Round Midnite

After the fact, I learned there’d been a prayer vigil at the site, PSA 5, which services NYCHA (New York City Housing Authority) buildings in a number of precincts, including the one where I live.  It was round midnite when I found myself at the site, and neighborhood mourners still straggled by –  a group of friends, possibly off duty police officers, shouted their goodbyes while a couple of – teens? Millenials?  Staggered up to the makeshift memorial.  Uniformed police officers hovered nearby and in pairs up and down the block; indeed, the police presence seemed greater than usual this evening, even taking into account the fact that it was right around shift-change time.

As we approached the memorial, me behind them, the young men got quiet. They paid their respects, and were refreshingly polite when they realized I was behind them, maneuvering themselves so that I could see the memorial as well.  Nestled into a triangular alcove created by the angle of the building and the roof, the makeshift memorial had sprung up, anchored on one end by Pat Lynch and the PBA’s huge-bordering-on-ostentatious badge-shaped floral arrangement, and tapering off on the other side to an end-of-watch poster featuring a white angel, the NYPD flag and shield, and murdered officer Randolph Holder’s name, badge number, and EOW date.

I felt compelled to pay my respects there tonight.  This man, whose skin happened to be black, was murdered because he, like his father and grandfather before him, chose to wear blue.  This man was Police Officer Randolph Holder, Jr., who was murdered by someone whose name I neither know nor care to mention, on Tuesday, October 20, 2015. 

So it was around midnight that I was there, wrestling with my own grief and the grief of the entire city.  Earlier I’d seen Pat Lynch,  the PBA president, on TV but muted it.  I can barely stand to hear what is invariably his lambastic hyperbole.  I found myself wanting to speak to him, though. In my imaginary monologue, I'd say something like:

“Yes, Pat, Blue Lives Matter, just like Black Lives Matter.  Can you see how we all mourn with you when a police officer is murdered at the hands of someone whose skin is black or brown? It’s a tragedy, and we grieve with you.  When I look at the perp's face and skin, I don’t know if he would self-identify as black, Hispanic, Caribbean, or what – I know I'd identify him as a murderer. I can't help but wonder why it's so hard for you to grieve with civilians when a murderer, who happens to be wearing blue, takes the life of an innocent person whose skin is black or brown?  If you really believe that ALL lives matter, the grief would work both ways, wouldn’t it?  I don't see a potential bad cop every time I see someone in blue;  why must you see a potential criminal every time you see someone whose skin is black or brown?  There have been 101 Human Line of Duty deaths in 2015 and 25 Canine Line of Duty deaths; there have been 959 civilians killed by police in that same time period.  Y'all are killing us at about 10 times the rate that your brothers are being killed.  Why can't you understand the grief and outrage of civilians? We feel the same pain you do; why can't you feel our pain, too?  And yes, it's still important to tell you that Black Lives Matter so you don't treat us all the way you treated James Blake.  And countless, unreported others.”

But this isn’t about Pat Lynch, because I don’t believe he possesses the intellectual nor the introspective capacity to come to anything like that conclusion.  In his mind, Blue will always be right, and black and brown will always equate to suspicious and unworthy of the benefit of the doubt.  Randolph Holder was murdered because of the color of his uniform, because of his profession.  That is just as much a travesty of justice as it is to murder someone because of the color of their skin, but Pat Lynch will only see the travesty of justice when it is regarding those who wear the colors he wears.

So enough about Pat Lynch.  I went to the memorial around midnight, and I noticed young boys who, in other circumstances, might likely be profiled by the police, stop to pay their respects at the memorial to a murdered officer.  I was reminded of how Paul and Silas were in jail when around midnight there was a great earthquake and their shackles were released. 

What if the good that comes out of Officer Holder’s murder is an earthquake of consciousness, an earthquake of understanding, an earthquake of respect? What if, in the wake of Officer Holder’s murder, we could be released from the shackles that bind us to our preconceived notions which in turn keep us locked into cells of separation?  What if we could all experience freedom without having to worry about our lives being taken because of the color of our skin or the color of our uniforms?

In the Book of Acts, after the earthquake Round Midnight, people experienced physical freedom, and some who had been bound by the need to control others experienced a spiritual awakening leading them a new spiritual freedom in Christ.

My prayer is that the things I saw Round Midnight tonight will lead to a great shaking – an earthquake of sorts – that will position all God’s people to relate to one another in love while seeking the very Face of God.

Miracles Happen Round Midnight.  I’m waiting on it.

With Gratitude to the Memory of

PO Randolph Holder, Jr.

Badge#13340

EOW 10.20.15

Let's Not Let His Death Be In Vain.

Overpowered by Funk

So it felt really good to be back in the gym and the pool. I’d been out for maybe a couple of weeks, which followed a couple of erratic weeks.  I like maintaining consistency in my workouts – it’s the only “me” time I really get, and the effort of pushing my body to and beyond its limits is a great way to free the mind.

So tonight I found myself struggling because I’d been away for so long.  After age 40, it’s normal to lose about 1%/year of your lean muscle mass (though not, apparently, of your fat…).  I first saw a deterioration in lean muscle mass last year at age 58, and I’m determined to reverse it, so any difficulty swinging weights after a break really concerns me.  Then to make matters worse, somebody was really funky.  Not just normal gym sour sweaty funk, but that nose-curdling BO that comes when someone has had a major deodorant fail.  We swing bells in a small enclosed space with no ventilation (they have fans, but because we sweat so much, nobody likes to use them), I’m working hard and this person is imitating a skunk.  I found myself getting really mad, because the smell prevented me from focusing on my workout.  It’s a gym.  It’s a late night kettlebell class, so there’s lots of guys and lots of people who have already worked out for a few hours.  We’re used to stinky.  This was out of the ordinary, the kind of stink that just hunts you down, overpowers you and suffocates you. 

So I’m mad, and then it occurred to me that this stink is just like sin.  Sometimes other people’s sin is so stinky, so offensive to us, that it seems to pervade our very being.  But we’re not in this world to judge other people’s sin any more than I’m in a gym to evaluate another person’s funk.  I go to the gym to work out, not to smell people.  I suppose I could have tried to do like I do when I pass by garbage, and either mouth breathe or blow your own air into your nose, but instead I just focused on the reason I was there.  I tried to squat a little deeper and swing a little higher.  Before long, I was so busy having my butt kicked by my own routine that I didn’t have time to be bothered by the overpowering funk.  Yes, it was still there; whenever we took a water break or did partner work I could certainly smell it.  But when I kept myself busy doing what I was spozed to do, it didn’t bother me so much – it didn’t have quite so much power over me.

We live in a world where everything with which we don’t agree is either theologically anathema or legally actionable. Everything with which we don’t agree is like that overpowering funk, and its effects upon us seem to have no end.  Perhaps if we focused on ourselves a bit more (or since I’m Methodist, I’ll suggest JW’s three simple rules: Do No Harm; Do Good; and Stay In Love with God) – maybe if we focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, maybe other people’s funk wouldn’t overpower us.  And maybe, just maybe, if we all focused on what it is WE’re supposed to be doing, not only would the funk not overpower us, but maybe we’d discover – new deodorants, new methods of hygiene, and who knows what else?  But we can’t let the funkiness of sin (or any other funkiness) overpower us and render us ineffective. Even in the face of seemingly overpowering funk, we have to find a way to funktion.

WHY do I keep DOING this?!?!?

I woke up this morning wondering WHY do I keep doing this?

They say insanity is repeating the same action and expecting different results.  I feel like I must be insane to keep coming into this place day after day, doing what I’m doing. I feel like a puppet of the governmental agencies that fund us.

