Saturday, March 31, 2007

A Parade Gone Bad

In a matter of mere hours now, Palm/ Passion Sunday will be the focus of Christians as they prepare for Holy Week.
I have mentioned here that there has been very little about Lent that has felt like Lent to me this year. In fact at church last year's Paschal Candle is still burning, I wonder, “Will this be the chain smoking Easter?” Symbols tell a story.

Easter is my favorite of the Christian Holy days. I think it might be because I can wrap my arms around the cross more tightly than I can wrap them around the cradle. There is a reminder of hope for me when I close my eyes and see the cross that I'm embracing. For me, at the beginning of those 40 days of Lent the cross is rugged, rough and ugly, by Easter it is gold, bright and precious. I understand the grace that was created there. I grasp that grace is not something that I have to hope for, I don't have to hope for God's love, it's here. I've heard so many say, “I hope that I get to heaven.” Christ professing people saying this? I cringe. I know that when it comes to my turn at the judgment that I have the best representation that money cannot buy.

That is the difference between hope and grace to me. I referred in an earlier entry to the Guild of St. Jude, The Men of Hopeless Causes. While it seems like a good name for us I have to remind myself that no situation under heaven is truly hopeless. I know that, I've seen the evidence.

The parade of palms, the passion story on this Sunday. The Chrism on Wednesday; that day that we are reminded of the symbol of healing in the oil of anointing. No magic, no mystery, but a symbol of the healing that God wants us to have. Maunday Thursday, the reminder that in the symbols of bread and new wine we are in the presence of the Lord and he's making a new promise to us at an intimate dinner party. Friday Good as one pastor friend of my used to call it; that day when we see that the anguish of life has an earthly end. The hour of, “it is finished.” and the miracle of the most holy place being revealed to us. The Vigil of Easter, that anticipation of Good News, the lighting of a new fire that we use to light a candle marking the new day, the candle that lights the way through the fog and mist and takes us to a garden where the greatest of miracles has occurred, the empty tomb and the shouts of Christ is Risen! It is the week that proves that our feeling of helplessness has been dispelled along with our sense of hopelessness.

There is so much darkness in the world it seems and yet that new fire on Holy Saturday isn't like one Lucky lit off of the last one, but a new fire, freshly laid, intense in it's burning, the white hot coals that provides for us a source of brightness so that we can see our hope coming, illumined so that we can see it more clearly.

I think of the events of Holy week, the way the parade of Palm Sunday turns ugly as the stories of the week progress, betrayals, soul selling, flashing swords, the washing of feet, an intimate dinner party between friends, and denial. Power hungry religious types, corrupt officials, the washing of hands, the agony of a son tortured, the pain of a helpless mother and the bewilderment of faithful followers.

All of this leading to a cross, a murder, is it any different than some of the places right here in my city on any given week? And yet, through all of this a flicker, a spark. A light in the darkness that shines on the seeds of hope and promise, it seems so very far away and yet I'm confident that the seeds will sprout.

Friday, March 30, 2007

The Guild of St. Jude or The Men of Hopeless Causes

He was across the hall when I moved into my apartment, a black man in his seventies at the time. I'll never forget our first conversation, but that's coming up.

Being reared in the country I learned at a very early age that it didn't matter if you knew the farmer on the tractor, the boys on the hay wagon, the driver of the pick up truck or the woman in the car, you waved at them. To fail to do so was considered rude in our household. I recall seeing my father at work in the yard when he would throw his hand up in the air and wave at a non existent vehicle, “passing by” in an effort to make up for the ones that he had missed, that's what he claimed to be doing any way. When we went to town we spoke to folks, many our neighbors, old school chums and most certainly a nod to folks we didn't really know, we didn't take a chance at offending someone by failing to be friendly. It was in these situations that I come to learn the true meaning of community. If you were friendly in cases of simple greetings then there was every chance that you were going to be a good neighbor too. Putting up an errant cow that found the only place in the fence that was down, helping to push a car out of a snow bank, an offer to help when there was illness, extensions of sympathy in a covered dish was practiced where I grew up.. This is how I was raised, and I have no regrets for it.

