My integrity: worth between $6 and $20

Several months ago at work, I found $6 on the ground near my desk. I asked the people near me if it belonged to any of them. Someone said it belonged to a woman I will call Butterfly Kisses because that's a code name I used for her with a friend. I can get along alright with most people, but there are a few people on this earth, with whom I have a very difficult time talking to. At all. Butterfly Kisses is one of them.

Once I took a personality test at work and got my own personalized booklet and one of the things my booklet told me was that I don't respect people who I think ignore reality. I think that might be part of my difficulty with BK.

Either way, when someone said that it was probably hers, I just kept it. I didn't want to have to have to interact with her. I figured enough people knew I found some money and that if she really was looking for her $6, she'd find out who had it. She never did and I kept it in my desk for a while before enough time had passed to make me feel sufficiently comfortable with spending it.

This morning as I was walking to my desk, I found $20 in roughly the same spot that I found the $6 several months before. Again, someone said that it probably belonged to Butterfly Kisses. Apparently, she just walks around with loose bills in her pocket and they are always falling out. Maybe if I just follow her around (at a safe distance) I wouldn't have to work anymore.

Anyway, I couldn't justify keeping the $20 so I went over to her desk and asked if she was missing any money. She said she'd lost $20 this morning and so I handed it over and endured the conversation that followed.

Conclusion: my integrity is worth between $6 and $20.

Happy Birthday, Carol Lynn

Tomorrow (Monday) is Carol Lynn Pearson's birthday. She posted on Facebook an experience she had last weekend in a meeting between Marlin Jensen, a general authority of the LDS church, and members of the church in the Oakland, CA area who had been hurt by the church's involvement in Prop 8. Read about her experience here.

Happy Birthday Carol Lynn!

Also, can we please start a petition to get Marlin into the 12? That's how these things work, right?

Links of love

These will be internet links, not sausage links, although I could probably actually go for some sausage links right now. It's almost lunch time. Next Friday is my birthday and my coworkers are taking me to lunch and I have to decide where we're going. I am considering Tasty n Sons because just like its name suggests, it's quite tasty. They actually just do brunch from 9:00 am to 2:30 pm, which is probably why I have sausage links on the brain. (Keep your unsavory jokes to yourself)

On to the actual links. My friend Christina sent me a link to this NY Times article titled Showing Gay Teenagers a Happy Future. That's definitely something I can get behind. Apparently, the columnist Dan Savage has started a YouTube channel called the "It Get's Better Project". The idea behind it is for well adjusted gay adults to let their much younger counterparts know that even though life might be unbearable as a gay teen, it can and does in fact get better. You can carve out a beautiful and fulfilling life for yourself although it might be different than what you had anticipated or what friends and family might expect from you. I haven't watched any of the videos yet, but it's on my "to do" list.

Also, I have been listening to this podcast from Mormon Stories. John Dehlin hosts a panel of active Mormons who didn't necessarily support Prop 8 (yes, there are active Mormons who didn't/don't support Prop 8). The panel includes BYU student Cary Crall, Morris Thurston (a lawyer who wrote this response to "Six Consequences of Prop 8 Fails"), and Laura Compton, who I believe runs the blog Mormons for Marriage. They take phone calls from listeners during the podcast, some of whom did support Prop 8. The conversation is interesting and informative and incredibly civil. Listen to it on your commute or something.

My friend Krisanne sent me a link to these talks that were given in some Mormon congregations in Oakland, California. The talks were given and information shared in an effort to one, heal the ugly divide in their congregations that has resulted from Prop 8 and two, to help create more understanding on the topic of homsexuality. I really wish more leaders would more proactively address the issue because I'm afraid it's not going to just go away.

There is a lot of stuff to consume in those links. Dig in!