But feelings are just that.  Feelings.  They're not facts.  I am immediately reminded that not only the wellbeing, but the very lives of 145 individuals with special needs, 30 employees, and 71 families – the lives of these people is dependent on me doing my job.  When I started this job, and at various times during my tenure here, their future has seemed somewhere between murky and downright dark.  While no one can actually see the future, we can see several paths, all of which seem considerably brighter now.  Even as I sit here writing this, we are presented with an opportunity to possibly expand our scope of services to include something new and novel for an additional population:  our children.

So.  I’m so tired that I’m in my office in shorts, a fluorescent orange shirt, and purple, blue, and lime green socks.  I’m wearing this mostly because that’s what’s clean and I haven’t had time to do laundry.  As I look at my life, the numbers say I could retire now.  Possibly.  I’d probably have to sell some property and give up the dream of being a snowbird; I could still travel (some), but probably wouldn’t have an automobile to return to.  But I wouldn’t have to get up and be so tired that I’m wearing a bright orange shirt, khaki shorts, and purple, blue and green socks to work, either.  Matter of fact, if I were to go ahead and retire, laying on the beach would actually be a cost-saving measure.  So why don’t I do it?  Why DO I keep doing this? 

One of the first years I was here, we hosted  a block party.  I wanted to have the Black Cowboys and pony rides, because I figured that many of the urban kids we serve would never get a chance to see livestock up close.  We ended up offering pony rides (free, of course!).  It was a tremendous hit, and we’ve done it every year since.  A week or so ago,  I was driving through an economically challenged neighborhood in another boro.  What did I see?  Kiddies riding horsies! I’ve lived around that neighborhood for 30 years and had never seen anyone offering horsie rides.  I don’t know if it’s a direct result of the work we did;  I know we do some transformative work, we help make people’s lives better, and so even though it feels like we’re doing the same thing over and over again, we are, slowly, getting results.  

Every year we take a few dozen adults with special needs to the State Capitol, arrange meetings with legislators, then empower and encourage them to advocate for themselves and their needs.  We make sure they have the necessary resources to get out and vote.  Later this year, we expect to take a similar number on a trip to Washington, DC, so they can see the place where the highest level of our government functions.  These same people, without us, could very likely be sleeping on the trains or on church steps. Instead, as much as possible, we are offering them pathways back to fully appropriate housing.

So I guess that’s why I keep doing this.  It’s not always my pleasure – some people are mean, some are vindictive, some seem  just plain crazy (and I'm talking about the staff, not the populations we serve!); the work is fairly tedious, usually thankless, and a number of people seem to think that generating stress will produce their desired results (hint:  it usually has the opposite effect).  But at the end of the day, when I do my job, people’s lives are positively impacted, and when I do my job well, the quality of their lives is enhanced.  Reason enough, I think, to make it in to work one more day.

Forgiveness? What About You?

Not a lot about modern society (except perhaps its apparent impending demise) genuinely grieves me; a trend in responses to the Charleston Massacre has done that.  Every day I see people – Christians, Pastors, Academics, Intellectuals, and many who fit into none of the above categories – condemning the families of the Emmanuel Nine.  I’ve heard people call them names, say they were in denial, and say they hadn’t properly processed their grief.

I’m grateful to my friend, neighbor, and colaborer in Christ, Rev. Jose Humphries, for helping me find my voice on this.  As much as I love to write, there is much to be said for verbal exchange.   As we chatted today, we acknowledged that, thankfully, neither of us has ever been in the position of the families of those massacred.  We can’t know how we would behave.  I cannot find it in myself to begin to dictate, define, or describe what might be appropriate behavior in such a situation. 

Much is being made of their acts of forgiveness.  Somehow it seems these acts of forgiveness are being co-opted by the talking head du jour as some sort of symbolic statement on how people of color should respond to tragedy.  No mention is made of the fact that people of color have had to develop superhuman capacities for forgiveness and an otherworldly reliance on the Divine simply to endure their physical journey in an atmosphere of systemic oppression.  No, no mention is made of that. In my opinion, failure to acknowledge that fact is a reflection on the commentators and a reflection of the dominant culture.  It takes nothing away from the injured people’s need, ability, and spiritual desire to free themselves from the ravages of unforgiveness.

But somehow it seems those who would comment are conflating and/or equating the spiritual practices of those who would forgive with the transgressions of those who continue to inflict pain and cause havoc.  Maybe this is why the Bible tells us to first take the speck out of our own eyes.  A long time ago, a very wise man helped me understand that the only things I can control are my own attitudes and behaviors.  Consequently, I don’t care much about nor pay much attention to what the dominant culture says or thinks about me (although I will admit to being pissed off when I can’t be scruffy on a Saturday and go into a department store without being followed around; I’ve finally learned to use that to my advantage, though – now I just hover around the register and amaze people at how quickly I get serviced!). 

But it seems that the dominant culture, the media, the talking heads du jour – whomever one chooses to name – it seems there is this inclination to point to these people in their grief, who are responding to spiritual savagery visited upon them by invoking the spiritual principles that have always undergirded them – it seems there is an inclination to point to these particular people in this particular situation and say “See, Black folk, THAT’S how you ought to respond when people visit atrocities upon you.”

And that thought, of course, is complete bullshit.  Remember above when I said the only things I can control are my attitudes and my behaviors?  That’s true.  It’s true for me,  it’s true for you, and it's true for every member of the dominant culture.  It’s just not appropriate and it doesn’t work for someone to point to anyone else and tell them how to forgive.  Forgiveness is noble and laudable, that is true.  But one cannot morally speak to people of color or any oppressed people about the moral superiority of forgiveness without acknowledging the systems created that caused many among them to have a  predilection towards and nearly superhuman capacity for, forgiveness. And one certainly can’t speak to oppressed people in America about the virtue of forgiveness without also speaking about the virtues of freedom, justice, and equality.  You cannot morally speak to me about my need to forgive without first addressing your need to let justice roll down like a river or righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.   

As I said, I’m not responsible for your attitudes or your behaviors.  Thankfully, I’m not in a place where I have to forgive people who massacred my loved ones.  But I do know that as long as you have a log of systemic racism, or a tree trunk of inequality in your eyes, and as long as you live in a forest of privilege-fueled oppression – as long as those conditions exist, they morally disqualify you from speaking about the speck of violence that occurs in my community after other atrocities are visited upon it.  And if you still choose to speak, know that I will neither listen nor be able to hear you.  The logs in your eyes and the forest you live in will render your words as but noisy gongs or clanging cymbals.

And yes, for that and other transgressions,  you will still be forgiven.  You’ll be forgiven because in order to live in the hellish environment you’ve created, all I could do was to take on the mantle of Christ and His teachings.  I have to forgive, no matter for what, and no matter how many times.  I do that for my own wellbeing, not for yours.  I forgive you because I’m responsible for my attitudes and my behaviors, and forgiveness is what I know, believe, and have been taught is right.

That's my attitude and prayerfully that will be my behavior.  But what about you?

Grace, Hatred, and Racism

Reared in a Methodist tradition, I believe that God’s Grace is available to everyone.  God’s Prevenient Grace is all around us and available to anyone who will have it. It is a gift from God, readily available, and has absolutely nothing to do with us. As we accept that Gift of Grace,  God’s Justifying Grace begins to work on us, bringing us in line with God’s Divine Will for us, making us completely new creatures within the Will of God.   God’s Sanctifying Grace then continues to change us and empower us to walk more closely in the Will of God.

Grace is always there; the question is whether or not we will latch on to it and if we do, whether we will surrender ourselves to it so it can change us.

