from christeos_pir

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the adolescent boy who committed suicide because my priest told me I would be better off dead than a sinner.

I am another adolescent boy who was molested for years by the another priest who all the while told me God hates homosexuals, but I never mentioned it because he convinced me it was my fault.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.


Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

grateful

After this past week, I am incredibly grateful to be reminded of the importance of mentors, as well as peers and friends in my life. Spending precious time with someone who is all three, well, that's an even greater blessing, due even deeper gratitude.

I remain convinced that the longer you delve into the Work, the more important it becomes to seek out and pay attention to those who offer clear external perspectives, to find and listen to those who can peer around the twists and bends and shine light into one's blind spots and dark crevices. And, upon occasion, ask the hard questions, issue the hard challenges, and help me laugh at myself by laughing at and with me. Hmmph, and ha ha, *very* funny. Yes, it is, oh it is.

And even here (perhaps especially here), reciprocity, even energetic exchange, giving and taking, gifts and obligations, keeping it all in balance. We learn as we teach, we teach as we learn. We all hold pieces of the infinite, deliciously splendid and baffling puzzle -- all of us are facets of what it means to be truly, deeply human, and carry pieces of what it is to be god. We are all signposts, lessons, allies for each other, and we walk through a world full of symbols, signs, meanings layered beneath meaning. Often we provide meaning for others without intending to, or find meaning for ourselves in the most unlikely of places. It's there to be seen, if we open our eyes and see. At least some of the answers are to be had for the asking, if we remember to ask. At least some of the secrets are carried freely on the wind, if we open our ears to hear. At least some of the truths can be tasted, smelled, touched, sensed...if we desire it. One of the roles teachers, friends, mentors, peers, can have is to remind us to desire the truths, remind us to open our eyes, ears, mouths, hands, to open up to what is there waiting for us all the time, if we desire, if we dare.

As I hunger for meaning, may I have true mirrors, friends, signposts, mentors, allies and loves around me, to help bring ever-deeper, ever-richer meaning to my life. And may it be so for all of us who wish it.