Herem

In the Book of Joshua, the ancient Israelites finally reached the promised land. At God’s command and with God’s help, they cross into Canaan and take the land by force. God tells them to kill everyone, even children, and destroy everything.

Turns out, there is a word for this. Herem - the total destruction of the enemy and his goods at the conclusion of a campaign.

There is no independent evidence that supports the claims made in Joshua, and many biblical scholars believe that it was written hundreds of years after the alleged events took place. Perhaps during or after the Babylonian exile. Maybe the author didn’t even mean for the book to be taken as a factual account. Maybe the author meant to warn his people that they should turn away from outside influences and maintain their distinct identity. Maybe the author meant to tell his people that God rewards them when they’re faithful and punishes them when they’re disobedient. Most of those who escaped the alleged slavery in Egypt were denied entrance into the promised land for being unfaithful and disobedient, including Moses, according to the Bible. It was their more faithful descendants who were finally rewarded.

The ancient Israelites didn’t come up with this concept. Just like so much of the Bible, herem is grounded in the greater culture of the area. It was a different time and a different place, and the culture was exceedingly harsh.

We could simply look at this as cultural history and ancient literature, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, if it weren’t for the fact that it comes to us by way of a collection of writings still considered sacred by millions to this day. You see echoes of it in colonialism and the genocide of Native Americans. Recently, a minister claimed that God wanted us to kill all the Syrian refugees, every man, woman and child.

I find this part of the Bible to be very disturbing, especially since it claims God demands, directs and even assists in the killing of innocent people. I’m sure you can find value in it if you read it allegorically, and, as I said, maybe the author never meant for it to be taken as a factual account, but I think, more than anything else, it sows the seeds of religious supremacy. I wish it weren’t part of our religious heritage. Just as I wish our religious heritage weren’t entrenched in patriarchy, and just as I wish those vicious judgments of people like me weren’t part of the package. But all of that is part of our religious heritage, and I suppose it will continue to be for a long time.

I believe in religious freedom, and I believe people should follow their hearts. But I don’t think every religious belief or practice should be given a pass, and I think fundamentalism is a dangerous thing. In my opinion, there is some pretty dark stuff in the Bible, and if taken literally and as the inerrant word of God, there are parts of it that can be used to justify some pretty horrendous things.

Live As Though The Day Were Here

The idea that we must either accept “orthodox” Christianity or become an avowed atheist is a false dilemma. There is actually an infinite variety of choices, including marching to the beat of your own drummer. You don’t need an ism or a formal systematic structure with a neat definition. Being yourself and accepting what you think and how you feel doesn’t necessarily coincide with joining a group of like-minded believers.

If you grew up with “orthodox” Christianity and have discovered that a great deal of it isn’t to your liking, you can reinvent it. There is evidence to suggest that is exactly what early Christians did.

I like the Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Paul Tillich taught that human beings have a greater capacity for kindness when they feel accepted, when they feel like they belong. When you see the world as a dog eat dog place, you tend to grab what you can get. You become bitter, hostile and paranoid. Tillich was a Christian theologian, but his understanding of Christianity wasn’t traditional. Rather than claiming human beings are unworthy, miserable creatures, he said that God has already accepted us, but we are reluctant to believe we are acceptable. So in Tillich’s view, Christianity isn’t about Jesus taking the punishment for our supposedly unforgivable sins, but rather an attempt to persuade us to stop punishing ourselves—and by extension punishing everyone around us—and “accept acceptance.” God isn’t the one judging us; we’re judging ourselves…and each other. Tillich reinvented Christianity, and I think he was onto something. I think convincing people they are loved and accepted—right now, just as they are—would help them live out the Golden Rule better than telling them they are sinners deserving of death, and their only hope is to believe in a blood sacrifice that covers their debts. Thus setting up a “saved” vs. “unsaved” dichotomy whereby the “saved” insist that we’re all unworthy, but some of us are more unworthy than others.

