Keeping these images in mind throughout this season of Lent. The desert. Bare, vast, uncertain, beautiful, scorching yet it promises to help me to find God and myself.
Archives for category: Worth
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The season of Lent, to my mind, mirrors quite aptly the experience of retreating into bareness and emptiness, vast expansive nothingness. It represents to me an opportunity to combat with our egos – our own yearly combat with the devil. Much as what Christ undertook at the onset of his miniistry on earth. He was emptied of self but also found affirmation and clarity of mind on the task that lay ahead of him. I take away from that, during this season of Lent, the simple lesson that while the emptiness and emormity of a self-induced desert experience appear daunting, the joy of receiving affirmation and pruspose ought to remain at the fore of my mind. The season of lent, and the bodily observance of self denial and retreat into sorrow, heat, emptiness ought not to be something I despise and dread. I need to dig deeper to embrace the desert and spend forty days within it. It is worth it in the end, as Christ’s example illustrates.
As such, I resolve to remain still, to treat the desert as a friend ad not a foe. To appreciate the experience of withdrwal from the usual harriedness of life and wanting for more in the knwowledge that while my body hungers, there ais a greater, intangible life giving Bread that I will receive. I will resolve to continue to fast and pray during this season of Lent in the assurance that while I thirst the promise of receiving a water that quenches a our deepest thirst (s) still stands.
“Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.” Psalm 46 v 10
The temptation to fight and prove one’s cause is a difficult one to resist – especially when you are reviled for what you are, yet there is a higher calling that compels us all to rise above it all, to enter into a place of stillness. And it is in the deep, quiet solitude of our inner beings that we discover the knowledge of God and that we draw an unshakeable sense of security. This is the encouragement that I give myself today. To strive to enter into a place of quiet, and to live fearlessly from that place.
I think a lot of the fear that I have struggled with has stemmed from the distracting clanging and clammer of truly hateful voices and it is my hope that in being still I will both discover God and myself, my worth and value as a child of the Eternal and transcendent.
“For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost” Luke 19 v 10
The ideal of having children and a conventional family life is still a key to gaining respect. Even in modern societies. It also comes through strongly in biblical writings about how having children wins respectability for men.
The question is, how do you then gain respect from your peers if the whole concept of being gay is seen as something sweet or charming at best but not necessarily respectable?
How do you gain respect without selling yourself out by playing straight? Is it possible? Or is it best to simply try to blend in?
There are no easy answers, I guess. Suffice to say that perhaps it is best to rather change one’s focus and choose to believe that we have constant acceptance from a source that is greater than ourselves and greater than societal conventions.
Simply being here and alive is scientific evidence that we are accepted by whatever laws govern the universe. Our task, I think, is often to assert our right to be here. To insist on our own value. To become more aware that we are deserving and worthy to be here. That no one holds the right to say or think otherwise. This has been quite difficult for me, because I have heard anti-gay rhetoric so many times, I have found myself many times beginning to question whether I truly deserve to be here and fit in. Many times I have found myself being afraid to let it show that I am ‘different’. Even as an adult. I need help, right? I am a complete mess at times.
My love for the teachings of Christ – and not necessarily of the church – leads me to take comfort in the teaching of Christ : That in him, I am not ‘lost’. And I take that word ‘lost’ to be quite a powerful way of expressing how it feels being a gay man in a ‘hetero-normative’ world. I take it to refer to being perceived as being without direction, without purpose, without meaning or inner guidance. This is the impression thatstill holds in many places about what it means to be gay. And people act accordingly in how they treat us, often. Even some of th emore liberal friends that I have still do not quite take the whole gay ‘thing’ as a fully respectable state of being.
Well, the comfort I am learning to take is that in Christ there are no ‘lost’ sheep. We are ‘found’ – accepted, loved not simply tolerated.
Yes, I often catch myself feeling lost but I am learning to focus on reminding myself that even if some people believe that I do not belong, that I am lost my existence its testament to being fully accepted and valuable. The comfort of knowing that there is a Christ who seeks and saves the lost – the out-of-place, the noncomformists, the misfits, those not readily accepted into society – is even more comforting. Finding respect and respectabiiity, I am learning , quite late in life, emerges from myself before I can expect it from anyone else.
“The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.” Luke 12 v 23
I guess this stands in opposition to the mainstream conception of how one finds love and value within the gay community in particular.
Of course, it is not unique to the gay community at all – this issue of body image and obsession with appearance – but it has been a concern for ages. Almost all cultures have had their own versions of attractive body image and aesthetics, and how to place value on people based on their looks.
It is not a charge to abandon our appearance and health, but I think it simply is a liberating passage that says that we can find a lot more of worth, experience more of life beyond our concerns with how we look and what we eat. There is so much more to life than these things . And where we happen to find people that do not conform to the standard, perhaps it does not matter that much. Their value, as ours, comes not from what they wear but rather who they are beneath the surface. What a liberating perspective!
I suppose that worth is tied to how we understand ourselves as human beings, our origins and where we derive our value from.
This is an interesting debate recently held at the University of Oxford on the nature and origin of human beings. The protagonists being Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and Richard Dawkins an author and evolutionary biologist.
From Psalm 18 (King James Version)
I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.
2The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.
3I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.
4The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.
5The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.
6In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.
“Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.”
Luke 21 v 36
These are an encouraging set of words that I think are very relevant for all, and hopefully moreso for believers who are amarginalised or actively excluded from religion.
