My New Year's wish for you

I am working today and I went over to the mall during lunch. The building I work in is connected to a mall by a skybridge, so I'm frequently over there during lunch eating or reading at Barnes & Noble. Today I read through some of John Stewart's new book and afterwards I had to use the bathroom before returning to work. Those bathrooms are not my favorite to use; they are pretty gross. I decided to use it anyway. After washing my hands, I started walking to the door and realized I forgot to grab a paper towel to open the bathroom door. A couple of dudes walked in though, so I hurried towards the door as it was closing to stick my foot in the crack and kick it open. Not only did I not succeed in trying to avoid touching the germ infested door with my hand, but my feet both completely slipped out from underneath me and I fell flat on my back on the wet public bathroom floor.

Happy New Year! I hope you don't fall down on a dirty public bathroom floor!

Resolving to be bigger

I posted this quote almost exactly a year ago and I thought it was something worth posting again as a New Year's resolution of sorts. Typically, New Year's resolutions involve not getting bigger, but I whole heartedly endorse this kind of bigness:

By size I mean the stature of [your] soul, the range and depth of [your] love, [your] capacity for relationships. I mean the volume of life you can take into your being and still maintain your integrity and individuality, the intensity and variety of outlook you can entertain in the unity of your being without feeling defensive or insecure. I mean the strength of your spirit to encourage others to become freer in the development of their diversity and uniqueness. I mean the power to sustain more complex and enriching tensions. I mean the magnanimity of concern to provide conditions that enable others to increase in stature.

-Bernard Loomer

Let's be big!

Merry Christmas

O magnum mysterium,

et admirabile sacramentum,

ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,

jacentem in praesepio!

Beata Virgo, cujus viscera

meruerunt portare

Dominum Christum.

Alleluia.

O great mystery,

and wondrous sacrament,

that animals should see the new-born Lord,

lying in a manger!

Blessed is the Virgin whose womb

was worthy to bear

Christ the Lord.

Alleluia!

Getting it right

This weekend I was checking Facebook and came across this:


Some of you may not be familiar with the people in this picture. I’m only familiar with the four men on the right. Starting at the far right is Trevor Southey. All I really know about him is that he was in the PBS documentary, The Mormons, where he was interviewed in the section that explored Mormonism and homosexuality. He was also interviewed and included in Reed Cowan’s documentary 8: The Mormon Proposition. Next to Trevor is Troy Williams, who I’ve heard referred to as the Harvey Milk of Utah. Next to Troy is Dustin Lance Black who wrote the screenplay for Milk and won an Oscar for it and has also won awards for his writing on the HBO series Big Love. Next to DLB is Bruce Bastian, who co-founded WordPerfect with Alan Ashton and who now focuses his efforts in philanthropic causes and is on the board for the Human Rights Campaign. All of these guys have a background in Mormonism. The final three I don’t recognize but I’m guessing are gay rights advocates local to Salt Lake. I’m sure others who read my blog would know who they are. Chime in if you do.

Anyway, it was heartening for me to see this and to see that there is some dialogue happening. I realize the LDS church inviting this group of people to the Christmas program doesn’t magically make everything better, and I certainly wonder about who’s idea it was/wasn’t to extend the invitation and what certain people on both sides thought of the idea but I think it’s another baby step towards understand and finding common ground.

I’m sure I’m not the first person to admit to having a thing for DLB. It’s a powerful and empowering thing to see someone who comes from a similar situation that I do, give a much needed larger voice to the story of Harvey Milk, do it well, and receive much deserved recognition for it.

I remember being in San Francisco with my friend Ellie a couple of years ago. We visited Castro Street, where I had an unexpected and profound spiritual experience. At the beginning of the street, we found a very simple memorial set back from the street that was fairly easy to miss. It consisted of a handful of plaques with pictures and a brief history of Harvey Milk. I was immediately overwhelmed by the feeling of that space. It was so quiet. There’s something beautiful about a man who helps inspire others to understand they are so much better and capable of so much more than what certain groups try to limit them to.

