Thursday, March 24, 2011

The Preacher’s Son and the Swan

by Gary Cottle

Once upon a time a preacher’s son fell in love with a boy in his father’s congregation. No one ever told him he might one day fall in love with a boy, so he was startled by the unexpected development, and he tried to hide his feelings. This caused him great heartache because he longed for the boy so much. 

The preacher's son was tempted to tell the boy that he would be the boy's faithful companion in life if the boy returned his love, but the preacher’s son was a good and loyal son, so he tried to continue to live by what his father had taught him.

One day the preacher’s son and the boy were asked to go out into the village and collect alms for the poor, and while making their rounds, the boy asked the preacher’s son, “Why do you always blush when you are near me?”

The preacher’s son was brought up to always be honest and true, so he said to the boy, “It is because I love you.”

The boy seemed to be surprised by this confession, but after a pause, he regained his composure. He said, “I am happy to hear that. I love you, too.”

The preacher’s son smiled, and he asked, “What are we to do?”

The boy said, “I think we should follow our hearts.”

The preacher’s son agreed, and then he gave the boy a kiss.

It just so happens that an old man, a terrible gossip, witnessed this, and by suppertime everyone in the village knew that the preacher’s son had kissed a boy.

When the news reached the preacher, he summoned his son to his office in the church. He asked his son, “Did you kiss your friend while out collecting alms today?”

The preacher’s son could not lie, so he humbly said, “Yes, sir.”

“Why would you do that?” the preacher asked.

“Because I love him,” the son said.

“You know the tenants of our faith do not permit two boys to love one another,” said the preacher.

In a respectful tone, the boy said, “Father, I have been a good and loyal son. I have tried to live by what you have taught me, but now I feel I must follow my heart.”

The preacher was disgusted by this, and he told his son to go home, retire to his room without supper, and pray that God change his wayward heart.

The preacher then went to his wife and told her that he feared they had lost their son, but she said, “Don’t worry, Husband, I think I can save our son.”

Several hours later, the wife, who had once been a sorceress, went to the boy’s home in the cover of night, crept into his room, and placed a swan’s feather dipped in the blood of a chameleon under the boy’s pillow. Soon the spell began to take effect, and the wife stood back and watched. Within moments, the boy was transformed into a beautiful swan. When the boy awoke in terror, he flew out the window.

The commotion caused the boy’s parents to stir from their slumber in the next room, so the preacher’s wife fled, and in her haste, she dropped a small, gold cross on a necklace that the preacher had given her on their wedding day. The cross had special meaning. It symbolized her renunciation of sorcery, and her conversion to her new husband’s faith.

When the preacher’s wife returned to her home, she told her husband that the boy would no longer trouble their family.

“So the boy is gone?” said the preacher.

“Yes. He is gone,” said the wife.

The preacher, knowing his wife’s past, knew better than to press for an explanation. Instead, he went to his son’s room, roused him from sleep and informed him that the boy he loved was gone.

“Now you may stop thinking about this boy and resume your role as my loyal son,” said the preacher.

Tears began to flow from the son’s eyes, and he said, “Father, my soul is heavy with sadness. May I take a walk in the woods to grieve in solitude?”

The preacher, on seeing his son cry, felt his pain, so he granted his permission. “Yes, son, but please return shortly and make your way to the church in time for services.”

The son dressed and left his father’s home to take his comforting stroll in the woods. But he was not in church when it was time for services to begin, nor was anyone from the village in church when it was time for services to begin.

The feather and the cross on the necklace had been found in the boy’s room by the boy’s parents, and they knew the preacher’s wife had taken their son from them with an act of sorcery. The boy’s parents informed their fellow churchgoers of what the preacher’s wife had done to their son, and they burned the church to the ground with the preacher and his wife inside.

Now, rather than take their children to church to be informed as to how to be good and loyal, they tell them the story of the preacher’s son and the boy he fell in love with.

Many years have passed, and still the preacher’s son and his beloved swan are sometimes seen in the woods surrounding the village.

