When a loved one dies
A story: the funeral for David
Grieving our lifelong dilemma
A story: the first AIDS Quilt, Washington, D.D., October 11, 1987
The wilderness of loneliness: Isolation versus Solitude
Isolation
Homesick
A home
A story: Homeless for the holidays
A story: A home his parents would never see
Facing Loneliness
A story: Friendship - the perfect gift
Solitude
Living alone
Parting Company
A story: the paths of Fire Island
Prophets
A story: an angry drag queen -- a prophetess
The lunatic fringe
The dark night of the soul
At our lowest point
Left alone -- we face an opportunity
Come to God originally
The Winter Solstice
Exile
A safe haven
The end of exile
When a Loved One Dies
When a loved one dies, it feels like the bottom has fallen out of our lives. Someone who meant so much -- a best friend, a soul mate, a partner, an aunt who understood, a brother or sister we’ve been with since our earliest memories, our god-like mother or father -- is dead. We feel a profound loss without their existence.
We also face our own mortality as this significant other dies. The reality of our own death is chilling. Can we ever find our way to live life anew when death holds such sway?
We go through the process of mourning and ride the waves of feelings: sadness, panic, anger, guilt, depression, abandonment as we face loss and the uncertainty and precarious nature of life itself. Finally the medley of feelings we call grief culminates in acceptance, renewal, and oddly -- joy. We feel joy in the mystery of life and its cycles of which we and our loved-one are wed. We begin to feel the truth in the statement that love is forever, even though our loved one is gone -- forever.
Grief can awaken other losses that remain unresolved -- especially the most profound loss of all, the tragedy of our childhood. If we can not face this fundamental loss from our past, then other grief experiences will have a disturbing undercurrent. Once again, the child is abandoned when others die for there is no adult to care for this lonely child within. Unresolved grief from childhood makes the loss of a parent particularly hard to resolve.
But if we have done our work and live as autonomous adults, the loss of a loved one, though painful, even excruciating, is resolvable. When our adult self is at the helm of our lives and not a lonely child, we can count on ourselves for consistent care, nurture, and protective power – even when death strikes a blow.
An actualized adult will weep at the loss of a loved one. But as another dies, we don’t lose ourselves. We are in our own and God’s care – as we mourn the loss of a beloved.
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A story: the Funeral for David
The urn sat on a stand at the front of the chapel. Jeff found it hard to believe that David’s ashes were actually inside. Where was David? The body he held -- the person he loved?
Jeff sat in the front row. Other gay friends sat in the back, not sure of their welcome. The family swelled the rest of the seats. When David died, the family took over like a force of nature and planned an ornate funeral in this ornate chapel in St. Patrick’s Cathedral of all places. This was the same cathedral that found homosexuality a sin and sealed its doors every June with silent disdain, as the raucous Gay Pride Parade passed out front on
This cathedral like David’s family was not gay friendly. Yet the formal liturgy left a space for personal memories. The family spoke first. What a wonderful son. What achievements. There was a litany of successes that sounded like a resume’ – and not a mention of his orientation. Jeff questioned: Where was the David he knew? His struggle to come out? His struggle with AIDS? His struggle to know himself, be his own person -- and get away from these very people who usurped him today?
Jeff remembered the family visiting David in the hospital wearing hospital gowns and masks, afraid of contagion, even when everyone knew AIDS was transmitted through body fluids and blood. It seemed hatred was also a contagion transmitted by blood. Jeff wondered if they were connected -- blood, hate, and AIDS. After the family would leave the hospital, Jeff would crawl in bed with David, careful not to disrupt the tubes stuck in him, holding his familiar, if skeletal body with care and intimacy.
“Does anyone else wish to speak?” Did he dare? Jeff stood and went to the lectern. “I’m Jeff. David and I were lovers. During his illness, a deeper side of David emerged. This new depth helped both of us grow in our trust in God and our faith in life. David, I miss you.” Tears forced Jeff to sit, but the temple’s curtain of denial was rent. The truth -- told. The service ended. Jeff went blank, as the family passed by ignoring him. Then, David’s sister came over and said, “Thanks for telling the truth. We have something in common -- we both loved David.”
Love tells the truth.
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Grieving our lifelong dilemma
If we are to live beyond the tragedy of our childhood, we must grieve our painful introduction to existence -- or we will carry this distortion into compromised adult living.
The child can not bear to see the truth of parental neglect -- his idealization of his parents is a defense against the overwhelming heart-break these flaws induce. This pain is too much for a child’s capacity. The real work of adulthood is grieving tortuous childhood reality, if we are not to be ruled by immature hopes of parental love and rescue.
We must face facts -- our first loves, our parents, did not love us and our spirited gifts (or our homosexuality if we are gay), with the intensity, enthusiasm, and devotion necessary for us to bloom into the fullness of our adult capacities. The pain of this fundamental loss is intense, the disappointment profound, the feelings of abandonment excruciating. We can only be reconciled to this unimaginable betrayal through an extended and painful grief process. Even the death of the illusion of perfect parents is a death -- and must be grieved. To be born anew, we must endure this wrenching process. By acknowledging our grievances against our parents, we feel the consequences of their lack of nurture. We suffer, we rage, we grieve as we begin the journey out of the illusion of parental rescue into a real life.
We had hoped against hope for mother’s all-encompassing love and father’s ever-present protection. These parental gifts never came – and never will come from outside of us. All the parental surrogates -- all the lovers we hoped would save us, all the jobs we thought would protect us, even our sense of God that would spare us the pain of growing up and into our adult stature -- we must give up. We must shatter these idols of immaturity if we are to see God face to face -- as we look into our own enlightened eyes.
We have spent a lifetime avoiding this way of sadness, this devastating Via Dolorosa. As we grieve our entire existence, we face and hold the forsaken child who did not receive the parental love and protection he or she needed. Through this grief process, we grow up. As we grieve the illusion of parental rescue, we begin to live a real life.
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A story: The first AIDS Memorial Quilt,
Ted wasn’t sure what The Quilt was, but he liked the idea of a gay march on
Once in
The march ended. All dispersed onto the mall to find the quilts of loved ones, as names were read over loud speakers. Endless names. Ted entered the paths between the quilts with a quiet curiosity. Then the quagmire of grief pulled him into a vortex of pain of which he wasn’t sure he could get out. The full reality of the horror, the scope of death, the devastation of the AIDS epidemic unfolded on the ground all around him. Name after name -- one gay man after another. Where was Bobbie? Where was his quilt? Perhaps if he’d made him a quilt, he’d know where his dead friend was, a reference in this bewildering field of sorrow.
The vibrant colors of the quilts testified to recent deaths. The pain sewn into them was palpable reminding Ted of all the needles pricked into the dying flesh of his friends, into Bobbie. A deafening silence hung in the air -- as if all life stopped and hope was sucked into this blanket of sorrow covering the earth. Hundreds of painful and failed medical procedures cried for explanation -- hundreds of lives cried for vindication.
The quilts, stitched with love, tried to piece together lives that had fallen into decaying fragments too soon. Ted wilted under the autumn sun, paralyzed with pain too immense too feel. He wandered among the endless rows of death, as God wept thousands of tears through this throng of mourners. Ted felt a terrible dry wind move through him -- he was alive, yet life would never be the same.
Through unimaginable grief, I enter a new time and a new world.
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The Wilderness of Loneliness -- Isolation versus Solitude
Isolation is human despair. When isolated, we are cut off from human exchange, but most significantly, we are separated from ourselves. We experience intense loneliness for without human contact, life loses meaning. We humans are social creatures and benefit greatly when others confirm our reality, corroborating our emotions, and mirror our ideas and identity. In solitude, we are connected to our true self and thus, connected to the river of truth that runs through all there is. In solitude, we are not alone -- we are with ourselves and with God.
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We can feel isolated in the middle of a crowd -- even in the midst of a sea of family and acquaintances. We can feel isolated in a marriage or partnership. Two people can live together with little meaningful, intimate contact, separated by walls of silence, emotional static, or depression and dissociation from honest feelings. Quibbling replaces real exchange; posturing in routines, roles, and family obligation all replace authentic living. Even our sex lives in these relationships can remain isolating and anonymous. Two people going through the motions of sex imbued with fantasy, but never connecting in a conscious way to each other, is a type of promiscuity.
The worst form of isolation and the deepest source of human loneliness is being cut-off from our selves. This occurs when we can not make contact with our identity for it is buried under traumas too profound and painful to excavate. Instead of our true self shining through, we wear a mask as we interact in the world. We are there -- but not present, lost in a wilderness too dense to penetrate.
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Homesick
If we are gay or unconventional and needed to move away from our hometown to be true to ourselves, we may become homesick missing the people and places we’ve left behind. Our new home is strange, we don’t know many people. Everything and everyone is new and different.
We sense the promise in our new home for we can be true to our identity and live and love openly, but we miss something deeply -- our hometown and our families, the way of life that was familiar. Our favorite tree, a lovely crook in the road, the affection, even if limited, of our families, the annual celebration of holidays with the clan. All of this is gone and we pine for what is missing. We are homesick.
