Tag Archives: death

Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly Fond Of Each Other

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I saw this news item from thinkprogress.org:

 

“Republican House Leader Vows To Use ‘Power Of Humiliation’ To Undermine LGBT Program”

My first reaction was a knee-jerk one of course. “What is it to you?” What is it about gay people that gets these particular people all worked up? I’ve always wanted to know that. My curiosity of course is somewhat rhetorical as it’s pretty much obvious that much of this comes straight (ouch, pun) out of the pulpit and is certainly reinforced by the mirror maze of political self-convincing talk.

What would these people do if they were faced with the reality of what they say? The subject of their ire is the Mental Health Services Administration’s book titled “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” So, what about this document? The title is really quite plain and explanatory and being a gay man, and knowing my particular niche culture gives me a unique viewpoint on this particular issue. Is it important? Do you think that people who are sick should be cared for, that people who are despondent and without hope should be helped? What are your thoughts on suicide? This gets right to the heart of it. I bet a lot of these people are upright god-fearing Christian types, they hail from Oklahoma and there is a stereotype, lets face it, about that region being rather salt-to-the-earth and quite red when it comes to politics. Sit back and let’s think for a moment about what your self-professed lord and savior, Jesus Christ, would think about “Provider’s Introduction to Substance Abuse Treatment for Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay and Transgender Individuals.” Your lord and savior wandered around healing the sick, he never asked anyone if they were gay, lesbian, or transgendered. It just didn’t matter to him. People who cared for the sick like he did, he said, would be favored in God’s sight because they cared. Care. That’s what it really gets down to, who cares and who does not? Who hides behind a carapace of bigoted ignorance and who really cares? For these people in this meeting, all of them who didn’t stand up, who didn’t stomp their foot on the ground and argue against this – all of them – how can you face your self-professed lord and savior who you see every Sunday, nailed to a crucifix? Yes, he died to absolve you on sin, but when he was alive, when he was teaching – what was that part? Did you all miss that part? In your haste to be absolved of your sins, perhaps you missed everything up until the climax and after it was all over, you just rolled over and fell asleep?

These are valid questions that I would love answers to. I would dearly enjoy facing these people after we all march through the stations of the cross together. Jesus healing the lepers, Jesus bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus and the children. Then turn to me, turn to a younger me, turn to any gay man, lesbian, or transgendered person and spit out that vitriol about the “Gay Agenda”.

Ma’am, yes, we do have a Gay Agenda. You caught us red-handed. Our agenda is simple. We are in pursuit of ending suffering of the people who are like us. The kids who grow up bullied and turn to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain of being mocked for being different. Not the color of our skin, not anything patently obvious like that, but mocked for who we love. You mock us over love. How can you face Jesus Christ when you mock people for loving? Wasn’t Jesus all about Love? Isn’t that what he preached? Love each other, be good to each other, and for the love of god, stop killing each other! So, where’s the love? That’s what the agenda is. We want to save ourselves and people like us. We want to reduce the suffering, we want to catch the sad and hold them tight and tell them that they are not alone. We want to rescue people who are so alone and unhappy that all they want to do is hang, shoot themselves, or drink or take drugs until they die.

So, is this document that the Mental Health Services Administration is providing a good thing or a bad thing? What are your feelings on dead children? How about young men and women dying at their own hands? What about that? How does that stand up to your fear of some undefined pink menace coming for you and yours?

Jesus Christ My Ass.

 

An Open Letter to State Senator Tonya Schuitmaker

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State Sen. Tonya Schuitmaker votes for bill to exempt Michigan-made guns from federal regulations | MLive.com.

Dear State Senator Schuitmaker,

I read the article above and I understand the political drive that stands behind your decision to pursue this action but as a concerned citizen of Kalamazoo Michigan I beg you to reconsider your actions. Regulating guns is actually part of the directive from the Second Amendment, an amendment that I know you hold very near and dear to your heart. The text of it contains this phrase “A well-regulated militia” and so, in that context we both can agree.  The state has a well-regulated militia, represented primarily by the National Guard, and all the state, county, town, and township Police. What makes Michigan-made guns so special? Do you think that somehow exempting Michigan from these regulations, which you know would never work anyways, would somehow bring jobs, money, or praise to our beleaguered state? The answer Senator is not more guns, but well-regulated militias. Well regulated militias with well-regulated guns.