That being said, my first conversation with Mr. Miller was at the mailboxes in our apartment building and it went something like this: I simply said hello to him and inquired about his health, safe subjects generally. (Mr. Miller, by the way is never referred to by his Christian name, Robert, it is always Mr. Miller, not because he says so, but because we say so.) His response to my greeting seemed odd to me, but honest and I have a tremendous respect for straight forward honesty. Mr. Miller said, “I don't take well to people and they don't take well to me.” Since that day, nearly eleven years ago I have made it my personal policy to see that I was friendly, not intrusive, but neighborly, living up to the code that I was raised by.

The forecast on that January morning was for a dusting of snow. When I left for work that day, I could see where it would be just a dusting, but as the day went on, dusting became six inches with some ice to boot. Three o'clock in the afternoon and it was nasty with a capitol N. True to my rural upbringing I phoned Mr. Miller, “Mr. Miller, this is Don Bryant, I live across the hall from you.”

“How did you get my number?” he asked in a tone of voice between annoyed and cynical.
“You're in the phone book,” I replied.
"How did you know you had the right Miller?”
“Your address is the same as mine.” I didn't chuckle out loud, but I saw humor in it, he wasn't seeing the humor. “Mr. Miller, I'm stopping at the grocery on the way home I need a few things, I was wondering if I could get you anything?”
I believe they call it a pregnant pause, a very vacant space followed my question. “I could use a loaf of the cheapest white bread they have on the shelf.”
“Consider it yours,” I told him.

From there on in we have been cordial neighbors, passing brief pleasantries in the hall or on the front stoop.

Last summer the front stoop came into its own. Mr. Miller would often sit on the stoop and he engaged in conversation with several other gentlemen tenants, it was one of the first times in the 11 years that I have lived here that I felt that I was part of a community, I was proud that I was invited to join in the conversations which ranged from politics, movies, (the man knows his Oscar winners, even the obscure ones,) medicine, the current condition of the neighborhood and the world, cooking tips and there were comments on the beauty of the “humanity” that passed us. I got to hear tales of what it was like on Indiana Avenue in the late fifties and early sixties when he would take his wife out for a little stroll on the Avenue. (The man knows his music too.)

Yet by Mr. Miller's choice, not everyone was welcome to just step up and toss in their two cents worth, and passers by and fellow residents seem to know it and took no offense by it. In fact there was nearly a sense of being in the presence of someone great, someone who was due this kind of respect. Frankly, I think he is.

One evening it was just the two of us and we had a wonderful discussion on the merits of pie. Chess pie was what started it off. He shared this tidbit, “black folks don't go so much for pumpkin, we make sweet potato.” I chuckled, he asked what was so funny, I told him, “you're a lot smarter for doing so, pumpkin takes too much work to prepare to make pie out of, sweet potatoes are a lot easier. Not nearly as much work involved.” He told me that he was surprised that I knew that pumpkin didn't grow in the can.

I learned during our front stoop visits that he didn't like the term African American. He told me, I'm an American, my skin color has nothing to do with that. I served in the Navy, I answered the call of my country to defend it. And besides, who do these people think they're kidding, they couldn't tell you the last person in their family who came here from the African shores. They need to get over it and move on and be glad that they are here.”

The men who gathered on the stoop last summer were dubbed The Guild of St. Jude by a self proclaimed, “Mackerel Snapper.” The Guild of St. Jude or the men of hopeless causes. It seemed a title aptly applied.

At 81 years old Mr. Miller has taken ill. Recently hospitalized there was a buzz amongst the guild trying to figure out what his illness entailed, was he in the hospital because his diabetes acted up? Maybe a TIA, did his knee lock up and he fell? Every notion was entertained. We learned that he has brain cancer, that was how it was told to us anyway and I believe that any of us could have been taken out with a feather. That's twice in the last year that I've been introduced to the true meaning of shock.

Now, I feel more than ever that what I first called, “The Front Stoop Menses Society,” was more appropriately named The Guild of St Jude. I don't say this because I believe that Mr. Miller is in a hopeless condition, but the rest of the guild feels that way, we feel that we are the ones in a hopeless condition, not him. We are the hopeless ones. We feel like our leader has left us, or that's how I feel. I feel like the hopelessness might be better described as helplessness, I think we are all feeling it. What can we do, what can I do? Yesterday after learning the diagnosis I closed the door to my apartment and tears ran down my face. I'm truly a member now of The Guild of St. Jude.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

What happened to my Lent?

