Local Honey

We started this blog 6 years ago. Every year (for 6 years) I've been invited, encouraged, interested, eager- to take part in this. But whatever it is about June 1st? I could never make it work.

In some ways this is redundant. What is the GSO but a blog about our family. Every time Katy or I blog, it is for at least one LGBT family.

As I write, I mentally review the week we've had and the weeks coming up, and I don't freaking know how parents do this. And then I remember, we are doing it... We ARE parents.
This is not a dream but a "dream come true"... (shrug)

With a 1.5 year old boy and a 3.5 year old boy, every day is an adventure.
Every meal is a crap shoot.
Every bedtime is a cliff hanger. (Will we sleep through the night or won't we?!?)
Next week, Katy is away at a conference and I will keep the home fires burning, but looking at the week we've had, I miss her already.

First, a few tid bits:

1) I'd just like to say, that the two moms are suffering a little right now. After more than a week of this "cold" I'm willing to concede that I may have developed seasonal allergies late in the 4th decade of my life. But seriously, if this is what a little pollen can do to a woman, evolution may be working against us. I promise, I'm going on local honey as soon as I can locate some...

2) Pink eye is running rampant through the day care. ML got two scoops of clear goopey in his left eye, and we had to get drops called in prophylactically to keep him from being erroneously diagnosed and tossed out of work camp day care for two days. In a scheduling Cirque Du Soleil that amounted to nothing less than a Parenting Coup, we had him on 24 hours of drops before any ocular pink-en-ing could occur.

3) JB's first dance recital is Saturday. His dress rehearsal is tomorrow night. He has the prince costume, pink tights, make up (including foundation and purple lipstick- that he requested Katy buy for him), black ballet shoes, a new haircut, and he is poised to steal the show. Most importantly, he is very excited and proud. And it is the most normal thing in the world to him. I pray that we get to keep him like this for several more years- where he gets to enjoy the things he enjoys in blissful ignorance that some of them (baseball, football, watching garbage trucks) are "boy things", and some of them (cooking, dancing, wearing lipstick) are "girl things".

Back to the post...
What the heck does it mean to blog for LGBT families?

In some ways, our blog is all about the fragile capacity of memory. I need to chronicle these times because if I can't remember what I ate for breakfast yesterday, how will I remember how adorable my kids were in the first real winter of their lives? Or how will I accurately portray to them how insane they sometimes made me, as I grow older and romanticize our early years together?!?

But that's only part of it, really. I blog for more people than me and us.

I blog for our family and friends that totally support us. I blog for our acquaintances that might not understand us. I blog for Oprah- that she might somehow stumble upon this space and find someone to pay me to write for a living...

When i first came out, one of the strangest things to me was the censorship that suddenly surrounded various aspects of my life. Prior to realizing I was gay, I was an open book. There was nothing to hide, nothing to dance around, no question that couldn't be posed. "What's new? Who are you dating?" And endless follow up questions about any man that might come close to fitting that description. But after "word got around" about me, conversations temporarily got quieter, more one sided... There were obvious school and work questions, questions about where I was living, but then things slowed down. Only a few would venture to the "who are you living with?" And even fewer would jump right out and ask about "dating" or a "girlfriend". My coping strategy was to just put it out there. I felt, the sooner I came out to people, the sooner I could convey this was not something that I needed to hide to feel secure. If it was public knowledge that I was OUT, then innocent discomfort based on a fear of being too personal or inadvertently OUTING me would prove to be unnecessary. I spoke quietly, but as clearly as I could about all aspects of my life.

This was not necessarily natural to me. But like when you teach yourself to be comfortable speaking in public, I just decided it was the way I would try to take care of not only myself, but others that I loved and worked with and played with.

When I met Katy, she reinforced this model of behavior. People don't know that she quivers a little on the inside and silently worries so much about what other people think, because when you talk to her, it seems like she's all carefree. She seems to say what's on her mind without pause. She tries not to couch the truth unless there's a really good reason. Once I fell in love with Katy, our relationship demanded an entirely higher standard for living out and proud. I mean, she's not someone I'd ever consider hiding, even for a moment. (As Lissa would say, "What's the point of having a trophy wife, if you can't..." Lissa uses that preamble in all sorts of scenarios.)

