I’m sick as a dog – bronchitis with a sinus infection with the doctor worried I could be getting pneumonia (that’s being taken care off with a slew of medication), a kidney stone (that I think I’ve taken care of with a natural remedy and I now am not in agony, so thats good.)  Being that sick on my birthday is bad enough, but there’s more.

I was a finalist for a DRE position at a UU congregation, in part why I’ve been quiet as of late.  Pretty much my definition of a dream job.  The interview, prep for phone interview, then flying me for final interview, etc. took up a lot of the month.  But, just found out about an hour ago that nope, they decided to go with the other finalist.  The love my energy and enthusiasm, etc., but going with the candidate with more experience as a DRE.  They were quite nice about it and all, but it’s hard.

I’m worried right now that I’m going to get locked out of becoming a DRE because of the experience problem.  I know a congregation’s going to have to take a chance on me, it’d be a gamble from the eyes of their search committee (although if you ask pretty much anyone who knows me in my congregation it’s a sure bet I’d be a great DRE, from what parents, teachers, adults, staff, and kids have told me.)  Because I haven’t been a DRE before.  And they don’t know me and what I’ve done.  It would be a leap of faith from the congregation, and a lot of congregations…don’t necessarily want to do that kind of thing if they don’t have to.  I’m sure there ARE congregations willing to take that leap, I just have to find them.

I assume there’s some kind of farm system for experience – be a quarter time DRE somewhere for a while before becoming a full time DRE.  But that’s not possible for me – I can’t work in a less than full time position and make the ends meet.  It’s just me, no partner to help cover the bills, etc..  The best hope I have for that, right now, is that a quarter time position opens up at one of the Atlanta area congregations and I can get it and work both that and my current job.

I knew coming in to applying for DRE positions that experience is what would hold me back.  Just wish I hadn’t been spot on.  Because at the moment I’m not sure how to overcome that.  If it were classes, knowledge, etc. that’s something I can work on, but that experience problem…sigh.

I know there’s so much good I could do a congregation as a DRE.  I’m sure I’ll think of something and I’m sure I won’t give up.  But it’s hard not to add this on to the whole sick as crap thing and the whole turning 30 thing.

I’d go drown my sorrows in chocolate if…I wasn’t so sick.  sigh.  Time for medicine.

I was in the 8^th grade, sitting at lunch.  I had been picked on all day, being called gay, faggot, you name it I was called it.  It was a regular occurrence for me in middle school.  And I sat across from someone else who was picked on for the same reasons – Andrew B.  He said something to me, and I don’t remember what exactly, but I fired back “shut up you queer.”  This was just under 20 years ago, but the regret I feel is still fresh, makes it feel like it was just yesterday.

Because even though he wasn’t gay, I am actually gay.  I just couldn’t stand being picked on any more.  I snapped.  I hadn’t ever done something like that before, and never have since.  I remember his face, clear as day, covered in acne in all its middle school glory, and he looked shocked that I would ever say such a thing.  I left the lunchroom consumed by my anger – not at him, not at the scores of kids picking on me, but at myself.

I knew I needed forgiveness.  But I knew I was too ashamed to ask for it.

And I didn’t.  At least for about fifteen years.  Then one day my covenant group here at UUCA talked about forgiveness.  The first question was what I needed forgiveness for.

My first thought was “I don’t need forgiveness for anything, what an odd question.”  After a minute I realized how arrogant that thought was…I’m certainly not perfect.  Then this memory came roaring back into my mind and hasn’t left since.   So I blogged about it, I love blogging as a way to think through and process what’s on my mind.  I wrote a post talking about what I needed forgiveness for, and this was front and center.  It was my way of confessing to the universe at large what I needed forgiveness for.  It was emotional writing it, tears were shed, but I sent it off feeling better that I had admitted I needed forgiveness.

The internet, that great interconnected web I find so much joy in, can be a magical place at times.  About three months later after I posted what I needed forgiveness for, I got a comment on my blog from an “Andrew B” and it said simply, and I quote, “Forgiven!” with a smiley face.  That’s it.

