10 Favorite Things

Reina tagged me (not in a gang related way, but in a friendly, bloggerly way) to do a list of my 10 favorite things. So here they are:

1. Music - I love listening to good music, singing good music and allowing good music to help shape and mold me.

2. Books - Another title for this could be that I love learning.

3. Doug Fabrizio - I know I just cursed Doug's name in a recent post, but I love him for reals. This one dovetails nicely with my love of learning mentioned in #2. The man is a beautiful interviewer and I love the people he brings on his show and the broad range of topics he covers and the way he explores them. I think one of my secret dream jobs would be to do what he does. Doug, if you're reading this, make me your apprentice.

4. Buddhism - I know it's like the trendy western things to say right now, but I love it. I love meditation. I love stopping and listening. I love taking the one seat. Allowing myself to feel. Learning what it has to teach me. Finding the middle way. I think Mormonism could benefit greatly from a healthy Buddhist injection.

5. Friends - I love discovering people and letting who they are unfold before me. I love being taught by them. I love my friends here in Portland and the ones in SLC that I don't get to see and be with as much as I'd like to. I love randomly being in the same city as a best friend while traveling and having delicious pizza together while discussing weighty things. I also love discussing weighty things with a friend at Red Robin while people around us are clapping their hands and singing happy birthday and a person in a bird costume lingers by our table. I love my blogging friends who tell me to keep my pants on when I'm on trips in San Francisco.

6. Traveling - I love to travel for the reasons that are explained so well in this post.

7. Personal revelation - I absolutely believe in a higher power who knows more than I do. I love that he is willing to let me in on secrets about myself and the world and my relationship to the world.

8. Good TV - I love good TV. The actual set of shows that I love evolves and changes, but right now I love Glee and Modern Family. I love that those two shows have both humor and heart. I also love Thursday night on NBC. It seems weird to say I love 24 because I'm not sure what I get out of it other than bloodlust and a severe adrenaline rush, so I'll just say that I really like 24. Oh, and combining #8 with #5 is another favorite.

9. The Oregon Coast - I love the beautiful ruggedness and greenness of the Oregon coast. I go there and I get immediate clarity.

10. The marriage of religion with intellectualism - This one probably seems a little bizarre, but I love taking two things that seem like they don't belong together and allowing myself to transcend the polarities to embrace both and see what both things considered together can teach me without feeling the need to latch onto one side or the other. Yes, I love wrestling with contraries.

Also, after a year of having my blog and not really making any changes, I've gotten totally crazy and made some. I know, the blog is hardly recognizeable (the dictionary says this isn't a word. Whatever.) Anyway, I added music, what do you think? Keep it or not? I added a poll to the right so that your voice can be heard. Let's rock the vote. I also added a search widget for my blog. Search away.

This is not Mexican wrestling porn

I spent part of this week in San Francisco, exploring some possible career options. I participated in a two day training in the relatively new and emerging field of coaching. I really don't like using the word coaching though, perhaps because of horrible memories of playing little league baseball and jock checks in my middle school gym classes. Why was it so important that we wear those damn things? I'm pretty sure briefs would have been just fine.

Enough of my traumatizing middle school experience. I was amazed at how at home I felt and also how uncomfortable I felt in the class this week. I was surrounded by so many people who spoke my language. There were some in particular who I connected with almost instantly in a way that rarely happens to me. Like we were just picking up from another life. At the same time, I was also venturing very far outside of my comfort zone, participating with people I don't know that well in a way that I typically reserve for intimate friends. It was all very mentally and emotionally challenging and rigorous. It was empowering to take it on and fully engage in it though. This is certainly something I couldn't have done a couple of years ago.

The scary part was realizing that it is something that I could see myself doing. There were comparisons of coaching to playing jazz or dancing. You kind of feel out the situation as you go and create as you go. This is kind of a shock to my system. I've always lived my life in a very habitual and predictive way. It's comfortable. I have a job with very clearly defined roles and tasks and if I show up between the hours of 8am and 5pm and perform those clearly defined tasks, I get paid. My life has been that way outside of work too. I'm usually resistant to change. I stick with routine. I've broken that up somewhat in the last couple of years and I think participating in this course was another way of doing that. It creates a lot of possibility, which is both exciting and scary.