 

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Premonitions and Teddy Bears -- My Search For Meaning and Comfort

Back when I had my head surgery, several churches from my hometown sent me prayer cloths. It made me feel rather awkward. On the one hand, I was humbled that they would care about me or take an interest in my medical problems. But on the other hand, it was as if they were asking me to participate in a kind of magic act that I had no use for. I thought that either the surgeons would be successful in removing the tumor, or they wouldn’t. I would either live through the surgery, or I wouldn’t. What ever will be will be.

I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that my life made much of a difference in the larger scheme of things. Of course I wanted to live, but I couldn’t imagine the universe being reordered just so I could. I couldn’t even imagine asking for such a thing. And I also wondered what these people who had given me the prayer cloths were really up to. Most of them had never given me the time of day before. I was facing the possibility of my own extinction, and it felt like maybe they were asking me to affirm their faith before I jumped off into the abyss.

I was instructed to take the prayer cloths with me into surgery, but I just couldn’t, not even out of politeness. It simply wasn’t my reality, and if the day of my surgery was going to be my last day of consciousness, I sure as hell wasn’t going to spend it pretending to be someone I wasn’t. So I left the prayer cloths at my apartment. (Later I found the nerve to throw them away. That took a while, and not because I actually believed they had any power, but because throwing them away seemed rude somehow.)

I did make it through surgery, but I was in ICU for a while after that, and my hold on life didn’t seem secure. I was so weak I couldn’t hold my head off of my pillow. I couldn’t turn or move. And I was in pain. I’ll never forget how alone, empty and helpless I felt, especially that first night after the surgery, after I had been out of it for more than eighteen hours. Even thinking about it terrifies me. It seemed as if I was on the edge of a cliff and I could fall at any moment. It may have been comforting to believe something was holding me back, or at least waiting to catch me if I did fall...because I had intrinsic value and worth. But I had no such comforting thoughts. While lying there, I felt like a piece of garbage about to be thrown away.

That’s the way I felt when I was in that situation, but if you ask me about it now, I can’t say with any certainty that we live in a cold and indifferent universe. I sincerely hope that we do not. And I experienced something before the surgery that makes me wonder. About a year before I was diagnosed, I had a dream, a nightmare. In the dream I saw myself lying helpless in a hospital bed. It was so disturbing to me that I awoke and sat straight up. I knew I wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep right away, so I went into the living room. While I waited for my nerves to settle, a strong belief came to me. I knew I had a brain tumor. I knew it. But I didn’t want to face this, so I stopped going to the doctor. For a year, I avoided medical treatment of any kind. But eventually I started losing my hearing, and I had to go. They did a series of tests, and eventually I was given an MRI. I never said anything about my belief throughout this process, but the whole time I was thinking that eventually they would find the brain tumor. And they did.

So why was I warned of this tumor? I spent most of my twenties in a state of suicidal depression, and I suspect that if I had been told I had a brain tumor a few years before, I would have seen it as my cue to exit. By the time I was 30, my moods were starting to even out, but I still wasn’t the most emotionally stable person around. So maybe I was warned so I could prepare myself. Maybe I needed the extra time so I could accept what was about to happen to me. Maybe I needed to be reminded that I didn’t really want to die. Who knows? I certainly don’t.

There was a little girl at the hospital who had her tonsils out the same day I had my head surgery. I saw her in the pre-op area. She was clinging to her teddy bear. The teddy bear gave her comfort even though it seems unfathomable that a soft, fuzzy toy could have any bearing on the outcome of her surgery. Maybe for some, prayer cloths are like teddy bears. Maybe prayer cloths are adult teddy bears. I don’t know. But as long as it’s not hurting me, I can’t see any harm in allowing others to have their teddy bears. The next time I’m on the slab, I might want to have a teddy bear that I can believe in.

I can’t say if life has any intrinsic meaning or purpose, but I suspect that if it does, then the whole of it is meaningful and purposeful, not just those parts we like. Maybe tumors and earthquakes have as much purpose as sunshine and laughter. Maybe. I don’t believe that anyone fully understands.

