previously published March 21st, 2012 in the Coastal Illustrated
Congratulations
to all my Episcopal, Catholic, and Lutheran friends and family. Today, March 21st, marks the
fourth week of Lent. That means two and
half weeks to go. Yes, that’s right
Melissa, you won’t have to smell my white wine anymore, soon you will be able
to drink it. It won’t be long Livi until
you can cover everything back up again with ketchup so you have no idea what
you’re eating anyway. Margot, it’s only
a matter of time before you can start pulling the white things out of your
onion rings and eat only the fried crispy goodness again.
Me? Well, it seems I have given up stuff I didn’t
even know about.
“This
is tougher than I thought,” Alicia tells me, signaling for the check last week
at lunch. “I put Balsamic Vinegar on
everything, even regular old vinegar.
What about you, what’d you give up this year for lent.”
“My
wallet, it seems,” I tell her, while rummaging around in my purse. “Looks like
I’ll owe you one.”
But
seriously, I sometimes wonder if people, including other Christians, think we’re
little nuts because what’s the point in sacrificing something for only six and
a half weeks out the year when you should be living like Christ for all 54. I guess we just really like symbolism. It’s not so much
what and how long we give up something we can’t live without. It’s to see if we can actually do it to some
sort of completion.
On
one level, Lent is about celebrating the season of Easter. After the debauchery of Fat Tuesday and the
repentance of Ash Wednesday, this is our way of reflecting on the last weeks of
Christ’s life and all the ultimate sacrifices he gave for us, ending with
Easter, the day of worship that represents his rebirth and ascension into
Heaven.
But
it also symbolizes the 40 nights and days Jesus went into the desert before he
began his ministry. This was the most
critical part of his life on earth, the true and ultimate test if you
will. He went in alone to meet the
demons, the dark visions, the self-doubt, just him and him alone. If he could abstain, reject all evil, then he
was the true messiah, the Chosen One.
It
is said if you can cast out the demons, that’s when the angels will come. And they did.
See,
Lent is about acknowledging we are not all-powerful; we are not Christ; we are
not God. We are human. We have vices. We want things we don’t need. We judge.
We make mistakes. We can also
recognize them. This is what Lent means
to me.
This
year I gave up not a thing, but an emotion; a symbolic gesture if you
will. I guess that’s either the Episcopalian
in me or the writer, probably both. So I
gave up fear, if not for all forty days, then one will do. I will face my fear of death, my fear of the
unknown, my fear of failing, my fear of what other people think, my fear of what
I can and cannot control. Yes, even for just one day I want to live like
Jesus. I want to be fearless; fearless
from the judgment of others and myself.
This
is what I am doing for Lent this year.
This is me without fear. Here
goes:
When
I pitched the idea for this column to the publisher of the Brunswick News, Buff
Leavy, it was, in its primitive form, a humor column. We all know it’s evolved from that. I’ve evolved, we all have. We are human, after all. That’s what we do. We are not born with any kind of wisdom, nor
do I think we die knowing close to what we aspire to know. All we can hope is to scratch the surface. Or make a sizable dent.
But
one promise I made myself when I started working here was that whatever the
subject, it would never be a divisive one.
We already live in a polarizing time and place. The whole point of what
I was trying to do was find common ground.
My theory was there was plenty of it out there, it just needed to be dug
up and tended. Yes, we all have
different beliefs, differing opinions, but we have more in common than we
think. That was my vision; find the
common ground. Nurture it. Let it grow.
So
here it is nearly three years later. And
here I am discussing the most polarizing subject out there; religion. But here I am nevertheless. It is Lent, right, and I will be fearless at
least this one time. I promised
myself. I promised God. Because lately, the way people have been
treating the subject as a whole, breaks my heart.
We
all know there are always a few bad apples in every bunch, as the saying
goes. And even the shiniest of apples
can be rotten to the core even thought they look perfect from the outside. Sometimes we bite into sweet and get bitter,
but if we are being honest that happens with all things in life.
Remember,
we are human, after all.
Sure,
there are “charlatans” out there. People
do exist who claim to live like Christ and turn around and do the most
despicable things. But as a whole, most
Christians go about their business, living their life as best they now how,
attempting to mirror Christ with their actions and words. Are we all perfect? No.
