Lost in Mistranslation

Labels never quite stretch out big enough to encompass the totality of a real..... live.... person.

I have a friend who... if identified by his labels... would be "a trip" at best.  He's a Gay... Evangelical.  He's registered as a Republican, often voting Democrat... He watches Fox news and Glen Beck but last election voted for Barak Obama.

He attends events like "Pride" (GLBT event) and "Hill song concerts" (evangelical worship event).  He's also a heavy smoker.

He believes in the real Resurrection of Jesus and the end of the world with a  rapture..... but he often jokes (or at least I think he's joking) that he has stocked his cellar with hundreds of cartons of cigarettes with the expectation that... judgement and divine apocalypse aside... he won't, "make it the first go round."

He hangs out primarily with gay men, (or whoever else feels comfortable enough with him) and at work he smokes with anyone who will smoke with him... including one of the obvious floor homophobes... who he seems to treat as a really good friend.

He often talks religion and God and has even lost multiple friendships with gay skeptics... because of his unwillingness to abandon his faith.  However he believes being gay is not a choice.  He knows "what the bible says"... on "the gay issue".... but believes the language comes from a pagan culture where there's something "not entirely right" about how certain words and phrases have been translated.        

He would one day like for his country to recognize the rights of himself and his other GLBT friends to form legal and binding commitments to the partner of his/her choosing.... and believes it's a tragic mistake that his friends don't share all the legal rights afforded heterosexual couples such as access to  lower insurance premiums... the right to make medical decisions on behalf of partners...  etc.

He would also like for he and his gay friends to be welcomed into (as he puts it) a "bible believing" church (should they so choose to attend one).. that "teaches about Jesus"... and he wants to be accepted for the faith that he has... regardless of differences of opinion on gay issues... much like many people who have been divorced and remarried (some.... multiple times) have differences of opinion on divorce issues.. ("a topic Jesus specifically speaks on"... as he notes) yet have been graciously received by those same types of "evangelical" churches.

What is he?

Conservative....?  Liberal...?  Evangelical?  Orthodox?  Heretic.... ?  Mistaken?   Mis-translated....? Misunderstood....?

What do you do with a guy who won't fit the mold?

A (post-modern) Hymn

Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am home again 
Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am whole again 
Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am young again 
Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am fun again 

However far away I will always love you 
However long I stay I will always love you 
Whatever words I say I will always love you 
I will always love you 

Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am free again 
Whenever I'm alone with you 
You make me feel like I am clean again 

However far away I will always love you 
However long I stay I will always love you 
Whatever words I say I will always love you 
I will always love you

(original words by the cure)

Christ of St John of the Cross

I had a 'cosmic dream' in which I saw this image in colour and which in my dream represented the 'nucleus of the atom.' This nucleus later took on a metaphysical sense; I considered it 'the very unity of the universe,' the Christ. -Salvador Dali 1950. I was driving into work the other day (listening to Abbey Road on my car stereo) and at the stop light... just over the hill from the exit ramp... I pulled over next to a guy standing on the side of the road. He was a middle aged white man with a few days of razor-stubble.  He had short...matted.. hair.  (blonde).  And his clothes were dirty.. with a foul smell. He was reddened from the sun.... (and I'm pretty sure he was drunk). But as I pulled close... with that instant of inspiration that comes on artists just before genius... in the canvas of my mind... I turned him into Jesus.   I didn't turn him like a magician does a frog.  Instead.... I was seeing a homeless dude with a ridiculous foul smell.... But also... I was seeing Jesus. Not the long haired type in the classic paintings....           But for visuals sake... I kept the man as he was.  Matted hair.  A bottle in his hand.  A dazed look on his face.       The truth is... I tend to see Jesus in some weird places.  Sometimes (like a Buddhist might) I see him in the earth... the Rocks and the trees.  Blowing gently in the wind.  Laying low.... or at the center of it all.... holding it together... (Colossians 1:17).  But like the homeless man... it all remains as it is.  Rocks.  Dust.  Molecules.  Quantum Particles.  Jesus. Surreal is a good way to describe my Jesus experiences.  It's like my most recent purchased piece of art... a take off on a Dali painting... (by Erin Whitson).. It's a Classic Jesus with a twist... Surreal with an altered perspective between the top half and the bottom. The bottom piece?... a wooded scene... at dusk?  (Or Dawn).. under a blackened metallic-blue sky. And the top half?  A hovering ghostly white Christ..... Crucified and skewed in such a way that we see him from overhead...   A Crucified Jesus.... stretched out mystically over orange fields and darkened skies.  And our view is from above as if we were looking down from heaven. I like the classic Jesus.  But I don't need him to be of the traditional type.  In fact... I'm reminded that the classic Jesus is primarily an invention of white European culture.  In reality.. Jesus would have looked a lot more like Osama Bin Laden than he does in most Italian Renaissance paintings. But some of my favorite Jesus images don't come from artistic renderings.  Some of my favorite Jesus images come from looking at other people... All kinds of people. I see him in artists a lot.  I can see him in John Lennon as much as Christ of St John of the Cross. I see him in gay friends.... and strangers... and women I know... But I don't always see him in places you might expect like the religious minded.       (He said that that would be so. that many who thought they knew him would find that they didn't after all).       On the road.. as I pulled over the hill I saw the homeless dude and I knew what I would do.  And I got excited.  (one of the many reasons I can't do conservative politics is that Conservatives don't get excited when they see homeless people).  I got so excited that I swerved up onto the curb he was standing on... (in the distance) and corrected myself in order to keep from running down the King of Kings and Lord of Hosts.   And when I approached him I handed out 3 protein bars through my car door window.  (an idea from a preacher friend I know)....One for the Father.... and one for himself.... and perhaps a third for the Holy Ghost. And as I prepared to drive away Jesus gave me the double chest thump with the two finger salute like Sammy Sosa (minus the kiss). I can only assume he meant "thank you".... And I was overwhelmed by the gesture and his reception of my gifts.  And then with much praise and rejoicing like something from Handel... I joyfully drove away.

