This next book, Preludria, my attempted homage to the fellow non-word Perelandra (C.S. Lewis' second book in his Space Trilogy), will be an examination life's patterns while dwelling on my given home planet and decision to reject its gravity. As such, I will be bending the Space metaphor to a properly pre-launch state; I will be discussing my childhood in terms of seasons on this sphere, and examining the narratives at play there that have lead me here: the launching pad.
First of all, a note on queering. I do not believe in superimposing anachronistic understandings of my present Self into my childhood narrative as a way of defining who I was. I am who I have come to be, and I was who I had become. The gap is essential, past understandings crucially held separate, present developments unique from who I have been. This is important to me because throughout my discernment process, as I discovered new, scary, and intriguing parts of what I would come to recognize as my queer Self, the strongest deterrent for my curiosity was others - often other (likely well-intentioned) queer folks - saying, "Oh yah, that's just how it works, " or "Yes, that's just how you have to do it," or the now-proverbial "Well, I was born this way." Resonant of the bland binaries that have gridlocked queers into dead-end narratives, this passive acceptance of the "now is as always has been" is a dangerous divorce from the deep analysis needed to discover the chaotic romance between chemicals, characters, accidents, and blessings that have made me who I am every moment that I have existed. In short, this exploration of my youth is intentionally devoted to both nature and nurture, the lattice and its wandering vine.
That said, I will now undertake what can be considered a "queering". A queering, or a queer reading, is a method used by literature and cultural critics and analysts, imposing the question "but what if this character were L/G/B/T/Q/A? Would that help us understand his or her actions? Would it clue us in on drives, motives, or developments?" Or, perhaps queering is used to find a gay hero, lost in a heteronormative entertainment industry, nuanced short story, or simplified ancient text. Any way the queer lens is used, its gaze may reveal truths, but it most certainly will scrutinize details hitherto passed over, or intentionally obscured. Here, I take a queer lens to the life's seasons as I have experienced them, asking the question: from where does my queerness fly?
Book 2: Preludria: From Whence He Flew
Chapter 1: Autumnal Aspirations
We are born in Autumn. We egress the fullness of life connected to its source, falling from it by some natural gravity that we call birth, and land on the earth to be immediately asked - demanded - to breathe, to eat, and to see on our own. Just as seeds helicopter from a tree to the soil, we depart the womb's connection and are pushed into the independence (and the denied-interdependence) of Society, the world below. We thus begin our fight to become individuals, Selves. Yet, we inevitably submit to the crush of time - we are detritus predetermined to be both the footstool and the cornerstone of civilizations to come. I was born in a small Connecticut town with many other white people like me, a small margin of diversity, an assumed, if not passive, Christian ethic, and not much to do on weekends. As a kid, I liked romping through the forest on my own, searching for salamanders, building forts, playing house with the neighbor kids, collecting Pokemon cards, and wearing yellow dresses. Well, okay, there was really only one particular yellow dress I was fond of: it belonged to a (still dear) friend, and I don't know how often I actually put it on, I just knew it was a blessed freedom to twirl in. That was it, it was just nice to twirl in. Salamanders, rocks, and secret paths in the wood were equally enchanting. To play. To discover the world. To take to the wind as I glided down from my source to the soil of Society.
A love of wonder and whirling stuck around. By the time I passed elementary school, I had decided that I just didn't like jeans. Everyone wore them - what a bore. Instead, what fun it was to wear pants with 30" bottoms, tight shirts (one which actually included a blow-up bubble on the front), and talk about Jesus while doing it. Not only did I like visually sticking out, I wanted everyone to know that I was on my way to paradise and they could join me. I was being raised in a Pentecostal church where we believed in a God that was alive, and it helped that we could see and hear this God in our healings, our spoken tongues, and we were wooed by His victories here and abroad on the mission field. I took up this mission call willingly. If was to join Society, I was going to continue to be conflagration of vibrant foliage on the way down. So, visually and verbally, I found good use of the loudspeaker that I had discovered as part of my Self.
