EVOLVED DEIFICATION ANYONE? byRolandWise

Nearly seven years ago I was road tripping across America; and in what turned out to be life-altering synchronicity, I arrived in our nations Capitol the day after Matthew Shepard died. The next morning at coffee I was invited by a friend to attend the vigil that night on the West Steps of the U.S. Capitol. Latter that evening as our subway car rolled beneath Washington and her lawns of freedom, the implications of this gruesome hate crime was beginning to sink in. I could spot the bipartisan mourners commuting to the vigil; for these folks [like me] shared the same unique brand of sadness. Looking around the car was like peering into the mirror grooming myself for grief. We all had allowed Matthew’s death to become our potential saving grace; and while our mounting self-forgiveness was more and more visible deep within our somber faces, each set of eyes was still a wasteland, littered with the personalized renditions of this tragic event. After several starts and stops the transit car felt confining like the passage way in the vestibule of a church. These narrow confines and seating arrangements would only carry our sadness and outrage so far; and then finally the birth of our platform appeared out of nowhere; and with the intercom directing us toward the doors opening, we all exited with an arriving sense of sorrow.

While escalating from the station toward a beautiful Washington sky, I could see droves of people alike making their way toward the Capitol Mall in a procession that was equally as quiet, as the available light was dimming. While the congregation of advocacy formed the lanky-awkward-beauty of vigilance was more and more evident. I somehow felt as blessed as I was saddened to be in this collective agreement, made long before time, with this young Gay man from Wyoming.

The first up to speak were the liberal politicians and the hip-trendy-religious leaders. They all offered words of comfort and promises galore, but the constituency before them was still outraged and far too upset by this hate crime to be fully appreciative. I believe the ritualistic commingling lectures of church and state was the last thing anyone wanted to hear. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure that hearts that evening on all sides were in the right place; it’s just that church and state and their unconstitutional matrimony were a big part of the problem, and therefore had no real powerful way of soothing the anguish we all felt.

When the sugary sermons ended, Matthew’s friends got up to speak. One by one they told us of his life, of his passions and dreams, and how they felt his time on earth had been cut short. I remember standing there in disbelief. The last person who got up to speak was Ellen DeGeneres. She began while sobbing and saying ‘this is what I was trying to stop’ and she could barely get through the rest of her message. We were getting it though. I remember thinking how much of what [we] her fans had received up until that point was more along the lines of a comedic relief, but on the West Steps of our nations Capitol that evening; it was her improvisational grieving that allowed us to weep collectively for the loss we felt. On this vigilant night, not only did Ellen’s courage and vulnerability bloom in new ways, it seemed her coming out experience and forging ahead with greater visibility was playing midwife to the pensive writer voice still trapped within me. I was fearfully poised in breech, dreading a birth canal that was cluttered with pain and disappointment. It was then that I knew I had to clear the slate for what lay ahead, even though I had no idea what that would look like or mean.

The next morning I got up early and went to a café, and soon after the journaling waned, I felt compelled to be a tourist and take the cerebral stroll down memorial lane in search of freedoms beginning and my own historical significance. I wanted to find a place to think about everything and figure out what I was doing with my life. I also wanted to explore why my coming out as a Gay man seemed as slow as Christmas. Once I found a ceremonial spot along the tidewater, I sat quietly and began making my own religion as I saw fit. When it comes to progressing, freedom and religion are one in the same, and the desire I carried within me to facilitate my own directions in life, baring the oppression of someone else’s versions of what they thought I should become, was stronger than ever. It was during this calming moment that I turned and noticed the giant roundhouse off in the distance. And although I knew subconsciously that it was the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, I had no idea it was anything more than just another one of those memorials I would soon pass on my tour.