As time passes, and we settle into our new community with new friends and family, we may be surprised to discover that we are still homesick for our loneliness persists. We are disturbed to admit how alone we have always felt. We may seek comfort in the arms of a lover, even anonymous partners, to ease the pain of loss and loneliness.
Then, an insight hits us. Loneliness is why we left home in the first place. Truth be told, we were profoundly alone in our families of origin for our orientation, our lively spirit, and the threat of our emotional honesty were not appreciated at home.
In the safety of our new home and new lives, we can recognize that we’ve been lonely for as long as we can remember -- that our loneliness started long ago at home with our family. In our new home, we can face the depth of our loneliness. At last, we can come home to ourselves and be lonely no more.
Ultimately, I am homesick for myself, lonely for the place in me where God resides.
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Just because prophets, outsiders, and gays aren't living a traditional lifestyle, often in the wilderness, estranged from the norm and our families, doesn't mean we don't need a home. We do! At the end of the day, it's important to come to a safe haven, a sober, sane environment, where we can close the door and say, I'm home.
Home is a place to just be -- to be real and authentic, a place to create and re-create, to recharge our batteries physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
Home is a place to be intimate, where we are safe to reveal not just our bodies, but also our emotions, even our souls to our deepest love partner, and to our true selves.
Home is a place to nurture our friends and family, gay or straight, a place to cook, eat, play, and entertain -- especially entertain great ideas and visions of wholeness.
Home is where the heart is. If we are connected to our hearts and to self-love, a home is possible. Transience, crash pads and emotional homelessness are signs of heartless, loveless living, and no longer acceptable for outsiders seeking enlightenment.
Home is where the heart is. My home is a safe place to open my heart.
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A story: Homeless for the Holidays
In the eyes of the world, Kevin was rich. He had always functioned in high-end jobs and had a beautiful apartment in
He pretended the holidays had no impact on him, because he wasn’t religious -- and he was out of communication with his family. Yet, as holiday fever revved up in the city, he became increasingly depressed. He started to drink again to cover the painful feelings of being left out. He also kept at bay the dismal memories of his childhood, and the sad disappointments he experienced at holiday time.
On a gray December evening, after a grueling day at work, Kevin wandered past a gay bar. He knew if he went in, it would be not just a drink – but another drunk. He had been to A.A. and had gotten sober once. He took a deep breath, walked past the bar and began roaming the streets of
A church, where he had attended A.A. meetings, was miraculously open with a Christmas concert going on inside. He entered and sat in the back. As the familiar carols drifted over him, confused emotions welled up – sweet and bitter. Many of the painful feelings he blocked when he drank were coming up. Also, a deep need to belong welled inside of him. Especially, he felt a deep need to belong to himself. As he felt this mix of feelings provoked by this holiday season, he looked around and noticed homeless men, some drunk, also sitting in the back, getting out of the cold. Kevin saw the parallel. For all of his wealth and fancy apartment, he did not have a home either – and drinking would only exacerbate the problem.
As he left the church, Kevin realized that he had neglected himself this year, in fact for most of his adult life, echoing his pain-filled childhood. Now, his lack of self-care was catching up with him with wrenching loneliness -- and another drunk was not the answer. He vowed to do whatever ever it took to give himself a real home, and a real life. He did not want to die homeless -- and heartless.
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A story: A Home his Parents Would Never Visit
Ted was spending the weekend at Eric’s country home. They had been close friends for years and had even met each other’s parents. Presenting each other to their respective families was a tribute to how much these gay men valued each other.
Now, Eric’s parents were dead and Ted’s were elderly. Ted commented as he surveyed the landscaped property from a cantilevered deck, “Your parents will never see the beautiful house you’ve built. They’ll never see how well you’ve done.” “No, they’ll never see my success,” Eric concurred.
Ted did not have a house in the country. His life’s goal was different from Eric’s. Ted’s aim was to build a house within himself, a house of consciousness where every room of his being would be illuminated. The home Ted desired to move into with all his passion was his true self.
Suddenly sadness flooded Ted. He thought about the comment he’d made to Eric about his parents never seeing his house and realized a parallel applied to him. His parents, though still living, would never visit the home he was building, the home of consciousness. To visit this home, his parents would have to become conscious themselves and this was not something they wished to do. In fact, they had spent a life time staying unconscious with the distractions of family affairs and conventional living.