As I listen to the news reports being spun to paint a homegrown terrorist as some sort of victim, and as I watch the majority of my white friends remain painfully silent on this massacre, this racially charged American act of terrorism against Americans of African descent -- as I listen, it occurs to me that grace, hatred and racism share some characteristics.  In the American spirit, psyche, and ethos,  all abound, and all are available to anyone who will latch on to them.  Once we reach out and grab onto them, whether we grab on to Grace, hatred, or racism, -- whatever we grab onto begins to work on us.  Grace will begin to bring us in line with God’s Divine Will for us, hatred will bring us in line with scorn and disdain for things not pleasing to us, and racism will bring us in line with an ideology that people who share some of our genetic characteristics are somehow superior to other humans.  As we continue on, whether walking in Grace, in hatred, or in racism, we begin to change and to conform to its power over us – Sanctifying Grace will empower us to walk in the will of God, while Horrifying Hatred or Reprehensible Racism will distort and deform one’s human nature to fit the will of the demonic forces in which they have their genesis.

Let's be clear.  This terrorist is not a victim.  The nine saints who welcomed him into Bible study and were killed because of their kindness -- those are the only victims.  At the end of the day, the homegrown terrorist had a choice.  He CHOSE to embrace hatred and racism, he CHOSE the resulting deformity of spirit, and he CHOSE to act from that distorted and deformed place, rather than to seek wholeness.  At the end of the day, the young white terrorist lived in an environment where hatred and racism freely abound.  He lived in an environment where the “confederate flag” is still flown, and where a legacy of enslaving human beings is somehow conflated with and glorified as history.  Again, as a point of clarity, what's being highlighted is a history of slavery and abuse, and there's nothing to be glorified about that.   While there may be some valid discussion over the original intent of this flag, the reality remains that “The Stars and Bars,” in whatever its present iteration may be, has always been a symbol of the pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist, secessionist, Confederate States of America.  In the debate over what the flag in SC means and whether the state of South Carolina has the right to fly it, no one mentions the fact that “The Stars and Bars” experienced a resurgence in popularity during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s and became an unofficial emblem of the segregationist movement.  FOR THAT REASON ALONE, the State of South Carolina needs to take the first step and remove the flag from its official buildings. This would be a show of respect to its African American citizens murdered by a terrorist bent on starting a race war, and it would, I believe, send a message that the atmosphere of hatred and racism is no longer to be tolerated.

Like Grace, Hatred and Racism have no intrinsic physical form. You can see their effects, you can sense their presence, but you can’t reach out and touch them.  This may be why those who are not people of color often believe that “too much is made of the race issue,” or think it’s nonexistent because “we have a black President.”

Which is sort of like saying “I prayed to Jesus last year, and I was really sincere.  So today I’m gonna give my son a gun to kill your mother, but it’s ok, because I prayed last year.”  God’s Grace is given to the humble, and is shown to be sufficient for us when it is made perfect in weakness.  It’s a gift from God, clearly not something to be claimed or appropriated by humans.  It’s not something with or about which we can boast; it is, if you will, an inside job.  But Hatred and Racism – these are humanly (or demonically) sourced qualities, and they will flourish where they are neither destroyed nor, at the very least, corrected.  They, like sin and all things with an evil genesis, must be resisted – they are things for which we must always be on guard.

And we’re not anymore. We’ve grown complacent, we’ve fallen asleep, and just like those dear people innocently let a madman into their midst, we have allowed hatred and racism to come sit and sup with us.  We may not recognize them, or we may think they look a little off but be reluctant to say anything about them.  But we have to learn, folks.  We have to learn that injustice anywhere is still a threat to justice everywhere. We have to believe Jesus was sincere when He said that whatever we did to the least of these, we did to Him. 

So what’s it gonna be?  Are we going to choose to be filled with God's grace, quietly but resolutely empowered to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God?  Can we see "the least of these" not only as poor people in far off lands, but as those who are marginalized and abused by our very own political and social systems?  Or are we going to succumb to the cancer of hatred and the lie of racism?  Are we willing to expose and eradicate the latter two so the former might grow within us?

Or are we just gonna lay low and act like none of this has any meaning?  They’re all there:  Grace, Hatred, and Racism, and they all have the power to make us and mold us and change us into something new.  Like the terrorist who murdered the Emmanuel 9, we get to choose what we grasp and hold onto.

Nah, it's Not Just Mental Illness

This morning I stopped in a convenience store.  A man was seated there,  his deep chocolate skin accentuated by an accumulation of street dust and dirt.  He was disheveled, apparently both homeless and mentally ill.  For a moment I wondered what Jesus would do in NYC, how He would deal with the scores and scores of people in need.  I focused on Jesus the man, forgetting that the Divine person of Jesus could and probably would choose to restore them to wholeness.

My thoughts were interrupted by the shouts of the store manager yelling at the man to leave and threatening to call the police.  True, that is his right, but the guy, though dirty and half-dressed, wasn’t smelly, the store wasn’t crowded, and he wasn’t disruptive like the entitled white guy who was in there arguing the day before.  This brother was just trying to sit down in the cool for a minute.

I was left wondering why mental illness is used as an explanation/quasi defense when considering someone who commits an act of premeditated terrorism with the goal of starting a race war, but why that same condition of mental illness is completely ignored when considering someone who simply needs help to survive. 

Seems like there’s more than mental illness going on here.

Praying Because I Still Have Hope

The murders of nine Black people at Bible study is heartbreaking and horrific. Sadly, it’s not the worst part of the story.

As the news broke, a NYC businessman announced his run for the Presidency of the United States.  He did so while showing an embarrassing dearth of knowledge regarding international trade.  Instead of bothering to educate himself, his platform appeared to be based on xenophobia and character assassination, referring to “people with accents” answering call lines, and calling US Government officials “weak” and “stupid.”   In the week or so leading up to the murders, we saw the Twitterverse explode over some woman who appeared confused (or deliberately deceptive) about her racial identity; we saw a popular US vacation destination begin the systematic deportation and denial of rights of people who “look like” they are of African descent, we saw some people in an uproar over a person who decided they were in an inappropriately gendered body, and we saw, over and over again, attacks upon people of color – for being in swimming pools, for shopping, and for any number of real or imagined offenses. 

Like many (of my friends of color, anyway), I’m heartbroken over what I see.  I’m no longer looking at the violence of the acts; living in a city where a man killed his girlfriend and made her into soup which he then served to the homeless has shown me that human depravity and its accompanying physical violence can sink to unimaginable depths.  What concerns me more than the physical violence is the psychic and spiritual violence we continuously wreak upon each other and upon the world.  That, IMHO, is an even worse part of the story.

They say charity starts at home, so I’mma go there first.  We Americans are incredibly self-absorbed.  Get a group of us together and chances are you’ll find us sitting and peering down into our electronic devices rather than interacting with each other.  If we do find someone we like, the first thing we do is trade email addresses or figure out how to facebook each other.  Our norm for social interaction seems to have shifted from the personal to the electronic.  The unfortunate byproduct of this phenomenon is that, as Americans, we always want to do more.  We have access to more people and more information and so we go for quantity over quality.  In the process, it seems our intellectual capacities for critical thinking and our spiritual capacities for discernment have been significantly diminished.  Take any preposterous assertion, put it on the internet, and within 24 hours, someone will be running around repeating it as if it’s real.  Use popular music to create an image of African Americans as drug-using, gun-toting thugs, and abandon all empirical evidence to the contrary, and an alarming number of people become willing to believe it's real.  Religion is too hard or doesn’t make sense?  Don’t try to understand it; don’t try to change or grow spiritually – no.  Just abandon religion, make up your own, or simply embrace your spirituality, without ever bothering to check it or yourself or even to consider that maybe, just maybe, there is something outside the box you see.  

