ST. Gertrude’s Abbey – an at Home Monastic Practice

Tag: kindness

  • Reclaiming Christianity

    By The Abbott

    Christians and Christianity have gotten a bad reputation in the last several…thousand years. And with good reason! From the frightening Crusades of the Middle Ages that brought with them pestilence and death (and apparently cinnamon and pepper…how gay were the Crusades?) to the most recent walking Christian carbuncle, Kim Davis the four-time married, hillbilly hooker from Kentucky who is now bringing a challenge to gay marriage because her legal fees have forced her to sell off her entire Beanie baby collection and her momma’s Elvis memorabilia. Christians deserve their bad rap. The fact is that there are among the Christian world those of us who think and feel differently…about all of it.

    I am a gay Catholic. Openly. Without apologies to the gays or to the Catholics. Despite my faith, I am also not what one might call traditional or conservative. Some might call me a “cafeteria Catholic” – one who likes to pick and choose from a buffet of beliefs which ones they will follow and which they will pass on. I don’t see that as an insult. If that means that I choose to use the good sense God gave me as a reasoning and logical creature rather than blindly follow a group of fussy old men in dresses and custom millinery over the precipice? Fine. However, I do choose to follow those teachings that: 1) make at least a little sense to me, and 2) do not negate, in any way, the Jesus of the Gospels. Some might even call me a heretic. I like that word. It’s not one heard much anymore. (Like “facts” or “hypocrite” or “Nazi sympathizer”)

    Conservative Christians have polluted the faith in a way that should, to a sensible person, shock them. They have taken a brown man from the Middle East who taught as his central teaching to love your neighbor as you would love yourself and turned him into a fusion of WWE wrestling, a monster truck rally, a 4th of July fireworks display and a gun show. And these people have no shame in it. They produce men like Pete Hegseth who do not bat an eye when they use religion as a club to beat down gay people or, as of lately, women. Or J.D. Vance who twists the words of Christ to fit the putrid narrative emanating from America’s Hitler. Then there is the cowardice of the supposed Christian Right. They would rather pander to a power hungry, megalomaniac in a full diaper than put the breaks on it all and stand up for real Christian principles. These include compassion, kindness, understanding, generosity and hospitality. You cannot go to your megachurch’s bake sale and praise Jesus on Sunday and then send your fellow humans to a concentration camp or take away their basic rights the next and still call yourself a Christian. There is nothing Christian or divine about cruelty, or oppression.

    I am, like every human born before and after me, a sinner. Sin is a word that has become synonymous with judgment and condemnation. Like nobody ever has made a mistake before. Sin is used in a strange way by Christians who I believe may have forgotten what that word really entails. It is not saying “shit, or fuck or damn.” It is not drinking too much at a party. It isn’t being gay. It isn’t baking a cake for a lesbian wedding. To sin is to ignore our relationship with creation. When we imprison someone for being gay, or discriminate against them for being trans, or black or Puerto Rican or judge someone…for any reason…that is sinning. To sin is to clear cut a forest for cattle grazing, or cause a wildfire in order to have a gender reveal party, or to pollute the air and water for profit. Sin is to cause offense to God and to others by forgetting them and doing whatever we want. At its root, sin is selfishness, cowardice and hubris all rolled into one.  

    Sin is a wound. But if we know anything at all about the Jesus from the Gospels, he really enjoyed healing people. Those wounds only drew him closer to the people. When we call to mind our shortcomings and our moments of failure, even our moments of darkness, it does not need to be shameful or painful. It is when we bring these dark gifts to God that he delights the most. Recognizing our failure and endeavoring to do better is at the root of what real Christianity is all about. Redemption is not some end times ticket to heaven. It happens right now. When we say we’re sorry for doing something thoughtless and then make up for it, that is redemption. When we make billions of dollars from the poor but then seek to give it all back in ways that augment their lives, that is redemption. I ask God not just for forgiveness, because he gives that willingly and at all times and for all things. I ask him for the strength to bear it all. I ask for wisdom. Sometimes I ask to just keep my head above water.