More from JonJon's Journal

A few weeks ago I posted my first journal entry from my childhood journal. It was sweet and innocent, which is kind of how things went for me all through elementary school. I was comfortable and confident and I was really good at memorizing things and regurgitating them, so I did really well in school. My teachers usually really liked me and vice versa. I can tell you what each of my teachers wore on the first day of school from 3rd through 6th grade, probably because I was so thrilled to be back in school that the details of those days were seared into my young little memory. Mrs. Thurston wore a black and white splotchy dress, Mrs. Hess wore a khaki skirt with a pink and white striped button up, Mrs. Pollock (my least favorite teacher and yes, we made fun of her name) wore a vertically striped dress that was different shades of blue and green, and Mrs. Butcher wore a khaki skirt with a brown sweater. Elementary school was kind of magical and my memories are all pretty much good. I really felt like I was king of my tiny, elementary-sized world.

Things quickly fell apart when I started middle school. In my April 4, 1991 entry, I was just finishing my 7th grade year. I was very adept at eloquently expressing my frustrations. This is what I had to say in very large angry letters: "I HATE SCHOOL IT'S SUCKS! SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS SCHOOL SUCKS SUCKS ROYALY SUCKS, WAR HAS ENDED (Persion Gulf with Bush I, I'm thinking) SCHOOL SUCKS IT SUCKS MY TEACHERS SUCK." I'm glad I at least took some time to throw in a current event to give some more context.

Another good entry is June 10, 1992, just after my 8th grade year had ended. Here's my report on the start of summer: "The first few days have been pretty busy - haircut, doctor's, piano lessons, working, and laying out. Lately I've heard about nothing but tans, laying out, etc. - So and so's laying out, and people making fun of people with farmer tans. So yesterday I decided to lay out and get rid of my farmer tan. It didn't do much. I might lay out again today." What?

In my June 25, 1992 entry, I delve a little bit into some medical issues: "I don't know if I've said anything, but a year ago I got this wart-like thing on the bottom of my tongue. My doctor, Dr. Morrison, cut it out. Then it grew back one year later and I got it cut off again this last June 2. Then it grew back again with several other sores. I have an appointment with Dr. Morrison on July 7. I'll let you know about it when it comes around. Well I better go. Auf Vedersehen."

July 1, 1992 starts out with "I thought of something I wanted to write down while I was doing my hair." What 8th grade boy refers to "doing his hair"? A very special one like me. The something that I wanted to write down was an experience I had when the middle school was putting on Bye Bye Birdie. I played the part of Huge Peabody and during intermission, Katie Lyn Lowder (I have no memory now of this girl or that she and I had this conversation) came up to me back stage and gave me a hug and told me she just had to because I was so damn adorable. This is what I remembered while doing my hair that I had to write down. Three months after it had happened, after school was out and I was one month into summer. Clearly, I was hungry for some kind of validation. Then I went on to explain that I wanted to be an actor when I grew up but that I probably wouldn't be one for the following reasons: "There aren't many Mormon actors because as mormons we wouldn't want to do some of the things directors and producers would want us to do. Then you see the lives of some actors who get married and divorced 20 times in their lifetime." Did I mention I was probably a little bit self-righteous as a child? Those were my reasons then, and those are the reasons why today I am not a famous actor.

The summer of 1992 was the summer that we went on a family vacation in the northwest that included a couple of days in Portland. The only other time I had been before moving here almost 8 years ago. This is what I had to say about my now beloved city: "I love it there, but the streets downtown are all messed up."

I've noticed a theme in my entries. They are fairly bipolar. I'm either ecstatically happy or incredibly sad/angry. My journal is littered with entries like this one:

Don't worry, I never physically harmed anyone, although maybe I would have felt better if I had. My final entry in this journal is December 13, 1996, just a few weeks before leaving to be a missionary for two years for the LDS church. At this point I had not told anyone of my attraction to men, but carried a lot of guilt about it: "Satan is working even harder to bring me down. I feel like such a terrible, terrible person. Like I'm no good. Like the Lord has no use for me. Satan is doing his job & doing it well. I will push forward. I will read the scriptures. I will pray. I will keep my mind clear, I will not let doubts get in the way of fulfilling my dreams. I will dedicate the next 2 years to my Father in Heaven. I am His."

