whoops, where've I been?

Wow, I almost forgot I had a blog!  I totally forgot about my last entry even... but looking at the date, I can see it was not long before my friend found out her lung cancer had returned, and she chose to have no further treatment. She was 87, and as she put it, "she'd had a good life."

And I asked her if she'd like me and my partner to stay with her, and be her home hospice caregivers, and she said "yes." And she died at home, peacefully, in her own bed, with her cats, on August 22.  And now it's November.

The message I have for you, first, is "you can do it." I had no experience with hospice.  I was kind of nervous about that. Could I do it, help someone to die at home? But dying is just a part of life we're all going to experience.  It's quite universal despite our ignorance and denial about it.  It was a real honor and a learning experience to go through that process with someone. "Draw back the veil" and all that.

If you have the opportunity to walk that road with someone, I am here to tell you, with the support that today's hospice programs provide, "YOU CAN DO IT."  

Here's the tree at her graveside. There were squirrels and crows nearby. She is at rest. And I have a much better understanding about death and the dying process.

Sunday Nugget - Hymn 522 - Amarte Solo a Ti Senor

Well, I haven't been blogging for a while, because I'm way behind on my professional website work, so when I sit down in front of the computer, I feel like I really have had to stay focused on customers, instead of "belly button gazing," to paraphrase one of the choir members.

But I'm going to try to stay more attuned to the blog by dropping in more simple "nuggets" of things that seem meaningful even if I don't take the time to ramble on about them. (Here's a picture of the "world's largest gold nugget" called the "hand of faith" on display in Vegas)

So my first Nugget from Sunday's Mother's Day service is this hymn, Amarte Solo a Ti, Senor, which the choir sang with English lyrics.  There was a line in the English lyric, "I will protect the weak, my lord; I will defend the poor, my lord" and that really "wowed" me.

I thought, wow, this is a cool religion, that doesn't just tell you to go off and sit under a tree and forget the world until you have somehow forgotten yourself and transcended... this religion, this Jesus, he tells you to get out there and protect the weak and defend the poor.  Not just to worry about yourself and your spiritual journey, and hide away from the world, and your personal search for Joy, but to get out there and help people who need help.  Not to just sing, "I will love only you oh lord" but also "I will protect the weak and defend the poor."

OK, this was supposed to be a simple, quick "nugget" and here I am going off on a tangent again.

So this hymn reminds me of a recent opinion piece in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristof called A Church Mary Can Love.  In it, he writes "I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns. So when you read about the scandals, remember that the Vatican is not the same as the Catholic Church. Ordinary lepers, prostitutes and slum-dwellers may never see a cardinal, but they daily encounter a truly noble Catholic Church in the form of priests, nuns and lay workers toiling to make a difference."

He also writes about the early church being far more accepting of women, including an early apostle named Junia, whose name was later masculinized to revise her gender.  You can read more about her at wikipedia here .

I looked for "Loving Only You My Lord" in English on Youtube but didn't find it... so here is a version with the original hispanic lyrics "Amarte Solo a Ti Senor." I chose this one because something about those flutes is really compelling.  The graphics are a little cheesy but there is one I particularly liked at the 1:39 mark, showing Jesus sitting aside and intently watching our little blue marble.

I will protect the weak, my lord.  I will defend the poor, my lord. Not quite ready to commit fully to that vow, but it's catching at me.

Is the Federated Church the cure for Avatar Depression Syndrome?

After I saw Avatar the first time, I spoke about it at church, saying that one of the unexpected reactions I had to the movie, was that it made me think of the Federated Church, in a fond way.

This confused people, because it's a movie about giant blue skinned aliens in outer space.

Nevertheless, my comment  stimulated a few conversations with people that normally don't interact with me.  Some kids and Moms told me how much they loved the movie, and how their sons also felt compelled to see it several times.  An older retired military man said he had found the movie somewhat offensive in its depiction of the main villain as a mercenary military for hire (I agreed). It was briefly mentioned in the movie that the military had conducted many previous worthwhile missions, but there is no doubt one of the two biggest villains in the picture is a military man. However, the biggest hero in the picture is also a military man.

When church members asked me, I explained my comment about Avatar, by saying that the reason I dragged myself to a real movie theater to see the film, instead of waiting for the DVD, was that I had read that a significant group of viewers were developing "Avatar Depression Syndrome."  A movie that makes people depressed?? Count me in !!! What was I thinking??? LOL.

Apparently some viewers who have seen the movie many times, end up feeling depressed that our own world is not as beautiful and interconnected as the movie's imaginary alien world and people.

In the movie, on the alien world of Pandora, the invading humans gradually discover that all living things on the planet are literally interconnected, with a biological network. The alien race called the Nav'i have a little feathery connector on their tail, that they can use to literally plug themselves into both individual creatures, that they ride or fly, and also into a larger global network. This biological connectedness gives rise to a super planetary consciousness and deity called Eywa.