    Noticing that you are in the presence of God should be something one constantly tries to do because whether you take note of it or not, you are always in his presence. Churches. Temples. The Holy Land, Mecca. Bodh Gaya. Varanasi. Rome. All holy places. All places where God’s presence dwells. But none of these places have more or less presence than where you are right now. Your shower. Your bed. Your favorite chair. Your least favorite chair. The bus stop. Your doctor’s waiting room. On the toilet. In a park. In your office. Each of these places also hold within them the entirety of God’s presence. The difference between St. Peter’s Basilica and your bathroom-aside from several billion dollars worth of priceless art and architecture and the fact that you can’t roam around St. Peters naked- is the perception that it is holier. But God is not more or less present in either place. While a beautiful church, temple, synagogue, or mosque might more easily invite prayer and meditation, they are not more full of God. To deny that is to negate the very nature of God.

    The seasons are reminders of the awesomeness of God. Not awesome like in an old Keanu Reeves’ movie but rather “full of awe.” The wisdom present and on full display for anyone to witness during these times of year truly reminds me that existence itself is the greatest miracle. Trees during springtime know precisely when to flower and bud. Birds know the right day to start their migration. Bees know when to stretch their little wings, do some dusting in the hive and get back to work. Animals know when to come out of hibernation. No one reminds them. They don’t get a text alert. In the summer, these creatures all continue in the vein of the miraculous. Just glance at any leaf- really, any leaf. And the workings of just that one leaf should silence you in amazement and gratitude. And that’s just the one leaf.

    I once had an astronomy professor who told our class that, “There is no way to know how many universes have existed before this one and no way to know how many more will come after it.” The miracle of this universe unfolds before us in every moment of our lives. “The Kingdom of God is spread upon the earth yet people do not see it.” (The Gospel of Thomas). Instead, we see commodities. We see money. We see opportunities to sell crap. We see QVC and Facebook Marketplace. When we have re-learned the sacredness of all things, maybe then we might feel and witness the presence of God everywhere again and not constantly demand signs and wonders.

    As a gay Catholic, the reclamation of Christianity for the sacred, for the contemplative, for the meditative, for compassion, for Christ, is an endeavor that is possibly a losing one. But God takes great delight in his little ones and it is in the underdog, the true David’s of this world, where the glory of God is made manifest. The Beatitudes, Christ’s message to the exhausted people of the 1st century begin with happy are the poor and continue with a litany of weakness as the dwelling place of true blessedness. Christ is not present in the rich. He is not present in the powerful. He is not present in the oppressor. He is not present in the bigot. He is not present in the violent. Christ is present in the smallest of people and in the tiniest of spaces. And always where one least expects him.

  • Kill Big Bird

    by The Abbot

    My mother used to joke with others that my first word was “agua.” It wasn’t that I was obsessed with water or that I grew up in a Hispanic or Spanish-speaking household. We were a poor white family living in a working-class suburb of Detroit. When I was a child, I only watched a handful of television shows –Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, Mr. Dressup, The Barabara Mandrel Show, The Incredible Hulk. But my mornings started off with Sesame Street.

    Those familiar with Sesame Street know they covered the basics in counting, and the alphabet, and mixed them in with songs and lessons on what it meant to share, be a good kid, and how it’s okay to be a little different. It’s Not Easy Being Green was a Kermit the Frog staple. Sesame Street, being located near the very diverse and multicultural Alphabet City in lower Manhattan was home to all sorts of people, puppets and monsters. There were the ambiguous roommates Bert and Ernie who lived below Luis and Maria, the Latino owners of the neighborhood Fix-It Shop. It’s not that they exclusively spoke Spanish but on occasion they spoke it. Telly the Monster and Grover were often curious when they heard it and neither Luis nor Maria minded explaining a little of their mother tongue. One of the words they focused on a lot was “agua.” I don’t know why. Sesame Street was not aquatic. Big Bird was not a giant duck. Cookie Monster did not list among his many hobbies – water skiing. Still I picked up agua joyfully pointing out agua to the adults in my life no matter where I encountered it.