So we are a gay family, but we are certainly not separate or isolated from other families. And we are open and clear on what puts us into this very distinct category of families, but often, we are so busy living our lives, that we feel a little removed from vitriol aimed particularly at us.
Consider this:
- 31 states in the country have CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS that forbid marriage between two men or two women (the acknowledgement that we are a family)
- 39 states in the country have STATE LAWS that forbid acknowledgement that we are a family
- There is a federal law (DOMA) that disallows the federal acknowledgment of our state-sanctioned marriage. That includes not counting us as a family in the census; not counting us as a family in the tax code; not counting us as a family in terms of disability, social security, medicare, military benefits; that includes not counting us as a family in terms of immigration, international travel and protections, and federal employment.
- Federal law is still unclear on the status of gay men and women in the military- Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) is supposedly on it's way out, but until that transition is completed, gay men and women are prohibited from serving in the military; which as far as I'm concerned means an out gay man or gay woman (even if s/he could win the general election and earn the votes of the electoral college) would not be eligible to serve as Commander in Chief or President of the United States.
- In at least 41 countries, it is AGAINST THE LAW to be gay or in a gay relationship
- Many of the worlds religions claim without any hesitation that God either hates gay people, wants them to live in denial of their natural inclinations, or will definitively punish same sex attraction with eternal damnation.

In a world with these types of headlines, with so many powerful, famous, and vocal people that are lining up to condemn us for being gay, when I consider our family, and our lives...
The sad truth is I don't feel all that gay.

We don't live in a gay house, in a gay town, have gay jobs, go to a gay church-
(Well, actually, our church is a little gay...)
But what I mean is, we are just living. We are conventional and mainstream and we are comfortable that way.
We dabble in activism and keeping this blog is one tendril of that activity.
We are surrounded by good people of all stripes, and we feel boring and not "different" at all...

This year we went to PRIDE in North Hampton, MA. North Hampton, if you don't know, is the lesbian "San Fransisco" of the east coast. It is the "New England, town-green, raise your chickens under the worn out kayak in your yard, 7 sister all-women's college surrounded, hemp-wearing, local honey and maple syrup-making, artist collective, non-profit supporting, justice seeking, female indie-rock band launching, queer women raising children, challenging each other to cook-offs, reading contests, inter-mural soccer, and 1/2 marathons;" it is the year-round answer to p-town. (deep breath)

When you go visit friends in NoHo, there are always 2-3 husbands in a group of 10-15 women, but they're the type of guys that are more liberal, intellectual, feminist, or bohemian than any of your female relatives back home, so (in the most innocent, respectful, and non-emasculating way) when you are with them, you forget there are men in the room.

So we are in the car, heading up there (for PRIDE) I started to get a little insecure.
I started thinking, "We are going to J and J's house and they are so, well... cool and they've got the right shoes and kayaks and schedule that's healthy for their kid... And their son isn't in day care for 40 hours a week, and they probably don't even let him have chicken nuggets or PLASTIC toys (let alone Ball Park Franks) and we are so STRAIGHT compared to them..."

And then I thought:
"STOP!!!!!!!!!"
"THEY ARE STRAIGHT! Tracy, they can not be gayer than you... YOU are married to a woman!!! That IS the very DEFINITION of GAY!!!"

But, isn't it true that nowadays, GAY FAMILIES include so much more than two people of the same gender who are in love and/or sleeping with each other.

J and J who are practically gayer than us- even though one of them is a MAN and one of them is a WOMAN (Because they do live in a "cool gay house" in a "cool gay town" with our very best gay friends) J and J are part of this gay family.
Our parents and sisters and brothers are all part of this gay family.
Our cousins, aunts, and uncles by birth and our cousins, aunts, and uncles by choice are all a part of this gay family.
Our softball team and coworkers are all a part of this gay family.
Our college friends, Our Facebook friends, and readers of this blog, and the people that take care of our children every day at their school are all a part of this gay family.
My mom's hair dresser, and my father-in-law's tennis buddies and my grandmother's sister, brother, and church friends that are always asking about our boys... are all part of this gay family.
Anyone that has ever stopped a homophobic joke or tirade because they've thought of us and said, "That's just not true and just not nice."
Anyone that has ever decided not to vote for an anti-gay politician because of how that effects our family or the future that our children will grow up in.
Anyone that has ever turned to their small child and said, "There's nothing wrong with dancing if you are a boy or driving a truck if you are a girl, and I love you no matter what you grow up to be" is part of this gay family.