There are lots of things I would tell my younger, naive and so earnest self if I could. The general idea though, is encapsulated in these quotes.

Up and Over It

I CANNOT stop watching this video. You can't make me. There is so much to love about it. Watch this and it will instantly make your day better.

Also, my friend Carlos, who is a tumblr, sent me a link to some really fantastic Wendy's training videos from the 90's. Here's one of them:

Finally, my friend Krisanne recently started a new art blog called A Paper Moth. Here's her description of what her plan is for the blog:

Here is where I tuck academia away and write the poetry of art. I will post a work of art that strikes me and write a short paragraph based solely on my emotional response to it. There is no analytical brain work to my writing here, just heart.

Krisanne knows art and she knows words and if anyone has heart, it's her. She combines all of the above very beautifully on her new blog, so go check it out. Also, she has opened it up for anyone who would like to contribute.

That is all. Happy Friday, everyone.

Mondays with Eugene

I've been tossing around in my head lately this thought that maybe the importance of gender isn't so that we can clearly define and separate into masculine and feminine roles, but so we can bring both together to acheive a balance of the masculine and the feminine within ourselves. I've been chewing on gender a lot lately and I'm not sure where I'm at. I think gender is important, but I don't think we've arrived at a satisfactory and holistic understanding of why and how it is. In the mean time, here's a little tidbit from Eugene England that explores the idea of exploring and cultivating both the masculine and the feminine as he experienced it:

In the past ten years, I have become increasingly unsure about the value and satisfactions of my traditional male role as aggressive achiever, doer, decider, spokesman—which, for all my achievements, has left me lonely and defensive, in some ways emotionally immature. I have become uneasy about what our culture has traditionally designated the “masculine” virtues of courage, pride, self-confidence, rational assertion, generalization, decisiveness—which, for all their apparent value, seem to leave individuals and societies in constant, unsatisfied desire, engaged in endless envy, rivalry, and imitative violence. I have found inadequate, for my own needs as a poet and essayist, the traditional male style of straight forward narration, logical conclusiveness—which, for all it says, leaves much of what is most important to me unsaid. Instead, I find myself, though I’m still not very good at it, wanting to listen, cooperate, nurture with presence, learn rather than teach. I yearn to be more than to do, to give mercy more and seek justice less, to heal rather than to help, to be meek. I want to hear my inner voices, record their circling presence, trust my unconscious mind as it moves upon silence, as it responds to the unpredictable, uncapturable breeze of the Holy Ghost. I do not want to be thesorcerer, to hold power that changes women into something else. My best piece of writing so far, I believe (and more objective critics have agreed), is a personal essay called “Easter Weekend” (1988). In writing it, I began to discover the “woman” in myself, a voice that hovered and circled rather than thrusting to conclusions, that combined narratives like a mosaic to get at emotional patterns rather than moving through logical exposition to a rational conclusion. With increasing assurance, I listened for and finally heard and expressed new voices, different from my own but part of me. No, I don’t believe women naturally write that way or that all men should. I only know that I discovered important things, things I am excitedly exploring, that cultural male modes and models had not provided me. To paraphrase Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie, “I was a better man when Iwas a woman than I was when I was a man.”

I'm picking up what he's laying down. When I was going through my Evergreen phase, I remember thinking that I needed to model the roles of masculinity that I saw around me. In my own limited world view, to me that meant I needed to be less emotional. I needed to be more logical and decisive. I needed to develop a love for sports and learn aggression. I needed to associate less with women, because I was way too comfortable with them and it was preventing me from being attracted to them.

I was depending on a construct that I now believe is broken to try and fix myself, without realizing that I really actually wasn't broken in the way that I thought I was. I was trying to shut down a part of myself that was hungering for expression and in the process needlessly breaking myself, even though at the time I thought it was part of the fixing process. Eventually though, I learned that I just need to let the wholeness that is already in me unfold instead of trying to be something I wasn't.

What are your thoughts on gender?

Wiiiiiiiiiiiith.....a HERRING!!

