I'm sorry I haven't called or written in so long.
I would say I've been busy... but you would know that's a lie. You've seen me start this letter three times this week before running off to play Farmville or Mario Kart or call someone I didn't even want to talk to or do the dishes or just stare at the ceiling.
I wonder if you find it as hard to talk to me as I do you. I imagine you must.
I still always try to honor the promise that I made myself 11 years ago before I was baptized. Whenever I do pray, I try to say thank you more than I say please.
Thank you for allowing me to live this long, and for helping me to survive more than I ever thought I would. Thank you for giving me my intelligence and a mind that sometimes feels so much it borders on madness.
If you really are omniscient, if you're able to think the thoughts and feel the feelings of every tiny little being in the universe... I'm sorry. I can't imagine shouldering that kind of burden. Sometimes I can't bear to live within my own mind. Six billion more like me... I shudder to think.
My humblest apologies, for us.
Thank you for all the wealth you've given me, and all of us. I have a good home and food, I have clean running water and unnecessary amenities by the millions. I am very rich, and I know this... even though it's easy to forget when I get an overdraft alert or collections calls by the dozen. On the world scale of riches... these things in themselves signal luxury.
Thank you for my health. A body that always gets up out of bed, never fails me, and has yet to ever break down.
I won't talk about my wishes. The things I need help with, guidance on... you already know them. You see me sitting with these hurts weighing heavy on my heart, day in and day out. You hear my whimpers and complaints, you watch me crying and feeling sorry for myself. You see me struggle, sometimes feeling like a trout flopping about the shore. On nights like tonight, you see me sit for hours looking for the motivation to get up make myself food. Again I wonder if I frustrate you as much as I do myself. This time I'm going to venture to guess... no. You are much more patient than I am. Thankfully.
Thankfully.
I cling to the mantra hung around my neck and I pray that I do not get lost in my pain.
Sometimes I feel very lost.
Maybe we should talk about that some time....
me
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
for the Bible tells them so
These evening I went with my ex-girlfriend to a screening of For the Bible Tells Me So that she put together with the LGBT group at her Church (a United Church of Christ in Lexington).
I don't know where to start.
Most of the viewers were the teenage members of the church. And it was truly amazing to see their incredulous reactions to the film. Having grown up in the self-described "bubble" of liberal Lexington, the kids had no real concept of the sort of blind hatred and discrimination from "Christians" chronicled in the film. Their naivety was beautiful and refreshing. I hope that for everyone younger than me from this point in history on, this sort of reaction is the norm.
Having grown up in Colorado with a family from backwoods Missouri, the scenes in the movie felt like a painful personal memory. My own coming out - to myself - culminated in the beginning of my junior year at the University of Northern Colorado. It became an unavoidable truth that I could no long deny. For more than six months I grieved furiously, crying myself to sleep. The pain was intense. It led to two hospitalizations and months of suicidality. I would have done anything to change myself. I hated that this was me. I hated my fragile self even more than I did before.
It was at this opportune moment that my University was visited by the Westboro Baptist Church, led by hatemonger Fred Phelps and his "God-hates-fags" sign-toting followers. He came in full-force, as he always did to Northern Colorado in the fall (to protest the annual Wyoming/Colorado State homecoming game, reminding students each year of how many days "Matthew Shepard has been burning in hell").
And there it was. A hard slap to the face. Violently reminding me of what I had learned many years earlier when my parents divorced and my father lost his mind: The Bible is a weapon. And no one hates like Christians.
At this time in college, I wore around my neck a star of David imposed over a Christan cross. I had made it myself, as no readily available jewelry felt authentic to me. With my upbringing I couldn't honestly wear a cross, nor a star. But after the Westboro Church made their entrance... I vividly remember ripping it from my neck. To look at it made me sick. To look at any cross, made me sick.
And I realized this evening that this is the case even still.
I'm an intelligent person. It pains me and makes me ashamed that I have such a negative, visceral reaction to religious iconography.
It's not just because of a single instance. It's not because of Reverend Phelps or Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or any other right-wing nut-jobs. It's because of years and years of denigration. Hatred both brazen and covert. It's because of being told over, and over, and over again that I was an abomination. Told that, in the name of Christ, I am an abomination...
It pains me to admit that when I see a cross - whether atop a church or around someone's neck - I see a symbol of hate. Whenever I hear that someone is "a good Christian," what I really hear is "ignorant and hateful." To me, all of Christianity had become a hate group.
Intellectually I *know* the error of this. I know that the hateful, ignorant people splayed across the news represent only a fraction of a percentage of Christians. I know that hate is not a hallmark of Christianity. Certainly not of true Christianity. But the hatred that I have seen scares me. And it scares me even more how drawn people seem to be to it, and how they buy in so whole-heartedly. How they flock so hungrily to Pat Robertson and James Dobson and so many others like them. Their power scares me. Their influence scares me. Their ignorance and hatred scares me.
