tale spin.
July 21, 2009
i find myself here. on an island precariously close to the canadian border and i feel the excitement tingling on my skin, knowing that the magnificence of quebec is practically in reach. i can almost taste it…the lure of a country that is not mine, and yet, it feels surprisingly a lot like home.
the house my family has rented for this week boasts a plaque on the wall in one of the bedrooms that reads:
“home is where your story begins”
each time i read it, i pause. which story, i ask? which beginning? as a being full of stories, does this mean home is something less tangible than place, and perhaps, more akin to time?
home has always been a fairly elusive idea for me, as i have wandered around the globe seeking a sense of belonging – with space, with individual people, with broader community…and, as i am here now, i feel the pull of coming home that grabbed my heart that first time i laid eyes on montreal.
as i give in to the seduction of this nostalgia, i recall a story i wrote a few years ago, after a wintry visit there…one that revived a memory of friendship that i long for in a home.
“montroyal”
Everywhere I look the glare of frozen water gushes into view. The snow glistens, the ice crackles underneath the weight of my boots each time I take a step. I feel the sun, barely. The sting of the wind tickles my cheeks so I keep laughing, I keep talking, believing the longer I keep going the less I’ll notice the pain growing in my face.
It works – at least for a time.
We’re taking a walk, following a designated path though not caring where it leads. Reclaiming a friendship that has stumbled with time, reinvigorating a love between two people that is a fresh as a deep gulp of filtered water.
I walk into the snow, in defiance of the trail plowed and trampled neatly before us. I have boots to put to use in this land of negative Celsius and rosy cheeks. I trample the snow, disappointed that it really isn’t as deep as I had wanted…and then I seem to lose my balance, and his laughter surrounds me, breaking my fall. It takes me several attempts to evade his sly shoves and bumps to get back on my feet…kicking him just as slyly in the butt on my way back up.
I feel like a 10 year old again, the fun of playing with a friend who allows me to push back, to tease, to touch without the fear of getting hurt. He is that to me…and more. As we begin to walk back to the trail, I rush up, thrust my hand into one of his pockets and pull him to me. I smirk as I catch him on his unawares and then just as intimacy is breached, I step back and it’s now his turn to embrace the snow. Our laughter rings with familiarity through the naked trees.
Our promenade of the park continues, passing families on holiday, couples oblivious to our chatter, people shunning a day of work to enjoy a blissfully warm winter afternoon. Soon the insulation of laughter wears thin and we find ourselves racing back to the car, ready to slide into the next adventure awaiting for us this day.* 2/3/05
church: never say never
December 1, 2008
my very wise graduate advisor used to tell me, “never say never”… and all these years later, that has proved very sage advice. yet, i would easily dismiss this advice in those moments when it came to the practice of going to church. i was seriously convinced that i would never go to church again…after the trauma and heartbreak that was my evangelical, born-again upbringing.
yet there i was. this past sunday morning. sitting in church. by my own accord. yup. i went to church on a sunday morning. never say never…
i went because, well, things change. i have been exploring more and more these days my relationship to community, to spirit, to god (if you will) and what actually tipped the scales for me to break my vow of “never”, was that my good friend was preaching that morning…and as she spoke, i found myself quietly trembling, deeply touched in a place i wasn’t expecting to be revealed, with more than a few tears trickling out.
i laughed about it afterwards with the friend who attended with me, that i had just experienced one of those “come-to-jesus” moments that folks talk about when explaining their salvation. yet i don’t think that i was saved, in the traditional sense of that word – but rather, i experienced a warm healing poultice and bandage being gently applied to a spiritual wound that is much larger and more raw than i would like to admit.
so, what happened?
my friend giving the sermon talked about unity. about difference. about belonging. about how checking any part – no matter how large or small — of who we are, at the door, when we enter the room, community, the congregation – does more harm than good in building authentic and spiritual connection. if we really believe in connecting through love and that god, the spirit, the universe is love, how can we then truly build from that place? telling each other that “i love you, but…” does nothing at all to serve a god who is unconditional love.