I figured it wasn’t real – yes, I had used his real name in the post and I could tell he found the post by googling that real name.  But come on, what are the odds of that actually happening?  I asked a couple of questions over email and sure enough – same middle school, same guy, and he had absolutely no idea what I was talking about but forgave me anyway.

Something that I had been carrying for years, feeling terrible about what I did…well, first apparently wasn’t as big of a deal to him as it was to me, and secondly he forgave me just like that.

So why then did I never feel that sense of a weight lifted completely off my shoulders?  Perfectly happy to go on with my life with a renewed spirit?

Because I clearly have forgiven myself.  Even though he forgave me, that didn’t soothe my soul.

How can I forgive myself?  There’s no handy dandy instruction manual.  I find it easier to forgive others, so much easier to forgive others, than to forgive myself.

I’ve long since forgiven my classmates for mocking me.  They were acting out in their own way – they were venting their middle school awkwardness out on me.  I knew they didn’t know the struggle going on inside me, knowing I was different but lacking the vocabulary and the will to fully explain it.  They didn’t know that each word was a like whip across my back.  They didn’t know it would cause me to snap one day and vent my own frustrations out on Andrew.   And I imagine Andrew had similar thoughts to that when reading that blog post from years ago and forgave me in the same manner.

Are there things that I know I can never forgive myself for even though the injured parties have? If I know that I can never forgive myself, do I deserve this guilt as a way to atone for my self described sins? Or do I need to ask a higher power for help? Would some kind of divine intervention ever soothe over that nagging pit of guilt I feel, still 20 years later?

To be able to finally forgive myself after 20 years of self induced pain?  That would be true grace.

There’s this undercurrent of complete distrust of anyone with power or authority.  This is a RELIGION.  If I can’t trust people in a religion then I wouldn’t *be* part of that religion, plain and simple.  I know that there’s some deep seated generational divide issues here with Boomers not trusting and Millennials more likely to trust people in power.  But come ON.  The Board is filled with freakin’ volunteers whom ARE ELECTED, and my pal Nancy from my congregation who’s on the Board is about as power hungry as a dandelion.  (Love ya Nany!)  Is it just easier to call out The Board™ and forget those people on said Board at people from our local congregations?  Who like to give hugs and do coffee and organize the ukulele club?

But it’s not just The Board that immediately inspires mistrust in countless UUs.  How many people inherently mistrust The President of the UUA, the UUA, Boston, or their local Minister or any Minister for that matter?  How many people inherently mistrust religions that begin with a capital letter?  Anything important enough to be capitalized is clearly wrong because of what it took for them to earn that capital letter?  Do capital letters somehow oppress people in a way I’m missing?  How much of this distrust is grounded in reality versus grounded in hypothesis?

I simply do. not. understand. this deep-seated mistrust of people with capital letters in our religion.  OUR FAITH.  Our first principle is about the inherent worth and dignity of every person, not the inherent mistrust everyone who has earned a capital letter deserves.

Have people been just completely burned by others to THAT extent?  By other religions?  Has a prior Board kicked their puppy into a pot of soup and served it to the 1%?  What is it?  Are so many UUs that jaded where they automatically mistrust first?  Proven untrustworthy until proven trustworthy?  Proven guilty until innocent?  That goes against every core of my being – my spirituality, my faith, and my freakin’ religion.

I give up trying to understand this.  TRUST until proven untrustworthy.  LOVE until proven, well, the only thing that can end that one is “until the universe ends.”

I’ve been thinking about what to give up this year in addition to trying to stick to the Busted Halo Lent Calendar Fast Pray Give (which for anyone thinking about trying some kind of Lenten practice I highly recommend.)  I had it narrowed down to politics/political blogs, fat free Pringles (a Weight Watcher staple of mine), hitting the snooze button, but I decided to give up my normal lunch.  Every workday I head over to Publix (a supermarket chain in the South) and grab a whole boar’s head sub.  Great Weight Watcher wise, filling, healthy, and convenient as right now where I work there are Publix’s in adjacent shopping centers.