Let us put talk about politics aside just briefly and discuss what I am really getting at here. How many people must be killed before guns lose their allure to you? How many perforated children must lie dead at your feet for you to consider that perhaps stricter controls on guns, and yes, gun manufacturing may be a good idea? I and the rest of the citizenry would really quite like to know. If you have not seen the news recently we have two epidemics sweeping the land. One is influenza, and the other is gun crimes. While there is little to nothing that a legislator can do about influenza, you can do something about access to guns for these criminals. Let us speak plainly here, people are broken. Your citizenry are sick. Many people have untreated and undiagnosed mental disorders which interfere with rational cognition yet these people have no problem acquiring guns and ammunition and killing other people. These are criminals, and the law does not prevent them from accessing guns.

The classic republican design for guns is rooted not in lawful behavior but actually in mutually assured destruction. Republicans would quite enjoy it if every person was armed, because then the notion of gun violence, in the republican way of thinking, would evaporate. This design may work and I admit there may be something to it worth at least thinking about, but there is one problem to this design. Some citizens are mentally ill. Would you hand a mentally ill person a weapon and expect them to rationally consider mutually assured destruction? What if they are plagued by voices or have rage control problems? What does the republican model say in that situation? It devolves into a mexican standoff, moments before a blood bath. The Republican Party has a choice. You can go either way forward from the fork of gun control or addressing the mental health crisis in America. You can’t have it both ways. Either everyone gets guns and the mentally ill are cared for or there are strict gun controls and the mentally ill are left as they are.

So, Senator Schuitmaker, as a concerned voter in Kalamazoo I ask that you please reconsider this position. You can think of any part of your constituency when you make these decisions. The potential victims, men, women, and children and the various mentally ill people who mingle amongst us. We don’t ask for gun bans, but we do ask for gun regulations and I am willing to trade damaging the economics of gun manufacturers in this state so that we do not have to endure any more headlines about a field of dead children.

Reagan’s 100th

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Poring over the morning news I ran across a news entry that spoke about Reagan’s 100th Birthday. Much like how a very strong odor can key on a memory and bring a flood of remembered things back into your mind, so did this. I grew up with Ronald Reagan as President. I remember the Cold War with the USSR and I remember “Mr. Gorbachev, Tear Down This Wall!” speech that Ronald Reagan gave.

This man has accumulated a halo around him that places him just beneath the Holy Trinity itself for Christian conservatives. The memory of this man and his presidency bring many overheard arguments between my parents as I started to learn that when two people are dedicated to polar opposites, that the law of attraction is mostly relevant for magnets. I don’t think anyone really regards the man, Ronald Reagan any longer. Death has transformed him from a person to a canvas, it has sucked out his 3rd dimension and converted him into a handy surface that anyone can use to their heart’s content. The man is dead, how could he complain at how his memory is treated?

Conservatives pray to him. They read what he wrote, what he said, and what he stood for as slightly less important than the New Testament in the Bible, but way more important than anything else. His political life has been transformed into a conservative ideal, and if you fashion a hand grenade of Reagan’ness and pull the pin and lob it into a GOP gathering they all will turn to the light and get very quiet and pray to the Reagan-y-Explody-Goodness. The fascination they have borders on the fanatical, there are terms for what they are afflicted with – you could call it hero-worship, enthrallment to the cult of personality, a whole host of things. For a segment of our political spectrum Ronald Reagan is the second coming of Jesus Christ. I’m surprised they haven’t tried to force the hand of the church and have him sainted.

Now, for the Liberals, Ronald Reagan is something just as precious, but completely opposite. He’s a flame-eyed monster bent on world domination and more shifty criminal acts than you can shake a stick at. Liberals remember the Contras and Sandinistas, all the underhanded dirty tricks and the policies that brought anger and rage. Death brought Reagan to a canvas and Liberals painted that canvas with their impression of the man, casting him not in a saintly light, but one of monstrousness and epic Mordor-class evil. For the conservatives savior, he’s the Liberals bane.

If ever you want a handy guide to political polarity, simply drop Reagan’s name and watch the response. If you see a halo, wistful eyes, and te-deum’s forming then you have yourself a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. If however you notice some frothing, restlessness, agitation, and perhaps the construction of effigies that are set on fire, then you are facing a liberal.

I personally celebrate the fact that he’s very much dead and can’t form any new political opinions or wield any political power. It’s not that I sought his death, that I prayed for his untimely demise, but I did thank the Light when he did die. This is in stark contrast to the oedipal-obsessed spawn of Reagan’s Vice President. For that son-of-a-bitch (the term is apt) I will hold a very large party and feast upon his death, celebrating the worlds freedom from that unbearable monster. Reagan is just as much a monster, but his corpse in the ground tempers my anger into a kind of wistful fuzzy disgust.

