Palate cleanser

Once, mixing chemicals, his glasses almost glowing,
he told me we were falling at that moment,
at every moment, through a slow funnel of days,
that when we die the funnel opens on itself
and gobbles everything we've done, spitting out
hours, minutes, every increment of time, leaving
us a glove of accumulated light that we wear
forever. He only explained it once.

Lance Larsen
Elegy to photographer Donald Pugmire

Oprah, Oprah, is it really you?

I had the strangest dream last night. It’s been a while since I’ve had a dream this strange and vivid. Like the dream about being embalmed while I was still alive, or my dream about going to Nazi school. In this dream, I was in a movie with Oprah, so the dream was the movie. The movie was set around the time of The Color Purple, but that wasn’t the movie we were in. I lived with Oprah and she was very sick, I think it was cancer. Another woman we lived with decided to take Oprah to the hospital to get some help because she was in a lot of pain. I was watching from the porch as the two worked their way to the car, Oprah kind of doubled over in pain. Apparently I’m a jerk in this movie because I just stayed on the porch and watched. All of the sudden, Oprah stopped and screamed in pain. She widened her stance while still standing in her dress and all of the sudden, all of her internal organs started falling out of her dress. The intestines were first and they stayed all clumped together as one solid mass and actually bounced a little when they hit the ground. After that, everything kind of followed en masse and the last thing to fall out were two really large eggs. Maybe representative of her ovaries? Then I woke up.

I wish Joseph was around to tell me what this all means. (Cue Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat soundtrack) Until then, does someone want to take on the task of fleshing out the details and writing the screenplay for this blockbuster movie? Maybe Joseph could be rescripted and instead of a dream about corn, the dream could be about Oprah losing her entrails. No? Bad idea?

Speaking of rescripted, this weekend I went and saw a Richard Wagner opera rescripted as a Baywatch episode. It was a little over the top silly, but I suppose I should have expected that.

7 year itch?

Seven years ago today I moved to Portland. It was never really in my plans. I had just graduated from BYU and was working on campus in the visitor’s center and trying to figure out what I was going to do next. The job market sucked around that time. I had interviewed half heartedly with some accounting firms but nothing really panned out. The only offer I got was with my current employer in Portland. I wasn’t so stoked about moving to a place where I knew no one. I think I would have stayed at the visitor’s center indefinitely if I could have, but being a campus tour guide wasn’t really a viable long term option.

I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to move to Portland and most people told me what I wanted to hear and validated my feelings that moving here wasn’t a good idea. One girl that I didn’t know very well overheard one such conversation though and she told me to do it. To take the job. She told me Provo was a lifesuck and if I didn’t leave and conquer another city I would regret it. My dad also called me to make sure I knew what to do/say when I got a job offer. As a result of those two conversations, I decided this was something I should at least prayerfully consider.

Pure logic alone should have told me to take the job and make the move. It was a good opportunity and it was pretty much my only real opportunity. I don’t always do things necessarily because it’s logical though. After a couple of days the feelings caught up with the logic and three weeks later my friend Kevin drove with me and helped me move before he turned around and drove all the way back to Provo.

I had arranged to move into a house with some guys in the singles ward. I arrived on a Sunday and they were at church so they left a key for me. I went in and took one look around and realized I couldn’t live there. I went to the church and the singles ward was just getting out of sacrament meeting and I ran into a friend from BYU who offered up his couch. I crashed there for a couple of days until I found a studio apartment downtown. That first day is very vivid in my memory though. Bryce’s kind interest in me, Amber’s fantastic scarf, dinner at Skye’s and a conversation with her about church music, meeting Lori over cobbler, KaRyn inviting me to FHE. It’s kind of comforting to realize that so many of the people I met that first day are some of my closest friends.

I’ve done some fairly stupid things since I’ve lived here, but overall, Portland and the people I’ve met and become friends with since I’ve lived here have helped me step outside of myself and see myself in a different light. I think extracting yourself for a time from the place you grew up in is a good thing. It’s helped me see myself and my life through a different lens.