So when I blog on June 1st (into the early morning hours of June 2nd) for LGBT families, I'm blogging for all of us. I'm blogging for the visibility and viabilty of progressive lifestyles and families (gay and straight) that fight a political machine and a standard of living that tries to make fact out of the myth that gay people are somehow a threat to our society. And the way that we fight (because we are so tired out by working our jobs and raising our kids, and keeping our houses in order) is by mostly just living. Living with and near each other and taking care of each other and raising our kids together.

I am so proud and feel so lucky to be living the life I am living with all of you as part of my family. It numbs the mind. It strengthens the heart. And emboldens the spirit.

It somehow makes the breathing easier. (Like an elixir for seasonal allergies)

When religious conservatives preach that to be gay is to be disordered and not in the image of God...

At least 5 times in the last 2 months, there have been national stories of teenagers committing suicide. They have become national stories because the kids were bullied, targeted, and harassed because they were gay or perceived as gay, and because for the most part, the parents, friends and communities of those children have spoken out after their deaths to say, "We complained about the bullying but no one did anything to stop it."

Not that one should be picked out as worse than the others, but the most recent was a Freshman at Rutgers University who was secretly recorded by his roommate and another classmate having an intimate encounter with another man boy. Tyler Clementi was 18 years old when he changed his status on Facebook to read: "Jumping off the George Washington Bridge. Sorry." His body was fished out of the water a few days later.

Justin Aaberg, 15, of Anoka, Minnasota, hung himself July 9th

Billy Lucas, 15, of Greensburg, Indiana hung himself in his parents' barn on Sept 9th.

Seth Walsh, 13, from Tehachapi, California, hanged himself from a tree on September 19th and died 8 days later.

Asher Brown, 13, of Cypress, Texas, shot himself in the head on September 23.It is hard to look at these faces and hear these stories and not get sick with regret and dark with rage that we live in a society that tells (especially boy) gay kids that they are not worthy of love and life. In fact, the message in a lot of anti-gay rhetoric is "you don't exist... God did not create you, you are deciding to be immoral- you can be fixed".

To tell someone they can be fixed is to tell them they are broken.

Ask nearly any adult gay man (many to most of the women too) and they will tell you the harassment they faced, the physical danger they were in growing up in school systems across this country was almost too much to manage. Now even though there is more support for gay equality and more awareness and "tolerance" there is this overt backlash and religious movement to proclaim that civil rights for gay citizens are somehow in opposition to the religious rights of zealots. That gay civil rights somehow means the end of religious freedom.

While the LDS and the RCC are pouring millions of dollars into trying to prevent civil marriage in the US and around the world, they are not only perpetuating the bullshit very-fucking-scientifically-negated notion that being gay is a choice, they are seriously over-reaching by extrapolating out that this (determined by conservative clergy, who very often are closeted and sexually repressed) "lifestyle choice" should not get legal "validation" or protection...

'Cause like, yeah... if I choose to eat shellfish, or get a divorce, or not marry the brother of my dead husband, or eat meat on fridays, or have sex during my period (all lifestyle choices that are frowned on by g-o-d in the bible) then I should expect it's okay for my neighbors to beat me to death when they get too upset about my immorality. Oh, and I should expect there to be a referendum on election day where everyone gets to vote on whether or not I am immoral and have a right to exist in my actual form.

Here is how "religious" people are getting led down a dark ally by their leaders that will some day be appropriately equated with the cross-burnings and terrorist activities of the KKK: A cycle of proselytizing against gay identity requires suicide of gay individuals to 1) continue to demonstrate (in the face of practically eroded evidence) that to be gay means to be mentally and spiritually unstable; and 2) since most religions see suicide as the final sin- there is no way a person that killed her/his self could have been spiritually worthy...

