Recently, my Gay Old Soulmate and I took the scenic High Road from Santa Fe to Taos. The Santa Fe Official 2014 Travel Planner marked the route in blue, noting Chimayo only as “a small church built in the early 1800s.” It did not mention pilgrimages, multiple chapels, or holy dirt. We did not know we would enter a different world.

Not long after, I would be asked to preach on chapter 9 of the Gospel of John. There, Jesus thrusts a man born blind into a different world by giving him sight. The ensuing conflict most likely reflects tensions between the author’s community and the religious authorities of that day. But I found myself wondering more about the experience of the man who the Gospel says received Jesus’ form of holy dirt.

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Twenty-two years ago, as spring arrived, my father’s spirit departed.  I remember brilliant sun radiating through the windows.  My mother remembers a windy day with snow on the ground. The difficult final weeks of his passage drew to a close with just a few shallow breaths and then–holy silence.

I am now only eight years younger than he was at the time that he died. I wish he could have lived to see his grandson teach at the college his father taught at.  I wish he could have held his two great grandsons. Continue reading →

Somewhere in the vague infatuation that launched our relationship, my Gay Old Soulmate suggested that we should make it a ritual to tell each other, “I love you” each night before we slept.

In thirty years of falling to sleep beside him, those I love yous have had many nuances. At times, we spoke them with utter gratitude for the unimaginable good fortune of finding each other. At other times, we forced them past gritted teeth. But when the words came with the most difficulty, that was when we most needed the reminder that, beneath anger or alienation, a commitment tied us to each other’s welfare and growth. We were not being hypocritical—we were being intentional.

At heart, love is not a feeling but a way of living. Continue reading →

I am saying goodbye to  the burger.  Thirty-eight years ago, I was taking art classes and working as a night assistant manager at a Hardee’s hamburger joint in Newton, Kansas.  In the course design-class exercises, I made a soft walnut, a la Claes Oldenburg–shell, nut meats, and all the papery dividers–made from cloth. After weeks of drawing and painting and color-matching walnuts, I began to look at my work world from a design standpoint too.  Each night, I trotted off to Hardees, where  I noticed the particulars of the Hardee’s hamburger (humble though it might be). Continue reading →