But I’m going to brown bag it.  The money I saved, which will be at least 20 a week, I’ll put in my new-as-of-today Spiritual Savings Account, an idea from this book on Spiritual Practices.  Money to a) donate to charity and b) use for resources for my personal faith development (like books or retreats, etc.)  I popped on over to my credit union and opened up a new dedicated savings account for it.

I’ll also be giving up Pizza (but that’s more for Weight Watchers ) and I might give up the political stuff too, or at least cut waaay back.  And I’m going to try and follow along with that Fast Pray Give calendar as well for some daily inspiration.

So why do I do Lent despite not being Catholic or really Christian?  There’s something about it that calls to me.  A period of time to prove to myself that my spiritual willpower is stronger than my bodily urges. That there’s something in me beyond my body that can say “No.  Despite you craving this, no.  I am stronger than that.”

But it’s not stronger right this second   Off to get a piece of King Cake and eat my final Publix Sub for the next 40ish days.

I was goofing off on twitter, stuck on trying to come up with some more original pins/graphics.  Mostly in response to a challenge in the UU Social Media Lab on facebook for more pins about hope (and the subsequent pinterest group board on Hope.)  I whipped up this one one day and it was great, and wanted to do more.

I have a ton of free stock photos through a website I use, but I was running out of good quotes.  I joked that I needed a quote by a famous uu that said something to the effect of “your life sucks.  but it’ll all be ok one day.  Hope.”  And that sparked in my mind a series of Social Media pictures on hope.  Called Let Hope.  I put out a call from FB friends on how they would finish the sentence Let Hope _____.  And I got over 20 replies and I keep getting messages with more.  The whole theme is starting to take off, some on pinterest, some on facebook, but the most notice and spread has been on tumblr.  Below is the gallery of one’s I’ve whipped up so far with about 15 more to go.  This has sparked me to talk with our staff about having thematic months for social media posts so I could do more like this.  They’re discussing it and’ll get back to me on that front.  I’d love to do different monthly themes.

But here’s the beginning of UUCA’s Let Hope series.  Feel free to leave a comment with how you would fill in Let Hope _____! Feel free to share these wherever!

Who or what on Earth has the authority/right to delinate what the mission of Unitarian Universalism is?  A General Assembly, which is an individual snapshot in time?  Congregations?  The board?  The President?  Can congregations adequately capture the mission of UUism with such a large number of folks who identify as UU but are not in a congregation?  Does GA have the authority to even do so?  Can a congregation or two put forth an idea for a mission of a greater religious movement?

Yes, I understand how on a congregational level we can come up with the mission of our congregation, but the mission of a religious movement?  Can congregations which make up only a part of a religious movement speak for the entire religious movement?

If it could be done at a GA, how would it be adopted at a GA?  Voted on by the delegates I assume, but delegates are members of congregations and leave out so many people – like all of those who can’t afford to get to GA.  How would they have a say in what the mission of UUism is?

If you ask two people what the mission of UUism is – you get two different answers.  Is there any hope for a unifying mission?  Is there any way folks can step outside what they think the mission of UUism is to what the greater mission of UUism is?  How on earth would we be able to do that?

I haven’t the slightest idea.  But there’s so much talk about what the mission of Unitarian Universalism is, but all I hear are personal definitions or what folks think it should be.  I just don’t see how under the current structure we have this overarching mission could ever actually be formulated.

Do other religions out there have mission statements?  Not churches, not church structures, but actual religions?  Maybe an overall mission statement isn’t needed by our religion, we just need a new institution dedicated to promoting UU identity with a clear mission of Unitarian Universalism (because I just don’t think how we have things set up now the UUA can do that.)

I think it’s essential.  I just have no idea how it could be done.

In the matter of congregations vs. congregationless, it’s not a matter of one or the other and it never should be.  I’m a strong proponent of my local congregation – without it, I would not be a Unitarian Universalist.  But I’ve also got a pretty damn kick ass local congregation.  We’re big, we have a huge young adult group, and I started attending my congregation in search for a community, in person, which I found.

And now that I’ve found it, I’ve branched out into the greater UU community, in part through this blog, in part through GA, but mostly due to Social Media.  And at this point it’s hard to tell which one is stronger, my in person UU community or my greater UU community, because I actually rarely think of the distinction.   These folks in my greater UU community are far from the few bytes of a tweet – I read their messages as if they were sitting across from me.

