay connected to the one representation of spirituality with which I was familiar - the mainstream church.

My story of being gay and maneuvering the world of the American “Christian” church - as a congregant or as an employee - has not been the most difficult one, I am sure, although it’s not been entirely easy either. Since college, I have been fortunate to end up in churches in the center or somewhat progressive side of the spectrum. However, I am struck looking back at the default method with which I dealt with the issue - mainly, proceeding with extreme caution and for a very long time, an underlying shame.

Churches are funny things - many of them are all “love, welcome, come join us” on the outside, but don’t be too real, don’t show too much, don’t ask too many questions, don’t disrupt the apple cart. There is a tremendous difference between welcoming someone with a “Hi, how are you?” and embracing them wholly and actively - which, by the way, is a pretty scary thing to do.

Even the most well-meaning folks will end up saying things such as “we love you anyways,” which is much better than many reactions, but still betrays a fundamental sense of not-quite-equal-ness. And in many churches and families, the gay son or daughter is at best quietly pushed to the margins of the page - which begs the question, “who is really in the closet?” The child or the parents? Or the church folk who tiptoe politely around the issue?

It’s been a long and intentional process, but I personally am becoming comfortable with my role in spilling apples. I believe that the real reason we’ve all been placed here is to discover who we really are, what we have to offer others, what our role here is meant to be, and I don’t know that I could have done that without the challenges that being gay has presented me in our current society. One interesting thing I’ve learned is that sometimes other people just aren’t going to like you, and that very often it has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. This is true about your sexuality, your physical appearance, or even what sports team you like.

Being gay has also helped me to not be afraid to speak up and ask the big questions - about life and about church. To me, a church should be the epitome of a safe place to be honest, questioning and truthful to the core. Such boldness can be applied to this church as well - a place that I personally am still getting to know. I read the words at the top of the bulletin and do wonder if all are truly and actively welcomed here - not just regarding sexuality, but also race, culture, beliefs and socioeconomic status. Realistically, how boldly and actively do we embrace the homeless family? The drug addict? The transgendered? The youth of today? What happens if and when a prostitute comes through our doors? A Pagan? A Buddhist? An agnostic? Are they actively welcome here, and what then does that mean?

To me, church is a place where all people can “come out of the closet” - whether about sexuality, past history, doubts, alternative spiritual experiences, guilt, prejudices, fears or belief. That questioning moves also toward asking why we are all coming here every week and how we might all better connect to each other and to God.

So, yes - i speak to you today as a person who spent many years struggling to find and reconcile his sexual identity. and a person who is thankful for that experience, as it forced him to be bold, to ask the big questions, to not be ashamed and - above all - to be aware of that literal, living, energetic thing called love.

I can share with you so many stories from my own life that have reassured me that I am on the right track - stories of synchronicity that you might find hard to believe, whether receiving unexpected checks for exact much-needed amounts or unprovoked job offers at exactly the right time. My favorite involves meeting a woman in the lounge of the Long Beach airport and running into that woman two years later in a New York City crosswalk, which led to an immediate job offer - a fortunate event considering I had just arrived homeless and jobless in New York. I am telling you this in a conversation about sexuality because I don’t consider it coincidence that these things have happened more frequently the more I’ve learned to come out in the open, to step into the light.

Last week, Barbara spoke eloquently about our growing table of community. I know it is a diverse body of God’s people, each with his or her own variation on theology and spirituality. I, for one, am not one to worry too much about the details of who Jesus was, something about which we know only a limited amount. I would rather focus on the message and the actions of him and those like him - not only the basic principles of love, hope, peace and charity, but also speaking truth, boldly and directly, both to oneself and to those who will listen.

I know that there are many in our world - and likely in this room - who hold a vision of Jesus, the white guy with great abs and a “terrible swift sword.” But I would propose that there are other possibilities, that perhaps he was a well-traveled somewhat homeless and, yes, maybe even gay-ish mystical shaman - maybe with tattoos (if they had them) and an interest in transcending the physical plane; who smoked opium with the Buddhists, lived among prostitutes and struggled for courage to ask the tough questions, whether about sexuality or tradition or hypocracy or enlightenment.

I’m not asking that you accept this vision yourself, just as I don’t need to accept yours. But I do ask that if we call ourselves “welcoming” that we actively and joyfully offer a seat to everyone at the table, not “in spite of” but “because of.” It is my belief that this community - and the world at large - can become - is in the process of becoming - a place of positive affirmation, a place where love is evident, and a place where all are encouraged to be and explore themselves, to voice their feelings and through expression learn to connect - that ALL may be one.

Where dat river at?

I lay my burdens down,

down at the water’s landing

the promised land is found

with no dictums or demanding

come cross the River Jordan

to peace and understanding

We gather gently by

God’s yearning sons and daughters

Neither male nor female am I

when I wade into these waters

But spirit, soft and solid

Returning to mother and father

Come along to the water’s edge

where we may drink of purity

and cross together to that promised land

where love will reign and sorrow cease

and burdens are quickly forgotten

as they’re washed away to sea

by the undulating tones

of the melody

of peace.

SWITCHING OF THE FLIPPING

Flipped the switch
Living days according to whims and news
and point of views
Willing to accept all and no longer fearful
of judgement
of mornings
of a need to choose
or bruise.
But still a bit worried about
my car being towed
bills being owed
prophecies foretold.
Fears of rejection
rooted deeper than thought or ought
If you want something
or someone
ask.
The worst you can get is a shot in the face.

RIGHT WHAT YOU KNOW

It’s New Year’s Eve and what do I know?

I just last month moved to Los Angeles in a 1991 Jeep Cherokee pulling a homemade plywood trailer made out of (among other things) a 1970 pop-up camper and an old chicken shed that is currently parked in a woodshop up the street and is still waiting to be finished with siding.

I spent the previous 5 months at the family farm in Illinois, where I passed the summer - among other things - chopping down trees,scrapping old farm implements, making furniture, building a dreamcatcher (using feathers from a wild turkey carcass found in the woods), fixing tractors, scavenging in old barns and going to music shows. All in all = success.

I flew to California to try to get myself off the ground (ie apt, car, source of income...) and found my Jeep (which has run flawlessly cross-country twice, aside from a front main seal oil leak which my friend and I managed to fix on the street in front of my house) and an apartment and at least a part-time job (music director at a small but progressive and promising church in Glendale that I am determined to wake up and shake up) all within 4 days. Check, check, check.

I drove my Jeep back to Illinois to get my things and say my good-byes and decided to offset my green-guilt by posting an ad on the Craigslist rideshare page, which of course caused me to wonder almost immediately if and how Kerouac circa 2010 would involve an internet posting. There’s something slightly less romantic about the internet in general (see also: dating life...I kid?) and I agree wholeheartedly with the notion that there is a definite tangible quality to another breathing person’s energy that is helpful in making basic day-to-day decisions, such as “Do I want to spend the rest of my life with this person?” or another perennial favorite “Do I want to ride in a small enclosed space for two days and two thousand miles with this person?”

Exhibit A: Ave, (we wound up calling him “Aveda” for short) a long-haired Native American who had made the questionable decision to move from the reservation, where he could get drunk and not process alcohol within the safety of his own people, to Chicago, where he worked as a bartender/“performance artist.”

During the wee hours of the first overnight drive, Ave declared that in his culture, they would call me a medicine man. While this was flattering, I couldn’t help taking less and less from this reference as time progressed: he had also spent the 16 hours on the way to Austin declaring himself the world’s next great pop star. This hypothesis was quickly and devastatingly laid to rest in Bethany’s (see also: raddest girl ever; bethanybauman.com) Austin kitchen during an episode that slew every American Idol reject reel I’ve ever seen (not that I’ve watched that show):

SCENE 1:

Out-of-tune alcoholic racist drunk Native American wannabe popstar

with repressed sexual issues:

“I keep on falling innnnnnnnnnnn--

(pause)

You think I”m gonna say love, don’t you?

