Posts Tagged ‘society’

Living Fully to the End

Posted: March 7, 2018 in Life's Design
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Considering living options as life winds down is an activity in which everyone will ultimately engage. Retirement planning is imperative. Many people immediately think about structuring their finances in a way that a sufficient amount of funds will be available for living out their final days. Without question, that is a huge piece of retirement planning. But that’s not all there is to ensuring quality, and even quantity, of life as it winds down. Another design component that goes into this last phase of living on this earth is whether or when to settle into a retirement community. (more…)

What?—A Peaceful, Progressive City—Why?—How?—When?

Posted: October 19, 2017 in Life's Design, Uncategorized
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Here is a reflection on the state of our peaceful, progressive city of Saint Louis after a

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Peaceful protesters tduring the second day of demonstrations.
Lawrence Bryant / Reuters a caption

month since a judge found Jason Stockley, a white former police officer, not guilty of first-degree murder in the death of Anthony Lamar Smith, a black man. Immediately after the verdict was announced (on Friday, September 14, 2017), people began to protest in the streets in anger against the decision. (more…)

Being Christian and Gay – Part 6: An Understanding of Sexuality

Posted: October 10, 2017 in Being Christian and Gay
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In this series on “Being Christian and Gay,” we have considered scripture and a Christian sexual ethic. In this post we’ll examine a general understanding of sexuality. There’s more, to being gay than the act of sexual intimacy. I, like you, both consciously and subconsciously are attracted to and seek to attract other people with whom to form deep relationships. This is the way we ward off loneliness. It is also the way we seek an intimate relationship. (more…)

A Gay Man’s Communities

Posted: June 27, 2016 in Gay Life
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I need community. I am not alone. Rural and small town areas of our nation are replete with stories of community. The proverb—from a hard to verify source—that states “it takes a village to raise a child” is a pithy example of the value of community. Strong bonds of friendship develop on college campuses. Fraternal organizations are often cemented with comradely feelings. Faithful congregants in religious communities describe their connections with one another as family and many sing about being in “the family of God.” Even people who are bent on destruction and mayhem find brotherly camaraderie in the pursuit of evil.

I am defining community as a social, religious, occupational, educational, or other group that shares characteristics in common and is perceived or perceives itself distinct from the larger society around it. A community can be of any size and the common characteristics are felt deeply so as to create a strong bond. The size of the community is not as important as the vitality of connection between members of the community.

Each of us find community in different sectors of society, and are most often members of more than one community. In fact, participation in multiple communities promulgates healthy life balance. The narrow focus of a single community creates energy and purpose but is devoid of healthy perspective and requires constant recalibration from sources external to that community. If these external influences are not strong enough to bring needed correction, personal commitments to only one community result in a life that becomes unhealthy for the individual and, by extension, the community, and the world immediately outside of the community.

This submission to a single community often happens when fanaticism and radicalism take hold and fundamentalist ideologies overpower the autonomy of the individual. This phenomenon is observed in political climates regardless of the niche in the structure of society: government, philosophy, education, religion, entertainment, or science.

Someone may take umbrage with my position. I’m thinking of people who are so strongly committed to one ideology that they feel every one should share their life’s single purpose. This is true in every segment of society and can be documented with a plethora of examples. Consider the politics of government, or religious faith traditions, or the philosophical underpinnings of any human endeavor.

But I digress. Back to my initial statement that I need community. Upon the death of my wife Barbara, I was faced with how much I had grown to depend on her over the 45 years of our marriage. This was particularly true when I examined how she had become my entrée to community, particularly those communities with a social component. My introverted personality depended heavily on her. When I was left to negotiate the serpentine ways of entering into and engaging components of a community, I floundered. But I desperately needed what communities afford: belonging, affirmation, support, purpose, and social opportunities. I persisted in my effort to engage communities in which I had relationships.

Members of my communities were unaware of how isolated I felt in the hollowness of Barbara’s leaving, even while engaged in relational activities among them. I was a master at pretense and masked the difficulty I had in entering new communities. However, I persisted in my attempts because I felt community was critical for healthy living.

The reality of my need for genuine community became vividly real when I began the process of bringing people into a fuller understanding of who I am as a gay man (click here for a post about my coming to terms with my sexuality). I knew from the beginning of this kaleidoscopic journey toward authenticity, toward living a life of integrity, that former communities might disappear and new ones would hopefully emerge. I was not blind to what I was doing. I was cognizant of the real possibility of losing friends and even entire communities in which I had enjoyed the accoutrements of belonging. A huge question mark was superimposed on my communities when I began informing people that I am gay. Would some disappear? Would some grow stronger?

I am on the other side of those initial steps into sharing the truth and reality of who I am as a gay man. I am now able to begin evaluating my world of communities. There are some of my past relationships who may or may not have received this recent revelation about me. I have not, nor at this time do I plan to bring them into the circumference of this knowledge for I have not had a strong connection with them for over 20 years. Nor does it concern me should they hear from some source that I am gay. Truth is not something to fear.