I don't know where this will lead, if anywhere, but it felt good to really challenge myself and take a risk and allow myself to be vulnerable. This was also the first time that I have ever "outed" myself in a group setting. There were roughly 20 people. I was reminded how big of a deal this isn't outside of Mormonism (or insert other conservative religion or culture). It feels good to get to the point where I can tell people and it's not a big deal. That might seem weird, but it really helps normalize it for me to be able to talk about it without it being a huge thing. It gradually becomes smaller and smaller for me, which is kind of funny, because that kind of goes against Jeff Robinson's whole walking-away-from-the-dragon-so-it-gets-smaller theory that I mentioned in this post. For clarification purposes, when I say that it gets smaller and smaller, I don't mean that the attraction is going away. I just allow it to blend in with the rest of me.

I remember roughly two years ago when Krisanne asked me if I thought I'd ever be completely open about my sexuality. At the time I said maybe, but it seemed like such a far off thing to me then. I couldn't even really imagine how that would look. Not that I'm completely open about it now, but so much more than I ever thought I would be just a couple of short years ago. And I like that.

PS, someone found my blog by googling "Mexican wrestling porn". I'm guessing they were sorely disappointed with what they found.

Damn you, Doug Fabrizio! (and Happy Birthday)

I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve been downloading the daily broadcast of Radio West with Doug Fabrizio. I love that man, but he frustrates me. He does these programs that are fascinating and stimulating on so many different levels and they often revolve around a book. I’m left wanting to read the book and suddenly I have a stack of books by my bed that will probably take me several years to get through. Also, there’s another certain someone in SLC and whose name also begins with D who is also causing that pile of books to grow. I’m done paying attention to anyone from SLC whose name begins with D. :)

So yesterday and today I listened to an interview that Doug did with David Schenk (again with the D’s) who wrote a book called, “The Genius in All of Us”. The basic idea is that in the past and to some extent still today, we’ve looked at intelligence as a thing that each person possesses a certain amount of. It’s written into your DNA and there’s not much you can do about it. Schenk describes it more as something that is potentially abundant in each of us, but it’s just a matter of learning how to tap into it. He also describes it as a process that is a complex interplay of many different factors including genes, environment, opportunity, work, etc.

The problem is there’s so much in life that blocks and clouds and makes it difficult to tap into our own genius. It doesn’t mean it’s not there though. There’s just so much that distracts us from our own genius and not all that distracts is necessarily inherently bad. For example, I was raised in a very orthodox Mormon home in Sandy, Utah. My parents taught me to be good and to adhere to certain standards. I grew up experiencing discomfort with anyone or anything that was different than I was. Not that my parents taught me that, but if you grow up in an environment where most of the people you associate with adhere to the same belief system and there isn’t a lot of diversity of thought, I think it’s fairly natural to develop a discomfort with anything that is outside of that realm.

The funny thing is, I’m naturally drawn to more open minded, expansive people, people who would have made me very uncomfortable earlier in my life. It’s almost like God built it into me so that I could eventually learn to pull my head out and learn to love myself and start living in a way that is more alive and fulfilling for me. In the meantime though, I was very distracted by my very limited Mormon experience growing up in Utah. I’ve realized how important it is to expose myself to different people and experiences. After I started tip toeing outside of my own limited realm, I discovered people and experiences and schools of thought that have helped me tap into and listen to who I really am. And that is so much more than just cultural Mormonism or homosexuality or a physical body or a career or any other role I could play.

And speaking of listening to who I am, my blog turns one year old today. Thanks to all who read and comment. I’ve been able to meet and associate with new people who have enriched and changed my life in so many beautiful and specific ways. I’ve also been able to interact with existing friends and family who I love, and have been able to cultivate those already existing relationships in many and sometimes unexpected ways.

