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
At an age (many years ago) that some Millennials are now—and that Jesus was then—I strode eagerly into the wilderness.
And when the tempter told me to prove I was a child of God, by changing my queer to straight, I pulled my Bible from my hip pocket and shot Scripture right back at them. (Not to mention that they’d kinda got it bread-to-stones and not the other way around.) Continue reading
I move through the labyrinth on my knees, like a supplicant on a pilgrimage to a holy place. I pluck every dandelion, every blade of grass. Seedling trees and other wayward plants nearly obscure the stones that mark a path to the center. I must remove them, too.
Every spring the same exercise awaits me. I make my way, revealing the path, inch by inch and foot by foot. Where the moss threatens to envelope a rock, I pull up the rock and turn it over—showing another side, darkly moist but clean of moss. It sharpens the edges of the path.
In the labyrinth, clearing and clarifying the path take time and patience. All vegetation except the moss must go. Even the rocks may need to shift slightly. Some need to be turned over or repositioned after winter’s frost and settling. Each stone helps mark the path. I make the labyrinth my metaphor as my queer life turns, inward and then outward, perpendicular to and then parallel to a center. But as I follow the path, I trust it will lead inexorably toward a center. Continue reading
I wore cowboy boots to church today. Why? I would not have been caught dead in them when I was growing up in Kansas. I never even owned a pair of boots until country dancing swept the bars sometime in the 90s. Then, as a gay man, I would not be caught dead dancing without the proper footwear for the occasion. And I discovered that I liked the way they made me feel–masculine and sexy. How queer that being queer would turn me on to what epitomized its opposite in my youth.
But why wear those boots to church? Continue reading
“Then afterward, I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh;
your sons and daughters shall prophesy,
your elders shall dream dreams,
and your young people shall see visions.” —Joel 2:28
Now I am ready to dream. To rise out of visions. To move beyond prophesy. To live a colorful new reality.
When I was young, inching toward a door I did not recognize as the inside of a closet, I had visions. Visions of a young preacher going home to Kansas. Urban ministry was the cutting edge, or overseas development. I would minister to the rural forgotten. It turned out another way.. Continue reading
As I become more and more a gay old soul, life’s challenges fall roughly into four themes: spirit, body, relationship, resources.
Spirit
After I first came out we dreamed of a fairy godbrother circle. A sort of gay spiritual order with its own spiritual discipline to weekly: