And Now for Something Completely Different

NOTE: This blog is somewhat sequential, so if it's not making sense just go back an entry or two.

I need to take a break from the Home Sweet Home employment saga. In case you've been following it I have been keeping in touch with some residents and co-workers. There have not been big lay-offs but everyone is pretty miserable.

And now to change the subject. NOTE: IF YOU HAVE A MORAL OBJECTION TO HOMOSEXUALITY DO NOT READ THIS POSTING. I respect your opinion so please be respectful of mine.

I almost called this entry "Personal Jesus" but was afraid an evangelical would find it and would think I was witnessing and I shuddered to think the response I would get.

I got to thinking one night (I'm prone to random thoughts) about how people personify God in order to feel closer to him/her. Take, for example, the hymn "I Walk in the Garden" (And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own...).  I'm also a huge fan of Anne Lamott who, in her book Traveling Mercies (I think), wrote about how she would clutch a tissue during church so it would feel like God was holding her hand. In the Christian tradition God took human form, and I think we need to put God in a form we can love and understand. It got me to thinking...how would I personify God? What would my Personal Jesus be like? In the interest of full disclosure you should know that I'm a baptized Catholic raised in the hippie Quaker tradition who is currently Episcopalian.

I'M LAYING THIS OUT AS A THOUGHT, NOT TO OFFEND ANYBODY: A gay man. My Jesus is a gay man.

Not just any gay man. Not someone who is repressed, hostile towards women, or would dismiss me as a "breeder." I like comfortable, flamboyant, funny gay men. I could talk to him like I do my women friends because we have the same emotionality and empathy, and enjoy the same eye candy. Yet he is still a man who has that certain male energy. If a gay man tells me I'm beautiful or clever I take it as the highest compliment because not only do they tend to have exquisite taste, there's no hidden agenda. He may have sexual appetites, but they sure the heck aren't directed towards me!! Admiration from a heterosexual male simply comes from a much more complicated place. (Sorry, Tom. I love your admiration, too.) I don't know why (although my therapist had a few good guesses), but male approval devoid of sexual interest is a drug for me. Nothing else makes me feel as good about myself. I can feel loved, and safe, and there's no competition.

I'm at sort of a cross-roads in my life right now and searching for Mr. Fabulous.