We Were Here …
A Feature Length Documentary by David Weissman
“Of all the cinematic explorations of the AIDS crisis, not one is more heartbreaking and inspiring than WE WERE HERE… The humility, wisdom and cumulative sorrow expressed lend the film a glow of spirituality and infuse it with grace… ONE OF THE TOP TEN FILMS OF THE YEAR.” Stephen Holden, New York Times
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Earlier tonight as I was writing “We are not meant to be alone” hubby had put on this documentary that was airing here in Canada tonight. And so I sat through this film reliving the past 20 years of my life in stark detail.
Listening to the story tellers just breaks my heart, because I was there through the worst time of our lives. You just cannot imagine what it was like. Thinking about it is one thing, listening to someone narrate that time period is heart wrenching.
You know, the further I get from the past, the less I tend to think about it today. But every once in a while, and this rings especially true during Pride Months these documentaries play as reminders to those we lost.
I want so badly to tell you that YES, we are not meant to be alone and that we are all loveable no matter what devastation or situation we find ourselves in. And I think somewhere deep down, hubby’s message in watching this film was to say, yes I remember for you and you are not alone here in this life.
Things in my neck of the woods were as frightful as they were in San Francisco and in many big cities in the very beginning. When AIDS came to Ft. Lauderdale, we were all taken aback by the horror of just what AIDS was doing to our community.
Thank God – T H A N K G O D that what I saw did not happen to me. Because it was ugly. I have documented all these things in PAGES, but for the moment I am drawn to address this topic here and now because it weighs heavily on my heart and soul.
When I sero-converted I was so sick. I thought for sure that I was going to die at any moment. But my friends and keepers in the AIDS care circle had other plans for me.
The film speaks of finding a cure …
that there should be more than AZT…
Back in those days we were all taking AZT because there was nothing else to take. We even went the lengths to collect old drugs from people who had died, and those drugs were taken to drug farms and re-purposed for use for those who were still alive and fighting to stay alive.
God forbid you had to go to a hospital. They would break out the hazmat suits and moon goggles and scrubs. It was heartless the way that the medical community treated us, for a long time, until they got trained to be able to deal with us without all the fear that was running rampant through the cities.
There were no specialists, no real doctors at that point, it was hit and miss because there really was no social medical safety net to take care of all the sick. But there were enough people to begin with that took on the task of treating what they could with whatever they had on hand.
I know for myself. I took tons of pills to try and find something that worked. And in the beginning that was AZT. It made me sick, and we had little pocket timers that would go off every four hours to remind us to take our pills.
Eventually in Miami there was dedicated doctors who were in the loop of medical research that I got involved with and what these doctors did for me is nothing short of a miracle.
With Genotype and Phenotype testing, they figured out the strain and type of virus we were carrying, then from that they proceeded to attaining tables of drugs that we could take that had promising results in the lab. And as drug companies pushed out pills we took them.
We did not wait for test circles to form on others, we tested all those meds ourselves. So that every year we survived, we had data to share with the rest of the world as AIDS was a worldwide epidemic.
But medication was expensive especially if you could not afford your pills. There were no insurance plans designed for this – people were selling their life insurance policies and going on government disability to be able to afford treatment. I know it took me three attempts to finally get disability coverage in the U.S. I had to almost kill myself to get my social services person to sign off on my form.
Let me tell you what the government made us go through to get disability insurance. We had to be on deaths door step, sick unto death before they would finally clear you. I got so sick that on the day I finally got signed I walked into the office, not having bathed or shaven in a weeks time, hacking and coughing all over the place for someone to fear me enough to sign on the dotted line so that I could get assistance. It was heartless and cruel the things the government and the state did to those who were sick.
They made us little white boys go to places that white people don’t go to in broad daylight. Trekking from one side of the city to another taking bus after bus and train after train just to get social assistance. Needless to say that once a cast iron bitch always a cast iron bitch.
People were so afraid of the sick. God forbid you sat next to us on a bus, or a train. God forbid you had to deal with us directly.
- I watched families throw their sons out into the streets.
- I watched lovers toss their loved ones out into the streets as well.
- I witnessed land lords toss sick people from their homes.
- I witnessed employers fire and cut people off from insurance and livelihoods.
- I witnessed so called Christians get on their hellfire and brimstone horses and watched them burn us all down to the ground with hatred and fear mongering.
- My Own family turned against me when I got sick. They would rather condemn me rather than help me so fuck them …
It was Sick. Absolutely and Totally Sick !!!
And still today that hatred simmers in certain circles. And every year we go through these periods of time when we are raw with emotions that some fuck comes along and throws salt in the wound just because they feel righteous !!!
The One Good thing that did happen was it galvanized those who were left into care circles and care givers. AIDS separated the men from the boys and the girls from the women. You learned just how devoted your friends were to you and just how much they meant to you while they were still here.
And FUCK all you haters out there. Heartless Bastards…
So many of my friends died. All I have is a photo album of the last time I saw the Names Project Quilt show in Ft. Lauderdale or Miami I think it was. This blog is a testament and my memory for those years of my life when I thought that I too was going to die.
God in his infinite wisdom had other plans for me. There was a life to live. There were things I still needed to do, and people to meet and places to see. Today I have the best doctor in the world. He treated patient Zero, the French Flight Attendant back in the old days. I truly lucked out when I moved here to find him and get into his clinic.
It is sad that there is still no cure. But death is something of a second thought now. We are living longer. I had a doctor who told me that when I die that it won’t be AIDS that kills me. And that was a long time ago.
I’ve always said that if science ever gets to the point that time travel is possible, the time I would go back to is the period of time that I was first diagnosed, because it was the Best of Times and it was The Worst of Times. I knew then that I was loved and so cared for that I wanted for nothing. And I think that that is what saved me.
There wasn’t time to sit and wait to die. I was too busy being taught how to survive and in that time I did not sit in my shit and play with it. Time was of the essence and men nor horses were going to keep me from winning this fight.
Every day that I look in the mirror I thank God for Todd and Roy and all the others who took the time to teach me and to love me and to make sure that nothing took me down be that sickness or man.
Never Forget and Remember still that on your daily goings on, you never know who you are sitting next to on the bus or on the train, or walking down the sidewalk, you never know what battle someone else is engaged in.
It Gets Better. We are still alive. And our stories should never be forgotten.
We Were Here … I was there, and I am still here.
Your Coffee’s too Strong !!!
Israel, Hamas announce deal to trade captured Israeli soldier for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners …
“Netanyahu said the captured soldier, Sgt. Gilad Schalit, would return home within days. Mashaal, portraying the agreement as a victory, said the Palestinian prisoners would be freed in two stages over two months.”
I have been following this story for years since Gilad Schalit was captured. Finally this young man is coming home. Well done… It is about time he was returned to his family and country. This is fantastic news.
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Today October 11 – Is National Coming out Day
A big decision in any gay person’s life is the decision to come out. It marks the day that we come to terms with who we are and where we are in our lives to come out and openly declare what we are to the world. It doesn’t happen over night and is a process that takes a lifetime. Times have changed in the past 20 years for the LGBT community.
But teens and young people have been targets of concerted bullying and demeaning behavior by family, peers, conservative media and countless numerous Christian communities and their preachers and bullies.
This behavior must not go unpunished.
There should be definite consequences for bullying.
Today we celebrate all those who have decided to make a stand and share with the world that the LGBT community is expanding. Where ever you are and who ever you are, take your time, and do it on your own timetable. We are here for you every day and any day.
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Courtesy: Flickr Jamescg
We now we return to our regularly scheduled programming …
Good evening Peeps !!!
We are sitting at a cool 14c. One more day of clear skies and rain is to follow for later in the week. The trees are turning. Our neighborhood is covered in a fine layer of yellow leaves. Some of the maples by the church have begun to turn.
It was a beautiful day today. It was an early start out to the church. Have tunes will crank out chairs and tables. I was done by 5:45, and people started arriving soon after. We gained another member tonight rounding out the member count at ten. We had visitors from the U.S. at the meeting tonight. Our women take really good care of visitors. Our visitors go home with more than they came with which is a good thing.
So I make 40 cups of coffee every week in the big industrial coffee pot. There is a cup count of how much coffee I put in the hopper each week. And people rave about how good the coffee is. I had to step up the amount of coffee I make when the numbers spiked over the last month.
Tonight, I was sitting at table and a woman who rarely comes to the meeting, who never participates when it comes around to her, goes to get a cup of coffee and she says to anyone who was listening, “You need to put water in the coffee pot to weaken the mix because I can’t drink this strong coffee!”
What do you mean, put water in the pot? Everybody in the meeting already have their cups and I haven’t heard one person complain in all the years I have been making coffee that there is anything wrong with it. I grabbed the tea kettle and poured half the kettle into the top of the pot, sending coffee grinds all over the place. Like that was going to make a difference in HER cup of coffee.
I said to her … You know nobody ever complains about coffee, they are grateful that we even make coffee. You are the first person I’ve ever heard complain! If your coffee is too strong then put some water in your cup and water it down. Sheesh !!!
When it came time for her to share, she sat there silent and passed. God grant me serenity !!!
Our topic for the night:
“The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called will power becomes practically nonexistent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.” Big Book, pg. 24
With some sober time under my belt, most of my own personal observations come in hindsight. When I was first sober, I got to a point that I was free falling. I did not have a sponsor and I made a fateful decision that took me out the door.
In hindsight, during my slip, I drank and drugged. First I put down the drugs and I left them by the side of the road, I walked away, and never picked up another drug again. The funny thing was that it was easy to put down the drugs. I changed geography, I moved away from those people and places. So even if I went looking for them again, I wouldn’t necessarily find them.
But it was very different with alcohol. I could have put down the drink. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. I don’t know that I needed the alcohol. But it was wired into my system. I don’t know why I needed that weekly binge. And it wasn’t until I hit the wall and my bottom, that I decided that I didn’t WANT the alcohol any more.
I walked away from alcohol. The club I drank in closed its doors shortly after I got sober. And I did not go looking for another drinking establishment, oh, they were out there, how could you miss the myriad of clubs on South Beach.
I had my meetings. I had new friends who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me. Over the last 10 years I have worked on that buffer zone that now exists in my field of vision, that keep me from ever having to take another “First Drink.” Because we all know that if I take one, more will follow…
We read, we go to meetings, we work with others, and we work on our spiritual condition. Because nothing guarantees me sobriety than working with another alcoholic. I do service every week. I follow the same routine every week, week in and week out. I’ve followed the same path for the last 10 years, and to date I have never had the compulsion to even contemplate a “first drink.”
And for that I am grateful.
Two more months and I hit double digits. One day at a time.
More to come, stay tuned …
10 Years …
NEW YORK – SEPTEMBER 11: Hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the south tower of the World Trade Center and explodes at 9:03 a.m. on September 11, 2001 in New York City. The crash of two airliners hijacked by terrorists loyal to al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and subsequent collapse of the twin towers killed some 2,800 people. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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It has been a week of quiet reflection and introspection about those events that took place on September 11, 2001. Many people are writing on this memory over the last few days and I was going to write on Sunday, but I think I can write on it now.
It was a quiet morning in South Beach that morning. I was asleep in my bed when the phone rang. It was my friend Ricky. He said to turn on the tv, that something was going down in New York City.
I sat rapt and cold watching the events transpire as they did. At that time my memory started running because my brother was employed as was his wife by the government. And when the plane hit the Pentagon, I panicked. I called my mother for some shard of news that neither of them were there.
My mother would neither confirm nor deny where they were at that moment. The punishment of silence was being played out on me because of my parent’s belief that I was less than human and unacceptable as a member of the family. Even then relations were strained between us and she wasn’t going to give up her information without me groveling for it.
But after 12 hours of relentless questions she finally let go the info that they were not at the Pentagon.
I did not report to work that day or the next. I wandered up and down the island watching tv and talking with friends about what we had seen. We were all in shock. And life on the island stopped. The party hardy city was struck stone cold sober. I sat in an internet cafe on Lincoln Road trying to find things to do, people to help and news to watch. The young man who ran the cafe would eventually give me free time every day for the 2 week period of time that the benefit period lasted on the island.
We had a week of mourning. There were no parties. It seemed the club atmosphere was sobered up. Nobody was in the mood to party or drink to excess because of what happened in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania.
They told us that we should go to the beach and lay candles lit in the sand at nightfall, because the satellites above were taking pictures of the coastline from space. So we did that every night for two weeks.
After a week of not knowing what to do, and seven days of forced sobriety, the island began to open up again. And the fund raising began. At the major clubs on the beach would have matching donations drives and if you donate so much money – you could have the equal back in alcohol.
So we went from stone cold sober to hot stock drunk over night. We drank every drop of alcohol that was stocked on the island for more than a week. And whatever money we raised was sent to the disaster zones up North. It was a very emotional time for us.
I spent a lot of time in front of the television. I had a computer at home during this time, even writing to Peter Jennings while he talked on tv news for days and nights after it happened. I had a direct email address for him and I would write him during the night while he was alone on tv.
One night – and I have it recorded on vhs, Peter was having a hard night, trying to remain stoic and strong, and it was wearing on him badly. So I dropped him a note and I said “Peter, take a breath, loosen your tie and just relax for a few minutes. You aren’t alone. Just do it …”
That email reached him and there on live tv, he took a breath, he loosened his tie and he stopped talking for a few minutes and he got through the rest of that shift that night. Peter Jennings was the voice of reason I had grown up with from a young boy into the man I was at that time. I have 20 VHS tapes that I have in my video collection from the morning of 9-11 through the following weeks time of news, interviews and finally the first night David Letterman came back to do his first live show after 9-11 with Dan Rather in chairs – we all cried that night.
Peter Jennings, in a moment of weakness, started smoking again after 9-11 a choice that ended very badly for him as he contracted cancer and later died from it – it was a sad time for everyone. But for those crucial few days after 9-11 Peter Jennings was the man of the hour of ABC news. I will always be proud of him and what he did for the city, the world and his viewers.
This is what happened to my community in South Beach at the time of 9-11.
What is your story?
Name someone who has significantly influenced the way you see the world.
Courtesy: Faceyourfate
Question via: Plinky
When I was very young, I had all these things about me that taught me about many things. From a very young age, I knew these things for sure. I saw things, read things, did things that would inform my life forever. And at some point I learned, well, I thought I learned that if it was good for an adult, let’s say if it was good for my parents, that it would be good for me. I don’t know where I learned that from or from whom, but I knew at some point that if it happened and I learned about it, then I could do it too.
From the buffet of things to read and experience as a young child, into a young person, I knew who I was, I knew what I wanted, and in my mind, what secrets were kept were ammunition for me to use later on in my life. I did not know that then, But I learned it on the way through life.
Be careful the lies you tell your children, because one day they will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. And don’t ever say that I never told you so.
For me, in some way, however disgusting I find this sentiment, I wanted to be just like my father. And in my way, I did become him. I grew up to be a raging alcoholic. However, he managed to keep his house, his wife, and his job. My father, on the other hand was hell bent on my destruction from very early on in my life and had not several people gotten in the way at the right time, when they did, I probably would not be here. His words haunt me even today …
YOU WERE A MISTAKE AND SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN BORN …
At the end of my relationship with my father I hated him. Clear and simple. I was living in Miami and I was very sick and in the thick of AIDS. Those first five years were torment. I was terribly sick and miserable. I had come close to death several times, it was really bad.
My father would come through town and he would visit me. But his intentions were clear from the outset. He would berate me and make me feel less than and unimportant. He had no shame and he didn’t think twice about expounding his beliefs as a Christian, me being a raging homosexual and dying of AIDS at the time. Back then, predicting my survival was sketchy at best. Had you told me then, that I would have made it to here, I would never had believed you.
I remember the last time I saw my parents. It was January 2001. New Years day to be exact. I had worked an all night shift at a local club, and I got home around 6 a.m. My phone rang and it was my mother, telling me that they were in town and wanted to see me. They had been in Miami for a week, and failed to tell me that in the beginning or make any move to see me earlier. So they came by my place and my father got out of the car and told my mother that she had mere minutes to speak to me as they were on their way back to Sarasota. I offered to take them out to lunch, hell, I was even willing to splurge and pay for parking on the beach for them to stay longer. My father said no.
I walked my mother around the block, said my hellos and goodbyes. And she got back in the car and they drove off. That visit lasted maybe 30 minutes.
I never saw them again.
So it is 2011. Many years have passed. And I am the man I am today because of men in my life who took the time and invested in me to help me live, survive and thrive.
The man who saved my life and took the greatest interest in my life was Todd. From the day we met, in that dark and dank leather bar many years ago, we were meant to be together in ways that normal people will never understand. I was working at the STUD when I was diagnosed with AIDS back in 1994. I have written ad nauseum about that time in my life.
I learned how to live. One day at a time. Through the vehicle of odd jobs and nightly chores in a nightclub I learned how to take care of men who were pigs. Stopped up toilets, cum covered bar stools, Shit packed toilets and garbage strewn patios and club space. I once begrudgingly did these chores resentfully.
I hated these pigs for a while. And I used to bitch about how dirty men were and I pissed and moaned about cleaning up after them. Until one night Todd took me aside and said to me …“You spend so much time bitching about doing the work, If you would only do the work instead, it would get done much quicker.”
He also added on many occasions that “If I could clean up dirty bathrooms and shit filled toilets, that when I got sick and found myself in degrading shitty situations myself, that I would know what to do.”
Back then people with AIDS were suffering terrible situations, it was degrading and demoralizing. What I witnessed and what I went through with my friends, and the hundreds that we cared for during those years, Todd was preparing me for my own demise.
Although, I think and this is speculation, that he would teach me and take care of me hoping against hope that I would live through this and survive. And if it had not been for Todd and Roy and all the men who took care of me, Farkle, Billy, Marie, my doctors and the clinic staffs, I don’t know if I would have survived.
I still find it odd today that so many men went to their deaths in the ways they did, yet I emerged from that hell. Yes, I had many medical issues in the first five years, I stated that above. The government was not kind to people with AIDS.
In the end circa 2002, I was sober. But at that time, I was living on disability and living as well on the good graces of my friends, and the service organizations who provided meals on wheels and furniture for my studio, rent assistance because I could not afford to pay rent, buy food and pay for my medication at the same time. Sometimes it came down to a choice, whether to pay for meds or buy food. Or buy meds and not be able to pay rent. The price I was paying for drugs in the U.S. was criminal. How the government expects you to live on pittance and be able to afford life sustaining drugs was beyond me.
I got lucky. A lie once told, gave me my out.
So here we are in 2011. I am still alive. Imagine that. Nobody cares. It isn’t that important. I breathe and nobody is none the wiser. I came to Canada and met the next group of men who would pick up where Todd left off. Todd’s teaching got me into the game. All those lessons learned have been put to good use.
In 2003, I became a Citizen. I arrived on February 13th 2003.
I would meet my mentor a few months later by chance. A man who I call one of my best friends today. I came to Canada during the run up to the Iraq war. The war was not applauded, nor was it wanted. The president at the time was suffering from lack of support. There were marches here in the streets every day. Anti War protests, Anti-American protests.
In those first two years I was here in Canada, I had to find my footing. I grew up in the South. My parents were Catholic. My parents were very homophobic, racist, bigoted, ignorant and I had to skate through my life at home listening to the family gospel. I was supposed to follow everything that my father preached to us as children.
I’ve learned this lesson about life … And living in the United States.
If you want to really learn about the United States, from outside the spectrum of U.S. media and news makers and policy makers and your churches and your government, leave the comfort of your sofas. Put down your beer and chips and move abroad for one calendar year. I promise you if you do this, you will never be the same.
Living above the Northern Border has given me eyes to see how I was raised and just how different a man I am today because I left the United States. The way they forced me to live those years that I was so sick was detestable.
I had to learn where my loyalties lay. The Anti U.S. sentiment was getting to a fever pitch here in Montreal, with demonstrations all over the city. They told me to sew Canadian flags on my backpack so that I would not get pegged in the streets or the Metro by those who were not so sympathetic to the U.S.
I took me a long time to find my feet. And it was Donald who gave me what I needed during those years that made me the man I am today. When I was uncertain of where I should be, and who should I support, I was both an American and a Canadian. I didn’t know what to think or what to believe.
And he told me … “If you don’t know where you sit or where you stand, then sit where you are until where you are feels comfortable. Learn about your surroundings and take it all in. Then when you are ready get up, consult your map and take the next step.” Whenever I had to make a decision about something I employed this tactic.
I am a proud Canadian. I’ve learned enough now to know who I am, what I am, where I stand and what I believe. On Sunday I will turn 44 years old. I lived, despite everything that I have been through in my life. I could not have ever imagined life as it is without the care of many men in my life.
I trust my husband, my friends and my medical team with my life. They have kept me alive all these years, and I have had my down periods. I have had setbacks over the years, but I have been gaining. As long as the drugs work, I stay on the upswing.
I lived. And I owe my life to the men who cared for me, loved me, supported me and gave me what I needed.
They say you can’t choose your family. You are stuck with what you get. And for some that isn’t good enough. And for that I say this, one day you will leave your home and make your way into the world. You must survive what you begin with in order to become the man or woman you were meant to be.
I had to make a decision in my life and I had to get away from the demons of my life, my addictions and my parents. That relationship never healed. And I am all the better for it. I gave up seeking redemption. I gave up seeking approval as a man. Because it will never come. And it is their loss not mine.
Life is what you make of it. You live or you die. Make your choice.
Hopefully you have someone in your life who helped shape the world you live in.
A Blast from the Past …
I was quite dapper in my youth. On Board Nordic Empress, RCI Cruises
Memere aboard Nordic Empress, RCI Cruises
I wish I could have bottled this one too …
Now I get to see her on my desktop.
I got a whole bunch more photos from my aunt in the mail today. There are my favorites. I scanned them into the computer and posted them on my Facebook profile.
Sunday Sundries …
Courtesy: Louislanderdeacon Flickr
The Golden Globes are on. Let’s see how many stupid things Ricky Gervais can say in a telecast.
There is snow on the ground, last night it snowed, a few inches but tonight it is bitterly cold out. It is (-14c), but I am told that it is supposed to get even worse as the night progresses.
I got an email addressing Christianity and my use of certain photos on the blog. Obviously, my writer did not read the ‘about me’ down below. I happen to like the photos that are up on the blog. They are a little profane, a little nude, a little suggestive. You may call it porn, but I call it photography. And if you don’t like it, then don’t come back.
I have lived a full life, and all of the photos on the blog relate in some way to parts of my life. Being a Christian is one thing, being gay is another. I reconcile my Christianity very simply. There is a God, one of my understanding. The God of my understanding is one found out in the field. I don’t wear religion on my sleeve like I used to. There are things about my life that I find sacred. My attention to ministers and servants of God, that is part of my own belief system. I didn’t think I needed to explain, but it has been said, in the past, and not in so many words, that it is a little perverted, I disagree.
You can’t have the sacred without the profane. There is no danger in living a straight laced life. I did not live a straight laced life, and if you need more explanation of that life, then take some time to read some of the pages down below.
Christianity, it is something I profess, and that is it. Nothing more.
I don’t make excuses about the way I live my life. I have enough years behind me to be able to make a statement and know what that statement means.
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I got out of the house tonight and attended Sunday Nighter’s literature discussion meeting. We read from Jack Alexander’s article from March 1st 1941, Saturday Evening Post, on our organization, Alcoholics Anonymous.We only got partway through the opening pages of the article. The room was full so there were a lot of people to share for the hour.
Reading about the hopeless alcoholic, I have witnessed that kind of hopelessness in my life. I watched my grandfather drink with great intensity, he was the hopeless, I can’t put it down, drinker. It was a problem that took him down in the end. I imagine that he suffered greatly due to his drinking. After suffering a stroke in my young life he ended up in an institution, but by then the damage was done.
If I look at the insidious disease of alcoholism, my grandfather was a bottomless alcoholic. My father, in his wisdom, was an alcoholic as well, but they differed in the way they drank. Alcoholism as a generational disease is progressive. As the third generation alcoholic, I did not repeat what I saw in my life. I drank available alcohol. I never drank at home. I even drank your alcohol if you had some. I needed the social aspect of the drink.
I never drank alone, but you could say that when I drank, to the extent that I drank, I became alone. I could drink in a packed nightclub, trying to fit it, and at the end of the night, it was only me being poured into a taxi cab to go home, alone.
On the last night I drank, not being able to remember how I got home that night, I knew I was finished. Not being able to remember, was a problem. Someone was watching out for me in the end, that is my belief.
I could not go on like that any more. And the only solution I had was to come back to the rooms of alcoholics anonymous.
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People are struggling in sobriety these days. The winter is not kind here, and we have seen a ton of people going back out after amassing decades of sober time. People are struggling with the fact that alcoholism is a disease of the body and mind. It doesn’t matter how much time you have, we all struggle one way or another.
People are slacking off their meetings, and are finding themselves in odd places emotionally. And it being bitterly cold as it is doesn’t help the fact that we need to get to meetings at any cost, because for many of us, we needed to drink at any cost. It is just important to keep coming back. To never forget why we came here and why it is so important to make meetings whenever possible.
Because it only takes a brief slip of the mind and some distance from meetings and one can find themselves in a pickle. The more meetings I go to every day, the more I find that I need these meetings just like anybody else. You never know what will pop up in the mind in life. That is truly apparent today. Listening to what people are sharing, people with over decades of sobriety are having a hard time as of late. None of us are immune to this happening.
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We are just days from the start of the winter session at Dawson. I don’t know if I am excited to start classes again. I am neither here nor there on the subject. All I know is that I am ready for something exciting to happen in my life. I wonder what this year is going to bring me in sobriety. They say that things change at ten years sobriety. And I am well on my way today.
I have a long term goal on the table. I want to go to Rome for the Beatification of John Paul II in May. I haven’t brought this up with hubby yet. A return to Rome in sobriety will be a life goal. My first visit to Europe was not pretty, I was young and a little bit more stupid. But I made a sober visit to the Vatican, back in the day.
I am rambling now, and that means I should stop typing, because I am not saying anything useful at this point.
More to come, stay tuned …
The last Saturday before Christmas…
Courtesy: Blamboys
They Hyperlink worked tonight, Woo hoo !!!
Christmas is seven days away. Have you finished your holiday shopping yet? Hubby and I still have to get gifts for the family probably tomorrow at The Bay.
I have a Love/Hate relationship with the holidays. nobody knows how lonely it gets sometimes being me. And the more I dwell on it, the lower my mood drops into the sea.
Not having family to speak of. Not that I speak of them at all since I am persona non-grata to them still to this day. I still pray that God might work a small miracle. I guess it isn’t in the cards again this year.
I’ve been working very hard at keeping an even keel the past few days. And I know this will only get worse the closer to the holidays we get. Hubby will travel to Ottawa to see his family and I will stay here, because it is just better that way. The less they see of a gay marriage the better they feel. “the things we sacrifice for family.”
I’ve been reading the new book, Aging with HIV, last night I got a few chapters in and I had to put the book down because of all the feelings and emotions that the book was bringing up.
How many friends do you have? If you had to build a company that’s sole job was to care for you, could you staff all the positions? From the friends you do have, how many have been around since you were first diagnosed?
Questions like this that keep me up at night. I can count all my friends on one hand. I don’t know enough people in my life to staff all the positions in my self care company. Only two people still exist from the time that I was diagnosed, although we do not talk very often I know where they are and can call them if the need arises.
When I was much younger, the bar fell apart, people died and new people got involved in the organization that did not have my best interests at hand, so I left that staff. My friends packed up the U haul and set course for San Francisco. The invitation came up for me to go with them. I was too young and I had visions of healing my family rift and reclaiming my right to family, that never happened and I missed an opportunity to go West with my family of choice.
I had to stay where I was, in Miami. That’s all I knew, so I stayed and went on with my life and it was hard to leave my old life behind, because once the group broke up everything changed. I had to relearn how to live life on my own once again. I did a so so job at that.
There is no gay community here. Not that I have gone looking for it, nor do I wish to find it really. I had hoped that my time in university would bring me to new community, however, it only brought me one friend. My mentor and guide. He was the only benefit of my university time.
Now at Cegep, the kids are much younger than me, I am sometimes the oldest man in the room, teachers included. So that does not bode well for making lasting friends. I am not a twenty something any longer.
I have my friends in sobriety. Those people I see every week, my sponsor and a couple of others scattered all over the globe. People I can call and count on, but I don’t see them very often. People I met here in my home group, some of them have moved on to other groups, and a few of them have left the program completely.
Christmas is coming fast. I have my holiday meal in the freezer and the fixings in the cupboard. I sent out my Christmas Cards and I have finished all my shopping. The wishes I have for Christmas are the same every year.
I don’t think God is listening to me any longer. Or the wishes I have are out of the realm of possibilities. I am powerless over people, places and things.
I cracked open this book I got for Christmas, last night, and read it from cover to cover in one shot overnight. It was a good read. I enjoyed the book. Here are the specs:
Paul is a boy who is highly religious, goes to a Christian school, lives in a very small town, and loves God and his girlfriend of several years. Living in such a small town and going to a small school, everyone knows the new kids.
The knew person, Manuel, is weird. Everyone talks about him, especially when he joins Paul and his friends at their lunch table. Manuel proceeds to tell them that he is both gay and Christian, two things that don’t mix well.
The girls love Manuel, but the boys want to stay far away from him — except for Paul. Manuel is trying to be Pauls friend and all the guys start talking about the both of them.
As Paul and Manuel hang out, a friendship is formed and Paul challenges Manuel about God, the Bible, and being gay. Every answer Manuel gives makes Paul think differently about his religion and what it says. Is being gay okay, and can you still go to Heaven?
While examining his feelings, Paul wonders about his own sexuality and if his friendship for Manuel is just that — a friendship. When a series of events happens, Paul finds his true feelings, his true identity, and, most importantly, love.
Alex Sanchez’s latest novel is amazing. It gives a new interpretation of “the Bible says that being gay is a sin,” an excuse that many use. Very thought-provoking, this book will keep a smile on your face until the end.
It was a good story, it had its tragic episode in the story line, I guess you have to have one, when dealing with Christianity and young people, nobody escapes. It was interesting to read the back and forth about God, the scriptures and being gay and a Christian at the same time.
I have been around and around over those scriptures and they feature prominently on the home page here on the blog.
I guess I will call it a night, it being 3:34 om the morning, and I still need to get to bed soon.
More to come, stay tuned…
Life …
Courtesy: Thiswillnotdefineus
I just love this photo.
I am powerless over people, places and things. So that allows me to let go and let god. Enjoy the day and stay in the moment…
Don’t ask Don’t tell was given a sharp blow to the chest today. We are ashamed at the Republican party for their filibuster today. And we are also confused that the Democrats did not shore up the votes, they said they had just 24 hours ago. Gay rights in association with the military will just have to wait for the President to make his move. I guess we shall just have to wait for the military review to be completed in January. But the President has already promised a repeal by the end of this year. Someone needs to light a fire under his ass to get this done, already.
Last night I worked on the blog finding new imagery for my header and the sidebar. I really like the update. It is fresh, poignant, and brings a different slant to the blog. I have found a couple of sites through my tumblr account that collect these beautiful photographs from all over the world, by some of the best photographers in the business.
I started writing a post last night, that I later abandoned because I wasn’t sure about my topic. I’ve been talking to some of my friends lately about life, it is always great to hear that friends are doing great, having fun with life and exploring different aspects of our lives.
After reflecting on those conversations I’ve been reminded of the past and what once was, and just how much I miss certain people and times in my life, almost to the point of lamentation.
I wonder what life would be like, if those parts of my life, that have been long since gone many years now, that I miss so terribly, were a part of my life today, would life be so different? We do not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it …
Today we revisited the past in talking about “Hitting Bottom.” Junior pulled this topic from the daily reflections and the group did not hold back the honest sharing.
I remember my experience with a crash and burn bottom when I first got sober in 1994. It was really bad, I almost died, save for the team that rallied around me to help me get better. Things that happened in my first round of sobriety did not happen the second time I got sober. I have said this before.
Everything that happened in my life the first few years I was sober, was cathartic real life teaching. It was the most transformative period in my life. If I had to do it all over again, I would. I would not change one thing about my past, in order to make it any better or worse. I had the right people in my life, I had the right job at that time, and I had the right friends in the family we created amongst ourselves.
I remarked that the second time I got sober, I hit more of a psychological bottom. On Miami Beach, where I was living at the time, it was all about being seen in the best light. Having the best body, using the best drugs, and drinking the best booze, and partying at the best nightclubs week after week. I could not keep up with the partying, nor could I compete with the gym bunny crowd any longer.
I was socially stuck in my thirties, trying to act as if I was twenty, playing the social games of society, trying to be good enough or pretty enough… But I grew up. And I knew the party was over by the time I decided that I had had enough…
I knew the way back. The prayers I said when I decided to quit drinking the second time were well placed. And once again, god put the right people in my path, at the right moment, to facilitate my return to the program.
Once I crossed that threshold back into the room, I hit my second psychological bottom. I was ashamed of myself. I hoped that none of my sober friends would see me coming back to the rooms. I thought getting sober on the beach, and not in the city, would save me face.
Later I learned that it was all in my head. My friends were happy to see me back. I had to get past all the shame and remorse I felt coming back a second time.
At that time, the right people welcomed me back to the meetings. They took care of me day in and day out. I had a good job, I had a place to live, and I was getting sober again.
I know that after those first four years, I forgot about how and why I got sober. I became blind and the disease of alcoholism was eating away at me, in certain aspects. At four years sober, I was living in Miami and not Ft. Lauderdale, where I first got sober.
I did not have the support of the men who were in my life in the beginning. I did not do enough to shore up my sobriety. When I pulled the geographic at four years sober, it was a slip in the making. I had no control over the first drink and drug.
Even there, on my slip, when I picked up and used, I had hit another bottom. There was no going back, I was fucked from the word go. I should have never done what I did. That whole 18 months of my life were a waste of time, talent and treasure. I lost everything I owned and almost my life. We heard tonight that if you go back out after time in the program, you are powerless over the first drink, and that once you start drinking again, it only gets worse.
It is a caution to the newcomer just how crucial it is to stay on track, to know your bottom, and respect it for what it was. If you were blessed to come in and stay in, then you must do what is necessary to make sure you shore up your sobriety against another drink.
I have been consumed with thoughts about the past over the last few days. There seems to be a lesson coming. I am not sure what the lesson is yet, but a theme is coalescing around me. I am too far out from my anniversary, to get on the pre cake roller coaster.
I guess I am polishing my gem, so it seems. Issues are cyclical. Life is cyclical. In sobriety, you get to review your life on a continual basis. As we hit beginner meetings, and you go over 1,2, and 3 over and over again, month after month, the act of self evaluation comes and goes. Every time you get to look at some period of your life and each time that specific point comes up, you get to look at it with fresh eyes, sober eyes of today.
What happens is that once you learn the lesson that happened in the past, you get to review it again. And from that comes gratitude. Gratitude that the lesson came and you learned from it, and that you can move past it, and let it go, until the next time the review takes place.
Every pass of the polishing wheel cuts and shines the gem, that is sobriety. Every memory that is cataloged is grace. Every person in your life, is there by divine position. I begin to see in sobriety the universal plan. The great hand of god making his presence known to me on a grand scale. Sobriety is a wonderful grace. Every day brings something new, and today we got to take a look at a specific area of life and we are reminded just how blessed we are to be sober today.