Well, as I’ve said before, I don’t know if there’s a god or not, but I do believe that we’re more likely to be loving when we are loved and when our needs are met. Children being raised by responsible, loving parents, living in decent housing in safe neighborhoods, having enough food to eat, getting a good education, and having a sense of belonging, a sense of community… These things are important, and I think they make all the difference.

Based on my understanding of the canonical Gospels, I think Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher, but apocalypticism is one of the things I don’t like about traditional “orthodox” Christianity. I don’t like the idea of a cosmic war between good and evil. I think it leads to believers viewing themselves as one of the “good guys” while viewing those who different as evil. However, I can see how the idea might have been a comfort to those living under an oppressive regime two thousand years ago. It provides a reason as to why a loving god would allow good people to be persecuted, and it promises that one day everything will be put right. The problem is God never put things right, and people are still holding onto the promise, and still thinking of themselves as the persecuted “good guys” when they’re not being persecuted.

Jesus did put an interesting spin on his version of apocalypticism. (Or at least, the Jesus we find in the canonical Gospels did this. How complete and accurate those gospels are is anyone’s guess.) Rather than advocating for a violent overthrow of the Romans and their local collaborators, Jesus spoke of the coming Kingdom of God and advocated that his followers start living as though that kingdom were already here. Maybe he, or, at least, the Gospel writers, believed this kingdom would be a physical reality that would be manifest by supernatural forces. (Then again, maybe not. Maybe it was meant metaphorically.) But can’t it be whatever you want it to be? It seems Jesus taught that there would be no more violence in the kingdom, so turn the other cheek and love your enemies. It seems he taught there would be no more inequities, so give to the poor and stop trying to become rich. In the kingdom, we’re all going to be equal, and we’re all going to take care of one another. Couldn’t all of this be seen as another way of saying “be the change you want to see in the world”? Even the avowed atheist Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Live as though the day were here.”

David and Jonathan, a Love Story

Lately, I’ve been thinking about and reviewing the Old Testament. I started with Genesis, and I’m up to Solomon. The story of David and Jonathan is not only striking in isolation, but it stands out in comparison to all the relationships that precede it. It’s true, there is no “smoking gun.” No verse explicitly indicates these two men were physically intimate, but I think you can interpret their relationship as romantic. It seems more romantic to me than almost any other up to that point. Besides, we all know that love between men isn’t merely about sex. If a man and a woman had an intense romantic relationship that never resulted in physical intimacy—to anyone’s knowledge—you wouldn’t have many running around insisting that they were “just friends.” And the text does leave room for interpretation.

I don’t think this is a story with one objective meaning. Fundamentalists insist that there is one cohesive understanding of the entire Bible—namely theirs—but it seems to me that many of these stories are functioning in the same way other examples of literature do. The reader brings something to these stories.

For instance, much of the story of David and Bathsheba is open to interpretation. In the movies, Bathsheba is portrayed as a seductress, but in the Bible, her character is ambiguous. Did she know David would see her bathing? Was she deliberately displaying herself? That’s up to you to decide. When David summoned her and had sex with her, did she have a choice? Did she want to have sex with David? Or was she raped? The text doesn’t make that clear in my opinion. When she tells David that she’s pregnant, what does she want him to do about it? The Bible doesn’t spell it out. We’re allowed to fill in the blanks.

There are a few things that are spelled out. David, one of the heroes of the Bible, is an adulterer and a murderer, and it’s not surprising. It is interesting that the heroes in the Old Testament tend not to be plaster saints. We’re introduced to one flawed character after another. Abraham allows his wife to be taken into the households of other men twice. Once would have been bad enough, but he does it twice, and each time, he profits from it. Abraham and Sarah almost come across as a couple of con artists. Jacob tricks his older brother out of his birthright. These aren’t goody-goodies who never do anything wrong. So the idea that David would never do anything with Jonathan that would shock the sensibilities of his countrymen or offend God seems absurd.

