Broken Spirits and Full Moons

Driving home today I feel exhausted. Not exhausted from physical exertion, but from mental, emotional and spiritual exertion. This kind of energy drain strikes me as far more draining, since it seems to stay even when I cross the threshold of my home--my sanctuary. I often turn to music, walks in the "big green", laughter at my little westies or verbally wearing out my very kind partner. Conversations with God continue through telepathy and ongoing communication that originate in the soul. These soul words and soul communications have been with me since I was very young. I am engaged all the time consciously and subconsciously in "soul talk." It could be called prayer or meditation, but those words are too "fixed" to describe this phenomena. Maybe, it is the "still small voice", that Elijah experienced--it just is.

I knew when the full moon was out, all pale and butterscotch that this was going to be a trying weekend. Over and again I encounter folks who are afflicted with broken spirits. Often from Calvinist theologies, feeling like they have disappointed their families, no longer part of the elect they simply lose their fight and give up. Since 1988, I have offered a pastoral hand to gay and lesbian people, some sick with cancers, and viruses. Others have complications from mental grief over the slow eroding spiritual labor of always having to exonerate one's existence. So many of my brothers and sisters are engaged in a slow suicide or are full head onto a death wish. Slow suicide comes from self-medication with various substances, death wish from merely living life with no self-respect. Consequently having no respect for anyone else either. Other deadly gods take control when spirits are broken.

I struggle with self-worth and esteem like many I reach out to pastorally. How could I not when obviously I am neither part of the evangelical scheme of the conformist elect nor a world view that believes "there's a reason for everything." Human being after human being, in the Bible belt, listening to "I must have deserved this", or "God is paying me back for ________." Graceless lives, feeling like great big disappointments or who experience being politely tolerated at family gatherings. I don't exactly feel like that, since I am surrounded by a very loving family. But I understand where my broken queer siblings are coming from. Intellectually, I know God loves me, on a day-to-day basis I am weary with being a gay rights activist. I am an activist because I am willing to say that I am gay to anyone who asks. What is wearying is the self-exoneration work, which seems to be required in this culture. It never stops. Largely, in the glbt community I have to give excuse for my open Christian faith, in the Christian community I have to justify my existence. Then what really wears me out is the shocking presence of gay fundamentalists. People who at some level have rationalized their sexuality, yet continue to hold to a compartmentalized faith rooted in biblical fundamentalism. They would still be at home in a Southern Baptist Church or The Church of Christ if you never knew they had a same sex partner or had same-gender-loving proclivities. If they can hold onto this feeling they are part of the elect, the privileged, then I guess they can manage. Their spirits break when they realize their religious system of conformity doesn't include them.

I guess that is why I am feeling extraordinarily weary. This battle is not with the hate mongers out there, it is with the hate mongers inside our own people. Late nights coaxing away an attempted suicide whose words were laced with "God is punishing me." To a broken spirit whose life is flooded with despair, thus a death wish has ensued. A partner who remains in an abusive relationship because, "I guess this is what I deserve." My soul talk picked up loudly when I got home this evening, walking my westies in the big green, it sounded like Jesus saying over and over again, " ...AS YOURSELF."