So to that girl whose name I no longer remember, I left and conquered another city. Sucka what?

Open thread on church media

In my last post I made mention of the role seminary videos had on forming my understanding of certain gospel principles. Ninny Beth, who is like my soul doppelganger, made the suggestion of having a discussion of media in the church. For the purposes of this post, when I say "church media" I mean to include both church produced media as well as media produced by church people (Michael McLean, Saturday's Warrior, etc.).

So here are some questions to get the ball rolling. What perceptions of gospel topics did you have in your youth that resulted from church meda and how have they changed? For example, the video I referred to in the previous post about the girl who had to postpone her marriage because she broke the law of chastity with her boyfriend. I think for me it painted a picture of lots of tears and feeling bad as a form of true repentence. Should it have been any different though? It probably also started the process of me learning gospel principles, albeit imperfectly. Maybe it was good enough at that age? Maybe it could be improved upon? How? What church media is inspiring to you as an adult? Anything?

Also, this could be expanded to include stories that are passed on, like comparing breaking the law of chastity to chewed up gum. Have you heard others that you think are more destructive than helpful?

As a side note to give more perspective as to why I think this type of discussion is helpful, I think part of growing into healthy adulthood is being able to thoughtfully deconstruct and objectively look at those things that had a big part of forming me in my childhood and adolescence, whether talking about family or church or other things that had a large influence. I think it's through this process that I learn that I have have certain ideas or perceptions or ways of being in the world that have been with me for years that have held me back or limited my understanding of certain things or kept me from existing in the world in a way that produces happiness. Kind of like what Wendy talks about in my previous post about "habits of unrighteousness" that get passed on through family or church until someone makes the choice to dismantle them.

So I guess in a way, this excercise could be a practical application follow up to my last post. I should also note, the purpose of this exercise isn't to find ways to blame the church or family for warping me. I'm sure the intent of church and family isn't to warp. We are all unique individuals who are affected differently by different things. There is probably someone out there who thinks the seminary video I mentioned is amazing and helped him in ways nothing else has been able to. I'm just curious about what your perceptions and thoughts are.

Discuss...

Redefining sin and repentance

I really don’t like the words sin and repentance. I think they are two concepts that are completely misunderstood, and therefore the words take on the misunderstood meanings. I think those misunderstood meanings prevent people from making real and transformational changes in their lives.

I say those words and what comes to mind? Awkward interviews with bishops that have a constrictive feeling more than an expansive one. That awful seminary video about the girl who is about to get married and has already sent out wedding invitations but goes a little bit too far with her boyfriend and therefore has to postpone the wedding. The video presents a view of repentance that I think focuses way too much on shame and guilt, two very constrictive feelings. The take away from that video is that to repent means to cry a lot and feel horrible about yourself. I may be exaggerating but that’s kind of how I viewed repentance and I feel like my point of view was largely shaped by bad seminary videos.

Another image that might come to mind is Elder Scott staring directly at me through the camera asking me to pretend like we are alone in a room together, talking one on one. That usually leaves me with more of an unsettled feeling. I wonder if they’ve ever done focus groups to see how people respond to talks like that. I’m guessing I’m not the only one feeling unsettled.

The words sin and repentance might also bring to remembrance talks in our youth that evoke the metaphor of the chewed up piece of gum, or the trampled flower or the cookie with dog crap on it to get us to obey the law of chastity. Not helpful. The reality is that lots of kids are going to mess up. Do we really want to send them the message that if they do, they are now a chewed up piece of gum or a trampled flower or a cookie with dog crap on it that no one is going to want? Probably not.

I think we also limit our view of what sin is to a list of things that you have to go talk to the bishop about. I recently heard a testimony of a girl who said she was flipping through the scriptures one night and kept landing on verses about repentance. She said she wondered what was going on because she felt like she had nothing to repent of. I’m sure she would freely admit that she’s not perfect, but I think what she said illustrates how we limit our repentance to that confession worthy list. I think that line of thought holds us back.