    It should now come as no surprise that neoconservatives went after public broadcasting again. They’ve been trying to get rid of it since Nixon was in office. Mr. Roger’s himself, in a last-ditch effort to save public television testified before Congress not only extolling the virtues of public TV but also admonishing lawmakers who found more value in bombs and less in kindness and curiosity. Programming on public TV is everything that conservatives and Republicans hate. It makes no money. It features no violence. It rarely references religion or Jesus through talking cucumbers. What it does have are diverse puppet monsters living together, caring about one another and curious about the world they live in. They focus on avoiding littering, being a good citizen, the value of protecting the environment, the importance of being open-minded, and the crucial need to preserve factual history. Children might learn to be nice to someone who is different than they are. They might want to learn more about the Great Migration or the New Deal. They might even want to learn to read – a frightening prospect indeed for a culture bent on controlling the collective mind of the nation. It’s almost comical that the same people who believe their government is trying to manipulate them through chemicals in the air or water or through microchips in vaccines are already completely controlled by nothing more than planned blissful ignorance and broadcasting in an echo chamber on Fox News. No need for harsh chemicals at all! All natural mind control.

    I haven’t watch Sessame Street in many years. I like to think that I had the privilege of growing up during the golden age of Sesame Street. We had Bob, the local music teacher, one of the longest serving cast members who appeared on the show in 1969 and did not leave until 2016. His girlfriend Linda, who was deaf and communicated with others through American Sign Language. Olivia, the fabulous black woman photographer who was also the singing powerhouse. Her brother Gordon, a science teacher, and his wife Susan, a nurse, owned the apartment building at 123 Sesame Street. Mr. Hooper owned the local bodega until he passed away and David, the eccentric hat wearer man took over. There were always children around as the street was kid friendly. Of course there were the Muppets who each represented an aspect of human emotion and experience and were every color of the rainbow. The show also featured a cast of guest stars that rivaled even SNL’s. I had the chance as a 5-year-old boy to see Arthur Ashe talk about tennis and near and far with Grover. James Taylor sang with his guitar and so did Judy Collins. Yo-Yo Ma appeared with his cello. Gregory Hines tap danced in the streets. Madeline Khan famously sang “Sing. Sing a Song.” Don’t worry if it’s not good enough for anyone else to hear. Just sing. Sing a song.

    I cannot imagine the kind of person I would be today if I did not have access to public TV as my second parent. Sesame Street made me curious about a bigger world that I would never have thought existed outside of the suburban street I lived on. How many 5-year-olds are running around singing because Madeline Kahn inspired them or dance because Gregory Hines suggested they do so or to learn more about art and theater because a group of puppet monsters made it fun.

    Republicans hate public television because it dares to suggest that “normal” is something other than white, nationalist, and Christian. PBS portrays a normal that could be just about anything. Sesame Street is the idealized dream of what happens when people stop caring about “what” you are and are rather more concerned with who you are. Children raised on PBS might actually not care that their neighbor is a pigeon hoarding gay man but might care if they’re unkind or bad at sharing. Even Oscar the Grouch, as nasty as he could be, still was loved and even loved others. His best friend in the world was a 4” worm named Slimy.

    PBS is likely a nightmare for Republican parents. I can see it now, Chad a closeted gay man who works every day repairing copiers and his wife Rebecca, a stay at home mom who spends most of the day trying to get her kids to become YouTube celebrities so she can spend more time with her Pilates instructor Reggie, are hosting the local mega church’s bloated pastor and his wife, Sharon, a morbidly obese Tupperware collecting, behemoth in the living room of their modest home in Someplace, Ohio but definitely not Columbus. Suddenly, after Rebecca has served a second cup of coffee and her extremely dry homemade almond roll, little Dallas barges in and proudly asks “Why can’t I tap dance”? or “Why are there no black people in our church?” or “Mommy, what’s diversity?” Rebecca faints immediately. Chad laughs nervously and tries his best to shoo Dallas out of the room while winking at the pastor and saying that kids say the darndest things. The lecherous, sweaty pastor and his blank stare of a wife politely laugh into their lace-trimmed linen napkins but think “Damn PBS.”