But, people started to resist, to rebuke, to recoil. My reception began to get fuzzy. The other boys didn't understand why I spent more of my time with girls than with them on the soccer field. They didn't understand my zealous attitude, and why I was stronger than their jeers. Eventually, a name for this abnormality that roamed their school halls arose: "Gayson". I wasn't like them, so I must be "gay". I didn't know what this word really meant, except that it was bad and that it meant I was not "cool", according to some. I had some notion that it had to do with my oddity, but I simply dismissed it with, "I'm different because I'm a Christian." (Oh, the irony!) And lived another day, by the power of Christ, my fellow oddity.
But, as the days went on, gravity was taking its toll. I was landing in my descent from the womb of wonder, and it was getting cold.
Come middle school, I was still thrilled by a good romp in the woods, where trees and streams were friends who didn't protest. I also liked video games, visual arts, and theatrical pursuits. When (male) Society was not giving me much to live by, I found solace in my creative endeavors, my ever-faithful female friends and sought friendship with my teachers. For a while, I delighted in the fact that I was a successful student, I could do impressive things with my hands, my voice, and my mind. But, my being was starting to change. Hormones were starting to fly as the world around me entered into puberty. Girls started listing the guys they liked, guys: their girls, and me... well, yah, I found some girls more interesting than others. So, I presumed that meant I liked them. And I did. This girl was very pretty and very smart. That girl was really funny, and friends with my friends. This other girl I had known forever, that other girl was brand new to me. So, the first year of high school I tried out that thing that other kids had been talking about for a while: dating.
I liked it. I liked her. She was pretty, smart, funny, and grew up a Christian home as well. We went to movies, we went shopping, we hung out, and I had a promised date to all those freshman dances. We snuggled, we flirted, and then her birthday came around and she asked me if I'd kiss her. Hmm, that was a new one. But, here I was, lover of play, wonder, and newness. I'd seen this done many times on TV, I don't know what made me so nervous, or what made it seem so alien to me. Well, she finally landed one on me, and it became this nice little thing that happened when I'd walk her to her door after a date - as long as mom couldn't see from the car me kissing a girl. After all, years and years of "guys-only night" discussion in my church youth group had taught me that desire leads to sex, and that's sin, and sin means death. Safe conclusion: never look at girl with desire. This was usually pretty easy as I looked at my girl friends as equals, but I was treading on unholy territory with my sneaky kisses.
Time passed, and I started to get a little bored in the relationship; I decided I didn't "like" her anymore. So, naturally, I broke up with her - in the classic "let's be friends style" in Taco Bell, a nice, if unsanitary, neutral space. It seems I couldn't find a monocle on my space suit to keep my looking in one place for too long; there must be other adventures to be lived, wonder to be observed. But, this whole partnership thing was confusing. Was someone supposed to come with me as I wandered? Boys were bothersome bullies, and girls were enough like me, that I might as well be by myself. I didn't understand the people on this earth I was landing on, but I was starting to see that if my protest of a Self was to stay here, I might have to quiet down, I might have to bundle up.
Chapter 2: The Deep Winter
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| albedo: the light and heat that is reflected off a surface back into the atmosphere; it is increased by snow and ice |
Toward the end of high school, I was starting to get antsy. I had been in drama club for the last few years and I had found comrades with whom I could play, joke, and be awkward. I had been affirmed in the spotlight, I was still a decent student, but I started to think less about me, particularly staged versions of me. I was no longer content with memorizing lines to merely entertain. I became concerned that we were sleeping in an world awake with conflict (the early rumblings of the "Save Darfur" campaign were afoot, for a time reference), and I was no longer content not being...something. I didn't know what, I knew I was not it.
I started to stoke the fire. I started a "humanitarian club". I co-directed a play with a friend about elitist luxury and proletariat unrest. I did indoor track. I wanted to go. I wanted to run. I wanted to shout. I wanted to jump. And mostly, I wanted to break, to cry, to give up, to just be it.
Yet, I was miraculously productive in this state of decay. I had some clandestine toolbox of creativity that kept me working. Having since spoken to friends and parents about this period, they had little idea what I was going through. My parents celebrated my performance, my teachers were impressed by my efforts. In grasping I made an attractive facade. But, I began to trade in this social credit for investments with no return. I took "mental health" days to get away from the pressures of school. I'd lay in bed staring at books instead of reading them. I'd play action/adventure games because their heroes would make such great feats at the nimble flick of my thumb. At home and at school, I used my reputation to assure all that all was well. But, as my prideful diversions accumulated, my escape routes were quickly eroding. I would not suffer the embarrassment of being seen suffering.