A few months back a friend sent me a talk by Wendy Ulrich called Journey of the Soul. This one is definitely worth reading. I’ve been chewing on it ever since and feel like it provides a view of repentance that goes beyond merely controlling behavior or checking off the three R’s or whatever. It’s about actual foundational transformation, about dismantling those things that we engage in that are self defeating or self limiting. She begins by alluding to Nephi and his family leaving Jerusalem. Here’s a little paragraph to give you a taste of what the talk is about:

Thus begins Nephi’s journey away from Jerusalem, a city steeped in the “tradition of the fathers” as the scriptures call those habits of unrighteousness that pass from one generation to the next unless someone makes the deliberate choice to dismantle them. Usually my own spiritual journeys have begun less dramatically. The crises that push me to abandon familiar paths and question the traditions behind past choices have more often taken the form of a threat to my soul life—to my growth and potential as a human being. When the defenses I have learned have outlived their usefulness—when they can no longer protect me from my enemies of fear and depression and anger and guilt—it is time to leave the pseudo-security of a familiar order and depart into the wilderness.

To me, there are lots of traditions that are passed down not only through families, but also cultures and organizations like the church. Ways of being that are ineffective and perhaps unknowingly self limiting. To me, those things are just as, if not more important to address than the big ticket items. I’ve found that the more foundational changes I make, the less the big ticket items are a concern. They kind of take care of themselves.

I’ll give a more specific example. I was in a meeting recently and someone there mentioned an object lesson that I thought was particularly amazing. I might get some of the details wrong, but I can give you enough of an idea to get my point across. In this object lesson, people are supposed to go through magazines and cut out pictures of people or things that they’d like to be or have. Maybe even of people or things that they think others would like or expect them to be or have. The images are then put into a collage on a big piece of poster board and a person is asked to complete some task while holding up the poster board.

The idea is that if we expend so much energy holding up a façade, it takes away from us being able to exist effectively in life. It’s also dishonest to ourselves and those around us. Mormons are really good at facades. I’m pretty sure most of us wouldn’t put this on our list of grievous sins, but I know that the more I’ve dismantled the façade and tried to bring it down, the easier it has been to avoid those things that are on the grievous sins list. And actually, it now seems kind of ridiculous to have a ranking of sins. That’s what we do though.

Now I try to look at it more as whether something is going to contribute to making me a better person or if something is going to contribute to holding me back. I try to make sure I’m doing more things on the “better person” side as opposed to the “holding me back” side. The balance shifts daily, but gradually I feel the “better person” side winning out more and more. I think it’s because I feel that sense of fulfillment that side provides and want to feel it more. Sometimes things still get cloudy though, but it’s easier to shift the balance back when I need some adjusting.

So yeah, sin and repentance are lame. We need new words.

Look at my Valentine!!!

My friend Nathan made me this Valentine. I think it's so fantastic. Last year he made 3D paper ribcages for Valentine's and sold them on etsy and they ended up being featured in the NY Times. He's insanely talented and creative.

Other than that I'm kind of sad that I'm working today, since almost everyone else seems to have the day off. I was going to take it off but being sick last week and getting behind kind of killed that dream.

I'll tell you what dream isn't dead though. The dream that somewhere on the interwebs, a site exists that combines Tom Selleck, waterfalls and sandwiches. That dream is so alive.

Choose your own ending

A good portion of this week has been spent in a delirious and feverish daze. I started getting sick Monday, and by Tuesday I was in full blown strep throat mode. I started antibiotics yesterday and today am finally feeling close to normal. Thanks to a semisynthetic penicillin. Yay drugs! That’s not what this post is about though. I’m still not exactly sure how to lay this out or what I’m going to say. Usually the best thing is to just start. So here it goes.