Ted realized that as he became more conscious, he would part company with many. Few wished to illuminate their lives, for though the rewards were great, so was the pain. He would meet others with whom he could share his home, but his parents would never enter the mansion he was creating within himself. There was no getting around the sadness of this loss except to grieve it -- his parents would never visit or know the beauty of his true self.
I create a home within myself that only few will visit.
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During the holiday season, a joyous time of year for many with Christmas, Chanukah,
Chances are, our loneliness stems from long ago, the child’s expectations and failed hopes intensified by the promise of the holiday season. The anticipation of the holidays may have seemed a saving grace for a lonely boy or girl whose world and family-life did not always feel jolly or safe. The gifts, the magic of a Christmas tree, the excitement in the air, the decorations on
Now, as adults, we may feel again the anticipation and hope we felt as children -- and its heart-break. In fact, we may feel the same anticipation, colored by disappointment that haunted us all those years ago. We remember that this magic time of gifts never gave us what we truly wanted -- a safe place in our family where we were seen, and appreciated for exactly who we were -- wonderful enlivened children – some of us gay.
Our hearts may break during the holidays remembering what was -- and what wasn’t. A candy coated version of a past that left us feeling disconnected will not bring us peace. As we feel the reality of holidays past, their delight and pain, a new light begins to kindle in us, even in this darkest time. Only facing the facts and feelings of our actual past experiences will generate a new spark of life in these dark and cold days of today.
During the holiday season, we may not get the gift for which we ache -- a different childhood filled with parental love and acceptance. Yet this sacred season will not be wasted, as we can give the priceless gift of acceptance and love to ourselves -- and loneliness is changed to joy.
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A story: Friendship – the Perfect Gift
On a cold Saturday in December, two gay friends bought a bouquet of red roses and would place a rose on each apartment doorstep where they had lived (separately or together) over their time in
Dressed warmly, they wandered through the
Brendan and Christopher were best friends. Over the years, they had watched the gay community evolve through victories and losses – even an epidemic – and trying to find its soul in the aftermath. They had meet each other’s parents, even visited each other's childhood homes, places off the beaten path and not particularly friendly to gays. Of all the gay men these two had been close to in
When they met in their youth, lovers came and went like lightning -- but a friend, especially a best friend, stuck
They reminisced over soup and coffee at their two favorite spots in the
There was much to remember. As the bouquet of roses became few, all their homes visited, Christopher suggested they stop in a shop and buy each other a gift. They browsed. A vase? Or some goofy inexpensive trinket? Or should they go up to Tiffany's and spend some serious money?
Then Brendan stopped and said, "There's nothing to buy. The gift has been our friendship." “Of course,” said Christopher. “I was trying to capture in a material object an intangible treasure – our friendship.”
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Solitude
Solitude may look like isolation, for we are alone, but we are not lonely for we are with someone -- we are with ourselves and with God. In solitude, we are not cut-off, but connected to it all. Through our deep connection to our true self, we are connected to everyone. And the river of truth that runs through all that is flows freely through us.
As we linger in solitude, we do not feel anxious or alone for our profound connection to life comforts our fears and quiets our loneliness. We have a companion through all of life’s storms -- we have ourselves. Through our intimate connection with self, we know that God is with us, too.
Even if we have a committed partner or intimate friendships, we still need time for solitude to nurture the best friend we will ever have -- ourselves. After a period of solitude, we return to our relationships refreshed. We are not needy or desperate for others, as are the isolated, for our source of companionship does not begin with others, but within ourselves. We are not afraid to be alone for we never are. We are always with our best friend -- our true self.
In solitude I commune with my best friend -- myself.
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We need time alone. We sense another relationship will only distract or numb us -- or end in warfare. We need time alone to build a relationship with ourselves, to discover who we are.
We have hoped again and again that a partner would save us from our plight. But again and again our hopes have been dashed. We are finally convinced that another relationship will only distract us from answering the ancient, painful cries we have refused to hear. It is time to embrace our past and the aching child who waits within to be freed from his dungeon of despair.
The bleak reality hits us: Until we take our inner child into our own care, we will always seek someone disastrous to do it for us -- and be disappointed. Until we heal our wounded child, we will always seek a surrogate parent who will echo our first parents and their limits -- incapable of satisfying our deepest needs. No matter how we plead, cajole, or seduce, a new lover will never heal our wounded inner child or the damage inflicted on us in the past by our parents.
Our choice is stark. We either sink into depression, alcoholic fog, or other self-defeating, even suicidal spirals -- or we face this truth. No one outside of us can meet the needs of the emotionally hungry, neglected, and angry child who remains abandoned within us -- certainly not another lover, partner, or spouse.