You also have other instances of major figures violating Leviticus. Abraham marries his sister, and Jacob marries two sisters. Both of these things are forbidden by Leviticus. That might be because some of these elaborate law codes were developed at a later date. Maybe hundreds of years later. Even though they’re laid out in the Pentateuch, even the stories about David might be older.

Despite those nasty bits in Leviticus, I don’t see ancient Biblical authors or the final editor going out of their way to emphasize that this was considered the sin of all sins. They seem much more concerned with idolatry and general disobedience. Even in the story of Sodom, you don’t get human men engaging in consensual sex. They don’t spend a lot of time driving home the idea that it’s awful for men to diddle one another or fall in love, and they must have known that it happened, or it wouldn’t have been mentioned in the story of Sodom or in Leviticus.

I don’t see anything wrong with reading the story of David and Jonathan as a romantic love story. You can’t prove that they were in love, but so what? You often can’t prove an interpretation of a work of art.

Yes, We Can

Thirty years ago, hospitals sometimes threw dead AIDS patients into dumpsters because funeral homes didn’t want to touch them. We had a president who refused to acknowledge there was a problem. The Supreme Court refused to strike down anti-sodomy laws. Most didn’t dare to hope for same-sex marriage within their lifetime. That was the country we lived in 30 years ago. We still have work to do, but we now have marriage equality, and soon the overwhelming majority of the country will be just fine with it.

I don’t think single payer universal healthcare is a pipedream. I don’t think the current system is good enough….although it is better than it was before the Affordable Care Act. Other countries have universal healthcare, and we can, too, if we keep pushing for it. We can live in a country that acknowledges healthcare is a right. We can live in a country where the healthcare needs of the seriously mentally ill are met, and those who suffer from mental illness aren’t dumped onto the streets to fend for themselves.

Not Good Enough

My mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia as I’m sure many of you know by now. Schizophrenia is a debilitating brain disease. Mother heard people talking to her who weren’t really there. She believed in elaborate and sometimes frightening delusions because she could not distinguish reality from fantasy. Sometimes the noise in her head was so great, Mother had trouble keeping track of time and sometimes forgot where she was.

My father had health problems, too, and in the early ‘90s, he was forced to retire early. He was allowed to keep his employee based health insurance, but Mother’s policy was dropped. Because she had a serious preexisting condition, no private insurance company would cover her, and my parents couldn’t afford to pay for it anyway. Because she was married to my father, she was not eligible for Medicaid (except for short periods of time when she was hospitalized and racked up thousands of dollars in hospital bills), and she was too young for Medicare.

Her psychiatrist knew that Mother would not be able to function without antipsychotic medication, so he continued to see her after she lost her insurance, and he arranged for her to receive free samples of her medication. Obviously, you don’t come across a doctor like that very often. She was lucky in that regard. (The doctor was a Muslim emigrant, by the way.) This generous man provided psychiatric treatment, but Mother went without regular checkups and routine medical tests for the last 12 years of her life.

In early December, 2003, she was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic inflammatory breast cancer. This was a shock considering she had been complaining of a backache. Finally, she was eligible for Medicaid because of the diagnosis and her financial situation, but it was too late. She died two and a half months later.

Mother told us her back was hurting in September. We all hoped it was just a backache and that it would clear up on its own in time, but it didn’t. She finally went to see a doctor in mid-October. He was reluctant to order tests because he knew she and Dad didn’t have the money to pay for them, so at first, he only prescribed pain medication. Her condition did not improve, so he sent her to have a scan in late November. There was a shadow on the picture of her spine. That’s how she landed in the oncologist’s office in December. He took one look at her beasts and knew immediately what was wrong. He admitted her to the hospital the next morning, but as I said, it was too late. They did manage to shrink the tumor on her spine with radiation and the tumor in her breast with chemo. He wanted her to have surgery in the spring. He thought he might be able to extend her life for two or three years, but Mother developed pneumonia in February, and since both the chemo and radiation had knocked out her immune system, she was unable to fight it. We removed her from life support a few of days after Valentine’s Day.