See how that works? Chicken, egg, chicken, egg... got it?
Let me try one more time:

• God hates it/you (as determined by me)
• If God hates it/you, we can't exactly expect others to be okay with it/you
• If those others beat you up or harass you... well, see what I mean about you/it being messed up? millions of God-loving people can't be wrong...
  
• What you think you are can't be real because God is not okay with you/it
• If you kill yourself, you must have somehow known this to be true
• oh, and also- those people telling you that it's okay to be gay are confusing you and they are also part of the thing God hates and most of the reason you probably killed yourself is because they confused you...
• No one who thinks that "being gay is okay" should teach you, or talk to you, or be alone with you, or be in a position to influence you because 1) God would not want that, 2) Those people are immoral, unstable, and dangerous 3) They are out to recruit you (since you were NOT created gay, the only way into "gay" is through RECRUITMENT!)
• PS- I'm not intolerant, God is...

see visual aid from Box Turtle Bulletin:


So HERE's the letter that I'm writing to my kids, and the advice that I'm giving to all parents within my reach...

If you enjoyed this rant, you might also enjoy something similar from Dan Savage. If you have never heard of Dan Savage, he is a potty-mouthed gay, sex advice columnist that came up with the greatest idea I have heard in a long time. A YouTube channel called: IT GETS BETTER. This is a way to try to stop kids from killing themselves... a way that any kid with the internet has access to a bunch of videos from LGBTQ adults that can tell them from experience that the best years of your life happen after high school.

The videos are amazing. Here is the video that Dan and his husband started it all with (it is worth 8 minutes of your life- pass it on):

Go to bed, already.

Tomorrow, we will try to spend the day demonstrating pleasantness in the midst of our anxiety and discomfort.

Tomorrow, we will try to remember the spirit of women who were pretty damn good role models even before the mantle of sainthood was placed on their memories.

Tomorrow, we will let our bodies and minds fight it out... Our minds want to be in charge of our emotions, but grief and anger have a way of marking you physically. And "the body" sometimes has a more accurate memory than even "the memory".

Tomorrow, we will cherish our children.
(A little more than we do every other day.)
Tomorrow, we will try to be gentle with each other.
Tomorrow, we will try to be generous and a little more patient than we usually need to be in our interactions with others...

But TONIGHT, before I go to bed, I'm going to check every window and every door (like Katy made me promise to do) to be sure they are locked. And I'm going to say a silent, but heartfelt "fuck you" to the psychotic criminals who killed our friends 3 years ago...

Then I'm going to wash the destructive anger off my face, and brush the bile off of my teeth, and try to shake the gnawing anxiety from my core. And THEN, I'm going to hold my wife close- hoping that my love and concern can keep bad dreams at bay- and trying to convey to her through my actions that no matter what, I'm here with her and I love her... and I'm sorry for the losses she has endured.

------------
Our church benediction:

Go out into the world in peace
Have courage
Hold onto what is good
Return to no person evil for evil
Strengthen the fainthearted
Support the weak
Help the suffering
Honor all beings
Amen.

ML's church dedication

Today was not only Easter, but also ML's church dedication.



We belong to a UU that we love that I've written about here.

The dedication is a variation on "Baptism" but instead of washing away the sins of all humanity to make your baby pure, we really stick to focusing on welcoming the child into the church and a promise from the congregation to be there for the child and the family of the child...

We lit the chalice:


Well, JB would tell you that HE lit the chalice...


(Stop looking at my chest, ya'll!!!)

It is a really sweet ceremony and whenever we watch (from the pews) a family act out this ritual, we get kind of choked up. Today was no different from this side of the event.







It was a good excuse to dress these adorable kids up in their "Sunday best"... and man were they cute...











To be clear, there are more pics of JB b/c we were all dying about how cute his suit was, and ML had just woken up and wasn't really interested in getting his picture taken.









Cam and Mac = beautiful!


All four cousins!!!