I grasped the handle of the door to the church and knew that just from the weight of the heavy metal ring, that was the door pull, that I had better put some muscle in it. Good thought to have had, the door was as heavy as it was imposing. As I stepped in and my eyes adjusted from the bright sun of a late summer San Francisco day, I wondered if the door was designed to keep Satan out or sinners in.

Grace Cathedral at the top of Nob Hill was like a siren calling me to come inside, and I gladly dashed my boat against its rocks. When my eyes adjusted I could see that I was in a beautiful place, a place properly named.
The nave of the church has a very old world feel about it. As I walked down the side aisle I thought of Dorothy Gale saying to Toto, “I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.” (Funny that I should be quoting from the Wizard of Oz while in San Francisco.) There were elegant banners hanging just below the windows high over head and they invoked scenes of what I believed churches and castles in Europe to look like, though I've never seen them banner to face.

I walked about three quarters of the way back into the nave before I slid across the pew where I sat quietly and alone, though somewhere in the building someone was practicing organ and ironically, God of Grace and God of Glory.

The word Grace kept running through my mind. When I was in my early teens I learned in a little country church that grace was, “the unmerited favor of God.” Not until I was a little older did I come to understand that what I was being told was that God loved me, I didn't earn his love, I couldn't buy his love, I didn't deserve his love, but he was giving it to me anyway and he was doing it lavishly. He wanted me to have it and was pleased with me for being so open and willing to receive it. In fact, my taking from God what I didn't deserve somehow pleased him. Now, to truly make sense of all of that I needed twenty more years and a trip to the left shore.

There was a beam of light beating down through a small pane of clear glass in a window across the aisle on the Gospel side of the church, seems I always gravitate to the epistle side. The window was easily two stories above the floor. It was an intense beam of light and it focused on the altar, at least 150 feet ahead of me. My eyes followed the beam from the source down to the altar where it focused on a simple cross of gold thread embroidered on the green parament. The light was intense, it made me think of the childish prank of training a light through a magnifying glass to ignite a piece of paper or as the bullies do, toast an ant, essentially, that's what was happening, only without the smoke and flame and God is no bully. In that golden thread, fashioned into a simple cross on the altar of Grace Cathedral I came to see exactly what grace truly is. I had to leave Indiana to see the meaning of grace.

Simple, golden, intensely lit, laid upon an altar, an altar of sacrifice, a place where the two bodies of Christ meet. The body of Christ in the form of the Eucharist and the assembled modern day disciples that are also known as the body of Christ. This is grace, the laying down of Christ's golden life, the intense light of God in a simple message, “I forgive you and you can't help it, I love you and you can't stop me. I live in you and I'm not moving. I'm giving you my grace and it's enough for you.”

I sit in church on Sunday mornings, not in Grace Cathedral, but my church, the church at home. There are times that a bright beam shines across the nave, only here it is epistle to Gospel. The beam never seems as bright or as intense as that beam that burned through the glass of Grace Cathedral. The ray of light never falls where it did at Grace. I wait, wondering if it ever will fall upon that golden spot for me, will it land there once more to remind me?

Not long ago I sat there on a Sunday morning, internally there were tremors. I used to have them much more often than I do now, simply, they are periods of anxiety. I kept looking inside and prayed, “why is this happening? Why do I feel this way? Are you there Jesus?” Of course I knew that he was there, after all there is grace, that California revelation of, “I live in you and I'm not moving.” The tremors calmed, but not as quickly as I would have liked. When the postlude was played out and I was leaving two conflicting thoughts met in my mind and in my heart, “where is the holiness? And, 'I'm giving you my grace and it's enough for you'.”

It is Lent, a time of looking within and reconnecting with the reason that God would make one final sacrifice. For me the symbols of Lent speak volumes and help me to feel and to see that I am the reason that God had to sacrifice his perfect lamb. This year I'm struggling with what I most need from the season of Lent. I'm wrestling with other demons, vicious ones; the ever present feeling of loneliness, grief, turmoil that surrounds me in the form of being a sounding board for others and I am at the point of not wanting to listen any longer, there are the demons, then the sins and the shame, I have to remind myself that some of these are not the same as the other, that some of the demons are not shame, but it's a complicated chain and some of the links are oval, some square.