In one on-line forum titled "You Know You're an Avatar Fan If..." one fan wrote "...you wish that upon death, heaven will be Pandora..." Link here .

Anyway, some people in our earthly audience see this amazing imaginary interconnectedness, depicted in stunningly realistic 3D glowing technicolor, and then the lights come on, and they feel permanently isolated and shut off from their own relatively drab industrial world.  And they get depressed and wish they could go back and live in the movie. You can read Audiences Experience Avatar Blues here .

When I read that the movie was affecting people this way, it was a clue to me that something was going on that was larger than just an epic sci-fi blockbuster.  So I went to see it on the big screen, knowing I might walk away stricken with Avatar Depression Syndrome. But instead I thought about the Federated Church. And I immediately wanted to see the movie again, and go to church.

Remember how some kids saw Star Wars twenty and thirty times when it first came out, and later George Lucas admitted he had used mythic elements from the work of Joseph Campbell? This was later described more explicitly in Campbell and Bill Moyers series The Power of Myth .

So I went to see Avatar, and instead of finding myself feeling disconnected and yearning for the connectedness of the Navi, I realized that the Federated Church was providing that sense of connection and spirituality and wisdom for me, that was expressed in such an other-worldly exotic way in the movie.

The planet Pandora has this sacred place called the Tree of Souls, which is this weeping willow type tree with long glowing white leaves.  When the Nav'i die, their conscousness is stored in the Tree of Souls and the living Nav'i can plug their tails into the tree to communicate with them.

Well, when I look out at the Federated Church congregation from my seat in the back of the choir loft, I see a lot of glowing white hair, in the choir and in the congregation.  So the Tree of Souls also reminded me of all the white haired members of the congregation that store all the wisdom and memory of the church.  The Navi can plug into their tree to reach the planet's gaia goddess figure Eywa.  And I feel like I am trying to plug in and access god, through all the white hairs in the church congregation as well... my own Tree of Souls right here in Orleans Massachusetts!

Another thing that reminded me of the Federated Church, is that when the Navi pray, they all put their hands on each others shoulders and sing.  During flu season our choir was making a prayer circle by resting our hands on each other's shoulders, instead of holding hands. So that also reminded me of the Nav'i.

So, some of the reasons Avatar reminded me of the church were pretty superficial:  white hair of congregation= white leaves of Tree of Souls.  Na'vi pray with hands on shoulders=choir making circle with hands on shoulders because of fears of swine flu.

Then there are some other paths the movie may lead you down-- the parallel of the avatar Jake Sully sent from the heavens to Pandora in the local race's body, teaching them how to save themselves, killed by his own people, and finally resurrected, is an interesting "compare and contrast" with the story of Jesus.

And Oprah's latest spiritual guru, Eckhart Tolle, was recently written up in a USAToday story with the comment "Avatar's basic message of reality as pervaded by a field of intelligence struck Tolle as "a very important spiritual idea brought forward in a way that people could enjoy."


Reality pervaded by a field of intelligence ?? Is that God? What do you think? You can watch part of the new Avatar trailer below (click the triangle in the lower left corner). It's somewhat cropped... so if you want to see it in widescreen you can go to the official site here

Official Avatar Movie

iPhone and iPad - Royal Telephone ? There's an App for that!

Some time ago the choir sang an energetic ditty about a Royal Telephone we can use to talk to Jesus, and get answers directly from god's royal line.  You can read the lyrics and hear the melody here . It was a fun piece to sing in harmony and we even adapted it for a choir member's birthday party. (What a fun party that was, thank you Bob's family!).

"Telephone to glory, oh, what joy divine!
I can feel the current moving on the line,
Built by God the Father for His loved and own,
We may talk to Jesus through this royal telephone."

I also liked the song because I love my iPhone.  It's one of those "game-changers," like the DVR, where a piece of technology makes a radical alteration in your life, for the better.  I remember asking a friend who had just gotten Tivo (which is a brand of DVR), if it was worth it.  He replied, completely seriously, that it had changed his life.  I did not expect that answer! So I signed up for one, and as I slowly learned to use it, it changed my life for the better.  My friend was right. Now I can't watch TV without a DVR.  It's just too archaic.

My iPhone is the same way. It took a little time and effort to make the switch from thinking "this is my phone" to thinking "there's an app for that," but with a little effort I did make the jump, became seriously impressed with Apple's attention to detail, and now would be loathe to part with my trusty little iPhone. I even bought a share of stock in Apple.  With the recent release of the iPad, which is a larger version of the iPhone, I would buy more Apple stock if I could.  It's going to be huge.

"There's an app for that" refers to the little software applications that you download to your iPhone. Making phone calls is only a fraction of what the iPhone does. There are now 185,000 available apps... many are free or cost only a dollar or two.... games...navigation...books... gadgets... self help... social tools... car maintenance... I could go on.  Perhaps this quote sums it up best-- I read recently of a man who was crushed and trapped in rubble after the earthquake in Haiti. "Alone in the darkness beneath layers of rubble, Dan Woolley felt blood streaming from his head and leg. Then he remembered -- he had an app for that." 