Please insert caption

This picture was part of a post on Mormon Matters about politicization of the church. The post itself is a starting point for some great discussion, as evidenced by the many comments on the post. There was one comment that caught my eye. A comment about how this picture is just crying out for a caption. The one suggested was, "Church leaders present President Obama a schematic of the Plan of Salvation, and point out where unrepentant Democrats go."

OK, now it's your turn. I'm looking at you, Pablo. Ready, set, GO!

Costa Rica POW!

It's Friday night and my parents are asleep and so I am blogging. They are troopers. I took them with me to my friend Diana's birthday party tonight. Diana snapped a picture of both of them sitting on the couch texting. Hopefully I don't get blacklisted from future parties for being the guy that brings his parents to parties. :)

This picture is a gem and it was taken by Sheri when she and Megan were vacationing in Costa Rica. Apparently, this couple was changing on the beach, but were trying to be discrete. Only problem is that they must not have realized that the tree didn't cover the part of them that they should have been the most concerned about covering. I'm just hoping that's all they stripped down to.

Also, not sure if anyone heard but the church pulled the plug on Mormon Doctrine by Bruce R. McConkster. I remember when I was younger thinking that the book was just that, Mormon Doctrine. It gets quoted like it is. However, the McConkster said some pretty crazy stuff in there. Like blacks will never have the priesthood and the Catholic church is the whore of all the earth. If Bruce were still alive, I'd try to set him up with Dale Carnegie, so that Dale could help him learn how to win friends and influence people. I'm pretty sure calling other churches whores isn't on the list. Here's a good article from the Salt Lake Tribune by Peggy Fletcher Stack. And here's a great post by my friend Paul. Paul's got an excellent grasp on church history and church culture and has just enough snark to make it lots of fun. :)

I Heart Morten

My choir concert is this weekend and the 'rents are here for a visit. We are singing Sure on This Shining Night by Morten Lauridsen. Morten does amazing things with music. I first became acquainted with him when a friend from my BYU days gave me a CD of his and I immediately fell in love. Here's Sure on This Shining Night sung by the University of Utah Singers for your listening enjoyment:

If you are in the area and would like to go, the concert is Saturday night. Send me an email and I'll send you the deets.

Happy Friday!

What it means to be a man

I think we've gotten to a point in history where it's safe to say that men have certain disadvantages. Sure, we've traditionally had more of an advantage in school and careers and even church, but those advantages are mostly ego-centric. The advantages revolve around money and positions of power or authority. What of our emotional health though? How many books and organizations exist that further the emotional health and development of women? How many books and organizations seek to do the same thing for men? For men, it's all about how to become a better provider, how to make more money, how to further your career, how to fix a car. I think we assume that just because that's how our culture is currently, that's how it always has been and that's just how it's supposed to be. It's part of our gender roles as males. I say bull shit. :)

My friend Krisanne recently sent me a link to this post on The Exponent. The article discusses how sometimes in books and movies and popular culture, the man is portrayed as the bumbling idiot while the wife is the more evolved force in the relationship. The author also mentions how this mentality has kind of leaked into church culture. An explanation that is often given for why women don't have the priesthood is that it's because they are inherently so much more spiritually minded/evolved than men and we need the priesthood to help us evolve. I don't really buy that. It sounds like a really bad made up reason, kind of like blacks couldn't have the priesthood because they were less valiant in the pre-existance. It's like we're setting ourselves up for everyone to expect much less of us. We aren't naturally nurturing and charitable and kind and warm like women, so please bear with us. It also kind of sounds like we're just patronizing the women and hoping that by doing so, they'll stop asking why they can't have the priesthood.

This isn't about the women though, this is about the men! My friend David sent me some more quotes by James Hollis, who I quoted in my Resonance and Rhythm post. These quotes come from his book Under Saturn's Shadow: The Wounding and Healing of Men. I've added this book to my list of books to read that keeps growing more quickly than my ability to read them. Here are some passages:

Because men are so insecure in their sexual identity and propped-up gender roles, they fear and deny those parts of themselves that don't fall within narrow collective limits. When they see those aspects being lived out by others, they reject them violently. Homophobia is a prime example. Gay men have the same heart, same soul, same courage to go into battle as their heterosexual brothers. It is time to come out of the macho closet and name the real problem--that men fear those who incarnate their unlived life. The enemy is not the other guy, but rather our fear that we are not what patriarchy demands.