Suicidal contemplation came like a midwinter fantasy of summer. Release. While it may seem odd that I was stoking the fire of faith-driven activism with one hand, and dousing hopes' embers with the other, it came quite easily for me, for they were completely different endeavors. In fact, you might say different Selves were pursuing them at the same time. Alas, I was plagued with Gnosticism. My body and spirit were divinely divorced, yet my spirit was unjustly burdened by its woeful vessel. I had things to do. I had social and political barriers to break down. I had people to save. Why were the chemicals rushing through my body demanding so much from me? Guys were hot and unavailable, girls were ubiquitous and equal, teachers and pastors were insufficient, sex was taboo yet ever on my mind, Jesus was my homeboy, the Holy Spirit was my breath. I was horny, I was lonely, I was happy, I was full of myself, I was special, I was nothing. And mostly, I was exhausted. This bickering conversation between body and spirit had done me in, and while it would mean losing my (self-)righteous spirit, this body had to go.
It was in this state of exhaustion I met with Death. Death could be all that I could not. Death would be lover - to caress my burdened limbs that could no longer hold hope, parent - nurse and caretaker to mature the liberation from my body, sibling - playmate in fantasy worlds and constructs that cannot stand. My spirit sunk deep into hibernation to commune with its new god: Mortality. In this dream, I could escape the responsibility of living, sure, but I could also be better than a-perhaps-something, I could be a definite-nothing. I could be one with the void. I could sleep.
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| Charon: from Greek mythology, the ferryman who carries souls across River Styx to the Underworld, at the price of a coin, placed in the deceased person's mouth |
Where once Death stood as the ultimate end, the assumption of restful non-doing, Death had been transfigured to become a new means to Life. And in this, I learned the proper protest. I had been giving myself to the sways of politics, society, and dogma to determine was was good or evil, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. But, communing with Death taught me to see the rareness of a life fully lived. In His protest of the grave, preceded by humble submission to torture, Christ showed me the way of redemption. To re-deem is to re-claim. To buy back. There is a cost and there is a reward. This is nothing new, however. This is the way of farmer who sows and reaps. This is the way of the birthing mother who carries, pushes, and cherishes. This is the way of Nature who buys back the sky from winter's wraiths through its great endeavor toward the worshipful sun. This, then, is the proper protest: not that one can oppose the present burdens of life with the threat of death, but that one can overthrow the unbearable lightness of Being, despite Death's draws, through the cataclysmic creativity of a life rendered redeemed by Love.
Love cannot help but act by the jealous nature of God - its other name - and thus it bursts forth from any container which seeks to hold it captive, even the ground. So, I rose from the ground of despair, and I was commissioned as the grain of wheat, whose death paradoxically begets life, to supplant life and reason into a world distracted by death. Coincidentally, it was around this time I became a student of archaeology at Wheaton College.
Chapter 3: Spring's Eastertide
Having recognized our Selves as worthy of life among Others, by the test of extremes external and internal, we break into spring yearning past our might to survive and we teeter-totter our way toward the meandering sun, asking rather how we might learn to thrive within holy Creation. Death, we have learned by however we encountered it, is inefficient, and more so, has proven only to be a temporary solution. Death, winter's task, is instead overturned to catalyze Life, and our second birth, our necessary egress from Society's defined bounds into the welcoming ether of interactions uninhibited - that glorifying chaos-construct that is Created Nature. Thus as a seed, though thrown far from its source, we grow in a familiar and reflective pattern from whence we flew, all the while becoming something entirely different, undeniably new.