He had a first aid app on his iPhone, that helped him treat his injuries and keep awake and alert until rescue arrived.  (At the end of the story, he still says he's grateful to God for getting him through the ordeal, so the iPhone doesn't get all the credit).

So what makes the iPhone a royal telephone?  Well, it turns out it's a great bible reader too. You can read more about reading the bible on the iPad by clicking on this link  "The Bible is Alive on the Most Modern Tablet"  .

I use my iPhone to read the Message bible.  The Message (click the link to read about it at Wikipedia) is a new translation of the bible in contemporary language, which the author was inspired to begin as an effort to capture the "vitality and directness" of the new testament as written in the original Greek texts. He says, "I hoped to bring the New Testament to life for two different types of people: those who hadn't read the Bible because it seemed too distant and irrelevant and those who had read the Bible so much that it had become 'old hat.'


Well I definitely fell in the former group.  And now much to my amazement, when I have a few minutes to spare, I can now pull up the bible on my phone.  I never used to read the bible.  Now I do, a lot. It's really an amazing story. (Of course these electronic bible editions have all sorts of fancy tools to highlight, compare, notate, etc that I haven't learned to use, yet.  I just read it. If you want to click through 100 images of what bible reading software can do on the iPad, click here) So, my iPhone is now my bible, literally.

It's not all good news, though.  My love for gadgetry and my royal telephone is tempered by this story outlining the negative ecological implications of this type of technology. There are labor questions, and particularly the dangers and consequences of mining and refining the fancy metals needed for all the hidden workings.  And despite the fact that you might think it's better to read a thousand books on one gadget, and thereby save a lot of trees from being turned into paper, in fact, a recent analysis shows that paper books are really more gentle to the planet than e-book readers.  Paper is a renewable resource, unlike heavy metals, and doesn't require a steady stream of electricity.

So maybe I will eventually look for a pocket sized paper Message bible, when I am able to evolve beyond my current state of rapt technological immersion.

Still, today, I thank my iPhone and Apple Computer for bringing me the words of Jesus.

Easter Sunday, God's Secret Service, and the Butterfly

Wow, what an Easter.  As a kid I loved the egg hunts.  I still enjoy the candy.  I was always mildly irritated by having to attend an Easter Dinner every year as if it was some important holiday.


Well, surprise, suddenly it is an important holiday to me. Thank you, Federated Church.

I've written previously about the Maundy Thursday Tenebrae service in the dark...amazing.

Good Friday, I attended an interfaith service at the local Catholic Church. I didn't find it very moving, except perhaps for seeing all the priests/ministers/pastors working together to lead worship, but it was another piece of the Easter journey.

Saturday I washed my dogs and my bike, and read some of the Message bible.  I kind of got into it... the story is coming together better for me, how the bible is set up, and how we know what we think we know about Jesus. Then I ran across the 10 Commandments with Charlton Heston on TV.  Believe it or not, I have never seen this film.  Well I still haven't seen the whole thing, but I've seen part of it... Egyptians in shimmering gold lame outfits and hollywood starlets with midwestern accents as famous jewish women from the bible... amazing.  A quick read at Wikipedia about the film showed me where it's accurate biblically and where it's not... and said that in today's dollars, the 10 Commandments would be one of the 10 top grossing films of all time, at just under a billion dollars. Apparently DeMille filled in some details from sources such as Josephus, the Sefer ha-Yashar, and the Chronicle of Moses, as well as the Qur'an (click the links to go to the wikipedia entries). You can read about the movie here .

Sunday I dragged myself out of bed in the dark, showered and shaved, and got out to Nauset Beach for a sunrise service with the Methodist Church.  I don't remember much of the actual service, but the setting and the sunrise was a truly spiritual event.  I've seen plenty of sunsets... I vow to see more sunrises.  Here's an actual Nauset Beach sunrise photo (not from this Easter though):

Then at the 10 am service, Pastor Sally was on fire!  (First she acknowledged the "Christmas and Easter" visitors that filled the sanctuary, with a funny joke about a pastor trying to get an Easter-only worshipper to join the army of god full-time...the visitor replies that he's actually already in the army, it's just that he's in the secret service.) She admitted that even she has those "secret service" moments.

And the Rev. Dr. Phil Mitchell (an awfully nice, humble guy, for such a long title) had a hilarious children's chat moment, as he was leading up to the analogy of Jesus rising from the crucifixion as a butterfly emerges from the cocoon... and one tiny little kid just said right into the microphone something like, "Jesus is just like a butterfly because he was raised up to god" and Phil had the good sense to know when he had been upstaged and end it right there... saying "thanks, you said in a few seconds what the grownups are now going to spend an hour to say."  Another little kid quietly corrected Phil, that moths come from cocoons, and butterflies come from a chrysalis... but that kid wasn't near the microphone so he didn't really get his point across to the whole congregation.