I am prepared to let others have their prayer cloths and teddy bears, but I would appreciate it if I was allowed to come to my own conclusions and to make my own peace with this crazy, scary, exciting, funny, sometimes cruel, sometimes beautiful mystery that we’re all a part of in my own way.

Saturday, March 12, 2011

Lisa Ling's "Pray the Gay Away?"...and my reaction.

Our America with Lisa Ling, "Pray the Gay Away?" - FULL EPISODE

http://www.oprah.com/own-our-america-lisa-ling/Our-America-with-Lisa-Ling-Pray-the-Gay-Away-FULL-EPISODE?FB=fb_ouramerica_031011

Lisa Ling Screws Up Big-Time On 'Ex-Gay' Segment
YouTube video from Truth Wins Out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS2MmgeORY8

I think Truth Wins Out does have a point. I think Ling did go a little soft on Exodus. But anyone with any kind of objectivity on this issue could probably see that the two young men interviewed by Ling who were doing the "ex-gay" thing are not fooling anyone but themselves. They both saddened me because they were both obviously nice guys, and I hate to think of them going through life thinking that they are "broken" in some kind of special way that sets them apart from others, that they have to "struggle" with who they're attracted to.

I thought Michael Bussee's story about the man who cut his genitals with a razor blade and then poured Drano on the wounds because he felt so guilty for not being able to "pray the gay away" was simply devastating. I had to stop the video at that point and collect myself before I could continue.

One of the things that bothers me is the way many of the "ex-gay" people are constantly equating being gay with binge drinking, drug abuse, and extreme promiscuity. I never engaged in any of that, and I'm still gay. I don't look down on those who do, no matter if they're gay or straight. (And yes, there are plenty of straight people who party. So please stop pretending that's a gay thing.) A lot of young people -- both gay and straight -- party when they're young. Most of us -- both gay and straight -- start to appreciate the smaller things in life more as we get older. How many straight people have you heard talk about their wild and crazy youth? How many associate that with being straight? How many think they have to give up their attraction to the opposite sex in order to lead a more quiet life?

So there's a false dichotomy being presented. They claim you can be a gay Dionysian party boy, or you can have a calm "normal" life surrounded by nice, loving people if you "pray the gay away." But that's a lie. You don't have to be a party boy to be gay. And you can lead a quiet life surrounded by loving friends and family if you're gay. You do not have to stop being gay to have that.


The way it was suggested that everyone had to come to terms with what the Christian Bible had to say on this subject was a bit disturbing. I'm a southerner who was raised a fundamentalist Baptist, but I can tell you that I never fully internalized the programing. I never really even thought about "praying the gay away." I never really worried about being judged by God for being gay. When I was young, I was worried about rejection. I was worried about being abused if people found out. I was worried about hurting and disappointing my family. I loved my family, and they had a really hard time of it, and I didn't want to add to their suffering. But I never really believed that they knew the mind of God. They were literally crazy. They were so nuts, I sometime wondered how they had managed to survive so long.

Of course Christianity, and specifically my family's brand of Christianity, had an effect on me. But I arrived at college with a mind that was wide open. I studied religion and philosophy because I wanted to find answers that I felt I didn't have. For a long time, I even considered graduate school. But no matter how many ideas I read about, no matter how many philosophies and religions I familiarized myself with, I never got a sense that I had arrived at the final answer. So I gave up the intensive search.

I have certain ideas, but I don't like proclaiming my allegiance to any particular philosophy or religion. I'm much more comfortable now with the idea that I simply don't know much of anything for sure, and I want to maintain an open mind.

So it does bother me a little that we live in a society in which you ether choose some version of Christianity or you choose not to reflect on the big questions. I think that's a false dichotomy, too.

BTW,  I loved the camp for gay kids. Golly, how I wish I could have went to a camp like that when I was young. Would have been so much fun.