God Is Good

I don't know why I think this, I just do. I have spent all day today lying in bed, my body racked with pain because my fibromyalgia started flaring up this weekend and, having slept very little last night, I awoke to the hell of not being able to move without excruciating pain. I laid there all day, praying and listening to prayers on EWTN on the internet. I listened to mass, said the rosary, divine mercy chaplet, and several other prayers, and listened to the rosary while trying to feel the presence of God with me in my room. I can't say that I felt anything extraordinary, but I knew He was there. But everything else in my life must be going well if I feel this way about God. WRONG!!!

Back in Indiana, my mother is dying, slowly, existing in a frustrated state of not being able to think straight or vocalize what she is thinking since a stroke (her third in six years) left her in this state. She is the last member of my family that I am close to and when she goes there will be a large hole in me that nobody else on this earth can fill. Here is Kentucky, my second family is in turmoil since the Board of Trustees placed our beloved president on leave after failing to force his resignation. On top of that, a person that I have been very close to for the last several years is leaving at the end of the week to move back to Maryland. I wish him and his family all the best, but that opens yet another hole in me. And my third family, the family I will join at the end of the year when I join the Roman Catholic Church at Pax Christi in Lexington, KY, is still a bit of a concern to me since they do not, as of yet, know that I am gay. I chose that church because of a statement on their web site and in their weekly bulletins states that they welcome all, including "those born with sexual ambiguity or differing orientation". I think it will be okay, but one never knows for sure until the moment it comes out.

So, as you can see, right now, I would not wish my current condition on anyone. I know that God loves me, and those I love, and that He is in complete control. I know that when my mother dies, she will be reunited with her parents who went before her. And that I will one day join them. I know that when my friend and his family return to Maryland, they will be close to their families and their son will be able to see his grandparents and grow up around them like I did mine. I hope that the physical suffering that I have endured on and off for the past ten years will be for some good to someone, somewhere. The bitterness that I used to feel when things went wrong is not present within me. While I love my mother more than anything or anyone, I know that she is no long in my hands to care for, and that she has passed over into the care of the Lord, who will leave her or take her from this earth in His good time. And as bad as I have it, there are others who are worse off.

I was feeling a little better this evening, so I decided to get up and watch a movie, or two. One, the Saint of 9/11, is a documentary about Father Mychael Judge, a Franciscan friar and NYFD chaplain, who died on 9/11 when the first World Trade Center tower collapsed. Seeing those he affected during his life, sometimes when other Christians and even the church, had turned their backs on them, showed me that God finds a way to express His love for all, even to those that the church has rejected. I also watched Mother Teresa, starring Olivia Hussey. I bought this movie over a month ago, but only watched it for the first time two weeks ago. Ever since that first viewing, I have watched it about every other evening. I cannot get it out of my mind. What she did, how great her trust in God was, despite the obstacles she encountered, and how she was Jesus to all around her, whether they were Christian or not. As I watch it, I both know and desire the love that she had for others. I both know and desire the trust she had in God. And I both know and desire to let Jesus shine through me to all...ALL, NO EXCEPTIONS, and let then know of His love. I say that I both know and desire these things because I know and possess them on a certain level, but I desire them in a much greater measure than I currently have them. I want to become them. This is my prayer. Maybe the holes that are opening in my life are making room for God to more fully infill and overcome me entirely. May God make it so. May Mary pray for me. But, as always, not my will but Your will be done. Amen

Some Things Just Don't Change

I had seen this before but I couldn't remember where. Well, I found it by chance tonight and wanted to post it here. It is a column by Eric Zorn who wrote for the Chicago Tribune. A series of his columns, including this one can be found at http://www.ericzorn.com/columns/request/


MARRIAGE ISSUE JUST AS PLAIN AS BLACK AND WHITE
5-19-96

Statement No. 1: Same-sex marriage must be forbidden, said the Republican senator from Wisconsin, "simply because natural instinct revolts at it as wrong."

No. 2. An organization opposed to gay marriage claimed legalizing them would result in "a degraded and ignoble population incapable of moral and intellectual development," and rested this belief on the "natural superiority with which God (has) ennobled heterosexuals."

No. 3. "I believe that the tendency to classify all persons who oppose gay marriage as 'prejudiced' is in itself a prejudice," grumped a noted psychologist. "Nothing of any significance is gained by such a marriage."

No. 4. A U.S. representative from Georgia declared that allowing gay marriages "necessarily involves (the) degradation" of conventional marriage, an institution that "deserves admiration rather than execration."

No. 5. "The next step will be that gays and lesbians will demand a law allowing them, without restraint, to . . . have free and unrestrained social intercourse with your unmarried sons and daughters," warned a Kentucky congressman. "It is bound to come to that. There is no disguising the fact. And the sooner the alarm is given and the people take heed, the better it will be for our civilization."

No. 6. "When people of the same sex marry, they cannot possibly have any progeny," wrote an appeals judge in a Missouri case. "And such a fact sufficiently justifies those laws which forbid their marriages."

No 7. Same-sex marriages are "abominable," according to Virginia law. If allowed, they would "pollute" America.

No 8. In denying the appeal of a same-sex couple that had tried unsuccessfully to marry, a Georgia court wrote that such unions are "not only unnatural, but . . . always productive of deplorable results," such as increased effeminate behavior in the population. "They are productive of evil, and evil only, without any corresponding good . . . (in accordance with) the God of nature."

No. 9. A gay marriage ban is not discriminatory, reasoned a Republican congressman from Illinois, because it "applies equally to men and women."

No. 10. Attorneys for the state of Tennessee argued that such unions should be illegal because they are "distasteful to our people and unfit to produce the human race. . . ." The state supreme court agreed, declaring gay marriages would be "a calamity full of the saddest and gloomiest portent to the generations that are to come after us."

No. 11. Lawyers for California insisted that a ban on same-sex marriage is necessary to prevent "traditional marriage from being contaminated by the recognition of relationships that are physically and mentally inferior. . . . (and entered into by) the dregs of society."

No. 12. "The law concerning marriages is to be construed and understood in relation to those persons only to whom that law relates," thundered a Virginia judge in response to a challenge to that state's non-recognition of same-sex unions. "And not," he continued, "to a class of persons clearly not within the idea of the legislature when contemplating the subject of marriage."

To sum up: Legal recognition of such marriages would offend tradition, God, the sensibilities of the majority and the natural order while threatening conventional marriage, children and the future of our civilization.

The quotes are culled from a Boston University Law Review article and a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, though I did take the minor liberty of changing the subject of the strangled rage, fear and righteous indignation.

Everywhere I quoted the speakers referring to same-sex marriage, homosexuality and heterosexuality, they were actually referring to interracial marriage and their views of black people, white people and the proper interaction thereof. And yes, that includes statement No. 6, which in original form articulated the old white supremacist belief that offspring of whites and blacks were--like mules that result when horses mate with donkeys--sterile.

The quotes date from 1823 to 1964 and, though the sentiments look hatefully ridiculous to us in 1996, they had sufficient appeal and staying power that 15 states still criminalized black-white marriage until the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously overturned those laws in the appropriately named 1967 case, Loving vs. Virginia.

Those whose unaltered words today resemble statements 1 through 12 above, take note. The stench is familiar. The future is listening.

As you can see, people continue to try to tell others how to live and who they can love. If we all loved unconditionally as God loves us, this wouldn't be an issue. But that day won't come this side of the second coming of Christ. May it come sooner than later.