I needed the symbols of the church to remind me of what Lent is preparing me for. I needed the darkness and the way that the darkness causes us to look inward. I needed the reminders through solemness that my sin is serious business and the sacrifice made on my behalf is not to be taken lightly. I needed the quiet, not the raucous. Without these things in my life right now I don't feel the dawn coming, and it is growing ever nearer. I don't see the bright intense light being trained on a wooden cross causing it to become golden. Instead it has felt like business as usual, Tom Bodett has even left the old porch light to the tomb burning and I feel like Lent has been preparing me for nothing more than lighting one Marlboro from another. Will that happen?

Still, I hear the voice, “Where is the holiness? I'm giving you my grace and it's enough for you.”

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Not that Dream Question Again

A Dream Deferred

by Langston Hughes

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? Or fester like a sore-- And then run? Does it stink like rotten meat? Or crust and sugar over-- like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

As much as I hate to say it, I sometimes feel as though that am asked about dreams an awful lot these days. “What are your dreams?” If you want to believe me or not, it's up to you, but I have laid awake for a while because of this question. I suppose it is because I feel hounded by it.

Yesterday while I was rerunning the Sunday sermon in my head I thought about how this question was asked again. All that I can think of is how I once had dreams, but I don't seem to have them any longer. It was thinking about this when the poem by Langston Hughes came to mind. It was then that I realized that maybe there is a possibility that my dreams will return, but they are certainly gone for now. I had a dream, I had a few, but they have been dashed like the ships in Hitchcock's movie Jamaica Inn, a lodge and pulic house along the Cornwall Coast. In one of the earliest of his films with sound Hitchcock told the story of how land-bound pirates would extinguish the signal light so that the ships would run aground along the treacherous Cornwall Coast and then they would kill the crew and rob the ship of it's cargo, usually very precious things, for the king and the gentry of England in what appears to be the late 1700's, but bear in mind they kept a commission.

I may not know exactly what happens to a dream deferred, but I do know what happened to the dreams of my past, few if any of them came to pass. Maybe our dreams run very high risk of going through the process of the last line of Langston's poem, “Do they just explode?” Mine did, and they did it with anything but aplomb. I don't find it necessary to share those fallen dreams with others now.

I've gone from dreams to what I believe to be the more adult and spiritual approach. I have some hopes for my life, I have desires of the heart that I believe God's spirit knows better than I do. I'll share a few of them, in some particular order, but not in exact order, I'm not sure they need to be in any particular order.

I do hope that I don't die alone. (Sure, God is with me, but I want a member of my family circle or circle of friends to be there with me. On the same topic I hope to have good care, not just from the hospital or hospice, but I want spiritual care not just for me but for my family as well, I hope that they are comforted.) I hope to see the direction God wants me to go in my life, I feel confident that this hope is being realized, but I tend to see it granted daily, but in the rear view mirror usually. I hope to have a partner some day, someone to share an intimate love, (not that kind, but true intimacy the cerebral kind). I hope to see a very real example of living peace, (it's okay to think on that one for a while.) I hope to see the joyful spirit that I used to have come back, I miss it. I hope to see an end to the bad memories I have from some of the life traumas that I've had, though I hate to call them that, I don't like the word trauma used outside of the ER.

I don't think that hope and dreams are the same thing. I see hope as being more spiritually grounded, I see hope as being prayerful; when it is a sincere hope, a heartfelt desire. I guess that I see dreams as Shakespeare described them, “True, I talk of dreams, which are the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy, which is as thin of substance as the air.”

Sunday, March 04, 2007

Left Scratching my Head, Do I have regrets?

So I was talking to what I like to call my, “professional friend” one day. Okay, I pay her some and the insurance makes up some of the rest of it, that's why I call her that. I say that, but it's true, she has become a friend, but keeping her professionalism has been important for both of us, so the mix is good.

I said to my PF, “I get tired of being alone and lonely, being single has gotten very old, I've done some of the things that gay men do to make friends, but I want quality friends and out of those quality friends maybe there will be someone who will be special and we'll be special to one another.” You see where my line of thinking is going so I don't need to bore anyone with the rest of it.

PF suggested to me that I try to find a group who “has a passion for something that you have a passion for, how about starting a knit/crochet group, you seem to like that a lot.” PF is wise, that's why she is a professional friend.

Sparing you the technical details of this yarn, get it, yarn? I'll keep you from needing two cups of espresso while reading this part, the group got started, I had an idea of what I thought that we should make together and Clicking for a Cause was on its way, and I would say that we have been productive. While I have met a few folks that I really didn't know before, what's more I have come to know a few people better and I enjoy their company, that part has really paid off and the fact that there is also a product that comes out of the group that helps others, well, that's a great thing too.