There is still a question mark hovering over some communities in which I have enjoyed relationships in more recent years, though I am not currently active within their circles. In some cases there are community members who now have a more complete knowledge of who I am, but the community at large may be uninformed.

The primary community of family and close relatives has been affirming and I am most grateful for their acceptance. Some of them accept me without affirming, and that’s okay. Each must come into their own understandings in their own way. My children in particular have been wonderful. Their love has not diminished and their acceptance is unwavering. This family community is a source of comfort, affirmation, acceptance and pride for which I am deeply and fully thankful.

There are other communities in which I circulate. For instance, my church is a significant community for me. As such, it was the first one in which I began opening my life. Not the entire church, but valued members with whom I already had a warm relationship. I might characterize these friends as a community within a community. Each time I have opened myself to someone in the church, I have received no condemnation, no negative reaction, only love and gratitude for being considered a close friend with whom I could be authentic. My church community, not in whole but in a large part, is a place where I feel safe, receive affirmation, support, and can live my life with transparency.

Another community is the condominium where I live. I have discovered an enlarging group of friends who have warmly accepted me as a gay man. Some of them are gay while others are not. An interesting thing about this community is that almost all of them could be either my kids or even my grandkids! I am grateful for them, their affirmation, their support and the social opportunities they afford me.

I live in a downtown neighborhood not unlike a neighborhood anywhere in the country—rural, small town, or suburban. I know the store owners, restaurant servers and even cooks, policemen, street sweepers, mail carriers, and homeless people. Many, though not all, know I am gay and, because of my transparency, my relationship with them has even been strengthened.

I am a “member” of a community of people who habituate a coffee shop. We greet each other warmly, call each other by name, and all of us enjoy coffee. A member of this community stopped me on the street today to ask if I had made my trip to Dallas yet. I hadn’t seen him for several weeks yet he was interested in me and showed that interest by mentioning something specific about my life. And so it was when a friend entered the coffee shop today and I encouraged him to tell our friend the barista what happened in his life over the weekend: he had gotten engaged to a wonderful girl. This is another example of a community of people in my life.

I have not gotten involved in a “gay community,” though I’m not averse to doing so. Because so many people, gay and straight, have affirmed and encouraged me, I have not felt the strong necessity for such a single purpose community, which has been a felt need for many gay people. I have participated in a few activities with some of these communities and do not feel as awkward doing so now as I did when I first began revealing my gay sexual identity. I have yet to feel the need to depend on them as once I thought I would.

There are times when I identify with certain communities for specific purposes. As an example, the mass murders in Orlando, Florida brought me into the gay community emotionally and spiritually. I feel a kinship with the survivors of that awful atrocity. Though not organically so, I am a member of the community and feel the loss. This is not unlike when I was an international missionary in Southeast Asia and heard of the accidental death of a missionary in another part of the world. Even though I had not known the one who was killed, I felt a part of me had been injured and I grieved. So I offer prayer and tears for my gay community in Orlando.

I need community, but not just one community, a variety of communities. These communities provide perspective to keep my life in balance. My communities increasingly enrich my life and fill it up with novelty and growth, with spirituality and courage, with peace and contentment. I need community and am finding it in many places. You are reading my blog and I count you as a member of this virtual community. Please leave a comment below to spark community conversation, drop me a note in the “Let’s Talk” tab, or can click the “Follow Life’s Design” button at the top left of the page to receive an e-mail alert for the next post. Let’s build this community together in this space.

Is God on Washington Avenue?

Posted: August 27, 2013 in Uncategorized
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I’ve been looking for God in my community, Washington Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The evangelical Christian would would look for him in language. The presence of certain vocabulary and the absence of other vocabulary signals God’s presence for them. A Bible study held at noon for business people, and in a condo for loft dwellers would be a stamp of God’s presence. Or, they would see it visually in one person, usually with a Bible, in prayer with another person leaving the impression that evangelism was happening on Washington Avenue or in a coffee shop. But does the absence of, or presence of, certain vocabulary, a group of people studying the Bible together, or a public evangelistic encounter indicate the absence of God in his creation?

I have questions today: Does God work only in the lives of people who have made a focused commitment to him through faith in Jesus as the Christ? Is God completely absent from all else in society? Is everything that is good but does not emanate directly from a conscious submission to the grace of God in Christ just a moral principle at work in society? What does it mean for a society to have “redeeming” qualities that are never consciously, overtly connected to acknowledging Jesus as the embodied presence of God on earth–God’s Son?