(pause)

I got a FEEEEELin, that toNIIIIIIGHT’s gonna be a GOOD NIGHT

Me:

So, this is your Black-eyed Keys medley?

SCENE 2:

Aveda, two drinks in, having awkward “deeps” with an uncomfortable Nico and Luke, whom he just met

Aveda:

“I’m bi.”

Luke:

“Cool.

(Pause)

Joel’s gay.”

SCENE 3:

My foot in Luke’s face.

Aforementioned N.A. also ended up sort-of following us out that night, as no one (read: me) had the courage to tell him to climb back into his windowless trailer. In my defense, things had not quite made their abrupt but inevitable turn from hilarious ridiculousness to “Get the crap out of my car.” That diversion was quickly taken, however, in a story involving a guy with a face tattoo from Vegas, photoshop cropping, and a few well-chosen racial epithets uttered by my travel companion on an Austin city street corner.

(PS Aveda, if you’re reading this, I still have a bag of your dirty laundry in my trailer.)

Exhibits B and C involved a self-proclaimed 21-year-old rail-riding anarchist with plans to buy a sailboat in Miami with which to “chill in the Caribbean” and an unhappier-than-expected comic book illustrator and Rainbow Gathering supporter fond of telling half-truths who claimed to be ready to drive overnight and wound up driving literally a total of an hour before pulling over and saying, “Alright guys, I think it’s time to rest my eyes.”

Other blurry memories include trying to help fix a broken-down pickup on the side of the road in the middle of the black Texas night while fending off an angry drunken hitchhiker and the realization for about half of an hour that my truck and trailer had literally been hijacked by previously discussed half-truth-teller determined to be dropped off at his front door. (Just kidding - it wasn’t HIS front door. It of course turned out to be the front door of a stranger who he didn’t actually know but was surely a “friend of a friend”...)

It’s recently been suggested that Kerouac didn’t, in fact, live many of the adventures described in “Travels With Charlie” and that for a large majority of his travels actually stayed in luxurious accommodations with his close friends and relatives.

I don’t blame him one bit.

**************************************

My apartment I found on the internet, although the fellow moving out of the room I’m renting happened to be a friend of one of the 7 people I knew in LA - a tattoo artist at the parlor up the street where I had just been two weeks previously with three friends getting tats. So I of course wandered in there after I learned this tidbit to try and find out what I’d be getting myself into.
The gist of the conversation:

“Hey man, if you remember me, I just checked out your old room and was thinking of moving in there.”

“Cool.”

“Yea, I was wondering if there was anything I should know about it.”

“It’s pretty cool.”

“Cool.”

I perhaps should have pressed for more information - a sentiment I felt rather sure of when I woke up to my new roommate playing guitar in the living room and belting loud but unintelligible curses a few weeks later at 3am. It turns out he was upset that his bike - more specifically, FIFTH bike - had been stolen that night, and he was distraught over “what it means” and the deeper significance of the incident. (The leading response amongst my peer group thus far is that it meant he should buy a stronger lock, although I have a rather skeptical peer group).

In any event, I let the commotion escalate into a stomping and knocking-things-off-the-walls sort of thing until I finally got up to find him rocking back and forth on the toilet with the door wide open as he alternated between Tourrete’s-inspired moans and enthusiastic wall-pounding. (I, of course, quietly tip-toed back into my bedroom unnoticed).