Only we can go in to meet this desperate child. Only we can fulfill his deepest needs. We realize it is time to parent the neglected child who haunts and paralyzes our present with his frustration and pain.
To best accomplish this, we live alone. Without the distraction, irritation, and even pleasure of another, we meet ourselves and our needs at last. There is no one to project our dilemma unto. There is no one else to blame for not meeting our needs. The child who aches for our care receives our undivided attention. We sort out -- alone.
We still have deep and rewarding friendships, even therapeutic guides if necessary, but living alone, we come home to our own company, the music we like -- or more apt, the silence we require to hear ourselves at last. A time alone is our golden opportunity to hold our wounded, beautiful child in our own care. In return, we receive our adult lives and autonomy and need never be lonely again. Certainly as we get sober from any form of addiction, we move away from people who are still actively addicted. In order to keep our abstinence, we must not be around others who are abusing substances or behaving in ways that are self-destructive. We part company with many -- even those who have been nearest and dearest. As we grow in consciousness, we leave behind those invested in sleep. As close as we may have been in the past, the convulsions of coming to consciousness are not welcome to those who wish to remain in dissociated oblivion. Our very presence may disturb them and they may retaliate by denigrating our new-found awareness. We must be very careful not to allow others’ deadened life-force numb our newly won vitality. We must guard our precious perceptions and not squander these hard-won treasures on those whose defenses would undermine their meaning and truth. Perhaps most difficult of all, we must leave the limits and addictions of our families, of our parents. We must part company with these primary figures who wield tremendous and often deadly psychic power. The censoring voices of mother and father will crush our adult attempts to escape the orbit of family, if we are not disciplined and committed to our departure. We may leave with grace -- they may not even notice we are gone. We needn’t disturb their sleep. We may even choose to maintain civil, but distant contact. But withdraw we must, leaving behind the hope of their joining us and blessing us as we venture to the depth of our being. To become enlightened, to bring light to the deepest and darkest recesses of our being, is a path few will follow. We must be careful of the company we keep for our holy intent is an easy target for those who wish to remain unchallenged by life’s unfolding quest -- and prefer to sleep. As I awaken, I part company with those who prefer to sleep.
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As we grow, we leave others behind. We out-grow certain relationships and part company with those who can not grow with us. We seek souls with whom we have an affinity -- who nurture our developing sense of self and our deepening wonder at life.
The August moon rose full over the ocean, etching a glittering path of light to the horizon. Oblivious to the moon, clusters of gay men, with polished bodies, identically dressed in white T-shirts and tight jeans, headed to the dance palaces of
Jonathan passed them in the night, going the other way. He wanted to see the moon rise. He was always going the other way it seemed -- first in the straight world of his origin and now in the gay world of his orientation. More clusters of men passed him on the narrow boardwalk, drawn to the dance hall and its communal oblivion. He wished these men would join him at water’s edge to dance in worshipful ecstasy. Instead they danced on “ecstasy,” the illicit drug.
When he first came out, he had explored traveling with the gay pack and found its conformity spirit crushing. He didn’t like how he went along with activities that violated his values just to gain crumbs of acceptance, not unlike the crumbs from his straight family.
Ignoring the crowds, Jonathan continued on the path to the shore finding his way in the boardwalk matrix that wove along the ocean. One path went into the dunes and sexual acting-out, one to the bars and the dance hall – and one to the shore with rolling surf.
He remembered all paths eventually lead to the true self and to God. Even circuitous paths through great darkness go home -- and eventually everyone wakes up. Should he join them, he thought, as more men passed in the night, even though joining the crowd had only brought him heart-ache in the past.
He arrived at ocean's edge, with the eternal surf rolling into his feet. Barefoot, he stood in the water, moonlight connecting him to the horizon. “Must I always be alone?” he doubted his sober choice to be away from the masses and with himself. “Am I afraid to be with people?” Yet that crowd was always a lonely place. “Am I afraid to be alone?” The questions became moot as beauty saturated his senses. “I’m not alone -- I’m with myself.” He felt a deep consonance and peace within himself as he communed with the moon, the surf, and himself. Then, he looked up. His best friend Andy appeared, smiling in the moonlight, "I thought you'd be here."
If I stay on the path – I’ll find companions.
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Prophets live in the wilderness
Prophets live in the wilderness so that they can speak the truth without censure. A prophet is a voice ahead of his or her time. A prophet tells the truth the world would deny. A prophet is a visionary who sees beyond the obvious to a more meaningful way. A prophet is a conscience in a world that would forget itself. A prophet speaks the words of God through a human voice and a human life.
Prophetic ability is feared by the norm. Any who challenge people to think, rethink, and question basic assumptions about identity, the family, and the purpose of being are not easy to be around.
Anyone, gay or straight, who is an outcast from the mainstream and lives outside the confines of conventional society, is free to be a prophet, a voice crying in the wilderness, speaking the truth.
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A story: An Angry Drag Queen – a Prophetess
The 4th annual Pride March finished and we settled into a rally in
Then a white guy with a short haircut, tight T-shirt, and blue jeans got up to speak. He was the new, gay role model -- a regular guy. Suddenly, appearing like a Fury out of hell, a fierce Hispanic drag queen, a torrent of energy with bad hair, a bad gown, and a drug habit stormed onto the stage and grabbed the mike. It was Sylvia Rivera who had fought at Stonewall that fateful night just a few years before.
"You all want to be men -- but don't forget, it was the drag queens that started gay liberation!" Her voice was raspy, hoarse, and desperate. Too much screaming, too much drugging -- too much pain and rejection over a lifetime. She was wrestled off the stage by four “real” men.
Silvia Rivera, a savage caricature of a woman, was right. It was her, and the likes of her, that finally had the courage to fight the police and a system of cruelty that had crushed gays for centuries. Now, we were ready to shove her and her kind into the background as an embarrassment, a painful reminder of our own troubled past. Now “real men” were going to take over gay liberation. If we would be accepted by society, or by ourselves, we would need presentable, “regular” white guys to lead us.
At the time, I didn't understand the implication of a raging, side-show freak -- nor did I realize the truth she spoke. In her own ragged style, she was a seer who foretold the dangers of repressing authenticity and conforming to an acceptable image. As she predicted, some of us would soon become “clones” (we used that term and not pejoratively), conforming to a macho image by wearing identical grey bombers jackets and jeans. We shunned more nuanced clothing – certainly nothing feminine. But a healthy identity could only be known by integrating gender complexity -- and also by integrating our painful history which included shame and rejection, a past Sylvia Rivera represented and we wanted to forget.
A hurt, ferocious drag queen was our conscience and a prophetess. As she was forcibly hauled off the stage by “real” men, I thought she was simply a street-crazy. Yet her raw message stuck with me and became more meaningful over the years. We can play it safe in conformity and its deadening consequences, or we can let our raw authenticity lead the way to liberation of our true selves – following in the rough yet revolutionary steps of Sylvia Rivera.
The comforts of conformity may tempt me, but the wilds of authenticity free my spirit.
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We owe a debt of gratitude to gender variants -- the mad, drag-queens and butch lesbian who stood up to the cops at Stonewall. It took these outrageous, outcast people who lived beyond the limits of social convention, and even the boundaries of gay conformity of the time, to stand up to social injustice. It took a drag queen to look hatred in the eye and say: Enough!
While other gays were trying to fit in, or disappear, a necessary and understandable survival strategy in a dangerous world, these social misfits couldn’t hide, and out of frustration, anger, and nothing-to-lose, they fought the forces of oppression.
God bless the lunatic fringe who defy a conforming world and its henchmen – the family and the traditional values of the norm. By living their originality, they extend the definitions of our humanity and soul for everyone. They give us all more room to breath and to be true in a constricting world.
Is it madness or is it genius? New creation has a bit of both. Then a few years down-the-road, people begin to recognize this hard won wilderness as truth. Now we say, "Of course we should have gay pride, and civil rights, and equal rights for women.” But it took social misfits, even drag queens, to say it first, while others hid frightened in the shadows.
When the rules are insane and every one is complying out of fear, it may take a mad queen, or any creative, misfit genius, to break through the complacency and scream, “Stop! This is hateful, unjust, and wrong! You can’t do this to me!”
The banner of human progress is often carried by the misfit. Thanks to the lunatic fringe of yesterday, all of us are freer today. I do not devalue my own "mad-cap" ideas. They may liberate the world.
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The Final Wilderness
The dark night of the soul
There is a time in our work to resolve the unconscious, when a dreaded low point occurs. We feel abandoned by the best within us – we feel abandoned by God. We have entered the dark night of the soul.
With deep anguish, we pray – but no one is listening, at least no god that we can perceive. We must fulfill our own prayer as a sacred adult for no savior is coming to redeem us, yet at this moment, we remain a terrified child. We have left friends and companions behind to enter this dark cave. No therapist could help us either. Even our own self-therapy seems to fail us in this dark hour of existential anguish. It is time to stand alone in the face of existence – this is our moment, this is our trial. We are plummeting to a new level of our depth. We are going through hell.