Maybe part of my “well duh” comes from being a young adult, one who grew up on the internet who has dear friends he might have met in person once.  In the greater UU Young Adult community, there are plenty who find their UU identity through their congregations and there are plenty who find their UU identity through cons and retreats.  My biggest beef with the old C*UUYAN was that it was really only focused on those cons and there wasn’t any organization dedicated to building up congregational young adult participation.  The UUA is getting its act together on that front, and our YA group started up the 2030s national project (which we need to inject some energy into), and the now CAYAN is there to provide for the con culture.  Now UU Young Adult stuff is not one or the other – it’s both.  And that’s how it should to be.

Congregations and Social Media

I think that large congregations have a duty to broadcast the message of Unitarian Universalism in their local areas, states, etc.  There are those that immediately want to outsource that to the Church of the Larger Fellowship, but it should not solely be up to them (although they certainly do an admirable job.)  Large congregations have a duty to step up and lead and shine that message of hope and let folks know about not only their local congregation but also Unitarian Universalism in general.  We have a duty to help those not in our brick and mortar congregation develop their own personal UU idenity.

Which is in part why I do our congregation’s social media.  Right now, UUCA has a facebook page, a twitter, a tumblr, a pinterest, and a google plus page (which right now is dead for lack of time.)  I’ve recruited a team to help out, especially with twitter and pinterest, and they’re doing amazing things. If I add up the individual followers of our social media platforms, we’re at well over 1,000 folks.  Now, of course a lot of those folks follow multiple outlets, but our direct reach on social media is greater than our membership numbers, and our indirect reach through RT, reblogs, shares, etc. is just incalculable.  It’s big.

Clearly, it’s not just members and friends of our congregation following us on these social media networks.  It’s folks from all over, folks on facebook from small GA towns where there is no UU congregation anywhere close, youth on tumblr who have rejected the church they are being brought up in and look for a UU message.  It’s folks who find our message inspirational, and sure, there are UUs who are active members of their local congregations who see what we’re up to and to get inspiration.  But there are plenty of folks who identify as UUs who do not go to a congregation who look to us for inspiration, and it’s our duty to provide it as responsible stewards of our faith.  Hell, social media doesn’t cost our congregation a dime (it’s all volunteer, lay led) and it actually improves our congregation and has built stronger internal ties.  And if we did decide to have a staff person do it – as a large congregation, we have the congregational resources to be able to make that happen.  And we certainly have the congregational resource necessary for a lay led program – people.  People willing to take it on, people willing to learn about social media platforms, people willing to stare at a computer screen for a while, and people who enjoy all of the above.

Of course not everyone has access to the internet, nor does everyone like social media.  But there are several people I’ve seen use that as a way to say no emphasis should be placed on social media at all.  I suppose they’re in favor of an in person, congregational approach.  But that clearly fails to reach everyone too or we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.

It’s not one or the other and never should be.  This POLITY-OR-DEATH mentality just drives me nuts.  We ought to be responsible stewards of our Unitarian Universalist ideals, which are far greater than any single congregation.  We ought to be broadcasting that message, that hope, whether it be from congregational social media platforms to individuals helping console each other on tumblr.

The fog kept rolling in off the coast.  When it was light earlier, I could see the fog blowing in the wind.  I had never seen something like it.  The swirls of water droplets, dancing to a tune only they could hear.  It was mesmerizing,

I walked outside, passing by what had to be the fifteenth bow legged cowboy I’ve passed tonight.  Yes, the rodeo was in town, and this casino was hosting it.  But really?  Why so many bow legged?  Hobbling around?  Did they have rodeo related injuries?  Maybe it was today and they were all sore?  They looked remarkably the same, a cowboy hat, a red shirt, and a pair of blue jeans generally with a lady friend on his arm (about even between blonde and brunette.)

I got the feeling of incredible sadness when I sat down outside.  How many dreams were destroyed at the tables inside?  I shivered.  Suddenly I felt the weight of all those lost dreams, the incredible sadness.  Sure, there were winners, but my mind was with those who were desperate.  The morning desperation was that of those desperately trying to win a buck to pay their rent.  The evening desperation, particularly tonight, had a more romantic flavor.