This event was hard to forget until I arose a couple of weeks later to start my day. I have a daily morning habit of making the most important breakfast bagel sandwich known to hu[wo]mankind, and I headed to the kitchen to do just that when I noticed the ENTIRE CONTENTS OF THE REFRIGERATOR AND FREEZER ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR. And we’re not talking typical bachelorhood apartment here; this is Michelle Obama-approved rations for at least the perimeter guards: fresh produce, broken bottles of Pelegrino, milk, eggs, 20 frozen chicken breasts... I had a slight recollection of some disturbance mildly disrupting my previous night’s sleep (an occurrence I’d been getting used to) but was fairly confused by the fact that my small-framed roommate (with M.S.!!!!!) who has trouble walking a city block had somehow managed to tip over the refrigerator, let alone somehow return it to an upright stance.

Of course, the most absurd part of this story was the conclusion: in typical non-confrontational fashion, I cleaned up the mess and cooked my breakfast, then spent the rest of the day avoiding him. When I finally went in his studio to speak to him about the rent check that happened to be due that day (and yes, I paid it...), he paused after this conversation, looked up at me a bit emptily, and asked, “So...did something happen in the kitchen last night?”

****************************************************

So now what?

I am a recent Los Angeles transplant.
I have less than $200 in my bank account.
I’m strangely OK with that.
I have very little jobnessness.
I know this will change.

(I am reminded of the time I went to visit New York City for a week and ended up staying...this story involves sleeping on the couch of someone I’d just met, needing work, making a list of the - say - 12 people I knew in New York, remembering a woman I had randomly met in the Long Beach airport two years previously, crossing the street to get a bagel, and crossing the street on my return as the same woman “happened” to be crossing in the crosswalk right next to me with her friend Jonathon, who she had told me two years previously that I “just absolutely had to meet” and who subsequently connected me to a job putting together Broadway orchestras....But that is another story entirely.)

I have blockage and expectations and emotional attachment to people and unhealthy situations.
But I am happy. I am writing. I am playing. I am participating whenever possible and healthy.
I am doing my best to help without getting in the way.
I am doing my best to be a source of insight and not resentment.
I am cooking dinner and visiting the dogpark and accidentally attending fancy parties.
I am celebrating the New Year alone, but together.
I am doing what I know to be right, and righting what I know.

I have no direction

but a very powerful compass.

I’m noticing the bumps less.

Upon further reflection,

this leap of faith is trumpless.

The preceding tales are all absolutely 100% true.

curious about what this all means

curious about the wanderlust in his genes

curiously, he follows as he leans

SNOW

All this talk of snow in colder parts of the world is reminding me of winters past in Brooklyn.

I love you, New York.



The first snow of the year
is colder than I remember.
Viewed from the shadow of the bearded, bundled buddies
hacking and spitting and looking like they’re smoking in the cold
(this particular group really is killing themselves - these boys are old)
The sky but a gradual din of whitish gray flaking upward
One thinks of lovers and films and toasting by the fire
And not of this drafty fortress or unfulfilled desire
Across the street, a buildup slides helplessly from the awning
Unsettlingly similar to myself as it sits motionlessly midair -
defying all physical and I daresay realistic expectations -
before plummeting violently to the hardened surface below
to be lost underfoot until forgotten evermore.
I, too, was once pure, fated -
with only weighted dignity in store.

Cut to the Middle

I don’t want to know
how it ends
which one bends
who makes amends
I only want to see it
cut to the middle

You don’t need to show
how it begins
original sins
which one wins
I’m only here to see you
cut to the middle

This pain down below
wears me thin
my cheshire grin
stretches the skin
I don’t have all that much time
so cut to the middle

I don’t want to know
what it will bring
if there’s a ring
if they pay me to sing
I only want to remember
what’s in the middle




YOU

think you have it all figured out
but things are looking suspiciously different
and familiar.

it’s the same room, but different
same shelves
your glowing world is new

what if you were to invest as much in yourself
as you pay to them
others
him

how are you any different from the ones you tell to focus on themselves
you say:
but i don’t need to
i’m ready
i know me
now i’m looking for you.

how much happy with and bayou?
you have glimpses
tastes
brief flashes of ticklish solitude

yours is a life worth living
your writing is blocked
as is your life.

rip it down with this newly acquired knife.