Nevertheless, I was drawn toward it, so I pushed my way farther and farther along the Potomac Tidal Basin beneath the canopy of famous Washington cherry trees. Fall had definitely arrived in DC, and not only did I feel akin to the newness and cool beginnings of a fresh season, I also felt kinship to these cherry trees; for they [like me] were busy with the mental firings that would prepare for the winter that lay ahead. If I could only be like these trees, I thought. If I could bloom a voice like they bloom flowers, becoming published year after year as colorful volumes of beauty and chance. I felt their preparation for the cold was as eminent as my own, and by means of meditation and connection, as I strolled closer and closer toward my forefather’s house, I purposely allowed their low hanging leaves and branches to comb me.

Eventually I found myself sitting on a bench, smack dab in the middle of the Thomas Jefferson Memorial, beneath his twenty foot tall statue with the base inscription that read ‘I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.’ I sat there in his fatherly shadow wondering if my writing would ever be able to unload all the anger I held in regard to the wrongs done to me by earthly fathers and mothers? It seemed I had worked forever and a day on my inner self, I even went as far as receiving a Masters degree in counseling. And for what, to roam around America in fear of being killed for who I am? When I looked up at the roof of the memorial, I began reading the four chamber panel inscriptions. Jefferson’s writings, like the memorial itself, provided for all the freedom one could ever want. It was a well rounded historical perch; a resting place in fact, that not only commanded views of where I had been the entirety of my stroll down memorial lane; it also commanded a view of my innermost desire to stand up and take part in something bigger than the enslavement of my pain and hurt.

I began wandering that day with purpose, wondering if this sojourn to Washington DC was a rite of passage to my being born an American gay man. And while reading the 4 panel inscriptions for a second time, I thought, I am an American gay man and subsequently at liberty to say, and do, and be, whatever I choose. And although my passport only confirms the American Male part, the protocol of these heartfelt moments I am having here in the nation’s capitol within the cyclical walls of my forefather’s house, all suggest that on this day something along the lines of a birth announcement was in order. It was time to return home to my inner most self [scrapes and scares] and with new and improved versions of this birthright, stop living prodigally, and allow my voice to leap out of the womb of this knotted and fearful throat.

When it came right down to the notion of freedom, and the natural human evolutional movement forward, I realized that we all are born again, and again, and again, in this amazing process and that we are continually seeking out the newest versions of our old self. So for the past seven years, I have been reading and re-reading the four panel inscriptions [see below RESPONSE TO WANDERING ANGEL: A blog from Thomas Jefferson] all the while hoping for the ample light needed to carefully dissect the beginnings of my own articles of confederation. I have taken liberties with the Jefferson ‘BLOG’ tearing it apart word-by-word, infusing it within the structure of a new and evolved mindful way of thinking and writing. For example, I would typically find myself changing words like ‘God’ to ‘Inner Most Self’ or ‘Religion’ to ‘Freedom’ in the sprit of the true Deist Jefferson was known to be. In turn, his writings have been more an act of discovery for me than anything else; an unearthing of the writer-forefather-within that lay dormant in the caged facets of my own experience. It has also been the much needed re-writing and re-thinking of one forefather’s words, which within those words he encouraged us all to edit him as a means of stamping out tyranny.

The constitutionality of each person, along with their unique desire for freedom, is gently calling forth the power plants within us; it wants each of us to embark on something very new, much like Thomas Jefferson did in his day. He may have fathered an entire nation, just as Ellen may have mothered a stretch of the gay and lesbian movement; but on a higher level, our mandate at this point in human evolution is to parent our own spiritual proceedings. ‘We must hold these truths to be self-evident,’ making no allowance for politically or religiously motivated middlemen or woman to speak more clearly to our deepest parts, than we are willing to speak to ourselves. I am finding more and more that I am okay with the many things evolving around me. The reason being, I am becoming more and more comfortable with my own deifying process; and one cannot ask for a more healthy and sober, and yet sometimes lonely place to live than the united states of ones own freedom. Evolved Deification Anyone?

SIDE BAR:
I encourage BLOGGERS out there to write in with your own versions what you would like to discuss, SEND BLOGS TO roland@rolandwise.com

Originally Published in BottomLine Magazine, ISSUE 24:23, Copyright 2005 Roland Wise