But wasn’t I desperate too?  I was desperate to get away for a weekend, to leave my normal life behind for a weekend.  Desperate for some fun, for some relaxation.

I leaned back on the bench.  They were beautiful trees – I never know the names of trees I see other than magnolia and pine, but they were typical of southern Mississippi.  They were trees I would only see in the South, and in the southern part of the south.  And the calm, foggy evening, was destroyed by the huge, bright, LCD marquee overlooking Beach Blvd.  I wondered if there was a way I could shut it off – it lit up his hotel room too – but figured it was futile.

There was one block of pixels that was broken – stuck on a light, sky blue.  I stared at that block of pixels as the sign went from promotions to upcoming concerts.  How would it get stuck on such an interesting color?  Why not just go out completely?

Without the casinos, this part of the gulf coast would exist, but it would be vastly different.  Little tourism, few jobs.  But were the casinos a boon to the local economy aside from the jobs?  I knew this trip I had only spent money at various hotel casinos, of which were uniformly controlled by massive, publically traded companies.  How was I helping the local economy?

I wrote the above Saturday night, well, more like Sunday Morning at 2am.  I had a nice relaxing time on my vacation, but something clearly wasn’t sitting right.  After waiting outside for my to go order to be ready for a late dinner, I went back up to the hotel room and typed that out while eating.  And I decided to try and attend the Gulf Coast UU Fellowship in the morning.

The fog was incredible, yet again.  I played a few more hands of blackjack, losing, hit up the free buffet I had been comped, checked out and bid my goodbye to the casino.  I grabbed the address of the Gulf Coast UU Fellowship from google and headed out.  It was fifteen to twenty minutes away, and I was going to be about five minutes late according to my GPS, probably more because I had trouble seeing any stoplights until I was under them.  It had been ages since I had seen that thick of fog, and never for days on end.

I finally arrived – but no fellowship.  After searching the area for a good 5 minutes, gave up, looked back online and turns out they had just recently moved.  To a place about 10 minutes from the casino I was originally at.  To the breakfast room at the Econolodge.  I backtracked, now aggravated I would be thirty minutes late.  I contemplated not going at all – just blowing it off and heading back home.  But something made me go anyways.  Maybe I would be able to sneak in the back without folks noticing I was 30 minutes late.

No go.  I opened up the door to the breakfast room with the proud sign proclaiming a meeting of the Gulf Coast UU Fellowship and all heads turned towards me.  The minister, a consulting minister, paused in the middle of what she was saying to big me welcome, and they continued on with their service.  I plopped down in the chair closest to the door, so I wouldn’t be an interruption.

The minister wasn’t preaching today – wasn’t the one preaching Sunday a month for her.  I looked around – my tablemate was clearly in his 80s or more, there were a total of about six adults and two kids.  One other looked to be around my age.  They all looked at me with a hopeful expression – I was worried they were thinking I’d be able to come regularly, wanted to become a member, that I lived closer than 6 hours away.  I felt…I felt somewhat ashamed that I was just dropping in from out of town.  The look of hope they had…

They were taking turns reading selections from this past year’s Minns lecture series.  I had read a couple of them before, so I knew vaguely what they were about. The readings were talking about how essential Unitarian Universalism is, and how to grow.  One of the readings was about young adults, and I swear, at one point every other person in that room made eye contact with me when they were reading about what young adults need from a congregation.  My heart began to break.

After singing a hymn (which I knew by heart) the minister started talking again and then I was invited to introduce myself.  One of the first things I blurted out was, “I don’t live here – I’m from Atlanta.”  Just to get those looks of hope off their faces.  I couldn’t stand it.  I mentioned how I was just on vacation for the weekend but generally come down about once a year, was a member of the UU Congregation of Atlanta, and wanted to help.  The service wrapped up, including singing a goodbye while holding hands.  A singing benediction – I loved it, and quickly caught on to the tune.

