We are Vermonters now, my Gay Old Soulmate and I. We are not Vermonters like people who have lived here their entire lives. We hope to someday be Vermonters like those who moved here long ago. But already we are Vermonters in the sense that we want to be here and we have no other home.
I left being a Kansan somewhere early in the queer revolution. I don’t know if I left Kansas or Kansas left me. At some point my body began to know it as a hostile state. Continue reading
We,
who once discovered
in a flood that swept away
our self-hatred and alienation,
who now know that being ‘Beloved’
requires the rending
of all our sacred skies—
We,
who were driven into the wilderness,
who learned truth from wild creatures
and spiritual beings— Continue reading
Sculpture by Ken M. White
Winter gloom and darkness
turn the heart.
Blow Lent’s trumpet if you must,
and tremble.
But before you mourn in solemn assembly
remember
that these ashes
were once profligate palms
that welcomed Love.
Huddle in your prayer closet
marked with ashes as you may,
Love will see you
and prick your heart.
For February’s snow wraps the earth
as wanton Love embraces all its inhabitants.
I step off the train into Brattleboro’s darkness. It is 5:00 o’clock, but the sun had set before we reached Greenfield. I cross the road and head up Main Street. My briefcase hangs on a strap around my neck. I lift the bag of lunches (food for more than two) packed by Ruth and Beth. And I pull my suitcase behind me. What little traffic has backed up on Main disappears quickly once the train clears the crossing. I am left alone, trudging up the steep sidewalk. Dark store windows follow my progress. Even the restaurants have closed for Thanksgiving.
For reasons too tedious to enumerate, my Gay Old Soulmate and I headed different directions at Thanksgiving this year. I, back to our new home here in Brattleboro. But since I’ve only lived here a week, it doesn’t feel quite like coming home.
The sun has fallen behind the trees as my Gay Old Soulmate and I sit here on the deck in our little queer retreat cottage. If all goes well, we soon will leave behind the house we have lived in for twenty-seven years in the city we have lived in for thirty-two. We will move to a different house in a different town a few miles away from where we sit now.
Only an occasional bird call or distant dog’s bark breaks the silence. My soul has lived in unsettled quiet for some time now. Continue reading
Can I be a gay man without desire? Without a lust for other men?
Today I will be given Lupron, a form of Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) or “hormone treatment.” It will block my body’s production of the testosterone that fuels the prostate cancer lurking within me–and destroy my libido.
How will I be gay then? Continue reading
Speak to me with an ordinary voice
Ashes to ashes
dust to dust
You are dust and
to dust you shall return
Ashes to ashes
dust to dust
My life is ashes.
My world is dust.
I seek a gracious one
the self-giving one
the forerunner
crying my wilderness.
I seek the washing flood
the clear liquid pool
a new water
cleansing my nakedness
Urges impel me.
Eager, apprehensive,
how shall I reach
the object of my desire?
Can you be real?
I hesitate.
I might mess up,
be mistaken, be wrong
or—most devastating
—feel foolish.
Longing leads me.
Compelling energy
surges and carries me
inexorably forward
along a path.
Unable to perceive
my destination.
I project, at best,
a blurred image
—a half-imagined fantasy.
It becomes my obsession.
I tune that vision,
refining expectations
even before I breathe
its fear and promises.
Finally I release all
to emergent reality.
Soul and body,
thrust into wonder,
grasp each other desperately.
I could not know
where to follow my desire.
I dared not predict
a destination
nor even the journey.
Only by going there
could I obtain
the curse and the blessing.
Sex and the sacred,
so dearly the same.
I was asked to preach on January 11, 2015. The texts for the day were from Genesis 1, Psalm 29, and Mark 1. These were my thoughts.
Once, as a child in Kansas, playing with neighbor kids in their yard, we watched as heavy clouds rolled across the sky toward us. They were so thick, with such a defined edge, I remember us childishly speculating if this was how night came.
Then our neighbor’s mom tore out the back door. She yelled at us to run, run home as fast as we could. As we crossed the alley, my parents hurried out to meet us and to get us into the basement. We made it just as the storm hit, with weeds, branches, and debris tumbling past our basement windows.
“The voice of God shakes the wilderness …,”
writes the Psalmist. “The voice of God twists the oaks,
and strips the forests bare.
And in God’s temple all cry, ‘Glory!'”
In the age of Sandy and Irene, we no longer perceive divine power within a storm. We understand even the most capricious winds as meteorological events, capable of human explanation. A TV evangelist may may rail about God’s wrath in the wake of a hurricane. But the degree of his awe may be measured by the fact that he does not fall to his own knees, but only calls on others to do so.
Psalm 29 is not the only scripture to speak from a place of powerful disruption..
Continue reading
Staff Recognition Award, nineteen hundred and ninety-four: the framed certificate came home with me last week. Twenty years after having been awarded that honor, I retired from the department that nominated me for it.
Gay men my age frequently identified with the stereotype, “the best little boy in the world.” Having grown up in a world that labeled us unworthy, we did all in our power to prove ourselves worthy. Knowing in our closeted hearts that we could never meet expectations, we exceeded expectations in our public lives. Even after we came out, those habits continued.
I had not planned to spend my working days as a secretary or administrator in an office unrelated to my interests. Continue reading