Even though we as human beings are too often inelegant at expressing our purest and most sincere desires, sometimes somebody somewhere gets it right and I believe the church extending an invitation to this group and their acceptance of it was one those times.

Baby Steps

My friend KPDubs, sent me this last night. He saw it on campus at BYU. It was behind a key-coded door to a small computer lab, but it was there.

Breathing Lesson

The meditation instructor speaks of ma,
or emptiness--asks us to listen
to our breathing.
I think of the pleural space,
the vacuum our ribs and diaphragm
pull upon when we take in
breath, that pulls back when we exhale.
How we draw upon this emptiness,
and it draws upon us. How an anatomist
would call it a potential space, meaning
it does not exist--unless intruded upon.
How if your pleural lining is broken
we cannot breathe, until the surgeon
inserts a tube, restores the vacuum. How
it's said nature abhors a vacuum, yet
we cannot exist without one.
Without ma. Without this
emptiness within.

-Peter Pereira, What's Written on the Body

No More Strangers and Foreigners

I just read this opinion piece that was in the Salt Lake Tribune by Bob Rees and Bill Bradshaw. I tried to find it in my reader feed so I could share it in my sidebar but I couldn't so I thought I'd just devote a post to it. The article discusses a study by a woman named Caitlin Ryan about the correlation between family acceptance or rejection of gay family members and the gay family members mental and emotional health as they mature into adulthood. I know, I know, it's kind of sad that we need a study to tell us that familial rejection is bad on the psyche and familial love and support is good on the psyche, but apparently we do need a study to tell us this. Thank you Dr. Ryan for doing it.

I saw Dr. Ryan present the results of her study a couple of years ago when I went to a Sunstone symposium in San Francisco. I remember someone in the audience saying that this is something that the broader church needs to hear and especially in Utah where there seems to be higher rates of suicide and teen homelessness due to family rejection of gay family members. I have no idea if that's actually true, but either way, it's something all of us could benefit greatly from hearing and it made me happy to see an article about Dr. Ryan's study in the Salt Lake Tribune.

I'm guessing most of you know who Bill Bradshaw is because of the lecture he gave recently at BYU on the biology of homosexuality and his interview on Mormon Stories, but Bob Rees might not be as familiar. He is similar to Bill in that he is an active and believing member of the church who is trying to create more understanding in the church on the issue of homosexuality. He wrote a fantastic piece called No More Strangers and Foreigners: A Mormon Christian Response to Homosexuality that is well worth the read if you haven't already read it. I think it's also very palatable to mainstream members of the church, and would be a good thing to share with family members and friends who are getting their feet wet on the subject and want to understand more.

On a side note, my choir had a concert last night. I can't tell you how happy and loved I felt to have Pablo, Konrad, Trevor, James and other friends from church come and support me. Afterwards, we went out for crappy, strip mall Chinese food. I don't know if anyone else appreciated the moment, but it was great to sit and eat with a group of people that consisted of a mix of gay and straight and varying levels of affection and disaffection towards the church. In a way I kind of hope no one else noticed, that it just happened, because that's what we do, we sit down with people who are not like us, and we eat crappy food with each other family style, and we laugh together.

Agency Expanded

I skyped with my sister last week and she told me she had to give a talk in church on agency or freedom of choice. She didn't want to merely regurgitate the same old stuff and I immediately thought of a talk by Kathleen Flake that I've referred to before on my blarg. The link there to listen to the talk doesn't work anymore, so here's a new link. If you haven't listened to the talk, I think it's worth a listen. One of the things she talks about is that typically we think of agency as freedom to make choices, which is true. If I stop there though, that kind of limits what is possible for me.