As part of an evolving creation, we trust that if we endure, life will find us and renew us. But this feels like an empty rationalization in the face of our pain. We feel abandoned by life … with no where to turn.
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At our lowest point, we turn to God in desperation -- and find a void. There seems to be no answer. Where is God in our pain? Has he abandoned us – like all the others? Have we abandoned ourselves? The loneliest time for a soul destined for greatness is this agonizing progression. As we have worked to evolve from a life based on externals and childish dreams of rescue, to a spiritually mature life, lived from within, we have hit this fundamental low point. We fear we have lost our way. We question if we will survive this agony? We pray that hope will find us in this spiritual exile -- where nothingness meets nothingness.
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Left alone with ourselves – we face the ultimate opportunity.
We must leave behind our limited parents, and friends who would undermine this painful journey. We even leave behind our limited version of God and enter this forlorn time and space by ourselves -- to meet our deepest emptiness alone. We trust from some primal instinct that this profound journey will not destroy us -- but save us and imbue us with lasting meaning.
The most painful feeling humans can endure is fear of abandonment and annihilation. The infant’s primal fear is parental desertion. This terror now takes adult form – and translates into feelings of being abandoned by God, by meaning, by life itself. These profound, fundamental, and agonizing feelings of loss are actually the child’s final nightmare as the adult psyche transitions into autonomous maturity. To suffer these feelings is a necessary prelude before the illuminated adult self can emerge. We call this painful conversion from the realms of darkest despair, the terrors of the abandoned child to the promise of enlightened adulthood the dark night of the soul. And every soul who would meet its true self and enter autonomous adulthood must traverse this terrifying and profoundly lonely terrain.
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The true spiritual seeker comes to God originally. Great spiritual masters go into the wilderness, literally and psychically, to encounter God personally without the intermediary of religion or the constraints of culture or family.
If we are freed of religion’s pressure to conform to its dogma and definitions, if we are freed of cultural and familial mythology that defines our relationship to God as awestruck, dependent children, if we dare to resolve the unconscious and the crimes of our ancestors buried there, then we, the seekers of God, can have an original encounter with the divine.
Only those who venture beyond the known into the wild terrain of the unexplored can encounter the divine in an evolutionary and revolutionary way. Seekers who dare to live and encounter God beyond the definitions of family and religion expand humanity’s soul.
Those gays, or any rare soul, who dare to use their outcast status to seek truth, have a spiritual advantage. Any who live beyond the walls of cultural conformity are in a position to have an authentic encounter with the divine. Gays, cruelly kicked out of mainline religions, can reframe their outcast status into an opportunity to meet God authentically. It is not facing God that is so terrifying -- it is facing the disapproval of god-like mother and father that seems like sure death. Frightened adult/children can not see God -- they can only see a version of disapproving or rescuing mother and father. This is God to the spiritually immature. Only individuated adults can encounter God, and claim God as an innate part of themselves.
Any authentic person who stands apart from the family and its religion can serve a greater purpose. An autonomous seeker of truth can come to God originally. Unencumbered by unquestioned dogma, and reverence for parents, the liberated seeker of truth can meet God face to face and expand the breadth of humanity’s embrace with the divine.
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During the winter solstice, when the days seem to descend into darkness never to return, we take comfort in the inevitable cycles of nature. There is an end to darkness and it is not destruction. The sun returns – and with a subtle shift on this shortest day, the sun begins its slow return to fullness and light.
It is not an accident that we celebrate Christmas near the solstice. As the sun is born in darkness, so the Christ, our true self, is born in our emptied and terrified hearts at our darkest hour. At our lowest point, God hasn’t abandoned us, but is being painfully born – within us.
Our ancestors intuitively and purposefully set the archetypal Christmas story at the darkest time of year -- God is born at our darkest hour. When we can no longer turn to old ideas embedded in the family system for comfort, when cruel derision confronts our orientation and authenticity and mocks our search for truth, when our own behavior and addictions will no longer assuage our pain, but kill us instead, it is time for a deeper vision. At the depth of our despair, God through our true self must be born into our lives -- or we will die.
In nature, when darkness can go no further, new light begins its return. If we do not succumb to death, or destructive addictions, or defeat when all seems lost, life will find a way – and take us to a place better than we imagined.
As we are able, we offer that which is shattered to God and to life. And God’s mystery that surrounds us and is within us waits to imbue us with deeper meaning. Seen properly, our darkest hour and deepest despair are God’s opportunity to enter our lives and transform us into the Child of Wonder of Christmas. Our darkest hour is God’s opportunity.