    The danger that public broadcasting poses to the conservative establishment is significant. It is no coincidence that ridding the country of both PBS and NPR are part of their party’s life’s work. When you can inspire, at no cost to parents, curiosity, kindness, creativity, and acceptance, you represent a grave threat to a party line that it is better to be rich or rich adjacent than to be kind to someone who is different than you, or to be powerful rather than merciful, or to be a bully when you can be someone’s friend. I feel sorry for Republicans. I really do. Imagine the bland, empty, two-dimensional worlds they inhabit. No depth. No real purpose. No Make-Believe. Just raw, unfiltered ignorance and fear.

  • Make America Beautiful Again

    By The Abbot

    We have upon us a new American Crisis; larger in scale than our war of independence and greater in scope than the Second World War. Has the American promise of democracy and liberty been a lie? Why have we fought and died as a nation for the last 250 years if not for freedom and equality for not just ourselves but ultimately for every free man, woman and child that has walked or will walk this earth.

    Thomas Paine wrote that, “Tyranny, like hell is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.” As Americans, whether liberal, moderate, or conservative, we face a grave threat. An amoral would-be-tyrant with his cowardly sycophants have taken it upon themselves to re-interpret our Constitution as a document of oppression and authoritarianism rather than one of personal liberty and self-government as our founders intended. The fault for this strange and dangerous relativism of law lies with all of us.

    Fear

    Many Americans are frightened and feel forgotten by their government. We are all afraid. Fear is a base emotion for humans. Fear is conceived in ignorance and brings forth her children hatred, arrogance and greed. Fear has always been the most destructive power on earth. Not even the great might of the entire American nuclear arsenal can compare to the collective desolation a terrified humanity can bring to our world and upon one another.

    One unfortunate sadness of Make America Great Again is that nothing great has ever been born from fear. This country’s greatest achievements and its golden eras arise during times of collective national fearlessness. Our founding fathers brought forth this new nation despite incredible fear of death and the British Empire. This nation, when torn in two in 1861, was mended because of brave leadership and the virtue to condemn the great evil of slavery. Our country strove headlong into the first World War and came out the other side of pestilence and death into the august roaring 20s and the prosperity and exuberant joy of that decade. We banded together as an American family to wage war against the most destructive tyranny then known to humankind and fiercely confronted all the terror and evil of Nazi tyranny.

    When our country is not afraid; when our leaders stoke brotherhood instead of discord and understanding instead of ignorance – it is then we become great. We went to the moon. We defeated polio. We dominated world art, music and literature. We made the greatest achievements in science, engineering and technology ever seen in our species and we did it together through brave determination. Any promise to make America great through fear, hate and anger is an empty one.

    Americans have long been known and admired for our ingenuity, our creativity, and our conception of what free people are truly capable of when we help and support one another – no matter what. We have allowed a rogue group of men and women to take our rights, and to distort our freedom. Since the great hope of 1776 and our fledgling experiment of self-government, we have slowly allowed that hope and our power to slip slowly through our own fingers. We have grown lazy and fat in our blissful ignorance. We have relied on others to make up our minds because some have taken it upon themselves to encourage us to fear our own reason- our own mind – our own eyes. We have forfeited our democracy to billionaires and rich corporations. Fear is only displaced by knowledge, wisdom and reason and unlike fear, these virtues require hard work to gain and maintain.

    We find ourselves caught in the jaws of civil discord not seen on this continent since the turbulent years of the 1960s. Then, as now, political leadership was dependent on fear to maintain power. Fear of other races, fear of integration, fear of newly out of the closet gays and lesbians, fear of women defining their own destinies, fear of science, fear of communism.

    A Perilous Ship of State

    The world turns and still we find ourselves stagnant and stuck in the same place. As long as fear rather than reason rules our choices, the great ship of our nation shall remain in the doldrums of democracy. Without the wind of knowledge to billow our sails, we stay stuck in a wide sargasso sea of our own making. We hunger and thirst for direction from our captains and rather than tell us to hoist the main sails, empty the ballast, swab the deck and follow the star to lead us ahead- our captains point their fingers at each other, or worse, their own crew, as the cause of our immobile ship of state.