So, for the 100th Anniversary of Reagan’s Birth, I mark it with this blog post, I bite my thumb and I spit on the ground. And that’s all I’m giving it.

Little Lights

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When the worst things imaginable happen, the most unlikely people sprout wings and feathers. When Scott’s father began his downward spiral the hidden angels who were always quietly standing there stood up, came forward, gently shrugged and unfurled their wings and surrounded us with understanding, solace, and light.

Losing someone like this is a box of broken glass. Each movement, each discovery, the memories and reminders are fresh and sharp and each one is a shooting agony. There are blessings that surround us. I am most thankful that I was able to deliver Scott in time for him to take advantage of what remaining lucidity remained at his fathers command and that we were all able to say goodbye.

The emotional hurricane peaked at 11:45 when Scott’s Father passed on. The storm built, it came, and it passed leaving the survivors stunned and numb. Saying goodbye, especially in this situation is one of life’s most unpleasant knots. Nobody wanted to let go and nobody wanted to let the suffering rage on. It’s an unloving chain, sickness, debilitation, and suffering. All rushing headlong into something everyone knows is coming, nobody wants to face, and once it arrives, nobody truly can cope with adequately. Losing someone this central, this important can only be assuaged by the flow of time.

I am here to support Scott in his time of need. His and his families loss has left a Daniel-shaped hole behind and I’ve witnessed their coping. Through their loss and the emotional turmoil I find myself preoccupied with helping them cope and through that, naturally extending this fragile emotion through time and looking what is to come.

It isn’t until you lose a father-figure that you realize you had one all along. I have two more. Love, as I described it while consoling earlier today, is both the most compelling blessing and the worlds most horrendous curse. Expressing this emotion is something we all really should do as often as we can, to bask in the blessing before the curse of loss sets in. There are more fathers to lose, and I found myself dreading what is to come.

For Norm, I didn’t grow up with him as a father but he truly is a father to me. I will share his loss with his natural children and I’ll be on treaded ground. The real emotional pain comes when you have deferred telling your loved ones that you love them because they aren’t going anywhere, what’s the rush? Until they are gone and the words ring out in hollow space and the only comfort is the wellspring of your faith. Telling them that you love them, especially between sons and fathers is something that everyone wishes they could do much more of, but end up with the knowledge of the love and watching a mussy emotion transfigured into respect.

For Joseph, that’s a wholly different matter. I am my fathers only son. I was a spectator for Daniel, I am a player for Norm, but for Joseph I am more. In many respects I’m going to be very alone with my father when he passes on. The thing that hurts the most is that the love I have for him is the most understood and the most rendered-respect. There won’t be any regret for any of my fathers, but I do know that this was the easiest for me, and if this was hell, the others I can only imagine.

It boils down to Love. Do you love them enough to honor and cherish them when they are alive? If so, then that Love carries on through death and enables you to let them go. Loving someone enough to want to keep them countered with loving them enough to beg mercy on their behalf and celebrating their lives and the blazing glory of their passing. Love is both a blessing and a curse, and I wouldn’t be shocked in the least to discover that the entire Universes purpose is to explore Love. Love makes the world go round.

On Death and Dying

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My experience with Death is limited to the loss of both my paternal and maternal grandmothers. I have stood witness to their passing as well as the ramifications that sprang from those events.

Both of their passing, and my curious individualistic faith has formed the basis for my perceptions and thoughts about death and dying. I lost my Christian faith many years ago. I was raised as a Christian protestant, in the Presbyterian tradition, but I have developed my own unique viewpoints as I have lived my life and experienced it.

There is no real death in this world. The death that we know is one integral step we must take on our path. Each life is filled with steps, and they all lead somewhere, we are born, we grow up, we lead our lives, and eventually we die. I approach death both with metaphors and metaphysics. My metaphorical approach to death is the bowling analogy. Life is like a game of bowling: the shoes to rent, the ball to fondle, the lane to look down and goals to reach. Our lives are lead as the bowl hurdles down the alley, precariously streaking along a certain path, never one we think we selected but the path that was meant for us, one that could reach the pins or reach the gutter. When the ball strikes the pins, we die. While the pins knock over, they do not stop existing, they are gathered up, reassembled, and the ball is returned for another game. We are the pins, we are the ball, our death is when the ball strikes the pins and the gathering up and reassembly is the job of God.