I can only keep in mind the reactions of the youth. The shock and incredulity they showed in response to this hatred. It was blissfully foreign to them.
I can only pray, to whatever God, that the naive, loving bubble protecting the youth of Hancock Church can expand enough to engulf us all.
I don't know where to start.
Most of the viewers were the teenage members of the church. And it was truly amazing to see their incredulous reactions to the film. Having grown up in the self-described "bubble" of liberal Lexington, the kids had no real concept of the sort of blind hatred and discrimination from "Christians" chronicled in the film. Their naivety was beautiful and refreshing. I hope that for everyone younger than me from this point in history on, this sort of reaction is the norm.
Having grown up in Colorado with a family from backwoods Missouri, the scenes in the movie felt like a painful personal memory. My own coming out - to myself - culminated in the beginning of my junior year at the University of Northern Colorado. It became an unavoidable truth that I could no long deny. For more than six months I grieved furiously, crying myself to sleep. The pain was intense. It led to two hospitalizations and months of suicidality. I would have done anything to change myself. I hated that this was me. I hated my fragile self even more than I did before.
It was at this opportune moment that my University was visited by the Westboro Baptist Church, led by hatemonger Fred Phelps and his "God-hates-fags" sign-toting followers. He came in full-force, as he always did to Northern Colorado in the fall (to protest the annual Wyoming/Colorado State homecoming game, reminding students each year of how many days "Matthew Shepard has been burning in hell").
And there it was. A hard slap to the face. Violently reminding me of what I had learned many years earlier when my parents divorced and my father lost his mind: The Bible is a weapon. And no one hates like Christians.
At this time in college, I wore around my neck a star of David imposed over a Christan cross. I had made it myself, as no readily available jewelry felt authentic to me. With my upbringing I couldn't honestly wear a cross, nor a star. But after the Westboro Church made their entrance... I vividly remember ripping it from my neck. To look at it made me sick. To look at any cross, made me sick.
And I realized this evening that this is the case even still.
I'm an intelligent person. It pains me and makes me ashamed that I have such a negative, visceral reaction to religious iconography.
It's not just because of a single instance. It's not because of Reverend Phelps or Jerry Falwell or Rush Limbaugh or any other right-wing nut-jobs. It's because of years and years of denigration. Hatred both brazen and covert. It's because of being told over, and over, and over again that I was an abomination. Told that, in the name of Christ, I am an abomination...
It pains me to admit that when I see a cross - whether atop a church or around someone's neck - I see a symbol of hate. Whenever I hear that someone is "a good Christian," what I really hear is "ignorant and hateful." To me, all of Christianity had become a hate group.
Intellectually I *know* the error of this. I know that the hateful, ignorant people splayed across the news represent only a fraction of a percentage of Christians. I know that hate is not a hallmark of Christianity. Certainly not of true Christianity. But the hatred that I have seen scares me. And it scares me even more how drawn people seem to be to it, and how they buy in so whole-heartedly. How they flock so hungrily to Pat Robertson and James Dobson and so many others like them. Their power scares me. Their influence scares me. Their ignorance and hatred scares me.
I can only keep in mind the reactions of the youth. The shock and incredulity they showed in response to this hatred. It was blissfully foreign to them.
I can only pray, to whatever God, that the naive, loving bubble protecting the youth of Hancock Church can expand enough to engulf us all.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
I kidney you
One good/bad thing about training for the 60-mile is the ample time for thinking. It's less so on the treadmill, as most of my focus is on music or how much I hate treadmills, but today was nice enough to walk outside for a bit. Walking outside can be extremely therapeutic. When Francine Shapiro allegedly "invented" EMDR therapy, she did so after realizing how unburdened she felt after taking a walk and watching birds flitter by. I'm looking forward to spring, and warmer weather for the next 20 weeks of my training.
I digress as usual. While walking I began thinking about organ donation. Specifically, live donation and why more people don't do it. Why aren't there movements encouraging live donation? Commercials encouraging that like there are for everything else. Come to think of it, there aren't even campaigns encouraging post-mortem donation, or encouraging people to think about making provisions in the case of brain-death. Organ donation upon death can save up to eight lives. I understand there is a touchy religious component to all this. Is this the problem with live donation?
Obviously some tissues/organs can't be given from a live donor- heart, pancreas, etc.
But if I were asked, or the opportunity presented itself, I would donate an organ without hesitation. I admit, in my lower, most desperate, poverty-striken moments I definitely wished I could auction off any of my desired parts for cold hard cash. And had I found a market, I probably would have- but that black market is disappointingly difficult to locate.
