Simmer Down

I often drop in for a quick visit to various addresses in the Blogosphere, including some conservative sites that take, on the whole, a decidedly unfavorable view of gays.  I also have a few Facebook friends from my college days (I went to a conservative Catholic university) who espouse similar views. I haven’t unfriended them just because it’s useful for me to see what other people are saying, and it’s good spiritual discipline to try to love even those who seem to hate me (or at least a significant portion of my life).

It’s amusing to me how fraught virtually every discussion about homosexuality is on these sites.  Just look at what Those Crazy Gays are sayin now. Culture and morality on the brink! Let’s all find something to be indignant about.

I believe that the very rhetorical energy and hyperbole that fuels these discussions creates a distorted impression of “The Homosexual Lifestyle” for the readers and commenters. Frankly, it’s all much more exciting and overwrought than my own Homosexual Lifestyle, which is, in most ways, as boring as most of theirs. I’ve worked in Government consulting. I was president of my very conservative neighborhood association. I pay taxes. I root for the LSU Tigers and New Orleans Saints. I adopt stray animals. I contribute to the upkeep of widows and orphans.

While it’s a fun place to visit, Bourbon Street north of St. Ann doesn’t define gay life any more than Bourbon Street south of St. Ann defines straight life.

Falling into Myself

The temperature started to change around here this week. Fall is creeping in. For me, autumn takes its texture not only from the outward physical changes in the environment, but also (and perhaps, most profoundly) from the poignant layers of memory that have become indelibly linked to that season in my life.  It even has a melody: Pachelbel’s surpassing Canon in D, which I first heard in the autumn of my freshman year of college, as I stepped out into a very unfamiliar world.

One such memory was Thanksgiving Day, 1996. I was at the Baton Rouge airport, dropping off Dave—a genial British exchange student who was returning to England. He had been camping out for a couple of months in the rambling house near LSU that served as our English graduate student commune. After he checked his bags, we had some time to kill before he went to the boarding area. We wandered over to a gleaming new car from a local dealership that was parked in the lobby. While we were studying the way-out-of-reach window decal, a friendly police officer on foot patrol stopped by and started chatting us up.

I don’t remember how the conversation steered in this direction, but it turned out that, in the 60s, the policeman had been a young Trappist monk at Gethsemani Abbey with Thomas Merton. My ears perked up. This was intriguing to me both as a cradle Catholic and a former seminarian. He described how exciting it was to be in the abbey at that time, as famous authors, thinkers, and religious and political figures journeyed to the Kentucky countryside to meet with Merton, often giving talks to the assembled brothers during their stay.

He recalled one meeting in particular when a prominent civil rights leader had spoken about how we all arrive at certain junctures in life and are confronted with decisions that demand a response from us. About how it’s important to seize the day and take action in the appropriate season. Our lives may not be over if we don’t, but if we continue to delay and vacillate, they’ll be irrevocably different.

He was looking directly at me. My heart pounded as he spoke; I knew what this was about. The next morning I drove to Dallas, and that weekend I had hours-long heartfelt conversations with two of my closest friends. And so began the long and stumbling process of emerging from the dark and sad closet and coming out as an affirming and loving gay man.

More Bang for Your Belief

I recently returned from a really powerful retreat experience in the hills outside San Diego—the Illumination Intensive. Four and a half days of sitting across from another person, looking deeply into his or her eyes, and giving and receiving the instruction, “Tell me who you are.” No watch, no cell phone, no iPod/Pad, no Internet, and no other conversation besides that question and the answer.

In the course of responding to the instruction, a lot of stuff comes up. As the retreat progressed and I worked through it, I found myself getting mellower and mellower and more and more entranced with the individuals sitting in front of me, the beauty of our surroundings, and the pervasive sense of the interconnectedness of it all. Each person, each flower, each rock, each bite of lunch, each fly, each dust speck, each light beam from the setting sun seemed utterly suffused with the same gorgeous godstuff.

Now, I mouth inspirational reflections to that effect fairly regularly. However, this time I felt like I had anchored it at a much deeper level. And as I looked at things from that belief perspective, I found my mind quieting and my heart opening. I became more present. I wasn’t concerned about goals, conflicts, deadlines, plans, success/failure. All uncertainty and risk and concern for the future or regret about the past seemed flimsy and irrelevant in the face of the undeniable beauty before me Right Now.

It seems to me that’s a perspective that can be deliberately chosen and consciously cultivated. To the extent that it is adopted and empowered, a lot of the smaller hurts, injustices, and traumas that occupy our inquiries and therapies just naturally lose their hold on us and drop away—‘cause we’ve got Bigger Fish to Fry. Imagine if your first, most habitual thought was that your alarm clock, the Dalai Lama, your dog, the moonrise, the surly checkout cashier, your garden, your boss, and even the extra pounds around your middle all were direct reflections of divinity or the amazing bounty of the Universe. How would that change your moment-by-moment processing of your world?

