By the Power Vested in Me by the State of New York . . .

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

“‘We always treat our homosexual brothers and sisters with respect, dignity and love. But we just as strongly affirm that marriage is the joining of one man and one woman,’ the state’s Catholic Conference said in a statement.”   (From the Yahoo News story entitled “New York Governor Signs Law Approving Gay Marriage, 06/25/2011)

Can respect, dignity, and love be conditional?  The Catholic Church seems to think so.  And lest my Catholic friends think I’m picking on them, so does the Baptist church, the Mormon church, the Nazarene church, the Church of Christ, et. al.

But freedom of religion protects the rights of churches to be bigoted, judgmental, and small-minded.  I defend their right to believe they are morally superior to me.  (Just because they believe it, doesn’t make it so.)  But, I feel it fair to warn them that their contradictions are showing.  When you speak out of both sides of your mouth, people will eventually see your duplicity.  If the churches aren’t careful, their reputations will start to equal that of politicians or those poor abused used car salesmen.

Churches used to say what they really believed (some still do).  They used to say that gays and lesbians were going to hell.  They used to say that gays and lesbians were not allowed to be church members.  They used to liberally throw around the word “abomination” in reference to their “homosexual brothers and sisters.”  But slowly the social sand shifted and that position became seen as judgmental and unloving, especially by the younger generation.  The churches began to realize they turned more people away than they attracted by being antigay hardliners.  So they did what any political organization would do: they changed their message.

Now, lest you misunderstand me, the message from the Catholic church at the top of the page is an immense improvement over the casting-into-a-lake-of-fire messages of yore.  But the problem with trying to balance in the middle is that the attempt to appeal to both ends of the spectrum is transparent.   As a general rule, this gets little attention.  Churches have been carefully crafting their stances for maximum impact for years.

I won’t get into the definition-of-marriage argument, the marriage-is-a-civil-institution argument, or the Solomon-had-300-wives-and-700-concubines argument.  Those have been done, and you can find them for yourselves.  The simple fact remains that if you claim to respect, dignify, and love another then you must not use your religious position to minimize that person’s equal standing in society.  As many times as the church has done that already, against Native American Indians, African-Americans, and anyone else they had an interest in keeping subordinate, you’d think we would recognize the pattern.

Oh, well.  Catholic church or no Catholic church, marriage equality exists in New York today.  Three cheers for the rule of law.

Novel Schedule and Instructions

~ Deb ~ 3 Comments

According to the recent poll, there are seven people who have an interest in reading my novel through this blog (poll results are accurate to within +/- 3%).  Perhaps this will be more like a cyber book club.  And that is absolutely fine with me.  Like many artistic people, I have difficulties with self-promotion.  That’s why there are agents and publicists.  But since I have neither, I am compelled to get creative if I want any audience at all.  The size of the audience is not important to me.  From those who responded, I am already assured of quality over quantity.

I have divided the novel into 15 installments.  Two installments will be delivered each week, one by each Tuesday Morning and one by each Friday morning.  The first installment will appear next Tuesday, June 28.  With that schedule, the final installment should be delivered around the middle of August.  For statistical purposes, the novel is 76,016 words in length.  The shortest installment is 3,406 words, and the longest is 7,332 words.  That information is likely not the least bit important to you, but it fulfills some strange need in me, so I included it.

Here are some suggestions for you to follow or not as you see fit:

1)  Although I will announce new postings through Facebook (at least for the first few installments), it might be best if you subscribe to the blog or add it to your reader service if you have one.

2)  I would love to hear feedback.  Please make comments, and don’t for a second feel they all have to be positive.  Let me know what works for you, what doesn’t, what is profound, and what is cornball.  Point out grammatical or mechanical errors, even.  Let me know where the prose leaves you confused (this is especially important feedback).

3)  If you think anyone else you know might enjoy reading this particular novel for free, please direct them to my blog.  They will be able to access all previous posts and start from the beginning with handy links that will be added to my “The Novel” page.

