Reason Breeds Insanity

Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. On March 19, I leave to go to San Francisco. In many respects, I wish I was going… say 40 years ago, and I wish I could stay. But I am only going for a conference and at the end of the week, I will come back to Central Indiana. I will finish school, and I will stay here. I don’t hate it here, I just think I was supposed to live in California. I am pretty sure I will love it! I am pretty sure I may have ended up in an entirely different place had I gone to school in California. I toyed with the idea, but then decided to stay at BSU. No regrets, I just wonder.

I am really excited to spend the day with Jane. I never see her, and she knows the great places in the city. I pretty much can’t wait for that day. By Saturday when Jane picks me up from the hotel, I plan to have already been to the Flower Conservatory, Anchor Brewery, Haight-Ashbury, City Lights Books for a reading, the Tattoo Museum, Dottie’s True Blue Cafe, Coffee to the People, and to Alcatraz.

The first day, I am pretty sure will be spent hiking about the city with my backpack strapped on, waiting for Jim, so I can illegally sleep in his room for the night. Hopefully, I can con him into walking to City Lights Books with me, so we can hear Jack Hirschman read excerpts from his new book.

The second day I plan to do everything that I am pretty sure Sarah, Elizabeth, Jim, and Jill won’t want to do, but I plan to do it before they get there, and before Jim goes out for the day. All said, I think I will be walking about eight miles that day, unless I can figure out the public transit. I wish I had a bicycle that folded up!

I sort of felt like I owed it to myself to do what I want to do while I am out there, because I haven’t been on vacation for a couple of years. Pretty ironic since I am going to a city that has one of the highest rates of homelessness in the entire country. I know I don’t really owe myself anything. If anything I owe myself to someone else, a higher power. As I was considering my level of privilege, I stumbled on this site and I sort of changed the way I was looking at this trip. It isn’t something I deserve. My freedom, my financial ability to go is a privilege, a luxury. Because my views were changed by my discovery, I tried to find a place to volunteer to serve breakfast or lunch, but they all wanted long-term volunteers. I really just looked into the eyes of Maria (the woman in the picture), and I had to change my thoughts.

Why am I here?

How will I approach the city now? With my eyes opened to the faces of those around me. And my mind soaring because I get to do what I am doing.

Today is February 29. February 29 only happens once every four years. Would it be so bad to have a day off of school for a little celebration? I mean, once every four years having something to look forward to between Winter Break and Spring Break could be a good thing, right?

Today, I look forward to having only eight weeks left in the semester. I look forward to grading fifty papers next week and this weekend. I look forward to dinner at Dave and Andrea’s tonight and at MacCool’s tomorrow with friends and my little brother. I am even looking forward to the band, which is actually Irish/Celtic music this time. I look forward to reading only two more texts in Renaissance literature. I look forward to summer and walking and writing and possibly learning to oil paint. I look forward.

I thought I lost my “Life is good.” hat, which would be the second time that has happened to me. The same hat two times. This is the second hat, but it looks the same with a golden retriever holding a roasting marshmallow over a campfire. It reminds me of my dogs, Pippin and Lily. I need a little picture of Sydney embroidered on there to complete the scene. The first hat I lost when I left it on top of the car with the camping gear in Door County, Wisconsin. I hope some other camper is enjoying my hat. It was broken in. This hat isn’t. It also has a funny lumpiness on the left side of my head where there is too much material. Other than that, it is the exact same hat.

Last night I was invited by two of my friends to have a friendly chat about homosexuality and Christianity. While it went much better than I ever thought it would, and it was kind of cute to watch people trying to drink hot chocolate with too much whipped cream, I still can’t get the last bit of it out of my mind.
I will never understand the conservative Christian who claims to speak for God. I have nothing against conservative Christians, and I applaud their convictions, but I don’t get it. How can a human be so sure in his assessment of God’s will, God’s word, or God’s plan. Even great theologians have been questioned, but he had enough confidence in his opinion, to look at them and say: “I can’t leave without telling you that what you are doing is a sin. You are endangering your soul by continuing to choose this behavior.” Really? I think I could have handled it better if he would have said, “In my opinion…” But he didn’t. After an hour discussion.
I will just go ahead and say here that I was moral support for my friends, presenting their beliefs, but “articulately.” I wasn’t that articulate. It was at the end of a long day. I was tired. I’m tired of discussing this issue. I am tired of having to defend my right to interpret Scripture differently than someone else. I think this is why I love literature. I have my opinion about a text, someone else has hers or his, we smile at each other, and agree to disagree.
My questions are:

1. Why do we take up so much time in the church discussing things that seem to be so small?
2. Why don’t we spend as much time discussing why people die every day because they don’t have food?
3. Why don’t we put some of our anti-gay energy into getting Christians to tithe so that we can save the world?
4. Why can’t we see that Scripture is far more concerned with a plethora of other things—widows, orphans, aliens, justice, mercy, grace, forgiveness, hypocrisy, gluttony, pride, envy, lust, covetousness, and the list goes on—than abortion, cloning, homosexuality, or whatever else?

I mean, if you look at the Bible, with no agenda, what is it is about? I think Micah 6:8 is a good summary of what God requires of us. Or if your agenda is anti-gay, the Bible somehow becomes about marriage, with the entire spirit of the church and Scripture from beginning to end wrapped in a nice heterosexual wrapper. Jesus is a man, and we, the church, are his wife. Hmmm.
I am pretty sure that I don’t need to explain that I don’t think it is a sin to be gay. I think that God creates beautiful people: gay, straight, transgendered, or whatever. And I don’t think God wants us all to live in constant fear or loneliness. God didn’t create us to be alone, but I also think that logistically God had to create a male and female to begin with, you know, for the simple sake of procreation. Usually, I think that God wants us to celebrate each other, find the person that God has out there for us, and live a happy life trying to honor God within the bonds of that relationship; be it with a male or a female, or someone in between.
I do want to stress that I have nothing against people who don’t agree with me, but sometimes, conservative readings of Scripture remind me of the Bush administration: be scared, do what we say without question, we don’t really care about much but our own agenda. And as long as you are scared, you are malleable. I also think it is interesting that in my experience that for whatever reason conservatives are more afraid of opinions that don’t match their own.
Is it because they are so invested in their own agenda?
Are they scared that in the end God will be a fat, old, black, Jewish lesbian sitting up there with her arms outstretched saying: “Come on home, Honey, I accept everyone!”