I’m rambling now because not only am I heartbroken, I’m incredibly pissed off.  The point I'm trying to make is that psychic violence is the result of our collective self-obsession to the exclusion of all else.  We sit back and celebrate this quasi-hedonistic culture we’ve created, then feign – surprise? Dismay? Disapproval? when someone selfishly takes it to a level we'd never imagined.  But isn't that the natural product of our culture?  Bigger, Better, More? 

If we have created  a culture in which people are not able to think critically, a culture in which people have neither spiritual discernment nor spiritual grounding, a culture in which the ultimate arbiter is not “how does this impact our world,” but “how does this make me feel?” then WHY are we surprised that some loser redneck decides to murder the black people they see as the source of their problems??  Have we not seen harbingers of this with the lunatic burning Qu’rans in Florida, the knuckleheads praying for the death of our President (and more recently, of Caitlyn Jenner) in Arizona?  When there is no public outcry over shootings of Sikhs at their temples, when we don't shut down the bikers who blasphemed Muslims at their temple on their Sabbath day, when we pay more attention to the color of a dress than we do to the fact that a popular vacation spot has begun to "ethnically cleanse" its country based on the colors of people's skin -- if we are overwhelmingly silent on those matters, then why are we now surprised that yet another crazy white terrorist has taken it upon themselves to eradicate the people of color he perceives as the source of his problems? This is how culture generates psychic, spiritual, and then physical violence.

We have SO much potential.  We humans are very diverse, and that can be quite beautiful.  Even though we have natural tendencies to group ourselves along real or imagined lines of demarcation, I believe human nature is to cooperate with and celebrate one another.  But somewhere along the way, we’ve learned to make enemies.  We’ve learned to assign values to physical characteristics, and to judge and group each other according to those values.  We’ve created so many gods that we’re unwilling or unable to recognize the Universal Divine God dwelling in all of us.

My prayer now is that we might begin to celebrate the God in all of us.  My prayer is that those of us who are people of faith will continue to pray to the God of our understanding, a God Who will allow our hearts, minds, and spirits to be opened to God’s Divine Presence.  It’s only within God’s Divine Presence that we can begin to heal our wounds, to respect our differences, and to truly love one another.   I pray that God's Divine Presence will comfort those who mourn, will calm those who are angered, and will heal those who are wounded in body, mind, and spirit.  I pray because recent events reveal the brutal reality that when we fail to turn back to God, our course leads to destruction.  There’s no other way, at least that I can see.  We’re too diverse, we have too many competing agendas – we can’t rank them or decide one is better than another; we have to learn to coexist lovingly and peacefully.

Despite all I see around me, despite recent events, I still have hope.  As long as Jesus is Alive, I will have hope.  While I’m Christian, I recognize that many people are not.  I also recognize that, since the beginning of time,  every major grouping of humans has had some form of the Golden Rule, some principle that says, as Jesus did, that we should love and treat our neighbors as we’d want to be treated.  My prayer is that we could all begin to come together on that one point, and then to lift up the good in one another.  Is that going to solve our problems?  No, of course not.  But it might begin to calm us down to a point where we can begin to work together towards preserving our planet and our human race.

If I were a better or more profound writer, or it my emotions were not engaged, I’d wrap this up with some memorable ending, but that ain’t in me right now.  I'm heartbroken, but I still have hope.  Right now, though,  all I can do is pray we will learn to live and act in love for one another.  Our lives and our planet depend on it.

Hold On Just a Little While Longer, Everything's Gonna Be Alright!!

Hold on Just a Little While Longer.  Everything is Gonna be Alright!!!

If I shut up and turn my brain off for long enough, I can hear God confirming those words to me.  Problem is, I seldom shut up and turn my brain off for long enough.   My day job is executive director of a nonprofit.  It’s in one of the poorest congressional districts in the country, and we serve people who have a fairly tenuous grip on that social safety net.  While initially the position of “executive director” was a good boost to my ego (though, sadly,  not to my pocketbook.  Did I mention that this is a nonprofit?), the reality is that this role has driven me to my knees and increased my faith in more ways than I ever thought possible.  It often seems the organization is held together with nothing but dental floss, duct tape, and effectual, fervent prayer.  So I’m often busy petitioning God or, like this morning, thanking God and singing God’s praises.  But I don’t spend nearly enough time shutting up, turning my brain off, and listening to and for God.

So there I was celebrating this morning – yesterday I was talking about how I have to get through my audits so I can move towards mission-oriented development; this morning I hear the auditor may FINALLY be able to start writing his report.  Then I turned the corner and ran into someone who has a similar mission and complementary resources who wants to do some development. My response was to Thank God and sing God’s praises, not to shut up and listen to God.

Today, like most days, was an endless flurry of regulatory compliance, personnel issues, simultaneous community relations/drug interventions/building inspections, and fiscal oversight.  All this is laid atop a plate of capacity building, board development, and organizational mission/vision work. And all of THAT, of course, was interspersed with today’s internet banality, which seems to have shifted from the person born male who’s decided to live out her identity as a female to the person born white who’s decided to live out her identity as a black person.  None of which has any relevance to or bearing upon my present situation nor to that of my clients or employees.   As a very practical guide,  I need to be able to pay bills for 30 days and see payroll for two pay periods in the future, and that wasn’t the case today.  In the midst of deciding where to slice and dice, and whether to hold off on paying insurance or security, I stopped and realized the Ram in the Bush. I didn’t listen for the voice of God, but once I decided to hold on a little while longer, it became apparent that everything was, indeed, gonna be alright.

That would have been enough, but I was sitting at my desk, working on some APRs and accepting the fact that I wasn’t going to make my evening exercise class.  My exercise classes are my "me" time, and I don't usually miss them except to attend the professional ball games for which I have season tickets.  Working out gets rid of my stress, then the swim afterwards relaxes and isolates (or insulates!) me.  My exercise times are an integral part of my day, and I hate to miss them.  So as I'm sitting here realizing I'm going to miss tonight's class, I get a text from a friend.  He’s an old college bud, someone with whom I often share dinners and holidays.  Earlier this week I was thinking of him and how we needed to touch base, but did nothing more than think on it.

So he texted me this evening.  Yes, of course it’s time for us to get together, but sometimes we go several months without seeing each other and sometimes we see each other every weekend.  I don’t believe it’s coincidence that he texted me just as I thought about him, I took that text as another sign from God that "yes, Babygirl, you CAN do this. You can do this because I've got you."  This time I’m listening.  I think I may go home and turn my brain off, continuing to listen.  I have certainly heard God say  “Hold on just a little while longer.  Everything’s gonna be alright!!!”

Not Caitlyn; it's all about Him!

Yesterday Vanity Fair preleased its cover with Caitlyn Jenner. In case you have a real life, are not in the US, or are in the US but have been living under a rock for the last few months, Caitlyn Jenner is the female who, as the male-born-Bruce Jenner, not only won a gold medal for the Decathlon in the 1976 Olympics, but set a new world record in that event.  The winner of the Decathlon is traditionally known as “the world’s greatest athlete.” 

There had been rumors of a sex change for years, and perhaps there was a TV interview regarding her gender dysphoria.  It didn’t interest me so I didn’t pay a lot of attention.  I was shocked when I saw the cover of Vanity Fair, though – she looks incredibly good!

Of course, my Facebook timeline is lit up.  While the vast majority of people support Caitlyn, there are always the “saints” who condemn her as “attempting to change what God made,” and the ones who simply refuse to acknowledge this transformation.  I'm amazed.  Caitlyn Jenner was once more man and is now more woman than most of us will ever be.  All judgement aside, that right there is remarkable.

I don’t pretend to understand trans people;  a score of years ago in an early seminary class, I wrote something to that effect and the professor suggested I make an attempt to understand.  As a female who fits almost none of the traditional markers of “femininity,” but who has always felt quite comfortable with herself and in her body (aside from the flab), I’ve come to understand that our concepts of “masculine” and “feminine” are social constructs.  I’ve also come to understand that, at least in America, our thinking around gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, and, indeed, all things having even a vague sexual connotation -- they all boil down to our thinking about sexual intercourse.  Everything else is laid atop that, as if the net sum of human sexuality rests inside specific sexual acts.  If we then put the prefix homo- or hetero- or trans- or poly- or pan- or a- in front of the word sexual, we come up with something that we inherently consider related to sexual acts.  And with the exception of hetero-, and possibly a-, we tend to consider those sexual acts as "other."

Or something like that.  I am no expert on human sexuality. As I said, I don’t really understand gender dysphoria, largely because it’s never impacted me personally (despite what y’all say).   But what I can sort of understand is the amount of pain one must experience to consider gender reassignment a viable option.  So there are a couple of things that stand out for me: 

1) No matter whether we consider that pain as pathological or not, why aren’t we addressing it? Why am I seeing so many people who disagree with Caitlyn’s transformation expressing condemnation of her rather than acknowledging the pain she must have felt (Think what you want.  As a male, Bruce Jenner became known as "the world's greatest athlete."  Who would possibly cast all that aside if they weren't really going through?), and attempting to meet her to offer some way to ease that pain?  Even if, as some have suggested,  this transformation and gender dysphoria are manifestations of mental illness, why is it met with condemnation instead of compassion?

2) As I posted somewhere, I wonder why we view sexual reassignment surgery as inherently different than shaving our bodies or using deodorant or straightening or perming our hair or having liposuction or rhinoplasty or using makeup or any of the stuff we do to alter the vessels we were given?  If we assert that “God doesn’t make mistakes," then why do we automatically have surgeries for children born with cleft lips or palates, or with any number of physical aberrations for which surgeries are routinely performed (pinning the ears, straightening limbs, amputating extra fingers and vestigial tails)?   Oh, but those are minor and this is major?  Why is there no outcry or reliance on God's Omniscience when conjoined twins are separated?  That is routinely celebrated, and considered to be physically and emotionally healthier for all involved.   I don’t understand why our collective focus right now is on the physical vessel occupied by Caitlyn and not on the spirit inhabiting that vessel.

Sometimes I wonder if we who call ourselves Christians have lost our ability for spiritual discernment, for critical thinking, or both.  For many of us (and I certainly include myself here), our first inclination is to look at the external situation, and then to slap it into some spiritual box of our choosing.  I’ve watched with interest, and more than a bit of consternation, the hubbub surrounding one pastor’s request for a $65MM jet.  Again, many of my friends have very strong opinions (as do I), and I've chosen to forego alliteration in the title and not mention the person’s name.  It doesn’t matter whether it’s a $65MM jet, a million dollar home, a hundred thousand dollar car, or some other material extravagance;  it doesn’t matter whether we parade around in theologically incongruous vestments, make indefensible financial appeals, or demand cult-like obedience from those seeking Jesus ---  none of this foolishness could be perpetrated upon the flocks without their permission. Sadly, we as a Body long ago ceded that permission.

Early on in the Christian tradition, those who called themselves Christians routinely prayed several times a day, continually seeking both physical and spiritual union with God through subjugation of the flesh.  After a few hundred years, we had relegated most of the daily prayers and many of those ascetic practices to monasteries, to which we offered material support. This arrangement began to backfire (or implode) by the 12^th century and, for those of us in the Protestant tradition, came to an end in the 15^th  and 16^th centuries.  Slowly traditions emphasizing personal piety and holiness re-emerged and spread throughout much of the world. 

But something’s happened along the way.  These traditions of piety and holiness often arose not purely for spiritual reasons but also as a backlash or counterpoint to an intellectualized, rational, "enlightened," or scientific worldview.  For many, this tension resulted in a fairly significant gap between and faith and reason.  Sadly, that gap remains today, as does the outdated idea that to love Christ with all one’s heart and soul and strength implies not loving Christ with all one’s mind. 

So we see nothing wrong with accepting the Bible as the True, Inerrant Word of God when it comes to things that don’t immediately concern us, like (for many people) homosexuality or abortion.  But if we look at other issues (sexually,  fornication and adultery come to mind; socially,  the role of women and of slaves comes to mind), we agree that times have changed and somehow the words that are written in the Bible don’t apply in those circumstances.  And we are quick to justify our beliefs.  But before we become defensive and venerate the positions that appeal to us, we need to be able to see that a disconnect actually exists.  Sometimes we consider the Word True and Inerrant, and sometimes we want to interpret it.  For the vast majority of us, that interpretation is not at all systematic (that would be too rational); instead, it ebbs and flows and changes "as the spirit leads us."  But (and this is where spiritual discernment comes in) how many of us realize that every spirit is not a Holy Spirit?

We are people who want to be like Jesus, the same Jesus who stated that animals had homes but He had no place to call home – we want to be like Him, but we see nothing wrong with subsidizing one person's extravagant lifestyle while stepping over the hungry and the homeless.  We want to follow Jesus, the One who decried the excesses of wealth, we want to follow Him, led by troubadors singing songs of a mythical "Prosperity Gospel."

For the record, I don’t think the issue is with Caitlyn.  I don’t think the issue is with the jet guy.  I think the issue is with we who would call ourselves Christian.  We look at this thing called Christianity as if it’s some sort of cosmic test or exercise, at the end of which we all hope to get some reward, or at least to avoid eternal punishment.  We lose sight of the fact that the Same Eternal God who placed us here stands in Time and Eternity and could have, had God chosen, placed us at any point in either one. If we dare to use our minds, we might conclude that we are here  -- in this time and in this place  -- for a Divinely ordained purpose.  Is that purpose to criticize those in pain?  Is that purpose to participate in or subsidize lavish lifestyles?  Or is that purpose to honor the precious Gift we’ve been given and – in whatever way we’ve been blessed to do it – to share it with the rest of the world?  How long til we Christians understand that it ain’t about Caitlyn or the jet guy -- it's not about any of them – it’s All About HIM!

Thursday, April 16.

It’s 6:30 am in the rainforest. I’ve gotten up, packed, organized my pics for upload, charged all my devices, straightened my room, and am waiting for breakfast, which starts at 7, but where I don’t have to be until 7:30 (we leave at 8:30). Although I wasn’t overly enthusiastic about coming here, this has been an AWESOME trip!  The rainforest and the conservation efforts are great, but the peace and serenity afforded by no phone, internet, tv, or roads – basically no contact with outside civilization – that has been priceless. Bug spray is at a premium, but aside from that, I think if I spent a month here I could probably forget about the “civilized” world altogether.  It’s a completely different vibe here, and the Spirit runs really high.

I don’t see any churches, though.  I had fantasies of a CME mission on Tortuguero, and having a group of young people come every year to do things like build houses, lay wiring for internet, etc – and then I remembered that the goal of this place, at least, is to intentionally AVOID all that.

Something happens when we humans converge on a place.  It seems we are unable to appreciate God’s gift to us, wheher that’s in the natural or the spiritual.  We always have to put our own stamp on it, suiting it for our purposes, rather than conforming ourselves to that which God has given us  The former’s not working so well for me these days; may be time to get very serious about the latter.  