We do laugh a lot at the Federated Church.   And I think we truly celebrated Jesus' resurrection.

Anyway, it also gave me a new way to think about my time in Orleans... while I cast off the remnants of my old life and prepare for a permanent move to Hawaii... as time of reorganization like the caterpillar going into the chrysalis before emerging as the butterfly.  It can be painful and complicated and involves a lot of reorganization, but something great comes out at the end, much lighter and able to fly... so that gave me some good inspiration for slogging away through this period of my life.

Finally, I had just read that the Monarch butterfly that migrates from Southern Canada down to Mexico and back, does so over several generations... the butterfly that starts the trip dies on  the way, but his offspring continue the journey until it is complete.

So, if Jesus is the butterfly, does he die and return many times before his journey is complete, like the Monarch?  I just recently read someone saying that Jesus had already returned-- they believed that Martin Luther King JR was reincarnated Jesus, and he was killed again... another butterfly generation in a long migration?

Tenebrae - Were You There ?

Pastor Sally Norris led an amazing worship service last thursday night.

From the program... "the service of Tenebrae is an ancient church tradition, dating back to the fifth century.  it dramatizes the suffering, death, and burial of Jesus Christ. The service moves from light to darkness. Seven candles are gradually extinguished, symbolizing the flight and denial of the disciples and friends of Jesus after the crucifixion... we remember that Jesus this night gave -- and gives -- us a new commandment: 'this is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you... This I command you, to love one another.' (John 13:34)"

From the Call to Worship: ".... O God, help me this night not to fall away from you and from Jesus. Strengthen my faith. Increase my love for you. I have come to be washed, fed, and healed."

Prayer of Confession: "Spirit of Christ be with us now. We try to avoid this journey you are taking.  We may not watch and pray with you. We may deny you. Help us to face our fear of the Cross on which you died. Help us to face the crosses we must carry to honor your life...."

From the Litanies of Response: "... yet in our daily confusion sometimes we forget you... we have avoided opportunities to cry out against injustice.... yet we have stood by and watched even when we witness suffering...when our own clamoring deafens our hearing, will you knock again....?"

"May we learn by your example to love others as we love ourselves."

"We need a fuller understanding of life's meaning in our own existence... we need a vision that enables us to see the creation of your kingdom on earth... we need the comforting assurance of your presence."

"As this day ends, the darkness surrounds us. Give us light... send us peace... show us joy... grant us forgiveness... establish your live in and among us... "

"Help us to bear the burden of these moments... to follow with strength the paths you have laid for us... beyond dimness into fuller understanding of your will... that we may not stumble in darkness, but follow with blessing and joy where Jesus leads.""

Was Jesus Open and Affirming ?

I haven't written much recently, because I've been feeling resistance from a new path I've wandered into at the Federated Church.  You know like those dreams where you're trying to run, but you can only move in slow motion?  That's how church has felt for me recently, sad to say.

A few weeks ago, when I was writing an earlier post referring to the Mormon Church and their position on gays, I went to my current church's website to refer to information about their "Open and Affirming" status to gays and lesbians, as part of a larger United Church of Christ resolution.  I could not find what I was looking for on the local website, so I went to the UCC website, and found that while several UCC churches on Cape Cod have adopted the Open and Affirming resolution, the Federated Church is not one of them.  And in the general listing on the UCC website for the Federated Church, it simply reads "Listed Open and Affirming? No."

When I read this online, late on a Saturday night, I was almost physically sick. My heart started pounding in my chest... one of those moments when you think you know something, and it suddenly turns out you were completely mistaken. The rug just completely pulled out from under you.  It was quite a blow to me, because I had thought I had been specifically told the Federated Church had adopted this resolution, and this was one of the things that had given me the confidence in the first place, to attend an unfamiliar straight church as an open and honest gay man, without having to worry if that was going to be a problem.

It turns out the Federated Church has an old painful history around this resolution, and so this discovery led me onto a new path I had not expected to be taking at this church, of feeling reminded of my second class status and how often I have faced discrimination, and of course now having to speak up and defend and explain my feelings around this issue.  And I finally realized, I was avoiding my blog because of this... it wasn't a subject I had planned to write about... and I certainly wasn't enthusiastic about having to go down this road... but now it seems like I am being called to talk and write about it.

 I found a great writeup by Dan Kirk about how to escape from quicksand, real or metaphorical, here .  He writes, "Well, like any unfortunate wanderer stepping into quicksand or conversational danger, the immediate response is the one most likely to get you in trouble. Thinking before you do anything will save your sorry hide, and understanding your adversary gives you far more hope of survival. First of all, the viscosity of quicksand, just as with your mother in law or boss, increases with the more force you apply in the opposite direction."

So... more to come on this topic.