4)  If along the way you have any suggestions for a different title, I would love to hear them.  I have struggled immensely with the title of this book and ultimately have settled on simply Rose and Justice.  I have also considered Rose and Justice: A Novel in Four Acts.  I have considered certain phrases from Shakespeare, but so many of the good ones have already been used as book titles.   Any help in this department would be appreciated.

5)  Most importantly, never forget how much I appreciate your participation in this experiment.  Writing without an audience is like singing in the shower: Enjoyable and freeing, but often sounding better in the tight-room acoustics than it might in the open air.

Okay, so here we go.  First installment will arrive June 28.  Thanks for playing.

Gaia’s Got Her Blinker On

~ Deb ~ 1 Comment

One of the reasons I like measuring my days by the milestones of the ancients (also known as the milestones provided by the universe) is that they are both simple and complex.  The solstice itself is a rather simple event.  The word is often used to refer to the entire day on which it happens, but the actual solstice takes place in an instant.  This year, that instant will take place at 12:16 p.m. (CST), on June 21.

At one specific blip sometime during that minute, the sun will beam directly on the Tropic of Cancer and strike the northern hemisphere of the earth with its most direct rays.  In that nanosecond, summer will begin.  On the top half of the globe, the sun will shine longer than it will any other day of the year.

Piece of cake.  Long day.  Summer begins.  Tropic of Cancer.  We learned all of that in eighth grade biology.  But what we didn’t learn in eighth grade is usually so much more profound than what we did.  As I’ve watched the solstice pass each year (don’t blink! you’ll miss it!), I’ve incorporated new shades of the meaning it has to offer.  The mystical earth and the magical heavens can be our teachers if we let them.

The ancients devised ways to capture this blip of time that passes only once every 365 days.  They built monuments to it.  They conducted ceremonies for it.  Most likely, they built bonfires and danced naked in acknowledgement of this great mystery they might not have fully understood but fully accepted.  They might not have been able to launch a space shuttle, but they knew that from this moment each day would shorten just  a smidgeon.

I looked up the word “solstice” in the dictionary tonight not expecting to find anything new.  Whenever I do that, I always find something new.  The second definition read, “a furthest or culminating point; a turning point.”

The solstice isn’t really about the instant of the solstice at all.  It’s about the turn.  It’s about a shift in direction.  It’s about endings and beginnings.  It’s about celebrating transformation.

It’s that simple.  And it only took me a decade or so to see it.

Summer Rain

~ Deb ~ 3 Comments

It’s 9:30 in the morning as I write this on a late June Saturday, but the sky is dark with rumbling clouds.  It is necessary to have a lamp on.

I love storms.  Some don’t, I understand, but I do.  They create a sense of immediacy that forces us into the present moment.  Plans are changed, to-do lists get altered, grass goes unmown as we shift into the “now-ness” inherent in the storm.  Instead of doing yoga, I check the local radar.

After the heat of the recent ungodly month, the cloud cover and the drenching that cool the earth are especially welcome.  Despite the fact that it seems unseasonable and yet another undeniable manfestation of changing weather patterns that are happening whether we admit them or not, I embrace it and say, “Let it pour.”

Only recently have I felt a return to myself.  The daily denials and seemingly simple compromises parched my soul like the unrelenting oven of a Tennessee summer heat wave.  The deeper the cracks in the scorched earth of my spirit, the higher I turned up the heat.  For you see, I controlled this sun.  I was, and am, the weather god of my own personal environment.  Perhaps I was conducting an experiment to find my own boiling point.  Perhaps I simply believed that I should be able to endure, like a nomad in the desert with nothing but a camel and the map of the stars.  Or perhaps I had heat stroke.  Who can say.

For some reason as yet not completely known to me, I reached for shade.  The little weather god within said ’nuff and brought the rain without my conscious command.   And sometimes this internal climate change feels stormy and scary and dark and dangerous, but I also can feel things starting to grow again.

Like a summer rain, the return to self soothes and sustains.  Let it pour.