But right now I’mma take a shower and get my luggage to the main building before there’s another downpour.  We’ve been quite fortunate during our stay here – me especially, since I don’t know where my umbrella is and didn’t bring a poncho – there’ve been a couple of sprinklings while we were on the boat, and a couple of showers, none lasting more than 5 minutes, while we were poolside  There was a big downpour yesterday right after I got off the beach; it lasted maybe 10-15 minutes.  But this morning maybe from about 1 to 4 am, there was TORRENTIAL downpour!! I didn’t bother to  get up to look at it, but it came hard ad fast.  The rooms here don’t really have windows – there’s just screens up covered by curtains with panels in them.  This is because there’s no a/c, only a fan to circulate air.  And quite franly, that’s enough.  With all the greenery things are relatively cool, but with rain like this, it’s quite damp.  It feels like the clothes I wore yesterday all weigh a few extra pounds, and they don’t seem to have dried off.  I had some crackers that I threw out because they’re damp.  The humidity is oppressive at times.  The blessing is that the weather changes frequently and significantly – it’s damp and humid now after the rains – the sun could come out and dry everything out soon.  Although now I understand why all the sidewalks and verandas are raised – the lawns are sunken, so that when the rains come, the water can run off the sidewalks and into the lawns.

The “m” key sticks on this laptop.  Annoying  I’m off to get ready.  Next post will likely be written possibly from Guapiles but more likely from SJ.  The howler monkeys are out…

Oh.  Don’t know if I said this yesterday, though I have voiced the sentiment many times.  It’s really annoying to me when I go to countries where people expect, demand, beg for tips.  It occurs for me as both rude and greedy.  A tip, after all, should be discretionary and should not be expected.  Having said that, I am aware that some people only survive because of tips (And I’m talking people in NYC).  That conversation got a completely new perspective yesterday as I sat with my camera around my neck and realized that camera likely costs more than some of these people’s homes.  Why wouldn’t I share some of what I’ve received?

The breakfast bell has sounded.  Let me get showered and fed.

9:39 am – So breakfast was great:  eggs, gallo pinto, pancakes, salchicha, fruit, bread, and coffee.  We settled up our accounts and came on a nice boat ride to La Pavona, the place (not almendreja as I said before) where you change from your boat to your bus and vice/versa.  Because of last night’s rain, the water was about 2 meters higher than normal; combine that with the fact that it was lower than normal when we came in, and our boat ride out was only about an hour, compared with the 90 minute ride in.  So we are sitting here waiting for another 45 minutes or so for the van to come.  The rest of the group will go to Guapiles to rent cars:  the young couple and the older couple who met while working on a cruise ship along with their 10-year old son Alexandre, will rent cars and go to the same hotel in front of Arenal.  Francois (who works for a French company that makes bumpers for GM and BMW and has plants in Henderson, NC and somewhere in SC and is starting one in Chattanooga), his wife, and their two teenaged kids (male and female, aged 17 ½ and 14) will rent a car and go on to Turrialba and then to Arenal.  Me?  I’m going to SJ and then back to NYC.  It’s been a great time, though!!

Kenneth, our guide, has been great.  I’m still on this “rainforest as place of spiritual renewal” trip.  As we rode out this morning and I looked all around, where I’m sure some of the saints would see bugs and yukky trees and whatever, I kept hearing “Majesty.  Worship His Majesty…”  And that’s ok.  Everybody doesn’t have to sit up in church all the time.  There’s something to be said for going into all the world and sharing the Love everywhere you go.  I guess that’s mission work, kinda – I’ve spent enough time doing service work that I’m not in favor of just going somewhere and trying to “help” people.  What I think is helpful to you may be very different from what you consider helpful to you; for my help to be meaningful, I need to give you something you want and can use.  Which, I think, I why building relationships is important.  I can preach as effective a message through my interactions with strangers as I can from a pulpit.

Jesus doesn’t have to be oppressive or cloying or overbearing and certainly not self-righteous.  The physical world has beauty and blessings and gifts and rewards for us; we can accept the or not; we can use them wisely or not; we can protect them or not; and we can maintain/sustain them or not.  There are rules that govern how we move safely and productively in this physical or natural, world.  The same is true in the spiritual world:  our Creator has endowed us with beauty and blessings and gifts and rewards and the choice to accept, use, protect, maintain and sustain them – or not.  There are laws that govern how we move safely and productively in this spiritual realm.  Many people spend time obsessing over the laws; I think that once one has grasped the concept, one is then faced with the task, not so much of discussing or parsing or adhering to the law, but of governing oneself by the Spirit of that law, and THEN walking in one’s gifts to be, do, and embrace all our Creator has allowed.  Which, of course, is beyond our wildest dreams.  We get so caught up along the way that we always end up limiting what is available.

If you’re reading this you probably think my mind is wandering yet again.   It’s not.  I’m sorta overwhelmed with what an incredible life I have, with how many opportunities I’ve been given, and I’ excited to contemplate the next step of my journey, but I am SOO not wandering.  My heart, mind, and spirit are re-focusing.  It seems that, with all the distractions of “modern” life, it’s easy to lose focus, to get caught up in the minutia of day to day living.  Getting away from it all is allowing me to re-focus.  I pray I can maintain it.

But now there are birds chirping and people milling around.  More later.

Pics form the day are 

Tortuguero

       

It’s 5 am on Wednesday, April15.  I’m here listening to the sounds of what must be the howler monkeys – although I think “growler” would be a better name.  “Here” is the Turtle Beach Lodge on Tortuguero Island, in Costa Rica.  Tortuguero Island is a very biodiverse ecologically preserved place on the Caribbean side of the country, a place so remote that it is only accessible by boat or by a private airline.

It is stunningly beautiful.  We took a 90 minute drive from San Jose, stopping somewhere for breakfast. Then, shortly after the town of Guayapil, we came to Almendreja, where we got off the vans and got onto little boats (and where they charged us $1.00 to use the bathroom).  The boat ride was very nice, about 90 minutes more, during which we saw sloths (maybe that was on the drive), crocodiles, caymans, turtles, the Jesus Lizard, hawks, and monkeys (again, that was on the drive,  I think). 

We stopped in  the Tortuguero park in the town of Tortuguero before continuing on to the lodge.  The town is just a poor strip with a school and some tourist shops.  Thankfully there was an ICE shop selling Kohlbi cards, since Claro doesn’t work here. Of course,  Kohlbi doesn’t really work here, either, but there is a place out by the beach where you can at least send/receive texts and make calls.  It says no internet, but a lot of my fb notifications seemed to come in while I was there.

One of the things that has impressed me while here is the nearly reverential way in which some people regard the land and nature.  I’m not going to make any parallels between that and native people deifying things of nature; I am going to say that, as Christians, we tend to focus on relationships with other HUMANS, forgetting that God has given us stewardship over an entire world.  What I am learning is that one’s verbal profession of faith is perhaps not as important as the stewardship one exercises over one’s talents /gifts.  And those talents/gifts do not have to impact one’s personal body. Perhaps your gift is a love of flowers.  Perhaps it is a green thumb.  Then you need to be the best florist, the best horticulturist you can be.  That’s what I see around me, people honoring whatever God has given them.

I’m going to go down and have some coffee while waiting for the 6 am (pre breakfast) tour.  I will never go anywhere in the Caribbean or Central America without being covered in bug spray – though I can’t really complain. I’m in the jungle here, and it’s amazingly beautiful.  The bugs live here; I’m the intruder.

I have slept incredibly well since I've been here -- took an afternoon nap and fell into an amazingly deep sleep.  I think that being so deeply in nature, plus having neither internet nor cellphone signal --I think the lack of distractions and the vast immensity of the natural environment does a number on me, taking me back more deeply to my natural rhythm.  Whatever the reason, I am truly loving the rest and the environment.

