For several weeks now, I have been toting around the personal affects of the email from the anonymous Angel. Truth be known I knew this sort of negative opinion about the Angels existed; I actually knew this from the very beginning, because for any praise that I have ever received for the Angel Action events in Laramie, I have been obliged to hear something similar to your complaint. The first of such negative commentary came from none other than my own father, or as I like to call him my own personal version of Fred Phelps. He told me shortly after the events in Wyoming that ‘it was a damn shame I was running around the Wyoming countryside with a bunch of fags dressed like Angels’. I was upset for some time until I realized that the only good thing about the ignorance of ones parents is that the child is always blessed with a keen ability to facilitate much needed forgiveness and understanding. Especially if that same child has been required to forgive him or herself for very similar heirlooms of fearful living, which was the case for me as it turns out.
The problem, however, arises when we are faced with the navigation of these same criticisms from abroad, much like the opposition I received from the Anonymous Angel in the above letter. My assessment was that this no longer was an exercise in how I would respond to this man’s email or my father’s comments or to the Reverend Fred Phelps for that matter. It was about how well I would ever grasp the notion of responsibility when it comes to the fearlessness residing deep within my heart. And the solidarity required when a human being deems it necessary to step up to the plate and facilitate a desired direction and take Angelic Action.
Fred Phelps is the perfect place to begin because of his grandiose carnival against the gay community. I think we all agree that his bewilderment with gays and lesbians concludes at best that he is at the very least curious about different sexual expressions within the human community. But more so, the Reverend is so very fearful to fulfill his own latent homosexual desire [whatever the particulars of that desire may be] that he must maintain a noisy fire and brimstone vigil against ALL desires he deems as homosexual or wrong. So just imagine with me for a moment. When Fred Phelps goes against our diversity in protest, unbeknown to himself, this protest is simulcast within the deepest parts of himself, all the while masking and protecting, for good reason, what he is NOT yet able to face. I love this about humans, for this mechanism is like a governor placed within us, allowing for certain speeds given certain circumstances, no more no less. We are like Uhaul trucks on some level and will only go so fast and this is decided for insurance reasons well before the truck we drive is rented. So what sort of policy dictates ones speed? We all carry the potential not only to produce the best you witness in the world, like the Angel Action events in Wyoming. It can also produce the worst, like Phelps and his shenanigans.
I think the bigger picture here requires that we witness the forward movement of life and how it loops back around again and again just like an old woman sitting in her chair crocheting a blanket. The result being a life full of experiences with many twists and turns that may not seem orchestrated to the governed mind and naked eye, but to the weaver are the very knotted mistakes that form the eventual fabric that offers cover. Hence lives full of evolution and moving on and on into routine, that toward the end may seem more like an old fashion quilting party.
Way back when my grandmother would make all of us grandkids an Afghan. I had one from when I was young, but when I got into college I called her and placed an order for one that housed the University of Florida Gator colors of orange and blue. When I received the afghan several months later it held every color imaginable with a note pinned saying 'I couldn’t for the life of me remember the Gator colors so I used multi-colored yarn, I bet it’s in there somewhere if you look for it’. I love that memory because life is often like that. Although we are promised our experiences will cover and warm us they may look very different than what we had originally ordered.
Becoming reminiscent always puts me in a more responsible space. I found myself struggling less and less with my know-it-all obligation to preach from some rickety soapbox. It seemed like anger from the pulpit was the last thing we all needed in relation to the above email. What was really needed, however, was a greater sense of warmth and advocacy to blanket this man's complaint. His email was like a pile of wet clothes, him just in from out in the rain.
I began wondering to what degree this Anonymous Angel was enjoying a healthy sense of advocacy in his circle of friends and family. I wondered if his real beef with the outcry over the death of Matthew Shepard had more to do with his own mother's lacking? Would she step up to the plate for him if he were the victim of a brutal hate crime? Would she join HRC and forge ahead to change laws on behalf of her dead son? Would his friends wing themselves and rally around to protect his memory? Or would he just go unnoticed like the 'countless others' sense Matthew's death? I began to feel tremendous kinship with this Anonymous Angel and I thought for him to rise from his victim status and write this email was a great first step toward the plate. For him to present his desire as to how we are to proceed is ultimately delightful if you really think about it. And that he is not only making the exploration of his complaint a gift, but equally his fears an exploration of our own.
The bottom line here is that we all reel within the issues surrounding the originating versions of our earliest civil rights for they are coupled in matrimony with the personal renditions of our [parents] homophobia. In fact our modern day phobias have rooted themselves so very deep within the menagerie of our social norms, that for the life of any of us, we cannot seem to travel a city sidewalk block without some sort of shame bubbling up. Any given path we seem to travel these days is much like the child's game 'step on a crack and break your mothe's back.'
So we ALL know what it's like to travel our own personal road of change, making the necessary yarn choices that will get us where we desire to go in terms of color and pattern. Should anyone be able to tell another what road to travel, or what color to love, or what desires to have? Squelching someone's desire is as destructive and useless as trying to get a child to simmer down the night before Christmas. And under the guise of freedom, how should our United States Government handle the laws cropping up all over the countryside that allow one group of folks the right to marry while excluding another group from that same right? These are very important questions to bat around these days, because if one [who thinks they are free] will vote against the civil rights of another, such as in the case of gay marriage or hate crimes legislation, those same non evolving folks might be tempted at some point in the future to vote away the more mundane freedoms that we take for granted. So are we going to step up to the plate and live freely with bravado desiring what we will and affording that right to everyone, equally, no matter what the cost? Or shall we walk around in fear with our wings tucked between our legs?
Angelic responsibility is seated within us now. There are no forefathers left alive to speak up and reiterate the truths that have propelled this freedom along thus far, there are only mothers and not the kind that tuck you in at night. We must each afford ourselves the self-governing love and respect that will in turn afford this to all whom we come in contact with. And that these simple achievable notions MUST rise above our fears and misunderstandings of one another for the evolution to make a knot strong enough to create further fabric. Perhaps within our comforts we become fearful, and then complacent, and then we begin to gnaw on one another for no apparent reason, sort of like this Anonymous Angel was gnawing on me for being one of Matthew Shepard's Angels.
We are no longer children. Some argue we are not even God's children. Nevertheless, we are much like grandmothers now. We are akin to a new breed of forefathers and together as a group we are tying knot after knot weaving the fabric into stories that will blanket and cover generations to come. Poor Fred Phelps. If he only knew how much his negativity was fueling the forward movement of gay and lesbian civil rights. If my father knew how much his hatred has become the energy source fueling most of my self respect and love. And if this Anonymous Angel could only understand his impact, perhaps experience the evolution the rest of us are enjoying [right this minute] at the expense of his negative letter and this forging dialogue. There is much power to be utilized out there. Take your pick. For that which you fear, hate, despise or criticize you bring about more fully into your life. And that which you desire OR love is no different.
SIDE BAR:
Our next blog topic will evolve from this response. My suggestion however is the debate over same sex marriage. Gays and lesbians as renovators not destroyers. We go in and change neighborhoods and bring life back into failing and crumbling systems of living. What sort of impact would we have on marriage in America today? Are we to save it or damn it? BLOG BLOG BLOG......send to
roland@rolandwise.comOriginally published in BottomLine Magazine, ISSUE 24:21, Copyright 2005 Roland Wise