In late November, near Thanksgiving I received a call from a man who was trying to get a group together to knit in a tony knit shop in town, I agreed to go and encouraged a few who knit in Clicking for a Cause to go too. John agreed to go and at the first meeting there were the usual awkwardnesses that come with being in a group of people that you don't know. With that in mind you live in hope that the next meeting will be better, and I suppose that it was. At the second gathering of people you see if your first impressions were right. As in any situation like this you learn that you are wrong about some, right about others, but you also realize, or should, that they are looking at you and wondering too.

This past week there was an interesting experience and just like King Midas' barber I've felt the need to go to the meadow dig a hole in the ground and whisper that King Midas has donkey ears, so here I am, spade in hand. All of the men in this group are what my friend Brad calls, 'mos. That's short for homosexuals, I think he hates the term gay, because many of us aren't as bon viant as the word gay might imply. Somehow and I am still a little foggy on this one, one of the men in the group referred to his, “ex”. Then another referred to his three, “exes.” Personally I thought that triple X was something else all together, but seems I really don't know what I'm talking about in this case. Happy to be purling away on my project and keeping my yap shut on the subject, Mr. XXX turned to me and said, “Don, you must have done very well, you haven't mentioned any exes.”

“That's because I have none.” I replied with confidence but not with the sense of ire that was building within me.

“Wow, then you found the love of your life right off the bat, how did you do that?” XXX questioned.

“I'm not partnered.”

“So how long have you been single?”

Now I'm at the point where the sarcasm is building and if I don't let some of it out, I'm surely going to need more than one of my anti anxiety drugs when I get home. “Well, I said, I've been single since, let me see, I was born in 1960, there was that two month little dating game that didn't go well at all, I guess if you wanna figure from the womb it would be 45 years 10 months.” While one of the men in the circle smiled, the sarcasm fell on deaf ears for the most part. Actually I hoped that XXX aka Perry Mason would stop with his line of questioning. Somehow I knew that I wasn't at the end of this and I'm sorry to say, I was right.

“Do you regret being single?” He asked.

“Yes, but only on days that end in Y and months that have an R in them.” I replied, going back to my less obnoxious tone of voice though I could hardly stop being sarcastic. Trying to tell myself that maybe he just didn't understand that, a) it was none of his business and I was being too polite to say so in a group. 2) maybe he was gathering information for a thesis but didn't want to say so in an effort to keep me from being less than candid or III) he really didn't understand how hurtful questions like this are for the terminally single.

Not able to contain myself any longer I went on to say this, “Yes, I regret being single, I think of it often, for some reason I have a hard time meeting the kind of people that I want to meet, I don't like bars, so I won't be finding anyone there because they, (bars) make me incredibly uncomfortable. I've tried a couple of other places that didn't produce even a few, “good friends,” I've tried another place that I know there are like minded people, but it doesn't seem to have exactly what I'm looking for, (and it feels less comfortable all the time) , and for many reasons. I joined a group like this because I thought that I might make a friend or two, I've done some things that I'm not proud of in an effort to maybe just on a fluke meet someone, that little mission didn't pan out either, though if you don't try you don't know.

But I have come away with some wisdom in all of this too, there is a saying that goes, 'Better to be single than to wish that you were.' I buy into this because I have some gay coupled friends that can't stand one another, they can't get away from one another quick enough but they have a lease together or bought a house together and can't find a way to get out from under that and not go broke. I know couples that will sit in a gathering pawing one another so that everyone thinks that all is well and then go to the parking lot afterward and argue, scratch and hiss because they have different ideas of where they would like to go for brunch or dinner and have no concept of the idea of compromise. That bothers me, frankly, it scares me.”

I took a deep breath and said, “At this point in my life there are times that I think that my biggest regret is not being a monastic, I know that it's not too late for me to convert to Catholic and I'm on my way after a few psych tests. I regret the time that I've spent energy thinking that being single and alone is shameful, it isn't and I don't know where I got the idea. I don't regret though never having been in a relationship that I couldn't figure out how to get out of because I was so miserable that I was having the very thought to begin with.”

“Well, I just wondered.” he said, as if I had only said, “yes, I do regret being single.”