That’s the point. We actually
point out we are anything but. The vast,
vast majority (and yes of all races, gender, and sexual orientation) only
aspire to find grace and meaning in a search for something higher than
ourselves. We are seekers, not judges
and jurors.
That’s
why these gross over-generalizations make me so sad. Maybe people are scared and fed up because
there are no easy answers to life’s most challenging questions. No, those who believe in Christ are not
homophobic racists. Nor are we
single-minded or backward thinking. Last
time I checked, not all of us are right-wing, anti-feminist Nazis. We don’t
lead our lives or our congregations with hate in our heart and prejudice in our
minds. It seems to me those who pass
those types of judgments, are on an elementary level, the proverbial pot that keeps
on calling the kettle black. I guess I just don’t get it. Again, it breaks my heart.
So
now I am going to tell you a story that passes no judgment. It preaches no prejudice, it divides no one
man against another because it only unites us at the very core. It’s a story that made a profound difference
in my young life and is about one of the most fearless men I have ever known, my
childhood priest. He was also kind and
gentle and wise. He truly lived his life
like Christ, up until the day he died two weeks ago.
Father
Phelps, thank you for everything you taught me, the big lessons and the
small. Thanks for all of it, every
single morsel and crumb. I am wiser for
eating it up, not foolish and single-minded as some may suggest. You are my hero, forever and always.
This
one is for you.
I
am not sure if most of you remember the scare of the AIDS epidemic in the
mid-80’s. Some of y’all are too young to
have even heard of it, others, like me spent our teenage years being told a
sexual encounter could very well be a death sentence. We were told not to drink after people we
didn’t know, that sitting on a toilet seat could bring about our own demise,
and who knew if something as simple as kissing might put you at a grave risk
for contracting a deadly infectious disease.
Ignorance,
you can argue, comes from a lack of concrete, valid information. No one in the 80’s, no one at all it seems,
was privy to any hard scientific data of any kind. See, the AIDS epidemic was new, and scary,
and incurable, and kept coming fast and furious. Everyone was playing catch up. And it seemed to be everywhere, all at once. The one thing they could do was isolate the
infected patients into groups which were predominately gay men and IV drug
users. Soon after, they were confident that the virus was contracted trough
sexual contact and blood transference, and that every day, casual contact like
kissing, touching, drinking from the same glass was all completely safe. Our fears were proven unwarranted.
But
the fear was still out there, looming larger as the virus spread. Even Life Magazine ran a cover in 1985 “No one
is safe from AIDS.” The damage had already
been done. A whole group of people had,
in a matter of a few short years, been stigmatized and deemed social outcasts
for engaging in types of so-called “lewd” behavior that led to the epidemic
everyone was so scared of.
Partners,
mothers, father, daughters, sons woke up one day, not only having to care for
their loved one as they were dying, but had to sit by helplessly as they were ostracized
and demonized as well. It was a dark
time, for them, for us for believing in it all, for the lack of proper concrete
information getting out there. It was
fear, plain and simple. And no one knew
what to do with it.
Except
in my small, little world, there was one man who knew exactly what to do.
One
Sunday, I showed up as usual for 9am Sunday school. I would have been fourteen at the time so we
were in the eldest youth group. A man
sat next to me, he was frail and very skinny.
He had a few red sores around his mouth and on his wrists where his
shirt sleeves where rolled up. Father
Phelps introduced him to us and explained he was a gay man here in our
community who had been diagnosed with AIDS.
He told us not to be afraid and talked about all the myths that swirled
around us every day like phantom shadows.
We all prayed and asked him questions.
Was
he scared?
Yes,
of course.
Was
he afraid of dying?
Every
day. But maybe he could do something to
change the way people thought about this disease. Maybe that was God’s purpose for him now.
I
held his hand. I felt no fear.
I
took communion with him at mass. I drank
the same communion wine from the same cup.
I felt no fear.
That
day, Father Phelps taught us how to take a good look at our demons, our fears,
face them down, and then cast them out, far away into that desert. Fear had no place here. Only love.
Yes.
I will have no fear today. Yes. I believe in my priest and God and Christ and
all the lessons they have taught me along the way. I don’t believe in name calling or in
labeling. I don’t believe in prejudice,
or unkind judgments, or stigmas, either.
I don’t have any room for any of that anymore.
Who
has room when you are filled up with love?