    “It’s immigrants and refugees taking our jobs and our resources!” shouts our captains. And we rush to throw the immigrants and refugees overboard, but our sails do not billow, our rudder does not move.

    “It’s the gays and the trans and the drag queens!” cries the captains. And we again clamor to throw them into the sea, and again, we do not budge.

    “It’s the left…it’s the right…it’s the socialists…it’s the nationalists!” scream those captains. And still, we rush to throw them overboard too. But what we have all now failed to realize is we are now all in the sea looking up at our ship as our captains look down upon us -all drowning.

    The great sadness in the American debate is not only have we all been thrown overboard by our own family, friends, and neighbors at the insistence of those who care only for power and money, but we have also been doing it consistently and unknowingly for decades. We have lost sight of our purpose together. It was the most fervent wish of the first Americans that we work together to build this great American dream.

    The Preamble Revisited

    The preamble to our Constitution, a document that has in recent years, become the rallying cry of many people who have never read it, can leave no doubt of the kind of country envisioned for us and our children.

    “We the people of the United States”- This was not we the white Protestant men, or we the rich men with land, or we the corporations, or we the billionaires or we the Republicans or we the Democrats. It was we, the people. You. Me. Your liberal gay neighbor. Your conservative straight cousin. Your atheist nephew. Your extra Christian aunt. All of us. Together. Working through a life that does not promise happiness or prosperity without our collective cooperation and recognition of what is required for a good life or in other words-

    “In order to form a more perfect union”- define those things necessary for almost everyone to enjoy a good, peaceful, quiet, just and prosperous life as we work together to: “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

    The great and delicate gift of democracy requires our constant vigilance and care, and it is only together we can end this tide of subjugation to an ultra-conservative elite whose sole aim is to deprive the poor, the working class and the remainder of the middle class of our fundamental and inalienable freedoms.

    We are all indeed on the very brink of forever losing our country. It matters not whether you do or do not support Donald Trump. A nation that has lost its purpose for existence, its essence, its soul transforms into something that only appears to be America. It is a plastic idol of Jesus strewn with star-spangled, red, white and blue bunting who cradles a flag-draped bald eagle in a basket made from machine guns. This is not a country for everyone but only some of us. And that is not good enough.

    America the Beautiful

    Another unfortunate irony of “Make America Great Again” is that those who believe in it do not understand that in addition to fearlessness, a dedicated cultivation of its beauty is required for its greatness. I do not mean solely our majestic, purple mountains or amber waves of grain. I mean the beauty of all our people and our way of life now endangered. Being and staying beautiful is not easy. Ask any woman who spent two-hours getting ready for a date, or any man who worked out for years to compete at the Olympics. Ask any artist how much time went in to learning drawing and painting or a pianist how many hours of practice went in to playing a piece of music in a manner that seemed effortless. Every single one of them would tell you that it took significant work. And now a group of our American brothers and sisters are blindly following a man who has promised “greatness” through fear and without work by following a wide road of populism and scapegoating rather than the hard truth that greatness, and our nation’s beauty is dependent on our collective wisdom, hard work and sacrifice.

    We, unlike the French, or the Swedes or the Chinese, do not need to be tied to a nationality but can create our own. Celebrating and honoring the many wonderful cultures, countries, religions, and creeds that make up our nation can still be done under an umbrella of one American culture. The political group that most clearly defines that culture wins and right now, this is a group of men and women who have chosen an easy, wide road towards how we define America. According to their platform, we are supposed to be white, straight, only one of two genders, Christian, English-speaking, pseudo-patriotic in that we wear the flag as underwear, or a bikini or idolize it by hugging it, and buy into the lie that everyone can be a billionaire with enough hard work. One of the greatest hoodwinks thus far perpetrated on the American people has been convincing all of us who have already worked hard our whole lives long that supporting tax cuts for rich, entitled, “self-made” millionaires, and corporate and banking deregulation are great ideas and that unions, and tax cuts for the poor and middle class are bad ideas. Allowing corporations and financial giants any say in the governing of our country or themselves is like allowing the residents of a prison mental hospital to define the criteria needed for parole.

