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.