It is easy to begin to assume that we are disqualified from communicating with God, thanks in large part to gospels of hate that have developed progressively through the decades.
However, the invitation of Christ himself is to be watchful and prayerful, and it appears to be meted out without any discrimination or hatred.
We can still pray. Tere is no need for approval. After all, it happens in the secret recesses of our hearts and inner beings.
The assumption is that we are not interested in prayer and this tends to be a self-fulfilling projection. We become excluded from spiritual life and activity. Yet, the invitation is an open one. There are no exceptions, cautionary clauses or footnotes. It is a simple, bold invitation to all to pray. This shines through at several points in the teachings of Christ.
There is no contradiction in being a gay that prays, in fact, there is arguably very little that is more empowering that this knowledge that we are invited to pray. I’m keen on becoming more confident and decisive in taking up christ n his invitation to all to pray.
“I will call on the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.”
2 Samuel 22 v 4
I guess one of the challenges to walking a spiritual life as a gay man is finding the inner discipline to distinguish between my own feelings of un-worthiness which are reinforced by hateful messages from both the church and society on one hand, and to remember that a loving God is above all human made institutions and opinions.
The hatred that we are trained to have toward ourselves constantly robs me of the sense of being loved and so does it rob God of what he deserves, our praise, our gratitude.
This is not to say that I need to suppress my anger, fears and feelings of injustice but to simply say that along those real feelings there is always a need to return to a place of acute appreciation and praise for the source of all good things.
On this journey to rediscover my own sense of worthiness, I think one important step is to set my focus on recognising that while there is a lot to be angry about, while the institutional frameworks for religion often preach hatred against people like me, this is all rather moot. It is all but noise. The bottom line is that God remains a deserving destination for our appreciation, our praise, our earnest prayer and our sighs and words of thanksgiving.
The purpose of this blog is to keep a diary of a journey to a place of greater peace within and peace with those around me. But, more than that, I guess the big question that is really plaguing me is am I worthy? I hope to travel to that place of greater ‘orthiness through the pages of this blog.
I accept that I am loved by God. I hold onto my faith and spiritual disciplines strongly, and refuse to let them or God go. I’ve heard all of the arguments about being sent to hell by God and I do not believe a single word of them. I trust completely in a loving God who accepts me and accepts all. I’ve also tried to see if I can fit into the mainstream gay culture but always felt out of place. I don’t judge it but I know that it is not the place for me.
As for organised religion, I’ve had my fingers burnt and lost money in the process after experimenting with charismatic pentecostalism. It is an interesting way of expressing faith and I trust that those who understand what the charismatic movement is all about will continue to find reward in their endeavour to reach toward God. For me, my episode with pentecostalism helped me rediscover the European traditions of christianity in which I was brought up. So, I’ve returned to an older set of religious traditions that I loved as a child and that provide me with a sense of connection to Christians throughout the centuries and to God. I think I will stay on this path.
Now, I guess the challenge is that bigotry runs rampant in both religion and politics, everywhere. In France where I live at the moment, even the least authoritative politicians in terms of morality have the gall to condemn homosexuality, often with a venomous anger that is difficult to understand. In the religious traditions that I hold dear, there is not a little touch of hypocrisy. Priests condemn gays and yet have lovers of their own. Divorced clerics claim to have a passion for the sanctity of marriage.
There is no need to talk about the media, the use of language in such derogatory ways , the muted exclusion that one feels at work, university and any sort of social space. Well, this is not to say that there has not been progress. Policies on sexuality are much more open than they have been at any point in history in most of Western Europe. In other parts of the world, the discussion is being held – which is a marker of progrss in itself.
The issue is, there are always enough cues, verbal or non verbal, that say -a t least to me – that I am not worthy. Not worthy to be a part of civilised, proper society – that I am something of a second class citizen. My own mind seems to be an even greater enemy – challenging me if I truly deserve anything good, after all I am gay? Sure, I think God loves all, but do I deserve that love? Then there are the subliminal social messages that I construe in so many places that reinforce the sense I am not worthy of being accepted into the company of ‘normal’ human society. The most difficult for me to work through is the sense of unworthiness to have access to God, who the religious organisations that I love and respect have held captive and for themselves. While I am fortunate to be part of a community of believers that accepts me and my partner, it is very difficult to miss the messages from the broader christian world that those who monopolize God have judged us as unworthy of the love of God and his full acceptance as we are. We must change before we can be deserving.
How does one retain a sense of self worth when exclusion is often omnipresent as a reality? How does one move from a place of being insecure and afraid to truly express their true selves to being secure and confident to negotiate with issues of spirituality and religion? How does one build the bridge between their sexuality to their religious/spiritual convictions? And more importantly, how does one – how do I – feel worthy enough to persevere in my spiritual path?
I hope to walk a path to worthiness, to spiritual security, to living a life that marries my christian-rooted beliefs to my sexuality, to carve out my own path and to fully embrace the love that I know that God has for me and for all. I’ll take notes and keep a record of this journey, if only to understand my own emotions. I will try to do this at least once a week. And frequently post materials to at least encourage myself to remain spiritually grounded and to keep driving to a place of greater peace. If anyone reads the blog or not, I guess that is out of my control and perfectly okay too. May God bless the journey and grant me a safe arrival.
The Sacred and the (homo) Sexual 