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Exile
Is exile necessary for enlightenment? Yes.
Must we journey into the wilderness to become enlightened? Is exile a prerequisite for holiness? Must I be separate from the tribe to become whole? Yes.
If we are to become enlightened, we must journey into the wilderness alone. We must separate from the limits and voices of family and friends who treated us ill and constricted our souls to find the truth of our being.
If enlightenment is the full illumination of the unconscious, then being away from the family’s and society's prescribed definitions is a necessity. We must journey into the wilderness, a psychic space untainted by familial expectations and prohibitions. We must separate from the family and tribe, even the gay tribe if we’re gay, to find authenticity.
Exile frees us from social and family obligation. Alone, in solitude, our sole obligation is to truth. There is no one to answer to, no obligation to protect our parents’ image or to honor them blindly. It is in exile that we can admit the truth -- the misuse at our parents’ hands and their cohorts in society. We can also seek our sacred nature.
If we remain in the family, or our adopted gay family, or any conventional group, our allegiance remains with them. We will imitate their values and belittle our true feelings just to belong. How can we freely explore the traumas induced by both the family of origin and orientation, if we remain loyal to these systems which demand denial and psychic sleep? How can we shed light into all the dark corners of our being, if honesty is forbidden by our straight and gay families? The fact is we can’t.
We journey into the wilderness to find a sacred place, apart from family and social pressure, to delve into the walled off, most frightening, and most sacred parts of ourselves. In solitude, we come face to face with our traumatic history – and with our divinity. And like Jesus in the wilderness, angels will come and minister unto us. We will always find friends and co-travelers to aid our journey.
I am enlightened in exile.
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As we take our lives seriously, we part company with those who don’t. We leave people and friends behind who would thwart our vitality -- even destroy us. We leave spirit-numbing jobs and situations that would depress us. We start a new chapter in life. Through self-nurture, we begin to build a home within ourselves, a sacred haven at the core of our being.
When we attend to the needs of the hurt child within us, listen to his pain, allow him to cry his tears, we begin to construct a safe place within ourselves for him to grow up, and mature into who he or she was meant to be.
As we befriend the child of our past, we no longer look outside of ourselves for others to parent us, or to alleviate our pain, or to care for our needs. We are able to tend our own garden of gifts and build a home of our own making inside of our being. We become a safe haven.
With a sacred home within us, it is safe to be, safe to feel all our feelings, safe even to feel the traumas that devastated us as children and have continued to confound our adult years. We build a structure strong enough to hold the fullness of who we are as we entwine with the force of divine spirit.
Living within our sacred home, we can say, “I have come home at last. What joy I feel to hold myself in my own care. At last, I have found a safe haven on earth -- inside of me.”
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The end of exile
Exile is not an end in itself. At some point, we must tame the wilderness and make it our home. In this home of our own making, our true self is safe and secure. From this powerbase, we take the risk and return to the norm, even the land of our origin, to present our case and give our gifts. We tell the conforming world that there is another way that is authentic. It’s a better way than spinning madly and blindly into extinction. We have work to do, a ministry to perform – a world to save with our best efforts.
Some die in exile, never entering the Promised Land of the true self. For some, it is too difficult to integrate the disturbing facts of early existence, too painful to fully feel the horror that we endured as children, too sad that the home of origin was not safe or supportive of who we were, including our gayness or originality. Many languish in exile, until despair squeezes the last drops of life out of these homesick victims. If we persist in feeling exiled, and never find ourselves, we remain refugees, victims of the people and places we left long ago. We remain a lonely, abandoned child. Addictions will litter our lives to cover the pain of being outcast. We may die in exile.
But leaving home must be seen clearly. We fled not be to cursed and abandoned to die. We escaped to live, to save our souls, and embrace a profound possibility -- evolving into new consciousness. There is enlightenment in exile if we persist.
As we come into the Promised Land of the true self, exile ends. Having left the limits of family, we become citizens of the universe. We are no longer in exile -- but home, living in the land rich with the milk and honey of our sacred existence. There is no place that is not home, when we are at home in ourselves.
When we feel strong enough, we may return to visit our kinfolk. But our center of emotional gravity and identity remains within ourselves – not with our limited forbearers. We are our own referent, and do not look to our family for cues for our existence’s value.
We may have left home a victim, even thrown out if we were gay, but we return to the land of our family and the world of the norm, a hero, an integrated adult, bearing gifts. Anyone who is differentiated is an embodiment of truth and for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the person before them is the way to personal salvation. This is the most profound gift anyone can give – the example of an enlightened being.
Exile ends when I return to myself. My true home is within.
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