Sometime after that, Dad told me about something that happened in September. I must have been out walking in the woods because I wasn’t around at the time. Mother fell on our front porch, and she couldn’t get up. When Dad found her, she asked him to call her an ambulance, but Dad didn’t want to be stuck with a bill he couldn’t pay, so instead of calling her that ambulance, Dad—a man with a serious heart condition and an implanted pacemaker/defibulator—pulled her up and took her inside. Neither of them told me what happened when I got home. We didn’t know it, but Mother’s back was broken, and if Dad had pulled on her in the wrong way, she could have died paralyzed on top of everything else.

In my opinion, any healthcare system that leaves someone like my mother lying helpless on the floor and afraid to call for help because of money is simply not good enough.

Finishing School

I watched a couple of episodes of Shameless earlier, Friday evening. [Spoilers. I’m about to reveal plot points.] We watched episodes 3 and 4 of season 5. 13-year-old Deb becomes aggressively flirtatious with a 20-year-old pizza delivery guy, and Lip nearly flunks out of college. Both of those storylines got to me, and that’s because I understood why these two exceptionally bright and likable young people were being so reckless. They come from a chaotic and dysfunctional home. They have not been parented. I understood this because I can relate.

I loved my parents, and I miss them everyday, but they weren’t great parents. I think they did the best they could under the circumstances. They weren’t cruel. But they were incompetent to say the least.

My mother was seriously mentally ill. She regularly talked to people who weren’t really there. She believed in elaborate fantasies that only made sense to her. My mother loved me, I’m sure, maybe more than anyone else ever did, but all of this stuff that was going on inside her head distracted her. I don’t think she was even aware of my presence half of the time. Sometimes I would have to shout at her and wave my arms in front of her face to get her attention.

My father was an uneducated country boy who thought looking after kids was “woman’s work.” He didn’t know how to deal with Mother’s illness. He didn’t know what to do for her, and he didn’t know what to do for his children. So he basically blocked us out. He stayed away as much as he could, and when he was home, he’d ignore us. When he was around us, it always seemed like he was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Dad was a social man, and with other people, he was usually relaxed, open and happy. But when he was with his family, he was bug-eyed.

I know what it’s like to have unreliable parents. I couldn’t tell them anything. I couldn’t talk to them about anything, nothing that really mattered. I was terrified of either of them or anyone finding out I was gay, and I was afraid of how my mother would react if she discovered I was having any other kind of trouble. Someone stole one of my textbooks when I was 12, and the teacher refused to give me another. She said it was my problem that it was stolen. After several weeks, I reluctantly told my mother. The expression that came over her face was startling, and before I could get the whole story out, she was on the phone. Mother must have made twenty threatening and harassing phone calls to my teacher that evening. I was honestly afraid she would kill this woman. Well, at least I did get a new textbook, but I knew I couldn’t trust my mother to be rational. And Dad… He would have acted like I was sticking needles in his eyes if I so much as asked him to help me with a math problem.

The way I coped with this was by turning inward. I became exceptionally shy and withdrawn. Unlike the Gallagher kids, I was way too timid to act out. I didn’t learn many social skills when I was a kid, but I stayed out of trouble, and eventually, I learned how to study on my own. When I was about 14, I decided I wanted to go to college. That would be my means of escape.

I did engage in sexual activity when I was Deb’s age. The boy I fooled around with also came from a dysfunctional home, so both of us could slip into the woods on warm summer days and stay gone for hours without anyone even noticing. We didn’t have to explain or ask permission. No one cared. For the most part, those experiences were positive for me. I wouldn’t trade them. I wouldn’t go back and have it not happen. Given the time and the homophobic culture, it might have served me to an extent to have parents who were disengaged. Parents who were paying attention would have noticed my lack of interest in girls. Affluent parents might have even sent me to a therapist. That might have been the best thing for me if I got one who understood what was happening to me, but what if I had landed in the office of one who still believed in “curing” homos?