We then hosted Easter dinner for 16 adults/Teens and 6 kids age four or younger. It turned out to be an amazing day. The weather was as close to heaven as you can get this time of year. It was sunny, about 70 degrees F with a cool breeze. There was an Easter egg hunt (which ML slept through).











chocolate:



and a chance to dress in more casual wear:



We had surf and turf (mom brought the baked stuffed shrimp, and I roasted a filet loin on the grill. I was worried about how it would come out, but it was DEE-lish-ous!!! Having the chance to use the indoors and the outdoors, made things very simple in terms of space and having plenty of seating and the ability to SPREAD OUT and enjoy the weather and the party.

Our guests were very complimentary and very helpful and in general it was just wonderful!

ML took 2 substantial naps- he was tuckered out from being the center of attention this AM. JB did NOT take ANY naps except the 20 minutes he slept on the way home from church. Somehow with him we averted disaster in term of a napless melt down.



You are super cute, little boy... Congratulations on your big day!!!

Oh, the PEEPS dessert is here!!!

Relaxing but productive Sunday

It is not right to go this long without a newsletter...
That's what happens every time I sit down to do anything at the computer - I think "I NEED TO WRITE A NEWSLETTER" - and then I get overwhelmed and write nothing at all.

We have very cute boys, but they cannot be trusted to sleep thru the night. I keep saying I'm going to stop talking about how tired I am and see if that helps me feel less tired, but every time someone asks me how I am, it comes out like uncontrolled diarrhea - I can't stop talking about it - How tired i am...

(shaking it off) But that's not what this post is about...

Today was kind of an amazing day. JB must be in a growth spurt b/c he is sleeping and eating a ton. He only woke up twice last night to ask if he could come into bed with us and at 5:30, Katy brought him in... (This is his new thing, calling for Mama in the middle of the night... One night I went in because he was crying and it was my turn to comfort him and he threw some stuffed object at me and cried out, "NOT YOU! MAMA!! YOU GET OUT!!!" Katy thinks this hurts my feelings and in the daytime hours maybe, but at 2 am??? I think my snores ten seconds later do not accurately reflect how broken up I am that she is the MOC [mother of choice] at that hour...

He slept 'till after 8am and instead of rushing him and trying to kill ourselves to get to church for 9 o'clock, we went to the 11am service. This called for a lot of slow-paced dressing, packing, and down-right lolly-gagging that still put us in the sanctuary at 10:50am. (Our normal arrival time for the 9am service is between 9:08 and 9:15.)

When we got home it was way past nap time and BOTH boys slept SIMULTANEOUSLY! JB for over 3 hours and ML, slightly less. This meant that the mommies had time to talk to each other. And sit and make some plans for the week, prepare some menus, and even start working on dinner. It was quite lovely and when the boys woke up, they actually seemed to sense that we were more prepared to care for them than when they fell asleep. I think they were sweeter to us because of it.

ML had his first week of day care and did amazing. He's the bell of the ball, known over there at school as the "best behaved baby we've ever had!" That's some kind of break for a newbie to leave that kind of impression... JB has demonstrated a little jealousy. Not toward his brother, but toward us. It's normal regression and the kind of behavior that part of me is silently cheering him on for: "good-for-you, little guy! If someone is taking over your territory as 'cutest in the land,' go ahead and do something to get noticed"...

He peed his pants 3 times last Monday. The first time, in the morning right after Katy tried to get him to use the potty and he refused (could have been an accident)... The second time was 10 minutes later after she got him in a new, dry outfit... The following exchange occurred:

Kt: (to JB in the 2nd wet outfit of the day): What's going on? Why didn't you ask to go potty?
JB: (offhandedly gesturing to the wet spot on his pants) Sometimes it happens...

Then at day care, he did it again.

Who cares. We don't. But the kid is potty trained, he knows exactly what he's doing.

ML is just beautiful. He's such a happy baby. He smiles all the time and laughs and is generally mellow yellow. He is huge and we've nicknamed him "Hoss." Needing an equally cool nickname for his brother, JB has been dubbed "Slim".

As in:
Mom #1: Which one do you want to get out of the car?
Mom #2: I'll take Hoss. You get slim...