Imagine a conservative Mormon family. Probably not too hard to imagine so far, and FYI, I don’t have a particular Mormon family in mind. Let’s say the family is pretty rigid in their Mormonism and conservatism. So far it’s served their family well though. Their kids are bright, attractive and talented overachievers, who always stay inside the lines, just like their parents. Then along comes one of the kids, a boy, who begins to realize at a fairly young age that he has an affinity for other boys. He’s young enough that he doesn’t really understand what’s going on and he can’t realistically do anything about it. So he just keeps it to himself, because he’s been taught that it’s very ugly.

He continues on through school and graduates and goes on a mission. He gets back and real life starts setting in. He realizes that he is still attracted to men and that being a “faithful Mormon” hasn’t changed any of that. Not even a two year mission. He starts to notice that it’s going to be very difficult to live up to the cultural expectations of Mormonism. He decides to tell his parents, who love him, but don’t always know the best ways to show it. They expect him to continue to conform to their rigid views of what it means to be a good Mormon.

He begins to realize that in order to survive, he’s going to have to extract himself from the family and set himself apart from the family. Anyone will tell you how easy it is to fall back into family roles even after you’ve left the nest and lived away from your FOO (family of origin). The extraction from the family has to be dramatic and extreme, so that it will take and so that it will be very clear to the family where he stands. He probably even does stuff he actually normally wouldn’t do, but it’s all to make it very clear that the family’s way of being doesn’t work for him. A lot of that probably happens almost subconsciously.

As a result, the family clings even more tightly to their extremely conservative views and maybe even become more conservative. They must show that they can’t compromise on something like this. Not one bit. Each side runs toward and holds fast to their extreme views and behavior. The son becomes estranged from the family and the church and the family treats him as though he were no longer among the living. Nobody wins. Everyone just reacts. The family gets broken. I realize this isn’t the story of every gay Mormon, but I’ve seen it repeated enough to see a pattern or variations on this pattern.

If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about gay men, it’s that they have a deep, deep well of spirituality and ridiculous talent. With the scenario above though, it too often goes untapped. They are brought into families and a church that haven’t yet learned to fully appreciate and value and cultivate the incredible power and beauty that lies beneath the surface, and as a result they don’t recognize it in themselves. But it’s there, oh man, is it there. I look around and wonder if anyone else is seeing the gold mine we are sitting on and ignoring. I can’t wait until the day we learn to properly cultivate and tap those resources. I believe it will blow our minds. All over.

If you think about, the gay son born to a very strictly Mormon family sets up the perfect scenario for amazing transformation and opportunities for learning. They are a perfect foil for each other. In literature, a foil is a person who is a contrast to another character. I am admittedly not an English major, so if any English majors want to jump in and add anything, feel free. By providing this contrast, the foil might help the main character understand himself better, or help the reader understand the main character better. A foil gives something to be played off of. It provides some amount of tension.

A gay Mormon might help his conservative family learn to live a little bit outside the lines, in a way that expands their understanding of the gospel. The family might help the gay son not live self-destructively outside the lines. Each provides a necessary tug in different directions and as a result, they help each other live more fully.

I was recently involved in a retreat for the choir I sing in. We had a guest clinician come work with us. She had us do some exercises that helped us ignore some of the standard rules of good singing. She told us that sometimes you have to go outside your boundaries to see where they are. To add to the conversation, our director said that she sometimes has a lady come help her clean her house and she always warns her that it’s going to get messier before it gets cleaner.

This isn’t to say that I believe that we should explore everything and forget all boundaries. I do think, however, that we are sometimes way too scared to make mistakes. We cloister ourselves so far inside the lines that I think we miss out on opportunities for growth. Let your gay Mormon son be your tour guide and continue to be his. Just a warning though, his tour will probably be much flashier and might include song and dance. Just go with it. Trust me. The term foil refers to the practice of putting dark, polished metal (a foil) underneath a gemstone to make it shine more brightly.

Kids POW!

This one is from Skye, who is currently with children. Two of them. Sadly, she didn’t include the address of the establishment giving away free kids, so that will make it more difficult for you to go and pick up some of your own. Guess you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.