    Our national message must remind all Americans what this country is supposed to be about. It is time for the remaining men and women of reason stuck in a cataclysmic tug of war take back what is ours – the American ethos.

    Any attempt to reclaim that ethos will require significant effort to make all of us understand how hard and narrow the road to greatness really is. America is multi-colored and multi-cultural, and we take great pride in this vast spectrum. We honor one another’s right to their opinion, their own mind, and their own heart. We delight in self-expression- whether that be in a cowboy hat, a police officer’s uniform, a tutu, a football helmet, a Dior gown or a fabulous wig. We respect the right and liberty of any citizen of this country to practice whatever religion or non-religion they want, so long as they do not attempt to indoctrinate and infiltrate our mechanisms of governance and public education. We are a nation that dozens of cultures, all with their own languages and livelihoods, have colonized and governed. From 20,000 years ago when the first humans trekked across a now-vanished land bridge from Siberia, until today’s migrant workers, the North American continent has been one filled with beautiful civilizations.

    Reclaiming the Dignity of Work

    We are a nation who takes the best of every other nation and augments it through our fearlessness, and our freedom. We believe in the dignity of work – all work and all workers- and acknowledge that no man or woman, no matter how hard they worked ever did it alone. It is about both blue-collar and white-collar workers since both owe their paychecks to someone else and both spend 40 or more hours a week in the employ of another, and in a job they hate. Distinguishing between these workers has done nothing but divide a people who all share the same joys, the same dreams and the same sorrows. It does not matter if you build bridges, do someone’s taxes, clean bathrooms, perform open heart surgery, work on an assembly line, write legal briefs, or drive a truck across country. We each bring something – big or small to a nation that needs every single one of us to contribute something good.  Despite how much the super-rich claim their wealth to be self-made, they quickly forget the institutional vehicles that allowed them to build that wealth. This includes a stable country of laws and regulations. What would Elon Musk be if not for patents to protect his property or where would Jeff Bezos be without safe roads, the internet, or airports? The American people have paid for, built, and maintained all of our infrastructure. Most importantly, America has a middle class capable of consuming enough to make these men and women super rich by paying for those vehicles of civilization in the first place.

    What makes us great is our ingenuity, our “can-do” spirit, and most of all, our ability to lead the world in science, technology, education, art, literature, music, and athletics. I would like to ask this now of all Americans but most especially to those who felt determined to vote once again for Donald Trump – Can we be a nation fostering the greatest culture on earth, with the greatest scientists on earth and with the most abundant food and renewable fuels on earth and do so without having to limit one another? Is taking away the rights of other Americans needed to create and keep America as the leading ideal in our world? Ask yourselves, is it worth destroying half our country to allow only one mind, one culture, and one man to rule it indefinitely? When you think of American greatness is it cowering behind the massive red tie of Trump and the petticoats of his progeny or is it out in front leading, and shaping the world and not succumbing to it? When America was “great”, we were fearless and did not shrink from that responsibility.  

    The road ahead is hard and the way narrow but in order to build a lasting nation, a nation worth fighting and dying for, a nation that will in the centuries to come be the leader in what is to be the human race’s expansion beyond this planet and farther- we must stop our fighting, halt our angry rhetoric, cease these destructive principles and bravely determine together whether we want to live as a nation of free, enlightened people as our founders dreamed or die by the suicide that Lincoln feared.  

  • Pride 2025 Is Weird

    By The Abbot

    “My god! You’re like models! Gorgeous men! So much beauty for one girl.” she said.

    The flamboyance of gays I was with gave her the obligatory patronizing smiles and “Yas Queens” one is expected to give a straight, white woman who compliments you. Try it. Walk up to any fairly friendly looking group of gay men and pay them a compliment and they will return with a variation of “yas queen” or “you go girl” depending on whether they watched The Golden Girls when they first aired or on later syndication on Lifetime.

    “But not you. Not so much.”

    “Pardon me?” I asked.