I had asked a friend of mine to speak at the 8 pm meeting, and she was fabulous. I’ve been asking people from my sober circle of friends to speak at the meeting this month. This group of people all got sober around the same time period and we are all coming up on our nine year mark. Every day is a gift, including the people in our lives.
Ok, I think I am finished with this thought.
If you have a cell phone, I wonder how many of you play Foursquare? A few of my facebook friends foursquare. It is an online application that you have running in the background on your phone, and as you move about your city, it knows where you are at any given moment and you “check in” throughout your day. You collect badges and you can see where your friends are during their days as well. It is quite fun.
I have a bunch of apps on my phone that I use on a daily basis. Hubby spends a lot of time on his phone with his work and all. he loves the functionality of it all. I never imagined what a freeing experience it is to have the phone, I don’t know how to explain it but having hubby just a phone call away when we are out and about is totally freeing. It just makes sense…
Ok it’s 11 o’clock I need to eat and do my other online activities…
That is all for tonight.
Hindsight …
God dammit if my satellite radio player isn’t working tonight !!! It must be the weather… It is snowing in Montreal tonight. So I’ve loaded up a Chad Fox podcast and that is playing as I type tonight.
I have a lot on my mind tonight. People and places, times and tribulations. It has been very quiet with hubby gone, I have time to myself to think and be alone. I don’t get to be alone very much being married. So time to myself is a prized possession.
Last night was a little funny because I had to go to bed alone. I hate sleeping alone, but alas, family is family and hubby is doing his part to celebrate the holidays with his family.
Today is Tuesday and it was also my home group tonight. I was unnerved all day, time was just going by too slowly. So around 4′ o clock I got in the shower and got ready to go. I had to go by Provigo to pick up my cake for tonight.
Yes, I made it 8 years … Who knew I’d live to see today…
When this journey began fifteen years ago I had 18 months to live. The doctors told me to kiss my ass goodbye and call it a day. When the drink did not kill me, because I tried… To kill myself with the drink … God had other plans. And there were key people in my life then that stepped in to help save my life.
Danny
Roy
Todd
Farkle
Billy
Bill M.
I went into rehab and started my dance with sobriety on August the 23rd 1994. I would stay sober 4 years, if I knew then, what I know today, I would never have made that fateful geographic that took me out the door for 18 months of living hell. But you know, hindsight is 20/20. I have had a lot of time to think about the past and see the path that was laid before me. And really, to be honest, I haven’t spent a great deal of time thinking about the past, it is just something that I really don’t dwell on.
But tonight I hit two meetings at my home group and I had time to sit and ponder the past 8 years of “this” sobriety, and in a greater circle the last fifteen years. I should be dead… I should have died years ago … Which brings me to the eternal question that I ask every Christmas of God, “what am I still doing here?”
When I look back retrospectively over the past, I came to believe before I came to because someone up there liked me enough to set this path out that I walked, I wish I had had all this wisdom in my head then, but I didn’t. I had to walk it out “One day at a time.” When you are staring death in the face – and counting the days until you are supposed to die, you either learn how to live or you wait to die and learn nothing in between. There were too many people in my life then, that wanted and willed me to live. I think that those first years living with AIDS was consumed by working at the STUD. I was too busy to think about dying. And I think that that saved my life.
I walked the road. I had to stumble and fall, and learn to pick myself up again after my terrible crash and burn. God knew what he was doing. When I returned to home base after my slip the path was there, and I walked it.
Looking back I know that God was moving heaven and earth for me, and it seemed that I was paying attention to the signs and omens. I knew the way back to the rooms, but I was ashamed to come back because I was going to get sober AGAIN in the same city that I got sober in to begin with. And sober circles are very small … people know … and they knew I was on the rebound…
I prayed prayers – I needed certain things … And each prayer was answered.
- I needed a place to live – and it came …
- I needed a job, that came with the apartment
- I needed to stop drinking – the hangover of death came
- I needed to meet another alcoholic – Troy came into my life
- I needed to get to a meeting – I did that for Troy’s 1st anniversary
I remember all the people who were instrumental in my getting sober this second time. Fonda, Ed, Charlie, Shane, Billy, Christian, and a litany of others that I can see in my minds eye but I can’t recall all the names. I got sober over the holidays and that was tough. But my friends stuck with me one day at a time, one hour at a time, one night at a time… and I stuck and stayed…
The first time I got sober in 1994, the ambulance came and they got me breathing again, and Danny took me home and lived in my apartment for a week, he would not leave me alone. I went back to work and went through rehab and found a group to get sober in. They were not as kind to me as the second group of people. Because back then, to get sober, one had to face the gauntlet of people betting against you that you would drink once again ….
I remember picking up my first medallion – Fuck You you bastards, I stayed sober, against all your bets and pressure to go back out and drink.
I worked in a bar, but I did not drink, because Roy was my sponsor and he worked in the bar too, his partner was the owner and my boss. If it wasn’t for what Todd did for me in those first years of living with AIDS I surely would have died. There aren’t enough thank you’s in the world to repay what he and all of them did for me when I needed it the most. I am totally grateful for all the gifts that came into my life … I miss my friends. But I guess I am a testament to the power of prayer and the work of a tight group of family that saved my sorry ass. So many of my friends went to grisly miserable deaths, and I was there through all of that, and I lived. Why ???
I pulled a second geographic in sobriety, but the second time I did it the right way. I got hooked into the rooms and found a place to live and people to help me stay sober and it seemed to work. I got hooked into Tuesday Beginner’s 8 years ago and the rest is history. So much has come into my life over the past 8 years that I am amazed by all the gifts. I have seen trials and tribulations and it hasn’t been easy, but Rick summed it up for the meeting tonight – “I came and I stuck, and I toughed it out one day at a time, and I made it to 8 years …”
And I lived to see another Christmas …
We don’t talk about that aspect of my life, and really it isn’t something that I fret over or think about any more, I think I may take it for granted sometimes, that maybe I forget that I am living on borrowed time. I don’t dwell on day counts or the fact that I live with a terminal disease. When I play that card at my meeting it shocks people. I am still alive, and surely there must be a God because let’s face it, if there wasn’t a God and I did not come to believe then I surely would have died long ago.
I guess that’s all for now. I need to go throw something together for dinner it is nearing 10:30 p.m. and I haven’t eaten all day …
Thanks for all your good wishes. This post will cross over on Facebook so I have to mention those folks here now. Thank you for my sobriety …
Christmas is in three days … woo hoo …
More to come, stay tuned…
Tuesday Update …
Photo Credit: The Good Pastor Randall Friesen
The sky is dark and the clouds are beginning to fall over the city at this hour. Ominous storm clouds mean one thing, rain, in the sense of cats, dogs and little fishes. I got home just before the sky opened up and the deluge began to fall.
OH SO Tuesday …
The day started off very early for me. I did not sleep well last night so I was up with the birds this morning. I hate when the birds start singing before I hit the pillow. You know the birds in this city know the sun is coming, I think before the sun knows its coming…
I had a tete a tete with hubby this morning which was not pretty, not a way to get up in the morning. We rarely argue if ever… His choice of friends is beginning to make me wonder where my husband went sometimes.
He is, as of late, re-friending people he swore off years ago. Me thinks he’s having a crisis of identity in his mid life. UGH !!! but that’s not for here.
I got in the shower and got dressed and got off to the clinic for labs and a blood sugar check. I see my HIV doc on the 8th of July – Anniversary day, it must be fate that I see him on that particular day to congratulate him on keeping me alive for the last seven years…
The weather was really nice this morning. The sun was shining and it was warm and breezy. Weather changes very quickly here.
Then I set off for the mall to pick up my stash of med’s from the pharmacy. That did not set me back too much today. Next week I get the Major Meds refilled, and that’s a $70.00 expense. UGH !!!
I was starved at 10 a.m. in the morning so I waltzed into the diner where we have coffee before meetings and ordered a HUGE cheeseburger with pickles, fries and a tall coke… yes, I know I’m not supposed to have soda… It did not spike my blood sugar – so that’s all good.
You see the mall is 3 blocks from home, it is a Metro Stop on the Green Line and has multiple stories in it with big box stores on each floor and a nice size food court and shopping mall, it’s also where we get our hair done.
THIS is the mall in the “center” of the photo. In the foreground on the right is the Old Pepsi Forum which is an AMC theatre and across the street behind it with the tall tower lit on the roof is Alexis Nihon Plaza – and the Atwater Metro Stop. I just went and took this picture from my balcony.
I spent the afternoon doodling on the computer and took a nap for a couple of hours before I left for the meeting. I went to set up, I am good at working by myself. My set up system never fails me.
I called my sponsor before I left the house to hear what she had to say to me about what would happen at the business meeting with the little nemesis newcomer, she told me to keep my mouth shut and not to say anything. So that’s what I did. We did not speak one word to each other the entire time I was in that room through the entire meeting. I did hear him say my name when it was my turn to share though, so the ice may be thawing…
OH BUT EXCITING… “What are the odds that someone from the city that you got sober in, who’s home group was your home group for a while would come to visit and land up in our meeting tonight?” A woman came into the meeting and introduced herself from Miami and the SOBER on SOUTH BEACH room of AA was sitting across from me, I almost fell out of my chair. After the meeting we went through a list of people we both know from the room, it was so exciting… she goes back in a couple of days – how cool was that???
So that was the night. Calm, Cool and Collected …
It seems that the rain did not fall as a deluge – it isn’t raining at the moment either, so it got dark so quickly for no good reason, dammit !!!
I need to eat so I am going to go now…
Stay tuned, more to come …
The Doughnuts and the Bears
So you all want a story? ok. I will tell one maybe two.
David and I were young then. And we were tent mates. This trip forced us to go without certain items for a period of days. We had to carry what we ate, so we did not shop for junk food or munchies. We all had huge packs that we carried our tents, supplies, clothing and our bibles.
Each night one of us had to prepare a Bible Study for the group. I need to tell you that there were some very strong personalities on this trip. And I was the littlest boy there.
So on the hike we had access to a store once. John attempted to keep me level headed and sane by limiting my access to sugar, because I was totally hyperactive. David and I usually found ways around that. And on this particular day we got around that problem. We spent a good amount of cash on goodies, sugar items and doughnuts.
Every night we had to sack our food and hang it from a tree limb so that the bears would not get our food. There was a group of scouts a few days ahead of us on the hike that kept getting hit by bears. I never saw a bear on the hike.
David and I hid our stash of sugar in our tin pot kits that we could eat out of – they were two piece pan that had space inside to put stuff. We were in our tent one night (that night) and bears came lumbering through the camp. The food was all up a tree, but we had sugar there on the ground. So what do you do to make sure that the bears dont find the sugar?
YOU EAT everything that was in the stash – licking clean the paper wrappers and licking the pots clean so as not to attract a bear to get into our tent. We laughed so hard, but it really wasn’t funny. David was a hoot…
Story two
There were little rest areas on the hike where there were shelters and one one particular day we came across this shelter and next to it was an out house. Now an outhouse on a trail was much better than shitting in the bush…
And we all took our turns in the out house. On the floor in the corner of the outhouse was a small bundle of stuff. You never knew where animals will pop up on the hike. And so I was sitting on the throne of thought and this little bundle of stuff began to move. I raised my feet off the floor and did my business and left the outhouse and its little foreign occupant.
One of the girls went in to do her business and a mouse came running out of the bundle of stuff across the floor of the outhouse and scared the shit out of her. I never saw someone come out of an outhouse so fast in my life. It was hysterical.
Home …
As you know, I’ve been out of sorts for a few days. And today was Tuesday and I had a ritual to keep today. I got up this morning to drop our packages at the post office for Christmas and then came home and spent the day resting. I am finding it a challenge having so much down time from responsibilities and school, since we are off for the holidays. I remarked to a friend tonight that I have noticed the “open space” in my head now that I am not consumed with studies and “people” since Nikki and Peter have departed from my life.
And I am finding that disconcerting…
I set off for the diner at 3:30. I had to pick up cookies for the meeting and then went for coffee. Last night I started reading my Nouwen book, which I am finding really “up my alley.” I continued the reading today at the diner. I guess you could say that I am restless in my solitude and I am trying to find “things” to occupy that solitude. In reading Nouwen, I see that it is ok and preferable to have some solitude in our lives. It is good to have time set aside to do nothing but be present to the stirrings of the Spirit of God.
The Discipline of Solitude
Nouwen writes:
“To bring some solitude into our lives is one of the most necessary but also most difficult disciplines. Even though we may have a deep desire for real solitude, we also experience a certain apprehension as we approach that solitary place and time.
As soon as we are alone, without people to talk with, books to read, TV to watch, or phone calls to make, an inner chaos opens up in us. This chaos can be so disturbing and so confusing that we can hardly wait to get busy again. Entering a private room and shutting the door, therefore, does not mean that we immediately shut out all our inner doubts, anxieties, fears, bad memories, unresolved conflicts, angry feelings, and impulsive desires.
On the contrary, when we have removed our outer distractions, we often find that our inner distractions manifest themselves to us in full force…
Solitude is not a spontaneous response to an occupied and preoccupied life. There are too many reasons not to be alone. Therefore we must begin by carefully planning some solitude.”
So this is the way the reading was going at one point. Amid all the bustle and noise of the diner, I was sitting in my solitude reading a holy book. It was good. While I was sitting there reading, drinking my coffee I was also paying attention to the musack that was playing in the bar at the diner. [It is a two service diner, with a restaurant and a bar in the same location. There are also VLT's onsite. "video lottery terminals" ]
As I am reading I could not help but point my ears to the music that was playing, I guess you could say I was not fully immersed in my book, like I should have been. One after another the songs were coming on. Abba, Barbra Streisand and other tunes from my childhood were playing.
The Cat’s in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little boy blue and the man on the moon, when ya coming home dad, I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then…
So I am reading a book, watching the diners around me, they are all the same on that day[today], like clockwork, the same people, the same seats, the same dishes at the same time. And I am singing to myself the music that was playing. Then it happened. The piano introd and then the music…
“You’ll never find, as long as you live
Someone who loves you tender like I do
You’ll never find, no matter where you search
Someone who cares about you the way I do…”
I was immediately transported back to my childhood. I could not tear myself away from the song. I could see the house and the stereo in the living room, which my father had turned on a few moments before, as was ritual then, when I was a kid, to get the house moving for work and school.
It is cold outside, it was the first time it ever snowed in Florida and I sat there and thought about my father for the entire time that song was playing. I could not help but think about the words to the song as being delivered by my father to me in that moment [now]. Back then I was a little boy, and I still had the love of my parents, and the line comes up…
“You’re gonna miss my lovin’ (you’re gonna miss my lovin’)
You’re gonna miss my lovin’ (you’re gonna miss my lovin’)
You’re gonna miss, you’re gonna miss my lo-o-ove…”
In that moment, as I was sitting in the diner, I was missing that lovin. And it was odd for me at that moment as that thought ran through my head. It’s hard to believe today that my family chooses to live the way they live. It is a far cry from the way we lived when I was a kid. But this was a specific moment I was having at the diner…
I could not pay attention to the words on the page, so I closed my book, finished my coffee and set off for the church. It has been frigidly cold all day, but it was ok, without the wind blowing. I started with the coffee and then set up the chairs. I know Owen was pissed that I set up the chairs because he wanted to do something to be of service. And I explained the ritual to him when he came in. It’s all good…
Today’s topic came from Hazelden’s Stools and Bottles, and Step Two.
“… We need help all right bot not the kind we, or any other human being, can render. The seond leg of our recovery stool is suggested by Step Two. It is help from “A Power greater than ourselves – to restore us to sanity.” Suggestions for this help are taken from a basic law of recovery. It does not fail those who sincerely use it. Having failed with our own power, perhaps we can regain our sanity from faith in a Higher Power. others have done it…”
I dumped what was on my mind, what I had written here the other day about the torturous nightmares I was having about my slip. And after the meeting I was talking to Nancy and she said that maybe these dreams were a signal that I should return to basics. She said that there was nothing new to learn, by way of the steps, she said, it was all within me. But maybe it was time to reflect on the steps as they happened for me in the beginning of my sobriety. These dreams have evoked great fear. It reminds me how close the drink is if I do not maintain my spiritual connection to my Higher Power.
She had asked me about my cake last week, since it was my Anniversary on the 9th. I was indifferent about it since I already have my seven year chip in my wallet. But I decided to stay for the second meeting because she said that she had a good speaker. Saleem.
Wow, that was a blast from the past. Saleem spoke tonight. I remember Saleem from early sobriety. He was doing some of the same meetings I was doing when I first got sober. He called that period in his story tonight, “flirting with the program” he did not stick, he continued in his experimentation and now he has 17 months of sobriety. It was funny because back then, when he was marking time, I was giving him his monthly chips that first year…
Some stay, some go, few return to do it again…
He returned and is doing it again. It seems that he has a hold on sobriety because he said that he is still in fear of relapsing. In time, that fear will lessen, the longer he stays in the program, I am glad I stayed in. I think he was surprised when after the meeting Nancy said that she would bring my cake next week so that I could celebrate the right way, cake and all. And Saleem asked how much time I had, and I said seven years… He was surprised.
What struck me in his story was the fact that he grew up in Montreal. The final child of six siblings. And he said that for the first time in his life, he was comfortable and that he was able to call Montreal home. It was the notion of “Home” that stuck out for me.
I spent the balance of my life in Florida. 30 years of my life. I lived in Florida, I drank in Florida, I was diagnosed in Florida. In that moment tonight, as I pondered “home” I could understand what he meant about planting ones self in a community. I came to Montreal in 2002, I was following my heritage on my mother’s side of the family. I stayed a week, I loved it, I stayed for another week. I returned from Montreal to Miami, packed all my shit and came back to Montreal to stay. [We call this a geographic]
I pulled a geographic in sobriety twice. The first time, I pulled a geographic across the country and slipped for 18 months. I returned to home base [Miami] from that slip and eventually got sober a second time. The second geographic I pulled was in sobriety again. This time I did the right thing. I got connected immediately. I went to meetings and I started building a life for myself.