I did try to sell my eggs a couple times, but apparently no one wants to have my babies. I'm going to try not to take this personally and instead chalk it up to a heredity riddled with cancer.
But this isn't what I'm talking about- I'm referring to altruistic donation without compensation- but I found these passages on Wikipedia interesting:
"Two books, Kidney for Sale By Owner by Mark Cherry (Georgetown University Press, 2005); and Stakes and Kidneys: Why markets in human body parts are morally imperative by James Stacey Taylor: (Ashgate Press, 2005); advocate using markets to increase the supply of organs available for transplantation. In a 2004 journal article Economist Alex Tabarrok argues that allowing organ sales, and elimination of organ donor lists will increase supply, lower costs and diminish social anxiety towards organ markets.
Iran has had a legal market for kidneys since 1988, and the market price is of the order of US $1,200 for the recipient. The Economist and the Ayn Rand Institute approve and advocate a legal market elsewhere. They argued that if 0.06% of Americans between 19 and 65 were to sell one kidney, the national waiting list would disappear (which, the Economist wrote, happened in Iran). The Economist argued that donating kidneys is no more risky than surrogate motherhood, which can be done legally for pay in most countries."
In the United States, 110,460 people are awaiting organ donation. Nearly 90,000 of those are awaiting a kidney transplant- a donation which is completely feasible for a living donor (in fact, kidneys from living donors last an average of 3 years longer than those from deceased donors). Another 16,000 of those are awaiting liver donation- also available via living donor.
18 of those awaiting donation will die each day.
Numbers are even larger in some other countries. More than 2 million people need organ transplants in China, 50,000 waiting in Latin America (90% for kidneys), as well as thousands more in Africa.
I'm just saying... perhaps it's the communist approach to organ donation, but I think we have enough for everyone.
As of today, there are approximately 307,006,550 people in the United States.
There shouldn't be an organ donor waiting list.
Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is.
I digress as usual. While walking I began thinking about organ donation. Specifically, live donation and why more people don't do it. Why aren't there movements encouraging live donation? Commercials encouraging that like there are for everything else. Come to think of it, there aren't even campaigns encouraging post-mortem donation, or encouraging people to think about making provisions in the case of brain-death. Organ donation upon death can save up to eight lives. I understand there is a touchy religious component to all this. Is this the problem with live donation?
Obviously some tissues/organs can't be given from a live donor- heart, pancreas, etc.
But if I were asked, or the opportunity presented itself, I would donate an organ without hesitation. I admit, in my lower, most desperate, poverty-striken moments I definitely wished I could auction off any of my desired parts for cold hard cash. And had I found a market, I probably would have- but that black market is disappointingly difficult to locate.
I did try to sell my eggs a couple times, but apparently no one wants to have my babies. I'm going to try not to take this personally and instead chalk it up to a heredity riddled with cancer.
But this isn't what I'm talking about- I'm referring to altruistic donation without compensation- but I found these passages on Wikipedia interesting:
"Two books, Kidney for Sale By Owner by Mark Cherry (Georgetown University Press, 2005); and Stakes and Kidneys: Why markets in human body parts are morally imperative by James Stacey Taylor: (Ashgate Press, 2005); advocate using markets to increase the supply of organs available for transplantation. In a 2004 journal article Economist Alex Tabarrok argues that allowing organ sales, and elimination of organ donor lists will increase supply, lower costs and diminish social anxiety towards organ markets.
Iran has had a legal market for kidneys since 1988, and the market price is of the order of US $1,200 for the recipient. The Economist and the Ayn Rand Institute approve and advocate a legal market elsewhere. They argued that if 0.06% of Americans between 19 and 65 were to sell one kidney, the national waiting list would disappear (which, the Economist wrote, happened in Iran). The Economist argued that donating kidneys is no more risky than surrogate motherhood, which can be done legally for pay in most countries."
In the United States, 110,460 people are awaiting organ donation. Nearly 90,000 of those are awaiting a kidney transplant- a donation which is completely feasible for a living donor (in fact, kidneys from living donors last an average of 3 years longer than those from deceased donors). Another 16,000 of those are awaiting liver donation- also available via living donor.
18 of those awaiting donation will die each day.
Numbers are even larger in some other countries. More than 2 million people need organ transplants in China, 50,000 waiting in Latin America (90% for kidneys), as well as thousands more in Africa.
I'm just saying... perhaps it's the communist approach to organ donation, but I think we have enough for everyone.
As of today, there are approximately 307,006,550 people in the United States.
There shouldn't be an organ donor waiting list.
Maybe I should put my money where my mouth is.
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