    “No. Not you.” This woman who only moments before had bestowed such gushing adoration looked at me and called me Quasimodo, except in the most unimaginably bitchy way. Frankly, I wasn’t sure whether to burst into tears, or applaud. That is some serious shade. Normally, I can take a privileged white woman’s condescension. But this was done on a crowded Boystown street the night before the Pride parade. It cut me like a dull Venus razor.

    I could take some of the blame. My friends are beautiful men. So much so that I avoid being in pictures with them when I can. That sounds odd or even sad, but they really are that pretty. I could have befriended uglier people, but who needs all that attention? It’s always better for an introvert to find peacocks who happily slurp up the limelight.

    But my purpose is not to feel sorry for myself because my genetic lottery only paid me $5. My point is that I remember that moment vividly. I could recognize that woman even today. Her auburn hair, her pale, freckled skin, her sneer of a mouth. Ten years has gone by since that evening and I could paint a picture of it from memory. Anytime I feel like saying something intentionally hurtful, especially to someone who I barely know or don’t know, I remember this woman. She is my personal Gospel reminding me to do unto others because when you’re cruel to someone, they don’t forget it…even with a decade of therapy and Klonopin.

    Gay men are notoriously unkind to one another and to themselves. We compensate for childhoods, adolescences and young adulthoods filled with inadequacies because we were not born straight. I was not born to tug on a little girl’s pigtails, or play catch, or play any sports really. Gym glass to most gay men is triggering. We found ourselves in a world where balls were suddenly not our strong suit. Ironic isn’t it? Instead, we sought safe harbor in the drama programs, in our AP English teacher’s classrooms, in the midst of other misfits who were not as skinny as they were expected to be, or not as smart as they should have been, or not as talented in the way everyone wanted them to be. These were the musicians, the artists, the writers, the nerds. It is not a coincidence that so many gay men and women find themselves later pursuing careers in a field akin to their high school experiences.

    Pride for me has always been bittersweet. Celebrating both who I am and at the same time remembering how many people wished I had been someone different and in some cases me hoping that I could be. Gay bars bring on a full panic attack for me. Not because I hate crowds (which I do) or because I dislike gay men (which I don’t). Anyone who knows me, knows that I have worn glasses since I was 12. Without them, even recognizable shapes are an impressionist painting of colors. But in gay bars, or even at brunch, I take them off. I don’t believe in the adage that “boys don’t make passes at boys who wear glasses.” Slutty glasses are making a comeback. But like a horse with blinders, what I cannot see will not harm me. I can avoid seeing the faces that so often seemed to sit in judgment of me.

    This has been a life long problem. The very first time I went to a gay bar, I was terrified. “What will they think of me,” “I’m not hot enough,” “Why did I wear these pants, they make me look fat.” And I know exactly why I am like this  and still no matter how much I reason  with myself or remind myself that I was wrong and still am wrong, I remain so unbelievably fragile. The scar tissue festers. So when a random nobody of a Lena Dunham-like woman publicly humiliates you during Pride weekend, that wound is ripped open and the decades of insecurities pour out like a Capri Sun poked with a fork.

    Pride 2025 feels like a scab picked off a barely healed knee. Our community, that has fought for 56 years for the ability to simply exist and be happy in our own way, is caught in the cross hairs of a man, who funnily enough not only wears more make up than Ru Paul, but surrounds himself with weak, insecure, scared little men who travel with their own glam squads. Maybe in the more somber notes of this Pride, we can all pause and remember a moment in our lifetimes when someone was intentionally cruel or hurtful, and then hold that feeling with us long enough so that the next time we believe we need to say something or do something about someone whose lifestyle is odd to us, or whose hairstyle is terrible to us, or whose outfit is dreadful to us, or whose looks are frightening to us, or whose means of earning a living are beneath us, we can perhaps avoid needing to express our opinions and instead leave them be.

    This Pride for me is unlike any other. I feel compelled to contribute little to the hate game and instead remind myself that not only am I a child covered in the bruises and scars of a turbulent life, but so also are most of the people I will ever meet. Be kind. We’re all hurting.