Men are terrified of their feminine side. They associate their feeling life, their instincts, their capacity for tenderness and nurturance, with the culturally defined nature of woman and distance themselves accordingly. This also distances them from their own anima and occasions a profound self-alienation. In fact, it may be misleading to speak of a man's "feminine side," for the anima is actually a necessary part of what it means to be a man. Men seldom risk this part of themselves, but it is as much in their nature to relate to the world and to their own inner life as it is in the women's.

Virtually any man will recall occasions when he expressed himself and suffered ridicule or rejection. Men pay a heavy price for being seen to be fragile and vulnerable. They are shamed by other men, sometimes by women, but, most of all, by themselves. So they collude in keeping quiet about what damages them. The word "conspiracy" derives from the Latin conspirare, "to breathe together." Men breathe silently together to protect their frightened souls, prolonging the wounding of all.

Again, one comes to the issue of honesty. Individual men must risk speaking the truth, their personal truth, for it will be the truth for many others. An old Chinese saying suggests that the one who speaks the right word will be heard a thousand miles away. For men to stop lying, to stop participating in the conspiracy of silence, they must risk showing their pain. Others may, reflexively, leap to shame them, or, out of their own fear, disassociate from them. But in time all will come to thank those who speak their truth aloud.

Thank you, K and D.

This post was stolen

I am stealing this post from Gay Saint. He posted a response that advice columnist Cary Tennis at Salon.com gave to a father who caught his 13 year old son looking at gay porn and was asking for advice. Here's what Cary said to the father:

"To paraphrase a Frank Zappa song from the 1960s, I'm not gay but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I wasn't straight! I mean, we straight people have to really step up on this whole homosexuality thing. We walk around like we're the normal ones and everybody else is, like, different. But just think about it. Like, on a gut level, remember when you were 13? It was weird, right? Getting hair, and having urges, and wondering about girls and jobs and the future, and wondering, wondering, wondering. Can you imagine what it's like for a kid as these natural processes, spiritual and biological and utterly beyond his control, are taking him on a strange ride that he didn't really buy a ticket to but he's on anyway, as he's trying to grow up and conform and figure out what he's supposed to be doing, what it's like for him to realize that the way he's developing, just, by the way, is utterly freaking out the adults, so they're having conferences in the kitchen and they're looking at him funny and not believing what he says, and now he's lying about what he's looking at because he has no idea what's going to happen to him if it turns out, horror of horrors, that he might actually be gay, that it's a scary, weird problem that he has to hide from others, especially those in his own family? Can you imagine what that's like? Can I? And we straights wonder why gay guys sometimes wait until their 20s or 30s or 40s to come out to their families? Or never come out? Or prefer not to mention it or make it a topic of national discussion or get a little testy when we assume that in our latterly discovered enlightenment we will treat every gay guy as regional spokesman for, like, Gay Amercia, and we bring up the gayness of others as if we were the ones who, naturally, because we are so wise in other areas such as the conduct of foreign policy and stewardship of the environment, will take it upon ourselves to decide for them how they ought to act and what they are entitled to and whether they can live together and get married and visit each other in the hospital? And whether what they do and who they do it with is a sin? As if we could speak not only for the powerful white Christian hetersoxual majority of America but for God himself? Jesus! If I was gay but had the benefit of knowing how we straight people think, would I ever come out? I'm not so sure. I might prefer to just keep the whole thing between me and a few friends.

"So. Take a deep breath. A posture of utter humility before the mystery and grandeur of life is appropriate. And be cool. It's going to be OK.