I wish I had someone to talk to. My special friend was willing to do things, but he didn’t want to talk about it, and at that point, he wasn’t willing to think of himself as gay. But at least I had the freedom to discover the joys of sex. However, I know it could have went terribly wrong. What if it had been an older boy who had led me into the woods with the intention of raping me? What if I had blown a boy, and he told everyone in school? So as I watched Deb go through her sexual awakening, I tensed up and waited for the shit to hit the fan. I wanted her to have a trusted and nurturing adult around to tell her that it’s okay to have those feelings, it’s okay to want those things, but you have to be careful, and there isn’t any rush.

As I watched these kids experience the consequences of bad or nonexistent parenting and remembered what it was like for me when I was their age, an idea came to me. I think it would be nice to have a kind of finishing school for young adults from dysfunctional families. When the kid is 18, and their crazy parents no longer have any legal control, they could voluntarily sign up for a two year training program. They’d have to wake up early, make their beds and engage in exercise, just like in the Army. They’d have to be clean, neat and presentable at all times. They’d be fed healthy food, and they’d have to eat it using correct table manners. They’d learn standard English and take classes that would prepare them for college. Every day, they’d see a therapist who was specially trained to help young people with neglectful or abusive parents. They would get career counseling so that they could plan their future. It would be drilled into them every day that they could achieve their goals so long as they were reasonable and they worked steadily toward them. They would learn coping skills and social skills, skills that would help them thrive. It would be an intensive, nurturing and highly disciplined program. I could have used a school like that. I think it would have helped a great deal.

Religious Supremacy

If you sense there is something beyond ordinary perception and understanding and spend time contemplating and attempting to comprehend and appreciate that experience, I think that’s spirituality. If you form communities based on similar spiritual experiences and beliefs, I think that’s religion. I think spirituality and religion are very human things. I don’t think historians or anthropologists have ever discovered a human culture that was devoid of spirituality and/or religion. For instance, the early cave paintings might have some kind of spiritual significance.

Well, that’s who we are, I guess, and that’s fine, but I wish human beings would keep their spirituality on a personal level even if they share it with others and form communities of likeminded believers. I wish they wouldn’t claim to hold some kind of universal truth that supersedes everyone else’s experiences and beliefs, a truth that everyone must accept.

I strongly detest the idea that some people are favored by God (if there is one) because of what they believe or what religion they belong to. I think that this “saved” v. “unsaved” concept is pernicious, and I think that it is ego driven and has little to do with spirituality. It’s less about seeking truth and more about proclaiming yourself as the purveyor of it. It’s less about pointing to something “out there” that you’re trying to relate to and understand and more about pointing to yourself. “I’m Special. God likes me best. I’m more highly valued. You won’t be as valuable as me until you believe what I believe.” I think this line of reasoning leads to all kinds of cruelty and mischief. It divides and leads to conflict, war and mistreatment of those who hold different views.

If there is a god, I don’t think this god has revealed itself to everyone or in a way that can be understood in the same way by everyone. You can’t even prove that there is a god much less that this god has specific instructions and expectations for human beings. Human beings have difficulty figuring out the simple stuff. They certainly have difficulty understanding one another. But a shockingly large number of us claim to know the mind of God, and quite a large number are willing to try to lord that questionable claim over the rest of us. Some are even willing to harm you if you don’t go along with their claims.

I have little patience for those who say they are special and more highly valued based on their spiritual and religious beliefs, and it angers me when someone claims, either directly or in subtle ways, that their belief in things unseen and unproven trump the beliefs and experiences of those who don’t share their faith.

Babylon, Genesis and the Holy Ghost

According to biblical scholar Amy-Jill Levine, a professor at Vanderbilt, the ancient Babylonian creation myth Enûma Eliš probably inspired the first creation story in the Book of Genesis. (There are two creation stories in Genesis, and the second one with Adam and Eve is probably the oldest, and apparently was influenced by the Epic of Gilgamesh.) The first Genesis creation story might have been written during the Babylonian captivity after the destruction of the first temple. Taking the Babylonian myth and standing it on its head and making it their own might have been a way for ancient Israelites to maintain their separate identity.