9:10 am.  We arrived back from the boat trip at 8 am, at which time we had breakfast.  This morning was pinto gallo, huevos revuelots, queso, pancakes, cereal, and bread with butter, cream cheese, pina jelly or dulce de leche.  The joke here  is that in Costa Rica they eat beans and rice for breakfast, beans and rice for lunch, and rice and beans for dinner.  Beans and rice (pinto gallo) is served at every meal.  While it is a complete protein, I have to watch my intake of it.  Haven’t been in a gym or on a scale for two weeks; if I follow my usual pattern, I will simply have gained back the last 5 or 6 pounds I’d dropped.  It seems my body’s set point is about 30 lbs higher than the goal I have for myself.  Oh, well.  It’s a journey, not a destination.

So the boat trip was amazing. Two hours boating around Tortuguero, stopping wherever we or the guides saw something.  It was  mostly the guides, and once I realized I’d never remember all the stuff, I started to write down what we saw.  We saw:

-          White Collared mannequin (a bird)

-          Toucans, both black mandible and “kill bill” varieties

-          Capuchin monkeys (in families!!!!)

-          Jesus Lizards (so named because they can walk on water)

-          A white-breasted something (little bitty bird)

-          Some bird that I think is some kind of oriole but is in the owl family.  It was cleverly disguised on the end of a branch, and though I saw it and have pics, I’m not completely convinced it isn’t the branch.  AMAZING how these animals camouflage themselves; more on that later;

-          Two different kinds of bats

-          A yellowtail (don’t remember its proper name, but it’s a black bird, maybe white chest and long bright yellow tail.

-          Tiger herons.

-          Spiders

-          Cayman (don’t know what the plural of cayman is, but we saw a lot)

-          Some bird that is or is related to the national bird of Honduras

-          Kingfishers

-          Bees

-          We heard the poisonous frogs; we are supposed to see them on  the forest walk that starts in 45 mins.

-          Yellow crowned night heron

-          Iguanas

-          Anhinga, a fowl from the duck family

-          Gazillions of butterflies, all indescribably beautiful

-          Bolt-billed heron

-          And, of course, tortugas.

So. It was amazing to me that the guides always saw things that we didn’t see.  The white-breasted whatever is only about 3 inches tall, and it was up in the top of a tree that looked to be 15-20 meters high.  Yet these guys spotted it.  Maybe they knew it was in the area because of its call, but that wouldn’t explain how they saw the little bats which were about the size of golf balls, the same color as the trees, and in one case, hanging on the underside of the trees.  What I took away from this is that to see things you have to know both what to look for and where to look.

There’s probably a sermon in that somewhere, and there’s definitely a sermon in the Bloody Tree.  It’s a big, giant yet unimposing tree.  What’s unique about it is what gives it its name:  when you cut it, apparently its sap runs blood red.  Interestingly, that red sap has curative properties.  When you put the blood (red sap) on your body to cure a cut or to otherwise use for healing, as it begins to work, the color changes from red to white.  As much as I don’t like the popular Christian notion that to be cleaned is to be whitened, you can’t escape the fact that the blood is used for healing and as it heals, it turns the area white.  I’ma leave that alone until I can figure out how to preach it without implying that whitening is healing.

But first I’mma stretch out and take a little siesta til the forest walk.  Then I think I’ll come back and hit the pool.  It’s been a good trip here, and even though I didn’t get to go to Quepos to parasail, and even though I didn’t even get to see Danny, this CR trip has been awesome, as always.

I’m quite taken with the focus on ecological responsibility, and would perhaps like to pursue the nexus of ecology and theology.  While I love people and people generally love me, Christian folk often get on my nerves.  Many times we uplift our tradition or our own understanding of the Bible over anything else, thereby shutting the door for God to still speak to us.  Right now, in the African American community, there is a big push for social justice.  That is as it should be, but that does not mean we ignore ecological integrity.  The things we’re seeing with our environment (and attributing to the end of the world) might have been prevented had we looked at our entire world, including our physical environment, 20 to 30 years ago.  Again, I am NOT saying we should not focus on social justice as well; I’m saying the opportunities for social justice will decrease and mutate as our physical environment shrinks and or is poisoned.  Just as humans must focus on the entire tripartite person, so must we follow Christ in ALL the world.

I happen to think that stupidity, while anathema to Cassandraism, is a choice, one that I need to respect.  If you’re invested in being stupid, I don’t know that the best use of my time, talent or resources is to try to get you to divest of that stupidity.  Perhaps the best move for me is to deal with someone who’s not invested in being stupid.

12:45.  Lunch is in 15 minutes, but I want to  get this down before I forget.  Last first:  I’m sitting out by the dining area and speak to a guy who walks by. It occurs to me that I have a camera around my neck which likely cost more than some of these people’s houses, and that put a whole new perspective on the constant asking for tips.  It’s not about being wealthy, it’s about sharing of what you do have.

And then down  the walk comes this American (I think).  I automatically don’t like him because of the way he walks, but when he and I are the only two people in sight and he doesn’t even acknowledge my presence, well – so I watch him go towards the registration area and pull out his iPad.  I know there’s no internet service except on one part of the beach, but since he hasn’t bothered to acknowledge my presence, I choose not to interrupt him.  I watch him wander around and around searching for a signal and remember how I was prone to do the same thing.  I then wonder  if I come off as arrogantly to some people, and think of the possibility that he could be a perfectly sweet guy, just a bit preoccupied. Of course, by then he’s wandered off somewhere else in search h of a signal, and I head to the room to write down these thoughts before they leave me.

So the rainforest walk was AWESOME!!! They gave us these big ugly boots. I thought it was a bit over the top, but the rainforest is full of mud, and we needed them.  Then we got to pick walking sticks as we entered the forest.  I’m not really one for traipsing around a hot humid rainforest, but this was great!  We saw:

-          Iguanas

-          Brown vine snake

-          Brown two-toed sloth

-          A turtle laying eggs

-          Cayman (two) in the water and

-          A Tiger heron, all on the grounds of the Lodge, before we even entered the rainforest!  Inside the rainforest, we saw:

-          A termite’s nest

-          The poisonous red frog

-          The hot lips plant

-          A woodpecker

-          Spider monkeys

-          Howler monkeys

-          More termites

-          Cicadas

-          The helmeted lizard and

-          The green climbing toad.  Kenneth talked about the Green red-eyed frog, but we didn’t see it.

So I wore shorts, a wicking shirt, and a long-sleeved cotton shirt.  I was absolutely drenched when I got out of that rainforest.  SO humid!  But I’m grateful it didn’t rain.  I think I’ll hit the pool this afternoon, then do some more writing or just chill.  This has been quite the adventure.

Pics from SJ are here:  https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205392428944018.1073741901.1048146180&type=1&l=95bc8b8d8e

And Tortuguero pics are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205392465464931.1073741902.1048146180&type=1&l=17de467d70

Weds April 15 - Tortuguero Morning Boat Ride is here
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205392517826240.1073741903.1048146180&type=1&l=b84e69b962

and Weds April 15 - Tortuguero post breakfast rainforest walk pics are here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10205392810633560.1073741904.1048146180&type=1&l=9cf141f734

Lessons Learned

It’s Monday, April 13, at 7:45 in the morning.  I’m sitting in Miami International Airport. I should be in Escazu, Costa Rica, but missed my flight yesterday and couldn’t get from Jamaica to Costa Rica until midmorning today.  Lesson 1:  no matter how much you think you know your itinerary, LOOK at it, CHECK it, and DOUBLE CHECK it.  Whenever I go somewhere, I make it my business to know when my flight leaves.  I knew my flight left at 3 pm, and duly made reservations to leave the hotel at 12:30;  the 10-minute ride would get me to the Montego Bay airport well before the two hour window.  In a remarkable stroke of brilliance, I checked in online and confirmed my arrival time with my hosts in Costa Rica without ever bothering to double check my flight information. I had SO many opportunities to look at the departure time; I simply failed to do so because I thought I knew it.