"And also just generally reassuring kids about all this nonsense is appropriate too, don't you think? So could you just tell the kid that you love him and that how we develop sexually is just one part of who we are, and that however you develop it's completely and totally fine? Could you just tell him that you were 13 once and you remember it's a very weird and uncomfortable time, and that though you have rules in your house, your No. 1 rule is that you love your kids and you're there for them?

"Could you just do that?"

Also, my friend Ellie sent me this article by LZ Granderson, who is a columnist for ESPN.com and also happens to be gay, black and Christian. And attractive. I think he has some good things to say.

I'm pleased to announce a marriage...

As I've been blogging, I've gradually become more open about my identity. There's really no secret. As a result, I believe that lots of childhood friends, extended family, people at church, etc. are discovering this side of me (the gay side) through my blog. I'm strangely OK with that. Sure, it makes me feel a little bit uneasy at times, but that's kind of how I wanted it. I want people to know, but I want it to happen organically. I don't want to, and don't think I should go around telling people "PS, you should probably know that I like men. And not platonically." That catches people off guard and can often have undesirable results.


On Friday, someone posted a comment on an old blog post and asked some really fantastic questions. This someone is someone I know (the commenter essentially tells me that in the comment), but he/she posted anonymously so all I know is that I know this person, but not from where. I attempted to answer the questions in the comments section of that post and then thought maybe I should put the questions and my thoughts in a post of their own. So here it is. I also thought I should say, if you know me and have discovered this side of me through my blog and have questions, please feel free to ask, I'm pretty comfortable with the topic. Send me an email, ask me in person or if you're more comfortable doing it anonymously through comments, that's fine too. All I ask is that you be civil and respectful, which kind of feels weird to say, because I have yet to have an ugly experience talking about this with people, but maybe I'm inviting that to happen now. :)

Here are the questions:


I can't say I know or understand how you feel because I really don't. Perhaps I haven't read enough of your blog, but I am curious as to where you feel that these feelings come from and your thoughts on how to pursue life and happiness through the church when it could be very real that you will not get married or have children. My intentions are not to argue or "discuss" or disagree with you in any way, but merely to help me understand a little of your perspective on the gospel.

Such questions include:

Do you feel you will have the opportunity to have a wife and family beyond mortal existence if you do not have one in your time here on the earth?

If no, to what purpose do you see the role of a gay Latter-Day Saint? The church doesn't exactly come out and say that there are roles, rather they just say our purpose is to get married and have kids and go to the Celestial Kingdom.


And here's my attempt at some answers:


Mr./Mrs. Anonymous, now, of course, you've got me curious as to your identity. I didn't take offense to your questions, I'm glad you want to understand more. Sorry it took me a couple of days to respond, the weather's been fantastic this weekend. :)

As far as where I think the feelings came from, I think it would be interesting to know the answer to that. I think it probably varies by person. I initially believed that it developed as a result of the emotionally distant father theory and a failure to develop healthy relationships with other men. As a result, I thought all I had to do was repair those relationships and viola! I would be healed. 10 years later, I realize it's not that simple. I think it's probably a mixture of nature and nurture. My relationship with my dad is much better now than it was, and I've worked through my discomfort with men. I feel like I've become a fairly emotionally healthy adult. The attraction is still there though. Maybe that means that I was born this way. Maybe it means I just haven't given it enough time. And maybe it means neither. The truth is, no one on planet earth can really tell me for sure and so I try not to focus too much on the why and instead focus on continuing to become whole through Christ. I'm finding that what it means to be whole through Christ is sometimes unexpected by me and I'm sure by others who observe my journey.

As far as marriage here or later, the answer again is that I have no idea. Marriage is a huge part of the LDS culture. I certainly think there are many reasons for that. I think that type of relationship provides people with experiences that tease out insecurities and issues. That can either serve to destroy the relationship, or if each person takes on the challenge and works through their insecurities and issues, marriage can become a very healing relationship. An exalting relationship. I think though, that sometimes we lose sight of what the end goal is. Lots of people focus on temple marriage being the ultimate and end goal. I see it as an important tool that can help a person towards the real ultimate goal...exaltation. I think most people wouldn't be able to become the type of person they'd need to become to live with God forever without going through the testing grounds of marriage.