This is an English translation of the beginning of Enûma Eliš:
 
When the sky above was not named
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsû, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamat, the mother of them both,
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being.

Most know the English translation of the opening line of Genesis: “In the beginning…” Levine claims that a more accurate translation of the Hebrew would be “When in the beginning…”
 
In Enûma Eliš, seven wind gods assist Marduk in creating the earth. In the English translation of Genesis, we have the Spirit of God hovering over the waters. According to Levine, the Hebrew word that is usually translated as “spirit” can also mean “wind.”

I think it’s interesting that these Babylonian wind gods from Enûma Eliš could be the origin of the third part of the orthodox Christian Trinity.

A Few Rays of Sunshine

Deuteronomy 15:11 “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your fellow Israelites who are poor and needy in your land.”

There is quite a lot in the Bible that is truly strange—talking snakes and donkeys, people coming back to life after they’ve died, a virgin birth. There is quite a lot that is truly boring—all of those begets and the most detailed instructions on how to construct a tent you’re likely to ever come across. There is quite a lot that is truly ugly—commands to kill men, women and boys, but save the virgin girls for yourselves. However, once in a while, you get these little rays of sunshine.

What I see here is an ancient people who were used to cruelty and harsh conditions struggling to establish a kinder and more charitable society. I think the presence of these bits of hope and generosity is one of the reasons this tradition has survived for so long. But sadly, many of the self-proclaimed pious among us use (abuse?) our religious heritage to justify themselves at the expense of others and to beat down those they don’t like. That’s what it looks like to me.

Not In The Club

Uneducated people are easily manipulated. By uneducated, I mean those who don’t know history or basic science or haven’t sharpened their critical thinking skills by analyzing literature, studying advanced math or philosophy or logic. Every day we hear references to American history, “old time religion” and the “original intent” of the Constitution. Without a knowledge base, you don’t know if what you’re hearing is true, half true or nonsense. And if you’re not a critical thinker, your reaction might be emotional rather than reasonable. For instance, if you knew anything about science, a red flag would immediately go up when someone tells you evolution is only a theory because the word “theory” in science doesn’t have the same meaning it does in ordinary speech. If you were aware of this, the word “only” would be a dead giveaway that you’re being manipulated or the person making the claim is ignorant, or both.

Working class white people in this country are routinely manipulated by the Right Wing. They hear what sounds to them like high-minded rhetoric about “hard working Americans” willing to “pull their own weight,” and stuff about patriotism and duty, and they lap it up. It makes them feel good about themselves. They’re regularly pitted against those who are worse off than themselves. They’re convinced that the poor who survive on government assistance are lazy and living a high life on their tax dollars. That carefully crafted and fomented hatred is a distraction created by the Right. The Right is hoping these uneducated working class whites won’t look up state and federal budgets to see where the money is going. They’re hoping the uneducated white workers won’t stop and think about how their wages are dropping as the wealth of those who employ them continues to increase. It’s always, “You’re the backbone of this country. So keep working…harder and harder. Don’t be like those lazy people who don’t work. They can, but they won’t. And look at that one over there, isn’t his skin tone darker than yours? And that one, is she really an American? That over there is Muslim. Better watch out, or he’ll kill you.” Meanwhile, the rich and their hired guns—Republican politicians and Fox News commentators—laugh at the gullibility of the uneducated white workers. They laugh all the way to the bank.

It was the same way in the South after the Civil War. Wealthy white families maintained their power with the help of dirt poor and ignorant whites. They convinced the poor whites that Jim Crow laws meant that they were in the club. They focused poor white rage on blacks so they’d go on working for next to nothing while believing that the reason they never got ahead was somehow because the blacks were cheating them.