PS. On a COMPLETELY different subject, I was looking for an image of "dream running in slow motion," and found the MIDDLE image above.   It's from a blog written by some guy named Archimedes Minor, writing as knownstranger1, documenting his game play in in an artificial 3D Life Simulation Game... incredibly detailed and beautiful and thought provoking about the choices people are starting to make between living in the real world or artificial worlds that they create and control... you can check it out here .   

My first YouTube video - Hear my Prayer duet

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This is my first YouTube video ever.  Not great quality, but I think it still is worth offering.  The audio is a recording I made on my iPhone, of a duet I sang with another choir member, Betsy Wagner.  This is a rehearsal I happened to record. The melody is from an opera "Jocelyn" by Godard.  The original aria is "Oh! ne t'eveille pas" which is commonly known as "Berceuse" or "Lullaby."  This is an arrangement for two singers with inspirational english lyrics.  One of the lines is "I trust in the cover of your wings" and when we first sang it, I did not understand what that meant.  Duh! Later I was on Youtube looking for videos of chicks hatching for my previous post and came across this video of a robin egg hatching, with the mother robin incubating the eggs.  Light dawned over Marblehead... the cover of your wings!  Oh yeah, now I get it!  So I got permission from the youtube user who originally recorded the robin video, and put it with my rehearsal recording.  I think it's kind of funny actually, when the newborn chick is screaming for the mom and the lyric is "lord hear me." Comments/suggestions/ tech advice welcome.  Be kind, I am not a video/audio engineer and have never used these programs before :)

I left in some of the early rehearsal chatter with Betty, our choir director.  She says something like "we are now in performance mode and whatever happens we are going to go forward" and I think that is actually kind of meaningful, because, as they say, life is not a rehearsal.  No matter what happens we have to go onward.

voice in the wilderness

Even in the intense artificiality and commerce and silliness of American Idol, there are moments of honesty and truth and authenticity. This kid, Alex Lambert, is young but I think he "gets it." Sorry to say he did not get enough votes this week, and got released from the show. Click the picture or click here to watch the video of his last performance and the judges' responses.

BREAKING THE SHELL

">I went to a vespers soup and service at the church Wednesday night before choir rehearsal... more of a fellowship discussion, than a real worship event.

I have been finding it all a little overwhelming, trying to think and talk about god and keep all the vocabulary and issues straight, and hearing all the names and ideas of people who've asked the same questions I am asking, and all the answers they have given throughout history.

In a way I had started to feel like, "why bother?" All my questions have been asked before, and answered before, more eloquently than I can ask or answer them.  It's kind of like reinventing the wheel.

But somebody was talking about chickens, and watching eggs hatch.

That got me thinking about chickens when I was supposed to be thinking about god.

How does a chick know it's time to hatch? Nobody comes along and tells it.  Nobody comes along and breaks the shell open for it.  The chick somehow knows it is time to break that shell and join the larger world, and the chick has to figure out how to do that itself, and has to actually start chipping away at that shell from the inside all by itself.  Each chick has to do it on its own.

I'm sure that egg is really spacious at first and comfortable.  But at a certain point it must begin to feel pretty confining.  The chick starts to wake up and sense that there is something outside the egg.  Something it can't directly see or feel or hear or smell... all filtered by the hard shell... but a place outside to join nonetheless.  And that shell must seem pretty smooth and strong and impenetrable at first... but somehow the chick persists and gets out.

So I guess that's me right now.  Yes,billions of chicks have hatched before me.... but I still have to crack my own shell open, if I want to live. No one is really going to come along and do it for me. So I will keep chipping away at it.

(Hah hah... the church is kind of like an incubator... a lot of eggs in a warm place, with a few chicks that hatched early cheeping really loudly... a lot of eggs sitting quietly... a few rocking around.... some cute fuzzy chicks and some really sad looking wet ones... and of course a few that won't hatch at all.... LOL.)

Thank You Roseanne; Marie, Wake Up!

Roseanne Barr posted the following entry at her blog here about her thoughts on the recent suicide of Marie Osmond's son, Michael Blosil.  I don't know if Marie's son was gay or not, and no one may ever know what was truly in his heart, but there's a lot of truth to what Roseanne writes. Roseanne was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, and attended the Mormon church from age 3 to 16.

Marie's son was a student at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, and a Mormon.

Roseanne writes:

"marie osmonds poor gay son killed himself

because he had been told how wrong and how sick he was every day of his life by his church and the people in it. Calling that "depression" is a lie!

Yet the Osmonds still talk lovingly about their church, saying nothing about its extremely anti-gay Crusade. Marie also has a gay daughter! Hey, I want her and all the gay kids in the world to know that they are just fine being gay and that they deserve love and respect instead of insults and rebuke! I have gay people in my family and my circle of friends and I am kicking bigot ass and taking names!

That is how its done in my religion---(I have my own religion that I made up for myself and it is a great religion that actually works and respects facts and not fantasy!)