I am going to bed now, 'cause I'm sure this cycle of rational sleeping patterns cannot continue for an entire 24 hours.
;-)

This is a week for catching up with the writing on the blog, I can just feel it!!!

Church

When I was growing up, I was one of those kids (read: "dork") who loved church. I loved the sitting, kneeling, praying; the folding your hands and pondering quietly; the reciting of the mass, etc. I felt safe there and it made sense to me. I bought into it all hook, line, and sinker.

I understood what they meant when they said that "Jesus Christ was 100% human and 100% God." When I prayed to Jesus as a child and as an adolescent, I knew that he had walked the same path I was walking on earth, and I knew he had felt the sometimes insignificant (in an eternal sense) pains and dramas of trying to be a good person. The lessons of the church never felt oppressive to me. If it was an indoctrination, it was very peaceful and agreeable to me. It made perfect sense for example that God could be one, singular entity; but also equal parts of a trinity. It was not confusing to me that communion wasn't merely a symbolic representation of life-giving bread, but transubstantiation that made body and blood of bread and wine. (I was on board with all of that and with the fact that we didn't believe in Magic, and we didn't believe in cannibalism.) Furthermore, I loved the singing and the sitting together with my family for an hour a week, dedicated to some ideas that were bigger and longer-lasting than our human existence.

When I was in college, I attended the Jesuit Church on campus regularly. Going to church at home became a little harder as I started to notice how sexist some of the rituals were. I didn't like how often politics seemed to creep into mass. There was one deacon at my family's church who rarely gave a sermon about feeding the poor, nursing the sick, or volunteerism as a way to wage war on earth in God's name, but he never failed to mention abortion... outlawing abortion... and birth control was also always on his mind. At school, though, the Jesuits kept me in touch with my pal Jesus and his father, God. They focused on the message of living a good life on earth for not only heavenly rewards, but also the benefits uniquely tied to that type of simple living. My boyfriend and I would go to 10pm mass on Sunday nights and leave feeling full of gratitude, rejuvenated and ready to face another week of work and classes.

When I graduated from college things were spinning a little out of control for me. I realized that despite the love I had for my sweet, amazing boyfriend, I really was drawn and attracted to women. The trusting relationship I had developed with God lent to quite a bit of praying about what to do. The interesting thing was, my prayer revealed very different answers than the Roman Catholic Church was teaching. I knew inside myself that love was love. I had a well- developed conscience. I knew right from wrong. And after talking it over with God, it felt more wrong to lie, try to change myself, or "settle" than it did to "choose the homosexual lifestyle."

At that point in my life, I had the humility to accept that my decisions might be wrong in the eyes of God or my church or society. But if I was going to be this introspective and hard on myself, I felt the leaders of church and state must also be in touch with the limits of their "knowledge" of what God might believe. To barrow the words of Anne Lemott, "You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image, when it turns out that God hates all the same people that you do." At a certain point, I acknowledged to myself, there was no (wo)man or bishop, or human ruler that could truthfully know God's opinion and I would not tolerate a religious or secular leader that was unwilling to entertain that perspective.

Then all the stuff unfolded about hundreds of pedophile priests... and then somewhere in there, my best friend dies. At that point I'm ready to walk away from church because it is just too much. Too much compromise on my part. Too much dishonesty and hypocrisy on their part. Too much following ceremony and tradition (not because it feels right inside myself) but because it is easier to fake it, go thru the motions, not question the reason, not upset the apple cart. But I feel too "catholic" (and frankly too tired) to look for another church.

Then I meet Katy. And 2 things happen. The first is that, I find someone that I really want to create a family with. And the second is, when I take her to my family's church, it is so offensive- so thundering with the ways that we will never be accepted there. It was as if sitting there by myself, all the little ways the church "did not agree with" or "did not support" it's gay parishioners went completely unnoticed by me. I didn't mind much if they were talking about (or just ignoring) me. But when they were doing it to her- it really pissed me off- and it seemed so loud and intentional.

If this was the "one true church" as I had been taught to believe, then I didn't need church- I decided I wouldn't do that to my (future) family. Still, cutting church out of my life left me feeling empty- shouldn't you go and commune with good people for an hour or so a week to recharge your spiritual self before facing the next week's toils?

