Sunday, May 25, 2008

I just feel the need to write, to work out my thoughts in a way other than thinking them. I have really enjoyed this day. For the first time in a LOOONNNGGG while, I enjoyed church today. After a month as a nomadic church member, I finally found the ward I am supposed to attend, and I went today. Sacrament meeting was okay, but what really impressed me was the friendliness of the ward members. The girls in front of and behind me all asked if I was new and we chatted for a while, one even invited me to a barbeque at her house. It felt so genuine and friendly, and I didn’t feel weird there. Then I met up with some guys from my home ward, and we went to Gospel Principles. The teacher was starting the course over, so the lesson was on God the Father. People in the class had some really insightful comments, and I even made a few comments myself. Not the rehearsed, I-know-the-right-answer-so-I’ll-just-say-it type of comments, but I feel I was able to genuinely express my feelings and even talk about my spiritual weaknesses, such as they are.

In fact, I told the class that unlike other people who had just commented, I have grown up with a stronger connection to Heavenly Father than to Jesus Christ, something I am working through and trying to examine and strengthen. I didn’t say anything like, “I don’t believe in Jesus Christ” because I don’t think that’s true. But I adequately expressed that concern and I even heard some other comments that were helpful to me. The basic idea was this: Since God and Christ share the same attributes, then one reason for Christ to come to earth would be to show men the true character of God. Since we have no physical evidence of God himself, at least there has been a person on the earth who claimed to be his Son, to possess his same attributes, in order to show us how to be like God our Father and return to him. Much of my problem is that I often don’t know where to place Jesus in relation to God, since all the functions people attribute to Christ seem to be filled or able to be filled by the Father. This explanation I heard today made sense—in a way that resounded with my logic as well as my personal Truth-sensor.

Unfortunately, I had to cut out early from that class because my parents were both speaking in my home ward. That was also a beautiful experience. My mom talked about baptism, and gave a pretty comprehensive discourse on it. It was special to see her bare her spirituality publicly. Then my dad spoke. His topic was repentance, and he did a wonderful job. What I liked best was the personal way in which he approached the subject. He related several experiences he had with his father as a young boy, where he made a mistake and his dad got angry and punished him (physically and verbally). One time, as a teenager, he backed into a neighbor’s car, and drove off without realizing it. The next day, the neighbor called asking my dad to come over, and he walked the long mile to the man’s house. Dad apologized profusely, offering to pay for the damage. The neighbor calmly and kindly said, “No, I can pay for it. Your apology is enough.” My dad was stunned by this reaction, being used to anger and punishment in retribution for mistakes. In concluding, he said that more dads should be like that kind neighbor. I don’t exactly know why, but I got teary-eyed during my dad’s talk. I do know, though, that during those 10-15 minutes, I saw the very best of my dad. I saw the part of him that is loving, wise, honest, and tender. I think that is what made me emotional. It was a beautiful moment.

Walden: some thoughts

For the last few weeks, I have been basking in the words of Henry David Thoreau’s book, Walden. I chose it to read first this summer because I believed it would set a good tone for my summer, and it has. If anything, it has deepened my appreciation for the simple things in life. It has really resonated with my own recent thoughts about life, the meaning of life, society and society’s problems, and living authentically. So far, my favorite section has been “Economy”, in which he lays out his reasoning for going to Walden Pond, and he analyzes the basic human needs of food, shelter, clothing, and fuel. For each, he tries to find the original meaning it had and how that meaning has been altered or corrupted in our present day. For example, he says that clothing was initially intended to keep our internal heat inside, to conserve our energy and keep us warm. Over time, however, society has placed more importance on the condition, style, (and brand in our modern times) of one’s clothing than the dignity and worth of the person wearing it. He says: “No man ever stood the lower in my estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure that there is greater anxiety, commonly, to have fashionable, or at least clean and unpatched clothes, than to have a sound conscience. . . . Often if an accident happens to a gentleman’s legs, they can be mended; but if a similar accident happens to the legs of his pantaloons, there is no help for it; for he considers, not what is truly respectable, but what is respected.”

Brilliant. And he speaks in a similar way about everything, intensely looking into the crevices of our thought and behaviors in society, trying to sift out what is wrong or unnecessary and keeping that which is true and beneficial. I find a sweet, simple inspiration in his words, and for the first time in a long time I feel a connection to a writer through his words. Sitting down to read Walden is like briefly entering another person’s thoughts, in order to benefit from his musings and strokes of enlightenment. There’s simply too much to talk about with this book. If anything, I need some time to collect my thoughts and that might take till I finish the book itself. I hope to write more on it again soon, but for now I would just like to share some of my favorite passages:

“Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them.”