Gerald Lund one of the ex church apostles has three gay kids himself. 

Yet, even though the people they say they love the most in all of their public displays and speeches (THEIR KIDS AND FAMILY!!) are gay,-- their own children,for crying out loud- these people cannot find the christian decency and compassion within themselves to stop their hypocritical gay bashing!!

How sickening. I know so many mormon kids who were gay and committed suicide, and I just cannot and will not stay quiet in order to not offend bigots anymore. It is all so terribly depressing. 

Marie please don't talk about how your faith in your church has helped you get through this one! Please get some integrity and tell that church of yours that you will leave it and stop giving it ten percent of your money if they don't stop trying to destroy your kids' and all gay people's civil rights and dreams and hopes!!

G-d is trying to use you for something good and this is your opportunity! Your church is wrong and on the wrong wrong wrong side of things! Get as vocal about that as you are about your diet. G-d bless you too, Marie. 

Take a hard look at the facts now as you use this very sad time for introspection, healing growth and prayer, and become a strong symbol for loving mothers who make no apologies for hatred against their own kids!"


 Thank you Roseanne. 


In  Marie Osmond's defense, I have read that she is supportive of her lesbian daughter and has made statements in defense of gay rights.  But as a second son who is gay, I learned the hard way that when an older kid in a family comes out, the parents may be openly supportive to that child, but still, the younger kids in the family often see a more complete picture of the full spectrum of their parents' reactions "behind the scenes," and this can prevent the younger kids from being honest about themselves for a very long time. The younger kids see the tears and anguish and the secrecy and shame that the parents, to their credit, may try to hide from the older gay kid. This was my experience. My parents did their best to accept their older gay son, but I knew they really wanted me to be the straight son, so I tried to be that straight son, and to change, until I felt like I was walking around separated from the world by a thick sheet of glass.  In fleeting moments, I considered suicide and running away, but luckily I slowly found the courage to be honest, first to myself, and gradually to others.  I write "luckily" but maybe it was the "grace of god" as in "there but for the grace of god go I."


So Marie Osmond may be supportive of gay rights, but she is still a Mormon. Marie, at a certain point you have to draw the line and stop supporting bigoted organizations.  I have two gay friends who continue to attend and support the Catholic Church with their time, skills, and money.  I cannot understand this, when there are other churches that welcome open and honest gays. Wake up!


Here is a resource for gay mormons called Affirmation, providing a direct contact for support if you are in crisis, a suicide memorial and other suicide prevention links .

Keep it Simple, says the choir

I've gotten some great comments, both online and off-line, from choir members, since I invited them to read my new blog.  Two of them have reminded me to keep it simple.

One lady, said, "I don't get into all this navel-gazing. I never have. I don't understand it."  Then later at a vespers supper discussing recent tragedies in Haiti and Chile, and how we react to those who hold god responsible for such earthly tragedies, she offered another pearl of wisdom:  "Why ask why?  It just is.  Deal with it."  I thought these were really very wise comments, the type you would get from a buddhist monk after exhausting yourself climbing to the top of a mountain to ask the meaning of life.

Another woman, who I was shocked to discover is 82 years old, when I could have believed she was in her 60's, told me in so many words that, of course, we can't know god, so that's why he sent Jesus, to be the human embodiment of god on earth, and if you want to know god as much as a human being can, all you have to do is follow Jesus.  So that makes the path very simple and manageable, too.

I still am not comfortable believing that Jesus is the ONLY embodiment of god on earth, though, and the only way.  Maybe it's a good idea to keep the focus manageable, though, and target on just one faith.

And then I am reminded of one of my favorite teachers at Andover, my chemistry teacher Elaine Anderson.  I had not taken any chemistry before I began her class, so I had a bit of a learning curve to catch up with other students.  I just couldn't "get it" in the beginning...much the way I remember struggling in second grade to master the concept of borrowing ten from one column, when you needed to subtract from a number that was smaller.

So she came to me, and she said, "you know, Ian, I went and looked up your test scores at the admissions office, and you're not dumb, so why don't we do some tutoring outside of class."  And through that we struck up a friendship, and sure enough, it just took me a little time to "get it," and once I "got it" I had no problem excelling in the rest of her class.

But anyway, one thing I learned about her outside of class, was that she was a born again Christian.  I was really surprised that a scientist, a chemist, studying the scientific method, and using mathematics to describe the chemical interactions and behavior of the physical world at the molecular level, could also believe so passionately in Jesus and god.  So I asked her about it.  She told me, "well, it just happened to me... I was driving along on the highway in my car, alone, on the southeast expressway returning to Andover from Boston, and all of a sudden, I realized there was someone in the passenger seat, and it was Jesus.  And we talked, and we still talk."  How could I argue with that?  It wasn't that she'd devised some complicated philosophy or studied theology for years, and weighed the pros and cons of every religion.... it was just that suddenly one day, Jesus appeared in the passenger seat of her car, and they had a conversation while she was driving, and so of course she was a follower and believer of his now.  Very simple.