Bottom line, I believe that if I continue to focus on my relationship with Christ, continue to become more whole and well through Him, all things will fall into place as they should.

As far as the role of gay Latter-day Saints, I feel very deeply that we have a role to play. I think the culture inside the church as well as outside of the church is not well. I think we're capable of a lot more. The truth is, homosexuality is no respecter of persons, people inside the church are affected by it just as much, if not more than people outside of the church. As a result, there's kind of a forced marriage between the church and the issue of homosexuality, teasing out insecurities and issues that exist in both. Now we can choose to live in a loveless, hostile and toxic marriage or figure out how to bring back the love. I don't think divorce is an option. I see signs that people on both sides are seeking to bring the love back. I'm hopeful that there are many who are willing and able to find that middle way. Isn't that where truth usually lies? Somewhere in the middle?

Thanks for caring enough to dialogue with me a little bit. If you want to talk more, I have an email listed in the link to my blogger profile above. Or maybe you already have my email...

Lots of pockets and pictures of me

One night when Tara and I were on the train home (I think from Ladies Street, which is actually not Hong Kong's red light district, even though it sounds like it is), we saw this man on the train with us. If it looks like he has back pockets all down the back of his jeans, you would be correct. 23 to be exact. Tara said she counted. We spent the train ride trying to figure out what you put in so many pockets. I said condoms. Tara was much more creative and suggested that jeans might serve as a take along daily budgeting system. One pocket is for food, one for transportation, one for clothes, bills, etc. Tara snapped this one.

And then when we got off the train I followed him and snapped this one so we could have a full back shot. It's not quite as clear though.

Also, I bought one of these this week

And that makes me happy because now I can pretend to be Jay Leno

Or James Van Der Beek

Or Vocal Adrenaline's insane choreographer on Glee

Oh Warren, what will you do next?

This is a picture of Warren Buffett at the Berkshire Hathaway annual shareholder’s meeting that just occurred in Omaha. I attended the shareholder’s meeting in May 2002. It was the year before I graduated from BYU and I drove out to Chicago with my friend Kevin to work for the summer. Our mutual friend Adam, who is in love with Warren, owned a share of Berkshire stock and had tickets to the shareholder’s meeting and told us we should go with him. So as soon as Kevin and I got to Chicago and dropped our stuff off, we turned around and drove back to Omaha to meet up with Adam.

We spent the next few days camping at a KOA campground and doing all things Buffett. We ate at the local Dairy Queen, Kevin got some See’s chocolates for his mother, we bought a TV at Nebraska’s Furniture Mart as a wedding gift for another friend and we got our picture taken with the Fruit of the Loom guys. The purple grapes asked us if we were randy. I think he thought we were gay because we were getting our picture taken with fruit. He was 1/3 correct, even though that 1/3 was trying to pretend so desperately that it wasn’t so.

We also watched Warren and Charlie Munger, Warren’s right hand man, deliver their address singing and playing ukuleles on the jumbotron. We went to the local jewelry store, where Adam was able to snap a picture of Warren. I can’t remember if he touched him though. We also went to Buffett’s favorite steakhouse, Gorat’s, where he dines with Bill Gates when he’s in town. Gorat’s also became the place where Kevin ate an undercooked steak and suffered for the next week or two because of it.

The trip was seriously off the hook, you guys. Buffettpalooza. We were crazy like that. It was the perfect start to a summer in which my job ended up falling through in Chicago and I had to drive back across the country to SLC after a month and apply for a pell grant so that I could afford to finish my last year of college.

Just a heads up

If you find yourself having dinner with friends, and the conversation suddenly turns to the topic of wet nurses and how someone knows someone who had a wet nurse until he was 12 and you don't really know what a wet nurse is and neither does the person sitting next to you, don't pull out your phone and google "wet nurse" unless you are ok with seeing a well endowed older woman breast feeding both a human baby and a monkey baby. Just a heads up.