she talked about opening our hearts to all of our differences…and that bringing our whole selves to the table as a starting point for conversation, for understanding, for learning. what type of congregation could we be if that were to really happen? to embrace our differences rather than focus on purely our (assumed) similarities?
ok. so this is where i started to cry…and what she was saying wasn’t necessarily anything i hadn’t heard before…but to hear it in church, felt absolutely unreal to me. this was the message i longed to hear my entire life. every day. every time my parents forced me to go to church on sunday (and friday, and wednesday, and…whenever else they deemed appropriate)…and in a dress nonetheless!…i wanted to hear this message. that who i am, is entirely and completely OK.
yet, all i heard was how i needed to be something else. that who i was, was inherently so not OK. that i needed to be more “god-like”…how i needed to be perfect…and perfect in that world meant being quiet, subservient, heterosexual, unquestioning, conservative, dress-wearing, gender-conforming, and invisible. no matter how hard i tried, i just wasn’t going to get there. and for everyone else to get there, i’m realizing now, they too have to check parts of themselves at the door in order to belong. belonging in this way is a hurtful process for us all. i grew up in a community that demanded that we only focus on similarities that were at times more constructed than real. i grew up believing that difference in a religious and community setting meant i couldn’t belong. that in being different, i was inherently both shameful and wrong…and so, many years ago, i left the church…never thinking i could ever go back to a spiritual relationship with my god.
the damage that message did to me over the years has been deep. the wound still bleeds as i am working to reassess my beliefs that i am actually OK. growing up, i didn’t want to believe that any god, any higher power or spirit, could really think that i was wrong…if i were actually created in their own image…but because i never heard otherwise, i started believing that there was something wrong with me…
the truth is, i don’t want to check who i am at the door. i don’t want to be someone else just to please or appease others around me. i don’t want to conform in order to belong.
this has kept me from joining any group, any community based on “sameness”. i have always been wary of being too connected to the “queer” community because it has often felt like to belong meant i needed to be “the same” as everyone else – that it is not our difference that is respected. i am actually not a supporter of “gay marriage” as a universal platform for all queers…i think as a movement it is becoming too reductive of the queer experience and of the difference that is vibrant and thriving among us. i do believe in marriage as a human right and i do not believe we all want, or need, to get married – queer, straight, or whatever comes in between. i also get uncomfortable in spaces that assume that all of us “people of color” are the same that is often translated through the use of language based in an “US” vs. “THEM” dialectic…and yet the world operates so much from this opposition…and these desires are a part of my difference and i want to stop checking them at the door.
a world of sameness is not one i am fighting to live in. i want the world that was spoken about in church this past sunday. i want to live in a world where we get messy about our differences, where we are also able to embrace our similarities, understanding that assumed sameness is often a way to mask our deeper discomfort with difference. i want to live in a world where my beliefs, my experiences, my perspectives, and my joys…are honored, respected and are lovingly, curiously, and messily engaged with by others.
if the church i grew up with had offered me this, i never would have left…
but there i go again, saying never…
roland.
June 16, 2008
items founds in taiwan…and the friends they are given to…make my heart all giddy.
as i continue to clean my house i keep finding these little trinkets, cool little pieces of plastic or metal, or at times, something else, that i have either brought back with me from my journeys in taiwan or have somehow acquired here, lulled into being a consumer by that ubiquitous little white sticker affixed to it that reads: “made in taiwan”.
i wasn’t made in taiwan…yet so much of my life was…and yet, in taiwan, i find meaning, i found belonging…in truth, sitting on my grandparents leather couch that one afternoon with my agong, i found me.
so i hold onto trinkets, i buy them when they catch my eye…and i offer them up as gifts to friends as a piece of who i am. a gift of me.