Then coffee hour.  They were sure to offer me coffee, heck, FIVE different people offered to go get me a cup of coffee.  See, this was the breakfast room of the Econolodge after all, so they had coffee and juice they could offer me.  I thanked them but didn’t take up the coffee offer.  (Although I did later get a cup of juice.)

And I talked.  And I listened.

I’m still having trouble putting down the inner lion that’s roaring YOU HAVE TO HELP THESE PEOPLE to be able to adequately describe these conversations.

I heard from the consulting minister about how they’ve struggled in the area.  First Katrina destroyed their homes (and their fellowship building), then the BP Oil Spill destroyed their livelihoods, and then with the Great Recession, they have never been able to recover.  She talked with me in depth about how the biggest social justice concern they have is about flood and hurricane insurance – something not just never on my radar screen, something I had never even thought of before.

I talked with the president of the congregation.  She was the mother of the two kids, and she looked like she had to be under 40.  All she wanted was a place where they could have at least a corner for the kids – the econolodge breakfast room was too small for that.  Without a corner for kids where kids could be together and play, why would any young family stick around?

I talked with the treasurer.  They have land donated for a fellowship but not the funds to build on it.  They used to rent a storefront that worked great, but they had a hard time justifying the 1200 a month cost.

I offered my expertise with young adult group organizing, social media, web, whatever I could do.  They invited me to lunch and part of me ached to go, but I had to get back to Atlanta.  Back to my now shredded bubble of a home.

When I walked out of the econolodge, they were packing up the banners.  Oh they longed for a home where they could leave the banners hanging with pride.  I got into my car, immediately covered in fog, and sat for a few minutes before leaving.

My mind went to what I had written nary 10 hours before about desperation.  This was a different kid of desperation than I felt at the casino.  These folks were desperate for a home, an actual building of their own.  These folks were desperate to get their livelihoods back.  These folks were desperate for their lives back.  These folks were desperate to maintain their connection to Unitarian Universalism.

We’ve forgotten about this fellowship of fellow Unitarian Universalists.  They are our family, but we have forgotten about them.  They were destroyed in Katrina, but be honest, when you think about Katrina you first think about New Orleans.  You often forget how the Mississippi Gulf Coast was destroyed too.  Maybe it’s the New Orleans congregations you think of (incidentally, that very same weekend, the UUA Board was in New Orleans.)  But you don’t think about this Gulf Coast UU Fellowship, destroyed by Katrina, but without any other congregations close to them to provide emotional support.  They really are out in the wilderness by themselves.

How much do I take for granted being a member of UUCA?  We have a building.  Our own building.  We have multiple ministers, multiple RE staff, multiple support staff.  We have hundreds and hundreds of members.  Our 2030s covenant group meeting later that night had more people attending than this fellowship did on Sunday morning.

Folks down there seemed to be Unitarian Universalists first, members of their fellowship second.  They were desperately clinging to a Unitarian Universalist identity.  For a decent portion of my congregation, I’m willing to bet it’s opposite – they see themselves as members of UUCA first, Unitarian Universalists second.

They are our family.  I recognized one of the members from one of the Mid-South annual assemblies I’ve gone to.  When I walked in, I knew these were my family.  I’ve never really gone to a UU congregation other than UUCA, not even when I was on vacation.  While there, I had the feeling that if I was ever away from Atlanta, or moved, I would still be able to find home at any UU congregation or fellowship, because these folks were family.  But it’s family we collectively have forgotten about.  How could we?  They don’t even have a corner for the kids to play in.  How could we?

A tear rolled down my cheek as I pulled away through the morning fog, leaving part of my heart down with them.  This beacon of hope, shining through the morning fog.  They’re trying to shine through this fog of Katrina, of BP, of the recession and make it through and thrive in the afternoon.

I’ve got some more folks to talk with, from our district exec to the president of the Gulf Coast UU Fellowship, but I plan on doing everything in my power to help out this fellowship, from getting them help with their website to helping them raise the funds to build a new home to helping them get their stories told.  Expect to hear more from me, because I have to do something.  We all have to do something.