I went to many, many meetings. I did my aftercare, I saw a transitional counselor who helped me situate myself in the city. I worked my ass off. While I waited for my citizenship to come through, all I did was go to meetings around the clock. On February 17th, 2003 I became a Canadian Citizen.
I had already met the man I would eventually marry and build a home with. I had firm roots in the city that I still love, to this day. I think you can understand what it means to really love the place you live in, as an adult, Montreal is where I call “Home.” Because this is where I began to really live.
I went back to school in Montreal. I got married in Montreal. I earned a degree in Religious Studies in Montreal. I got sober and I’ve stayed sober in Montreal. I have a home group, Tuesday Beginners, for the last seven years. I have seen many people come and go, some return, many did not…
Montreal is such a beautiful city. You just have to experience that beauty for yourself to get the full picture of what I am trying to say. It is a city steeped in religious tradition. It is a city steeped in French Quebec culture, language, life and love. I understand what it means to call this city “home.”
If you’ve never been to Montreal, you should come and visit. The Summer festival season is something that I think everyone should experience once in their lives. For me I get to do it every year. The festival season is a ritual for the city. Every season, winter included has its very own ritual practices. That is one reason that I love this city.
I’ve learned a great deal about myself in sobriety in this city. You could say that I really grew up here. I learned to Love here. I grew in sobriety here. This is my home.
At the church there is a prayer that sits above the table where we chair from at the meeting. The prayer of St. Francis is something that is part of Tuesday Beginner’s sobriety.
- Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
- where there is hatred, let me sow love;
- where there is injury, pardon;
- where there is doubt, faith;
- where there is despair, hope;
- where there is darkness, light;
- and where there is sadness, joy.
- O Divine Master,
- grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
- to be understood, as to understand;
- to be loved, as to love;
- for it is in giving that we receive,
- it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
- and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.
- Amen.
A good lesson to learn in sobriety is that it is just as important to be loved as it is to love… I have great people in my life. It was a great day, as you can see by this sermon I have just written for you. Jon is going to tell me again that I write too much… ok, that’s all for now…
Life with God, a Faith Journey
Micah 6:8
He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.
In writing about the past in my last entry “diagnosis” I wrote a reflection on a book that I had finished reading, but if you were not looking for it specifically, you might have missed one crucial aspect of survival in my writing of that entry and including the text that I had read, that crucial missing element is God.
When you read some of the early AIDS writers there is one alarmingly missing part of the puzzle. Nobody speaks the name of God, nobody invokes the power of God, and nobody is going to church to pray. This is a specific aspect of my story that I did not forget to write about – but as I read my spiritual text “Life with God” as I lie in bed, I am remiss to let this go without addressing it here.
There is no doubt that the Christian Right has much to answer for for its treatment of the sick when it comes to people with AIDS, be they children, men or women. And there is no doubt that the “Church” with a Capitol “C” plays their own role of hatred as well. And we must also cite the evangelical preachers across the board for their fire and brimstone direct condemnation of people with AIDS as being “Punished by God, for their acts of sinful behavior.” And then there is the family unit of those who were sick who unleashed their very own brand of religious condemnation when it came to denying their own children when it came to AIDS and death. I would be remiss if I did not mention these specifically by name because you are all guilty as charged.
I never had issues with my faith when I got sick. Even when the world turned their backs on so many, when it came down to the nuts and bolts of survival, I truly believe within a shadow of a doubt that a Power Greater than myself was taking care of me. And I know that because when I got sick, I got sober at the same time, having daily contact with a power greater than myself in that precise time in my life paid out dividends. I prayed, my friends prayed, my community prayed. We all prayed.
Never once in much of Paul Monette’s writing does he mention church or prayer, although Paul and some of his contemporaries were involved with Ma Jaya in Los Angeles and in Florida. She was the leader of a community of people who did great things for people with AIDS, and she did for me as well. I would be remiss if I did not mention her here because I spent time on her ashram in Florida on several occasions after my diagnosis. She was very big on tv when on a particular late night show she would be seen speaking to a pair of parents who abandoned their son when he got sick and eventually died of AIDS and Ma was seen shaking a vial of ashes in front of them saying “how could you do that to your son?” That was what got me to seek her out and to know her because I too had been abadoned by my family.
Faith and Faith in God was a huge part of my life, my story, my recovery, and my survival. I must have done something right after all these years, to still be talking about this subject some fifteen years after the fact and I am still alive. Someone up there loves me enough to plead to God on my behalf. None of this goes unnoticed. I just thought it was important to talk about that part of my survival, because you just cannot survive on drugs alone. Because you can stuff yourself full of medication, but unless there is some conscious or unconscious action behind them, those pills are useless. If one does not put some power of grace behind the act of taking a pill, why take the pill to begin with?
There is a definite correlation between what the brain tells the body, the body eventually follows. So if you are sick and you bombard yourself with thoughts of death all the time, death is what you are going to get. And for some, death was the only conclusion to life and illness. There are just some things that happen that cannot be countered. Everyone is going to die at one time or another, and I know that God sees each and every one of us who suffers and he works to end that suffering, and sometimes, the end to suffering is death. No matter how much one prays or believes, if illness overcomes you, and for many it does, death is a foregone conclusion. But I lived…
When I moved to Miami in 1995, I returned to my roots of Holy Mother Church. I sought out the fathers of the cloth. I returned to the church of my upbringing, yes I was gay, I was sick and I was waiting to die. God had other plans for me. And I firmly believe that. I also firmly believe that Nuestra Senora Caridad del Cobre prayed for my soul, I firmly believe that Jesus walked with me, and that Mary prayed with me, and that God saw that I wanted to live because I was activly living my faith in the direst of situations. Death was imminent. I was supposed to die. At least that’s what the medical establishment told me, either they got it wrong, or God had other plans.
In moving to the Mercy Hospital Immunodeficiency clinic, that was a very Catholic institution. Because we lived in a very “Latin i.e. Cuban” religious and secular system of care. Many, if not all the women who worked in this circle were good church going, God fearing Catholic Women, who all had God’s ear. Not to mention the men and other doctors they served under they were quite the team of spiritually prepared warriors for God’s poor, downtrodden, and sick.
There was a faith component to our care. There was no denying it, there was no avoiding it, there was no disrespect, there was no question. Even the sick went to church, and when the sick could not get to church, they were visited by the Church. Now you couple sobriety and a power greater then myself, which I choose to call God, to this day, with prayer and sacramental living, you have one powerful energy machine for healthy living. And I know on those days when I found it difficult to speak, others were praying for me day and night.
Hell hath no fury like a group of faithful Cuban prayer people. We recited the rosary daily in any language you chose. We went to mass daily, and we received the sacraments. We were visited by holy men and women, we were even treated to spiritual retreats by holy men and women on the grounds of the Church of Our Lady of Charity, Caridad del Cobre. God saw us come, he heard us pray. And for many, they lived.
The one important thing I have to say for myself is that I lived.
I remember when I went to my church of my upbringing and I told the priests that I was sick and that they doctors has said that i was going to die, I remember holy men weeping, and telling me confidently that ONE, you will come to church, TWO, you will pray, THREE, you will see the face of God. They believed for me when I could not believe for myself.
I often tell the story of Father Jeff, a priest I met one Sunday who had MS, and he walked with crutches in and around and out of the church. He had no use of his legs, but he did have the use of his faith. And that day i watched him say mass that one Sunday, i knew I would never complain about being sick ever again. I would never become as jaded and cold to faith as many did before me. Many of my friends went to their graves cursing God because of what they had witnessed themselves in human beings who became animals, they, those cursed Christians who had not one word to offer the sick, but their vitriol of condemnation.
Still to this day, on this very blog, I get the odd Cursed Christian who thinks that I listen to their hatred and self righteousness. That I would even consider sharing their cursed comments with this readership. how wrong is that!!!
For many years, on Sunday nights, I would rush home to watch Touched By an Angel, and I have to say that I believe to this day that there are angels that walk the earth and that I am not alone, and neither are you. It would come to pass that this little show that could could be attributed to my good health. Because I believed and I prayed and I listened to a few angels who said, God loves you.
I guess that the spark of God never left me, even as a child, when my grandmother Memere presented me to God, that day in that church when I was just a boy, had a lasting affect on my life, even to this very day. Now, you want to talk about blind faith, mention to God the names Camille and Sister Georgette. They are both long since dead, Sisiter Georgette died two years ago August here in Montreal, Memere died a few years after I was diagnosed. They are two women I know have God’s ear.
I wanted to share this bit of text with you from “Life with God” pg 134, Foster writes:
“Life with God is an ongoing, ever changing, relational adventure. It is not a matter of being driven through life, stopping every now and then to get out of the car and see the surroundings. God invites us to climb into the landscape of our journey, to breathe deeply with full lungs, to feel blood pulsing through muscles doing what they were made to do, to experience the wonder of having a body with which to see and hear and smell and taste and touch of this astonishing world.”
We have the opportunity to incorporate the Streams of Living Water into our daily lives when we stop to ponder these sic paths together:
- The Contemplative tradition, or “The Prayer filled life”
- The Holiness tradition, or “The Virtuous life”
- The Charismatic tradition, or “The Spirit-empowered life”
- The Social Justice tradition, or “The Compassionate life”
- The Evangelical tradition, or “The Word-Centered life,” and
- The Incarnational tradition, or “The Sacramental Life”
I have discussed these six traditions with you last term when I studied Christian Spirituality, each of these traditions have their own entries on this blog, if you are so adventurous to go seek them out. Suffice to say that there is no life, without faith. And there is no faith without life. There are no words to speak to God in gratitude for all that He has given us, fortunate are we to share some time together here, in order that I might share my faith journey with you.
One of the things that mystifies my doctors today is my reliance on faith, when doctors who run by the book and by the numbers who are faced with patients that believe in God and have stock in faith, that seems to throw my doctor off the deep end. You can’t convince a scientist or doctor that faith plays a big role in the longevity of the sick. They say, what ever works, and for me what ever works.
May God bless you,
may his light shine upon you
and may the Spirit of God rest upon your heads and hearts.
Diagnosis…
It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood. I’ve spent the last few nights reading from an old book by Paul Monette called Borrowed Time. This is one of the first books I read after I was diagnosed because I thought it had wisdom that I needed to know about going into the rest of my life.
In this latest reading, I was struck by the insanity of it all and the crazy manic attitude Paul had towards his partner who had been diagnosed, gotten sick and eventually died. Surrounding them was a circle of men who were sick, in the time when AIDS was a death sentence and that words were not spoken, taboos were kept and superstitions obeyed. I have to tell you that it was really painful to read this text once again, living in the time that I live today, having survived.
I know that my generation came years after the first waves of AIDS in the early eighties. I was a 90′s kind of boy. Although we had our problems, they were not as bad as the former age. I don’t know if I am feeling a bit of survivors remorse or that I understand the past in certain terms. By the time I came along, AZT was the first drug of choice. Living under the careful watch of my keepers and always having that timer in my pocket that went off every few hours reminding me to take my AZT. What a horrible drug that was. But everyone I knew was on it when I got it. We all carried our little timers in our pockets, slipping pills out now and then as required.
I can remember thinking over the past few nights, that I don’t remember being that manic. I guess that Todd kept me on a very short leash and I did not have the time or the opportunity to get manic. Although I remember many of my friends had KS and were really sick. I was sober during this time of my life and I remember how demoralizing it was for some of my friends not being able to go out in public without their diapers or being fully covered up from head to toe because they had so many lesions on their bodies and it was a terrible sight for those who would see us. My memory of that time is limited to the community that I belonged to. So many men were sick, so many of my friends did die. The Quilt is my connection to those men, I have shown you all pictures of that quilt over the last few months.
Is it guilt that I feel that I survived and so many did not?
It is remarked that I should start with a little gratitude. And I do have an incredible amount of gratitude because When I came into my illness there were people there who gave me medical assistance. In those days you either had PCP or you had KS. In the beginning it was PCP that took me down after a long bought with hepatitis. I believe that it was within my experience of hepatitis that my body sero-converted. I was so terribly sick for a long period of time. I was given the “List” of warning signs that, if you started having these issues going on that you might have HIV.This is the list of issues that I was watching like a hawk:
Most people who contract HIV remain symptom-free for the first few years. A few suffer a brief period (3 to 14 days) of fever, joint pain, rash, and swollen lymph nodes—the small bean-shaped organs in your neck, jaw, armpits, and groin—within a month of being infected. Later, as the immune system grows weaker, a common group of warning signs may appear, including fevers, night sweats, tiredness, weight loss, coughing, and diarrhea…
I remember over a six month period of time ticking one symptom after another. That would have been between January and July of 1994, the month and year that I was diagnosed. I knew at some point that I was sick, and as the list began to grow, the more I feared knowing the truth. I guess by the time that July of 1994 rolled around, I was ready to go get tested. I had enough knowledge about me that if I was sick that there would be infrastructure set out to help me – like they had helped others. No one thought that they were invincible. Men and boys were dropping like flies. Denial was not something that many of us entertained. Although I did watch some of my friends suffer, those who did not want to say the words to themselves or to their partners and lovers. All of those men died. By some fluke of God, I survived.
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WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
AIDS is the deadly disease caused by HIV—an insidious virus that attacks the immune system, weakening the body’s ability to fight off germs and hold back cancer. HIV (short for Human Immunodeficiency Virus) can lurk unnoticed in the body for years, slowly wearing down the immune system until a series of rare and exotic illnesses finally gives its presence away. HIV works by infecting and destroying the white blood cells that serve as the body’s first line of defense against germs. Called T cells (or Helper cells), they mark invading germs for attack and call other immune cells in for the kill. In a healthy person, the T-cell count is normally more than 1,000. A few months after HIV takes hold, it drops to 800 or less. A long, gentle decline follows for a period of years. Finally, with a sudden drop to 200 or less, the full ravages of AIDS begin. In the early stages of infection, the only way to be certain you have HIV (or don’t!) is to take a test. If evidence of the virus is found, you’re said to be “HIV-positive.” The doctor can then prescribe drugs to fight the virus and delay the development of AIDS.
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These were the terms of reference back then as they are now. This is the real deal. I have told you the stories about the day I was diagnosed, what the doctors told me at that point. I have shared with you the hysteria that I felt knowing that I had more or less 18 months to get my life in order and that I was going to die. Because that’s the way AIDS was even in the nineties.
After reading Borrowed Time once again, I can see the disconnect that I had between the generation before us and them. We had come into a time when AIDS medications were starting to make their mark on the scientific front. By the time I hit Miami a year after I was diagnosed, there were enough drugs on the market that we started radical and heavy drug treatment. I had found a doctor who was going to save me and he would die trying to save every patient that walked through his office doors.
We were testing drugs in any way possible. Things were happening very quickly and time was of the essence. There was no time to waste. During those first few years we did not have genotype and phenotype, that came much later, but it did come. These are the tests that are done to figure out how one will either react or not react to available medications on the market. Unlike the men of the past, who did not even have these kids of assistance available to them, we eventually did.
What could we do? There was no choice but to take what doctors had at their disposal, and hope for the best, which is how we began. I remember that the drugs were hard, and that I was very sick all the time. Those first few years of AIDS were terrible. But my doctor warned me of everything that I could possibly experience, and I was encouraged highly to push through the side effects and to help myself by staying as far ahead of the wave as I could stand.
PUSH THROUGH…
If there was any hope of survival, you took the pills that were given to you and you “Pushed Through” whatever side effects came at you. Because if you can push through and get to the other side, then the life of that drug in your system would hopefully make a difference. Dr. Juan knew that he was going to save some lives, he believed that if we took a multi-pronged approach to treatment that he could save lives. Aside from the medications that we would take over the years, they would add Vitamin C drips, Immunoglobulin and B12 drips. During those years of trial and error, there were no half measures. You either went whole hog, or you did not go at all. If you wanted to live, you submitted to whatever treatment plan your doctor had available. I chose to Push Through.
I would take my pills every day like clockwork. But I also remember how hard it was in the beginning. Thank God I had a group of friends who were always there for me to help me, to drive me to appointments, to come and clean my house, to cook for me and to make sure that I was not alone during the low points.
I think that I survived because the medical team that took care of me stopped at nothing to make sure that all of us in this treatment circle had all the latest medical information, drugs and treatment options available to us. Unlike not having any answers to the what and the why, and the not knowing, we at least, had options to consider.
Moving from Ft. Lauderdale and the insanity of death to Miami, was the best decision that I could have made for myself. Because in Miami I fell into this treatment circle through the Mercy Hospital Immunodeficiency clinic. There was comprehensive assistance across the board. This is something that earlier generations did not have. We at least, by then, knew what we were dealing with. There were names for opportunistic infections, we learned what they were, how they were caused, and what treatments were used to counteract them and in the end even prevent them from occurring.
There was an ordered and methodical approach to treatment. In Paul’s day, one was grasping at straws trying to figure out what was going on, nobody knew then, what we knew so few years later. All the medical information collected in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia was put to good use. We studied every case history. We sorted through pages and pages of medical information. We studied every drug that was on the market and if those drugs showed promise then we would get them.
I don’t know, maybe I have taken for granted the fact that I did not live through that harried existence of “not knowing” although we had our own “not knowing” too. Drugs were being rolled off the production lines and as they became available, we took them, lock, stock and barrel. There was nobody before us testing them amongst themselves. WE, were the test patients and if it happened that those drugs failed, we were going to die.
