But sin has nothing to do with it!

I have mentioned my discussion group to you all? Last week we were talking about sin. Of course, in  discussing the topic there is a definite risk of personal revelation, and though the context of this group is Episcopalian a surprising number of us were raised Roman Catholic. Confession being so closely wedded to sin in the Roman Catholic mind, we gained a small window into one another's experiences in the confessional. They were singularly banal, and the discussion turned on the strategy of the Church in creating so much guilt in our young minds over actions that a moral adult can not even entertain as being transgressions. One thing that really took me by surprise was the repeated inclusion of "swearing" as a matter for inclusion in the confessional formula.

I was surprised not because I did not also "confess" that particular failing, I think I must have, though in truth I don't remember, but because for such a long time my thinking about it has taken such a different track. (You should be playing Lenny Bruce's "Fuck You" routine as a background to this.) You see, I have no problem saying the words, yet I never, or almost never, use them. This is so much the case that even my clients will apologize to me if they let one slip, thinking they have exhibited some moral lapse.

What such people don't realize is that they have only exhibited a lack of vocabulary. In addition, they rob these very useful little words of all their impact by unthinking over use. I will tell you that when amongst those I know, if I let out an "Oh, Fuck" I immediately have everyone's attention, which is what we desire from that particular utterance. Such expressions seem to be very forceful, but in fact are fragile little flowers that loose all their fragrance when trampled by moronic tongues.

I almost never use them. That of course does not mean that I am guiltless of offensive speech. It's just that, well, to confess, I get much more sadistic satisfaction from speech that offends without the object understanding it's offense, or which leaves the object in that most distressing of situations: confused, but embarrassed to confess their confusion.

"You, You, librating lestrigon"

Even spell check is upset!

"You limicolous troilist"

Another tack is to imply the invective with out meaning anything ill (this is for the penultimate equivocator:)

"He's an henotic escrivan"

"Why, I'll delumbrate the demot!"

These charming words all come from "Foyle's Philavery" which I recommend most highly for your lexical amusement!

 You will now understand that my abstention from profanity, which seems so admirable to many, is actually rooted in a much more grievous failing, and one that was almost absent from our discussion. "Pride goeth before the fall" was the constant refrain of my childhood. I long ago decided that my own fall would be accompanied by the most graceful narrative I could conjure!

Cheers

State's Rights

I am very relieved that the astronomical controversy regarding the planetary status of Pluto has been resolved, at least in Illinois. You are aware of this; that it has been determined that our beloved Pluto (the planet, not the dog) has had it's qualifications questioned? There is the issue that if Pluto remains a planet then other occupants of the Kuiper belt must also be counted as such. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about all this. I personally prefer the inclusive solution of 23 planets, but then I am an Episcopalian.

You perhaps are asking what this has to do with state's rights? Well, it seems that the legislature of Illinois has stepped in and officially declared that Pluto is a plant; at least while it passes over Illinois! I assume it will swell with pride sufficient that it's size will increase the necessary amount. We then will be confronted by a constitutional crises: if Pluto is a planet in Illinois must it not be a planet in the rest of the states? You see, we've been so excited about Obama and now we discover that we may miss the unifying wisdom of Mr. Bush. I am sure he would issue an executive order circumventing the mean scientists.

Personally I see an opportunity for the homosexulists in Massachusetts  here. I propose that we enter into a treaty with Illinois stipulating that we will recognize Pluto as a planet if they will recognize same sex marriage! Then we could talk to Indiana about their idea of making Pi equal to 3. Think how much simpler that would make things.....

Cheers

Lent, part four

"I am mistaken if you do not make a strange and proper jumble of the sublime and the ridiculous, the lofty and the low. I have looked at the world, for my part, and come to the conclusion that I know not which is which."

W.M.Thackery, from Catherine: A Story

Having gone through all that self revelation regarding last Lent, I must now discuss this Lent.

Before I consider this years resolution I want to relate something that took place on Sunday Morning. A member of the theology discussion group I belong to- the very generous and passionate member who gives us her house to meet in, often claims to not believe in God. This is very Episcopalian. Rev. Werntz repeated in a recent sermon the statement that there were many things that Episcopalians can believe,"none of which we actually do." On the surface this seems odd, I suppose, but in fact it reflects the wisdom of Elizabeth I who saw a society, a nation, and a church ravaged by conflicting contention about things no one could prove, and she managed to construct a church which could unite through society and ritual people who were divergent in belief. This was not a bad idea, both realistic and truly, well, Christian.