Certainly, it can be useful to rummage through our big rolled up Balls of Hurt, pulling on strings here and there in order to make some headway. Or, just maybe, we can look for some big leveraging beliefs that can unravel large sections with one tug. And that can be a force multiplier, because many of our little beliefs and judgments are off-shoots of (or supports for) our Big Beliefs and Judgments. The person who fundamentally believes that Life is a Struggle and the one who truly believes (and lives) that Life is a Beautiful Dance can pass within inches of each other on a crowded sidewalk, and yet live on completely different planets.

In assessing your belief cache and deciding what to take on and what to let go of, perhaps it makes a lot of sense to Go Big.

What Planet Are You From?

“Man, I hate that stuff.”

My graduate school housemate, Eric, walked by the bathroom as I was finishing up shaving and applying some aftershave.  Old Spice–it evoked all kinds of memories for me linked to my father. Strength. Steadiness. Feeling safe. Knowing everything was taken care of. Leaning against his shoulder and gratefully closing my eyes during an especially long sermon at church.

“Ingrown toenails.”

What????

“When I was a kid, I’d get infected ingrown toenails. We didn’t have any alcohol in the medicine cabinet, so my mom would pour my dad’s Old Spice on it. That’s what I think of whenever I smell it.”

Once I got past the initial ickiness, it really dazzled me to consider it.  I had just assumed that everyone had the same reaction to Old Spice that I did–that it was somehow hard-coded into human DNA. However, here was abundantly (disgustingly?) clear evidence that I was wrong.

Which then begged the question, What else was I wrong about?  What else did I take for granted about what other people thought about the world and how they experienced the many stimuli that they encountered in the course of a day?

I suppose I should have connected those dots long before then, since by that point I’d already lived for several decades unable to get within 10 feet of tuna salad–a toxic, noxious substance that most other people (were they superhuman?) seemed able both to smell and eat (the horror!) without becoming mortally ill.

If our senses and individual experiences can play such a strong role in determining the particular quality of our moment-by-moment experience, what about our beliefs?  How do they color the different worlds we each open our eyes to every morning? How do they filter all the inputs that come whizzing through our atmosphere?  Walking through a crowded store or driving on the interstate, just imagine how many different worlds are sailing by you–uniquely shaped by experiences, molded by beliefs, colored by judgments. No two exactly the same.

Which planet do you live on? What’s the air and environment like? How’s the quality of life? Does it support and nourish you?

If not, consider moving to a new one. You don’t need a rocketship to get there. Instead, hitch your wagon to a couple of new beliefs. With that kind of power pulling you, you can have your pick of the stars.

Disclaimer

You heard it here first: I don’t know what I’m doing.

Yep, I really don’t.  I have some pretty strong beliefs about what methods work and lots of evidence that they work; however, to be honest, I don’t know much about anything.  To me, “know” is just code for “believe very strongly.”  And I stay open to the possibility that my beliefs will shift and, as I work on myself and with others, that my understanding of what is most effective will continue to evolve. So, if yer lookin’ for the Final Answer, you’ll need to look elsewhere. I commit to give you my very best, and if my understanding of what is best shifts, what I tell you here and in my practice will also shift.

Here’s another one: I write a blog that deals extensively with self-judgment.  I speak with authority on the issue. I help others beat self-judgment.  I even get paid to do it.  And yet, I still judge myself.

Does this make me a hypocrite?  Am I like a therapist who works with patients struggling with eating disorders while myself secretly binging and purging?  Or a pointy-fingered televangelist who indulges in the same “sins” he so energetically denounces in others?

No, I don’t think it makes me a hypocrite. It makes me an expert.  Because I don’t hide it, I don’t judge my judging, and I don’t wallow in it.  I use the very tools that I advocate to others to work my way through my self-judgments.  I know the tools work, because they have worked (and continue to work) for me.

Also, I don’t think of self-judgment negatively, like a chronic illness.  Rather, it’s my valued teacher. One of the keys to overcoming self-judgment is to make friends with it, even to feel gratitude for it.  That might sound counter-intuitive, but it’s an important point.  Judging ourselves is a way that we try to take care of ourselves, because we have been well-schooled as a culture in the importance of using unhappiness as a tool to motivate ourselves to change.

I don’t think it’s an especially effective tool, but it can be the stimulus and the portal to complete transformation if we approach it with gentleness and curiosity.

And that, in my book, is something to be grateful for.