Katy and I tried to reconcile this and found a church to marry in. It was important to me that God be invited to that party. But this also marked the beginning of a different kind of struggle between 2 parts of me. Should I really leave the church- my church... my family's church because of their stance on "gay issues"? vs. How do I ask my wife to give these people the time of day? What is good for a little girl (an assumed straight girl) is not good for her adult self, her wife, or her planned but unborn children.

It is still an unresolved struggle. There is a part of me that wants to meet my family at church on Sunday... wants to go to coffee with them after mass, wants to be the same religion they are, wants to teach my son about the sacraments and communion. There's a part of me that just can't quite figure out how to handle communion: Is it their communion to give to me- and therefore I should follow their rules? Or is it my communion - a sacrament and gift that God gave me? Out of respect for my loved ones and for God, should partake when "the Eucharist" is blessed and offered to me? When I go back to my family's church for weddings and funerals? Or should I refuse? If I abstain, is it because I am rejecting the RCChurch or because they are rejecting me??? Do you see what a quandary I'm in?

For the last few years, Katy and I have been attending a Unitarian Universalist Church. A church we loved instantly. We walked into this church thinking it was a congregational church we might "try out," and we've returned nearly every Sunday for three years.

This UU has much more "God language" than many UU's (which is something that is important to me.) And has a wonderful female minister that brings tears to our eyes nearly every week with her humility and poignant directives to BE BETTER humans and HELP one another and FORGIVE your enemies and yourselves, and to follow a great and amazingly difficult commandment to LOVE.

Love.

Sounds simple, right? It's only simple, if it's half-assed. (The minister's sentiment, my curse word added for emphasis.) Love, if it's done right is a life long endeavor... Love yourself so you can live a healthy, productive existence and so you can take care of those around you. Love others- if you dare- because shouldn't we be living in less isolation with more frequent communion?!? This is the first church Katy has ever known- the first church she has loved. This church has all ready seen us through some hard times. The time we were pregnant and a few days later we weren't. The time we thought our relationship was falling apart. The several weeks after our friends were attacked and killed in their home. This summer, after that sad event- when I was 8,9, then 10 months pregnant- our minister, not knowing much of anything about us, not knowing what we were going through, led us in this benediction at the end of every church service:

Go out into the world in peace.
Have courage.
Hold onto what is good.
Return to no person evil for evil.
Strengthen the fainthearted.
Support the weak.
Help the suffering.
Honor all beings.

We had said those words so many times before, but everything was different now. During those weeks, Katy tried to hold herself together, tried to go to work in the blinding absence of her boss; tried to hold patients up as they fell apart; tried to prepare for the birth of our baby in this new world. On Sundays we stood stunned, numb, full of grief, fear, uncertainty, and very pregnant. I stood there with Katy- whose boss's wife and daughters had just been murdered, week after week we continued reciting that benediction. It took 6 weeks before my voice stopped cracking during "hold on to what is good". It took at least that long before I could get out a whispered version of: "return to no person evil for evil" without tears falling out of my eyes. And that's when I turned to Katy and said that I was finally ready to "sign the membership book." (She wanted to sign 3 years ago after about 2 Sunday services.)

The thing is, that benediction is what has been guiding me though the simple questions in life... Should I really be speeding up to the assh8le who cut me off on the highway just to offer him a dirty look? The concepts work, for the most part within the construct of daily annoyances, and hard times. But when you brush up against some example of real evil- how you react to it (even if only in the quiet of your heart) matters. And when you choose a spiritual leader, you'd better choose one with values you can lean on- that make sense to you. This benediction is only one part of the reason we love this church. These words cut to the meat of how I want to live my life. And if this is what it means to be a Unitarian Universalist, than I guess that is what I am. It is very much in line with what I need and what I believe.

So we joined. And when JB was born they announced it in the service and in the bulletin. And when they plan the Christmas nativity at our church, they ask the most recently born child (male or female) to play the part of baby Jesus. And if that baby happens to have been born to a couple of lesbians... everyone there seems to get kind of an excited glimmer in their eyes about it!