Back to my friend, and her disbelief, which I disbelieve in. She gave as illustration of her impatience with the concept of God the "Great Litany." I have managed to miss that ritual, until this past Sunday.

People today live in, what shall I say, the promise, or the illusion, of a stable healthy comfortable, and a safe life. I agree, that in my past I often would chuckle about such quaint phrases as "from the crafts and assaults of the devil" or "By Thine agony and bloody sweat."

She, my friend, would seem to think that these graphic and morbid phrases were irrelevant and meaningless in our lives today, and spoke of a God she couldn't relate too.

On Sunday I listened with different ears than I would have in the past. The years of sickness, loss, despair, fragility and uncertainty have changed my view of life's context. It often seems to me that I now occupy a space different from the one my contemporaries do, a space much more like that of the sixteenth century, when life had no certainties, when death and loss were constant companions to the individual life.

The service started with the litany, being chanted, as the procession of cross, candles, choir, deacon and priest moved in slow cadence around the nave of the church. My fellow parishioners complain of the nave being dark. It is, it is a little mysterious and a hundred years of wear have left it feeling like the gothic parish church it imitates. We chanted for mercy, for deliverance. "Remember not, Lord Christ, our offenses..." "Spare us, good Lord"

"From all blindness of heart, from pride, from vain glory and hypocrisy; from envy, hatred and malice; and from all want of charity, Good lord deliver us"

"From lightning and tempests; from earthquake, fire and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine, Good Lord deliver us."

There was nothing self conscious, or showy about all this. perhaps because of that it became a very moving, a very transporting experience, and it spoke to my heart with an unexpected force.

During Gay pride in 1992 I walked onto Boston Common and looked around the 100,000 gay people who were celebrating. I could see no one my own age. Every one was ten years older, or ten years younger. The AIDS epidemic had reached it's height, but "cocktails" were not yet available to combat it. It was a chilling experience, and I am left with almost no one who shared it. I now have that plague, and have spent years in despair. The condition of my health is so fragile that I view each spring as the last. Dr Choi would say I'm being overly dramatic, and perhaps I am, but my point is that now I hear the litany from a place in which all these odd and archaic concerns seem very real and pertinent to my life. I was moved to tears by the solemn chanting procession as it wound it way through the congregation. The liturgy of the church speaks from a place that we all like to think is irrelevant to our 21st century lives. I am here to tell you not to be so sure! Later, the tears came again. this time thinking about the musicians, and the church and the people who attend there; how lovely they are, how really beautiful. That beauty causes me to start to think once again of passing on as being a loss.

But lest I leave my dear Mr. Thackeray all alone up there at the top of this post I will make some comments about what I should give up for lent!

I was dressed in a Paul Smith shirt with a Dolce and Gabanna tie, both in the perfect ecclesiastical purple. I had been saving them for the season; I was wondering what to follow with on subsequent Sundays- black shirts, off course.

I've been thinking perhaps I should give up ice cream, I am accumulating a little fat, which is not something I've had to worry about since my little periods of wasting disease, and I really am vain about my flat stomach... A friend and I were discussing this this other day- he loves vegetarian food, and considered giving up wine, but is leaning toward giving up meat. I myself have seriously considered giving up long sentences. A friend who sings in choir was talking about giving up joking, but I rather thought increasing joking was a better idea. I was thinking about a wise friend who once spoke in terms of doing challenging things rather than not abstaining from pleasures.

All this is a delemna, and I suppose if I were sincere I would start going to church in jeans and a "Tee" shirt during lent... but then that would be disrespectful, wouldn't it? or so said Mom in the years when it would have been a preference!

I will revert to Mr. Thackeray, this time from "The Newcomes"

For in the majority of cases conscience is an elastic and very flexible article, which will bear a deal of stretching, and will adapt itself to a great variety of circumstances.

Cheers

Just In Case You Missed It

Today is "Sword Swallowers Appreciation Day!" See the amazing benefits to be gained by keeping up with the Scientific Community! You can read all about it here.

Actually I shouldn't be snide, it appears that I am about to become a beneficiary of their research, thanks to my ulcer. 

I will provide a resolution to the "Lent" Series presently, but thought a chuckle, now that the ashes have worn off my forehead, would be nice. No, I didn't wash them off, I don't do things by halves.

lent, part three

Two Despairs

The First Despair

It was after the winter

Of my contented resignation;

After the time of white wind rattled sashes

Hoar and blue and brittle;

Of tepid light as level as the drafts

That wafted silence through

My frozen soul, content to sit

In passing winter days, alone and cloistered.