So I was surprised and freaked out when I went to print my boarding pass at 11:55 and discovered that the flight was boarding 20 minutes later.  Seems the flight left at 1, and landed at 3…. I tried to get the lady at the ticket counter to let me make a run for it, but apparently the rule of thumb is that you need to have your bags checked at least an hour before an international flight leaves.  I’m grateful both that I had money to pay the exorbitant fare differential and that I had friends in Miami who were willing and able to put me up for a night.

So I spent the evening with my homeboy Rob and his new fiancée, Carlos.  They live in Miami Beach, right on South Beach, and yesterday was South Beach or Miami Gay Pride day.  So I went to the festivities with them.  Rob and Carlos are just a coupla guys, but as much as I enjoyed watching all of them, after a while I did begin to wonder if or why, in some people’s minds, to be a gay male is to be a scantily-clad muscled up twinkie.  There  were lots of nearly naked men with muscles, but after a while they all started to look  the same. I kept wondering what it was they were looking for, or what point they were trying to make.  It seems to me that somehow, somewhere the quest for acceptance of varying sexuality has gotten conflated with weirdness – or maybe it’s all a subset of individuality.  I don’t know.  I just think being gay shouldn’t really mean anything to anyone except you and your partner.  I don’t think it should define how you dress or speak or dance or live any more than being black should. Our sexual orientation and skin color are who we are, but we get to make choices about what we do; I don’t believe all gay men choose to muscle up and wear speedos any more than I believe all black people eat fried chicken and watermelon.

Despite – or perhaps in the face – of all that, I have to say that what I saw was a lot of love.  Yes, of course, there were the people pantomiming sexual acts, but the majority of those were the very butch girls – the hypermasculinized women who often exhibit more traditionally male social cues than men do.  Even that, though, seemed to be all about expressions of love as they understood love. I was in the middle of this crowd with a Christian T-shirt on, and not one person was rude or unkind to me.  I wondered if a person with pride colors or one of the “2QT2BSTR8;” or “ I’m not Gay but my Boyfriend (Girlfriend) Is,” shirts would have gotten the same acceptance and civility in the Christian community.  As a matter of fact, I posted a picture of a coupla guys in something like drag and one of my friends started commenting about sin.  Lesson 2:  Love is an action word, and our love shows in our actions.  Rob and Carlos asked me about officiating their wedding.  I believe officiating same-sex weddings is contrary to my church’s rules, but would likely have gone ahead and done it if I were already registered to officiate weddings in  the District of Columbia.  Because Carlos is here on a fiancée visa and has already been here a couple of months, I didn’t want to risk any last minute administrative hassles.  I realized I’d be ok with doing it when it occurred to me that a possible defrocking from my church would not make a substantial difference in my life, except possibly to decrease the burden of financial obligations for attending those ubiquitous meetings. (I’m writing this as I’m in transit from a meeting;  not all meetings are equal.  When I go to a meeting and come back with a deeper knowledge or an opportunity to have made a difference – that’s an altogether different animal from the meetings where you go sit in some ballroom listening to someone (misre)present concepts you analyzed 6 years ago, or pitch their latest book or other commercial venture.)

So in the middle of the festivities last night, I found myself wandering off.  Quite frankly, I was a bit bored.  I haven’t been a party girl for decades, so to me the music, the dancing, and even the bodies seemed monotonous.  I wandered along Washington Street, eventually going into a tattoo parlor called Salvation.  I was looking for an earring to replace my cross – it’s a barbell type with a cross hanging off it.  Got it on W.4^th street in NYC, so not sure the vendor will even  be there, let alone have the earring again.  It lasted all through the dolphin swim, but by the time I got to the Peter Tosh memorial, it seems to have fallen off.  I found another one that is a stud (which is actually better suited both for my swimming and for my calisthenics), but I liked the hanging one.  Perhaps the highlight of the evening, though, was when the guy in the tattoo parlor confessed Jesus Christ.  It got me to thinking about how we deal with the LGBTQ community – if I’d gone in there talking about how tattoos are unbiblical and prohibited by God or talking about how having a tattoo parlor meant he was an unrepentant sinner,  we probably wouldn’t  have made much progress. But we talked about his beautiful eyes, and beautiful things in the world, and nature and dolphin swimming and ziplining – and then we were talking about God and God’s majesty and about the Presence of Jesus the Christ.  I don’t have an agenda; I’m not on a mission, I’m just living a life full of God’s Grace and Mercy. It’s pretty cool, and I share it whenever I can.

So I’m here at the airport, and aware of the fact that today is the day I planned to go parasailing in Quepos.  Now I’ll probably not be able to do that at all, since I’m in Tortuguero from Tuesday through Thursday, and I leave Friday morning.  It will be good to see the turtles, but it would have been better to have been able to go parasailing.

But let me make those decisions when I get there.  I still have more than an hour til boarding begins.  Lesson 3: better to wait at the airport than to risk missing a flight.

1:37 pm.  So I thought it a bit ironic that, after missing a flight by minutes, the flight I had to take was delayed by over an hour.  We sat on the tarmac with the door closed, waiting for a mechanic to come and check the nav system, then bring a new computer.  It seemed we waited forever, but during that time a bit of calm came over me.  First of all, it wasn’t like there was anything I could do, and second of all, I was en route from Jamaica to Costa Rica by way of South Beach.  How could I complain?  So we’re in the air and I’m chill and I remember talking with the Haitian taxi driver (it’s amazing how many varieties there are of spoken English, and how much I don’t understand.  Between the Jamaican and Haitian patois, people have entire conversations with me and I have absolutely no idea what they are talking about.) – I remember talking with the Haitian taxi driver about how he made a mistake on his return date and was charged an additional $300.00.  Fortunately, he was staying with family and had the liberty of simply extending his trip.  But he told me I should have travel insurance, and I remembered that I did, indeed, buy travel insurance!!  Not only that, but I have a physical copy  of the policy, which seems to cover missed connections.  So we shall see….  I’m pretty sure I’m not in business class here, but there is enough room that I am able to cross my legs while seated.  A large man I used to know liked flying American because he said they had the largest seats.  The fact that there’s no one in the seat beside me is also a plus; I’ve just taken my camera bag from the overhead storage bin and stored it under the middle seat.  Additionally, I got Danny some rum leaving Jamaica and some more leaving Miami, plus I got some in Jamaica for Rob and Carlos, so I’ve been able to legally purchase and transport 3+ liters of rum.  They’ll enjoy it.  Lesson learned #4:  Do your best, but in all things remember that God’s got it, not you.  That doesn’t absolve you from the responsibility to put forth your best effort, it simply reminds you that the results will be determined not only by your efforts,  but by God’s Grace.

So I’m not gonna get to go parasailing.  But I did take the time on the airline to title the videos I have, and perhaps can upload them to Youtube this afternoon.  It may have to wait until I reach the States, but whenever it happens, I have them titled by date, which should make things easier.

Am getting better at this sim card thing.  I had an old Vodaphone sim from Egypt that I’ve put into my phone.  That way ATT won’t know when I land, so there won’t even  be a question of roaming charges.  Last year I didn’t do it, but going forward I think I will keep my Jamaican and Costa Rican sim cards loaded (I can probably put $1.00 per quarter on  them or something).  Then I can switch cards in flight, and be in communication as soon as I’m in country.  It would also mean I’d have a foreign phone number to give to my office – checked the bank statements and find some accounts in the negative.  Another signatory was supposed to be available to make transfers,  but it doesn’t appear that is happening.  I really need to groom a staff that can function effectively in my absence.  I know who I am as the head of the organization; it seems to me that for me to have optimum performance means the people around me should  not have to depend on me for every little thing. 

But enough with work. I think I’m taking another nap now and will write more later.