It was good for me to be where I was because I did not watch men die right and left as I had witnessed while I was living in Ft. Lauderdale. There was a difference in our treatment circle. Because we were going to live, we were going to defy the odds, we would not be the ones dying any more. Ft. Lauderdale was a scene of terrible sickness and death, terrible suffering and pain. I am really grateful that I did live through that. Because I must tell you that having lived through the depth of suffering and pain that I had, only made my desire to live stronger. I had good teachers. I had good men and women who helped me live.
The doctors today tell me that my virus is unique. That it [the viral strain] is one of the most resistant strains of HIV to conventional medication, yet the meds that I am taking do work, I am still alive. Like my former counterparts, when they said that you either get PCP or KS, when my friends all had the KS strain, I was the one to suffer PCP pneumonia. I had it more than once. And each time I almost died.
There was so much uncertainty to AIDS in the eighties that I cannot imagine how I would have survived had I been one of the first few generations of people with AIDS. I just don’t know how I would have survived such insanity and sickness. I can tell you that I did have my share of sickness. It is all like a blur to me now, those first few years, I fought for many years just to survive. There was not a whole lot of time to ponder the thought of death. I was always busy, my mind was kept occupied engaged in “Survival Mode.”
The problem we had at that time was the government. When I was first diagnosed I had applied for government disability assistance, and even back then it was often impossible to convince the government to help you, when all the government wanted was for you to die, to ease up on excess sick population. It took me three attempts to get disability assistance. I cannot imagine what the process is like today, AIDS was a totally different beast than it is today.
Imagine for a moment that You have just found out you are sick and that you are going to die and that there are not many drug options for you at this point, and you have to figure out how you are going to pay for the medications that you need and how are you going to pay your rent when your employers were firing people left and right and landlords were throwing sick people onto the streets. The government is sitting there denying claims left and right because if they decide that you were going to get disability, that you better be on deaths doorstep to get it. Many of my friends died waiting for assistance. For many years the governement gave people the “fuck you heave ho!”
I had to practically commit suicide for the government to finally agree to grant me disability. I had to make sure that I was terribly sick to death, I had PCP, I had to stop taking my medication and not bathe for a week, stop eating and waste away to something that I cannot imagine that I did in the end. But I did it, I remember walking into the disability office hacking and coughing on some woman’s desk practically wreaking of AIDS before she would sign my form and push through my application. It was really sick the lengths one had to go through to get formal government assistance.
RATHER YOU DIE, THEN US INSURING SOMEONE WHO WOULD EVENTUALLY DIE AND RID THE WORLD OF EXCESS POPULATION.
How very Ebenezer Scrooge…
Have I moved from the boy I was to the man I am? Has that much time passed that I have forgotten what it was truly like, what happened and what it is like now. I think it has. More than a decade has passed and times have changed. We are not dying like they were, we are not suffering like they were. There are many more treatment options on the table than there were just a mere ten years ago. Death is not as imminent as it was just a few short years ago.
The thought of death became less and less, the more years/distance one puts between you and it. Life has certainly changed in the last eight years. I have changed over the last eight years. The face of AIDS has changed over the last ten years. I don’t really think about dying – like those men who were suffering in the beginning of the scourge of AIDS did.
The longer I live, the less I stress over dying. I stay out of my head, I don’t entertain the manic waiting to die mentality. I’ve grown into the man I am because of what I lived through and am able to tell the tale. I just found reading Borrowed Time this time to be so distant from how I live my life today. I found myself getting ancy reading the pages, I also found that life back then was so different than it is today. We still don’t know things. We still test medication, but we are living longer more productive lives. if you told me then that I would end up being here today, I would have laughed you off the boat.
There is so much wealth in lived experience. I have survived hell. And I lived to tell the tale. All of the history you need to read is here in the PAGES. I have left you every piece of information that is in my head, that I can remember. This is just another one of those story posts that can be added to the collection of historical stories that have collected on my blog.
I am grateful for life, for air and for all good things.
Challenge…
Last night I sat in bed next to my sleeping hubby, reading from a book I often return to again and again, when reading time permits. I Heard the Owl Call my Name, is a book that I have read countless times and every time I read it I come away with something new. I may focus one certain passage or a thought that I may have missed, the pages are getting worn and I guess that’s what happens to books that are read often.
I was thinking about school as well. Over the last little while I have been reading through my collection of Idol novels from the UK and it hit me that I haven’t sat through one challenging lecture in a long while. It was as if my spirit was yearning for something last night. The question rose in my mind and made its way out into my consciousness, I don’t feel challenged in this class I am taking this first session. Is it that I am not putting forth proper effort or that I have lowered my expectations so much that there is no challenge to what I am studying? I’m kind of bored with it already.
I guess I am feeling a little resentful at the process really. I should be doing something, I should be out there working in my field, and yet I have not reached the end of my certificate yet, but still, I should be doing more with myself than I am and I am at a loss to know what ‘that thing’ is that I should be doing.
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I wrote to Jose last night after I posted his letter here on the blog, which has been picked up by the International Carnival of Pozitivities for its next publication, so I am going to get another article published. I don’t spend a lot of time talking about the past because there is so much already written that I can’ possibly write anything else, so what I thought I would do is tell you some stories about living in SOBE and how I got along with my friends. (SOBE = South Beach) …
There were things that I liked to do when I wasn’t working. Living in the city did not afford a lot of time to get around the city if one did not have a car. I didn’t have a car, so I had to rely on public transport to get from one side of the city to another, and Miami is a seriously ‘transit challenged’ city. The two places that I liked to go were Borders Book Sellers at Dadeland which was on the south end of the rail line, and SOBE which was an hours bus ride away from home until I moved onto the beach.
Lincoln Road was the epicenter of gay culture on the beach, which I understand is falling apart at the seams as the exodus of people are moving away from the beach because it is just getting too expensive to live there as the condo projects are taking up every inch of space they can find. It’s hard to sustain an entire community of gay people without spaces to congregate. All the large clubs have closed down or have moved off beach and that poses a problem to population when night transit lacks in a big way.
When I lived on the beach I was a stones throw from Lincoln Road living on 21st street across the street from the Miami Beach Convention Center. I have a few gay blogs that I follow from Miami and over the last few months the community has been going through a downsizing and that threatens the livelihood of the gay community. When there are no bars to congregate in where then does community end up?
It is a sad fact that circuit parties are the last bastion of world wide gaydom. I have to admit that I have never attended a circuit party, either in Miami or here in Montreal. They are too expensive to begin with and the fact that I am clean and sober means that I am not going to attend an all night rave with people getting drunk and stoned around me. One of the big events in AIDS charities is the yearly White Party which as a person with AIDS I have never been invited to, never did I ever get a free ticket or even charity when it came to an event to raise money for AIDS. And that bothered me that people who could not afford to go, would not even get an invitation to attend. Because it is just a big huge Money, Alcohol and Drug dump for those who are pretty, buff and connected. And if you consider that to put on an event of that magnitude costs a whole lot of money, after you pay staff, pay the alcohol and beer bills, rental rates for the site, suppliers and dj’s there is not a whole lot of money to go to charity is there?
It was really difficult for me to manage a home, rent, bills, food and medication and I had tapped all the possible assistance sectors of the city to help do that. I never in my life have ever been someone who had been touched or assisted by one red cent of money raised locally for people with AIDS, and that begs the question, where did/does all that money go? That goes for the same thing here in Montreal. I go to the clinic and I test medications for the AIDS community at large, but year after year, the community at large does nothing and I get nothing from that community.
The last time I attempted to get into my community here I was told that I was uneducated and that I could not possibly have anything to offer the AIDS community. Which was a real slap in the face. This province has the most fucked up system that I have ever seen, community wise. There are care systems in Ontario and British Columbia that are so much better than ours. They have comprehensive systems of doctors and service systems to meet all the challenging needs of the population. This is the one reason that we have considered moving out of province so that in the end, I could take my two degrees and find a real job doing something with the rest of my life because right now Quebec has done nothing for me and my family.
We really don’t get out into community. I used to go to gay AA meetings until I got tired of listening to sick men piss and moan about their lives and hearing them say week in and week out that they wanted to die. I just can’t deal with that degree of misery in my life. And I am not complaining here, I am stating fact. You’d think that as a city, that the systems created to care for HIV positive people would extend a hand to those who live in the city, No… You’d think that as a province and a city we could try to recreate those systems that seem to be really working in other provinces, but No, we don’t … The only thing that this province is good at is bitching about sovereignty, language politics, religious accommodation, yearly circuit parties and fucked up pride events that no good gay person attends because it is all bullshit.
This blog is a good gig, because I get worldwide exposure and readership, but it does not pay the bills. There have been times when I think about the outreach we do here and how we serve community at large and I think about buying a building here in the city and turning it into a multi-faceted service center for people with Hiv and those in recovery. It is a project that is sitting in a folder in my desk. I have drawn out the blue prints and the specs for that building but I have never investigated it further.
I don’t know, I think I’ve done enough ranting here, I am going to close for now…
Until later peeps…
How I got sober…
I guess you can say that a series of events conspired to get me to sobriety. I was heading in this general direction for a few months before I had gotten sick and tired of being sick and tired. I came off a long and terribly painful slip, I was trying to rebuild my life from nothing once again, and I found a land lady who decided that it was her duty to try and help me heal my wounds. She gave me a place to live and added to that she gave me a job when I really needed it the most. Little blessings…
I was a binge drinker then and so I was drinking for the entire week in one night. I had a job that paid me well and over those last few months I always tell this story about Troy. Troy was a boy who came into my shop looking for work. I hired him, and every day he would come into work and say “I did not drink today!” Well, I clapped my hands and said well done.
I had prayed for that last hangover, which came. The second prayer was that God put an alcoholic in my path. Over the few months that Troy worked for me he would say every day that ‘he didn’t drink’ until 4 months later we were on a delivery and he said that he was taking his One Year Cake and that maybe I would like to join him at a meeting, which I accepted his invitation. The third prayer was that I get to a meeting. I was ready for God to make his move. I was waiting for the signs to come together and they did.
I never took another drink. December 9th 2001 was my first meeting back. Which is the day I picked up my white poker chip. My sign of surrender. Getting sober in the same city “Again” that I got sober in the first time was a challenge, because I was ashamed and I did not want the many people I got sober with the first time, to see me crawl back into a meeting sorrowful and beaten down as far as I had been during my slip.
I had a month to clean up. Miami is a big city and sober people come and go, and news traveled fast in those days, and on Christmas Eve 2001, I went into the city for a midnight meeting and everyone I knew in my first recovery was there, and they clapped and cheered as I walked in the hall that night. I think it was one of the best nights in my sober life. I was free, and forgiven, and loved and that made all the difference to my sobriety that none of my friends judged me because I was doing a terrible job judging myself already.
I started working my steps. I starting reading the Big Book. I had a meeting every day at the same time in the same place that served me well. That 10 p.m. meeting did wonders for me because I was a late night drinker and I partied at night and I could not party any more, and all my friends I made at that home group helped me immensely.
Five months into sobriety I came to visit Montreal, I liked it so much I decided to move, and get my citizenship. I went home to Florida and packed up my little life and pulled up stakes and set off for the promised land. And that’s what it has been like for the last almost seven years. I would not have changed anything as it came to me – God blessed my life, God blessed my sobriety because this has been a wondrous life and I am truly grateful.
I did my homework. I went to meetings, I found my way into this beautiful city and I did not look back. The hard work here in Montreal is that there is only 2 meetings in this city (on the English side) that meets every day at the same time every day. If you are going to get sober in Montreal, you are going to have to work your ass off because there are over 500 meetings in the city every week, and you must travel to get to these meetings. There is no luxury way to do it. You find the time, You make the time, and you schedule your life around your meetings, and that is what I have done for the last six years and four months.
Thank you for my sobriety…
Casting Stones …
I refer you to “The Pastor of Disaster’s Post” this story is told based on a comment I left him.
This is my box of rocks. It was a gift from a man that I first met when I was exploring coming to Montreal. He sent me this box full of stones, when I lived in Miami Beach. This was during the time of my early sobriety.
I had been severely agoraphobic for many months and I had to work myself out of the house in order to function and go to meetings. It took some time, but eventually i was victorious.
This tradition of throwing stones was useful to me in many ways. One, it got me out of the house. Two, it always took place at night, and Three put me in touch with my creator on a grand scale sitting on the beach at midnight each night with my handful of stones.
You notice that I put out 12 stones. Each step is represented by a stone.
I had cut up pieces of paper small enough to write on and tape to each stone. Every night I would write down my worries, resentments, anger issues or anything else that I needed to “cast off” and I would tape each concern to each stone. I would walk the two blocks to the beach and find my spot where I would sit and pray. Then very methodically I would approach the waves and step into the sea. And one by one I cast off my stones into the sea as I was praying away all those things that stood in the way of me and my recovery.
I did this for months until I moved to Montreal. When I arrived here, I eventually settled in a studio apartment just on the banks of the St. Lawrence in Verdun. (This is before I met my hubby) and in the same way as the sea, I would cast my stones into the river instead.
Meditation:
What do you need to get rid of today? And how will you do that? Do you live near the water and do you have your stones? There are no justified resentments and carrying around excess baggage only holds you back from moving forwards.
Pray for the willingness to Let Go and Let God.
Castro steps down as Cuba's leader after 49 years
Ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro, who ruled the Caribbean island nation for nearly half a century, announced Tuesday that he is stepping down as president.
Cubans on their way to work pass by a huge poster depicting President Fidel Castro on Tuesday morning.
(Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images)
In a written statement, published on the official Communist party’s website Granma, Castro said he would not accept a new term as president when the newly elected parliament meets on Sunday.
His resignation effectively ends the longest rule in the world for a head of government and paves the way for his brother Raul to permanently take over.
“I will not aspire nor accept, I repeat, I will not aspire nor accept — the post of president of the council of state and commander in chief,” read the letter signed by the 81-year-old president.
Although there has been much speculation about his position as leader since he fell ill in July 2006, there had been no advance warning of Castro’s plan to permanently give up power.
The new National Assembly is meeting Sunday for the first time since January elections to pick the governing council of state, including the presidency Castro holds. Raul Castro, who is first vice-president of Cuba’s Council of State, is the constitutionally designated successor.
Castro had temporarily relinquished power to his 76-year-old brother Raul on July 31, 2006, when he announced that he had undergone intestinal surgery. Raul had long been his brother’s designated successor.
“My wishes have always been to discharge my duties to my last breath. That’s what I can offer,” Castro wrote. “It would be a betrayal to my conscience to accept a responsibility requiring more mobility and dedication than I am physically able to offer. This I say devoid of all drama.”
Castro has not been seen in public lately, appearing only sporadically in official photographs and videotapes.
Raul’s rule could bring economic, social change
Raul has hinted over the past 18 months that he wants to loosen the government’s control on economic and social issues, CBC’s Connie Watson reported. Raul has also acknowledged that government wages that average about $19 a month do not satisfy basic needs.
“They say the revolution will continue, but they have to ease up on some of the things that are making people frustrated,” Watson said.
Despite stepping down as president, Castro remains a member of parliament. He will also retain the post as first secretary of Cuba’s Communist Party.
U.S. President George W. Bush expressed hope Tuesday that the end of Fidel Castro’s presidency will launch a transition to democracy.
“What does this mean for the people in Cuba?” Bush asked rhetorically at a news conference in Rwanda during his trip to Africa. “They’re the ones who suffered under Fidel Castro. They’re the ones who were put in prison because of their beliefs. They’re the ones who have been denied their right to live in a free society.
“So I view this as a period of transition and it should be the beginning of the democratic transition in Cuba.”
10 U.S. Administrations tried to topple him
Cuban rebel leader Fidel Castro poses with two unidentified women who joined the rebel forces as nurses in this Feb. 6, 1958, file photo.
(Associated Press)
In 1959, Castro led a band of guerillas and toppled the Batista government. Although the United States was the first to recognize Castro, relations soon began to deteriorate as the new leader reshaped the country into a Communist state.
Castro’s government nationalized many American-owned businesses, and within a year Cuba and the Soviet Union began developing close ties. The U.S. would later impose a trade embargo on the island in an attempt to put pressure on Castro’s regime.
He was the target of CIA assassination plots, and 10 U.S. administrations tried to topple him, most notably the failed CIA-backed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961.
The country became the focal point of a possible war between the U.S and the Soviet Union after it was discovered that nuclear missile bases were being established on the island. The weapons were eventually pulled out.
On Jan. 26, 1976, then prime minister Pierre Trudeau became the first Canadian leader to pay an official visit to Cuba. Trudeau and Castro developed a close personal relationship and remained friends for years. Castro was among the world leaders at Trudeau’s funeral in Montreal in 2000. But critics have condemned him as a totalitarian dictator, who ran a repressive regime that quashed individual rights and carried out political executions.
With files from the Associated Press
Castro’s move talk of the town in Miami
MIAMI – Cuban exiles in Little Havana welcomed Tuesday’s news that Cuban President Fidel Castro had officially resigned power, but most in the heart of the Cuban exile community weren’t optimistic the move would bring major changes or democracy to the communist nation.
As news of the resignation spread, motorists honked vigorously at police patrol cars and television reporters. Shouts of “Free Cuba!” echoed in the streets, and small groups gathered to chat in local eateries. But there was no widespread celebration, just caution.
“I hope this is the beginning of the end of the system, but we have to wait,” said 35-year-old chemist Omar Fernandez, who left Cuba for the U.S. six years ago.
Repeated rumors of Castro’s death over the years helped prepare residents and officials for a day that all knew would eventually come. The community’s reactions so far were calm, peaceful and not as boisterous as when thousands took to the streets after Castro temporarily handed power to his brother Raul in July 2006.
Most exiles view Castro as a ruthless dictator who forced them, their parents or grandparents from their home after he seized power in a revolution in 1959. Police said they were “keeping a sharp eye” on Little Havana, but residents weren’t gathering in large numbers to celebrate. Nothing indicated a need for increased patrols off Florida or that a mass migration was imminent, said Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chris O’Neil.