One day as I passed the garden on my errand

I saw that the snow drops had bloomed.

No joy came with them however.

In this quiet and despairing state, this frozen stasis

Springs annual thrill no longer rang in me,

For each passing hour seemed one less

Of a numbered few. The harbinger of Spring

Being also the herald of a passing year.

"How many more?" "not many!"

The joy of coming signed only for the coming doom.

A cold despair drove me from the world.

2007 was a particularly beautiful year, and I had started doing landscape photographs. I was walking, some days long distances, with my camera. I was immersing myself in the beauty of nature. This work was my prayer, my hymn of praise, but still I had no smiles. I felt my smiles had been stolen from me along with my house and my identity; I had survived that horrible year of being imprisoned, both literally and in that mistaken identity and while I came out of it all with some sort of honor, and some sort of health the answer "not many" in those stanzas above were a consolation rather than a threat.

I had started a year of very arduous treatment in December of 2007 and by March of 2008 was completely debilitated. Somehow, somewhere, during February I started to fight. I just had to get back out into the world. The sun was changing and I was desperate to see it, to see the plants breaking the ground. Here I was, in this really awful state and yet managed to decide that since I wasn't dead yet I might as well live. I tried to find my smiles. I tried to give up despair, last year, in the very early spring. For Lent.

Sometime later I added a new despair, to replace the old one. You see, like so many things we don't use for a while I found I had misplaced my despair, and when I tried to find it after Easter I kept finding babies giggling in the playground, and dogs chasing frisbees, and people giving me seats on the subway, and smiling- here in Boston, I'm not kidding. When I found my despair again it was very different. Early last summer I was walking down a street looking at the leaves, and actually started crying, thinking how few more times I'd see them fresh again, thinking how really wonderful our world and our lives are; how hard it will be to leave.

The New Despair

But I still pass the years here,

Much to my surprise, and have

Faced them each since that blue and lonely winter.

Each has had it's spring and summer,

And I have watched the sky at equinox and solstice.

I see it joyfully again, and again I have planted

Zinnias and dahlias as my mother did,

And I sing the hymn of nature's beauty.

And yet, this evening, as the sun was nestling

Gently behind a cloud on it's journey

To the Western horizon, my heart

Yearned for it's beauty as it beaconed me.

Straining with love, as the soft warm air

Wafts around me I think:

"How many more?" "not many!"

A warm despair of yearning for soft light

Drives me to the world.

Lent, part two

I know it is forbidden to destroy ourselves, but I trust it is forbidden in this sort; that we not destroy ourselves despairing of God's mercy. The mercy of God is immeasurable, the cognition of men comprehend it not... Far is it from me to be tempted with Satan, I am only tempted with sorrow, whose sharp teeth devour my heart. 

Sir Walter Raleigh

The time following the death of Aramis,"the mad Genius," was a cold desert for me. I was left alone, developing pneumonia, had lost my health insurance and therefore my medications. When I started them again it turned out I had become resistant- I've stated this elsewhere in this blog. I was waiting, lonely, but contented, for the end to come. It seemed not very far off. My allusion to UTZ in the title of this blog is to the land in which Job lived. During the subsequent years everything that I cared for was taken from me. Up to a point I would joke that I had lost everything except the cat, and then the cat died, but like Job I kept peace with my maker. It never occurred to me otherwise. 

That is why I started off today with the quote from Raleigh. It is possible to be so resigned to the end of life that one can be even eager for it, to be in despair of the continuance of life without being in despair of, feeling abandoned by God's love.

I speak in retrospect, at the time I did not see myself as being in despair, in fact I wouldn't come to  see that until much later, when I started to come out of it. 

One may say that I was "depressed." In fact a therapist suggested it "Do you think you may be a little depressed?" I just chuckled, "Doctor, you know what's happened in the last 12 months, what would you think of me if I weren't 'a little depressed?'" he took it gracefully and acknowledged that I was right. 

This was before the death of my brother, and the destruction of my house. It almost embarrasses me to relate all these dramatic events. I keep a notebook in which I record my readings. After reading "the Mysteries of Udolpho" last year I started a very arch comment about melodrama and then stopped mid sentence because my recent history was no less melodramatic. All the while I was expecting the last ride into the sunset so all these bad goings on seemed like temporary annoyances; irritants to be endured until my time to join Aramis and my brother. Sometimes when the sun would lower to the western horizon I could imagine them up there having a good old time- very likely stoned and not the least bit worried about the one they left behind. I would pray that God, in his immeasurable mercy would stop the sharp teeth of grief from tearing at my heart and take me. 