Little do these uneducated white working class people know that they’re not really in the club at all. If those they’re suckered into backing ever accrued enough power, they’d bust the unions of the working class. They’d do away with minimum wages. They’d end Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They’d end unemployment benefits. They’d do away with workplace safety regulations. They’d do away with antidiscrimination laws. If they had it their way, an employer could fire you anytime for any reason, and there would be no safety net there to help you. If you got sick and couldn’t pay, you wouldn’t be treated, even if blood was gushing from an open wound. In the Right Wing paradise, if you don’t have the money then fuck you. And if you don’t have the money, it’s your own damn fault. That includes the uneducated working class. What the Right Wing doesn’t tell the uneducated white working class is that they consider them lazy, too. As far as they’re concerned, if you haven’t made yourself indispensable—usually with advanced training and education—or amassed a fortune for yourself, then you are good for nothing and expendable.

I wish there was some way to reach these people, explain to them that they’re being taken for a ride. I fear that, with their unwitting help, this country could one day fall into fascism, or we could see the rise of a modern version of feudalism.

2016

My New Year’s resolutions at the beginning of 2015:

Lose weight and get into better shape.

Write my fourth novel.

I had partial success on both counts.

In May, I bought a Kindle Fire. Amazon let me buy it on installments. I listen to audio books and lecture series while walking here in my apartment, going back and forth between the kitchen and the front door. By the end of summer, I was doing that for an hour and a half a day. I lost 40 pounds, too.

I outlined my novel and began writing it, but there’s still a lot of work to be done.

My goals for 2016:

I want to weigh less than 200 pounds by the start of 2017.

I want to finish the novel and get it published.

I have decided that if I fail to lose much weight this year, I’m going to seriously consider weight loss surgery in 2017. If I’m still a candidate for the surgery, that is. (If I’m close to 200 pounds by then, I probably wouldn’t be eligible.)

I’ve looked into it, and my insurance will most likely cover the cost because there are significant health benefits to weight loss surgery. Most, but not all, lose at least half of their excess weight. Many get pretty close to their ideal body weight. The surgeries have been greatly improved over the years, and they are now minimally invasive procedures. The risk for complications is there, but it’s not high. And the weight loss significantly reduces your risk of heart disease and diabetes. There’s also less of a chance that you’ll need hips and knees replaced.

I’ve been listening to testimonials on YouTube, and what impresses me is the sharp reduction in hunger pangs. One woman said she could eat all the time and never feel full, but after the surgery, she knew what it was like to be satisfied for the first time. She still enjoyed her food, but she didn’t want any more after a few bites.

There is a clinic in Modesto, and the surgeries are performed as a matter of routine in a hospital up there. Given that I don’t drive and that I have extreme social phobia, going back and forth might be an ordeal. You have to go for screenings, consultations and tests before the surgery, and there would be follow-up visits after. Amtrak and local bus services here in Merced and in Modesto could provide a way for me to get up there and come back in the same day for under $30 a visit. (Modesto is pretty close to Merced.)

After my head surgeries, the thought of more surgery and another hospital stay is frightening. But then again, if there are no complications, the weight loss surgery would be much less of an ordeal. If I can stand being put under for 15 hours and having two surgical teams working in shifts to get to the center of my brain so they can pick apart a tumor stuck to my brain stem, what’s a little weight loss surgery? I’ve also had hernia surgery and dealt with my penis and balls being so bruised they were literally black and blue for nearly a month.

Another goal is to continue to be the same unashamedly queer old boy I am now. A hundred trolls can report the photos I share of various models by various photographers celebrating the beauty of the male form, and Facebook might get tired of it and suspend my account, but I’m not going to let them stop me from appreciating beauty.

I would also like to become a pretty good photographer this year. A dear friend was kind enough to give me a Nikon D3300 for Christmas. It is my first DSLR camera. Up until now, I’ve only had relatively inexpensive point and shoot cameras.

So there you have it. Write my novel. Lose more weight. Get into better shape. Learn to take quality photos. And don’t let those who would shame me have their way.

Once I get my weight down—on my own this year or with the help of surgery next—it will be time for me to look seriously into ways to move out of Merced. That will be a goal in the not too distant future.

Hope wonderful things are in store for all of you in 2016.