(funny how darkness can lift. we had a good conversation and our hearts feel a bit less burdened.)
we end rehearsal very early. i spend time at a Barnes&Noble. i want to peruse the sexuality shelves, find more information about what it's like to be a gay teen today so i can better help the young people i try to serve as an OUTreach volunteer. when i turn toward the aisle, i see a group of teenage boys in trenchcoats, hair unkempt and faces half fuzzed. they are joking with each other at some book they were reading:
"Look at those fags! Can you believe that's what they do?"
i think i should feel brave. i'm not. i should enter the aisle and peruse the limited selection. i don't. i should take the incident and say something, teach these boys a lesson. i won't. feeling like a cowardly failure, i go to the poetry section instead. i purchase a translation of Neruda's
100 Sonnets. sometimes, when there are three teenage boys and you haven't got your mace with you, poetry is the only way you can examine your truth:
y asi como no tuvo nacimientono tiene muertes,
es como un largo no,
solo cambia de tierras y de labios.
i meet my friend, Miss Chanel-Number-5 (not because she wears the perfume, but because her name is CoCo), for lunch at the Copper Onion. her lovely son--a singular, Johnny Depp-ish junior high heartthrob--joins us. we laugh and extoll the brilliance of the food while we catch up on the travel and events of the summer and this fall.
i buy a ticket to a screening of
The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and having an hour to spare, spend some time at the citycreek mall (somewhat affectionately dubbed "the temple of Mormon capitalism" by me). as i enter the mall, i see two men holding hands, walking the way any "heteronormal" couple unflinchingly could, looking in storefront window displays. i follow them, trying to find the nerve to say
thank you. thank you for quietly living out your lives, for holding your hands together in
this place, this American/Mormon trade center
. it is inspiring. it is finite and perfect, which makes it infinite. i ask GOD to bless them.
i watch the film. i get excited about the previews=new films to see. i feel the weight of the pain of the world on my heart as i watch this story play itself out on the screen. i think of the stories of the kids at
OUTreach. i think of my own story.
i feel drawn to Temple Square after watching the film. i know i'll end up there, but i pretend to shop at a few stores at the mall to take up time. this tactic does not work, and i find myself within the gates of the Salt Lake City temple sooner than i anticipate.
at first, i ridicule myself for being here. soon enough, i accept the logic that this is a traditionally sacred site for me and my people. i sit on an uncomfortable bench and ask GOD if i'm following the path i was meant to seek.
prayer. it's a constant in my life, but it feels more urgent (for lack of a better word) as i sit and look up at this Holy House from my uncomfortable bench.
"Look up," that still Voice seems to say. spires point like arrows and the Angel Moroni holds his trump to his lips, unaided. i think of Moses, whose arms were so tired his brother, Aaron, had to assist. there is no assistance for Moroni--he's held that trumpet on his own for the last 150 or so years.
i think of Jonah, who rathered a fish's maw than than a visionary call. i am more like Jonah than Moses, or even Aaron. sometimes, i don't want to heed this call to lift my voice, to share my story, to build these bridges I AM prompted to build. i wonder where my Aaron is. who lifts my arms when they grow weary? sometimes, i feel so much doubt.
and then, bells from the Madeleine cathedral begin chanting the vigil for the hour and i feel the answer to my prayer:
ye are called to the work
perfect love casteth out fear
IT IS GOOD
go forth, my beloved son, in whom i am well pleased
our lives are lifted up by moments of atonement. i am full of them.