Sometimes I wonder if all this back and forth over Prop 8 is just a big fat red herring. We're getting distracted by the argument itself, instead of stopping to listen to what it is we are supposed to be learning. This isn't to say that I think we shouldn't be having the conversations, because I think we should. I just think we are missing a very crucial element that could help improve the conversation.

And it's not even really just about Prop 8, take any kind of disagreement you could have with any other person or group. I believe that how a person reacts to any given radioactive topic is more a Rorschach test that tells more about what's going on inside that person than it does about pretty much anything else.

Think about a recent conversation you've had or something you've read or observed that got you all sorts of riled up. You probably had some sort of immediate emotional reaction, and the instinct is to run with that immediate emotion. Odds are, your immediate reaction isn't just about what's happening in that moment. It's usually an accumulation of a lifetime of unprocessed baggage.

Maybe my vigorous support of or opposition to (insert radioactive topic here) is more a manifestation of my own fears or past pains. Maybe I've just become an emotional puppet for these fears and pains to continue playing out their tragic and painful story. That doesn’t mean these fears and pains are not legitimate. They are. They probably wouldn’t keep showing up and taking over certain interactions if they weren’t.

The truth is, they need to be acknowledged and processed. When I have a strong emotional response to something, I need to pause and sit down and listen to what my immediate reaction is telling me about myself. My reaction is probably telling me a lot more about myself than it is about the situation at hand.

If I take that time, then I’ll probably be more successful at processing my baggage and then it won’t control me. I’ll be able to be present with any given situation and be able to contribute to a meaningful conversation instead of turning into the emotional puppet and then trying to pass it off as righteous indignation.

A piggyback on Finding Your Tribe

My friend Lizzy recently posted something called Finding your Tribe, and I'm going to piggyback on it because I too love the idea of finding my tribe.

I think one of the key parts of coming to terms with and becoming comfortable with my sexuality has been finding my tribe. You know when you find members of your tribe. Sometimes there is an almost instant ease and familiarity. Members of your tribe help you discover the very best parts of yourself. Lizzy described it as finding the scattered pieces of yourself. It's like you see something in a person's way of being that opens up a new way of being for yourself.

I think members of your tribe also allow you to be your true authentic self in a way that allows your true authentic self to emerge. They don't hold on to expectations of what they want you to be or what you have been in the past. They treat each interaction with you as an opportunity to know who you are in that moment, instead of allowing past perceptions to distort how they treat you in that moment.

Interactions with members of your tribe aren't limited to two roles interacting with each other, or two people trying to be what they think the other person expects/wants them to be. All of that is stripped away and it's soul to soul. Do you ever feel in life like you are merely an actor playing a part? Did you know that it doesn't necessarily need to be that way? Did you know you can show up as yourself and that when you do, it makes it easier to find members of your tribe?

Of course, the scary part is that in order to find your tribe, you have to allow yourself to be known. As you are. No roles to cling to. Mother, father, son, daughter, academic, Mormon, disaffected Mormon, homosexual, leader, follower, clown, skeptic, insert job title. All those roles have to be stripped away to leave just you. Naked. Vulnerable. Ready to be known.

When you do that though, when you strip away the roles and allow yourself to be known, you find members of your tribe and you experience a two way flow of love and energy that is beautiful and nourishing and healthy and sustainable. It's truly transformative.

DTR

Look. If we are going to be friends, there are a few things that you are going to have to watch. You also have to like these things; otherwise, I'm not so sure it's going to work out between us. Take a look at these videos and let me know if you're willing to make this work...

I realize you have all probably already seen this one, but it's definitely worth a second look because it has a lot of my favorite people in it (well, except for Kate Gosselin, but she went up a notch for me after this video). If you've seen it already and want to skip past this one, I'm willing to meet you half way and still be friends.

You may have already seen the last video, but maybe you haven't seen this one...

I saw this next one on Facebook when I got home from work today and it just made me happy. If you want to make me happy, you'll like it too.

That's all. Let me know if this is going to work between us.