Dear fellow traveler:
You asked me to write some thoughts and advice as I am now expected to know how to avoid the pains of reconciling the spirit in me and the artificial boundaries imposed by Patriarchal religious institutions. In my case I believed my acts of self-destruction were rebelling against the moral dictates of sobriety, chasteness, and self-control. I was fortunate to encounter a spiritual community created by two drag queens and a PhD candidate who wanted to help those stricken by HIV. These people saw the value of people caring about people in a healthy community. The therapy I received was probably what saved my life. They saw themselves in my story though at the time, I had no idea why I felt as I did. I know now that my path has taken these turns because I have never lost that core value taught by a rabbi of seeing that each of us is capable of being a source of healing or a source of suffering. The conflict comes when religion comes between me and God and tells me I am not part of "God's chosen family" if I am a queer. God must be a just a little queer also if my physical being was made in his/her image.
I must have been good at keeping secrets because I could never admit to my gender dysphoria and also had filed a certain event of my early childhood as a "consensual encounter." Not until after my father's passing in 1995 did my sub-conscious allow the event to resurface. Cloaked in metaphor I wrote a poem about a "little boy in a cave".
Bundled up in my string of serial monogamous relationships and alcoholism was the guilty shame of my religious upbringing which told me my desires were wrong and my internalized homophobia was a source of depression and self-loathing. After getting the monkeys off my back I still had a deep need to find a spiritual outlet and practice. Finding a therapist who had experienced the same wounding taught me that we all are healers and we are all spiritual beings. I began to study Buddhism in earnest hoping to be liberated from the bondage of Christian religion and a more universal approach to compassion. I met Mat Fox in 1999 in Oakland. He was ex-communicated from the Roman Catholic Church for teaching liberation theology in Central American during the time when Father Romero was assassinated in El Salvador.
He taught me the value of creation cosmology and non-violence in envisioning a new order.
He is also a promoter of deep ecumenism and the integration of the ancient ways with the Wisdom tradition of Sophia. Not anything like the teachings of the temperance minded Evangelical Christians. Inside the spirit still sought meaning and found ritual celebration and body prayer to be a way to reintegrate spirit and creation into my life. So the question becomes "what are the most worthwhile ways to express the cosmic Christ?"
Service to mankind. The reckoning with a society still coming to grips with a minority that is of course of a different set of drives and yet we have the same desire to be happy and free from suffering. If the dominant majority denies this similarity there is oppression. If I do this for them it is oppression internalized and I am doing the work of the Inquisitor/Inquisition which under a new name still exists to this very day.
I guess my first advice is to find a suitable community which treats you fairly and justly and who will stand up for your right to freedom. Support in the quest for understanding of the Powers that inflict suffering by allowing oppression and discrimination and hopefully finding ways to transcend this false premise and create a new paradigm based upon the true teachings of Jesus St Francis and the other mystics like us who try to bring us deeper into the realm of the divine nature of this dimension.
The second thing is to realize our deepest wounds can be our greatest teachers. I have known the pain of separation from the things I love because I could not find a reason for the seeming injustice in the world. Battling the causes of poverty hunger racism and ignorance if I could just not worry about getting baited or attacked because I am not
acceptable to the self-appointed Mullahs and Self-righteous homophobes who want to burn me like the witches of the Inquisition. If I carry the religious message to the world I have no hope of making anything but more of the same thinking that put me on the therapy couch for many years.
It is a battle for control of the minds of men. Religion creates an all-or-nothing mentality. Get it right this is your last chance before hell and thereby creating more suffering by teaching intolerance and hatred. Which are the artifacts of hell that the devil left behind when he was cast away. The Christians are great at casting things out. About 2/3 of humanity which are non-Christian are deemed suitable for conversion or "death by patriot" reincarnations of the crusading warrior of the middle ages. We haven't evolved that far it still is an operational method to oppress and subdue the poor the weak and the pagan(read GBLT). It also allows the inequity to go on unabated.
So how do I make myself better at defending all my relations?
By being true to what I have learned about my own life. We are all born and all will die. In the middle lies the bardo and what we do with our minds/story is what is really our work of taking care of each other. As the healers have taught me I try to make a little less pain and suffering by being creative caring and taking only what I need and sharing what has been freely given to me.My experience strength and hope.
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