In somewhat related news, I am pleased to announce that I will be adopting Marriedtoamoho, MNJ, and their three children. The details have all been worked out on Facebook. Hopefully the five of them won’t mind sharing my spare room with Geoffrey’s piano and Marita. Geoffrey, don’t worry, I won’t let the kids bang on the keys and I’ll make sure Marita is up high where they can’t get to her. I’m looking forward to starting our new life together.

Remember how I tried to embed an MP3 in my post yesterday for you to take a listen? Remember how it didn’t work? For my next trick, I will try to embed a youtube video of the song. Pray for me.

Come out, come out or whatever

Coming out is a funny thing. Well, maybe not the act of coming out in and of itself. No I take that back, that can be funny too. I recently met the sister of a friend of mine. I knew that she knew that my friend (her brother) is gay, but I didn’t know if she knew about me. We were just hanging out and talking and throughout the course of the conversation I started working under the assumption that she actually did know about me and basically outed myself, but I thought that maybe she already did know about me. Anyway, by the end of the conversation, it was very clear that she knew and I knew she knew even though it had never been explicitly stated. It wasn’t until afterwards that I found out that she, in fact, had no idea about my sexuality going into the conversation.

Ok, maybe that was more confusing than funny, but back to my earlier point. I think sometimes the ideas and expectations people have about what it means to be gay, and therefore what it means to come out are funny. Through recent conversations, I was reminded that some people still see coming out as a very black and white thing. If you are out, people have certain expectations about what that means about who you are and what your path is. Also, for those coming out, those expectations make it difficult to carve out your own “coming out” or “not coming out” path. Those expectations are kind of like that car ride at amusement parks that keep the car on the predetermined path. This is where Skye’s Sweet Onions come in and remind us to not hold people to certain molds or paths based on our past experience with them or our past experience with others.

Also interesting is that I think some people believe that once you come out, you are out to everyone. Like it’s one grand sweeping act and you’re done. Have you ever seen the episode of The Office where Michael declares bankruptcy by simply yelling, “I declare bankruptcy!!” That’s not how it works for coming out. It’s not like you declare homosexuality and then everyone just knows. For some people that might be the case, but realistically, that’s not how it works. I don’t have a lot of obviously gay traits that would cause people to assume. I consider myself fairly out, but I don’t track down every person I know to make sure they know. It’s also usually not the first thing I tell new people I meet.

There are basically two groups in my life right now where it is not widely known that I’m gay. One is work. I’m sure there are some astute intuitive types who have come to that conclusion, but it’s not something I’ve explicitly stated to anyone there. Part of me feels like it’s none of their business, but another significant part of me kind of wishes that my close friends at work knew. I’m not really sure I know the real reasons why I haven’t chosen to come out on that front yet. I’m sure that’s something that could be explored further.

The other front is the choir I sing in. There are a few people who know, but most don’t. As far as I know, anyway. The question of my singleness and dating has come up before with people at choir, but it never feels quite right to just drop that bomb in casual conversation. This is a very mormon group. I have told a couple people in the choir since joining the choir. One was because a mutual friend of ours suggested that she read my blog and so she asked me for the address, and I was delighted to give it to her. The other I told because he always asked about my dating life and when he was going to get a wedding announcement from me. If people persistently ask me about that stuff, I tell them. It’s not that I don’t want these people at choir to know though. I really don’t care if they do, as a matter of fact I would rather have them know. I guess maybe it’s just that I don’t want to be the one to do it. Not sure what all that means, or if it means anything at all.

So yeah, If people ask if I’m out, I guess it depends on what your definition of out is. To me the words “out” and “gay” can be misunderstood and misleading and confining. I’m just Jon. Anyway. To lighten things up after a long and rambling post, I will now make my first attempt at embedding an audio file. It’s of Ben Taylor, the son of James Taylor, singing. Pay close attention to the words…