If it was my mind that dragged my burdensome body to the grave of winter, it was my body that had the power to push through, against gravity, and grow towards renewed faith. And in that way, my body, too, was redeemed. While there was plenty of body mysteries interrupting me on my way through middle and high school, college brought me to a whole new place: the land of men. Unsurprisingly, I (and all the other queers) had slipped through the heteronormative filter of mandated same-sex housing and into a world of great confusion. I had grown up living in with a father, mother, and sister, so the idea of being forced to live with nearly 50 peer males running around in any amount (often little) clothing as they desired was...what the Kingdom's code of sexual holiness demanded? That seemed a more than a little strange.
At this point I was still very much in a dark, cold corner of my proverbial closet. I was astounded by not only the sheer amount of people I was asked to live "in community" with (2, 4, 50, or 2300 depending on the scale), but also by the fact that so many of these people, men in particular, were so "comfortable" with their bodies. They were ready for their roommates, hallmates, and - on special occasions - for the whole campus to be privy to their entire corporeal geography. And where there is new geography, exploration, exploitation, and Empire quickly follow. But, wasn't I done with these pursuits of death and destruction?
Well, I was not done, inasmuch as I was finding out I had not enjoyed the exploits others were granted during puberty (at least in the movies). Now, I was granted a community of benevolent same-sex peers. I had no idea what it was to be in a group of fellow young men with no "adults" telling us what activity with which we should be occupied. That said, I did have a few dear male friends in my childhood, but the glaring majority were girls. I was now free to freely engage brotherly manhood. I was free to be among men, and here my oddity (which was rather tame compared to my elementary and high school incarnations) was quietly dismissed by my fellows as funny, artistic, or just that: odd. Gayson had died to the eyes of Society, and I was free to be me. And, as much as that sounds like a cat poster, it was also true. For the first time, it was assumed that I was like all guys, in some way or another. For the first time, I was assumed to be a man.
An aside: I remember that it was around this time I realized I had never really been affirmed as a man. Sure, I was brother, son, and even boyfriend to someone at some point, but I saw these as mere coincidences, not roles ascribed from my maleness. As such, I never affirmed myself as man. That is not to say that I had thought myself a woman, or girl, nor had I taken an identity beside male and female. I want to honor the identity development of the trans* person and note that I have always felt at home in the maleness of my given male body. But, I felt that I had been socially raised by the girls that I grew up alongside. Fittingly, I have learned certain behaviors, attitudes, or postures that were typical of a girl, but they often just became unwittingly ascribed to my nature through a decade of unconsciously practiced nurture. I was male, with some feminine flourishes. In that way, other males in their male bodies seemed different than me in my male body and feminized mind; I was more easily associated with the female tribe rather than the male tribe in the cafeteria, gymnasium, or art class, but I was comfortable knowing that my life was to be lived with my male genitalia and physical realities. I just really didn't know what it meant for them to be joined with the female "counterparts", nor did I see the social or emotional need for that.
Here in the halls of a men's dorm, Jason the Man, for once was on viable ground to grow into his maleness. But, resurrection - even in fertile soil - proved to be no easy task. Death's dirge was still resonant in the back of my throat, and at times I still called for its company. Its echoes came like a tuning fork to reprimand my off-beat desires. As I became a man among men, my spirit was revived, and with it, my childhood wonder. The Nature, the body, the emotional fragility, the fear, the strength of the Man became the hilly woodland where I could get lost in never-ending new discovery. But, the closer I got to men, the more this resonance became a magnetism, more than a song. I wanted to be with men, more, and differently than other men seemed to express. Quickly, wonder turned to fear. So, like any good, Christian queer does, I committed myself to counseling.
I don't know what I was trying to get out of counseling. But, as I noted before, I knew that wandering new geographies had a historical penchant for exploitation, and I was not interested in that. I knew that in my vigorous wonder, I'd explore things others had hitherto marked private property, and I was not ready or willing to test (all of) these laws. Instead, I was curious about what the law of God on these matters, be it biblically or personally revealed. In counseling I found a place to peruse my field notes from the road thus far. In counseling I learned to look in, in order to look out. I fit very naturally into my counseling sessions. I, my Self, became my new fascinating object of wonder. What was I becoming? Who would I be? Who should I be?