Learn more – http://sopastrike.com/strike

But there were goodies.  I love this post – Entropy and the Laws of Life.  This is eerily reminiscent of my post recently about my new years resolution.  Here’s a quote from it -

It’s easy to say I’ll just leave “it”, aka my life, up to the Universe, well, easy to type, but it seems extraordinarily difficult to actually believe and accept.  Accepting that your organization will inevitably fall like Newton’s apple means that you’re powerless.  And it’s not appropriate to feel powerless in our society.  It’s easy to fight against the Universe, and make grandiose plans on where you’ll be in ten years.  Easy to fight against, but impossible to win.

Looking back, it’s incredibly ironic.  I put up this post on compassion where I talk about needing to learn how to accept it – and then promptly forgot I ever wrote it and failed to reach out to my community for a while to get help.  I was in dire, dire financial straits and I just didn’t know how to pull out of it.  I saw my life as a total failure.  You can see just some of what I felt like on this post – The most innocuous, terrible question with the harshest lie.  I’m reposting the entire post here:

“How are you?” asked by Barbara, the cashier at Publix.

Such an innoculous question.  The automatic answer “Fine” comes out without a concious thought nowadays.

I once vowed to always answer that question truthfully.  But today, I’m having just a terrible day.  And I really don’t want to talk about it.  But it’s up there on the worst-days-list.  (Don’t worry friends, no one died.)  Today, en route to that Publix, I was on the verge of tears.  But I pulled myself together, as I must, as I was taught growing up, and went inside to buy my Axe body spray.

Then she asked.   Then I froze.  And I had to force out a reply – “fine.”  That must have sounded like the surliest “fine” she had ever heard.  She looked confused, but let it go.

I couldn’t tell her “I’m doing terrible.  Thanks for asking.”  Besdies the inevitable follow up questions which I did not and still do not want to answer right now, I’m then placing an unfair burden of guilt on a stranger.  Yes, I know “well, she did ask.”  But a) very few people who ask that really want to know the truth, they just do it to be polite (maybe that’s just a southern thing, I don’t know) and b) I don’t feel like I have the right to make someone worried or concerned.

I originally had something else as b.  But the more I think about it, the more that the new b might just be right.  That, I can blame partially if not entirely on my upbringing and coping with so many deaths at such a young age.

.I felt like I heard a nail, nailing yet another closet door shut, like part of me just died a little.  And I know that every time I answer “fine” to a question, I only make things worse.

I had a discussion with someone at work, a Korean female, who I knew was having a terrbile day.  I asked how she was, and she said “fine.”  I knew it was clearly a lie, so I told her that she didn’t have to lie to me, and if it was a terrible day than she can say so.  She told me that as a Korean female she just isn’t allowed to have a bad day, and especially not allowed to tell others if she is.

I thought it was nuts.  But now I know exactly what she meant.

That night I broke down, completely.  Really, it all seemed hopeless.  I couldn’t stop crying from the moment I left work.  Tears just streamed down without my control.  And for the first time in my life, I prayed.  And I woke up with a small glimmer of hope where the night before there had been none.  What happened?  I reached out for help, and every single person I asked helped.  Every single one.  And they were all folks from my UU Congregation.

Things got better, and now I’m in pretty darn good financial shape.

I’ll have learned a lot from this week.  As she-who-shall-remain-nameless told me on the phone, your times of deepest pain are the most meaningful times you grow.  If only I can somehow convince my heart of that.

I remember everything I felt during those times.  Luckily it’s just a memory and not reality anymore.  Months later, the Atlanta PD raided a gay bar – and I freaked.  From the post “I have fear in my heart tonight…”

I have fear in my heart right now, due to the Atlanta police department and their stonewallesque raid on the eagle last night.  I feel less safe because of the apd, who’d rather crack down on us queers rather than people murdering and mugging college students five miles away.  What is that?  Do I deserve to be hunted worse than a murderer because I like boys and not girls?

Talked a bit about writing after that, and then my annual new years post.  I ended that year with a post about Labels and Youth, and I still think a lot about labels.  And that class has become an annual tradition of our youth group.

So, yah, that seems like a pretty down year.  Yikes.  But, thankfully, things are better, and in order to truly appreciate the happy times in life, you have to go through some sad times too.