Truth is Truth

That which you forgive others.. will also be forgiven you.
-Jesus

In the end... the love you take... is equal to the love you make.  
-John Lennon. 

Truth is Truth quote:

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin. 
-Charles Darwin 

Losing My Religion

(prose? Or poetry?). 
PRO-etry:  

The house lights go down.

And Inside my brain...  The universe is remade.  The only universe I'll ever know...

It's a fact.

And with a leap... I could send it all flying through space and time...

Can you Imagine?.......

But sadly.. I don't care about that now.  Instead...
I'm  Listening to REM at a traffic light...
searching the faces around me...

still cars...

surreal....
silent of flickering light and sound.
paused like a film frame...
still stuck on the reel
that should be spinning around
the only world that I know.    

But its silent.
the story's gone.

The song that's playing is Losing my Religion...
Which is not about religion at all.
It's an old Southern phrase.
A figure of speech.
About obsession.

If I'm losing my religion?
I'm selling everything
to get one thing. 

And today.... (again)... I'm losing my religion

But... it wasn't always this way.

I was once devotedly whole
And wholly devoted to being.

I used to be ONE...
SOLID...
WHOLE... number of things that still remain with me today
though it's like bomb residue.

a virtual verity
in a singularity
with an explosion
that changed everything.

....and now I'm reduced...
like a math fraction..
like an animal urge...
Like the lowest denominator of a porn flick...
I've been reduced to this...      

I've been reduced to a
...fleshly opaque smell
that lingers in the air like a a flower fragrance.
A garden-wall of memory.
A place..... once safe.

But now I sniff it like a dog...

with irony
I smell it like cherry blossoms
near a green car stopped at
the traffic light beside me...
a face
Partly veiled by strands of light
brown-cherry hair.

She is Sweet.

To me?
She's remade in film...
innocent in sepia tones.
naked like Hot cinnamon
with sweat.

and she's Salty.

Isolated...

And suddenly.. she's completely unsafe.    

She doesn't notice me... that I'm watching her.

Her universe doesn't include me.
I'm absent there.
a ghost...
on the outside watching....
haunting.

Nor does she know my danger
my black-hole emptiness
How in this.... losing of religion
I can warp it... unreal..
Erase it.
Reduce it all like a fraction...

She....
To me          
Has become my Eve
of alienation.
And I
Today...?
her serpent of random chance.

It Reminds me of a dream
I keep having
of my Father telling a story...
something large...
up on the big screen.
Something crucial about me...
and life...
something to turn the gears
flicker the lights and spin the wheels
and reels
with the substance of things that a Father might say.

But like Nietzsche.. my Father's dead.
(or at least... he's dead to me now).
He died a few years ago.
And so.. (in the dream) I never hear the words he would say

Like the wholly devoted Ghost..
he's committed to watching...

he slips back into the shadows...
on the outside.
And I'm fully unaware that he's there.

And in between us is air
and the things we confuse for certainty...
Clarity.
The Black box things that slip
through our fingers like smoke.

And then the credits role
And the house lights come up

And then there's the silence of things
that come at the end
while I adjust again.
to a dangerous
and unimagined world.

and finally...
I muster the courage
to stand from the theater
walk across that damn
sticky floor
and once more...
step back outside
into the so called..
"real world".