But, in counseling, I learned about Others, as well. I learned that I was not the only man who ever liked men who also loved God. I also learned that the gravest judge and executioner of the rebel queer was likely to be myself, at least once I'd turned a blind eye to the violently judgmental arm of conservative evangelicalism. In counseling, I was allowed to express all that I had within me, and let it be. That is where I started to learn to come out. Before that, I had done some dangerous processing of my emotions within myself that had categorized them as inappropriate, wrong, unholy, unreal, and at the very least inopportune. But really, our emotions are our momentous truth when they are revealed and reveled. They are likely not the Truth, but they color our reality so thoroughly that to ignore them is to live in a delusion that any clarity can be had without all variables being accounted for. Rather, like a compass used in our pursuit of truth, the poles of thought and emotion cooperate to veer us toward reality.
It was during this time that I started considering more deeply a future of celibacy. Coming from a conservative Christian background, two viable options were given to me by the Church at large (my individual counselors were more forgiving): 1) to be healed back into a state of heterosexuality from my state of sinful homosexuality, or 2) to commit to celibacy so as to not sin in my homosexual existence. Something about the narrative of being "healed into heterosexuality" did not appeal to me from the start. I do believe that there are legitimate narratives out there along these lines. I do believe that there are those men and women who ascertain that a particular path of sexual (and thus spiritual) healing will involve them practicing an orientation they previously had not. I also believe that there have been horrible abuses - including death - proscribed to queer brothers, sisters, and all those in between in the name of "God" and "holiness" that need not have been committed. And overall, I believe that God is creative in how God raises us. To the second option, I've always liked restrictions, rubrics, and measures, (if not only to deny them) so decidedly disengaging sexual intercourse whilst still living into my sexuality and embracing celibacy seemed far more appealing. So, just as the feeble sprout of my realized social-spiritual-sexual Self broke into the fresh air with renewed life, I had found a lattice on which to grow toward the Sun.
Nature, it seemed, was taking its course. Furthermore, it appeared the God of Nature was on my side.
Chapter 4: Toward the Hope of Summer
Today I still stand among the late blossoms of Spring, cloaked in my shiny spacesuit - summer has yet to come. But, I hope. And hope is what will bring summer's graces. Past the suffering, the fall from unity with God, the romance of Death, the resurrection of faith, and my recent coming-out, I yearn to be at Home with God. I've spent a few years dwelling in and on the idea of celibacy, and I am still young. In these few years, celibacy has meant a lot to me. In my latter years of college, celibacy meant that I had a role in the Kingdom, one with a defined history and a mysterious present and future for me to discover. For millennia, celibates have been the priests and the prophets of the global village, of Spirit-revering people. Since my earliest pondering, I wanted to embody these strong characters of the Church. I wanted to have the power to speak and be believed, to utter the mysteries of God, to be alive in the Spirit and seek truth. So, I will try, and I will fly.
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| rumspringa: the Amish tradition of leaving the known community during adolescence in order to discern future level of commitment |
Yet, however far I wander, I hope to come back home to Christ. Though I have taken off from this planet of wrote narratives and bland binaries, I hope to return to and with Love. Christ was my first love, and by God, Christ will be my last love. In and through Christ all things were (and are) made; just as I worship an omnipresent God, I know that at all points of Creation I am meeting the eyes of its, of my Creator. In that I find hope, and pray that you will as well.
From Nature we are gifted unprecedented freedoms unwarranted by the assumed rubrics of Self and Society during the rooted growth of Spring. Communing with our True Nature, we find the deep network of being that encompasses all, but is envisioned only within our Selves. The toil of refining the Self for the sake of Others (Society) is consoled by finding our Selves in Others, and bending to the way of Nature's leading. In Summer, the God of Nature is revealed and revered. As all that comes from the earth grows but toward the daily Sun, so each of our lives is an outgrowth of the grace of that Sun, our source and our end. In time, Summer matures each Self to dress it with blossoms unforeseen, that the Sun might be glorified, that the Self might be redeemed, that Society might be embellished, and that Nature might be seeded by the Truth its Creator has reinforced, and finally, that Truth through Love may be renewed.
Hopefully,
Jason
Among the other beautiful parts of this: "the Father-Mother Bosom of Creation, Sexless Brother, Lover-Guide that is Life: the God Eternal." Thanks Jason
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