I mentioned the sun in the western horizon, but should have said "when I went out to see it." At first illness and my medications kept me indoors. Every cloud they say...., The resolution to medication resistance was a new "cocktail" which reduced the extreme light sensitivity that had been keeping me indoors, but still, nature and the passing seasons seemed irrelevant to me, and the passing of time was only a reminder of how quickly I would be gone. Dr Choi, my infectious disease Doctor kept insisting that she would keep me alive to enjoy old age. Very sweet, I thought, and I appreciated her care, and happily I still do. I thought she was very wrong at that time but now think she may be right!

The worst thing about this is that I have always reveled in the beauty of nature, and when I look back at that time- yes it is different now, and that is really what this series of posts is about- when I look back I see that I was in despair. That despair is what I gave up for lent last year.

Lent, part one

It comes to be that time. The seasons and the calendar rotate inexorably even while we ignore it. I was an Altar boy during grammar school. On early weekday mornings I would walk to the church to serve at Mass. It was in Latin then, and still I find those words more easily than I do the English,"Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentem..." I have this image of walking down the little hill in the woods next the house and crossing the wooden footbridge over the brook with the moon reflecting in the ripples just as light was breaking in the chilly sky. A time came when I felt that passing the brook and going into the church was not to go toward, but away from my "Patrem omnipotentem." I heard his voice not in the monotonous drone of the priest saying Mass in the stuffy little church my parents had been married in, but in the cool wind that whispered through the white pine that overlooked the bridge. "Credo...", what did I come to believe?

Not so very differently in the core of my heart, but very differently regarding externals, as the banality of the Vatican II Mass in English competed unsuccessfully with the beauty of nature. The Roman Catholic church seemed to become a conveyor belt of dead ideas that at one time had produced a wondrous material culture but had now betrayed itself. I became "Culturally Catholic." That term designates those who have fallen away from practice, and often much belief, but still recognize the cultural and social traditions that informs so very deeply the sensibilities of those who have been raised in observant families. I could not feel that my homosexual orientation was wrong, it never separated me from the divine as I understand it, but it did separate me from the church. I could not participate as myself and would not participate as a hypocrite.

Finally, I became an apostate. The Roman Catholic Church would not baptize my younger brother's son. My mother had had cancer for many years and was very near the end, and was very concerned that the boy be baptized. My brother was willing enough to please her but his wife had been married once before, and the church would only baptize the child as a bastard, which she would not agree to.

I was discussing this with a friend who was a member of the vestry at Grace church in Providence, and she became very indignant. She was a very close friend of my partner and myself. This is a way of saying that when she invited me to join her church it was in full knowledge of the issue that had kept me out of the RC church. So I became an Episcopalian because Mom accepted the validity of their baptism, and Fran could be comfortable with the conditions. I, and my partner, brought the child to the font, and I have remained an Episcopalian ever since.

Which is more a result of my not having become anything else than the result of any great surge of attendance or commitmentt.

It was very shortly after this that I moved to Boston. That was 27 years ago. I did not become a member of any parish until just recently, and my attendance at church was, to say the least, sporadic. I must confess that it was very hard to conceive that what I held to be right, what I knew and honored in myself, could sit in church without being castigated, were it exposed. But what purpose would there be in attending as half of myself. I spoke earlier about my sexual orientation, but as I matured and became a thoughtful person the issue was much larger than that. It seemed to me that participating fully would require my pretending to believe a lot of things that I was not sure about, or heartily disbelieved. I did discover at The church of the Advent, and at All Saints Ashmont amazingly beautiful services, even some of the latin I knew as a child, but the weight of expected belief always stood in the way of my being comfortable. Unfortunately I denied myself comfort for too long, only recently finding Emmanuel, but then "to everything there is a season," I shouldn't regret that I came to it when I did.

What is interesting, though, is that through all these many years the calendar continued to turn, Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter. Even among the non observant it is inescapable. Even the atheist wants his Sunday off! And in my heart there was always a response to the turning of the seasons of the liturgical year, and last year, though I've told no one (except my therapist, of course,) I gave something up for lent.

Tomorrow I'll tell you what it was!