Then when I was applying to college, she asked if she could pray for me, and I said yes, and we went to the chapel, and she prayed for my college admissions.  But that's another story!

The picture above shows a Hubble image of the collision of gases near an exploding star.  You can read more about it here

Can Elephants Hear Our Prayers ?

Aristotle once said the elephant is "the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind,"according to Wikipedia. They're one of the few creatures that recognizes itself in a mirror. We knew they were highly intelligent and social. But there's a lot more to learn about elephants. For example, they are one of the only animals whose brains share a certain type of nerve cell with humans and whales, a very long type of neuron that some associate with language skills.

And just in the last few years, an animal researcher named Katy Payne, who also studied the songs of great whales, observed from watching elephants at the zoo, that in there is a lot more going on with elephants than we had recognized.  We knew they heard things with their ears; that was obvious.  But Payne also saw elephants carefully positioning three feet while lifting the fourth, and sometimes laying their trunk on the ground as well.  From this she discovered, that in addition to hearing with their ears, they also hear with their drum-like feet and their sensitive trunk (containing from 40,000 to 100,000 muscles just in the trunk alone), and communicate with each other in a subsonic range that we knew nothing about.  They listen in this range of sound, outside our own hearing, using their feet and trunk.  This type of sound can carry through the ground up to 10 kilometers, so even distant elephants can still be in close communication. Yet people standing alongside the elephants have no idea this whole conversation is taking place in the ground beneath their feet.

Last night I read a blog entry called Creation Begins at Home written by a good friend of the Federated Church, writing as Leanderthal.  He refers the reader to a story by Robert Lanza MD which deals with a rather complicated theory of biocentrism. From what I could grasp of this theory, it has to do with how we can understand the universe, when we're stuck experiencing it with only our limited senses and corresponding beliefs in "what is real."

We see only a tiny spectrum of light, which we casually call "visible light," but that more accurately should be termed "human-visible light," because many other creatures do see outside this narrow spectrum.  Honey bees have receptors for ultraviolet, green, and blue receptors.  They can see ultraviolet light.  And correspondingly, some flowers have designs that are only visible in the ultraviolet spectrum. This flower picture at right shows what we see, compared to what a bee sees.

Invisible communication is all around us.  Apparently even trees are communicating to each other... when one tree is attacked by a pest it may sound an alarm by releasing certain chemical signals that encourage nearby trees to react defensively, even before the pest has reached them.  Larry Gedney writes in Alaska Science forum that it is not clear whether the trees are actively talking or just passively listening, but nonetheless concludes, "...the odd but pleasing possibility that plants can communicate delight[s] the public imagination."

We certainly were unaware that trees were communicating with each other, much like we failed to see that elephants were listening with their feet and trunks, and that bees and flowers had a an entirely hidden communication in the ultraviolet spectrum.  We can't hear it, smell it, or see it, but it is there nonetheless. Numerous examples abound... how about the migratory birds that can sense the earth's magnetic field?

So this leads me to ESP or "extra sensory perception."  Perception of things beyond our normal sensory range. We only sense a tiny fraction of what is going on around us... tiny windows that we peer out through, to the true world.  Apparently the true world is a chaos of vibration-- of vibrating atoms, light particles, sound waves... and we make sense of this by sharply limiting what we experience.

Yet isn't it likely that occasionally we get flashes or brushes of all the other unseen or unheard "goings-on" around us?  That from time to time we are almost able to sense something outside our normal range, but dismiss this sensation outright because of our unfamiliarity or lack of ability to process and decode this information?

Could this be another way to look at prayer? Is prayer really an attempt to recognize, mesh with, listen to... and perhaps even influence another power in the universe that we only are able to occasionally brush against, and rarely able to comprehend or "see" ... but maybe just often enough that we suspect there is something there?  Is it a way of centering and quieting our thoughts to help us become more open and communicative with some other vibration passing in and around us? Is it a communication that can travel unimagined distances, like the elephants listening across a wide savannah?

Who else can hear our prayers?  Whose eyes, ears, feet, or trunks are better developed than ours for this type of communication?  Are the elephants listening?

Sit and Spin, LA Story, Dervishes, Sarah Jessica Parker, and getting Emotionally Erect

When I was a little kid, I loved to spin in a circle. Either standing and whirling, holding out my arms, and then savoring the off-balance euphoria when the spin was over and I stumbled innocently into the wall... or sitting in a little red and white chair I treasured, called the "sit and spin," which was designed solely for the purpose of letting a small child spin in place like crazy.