“As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.”

“Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”
“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.”

“But lo! Men have become tools of their tools. The man who independently plucked the fruits when he was hungry is become a farmer; and he who stood under a tree for shelter, a housekeeper. We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.”

“Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living be laid for a foundation: now, a taste for the beautiful is most cultivated out of doors, where there is no house and no housekeeper.”

(On students) “I mean that they should not play life, or study it merely, while the community supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?”

“A man is not a good man to me because he will feed me if I should be starving, or warm me if I should be freezing, or pull me out of a ditch if I should ever fall into one. I can find you a Newfoundland dog that will do as much. Philanthropy is not love for one’s fellow-man in the broadest sense. . . . I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins.”

“Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.”

“Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.”

“The millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred millions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

“Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, . . . through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; . . .”

“How can you expect the birds to sing when their groves are cut down?”

“Give me the poverty that enjoys true wealth.”

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.”

success

A couple weeks ago, I went to BYU to speak before a sociology class about my experience of being a gay Mormon. I did the same thing last semester, and it was a very positive experience for everyone involved. I was in the same class last fall, and I came out to my professor at that time. He invited me, if I was willing, to talk to his class about my experience. I accepted, and have now become the honorary gay BYU student for that class. My goal in doing this is really to increase awareness and promote understanding. So far, it has been nothing but successful, as the following reaction from a student shows (I edited my name out with dashes and a few grammatical corrections were made):


"The day that ------ came and spoke to our class about sexual orientation and his personal experience here at BYU and being gay really got me thinking. Sexual orientation is such a difficult matter because it is a subject that is very complex. It is not black and white at all. When I was younger, it was made clear to me that being gay was wrong and a very serious sin in God's eyes. I grew up in a religious, active LDS family, and for some reason grew up with the idea that someone who was gay chose to be that way because they must be wicked of course. Soon after being introduced to the concept same sex attraction, ideas and talk suggested that being gay or a lesbian was more than choice, that it was a genetic part of a person's make up. From my observation, people around me such as my parents, church leaders, and members of my community, simply regarded this scientific approach to sexual orientation as a means of justifying the wicked. Although I didn't ever hate gay people, I always thought that part of them chose to be that way. Now I think very differently when it comes to a person's sexual orientation. I am much more open now.

"As we discussed in class and read about in our text book, a person's sexual orientation is truly something that people are born with. If being gay or being a lesbian is a sin and unacceptable before God, then why would he send people to Earth with genes to make them that way? I suppose there are the people who argue that having those attractions are just a way that God is testing these people, but I would hope that the God we believe in would not be so cruel. To deny yourself of love, pleasure, and being with someone who truly makes you happy is the worst punishment I can even imagine. I mean, these people can deny, deny, deny all their lives, and then what? Are they ultimately alone? Would God really want this, when in the scriptures he states that the purpose of man and this life is to have joy? Yet, if these people "give in" to their attratctions are they forever sinners who are doomed and cut off from exaltation? It just seems like such a lose lose situation. These are questions that I have been pondering since ------ came and spoke to our class.How do I feel about same-sex marriages and or civil unions? I used to think I knew, that the answer was so clear. In our church's family proclamation it clearly states that marriage is between man and woman. But even in this church people struggle with their sexual orientation. Is it better that they never marry when we are told that marriage is the most important covenant we make in this life to help us get to the celestial kingdom? Should they deny their true heart's desires and marry someone from the opposite sex and be miserable for the rest of their lives? Is that what God wants from these people? What is the chance that they will not only hurt themselves but their families if they decide one day that they can no longer put on the facade and leave their wife and children? It is just so sad to me, and I feel like there is no real good answer to any of it, even inside the chuch.

"Ultimately I think that in the end God will be the judge and the decider of all of us, that it is not up to any of us to judge or to make the rules. I think that it is easy to say that being gay is wrong or that marriage is clearly just supposed to be between a man and a woman when we dont personally know anyone who is gay. Yet, would the people who have these so sure assumptions change their minds at all if it were their son or daughter who had these struggles? I would think they would. I think that hearing ------ and learning more about sexual orientation and the complexity of it all has if anything made me more open and understanding, and less judgemental. And for that I am grateful."

If Democrats had any brains....