When our lives end, when the ball strikes the pins, we do not simply cease to exist. There is a part of us, the part of us that is aware of awareness. It’s more than simply our consciousness, as consciousness fits within the crib of our sentience, it is the part of us that is just as permanent as the rest of the surrounding Universe. This part is our soul. When we die, the soul is released from the body but it does not just evaporate into nothingness. The soul is purpose. The soul is both the selector of the path and the path itself.  In each of our lives our souls are driven to experience a certain path, and we take that path whether we are conscious of it or not. For most people, they remain asleep to their souls and consider the events of their lives to be chaotic and random. Other people who are on the path of awakening to enlightenment understand how their live is structured and respect and have faith in the path.

This touches upon Good and Evil. The path selected is a means unto itself. People attribute valuations of “Good” and “Evil” to explain events that defy logical or rational description. It is because the consciousness cannot apprehend true reality that we are lead to make this fundamental attribution error. We don’t know, and without any further proof to the contrary we affix a label to events, calling them “Good” or “Evil”. Then we rail at a God who allows “Evil” into our world. In each situation the “Evil” serves a purpose that we cannot apprehend with consciousness. There is no real “Good” or “Evil”. There are only souls being and making paths for our bodies to follow from lifetime to lifetime. Death is not “Evil”. Death is merely a part of the path, one step that leads to another. It is pointless to upset oneself over “Good” versus “Evil” as any upset to a souls path never is permanent, the soul will select a path to follow that it must, irrespective of free will to the contrary.

The matter of enlightenment still remains. When consciousness awakens and expands it can break free from Maya, the illusion of reality, and catch glimpses of the reality the soul exists in. The rewards of awakening are immediate: you can catch a sense to your path, you are filled with the serenity of knowing you are where you are supposed to be and that you are doing what you are meant to be doing. That you are on the path, your path. I can only imagine that when a person achieves true enlightenment, true awakening, their consciousness has a full view of their souls, an incredible thing to contemplate.

I also approach death analytically. I see the body as a very fragile yet exceptionally complicated tuner. When we are born, we don’t have the biological complexity required to fully ‘tune in on’ our souls, so from birth to about 3 years old we are wholly indistinguishable from our nearest evolutionary progenitors, the chimpanzees. After our 3rd year, our bodies show enough raw complexity that tuning the souls attached to our bodies can begin. This tuning goes on throughout life, constantly getting more and more refined. The soul uses the body at that point, it’s a type of symbiosis. As we age the soul begins to dominate the relationship. Our bodies aren’t immortal, they were never meant to be. They have accidents, become damaged, and erode. When the body is damaged or begins to die, the soul begins to depart the body. Death is not a pinnacle moment, it is a process – we call it dying and when people are dying, their souls gently slide out of tune with their bodies. Considering everything, this is quite possibly the most merciful part of life, especially when the body is trapped in extreme suffering. When I saw my loved ones progressing along the route of the dying I have seen this ‘tuning out’ for myself. The soul moves on, it cannot die because it is not physical – it is energetic. I have seen my loved ones alive and animate, and I have seen their bodies dead and inanimate. The dead bodies closely resemble my loved ones, but they appear different, without the spark of the soul, the body is just a shell. The connection of the soul to the body actually looks like something, when the soul is gone, you know it, when the soul is departing, you can see it go.

Death is not the end. Death is a step, a transformation, the soul released so it can discover a new body. It has been my experience that souls do not flit about like fireflies, but rather tend to ‘flock’ together with other souls. From lifetime to lifetime through reincarnation each of our souls touch each other over and over. The roles, the genders, the relationships, they are always in flux, but the souls always find ways to be reborn together, to ‘flock’ together, if not by selecting bodies that are near each other, they arrange the path to bring the bodies together over and over. Our human drama plays out over and over, we dance with the same people we’ve always danced with, from lifetime to lifetime.

So then what is the purpose of it all? Christians believe that death is the route to the afterlife. A place of perfection and perfect happiness. My experiences, even my past-life memories which I do have possession of, indicate to me that the afterlife is not the destination. It may be ‘a’ destination for some, but at least not for me and the souls that I recognize in this lifetime. I think instead that the purpose of life is experience. That souls enjoy Maya, they enjoy the challenge, the struggle and in some ways they enjoy the suffering. I believe it to be more a matter of a fascination with experience, the new situations and the learning that drives life.

If death isn’t the end of existence and souls are born together over and over again, then there is absolutely nothing to fear and death should be regarded as just another adventure in living. It is a natural and unavoidable destination for the body and a chance for your soul to continue on to find new ways and new experiences. It shouldn’t be full of sorrow, it should be a celebration of a life lived well. Paths selected, existence experienced, love enjoyed.