Ulises Colina, a 65-year-old electrical technician, said he was not certain if the resignation would bring any change. “I think it was a foregone conclusion that his political career would be over soon,” Colina said.
Colina theorized that any change in Cuba would have to come from within the military.
“Changes? Well, he’s the leader of the gang but he has a bunch of auxiliary gang members who don’t want to see change,” Colina said.
At a popular Cuban restaurant farther from Little Havana, the sentiments were similar.
“Even though this is great news for Cubans and for me personally, but I don’t think anything is going to change,” said Jose Miranda, 46. “Last time I was here was when the news said that he was really sick and we thought that he was dead. And look what has happened. Nothing.”
About 1.5 million Cubans and Cuban-Americans live in the U.S., two-thirds of them in Florida, and the majority in Miami-Dade County, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Since they began arriving, the Miami area has become a mostly Hispanic, bustling city that is a hub for international trade and finance, but also deals with poverty. What was once a city marked by Southern drawls in English transformed into a place where Spanish is spoken everywhere.
The first wave of Cubans who fled the island immediately after Castro took power, often sending their children ahead of them on so-called “Peter Pan” flights, generally support the most hardline U.S. policies toward the island. With waning family ties to the island, they are among the most vocal backers of the U.S. embargo.
The views of the successive waves of Cuban immigrants are more complicated. Those who came over since 1980 are more likely to have grown up under the Castro government and still have family on the island. They chafe under the Bush administration’s 2004 restrictions, which limit the money that can be sent home as well restrict island visits to once every three years for immediate relatives only.
Cuba experts in the U.S. didn’t expect any immediate changes, or for Castro to completely disappear from view.
“For Cuban-Americans it doesn’t mean a whole big deal. It’s the continuation with a different face,” said Andy Gomez of the University of Miami‘s Institute for Cuban and Cuban American Studies.
Joe Garcia, former executive director of the Cuban American National Foundation and now a Democratic candidate for Congress, cautioned that it was unlikely there would be any immediate political openings in Cuba.
“Today Castro announces the end of the revolution. That doesn’t mean it’s all over, but that means it allows people to finally begin to move beyond,” he said.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Sedensky and Laura Wides-Munoz contributed to this report.
No One to Call me Home
Reference: Mercy Home for Boys and Girls
Many years ago, I spoke about a time when I met a priest who had MS, and his ability to minister and administer the sacraments moved me so much that after seeing him that first Sunday on his crutches, I swore I would never complain about my HIV status ever again.
I had to meet him, and to know him. Fr. Jeff became my spiritual director. Those were the years just after I had been diagnosed and I was facing many challenges and trials, the one thing that made the difference for me, I believe, was my faith in God and the men who led me on into life, from where I had been.
Fr. Jeff was a man of many talents and he introduced me to books. These books still sit on my bedside table decades later because they mean so much to me in my ministry to my boys and to the many who come to this blog. You will frequently hear me talk about Margaret Craven’s ‘I heard the Owl call my Name,’ the most important book that I always return to when I need spiritual direction. The other book, [pictured above] is a second book that changed my life. And it is a book that I take very seriously and from this book I have learned much in how I foster my boys and work in my mentor areas.
One day Fr. Jeff handed me this book, because I guess he felt that I was starting to see myself as an orphan, having been kicked to the curb by my friends and family. No One to Call me Home tells the story about the mission and ministry of the Rev. James J. Close, and his work with homeless and or troubled kids who happened along his path. I identified with many of the stories from the book, and in those days I needed as much help to find myself and my life as I could get.
Many of the men of faith that I encountered in those days always pushed me to live my faith and learn how to make wise decisions and start to build a life that would be a success, It seemed to me, in hindsight that that was what Fr. Jeff and the other priests of my parish had done for me. They helped me build a foundation, they fostered my faith life and my physical body. They asked me to pray and to come to church. Because that was where I would find God at the table. Still to this day the sacrament of the Eucharist is very important to me.
I had been sober for some time, and I was attending meetings in Miami, and the priests of the parish took care of my spiritual needs when it came to my sobriety. I had many issues that I was dealing with and it seemed this ‘orphan’ was as broken as many of the kids that wandered into Mercy Home. I needed to figure out how I was going to live, pay for food, and pay the bills on time and still have a little left over to get around. Life was a daunting prospect in those days because I was so sick for most of those years, yet I found the strength and the time to come to church every week, even if someone had to come and get me by car.
I was lost for a long time. And Fr. Jeff kept me on a very short leash and that was useful to me for many reasons. I never made a decision or made a move to do anything without having passed it by someone for comment or advice. I never took for granted the fact that I had a team of full time advisers to help me live. Many of my friends did not work to build this infrastructure for themselves, but I did. I do believe that had it not been for the men and women who were put in my path at the right moment, I would not be where I am today.
Last night I was reading from the book and I happened upon the story of Sam and the lengths he went to to erase every shred of his past by changing his name, and I chuckled because I did the very same thing – to rid myself of anything that spoke of my parents or their lineage. It was an attempt to start fresh without being tied to the past. I could not live up to the name I was given, and at that time, I was so sick, I did not want my parents to have any power to do anything to me, had I died. I did not want to end up in some unmarked grave, the dark little secret banished to spend eternity in a place they chose, so when I turned 30 that is exactly what I had done. That decision was surely one of the last nails that I drove into my father’s casket. There were a few more to come…
I may not have ended up in a home for boys, but I was surely living on the street with no place to go and no one to help me save the men and women I met during those years, who helped me find a place to live, that I could afford, I had medical care that was the best I could ask for. My doctors moved heaven and earth and I had access to every drug that came off the production lines. And most importantly, I had friends in sobriety that took taking care of me very seriously. A few of my friends had keys to my apartment and they would come and go as they pleased, David cooked, and Logan did the driving, and Jon was my spiritual connection to Church.
I had a lot of issues, and I was sick, and on the terms of family, I was on my own, because nobody wanted to know me from Adam, and that abandonment was a serious issue for the whole of my life from that point on. I have moved well past that stage in my life, and I learned about what was mine and what wasn’t mine.
Over the last 13 years I have learned a great deal about myself and about life. I keep returning to the books that were given to me because they keep me grounded and remind me of when I first began to read them and I can see, so many years later, the lessons that stuck for me and how these books have shaped the man I am today. And I reflect…
I knew what it was like to have No One to call me Home, in those years, even if I was much older that some of the boys that ended up at Mercy Home, but I had been through all of many of those stories from the book. Coming from an abusive home, having addicted parents who did their best, yet at the same time, they fell short of doing the right thing when it counted or mattered. I know today that parents are creatures of their upbringing and that children are subject to whatever upbringing that their parents had. Issues were black and white, there was no gray area.
I knew what it was like to grow up before my time, and finding myself in situations where I as a young child, found myself in the position of caretaker to my brother. I hated day care, and I would rather have gone home after school which is what had happened. My parents gave me a key to the house and my brother and I would come home after school, and this was when I was in grade school. I definitely was my brother’s keeper…
I learned how to cook, I learned how to clean and I learned how to take care of a home, I was a veritable Betty Crocker before I left my childhood. Was it the right thing, or the wrong thing? I had everything a child could want or need. The dysfunction came when my parents came home from work. Family was a secret, you never spoke to anyone what you saw inside your house to anyone else. I could identify with many of the kids in the book, as to what they had witnessed as children in their homes, except they ended up at Mercy Home, and I ended up where I had arrived when Fr. Jeff handed me that book and he said that I could have it. It’s the little things that matter to me today.
In those days, people with AIDS became orphans, because of the inability of many to be able to cope with the arrival of AIDS into their lives. Peer pressure and social gospel was a hard lined gospel. Over night, over a series of hours, families, relationships and partnerships were destroyed upon the news that someone they loved, knew or socialized with was diagnosed with AIDS. We became another segment of orphan children. I was 26 and I surely was not a man by any stretch of the imagination. But I grew up very quickly.
My years with Master Todd, came well before I had met Fr. Jeff. When Todd moved West and I returned to Miami in 1995, the priests of my parish became the next teachers, leaders and mentors for me. I went through many incarnations of self over the first ten years after my diagnosis. It took that long to learn my lessons, and build my boundaries. It took me eight years to find my ‘place’ in the grand scheme of things and in the universe.
From 1994 until 2001, I foundered in the great big sea. It was one thing after another, I was sick, but I was sober. That was a gift. I was lonely and the one I wanted to be with at that time, did not want to be with me, monogamously. So I made a series of really bad decisions. And they almost cost me my life. Lessons learned there for sure.
I got sober again in 2001, TODAY in fact is my SIX YEAR sober anniversary. December 9th 2001, Troy took me to my first AA meeting after my long suffering slip into the pit of hell. And I am sober today!!
I guess that is why I picked up the book, off the bookshelf and read it again, to maybe remind me of where I had been, as an orphan in a great big world. I had to relearn many lessons and I had to find my way into the world again. And it was fate and the hand of God who put me in the right place at the right time, to meet Fr. Jeff and be blessed to know him and be ministered to him. I have many fathers on earth, and I have a Heavenly Father in God, and I am still alive, and today I am sober by the grace of God and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.
This afternoon Ms. Nikki called to wish me a happy birthday, which was really nice. She gave me my medallion last Tuesday, she’s a great friend. I put the link to Mercy Home at the top of this post, if you would like to donate to their ministry. I just thought that it was important to mention this book to you because from it, I took learned many lessons on how to love and to be of service to my boys.
Being a foster parent or a mentor takes a lot of work. And it isn’t easy, but I think I have done a good job with my boys. You just don’t walk into a situation knowing all the variables and life on life’s terms can be daunting, but we have persevered and we have had success, and so I know today that Fr. Jeff gave me some very important tools to use in my life today. And reading is fundamental, sometimes a very small book, yields great truth and lessons in love and miracles. I know today that there is someone to call me home now, because I know what it was like to have no one…
Finding the Perfect Church…
I have asked this question of some of the ministers that write for our sphere. For many years I have searched for the “Perfect Church.” Growing up in a predominantly white, middle class neighborhood gave rise to attending church with my friends. And that served me very well for most of my young adult life.
Labels had not been applied to us in this period of our lives so we were free to worship wherever we chose to. And in most cases our parents followed along, because the church was not only a religious landmark, but also housed Youth Ministry that everyone was part of for several years through high school and junior college and even for myself, Seminary.
After leaving seminary with a bad taste in my mouth for Catholicism, and Church, I walked away from God and his church. I thought that I had been slighted by clergy and I was pushed against the “choose us or get out” wall. It took me many years dealing with the truth to walk back into church.
This was always my childhood home, the Church I called home. It was the place that God and I communed. And after my leaving seminary – this was the church that I returned to many years later, as a weary, AIDS suffering sinner. I was sick, and I had been away, and I met a man who changed my life when I saw him say mass in this space with his crutches and MS. I vowed never again to complain about things in my life. And I have kept that word so many years later.
Being Gay, had its issues with Church. But not to the men who led this church forward. I was a part of this church and this is where I would find prayer, support and salvation.
As I grew into my 30′s I hit several questions in my life about faith, recovery and living with AIDS. I’d like to say that I found all my answers in “church” but that would be false. I was living in an area of town that did not afford me the ability to get to church any more. So I was not attending “church” where I had been for so many years. It was just logistically impossible to get there in time for mass.
During my second recovery, I was seeing a therapist and I had friends who were talking care of me at the time. I was having my visions and spiritual experiences outside the church I may have left the church “physically” but not emotionally and spiritually.
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Faith is like a garden. Each one of us inhabits the garden of our own making. We tend that garden daily. In the morning we walk through misty, dew covered flowers and plants, and as the day wares on the sun tracks across the sky as we sit in that garden. I believe that everyone is born into some kind of spiritual tradition, more than most may speak of but nonetheless, someone puts the seed of faith within us at some point.
If you were like me, you were baptized, first communion ed and confirmed in the Catholic faith. Some were baptized in the baptist faith and others were raised in the faith of their parents or extended families. But we all carry that seed within us.
For many, being Gay and Christian or Being Gay and Catholic was something we battled with because of the politics of the church. Now in my 40′s I can tell you that I will not walk into, better yet worship in a space that does not welcome me fully into communion. I used to compromise my ethics and my politics because I was attached to the Catholic faith by an unbreakable umbilical cord that still exists today.
When I got sick, the priests told me to come to church and I did because they were 21st century men in an archaic world of Catholicism. That lasted as long as it had to to keep my in line with my faith and connected TO my faith. God was in the church, praying with others took place in the church. Mass took place within the church. And I was ok with that way of life.
When I got sober in 2001 I was filled with questions. My faith was strong because I KNEW who God Was and who god Is still. I did not need the physical building to give me what I had created and cultivated internally over many many years of spiritual exploration. You see, faith is not something you feed once a week in a worship service. Faith is not something you partake on any given Sunday.
I was sober a four months when I came to visit Montreal in the Spring of 2002. It was Ash Wednesday when I arrived. I celebrated Easter here and I loved it. This is such a rich religious city. Later I would meet a Jesuit priest who would give me the same puzzle piece he gave all the other boys I later met on the path later on.
This is where it all starts…
I had a reason to come here and I knew after two weeks of being here, that I needed to stay here. I went back to Florida, packed all that I could and I left, never to return. Lies my mother told facilitated my move out of the United States.
I started my journey of faith in the Church Basilica of Notre Dame. It took me weeks to start putting the faith puzzle together. and now six years later, I can tell you that there are still pieces of the puzzle missing.
I had to get used to living in Montreal, Pre-Iraq War. I had to find my place in the greater scheme of things. And that took a long time. I had my citizenship on February 17th 2003, and I was sober 14 months. I decided that I would go back to school. My chosen major in the beginning was Psychology, that quickly changed to Religion.
These were the years that demonstrations were taking place in the streets and Americans were being warned to sew Canadian flags on our backpacks, so as not to acquire the ire of Canadians in Montreal, because protests against the war were daily occurrences. I did that and I participated in those demonstrations. But eventually I would hit several crises points in my life, ONE would be “where do I fit in?” I had to find my place in the community and that took two years upon beginning University. I remember sitting in Donald’s office asking the all important question: “I don’t know where I fit in and I have one foot in the South and one foot in the North – I don’t know where I should be?”
He was always apt to tell me these key words:
“If you find yourself in between and you can’t decide where to go or move, then sit where you are and survey all that you see before you. FEEL your feelings and get in touch with your dis-ease with where you are. Consult your map and ask your questions of the people on the path, then when you are ready, plot your next step, but not before you are sure of your footing.”
I met a man of faith in the Chaplaincy office. I was a man of faith and I was sure in my faith as any other man or woman was. The one difference? I was a sure gay man living with AIDS. I made no excuses and expected no special treatment, just love and acceptance, which I found in Fr. Ray Lafontaine. Still to this day, as a fellow Christian and Catholic priest in my life, he challenges me in my faith to find the answers for myself.
I attended his church at Loyola on Sunday evenings. And that worked for me because there were others like me in the church and we were all accepted.
****
That haze of Summer lasted for two years. In that time I started working on my religious beliefs. And I maintained my sobriety by attending meetings in the basements of many of Montreal’s most beautiful churches. When Father Ray was moved to St. Monica’s church and new priestly blood was flushed into the chapel, I met my faith match…
Having been singled out over my marriage to my husband and the vile words shared with me by the existing chaplain of the University, I walked away from Church once and for all. Although when Fr. Ray and Fr. Paul said mass, I would always attend.
Having studied religion for so many years of my life, and having lived with AIDS for so many years, I knew several things. 1. I knew who God was. 2. I knew who God is not. and 3. I knew who I trusted to support me in my faith journey.
I have been separated from Church for a long time now. It took the invitation of friends to attend a mass said by the Very Reverend Gene Robinson in the Summer of 2006 at Christ Church Cathedral to seriously contemplate a return to Church. In 2003 I was married in the very Catholic Space at Loyal, much to the consternation of Georges Pelletier. We did it just to make a statement of faith, because the entire Loyola community was there to stand with us and profess our faith and love before our families, friends and God himself.
The only time I ever walked into a church, during my time in the field, was with my Great Aunt Georgette, may she rest in peace… I would pray in the mother house chapel with her and I would attend mass there as well. The last time I attended mass in the Mother House Chapel was the day we buried her in August of 2006.
I would never walk into another Catholic Church after her funeral. Although I still maintain a working relationship with men of Catholic faith, I don’t go to mass in the Catholic Church. The other day that marked a change in my Catholic belief system was the day that the Late Pontiff John Paul II died, and I attended mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
You see, while I was studying Religion in university, I was studying my past, making peace with it and learning why things happened the way they did for me, and I was afforded this historical review because of the professors that I studied with for the last four years. I polished my religious skills and I mastered my Christian faith.
I was getting sober in church basements and I was ministering to people in the field. I never walked away from God again. I knew better, and he would always wait for me to find Him. Some of you know about the last five years. Some of you sought me out from the field for spiritual guidance. And I was there for you without question.
I always knew where God resided within me. I knew where to find God, outside myself. I can walk into any church in the city and talk to God. And I can talk to God at any given moment of my day or night, because I have built a temple of God within me.
We are all temples of the spirit of God. Most of us do not know this truth. So I share it with you now. We are all created in the image of God, and therefore we carry the image of God within us. We are walking talking miracles of God’s love and grace. My garden of faith is Eden within me. And I share that garden with anyone who wants to come and walk amongst the flowers. I do not need a building or the perfect church to settle my restless heart.
I’ve spent the last five years searching for God in the sacred churches of Montreal. He was always there where ever I looked for Him. As for the perfect church? You will never find it, because of the true nature of men and women. Humans are imperfect sinners who need to be taught what is right from wrong. And those who come to church already have their preconceived notions of who their God is, and what they will be willing to accept, in the way of Christian teachings, dogma and practice.