Now, when I walk into my dad's office, I see a number of newly-purchased books lining his bookshelf. Among them are Liberal Fascism, Because They Hate, Godless by Ann Coulter, and her new book If Democrats Had Any Brains, They'd Be Republicans. Somewhat bewildered, I examined this new Coulter creation. I had already attempted to read Godless, telling myself I would attempt to keep an open mind and listen to her point of view. However, I only got halfway through the first chapter before I felt degraded by its overwhelming negativity and hatefulness. Her arguments were weak, her appeals were emotional and not rational, and every page was lined with statements that I simply cannot and would never want to agree with.

My dad takes in a hefty dose of similar opinions each day, beginning with Laura Ingram, proceeding to Rush Limbaugh, on to Sean Hannity, and finally to some nice bedtime stories with Ann C. I am often saddened by the effect this has had on my dad. He will mutter angry words about people sometimes, calling them (especially gays ;)) "scumbags" and "maggots"--all taken from Limbaugh's rhetoric. Just today I heard beloved Rush say in a very nasty tone that the problem with "liberals" is that they are never satisfied, they never have enough. He proclaimed that America is doing just fine and that President Bush is the man for the job.

When I hear people demonizing liberals like that, I think of my friends, many if not most of whom are self-identified liberals. Somehow, in them I see what it truly means to be passionate about life, to care for others no matter what, to think deeply and examine issues before taking a stand. They represent the most cherished qualities we find in humanity, yet those whose opinions my dad feasts on would condemn their aspirations and beliefs as silly, godless, and irrational. How sad.

I recently changed my political views on Facebook to "liberal." Usually, I eschew labels except when they prove useful in representing the idea or identity I want them to. I do identify as "gay" because that represents in large measure how I feel and how I am, though I strongly reject adherence to stereotypes for stereotypes' sake. In a similar way, I have labeled myself "liberal" on Facebook. This does not mean that I accept all "liberal doctrines" (as Ann C. calls them) but that it most closely represents my views on social and political issues. I know how my parents feel about different issues because we have discussed them openly all my life, yet my experience has informed my views, and because my experience has been/is different, my views are, too.

Whenever I talk about this, I hear the "tolerance paradox" echoing in the back of my head. The argument that liberals focus on being tolerant while they are intolerant of conservative views. I hope I don't do that. I want to be open and at least listen to what others have to say, even when I strongly disagree. Even now, I remain "conservative" on some issues, and in any case, Utah and American politics is highly skewed to the right anyway, so in Europe I would most likely be seen as a far right fanatic.

Just some thoughts from today. :)

Excuse the emoticons.

l'été dernier

Exactly one year ago, I left my home for a grand, 3-month adventure in my belovèd France. This past week I have felt the pull of my beaux souvenirs and so I write to perhaps dispell the not-so-small twinge of sadness that I'm not there right now. Basically, I am a sentimental fool that sometimes prefers to savour the past. This is such a moment.

The above picture is the first picture I took of Caen, outside my bedroom window when I first arrived. I remember that first day: Sitting, heartbroken, on a plane, watching The Holiday and bawling my eyes out because I had left someone I dearly loved. Being distracted by the hot French guy across the aisle from me (one of the three hot French guys I saw my whole time there). Arriving in Paris early in the morning, emerging from the escalator onto an "everyday" Paris street. Buying my first official pain au chocolat and Orangina for breakfast. Asking for directions to the Gare St-Lazare. Running to composter (punch) my train ticket and losing my flip-flop in the way, watching it fly underneath a neighboring train. Running half-barefoot to my second-class seat. Feeling bewildered, sweaty, dirty, and a bit sick on the train, surrounded by strangers. Arriving at the Caen train station, looking for Virginie, the one person I had talked to beforehand, not finding her, and waiting. Driving to the Université de Caen and going to my room. Collapsing on my bed and sleeping for several hours. Eating dinner with Virginie's family. Not sleeping all that night.

I remember waking up with a kind of tentative excitement, like a kid on Christmas morning. I threw back the curtain of my room and saw that same view of my new home town. Caen: la ville de Guillaume le Conquérant et la Deuxième Guerre mondiale. The next three months brought many dear friends, beautiful experiences, and personal growth. Though I have a lot to do and look forward to this summer, and though I intend to have beautiful experiences with dear friends and grow personally this summer too, I will most likely still compare it to my incredible été 2007 in Normandy.

*picture of the last sunset I saw in Caen *sniff*