She expands agency and says that it is also the freedom to make meaning. It's pretty easy to sit back and let other people tell us what things mean. It's particularly easy to fall into that rut in church or politics, because there are plenty of people who are willing to dogmatically tell us what things mean and there are even more people who allow others to dictate to them the meaning of all things. Each of us, however, is blessed with a mind and a body and spirit and the power to explore for ourselves, with the help of the Divine, and discover what things mean.

The next morning I was driving to work. I got a bunch of audio recordings of some of the Sunstone sessions I went to in August and I've been listening to them during my commute. I was listening to one by Phil McLemore called "Hindering the Saints" and he talks about how some aspects of church culture hinder us from spiritual exploration and growth. He talks a bit about the power of choice. Here's my transcription of what he says.

We talk a ton about using free agency, our power of choice, to keep commandments and do the right thing; however, it is a known fact that most human beings are bundles of conditioned perceptions and responses and that only about 5% of our choices are the result of conscious, aware decision making. This is the reason so many good people fail in their best efforts to become Christlike and to fulfill their spiritual potential. Instead of continuing to beat the drum of using our agency to choose the right, when 95% of our spiritual will power is in captivity to physical, emotional and cultural conditioning, why don’t we talk about how agency can be expanded. It is not expanded by listing over and over what is right and what is wrong. This results only in boredom, guilt and frustration. It is expanded as one moves into the inner path and is reborn through the purifying influence of God’s love and grace. In this process, the old natural man, usually subconscious patterns and habits, are weakened and as the inside is cleansed, the outer being becomes clear and clean and suddenly choices in harmony with divine nature are more easily made.

I think a lot people don't realize how much of what they choose to do is the result of that bundle of conditioned responses or a role they think they need to play. I think lists of what is right and what is wrong is a good elementary foundation, but eventually the time comes to move beyond that and explore who you are and what things mean to you in your individual situation and how you can find peace and love and happiness.

It Doesn't Get Better at Boot Camp

Saturday I went to boot camp. Yes, KDubs, I go to boot camp. We did sprints at the beginning so I was already kind of winded right from the start. Right after the sprints, some guy who is a regular walked past me and put his hand on my shoulder and said, "It gets better." Maybe he looked at me and thought, surely this guy was bullied in gym class. Either way, it didn't get better. It got much worse when we had to do duck walks and bear crawls and burpees and jumping lunges. My thighs are still sore.

My friend Melysses S. Grant is doing the 25 days of Christmas on her blog. As a part of that, she is giving her own in depth analysis and insight into the lyrics of the most beloved of Christmas songs. She's already done Chestnuts Roasting, Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas and Jingle Bell Rock. Tomorrow it's going to be Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays by N'sync. You can't wait. She also takes requests and does lip syncs as well.

Man skills with MNJ

About a month ago, MNJ had to come to Portland for work, so he arrived a day early and we spent the day shopping and eating delicious food. He and Mandi gave me this book for my birthday.

Apparently, they think I need some butching up. I'd like to share with you some things I've learned. Chapter three of the book is on Love and Sex. There is a section in this chapter with the title "How to Identify Breast Implants". This has come in very handy. I like to know what I'm working with when talking to a woman. Am I right, fellas? No? Well, here are the six things to look for to spot fake, vine ripened chest fruit.

1. Remember: if they look too good to be true, they probably are.

2. Assess breast size as compared to frame size.

3. Be suspicious of baseball-shaped breasts or strangely arranged breasts (remember the spring break episode of Arrested Development? If not, find it and watch it.)

4. Check cleavage for rippling of the skin.

5. If appropriate, brush up against or hug someone with suspected breast implants.

6. Check under and around the breast for scarring. (I think it's safe to say I probably won't ever get the chance to use this method.)

While we were out shopping, we found a fun store with fun masks. You can call me Cleopatra and MNJ Queen Elizabeth. Emphasis on the Queen.

We also stopped by Little Winter, where I bought this print by Lisa Golightly. She has some fantastic stuff. Check it out on Etsy.