Can God be present across the street in front of the hookah lounge and the tattoo parlor? Is he somewhere under a tattoo. or in a tattoo? Can he be present in the sharing of a glass of wine during dinner? Was he there in a conversation I was in one day last week between a lawyer, a coffee shop owner, a Japanese judo instructor, a man confined to a wheelchair, and myself? One is smoking, the shop owner and judo instructor will take off on an eight-mile bike ride in a moment, the guy in the wheelchair is hopeful that the judo instructor will enable him to be free of the wheelchair and on crutches again, the lawyer bought a newspaper, brought it outside, dismantled it, relegated the comics, ads, sports sections to the trash while telling me he had propped a book for me to read against my condo door.

Was the God of hope and new beginnings in any of this? Does he only show himself in the life of a committed extroverted Christian? If we see God in the design of life on Washington Avenue in downtown St. Louis, that means one thing. If we don’t, is it because we’re not looking for him? Or, is he not present or hiding; and if he were present we would know it? Is he a God who reveals himself or hides himself, making it a kind of game for us to find him? Just wondering.

Productive Waiting

Posted: August 23, 2013 in Uncategorized
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Waiting, regardless of the reason or whether or not it is volitional, adds interest, growth and enhancement to Life’s Designs. On the morning of August 19 on my walk down Locust Street and back up Washington Avenue, I saw a friend on the other side of Washington sitting in front of the Washington Avenue Post coffee shop. He was drinking his morning coffee while waiting for a friend to join him for a bike ride.

Whether sitting drinking coffee while waiting for someone, standing in line in a supermarket, waiting in an airport lounge to board a plane, or sitting in a doctor’s office, waiting is a good opportunity to observe other people. We often call this “people watching” and engage in it mindlessly. However, by observing cultural nuances surrounding you, you can discover designs in other people’s lives that can enrich your own.

For waiting to be productive, one must observe with the intent of learning how people respond to or deal with life in the moment. I’m not suggesting we approach these observations negatively. Most of us don’t need to exercise aspects of our personalities that cast negative aspersions on people. That activity often comes without exercise, it saddens me to say.

Observations made during productive waiting involves a desire to learn, to expand horizons, to enter into a different perspective. Once in a Walmart store while standing in line waiting to check out, I observed a mother, of an ethnicity different than mine and others in the immediate area, discipline her crying child, who was creating something of a small “scene.” Here was an opportunity for productive waiting while standing in line, an opportunity to broaden both my societal and cultural understanding.

Certain cultures have child-rearing practices that differ from other cultures. This is true of cultures at the micro level of local communities and neighborhoods as well as cultures separated by national origin and lingo-ethnicity. My thought response must not be an immediate negative criticism of what is being observed without first seeking to understand the cultural norms from which the mother is operating. Why did she use language that seemed cruel and harsh (I say “seemed” because of the tone of her voice, her facial expression and the child’s reaction. I did not understand the language she used)?

Her approach effectuated a response in the child that both stopped the crying and elicited in him a meek demeanor though not cowering nor fearful. The approach quieted the child, but was it the best action for long-term development for the child? I don’t know; I don’t fully understand the culture. I did appreciate the resolution that appeared to be somewhat good for all, the child, the parent, the clerk, and the people in line. I wish I knew more of the culture.

I could have had an immediate impulse to be critical of the woman for speaking, what seemed to me, sharp and angry words to a defenseless child. Or, I could appreciate an interaction that brought peace in a stressful situation, even though I didn’t fully understand the transactions between mother and child due to my lingo-cultural disadvantage. Also, the clerk, to provide harmony within our American society, which values peace and minimal invasion of personal space, handed the child a sucker, with the parent’s approval. The child was happy, the mother smiled, chatter started up in the line as it began to move again, and life returned to normal.

Productive waiting can also be a mirror that reflects our own attitudes and actions. We can see in other people something that is positive and good and recognize that our own life comes up short. As a college freshman, I once waited in line in the Hannibal, Missouri, downtown post office to mail a package. A professorial type person was at a counter off to the side going through mail he had retrieved from his box when a younger person my age entered the post office and greeted him. They struck up a conversation obviously knowing each other. I watched and listened, not so much to specific words as to the flow. What struck me most, and what I remember after fifty-five years, is that the younger late teen would interrupt the forty-something, who would immediately stop what he was saying, even in mid-sentence, and focus attention on the younger would-be adult.

I felt warmth slowly rise to my face, not so much because of embarrassment for the youth as for my own personal guilt for the times I had done the very same thing. That day in the post office while waiting in line I observed, I learned, I vowed not to repeat the poor etiquette of the youth, and to follow the example of the man, whom I later learned was a professor and who would teach one of my college classes. I learned the importance of focusing attention on the person with whom I’m talking, to listen actively, to refrain from focusing on myself and my next great contribution to the conversation. The person buying stamps at the window was through; it was now my turn to mail my package.

Engaging in thoughtful observation while waiting can be productive. We can learn and grow. Our horizons can expand. We can become better people. The designs of our lives can be enhanced.