So take a church full of imperfect humans and ask them to build for you the perfect church! With all the heads buzzing in the church, each with their notions of church and God, and what do you have? A room full of buzzing heads, who could not agree on what they would call church, and I am sure that their conception will not be what you had in mind either. The perfect church does not and will never exist…
Where did Jesus do his best work? In the field, over dinner in sinners houses. Working with the homeless and the poor and sick. How many times does Jesus step into a church in biblical writing? And what does he say about the ‘church?’ What would he say about all of the terrible incarnations of Church we have today – in the world?
I do believe that God and Jesus weep at the way Christianity is lived out in the millions of lives of people around the globe. We know the scripture, we know the reason yet we can’t see past the noses on our faces and we cannot take the plank out of our own eyes before we try to help another, so what does that say about active Christianity???
I’ve been in the process of Spiritual direction for some time now, ever since coming to Montreal many years ago. I have sought the advice of many people over the years. And I work with others “in the field” every day…
Where is my “Church?” If I had to give you an address, that would be the Christ Church Cathedral because the bishop has said to the LGBT community that we are just as important to the church as any one else. That he supports us and wants us to participate in community and be active participants in our own faith. I am 40 now, and I have my morals, beliefs and values, and if I choose to leave the Catholic faith based on principle I can do that today, because of the certainty of WHO I am and What my faith means to me, because I am ‘out of communion’ with Benedict’s Church, and I can live with that today.
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But I don’t need a building to worship God. I don’t need the perfect church to teach me God’s word. I don’t need the perfect minister to keep me on the path of Godly living. Why, you ask? Because I can do all these things on my own. I celebrate my Christianity every day through prayer, word and action. I live my faith – therefore it is in front of me every day for all to see. I practice my faith. I talk the talk and I walk the walk, daily…
This is not a task I ask you to ponder on your own and it is not for the feint of heart either. But in order to build your inner church, you must start with a foundation, a garden. Mark out the space in your heart. Till the soil and plant your seeds. Give them plenty of water and sunlight and then pray over them…
We each have the capability to till our own gardens of faith within us. Because until you have a strong garden of faith within you, will you be able to find a church that will serve you, because without the understanding and cultivation of your own garden, do you remove the judgments within your heart of men and ministry.
If you are looking for the perfect minister of Christ, he will not appear, save Christ himself. We are flawed human beings, and therefore we must understand that and with that knowledge we can better serve the community at large, and if we able to serve the community at large, we can then see God for ourselves where ever we go, and in whatever church we visit.
The best work of the field is done in the most imperfect churches, because most people know that perfection is unattainable. Your Heavenly Father is perfect, so we have every ability to be as perfect as our heavenly father is perfect. But that will take a lifetime to achieve.
In order to find church outside of you, you must first build church within yourself. You must find your definition of God, you must let your faith garden grow. You must be strong in your faith because without strong inner faith, you will not have strong outer faith for community. Without using the gardening tools that God has given you, how can you practice your faith? You must find Sacred Space within yourself, and you must build sacred space for yourself, while you are in the field.
Because, what good would looking for the perfect Church do for you, if you do not have a handle on your own inner faith to begin with??? Build your inner church and invite God to inhabit your sacred space. Get to know this God of your own understanding. There are certain things a Christian must do every day…
- Read Scripture every day
- You must Pray every day
- You must Meditate every day
- You must Actively Practice your Faith every day
Because the simple act of prayer – asking God for those things that weigh heavily on our hearts, must be followed up with a period of silent “Listening” for God’s voice to speak to you. Because sometimes we get the answer… ‘keep praying, not today, NO!’ Cookie cutter Christianity is too easy. You must live your faith actively in community, that is one sure way to find Jesus in the field.
Start with your garden
Plant it, Till it, and let it grow
Listen to your heart song
and share it with the world
Take off the blinders on your eyes
and see the world in its imperfect state
Find Christ in the field and walk with Him
talk the talk and walk the walk
practice your faith in ACTION
in time your heart will soften
and you will see God
and you will find that
‘Perfect Church’
is but
‘Perfect Union with Christ’
AND
One day
A church will find its way to you
Because you will be ready to serve…
Just beneath the Surface …
Do you see it?
Can you feel it?
Do you ever think about it?
M O R T A L I T Y !!!!
I started my day in a church. Do you know why I did that? Why it was important for me to receive the sacraments today? To have a minister pray with me and for me, to bless me and absolve me,
Almighty God,
to you all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from you no secrets are hidden,
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
The older I get, the more serious is my thought about Mortality. We all will face it one day, but I can’t help but ponder this subject in greater detail, because unlike many of you, life could take a turn very quickly and I could die, the last time this happened was in 2006 when I was testing new medications, and I got severely ill and I remember saying to myself one particular night that “I thought I would die.”
On my birthday I was sitting in the room at the meeting, the church above us I spoke about the fact that none of us know when that appointed day will come, but for me I have been waiting on it for some time. I fancy God sitting up in his heaven, with a sly look on his face, holding strong to one corner of the carpet that I am standing on and he yanks it up and I fall, the end comes crashing down around me.
Nobody wants to say the words, but I know that many of my friends are wary of mentioning the word “death” so they speak in hushed tones using words like “I’m so proud of you”, and “that I am a miracle” and “that God has blessed me with long life,” to date. The best line is this one “He looks so good, that unless you knew or asked – you’d never know he had AIDS!”
I work very hard at avoiding or talking about the obvious strain on my mental health, yet I do not dwell on death, but I have a healthy fear of it for sure. You’d never know I was even gay, from the outside. You’d never know that there was an ember burning quietly and strongly beneath the surface. That person sitting in the same place as you had a date with death several times in his life, and he avoided the reaper.
I remarked to a friend that I was afraid of what was ahead of me after the meeting, and for some they cannot fathom this fact, but my friends did. Some of the men told me that I should go on with my life and not think about it, but how can I Not think about it?
I just wanted to remind you that Mortality is an issue that I deal with every day now. Each day that passes – I thank God for life – which is why I went to mass and I think in retrospect, that is why the Reverend Canon laid hands on me and asked God to bless me and keep me healthy. I heard the urgency in her voice – the necessity that God grant that prayer – right then and there. To guarantee me a place “in community” for as long as God would permit.
I do not know how long my body will continue to take the pills I push upon it daily, or how long these new medications will continue to work – we are only a few months in and things look very good on paper, my body seems to like these mew medications and I haven’t had any great bodily changes. The look of death has not come over me – that gaunt AIDS look that most men get at some point in their journey, those you know are marked for death.
I remember my spirit and I pray daily and I attend mass when I can, and I spend time helping others because as long as I keep the focus off of me and on someone else, I can avoid having to look at the cold hard truth for very long. But I must tell you that I have had that “conversation with God” this week, and I made a deal. I think he agreed on the deal, as long as I served Him – and did my best every day – and I stayed in my day and not expected to die – that I would live a long life.
Religion, what is it? Is it a comfort to help us on the way to our graves? To give us something to focus on in death? A loving God, a forgiving Christ and a Spirit that loves us to fill the soul of man with hope that on that appointed day we would stand with our maker and be granted eternal life!
Is religion a cop out? The easy path?
I don’t know what to think – but I do believe – and for me that simple kernel of faith saves me. I know that nobody wants to think about it, so I write and remind you of the ever present fact that we all will face our mortality, some sooner than others. I’ve studied death and dying in my undergraduate career.
For many years I held on to the visual of Monica, the Angel from “Touched by an Angel” who said those simple words “I’m an angel sent by God, to tell you that God Loves You.”
I have seen every episode and I have a collection of hundreds of episodes here at home. During those years that I was so sick and I needed something to hold onto this little television show was my salvation, a second helping of God every Sunday after returning home from an evening mass. I kind of fancy that Andrew would stand here with me on that final moment to carry me to God in heaven.
It was easy to let go and let God, because of my faith in God and this little show that confirmed to me in visual form that there were angels and that I wasn’t alone, sitting in my apartment, sick as a dog. They even touched on the “aids” stories and the fact that even people with AIDS had angels. I believed that and I still do. Now in syndication, on Vision TV I can watch TBAA at night here in Montreal. And at Christmas I can watch the special shows that were created over the years while the show was running.
I find it funny the lengths I went to to maintain my spiritual beliefs when everyone around me was worrying that I was going to die, I was worried about that and the fact that I had no idea how I was going to survive another year. These memories are found back in 1998 and 1999.
When Christians were condemning us, my family included there, the angels were there to tell us that God loved us and still loves us today. That faith worked, because I lived another ten years and now we start another decade with stronger faith and a few angels here and there…
I’m fully aware of my mortality and that scares me.
Ministry
“He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8
I never thought that doing something good for another would turn around and bite me in the ass. Christian ministry and emergent churches are the new faces of Christian worship and ministry. What I am is immaterial to Who I am. In the past few months as my degree was conferred to me by a University, I was thrust into a position of ministry leadership, not by my own choice, but by popular acclimation of the group who thought that I was the most logical person to lead them, in the wake of a colleague dying.
I have been working in my field here in Montreal for over five years. I work with the addicts, the alcoholics, the sick and the dying. I have probably spent more years in the ACTIVE practice of Christian Charity longer than most of you would even care to consider. When my friends were all dying of AIDS who do you think ministered to their souls, took care of their physical bodies, fed and bathed them and in the end buried them when parents of Christian faith walked out on them and left them in the streets to die alone!
My work was something that my peers and my supporters highly encouraged. I looked all over the world for the model that I would adopt to begin my work here. That church was RE:HOPE in Glasgow.
Let me stop for a moment and say this loud and clear. Just because I am a gay man, does not infer that any people I choose to support, or pray for, or attempt to raise funds for, speaks of the sexual orientation of anyone. There are straight writers on this blog and there are gay writers. They all have good messages and are people that I respect and admire. We all learn from each other.
So I know that RE:HOPE is trying to raise 12,000 GBP for their trip to the Holy Land this fall and I went OUT of my way to try and help them, because it was an easy choice and it was the right choice. I used the term “Partnered” and that has come back to me also.
You may not agree with some of my theology, and the obvious sane fact that I am a gay man of faith – speaks of just how much work I have done in 40 years of life to find my way through Christianity and Catholicism. I take what is good and I leave what is bad.’
Christianity isn’t perfect, and it is truly flawed. But Christ is perfect in his simplicity and direct in his message. People are flawed too in their beliefs and theology. People are imperfect yet God is perfect…
People have commented and Scott has commented about my choice of words and today he writes me to admonish me and to tell me about being careful of what I write, I got that.
What troubled me more – and to the point that – because I am a gay man in Ministry, some have gone as far as to question the sexual orientation of Scott Burns. I have to say that I am disgusted by this little piece of information. Don’t people have better things to do with their time than to wonder about the sexual orientation of people? Have we not grown past this little issue? Are we all adults here?
I’ve never met Scott, but I believe in his ministry. Enough to put my own reputation and this blog on the line in the sense of credibility and respect. So what, I am Gay and Scott is not? Does my support of his ministry automatically make him gay or make him suspect? Have we backtracked that much in the year 2007, that doing good Christian work comes with parameters and judgments by some? Of course it does, I should know that.
All of you out there are Christianity Majors and have decades of Christian study and worship under your belts, right? All of you have spent years in University studying Church history, Christian History and Christian Origins. right??? And all of you have spent time in a Catholic Seminary in the pursuit of priesthood as well, I suppose?
I do not make choices rashly or out of one side of my brain. You may not agree with my stance of Church, and you can question my “take” on Christian Theology. I have spent over 20 years of my life studying religion, in seminary and in University so I do know much more about church and Christianity, than the run of the mill lay person or arm chair Christian.
Living with AIDS – over 14 years now gives me certain understanding of what charity and forgiveness and true unconditional Christian love is. I know what doing the right thing is, if you lived with the threat of death every day of your life, knowing just what is going to kill you and how, you either do one of two things, you find FAITH fast or you give up and die.
I took the high road. Seeking ministers, priests and bishops who were accommodating and understanding. I am part of the Anglican faith now because I was told, unequivocally that the Montreal Diocese agrees with the blessing of Same Sex unions. I, in fact, am Married, and have been for now three years. We had a United Church wedding before God and our families.
So if you have a question about my Christian faith – You Ask Me! If you have a problem with me You Tell Me.
I cannot believe that trying to help another ministry would come back with questions, inferences and disagreements. I love it when people come to read, and many do each day. I reach out to millions with this blog, we have even saved a few lives here and there with the work that we do here.
All my kids and my peers and supporters who are part of this ministry are straight. One of them is in Seminary this fall. NONE of them question my ability to serve based on my sexual orientation. My exploration of faith has brought me to this point. And I will even go so far as to say that I probably have a better Christian practice than most of you out there, because you have to deal with doctrine, theology and teaching.
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I study Theology and though I may not agree with it, and for the most part I do not agree with any church that limits its membership to those who believe and are straight from those who believe and are gay. I have struggled with this issue for the whole of my life. And I have made peace with it.
I CAN reconcile being Gay and Being Christian, IF You CANNOT then that is your issue, not mine.
I do what I am called to do. I serve where I am called to serve. And I love unconditionally because I am commanded TO! I read scripture too and those six references to same sex, homosexuality and sleeping with a man as to a woman are all scriptures that I have spent a great deal of time, during my studies, trying to understand. I don’t think that you have spent as much time studying scripture as I have in 25 years.
Nobody has the right to judge what kind of Christian I am – or question the ministry that I work with. The reason that we have emergent churches and church plants and Christian ministries popping up all over the world is in response to the way Christianity has played out over the centuries. Nobody is pleased or agrees with the model we have, so we set out and create our own. I have done that after reaching the conclusion after prayer, study and academic work to know that Church Christianity will not work for me – it never has.
I have been a Catholic all of my life, I spent a year in a Catholic Seminary as well and I left because I would not serve Man and also because I was not a pedophile and I was not going to spend another year keep secrets for my fellows and the Catholic administration.
The members of the Anglican faith, here in Montreal, have been planting seeds in my heart for a year. They allowed me to come and go as I please. And they loved me unconditionally. And now I have made a conscious choice to become part of the Anglican communion because the Bishop himself has given the LGBT community a green light in his church. I have already written about this.
Can a Gay Man be spiritually centered – Yes of course he can. Can a gay man lead a church, Many do, quietly. I can tell you how many gay priests we have in Montreal and how many are open about it and they still have parishes and communities. I can tell you that I know a handful of Christian Ministers who will speak on my behalf and tell you that I am as true to Christian faith as I can be.
I hook up with a church I see does good work and I try to style a ministry by its example, maybe partner wasn’t the right term but still, I pray for that community and I work for the betterment of that community and I work tirelessly trying to help them.
I write letters to my supporters on my time to help You, and I get a letter of “this weighs on my heart too much” ok, that’s your issue not mine. I was just trying to help you out of a situation that you placed yourself in, then you wrote about it and asked for help, how many of us listened to you and went out of their way to help you???
And I am admonished for doing something charitable and good. I am told that Some do not agree with my theology! That’s your issue not mine. Some do not agree that a Gay man can be a good example to the people he leads, because of the inherent problem with being gay!
I will tell you here and now that sexual practice in my marriage is between ME – MY GOD and My Husband, and nobody else. Go read my writings on the Sacred and the Profane. Maybe you will learn something about how much I respect the two states of grace. You cannot have the Sacred without the Profane, because they inform each other.
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They are married in a coexistence of grace.
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I would like to know from you, my readers just what objections you have to what I am, Who I am and what I choose to do for a living? I put those buttons on my blog because the ministries that are there need support either financially or Spiritually. I won’t make that mistake again…
**************
I choose to support the needs of many and they should be grateful that a stranger would put himself out there to help another human being because he believes in the ministry of Christ. So until further notice I will remove all connection and fund raising for any ministry accept my own.
If you cannot understand what it really means to be a Christian and you can’t accept that maybe a Gay man with religious leanings, a full degree in Christian Religion Study and a further pursuance of a Pastoral Ministry Degree in Theology can lead and be a good example and a wise leader, then I invite you to be on your way.
Don’t waste another moment reading here and please, do us all a favor, do not return to this place, because we have no use for you either.
Yesterday I turned forty years old, and I had my own issues with faith, life and death, but to receive a letter of concern, admonishment and as I read it a separation in Theology and Christian faith practice insulted me. And to know that people who have come by here have questioned the dignity of another minister AND question his Sexual Orientation just because his visage and ministry appeared on the side bar of this blog made me sick to my stomach. I thought we were all adults here and that we were grown up enough to lay down our judgments and issues for the shared communion of Christianity. I guess I was mistaken.
Like I said, if you’ve got a problem with me, that is Your Problem not mine. If you don’t have the balls to approach me and state your case, that is also your problem not mine. If you question the way I practice my Christianity, that is also your problem, not mine.
If you do not know enough to understand that I have struggled with Christianity for the whole of my life and that I probably know MORE about the intricacies and minutiae of Christianity than you do – that’s not my problem.
God speaks to me – and he knows I am Gay, He also knows I am HIV positive, so do all my kids, my friends, my peers, and even my husband. They all love me just the same. God Loves me Unconditionally. There is no separation between God and Myself.
I don’t have time to sit here and write sermons like this and justify why I can practice Christian faith because of …. to you. I don’t need to. You can sit your happy ass down and write me and tell me of your concerns with my theology and practice and if I feel moved I will write you back, or even take the time to embarrass myself in front of you by writing a rant like this one again!