One of my favorite under-rated movies is L.A Story with Steve Martin, Victoria Tennant, and a young Sarah Jessica Parker. You can watch the trailer here for the reference to being "emotionally erect." Steve Martin's character is struggling to make sense of the insanity of 1990's Los Angeles, and he ultimately finds happiness by following the private directions given to him by a mysterious and massive highway road sign. Along the way he dallies with Parker's character who represents the innocent joy of youth. She finds happiness by spinning ... she just loves to spin in circles. Of course it comes off as dumb and crazy in the movie, but now I find it hilarious... and I wonder if it's a more sophisticated reference than I first realized ???

I just ran across this story on Sufism and Whirling Dervishes in Turkey . More information at wikipedia here. The author, Sunaina Gulati, writes, "The Whirling Dervishes are a part of the Sufi branch of Islam, known for its mysticism and asceticism...spinning is their way of worshipping God. [Rumi's] philosophy is encapsulated in one of his poems:

Come come whoever you are
Whether you are a non-believer,
Whether you worship fire or an idol,
Whether you have repented a hundred times,
Whether you have broken a vow of repentance a hundred times,
This is not a vow of desperation;
Come however you are.

She continues: " Science has shown us that the fundamental condition of our existence is to revolve. A man's very existence depends on this movement -- revolution in the atoms, structural stones of his body, movement of his blood etc. However, all of these are natural, unconscious revolutions. The Whirling Dervish actively causes the mind to participate in the revolution of all other beings...."

"...Akin Cakmut, who has been practicing the dance for many years since he first started at the age of 13, told CNN, "Everything turns in the universe. The world turns, the sun turns, your blood under your skin turns, and also the Dervish turns...The meaning of the first part is who are you? You are thinking who am I? The second part the Dervish understands, ok, I am human, I am living. In the third part the Dervish understands there is a force, and the dervish gives his heart to God. In the fourth part, your soul comes back to your body, and you understand that, yes, I am human I am a person...I can't explain it perfectly because it is between me and God.""



My childhood "Sit and Spin..." was my earliest naive brush with god? Is Sarah Jessica Parker in "LA Story" an accidental western analogue of the whirling dervish? Can I now get up the courage, as an adult, to go off somewhere and just spin? 

(dervish painting above by London artist Nazim)

child prodigy painting god-- real or hoax? a lightning rod nonetheless

A dear friend sent me an email with the title "whenever your faith starts to slip" and a link to a purported CNN video about a young girl, Akiane Kramarik, who is a self-taught artist, and from a very young age, has had visions of meeting god and going to heaven, and paints these visions.  Supposedly her family were atheists who have been converted to faith by the girl's visions. It is a very inspirational video which you can see here: drawing heaven .

Of course I'm very wary of these virally transmitted emails, because, so often, they are fun but untrue.  A quick look online found plenty of skeptics, questioning to what extent the mother is being truthful, whether the mother really was an atheist, whether this is a "balloon boy" type hoax, and whether the girl actually paints the work herself.  Claims are made that the paintings resemble the mother's own painting style, and that requests to watch or tape the girl painting have been refused.  Other cynical comments suggest that proper medication would prevent her from having these visions.

So I found the girl's website here akiane.com . I was amazed by a blog post about her recent painting of a buddhist monk, shown above, where she writes : "irate comments are mostly coming ... that I got deceived by the Devil who allegedly sent a Hindu swami across the whole world as counterfeit to Jesus’s model. ..I am a journalist visionary artist who paints diverse cultures, faiths and realities from both the visible and non visible realms. I am still learning and discovering new cultures, but I can assure you that the monk is no different from all of us who are seeking god and the truth... he was an answer to my prayer; for the past year I had been seeking to learn about different traditions and indigenous cultures from around the world."

Bravo for that.  At this point, I don't care who's writing, when it's such a great sentiment.  Clearly this girl is on an interesting journey.  Is it a sincere journey of faith, or a journey as an accessory to her family to make money by taking advantage of people's faith?  The only truth I can claim here, is that my reactions to the video told me something of myself, and my wants for faith.

Finally I am disturbed by the idea that medication would cure these visions.  We are a way over-medicated society, buying wildly expensive drugs that allow us to tolerate the actual insanity and detachment of so much of our modern culture, forcing us to work even harder to pay for these drugs that make it possible for us to continue to tolerate our work... in a crazy self perpetuating cycle. What if this epidemic of depression is really the healthy honest result of the path our society and our lives are taking?  Then pills are not the answer.  Personally I've been down a lot of roads trying to find that something I was lacking inside, that "good feeling"... sometimes they've been unhealthy and self destructive roads that brought temporary pleasure and relief...followed by trial periods of  prescription medication, that brought temporary relief but ultimately dissatisfaction as well... and long periods of addiction to work and chasing financial success and ownership of "things"... leading me to where I am today, wondering if there is an answer in organized religion for the fulfillment and pleasure I've chased so many other ways... I see other people have found it in religion, and at the same time do good works and become better more loving, just people along the way.  Will I find that? What path do I take? Time will tell... until then I fall back on music and singing. That's where I'm closest. (images by Akiane Kramarik, akiane.com)