last spring: i began speaking at community forums about LGBTQ issues in northern UT.

last summer: i sat in a kitchen i shared with NYC actors and sobbed as i scrolled through photo after photo of mormons in the SLC pride parade.

a few months ago: i found this image.

last week: i read about another LGBTQ teen suicide in UT.

today: saw the lds church's new web

site on mormons and gays. i think these thoughts: nouns. names. stupid words.

all this warmth and sadness. bandages, knives, cancers, scars. 

tenderness and fear and hope regarding the application of love and the misapplication faith in our community. 

mormonism and LGBTQ : mormonsm vs LGBTQ. depending on the day, GOD, the duality gets to be too much, even for this split-up gemini. i'm both. sometimes, i consider the spiritual history of NIC MAUGHAN and i lose my breath. i want to be neither. but i am both [i.am.in.you.and.you.are.in.me], and because i am both, i empathize; i teach; i learn; i rage; i love. i speak. i do. i grow. 

i become "i am." becoming one? atonement. it isn't ever easy to name what you've borne.

you kill something to let another part live. but death is transformation. blood becomes scab becomes scar-is-stronger-flesh. flesh becomes bare bone. those skulls where brains bounced with ideas.

god's eyes must have some kind of x-ray vision: they look on us all and see the same.love. it's this flesh we've got that keeps us seeing separate. it's flesh that's weak and clings to fear. 

i say fuck fear. embrace love. i see the image at the top of my screen. it's a reminder: look underneath. remember you all have the same blessed name: Child of GOD.