I know a lot more about Christian Theological issues than you might think. I have battled with the best and the brightest when it comes to theological and ministerial discussion. And we agree to disagree. The Catholic Church allows me access to the sacraments because it is a RITE of my Catholic upbringing, I was baptized into the church and in all my years only ONE priest saw fit to condemn me openly and with that condemnation he lost his parish and his people, they all left his church! In the Anglican faith I am in full communion with the Bishop’s church and it is high about time. God WEEPS at the intolerance and judgment of Christians all over the world. And we pray for them just the same.
I have studied Papal History and I continue “on my time” to further that theological education outside the classroom. I know all about the Churches laws and decrees, I have studied at great length – the life of John Paul II one of the most important Popes in Modern History second only to John XXIII. I don’t agree with all of his writing, especially about women, birth control, homosexuality and assorted other dimensions of his writing, but you must admit that in the hallowed darkness of his chapel the Pope begged God for forgiveness for some of what he did in public, forced to speak so many words at the consternation of the Holy See and those Bishops and Cardinals who were close to the See of Peter. So I know all of your arguments.
Christianity MUST evolve or else crumble in the ruins of its own intolerance and judgmentalism and condemnations. The Church must change to accommodate the many people who have grown up in a faith and as adults we are divided from the faith because of the stance of those conservative men in certain positions. The curret Pope Benedict will never earn my allegiance or respect, because he is a dog of a man. HE is responsible for much of what John Paul II wrote as he was the man in the position of keeper of the doctrine of the faith, now he is Pope, God help us all…
Faith for me as a gay HIV Positive man is cut and dry. You do good for others, and you love others and you maintain a humble presence in the world and you do no harm. I think that this simple theological model works. Don’t quote me mumbo jumbo theological ideas because all the theology in the world will not change the man I am today and what I choose to do with my life.
Theology is too wrapped up in rules and dogma. I am wrapped up in simple Christian faith for simple Christian people. Faith is simple. Talking the talk is one thing, Walking the Walk is surely another. I can do both – I can talk the talk and I do walk the walk. You ask any of my people about what I do day in and day out, and just how much of my time I spend helping others because I am called to do that and I am sure you would be pleasantly surprised. Men of faith should be this “giving” of their time and talent for the little pittance I make in return. I work my ass off to the bone day and night, I write, I work with others because work was done for me when I needed it to. Ministry is not just about preaching the Gospel to people, but getting down in the gutter with them. How many Christians get out there and really get their hands dirty? Not Many.
So I see a group that gets their hands dirty and I start talking them up and I pray for them and I try to raise funds for them. I do that for my group too. All is not words and bible, show me the money at the end of the day – I don’t make nearly enough to support my house yet, and I have another 18 months to go before I hit my Masters and Pastoral ordination, but I am in the field, I have been in the field for years.
I have been a Christian presence in my Gay Community since I was a young boy, And I was in the trenches when Christians were fleeing like in the exodus from infected sons, daughters and children. I stuck and stayed. I raised money, stood in picket lines and I was there through the worst time when Christians turned their back on men and women who were sick and dying. I WAS THERE! I cannot tell you the countless and thankless hours that I spent in service to my community because NOBODY else would dare touch us or help us. So speak to me about active Christian Ministry. Tell me you know from what people like me lived through in our own lives! Tell me you know the words that self righteous Christians used to condemn people and people lost their jobs, apartments, lovers, family and friends. Were you there?
I can tell you about Christian families that THREW their sons on the STREET, Churches who REFUSED to perform funerals, Christian men and women who worked in funeral homes that REFUSED to process AIDS infected dead boys and men.
This is a double sided issue. Men acted with one another. Men did what they did. Do we condemn them as well? They are all DEAD and I am still alive, so God in his wisdom still sees good in me to fill my lungs with air and gives me life each day. I know how I was infected. I was trying to help another sick soul who LIED to me and then killed himself and I found out After the fact!! So fuck me right? I got what was coming to me right? I was a sinner just like the others. So fuck us !!! right??
Good Christian men kept me alive when all I wanted to do was die already. They believed I had a place in God’s kingdom, even if we did not go to any certain church. I learned Christian Charity from the best. I learned what Jesus meant by Loving others as I loved myself the hard way. I had no choice because good upstanding self righteous Christians could not stomach the horror and filth – the sickness and death. Yet, they could walk into church on Sunday’s and quote scripture and condemn from their Holy Pulpits and pews, UGH it makes me SICK to think about the past…
I can tell you that some of us angry gay men who were Christians who went to school to become morticians so that they could start funeral parlors to give our friends proper burials and I know renegade priests who WOULD perform funerals for us and the minions of people who worked behind the scenes behind the Christian iron curtain who DID walk the walk when we needed it.
I can also tell you about cemetery workers who refused to dig graves and those religious men who stood in the way of us burying those people in hallowed graves. Shall I continue? I can tell you about ministers, Christian ministers TODAY who still condemn us. And you want me to follow their theology?
I think Not!!
And I know good Christian people who loved me when my parents disavowed me and wrote me off as infected goods. I was not immune to judgment and condemnation. I got it from my own family which speaks to the effect that my family has no role or place in my life today – and I am 40 years old and I am still here writing this story.
I was there with Jesus, changing diapers, cleaning up shit and puke and feeding people – And I sat with them until they died, while Christians all over the world sat on their tuffets condemning us and alienating and judging us and telling us that
“AIDS was God’s punishment for our sinful lifestyles.”
I SPIT on the people who did that and I will SPIT on whomever says that to me today.
And God WEPT!!!
Christians could learn from the ministerial work we did in the trenches when it really mattered. So nobody owns the right to judge or critique my Christian life, ministry, theology or practice. Because when I take my last breath – it will then be God and I in a discussion of life review and I know for sure that he will look at me and say:
“Well done, good and faithful servant!”
1 Corinthians Chapter 13:1-3
“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
Deuteronomy Chapter 6:4-7
Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God; Yahweh is one, and you shall love Yahweh your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. These words, which I command you this day, shall be on your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.
End of Sermon…
On Being 40 …
The lights go down, the smoke machine is fired up and Seal is on the turntable. I stand in a large space, it is just me, the smoke and my music, as I ready for the nights events. This visual is very useful because it takes me back to the most important time in my young life as a gay man – and an HIV positive man.
I have spoken of this time and place at great length in the pages here on the blog. But I invoke it as I write because it taps that part of my brain where all those memories are stored.
This is supposed to be my “40th Birthday” retrospective. None of my friends have offered up any wisdom to turning 40, and several of my blog reads reached 40 before I did, and they seem to be well adjusted and the same men I knew before they turned 40.
I am not feeling any kind of depression or do I have any problem with my body image the only vain thing I do for me is cut and color my hair, to hide those ugly grays!! That reminds me I need to make an appointment for Tuesday!! It is Sunday Late night as I am writing this.
I was 26 when I was diagnosed in 1994. The doctors gave me 18 months to live. And here we are celebrating my 40th birthday. All the men I loved, liked, followed and idolized in my young gay life are dead, and I am still here …..
I have much to be grateful for. I have many men to thank for getting me here. The men who saved me from death at the Stud, the councilors who helped me cope and heal, the doctors who treated me, the men and women who “Loved” me into existence. Little did I know then, in 1994, that we would be here celebrating. I guess as a gay man with AIDS I see the world differently than most of you.
I am not consumed with the trappings of wealth. I am not a rich man nor a rich husband. We live on modest means and I work a modest job doing God’s work in my community. I don’t obsess over things that most gay men obsess over.
Image, money, wealth, sex, men, drugs and alcohol and going out to the bar to socialize. I guess I have mellowed with age. I have grown into the man I really want to be. And I can’t complain, because I have everything I need today. Being sober is another additive to this perception.
I get tired of reading whine after wine. Marriage has tempered me – life has taught me how to be married. That you find one to love – and that one loved you in return without question, argument or issue. Hell, I had no idea I would fall in love and get married when I was 26. I was concerned about getting through the day alive!
For many months after my diagnosis I kept a daily calendar, marking the 560 days until my death. My first sponsor kicked my ass several times over this. He was apt to tear the calendar off the frig and I would, as usual make another one. It was my way of coping then. When I reached that “Death Date” and I was still alive, it was only then that I started to work on a future.
I was sick an awful lot in the beginning. I was in the hospital all the time. I was sick as a dog for long periods of time. I haven’t had a major illness in many years. “knocks on wood!”
When I turned 30 that was in 1997. I had been sober three years, I was living in Miami, and going to the Coral room for meetings. I made it four years sober. The good thing about hindsight in sobriety is this: I can see what I DID and DIDN’T do right. From 1994 until my slip after four years of sobriety, I was just learning how to survive. Granted staying alive on the U.S. Medical system was a chore, let me tell you.
This is not racist but I was on social assistance and HRS assistance for a long time until I got on Medicaid. And I have to tell you that I had to go to places that “little white boys” did not go in the daytime! Let alone after dark. In order to get services I had to work the system before I either got denied, got sick or DIED! In the United States, Miami, in fact, until I found the loop it was kill or be killed. People were not going to help a little white boy with AIDS, that was clear. And the Government, sure as shit thought i was better off dead than to give me assistance. That is where I learned to be a “Cast Iron Cunt!!”
More than a few times I had to stop taking my pills and get deathly ill to get someone to help me. When I applied for disability I was so sick, I thought I was going to die. I stopped bathing, stopped taking my pills and walked into that government office that day, I was green. I coughed all over that poor women who signed off on my application and finally I made headway and I was able to get what I needed to live.
I became the Cast Iron Cunt from hell. Because I knew where all the contacts were. I had files at home, phone numbers and names of credible people I had amassed for myself. And more than once I was called to a hospital to help a friend who was set in chairs for 13 to 15 hours waiting for a bed, unpilled and unfed!! Those hospital administrators were truly afraid of me, because I was fucking kidding.
These people, my people would be helped or they could find other jobs. We got a lot of nurses and care workers fired over those years. There was no time to train you – your a health care worker, then do your fucking job asshole! Because we aren’t getting better with you worrying about getting AIDS from someone, unless you were fucking us or using our needles…
I was a Little Mean Asshole.
My parents did not help me. My parents traumatized me as an adult and that is their shit, not mine. I got them back years later. Never tell lies to your children because eventually they get washed out in the laundry.
So where are we 1997, I was 30. I was still alive. I set out on a number of really BAD decisions, a geographic that almost killed me a year later. That brings us to the year 2000.I was back in Miami in July of 2000. I stayed with friends after my relocation back after I was hospitalized with facial and bodily trauma.
I was agoraphobic I wasn’t eating and I had to reconnect to the system after being away from 18 months while I tripped to hell and back. I found a place to live, I had a job and my doctor took me back as a patient. That man saved my life. I tested every drug on the market from 1994 THROUGH today!! So Thank me….
I had to learn how to live again. I had to learn how to go outside. I had to take back my life. And Andrea, my therapist saved me once again. I was so god damned lucky you know that, I met some incredibly amazing people in my life, and they all played a part in getting me here. People who believed in me when I could not believe in myself. People who loved me until I could learn what it meant to Love Myself. That took YEARS !!!
And I was on the fast track plan, because people with AIDS were not living very long in Florida. Every time I saw the quilt, hundreds of more quilts were added yearly. This is the period that I learned that Dana Manchester had died. He was a drag queen artist that I knew when I first came out at the Parliament House when I was 21 – in Orlando. That’s where I came out!!! All good gay boys who live in Florida come out at the P-House!!!
God, Ive been though some serious shit in my life. AND I Lived to tell the tale! I am one lucky son of a bitch!! Someone up there likes me. I guess in a way, loosing the people I loved early in my life “family wise” steeled me to either live or die. My grandmothers deaths affected me in ways that nobody knows, not even my family.
And I don’t have any family to speak of left in my life today, and I haven’t had any family in my life since well before I left the states. My parents condemned me as an abomination. Funny that I went on and got a Degree in Religion from Concordia University in Montreal and I did it all before my 40th Birthday…
I showed you, you Fuckers !!!
I’m sorry, but Itty Bitty Bad Ass creeps up on me at times, when I reflect….
I have ever right to be angry … Their loss. My Loss. Nobody won that fight…
I miss my Master.
I miss my friends.
I miss the past – the laughing – the fun – the Joy of drag shows and of being young again.
My mother told a strategic lie to her children. And in 2001 I capitalized on that lie. My mother had retained her Canadian Citizenship until AFTER my brother was born in 1970. She was naturalized in 1974. I had an out – and I took it. They fucked me over and so the last fuck was mine and it was going to be a good, wet and dirty one…
I was 34 years old when I left the United States. I packed everything I owned and I set off for the new world. Hell, I was still alive!! And I had not even started living yet. I was just merely surviving. But I was SOBER when I pulled that next geographic and I STAYED sober during the move.
I came for Easter 2002 to Montreal. I stayed two weeks, I just LOVED this city. And I still do. It is not Miami… that’s when I returned home packed and I left. My parent’s were horrified and insulted that I would gain Canadian Citizenship because of my mother’s well told lie… She almost got deported over my application. She was so angry at me she was spitting!! It was great! Payback is a bitch!!
Itty Bitty Bad Ass…
The last conversation I had with my mother was in 2003. She said to me and I quote:
“If we get sick and one of us or both of us die, we will not call you nor notify you of any funeral or tell you where we are buried!!”
How do you like that line? I had to cope with this news the best way I could. So I had to bury them in my heart forever. We had hurt each other to the point of severance. I was going to have the last laugh. But my mother cut me to the bone. I have seen her twice here in my apartment. She came on my 1st and 2nd wedding anniversary. I saw her here and I spoke to her.
I have always said that the one thing that would send me over the edge and I would drink over is the thought that she is dead, and nobody called to tell me. I am sober and I want to keep it that way. But I tell you, if this secret ever becomes reality, I will surely go insane!!
Almighty God,
to you all hearts are open,
all desires known,
and from you no secrets are hidden.
Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts
by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit,
that we may perfectly love you,
and worthily magnify your holy name;
Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
So you know the rest of the story if you’ve been reading this blog. All the stories and achievements are there to read about, including the history of Jeremy. I came to Canada to conquer death. I did that. This will be my 40th birthday, and I am still alive. There surely is a God. I know his voice and I’ve seen his face. I am loved.
- I came to Conquer Death
- I met a man in sobriety
- I married that man in 2004
- I went back to school at age 35
- And I graduated in June of 2007 with a Degree in Religion
- I am still sober – by the Grace of God
- I am still alive – by the Grace of God
I don’t worry about dying any more. I don’t worry about the past any more. Save one truth of secrets would probably kill me, so we don’t talk about it ever. I trust my gut to know what God is telling me. My psychic abilities are strong enough to know the truth about death. And I know for myself today. And I have accepted the truth in my heart and I am the man I wanted to become and am still becoming. So join us at Tuesday Beginners tonight and let’s celebrate my birthday Big Brassy and GAY!!!
When I had my near death experience in 1997, I went across and was seated in a garden of the most beautiful flowers. They sent me back without any answers that I had questions about. I met a wise man one night who said to me, “Why wait till you’re dead to ask your questions, ASK them NOW! So I did that…
I’ve never told anyone what I am about to share with you…
In 2001 – I had two “visitations” in my South Beach apartment. One by the Lady in White. She came to bless me. She brought the scent of roses, that I could never find the origin of and never did. I never smelled those roses ever again after that …
The second was the “taking” where I was lain on a table, in a room where beings were present. They pricked my arms and told me that I would be healed and that I would live, that all would be well. Somewhere inside I knew it and I felt it, that was the first time my t-cells ever hit 1000 – in my labs in the Spring of (2001), on the last round in July my T-cells were 1186!! My T- cells have been hovering at 1000 since 2001. They had never gotten that high before ever before…
Someone is protecting me … My faith has saved me, and Christ has redeemed me, and God continually blesses my life. Thank God for all of you.
Thank you to all my readers and friends and fellows. And as always, if you like what you read, please, by all means let us know. It is always nice to hear from my readers. I am not your “run of the mill” Christian, but quite the opposite.
I just do what I am called to do
I help where I am directed to
and I love because I am commanded to
And from the Old Testament I remind of these most important words:
“The most vital commandment in the Old Testament is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.” Deut. 6:5…
Bye for now…
Enter the Inquisitor to Baltimore …
Cleric Who Led Witch Hunt for Gays Named Baltimore Archbishop
by The Associated Press
(Baltimore, Maryland) The pope accepted the resignation of Cardinal William Keeler as archbishop of Baltimore on Thursday and named Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, who leads the U.S. military archdiocese, as his successor.
Keeler turned 76 in March, a year past the normal retirement age for bishops.
O’Brien, 68, served as an auxiliary bishop in New York before taking over the Archdiocese for the Military Services in Washington in 1997. He coordinated a major evaluation of U.S. seminaries in 2005-2006, ordered by the Vatican in response to the clergy sex abuse scandal.
The seminary review, completed last year, gave special attention to what seminarians are taught about chastity and celibacy. It also looked for evidence of homosexuality in the schools.
In a 2005 Associated Press interview, O’Brien said that most gay candidates for the priesthood struggle to remain celibate and the church must “stay on the safe side” by restricting their enrollment. The Vatican reaffirmed that year a longstanding church policy of keeping men with “deep-seated” homosexual tendencies from becoming priests.
O’Brien, a New York native, said he would be leaving his Washington post with mixed emotions.
“I just loved the military,” he said. “The service has taught me so much.”
Keeler, a native of San Antonio, was appointed archbishop in Baltimore in 1989 and marked his 50th anniversary in the priesthood in 2005. He submitted his resignation last year to the Vatican when he turned 75, as required by the church.
In May, Keeler said he planned to remain in Baltimore as head of the Basilica Historic Trust after his successor was named. He oversaw the restoration of the historic church.
The Archdiocese of Baltimore serves 510,000 Catholics in Baltimore and nine counties in central and western Maryland, according to the archdiocese Web site.
The Archdiocese for the Military Services serves about 1.5 million Catholics, including all in the military and their families.
©365Gay.com 2007
