Book of Jamez

55 y/o malcontent, something of a writer

Category: Religion

  • Programs, Pamphlets and Power

    At a retreat recently a speaker shared something from one of AA’s pamphlets that I either hadn’t heard, forgot about or didn’t sink in when I read it. I loved it when he was saying it and it’s been floating around in my head for a few weeks now. What do you think?

    P-41 A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

    Tonight, if I could find one fault with A.A., it would be that we have not yet begun to tap the potential hidden in the last seven words of the Twelfth Step: “practice these principles in all our affairs.”

    It occurred to me not long ago that whenever I am sitting in an A.A. meeting, I am never aware that I am sitting next to another white man, another Catholic, another American, or a Frenchman, Mexican, Jew, Moslem, or Hindu, black man or brown. I am aware only that I am sitting next to another alcoholic. And it seemed deeply significant to me that this feeling of common humanity had been purchased by me at the cost of considerable pain and suffering.

    Should this hard-won understanding of, and feeling for, others be confined to the meeting halls and members of A.A.? Or does it remain for me to take what I have learned and what I have experienced, not only in A.A., but in every other area and endeavor of my life, to lift up my head, and to assume my rightful place in the family of man? Can I there, in the household of God, know that I am not sitting next to another white man, another Catholic, another American, nor yet a Frenchman, Mexican, Jew, Moslem, Hindu, black man or brown, not even another alcoholic, and can I finally — at long last, please God — come home from all the wars and say in the very depths of my soul, “I am sitting next to another human being”?

    -from the pamphlet A Member’s Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous

    There are days when I think about all AA has done for so many very different people and how amazing the transformations of their lives is. This program of action, to change and help others is really the key to what is wrong every where. Imagine a world where the everyone cared not just for themselves and their pocketbooks but for their common man – instead of reaching out their hand for another dollar for their war-chest they’d offer it to the new man and help pull him up and show him a better way.

    The program of AA has been borrowed and adapted to many different fellowships – Alanon, NA, CA, SA, OA, GA… the list goes on and on. I know handfuls of people who – normal in every  aspect that I can see – who use our steps and traditions to guide their lives, they too say it’s life changing.

    So why aren’t we standing on the rooftops, screaming from the top of our lungs, opening churches and the like?

    In the book the Bridge Across Forever, Richard Bach and his wife get stuck traveling into different realities… in one of those realities they find a mystical book, seemingly dropped from the heavens with all the answers to lifes mysteries. Richard and Leslie want to take that book with them to share with everyone that here is finally the answer, here is something we can all agree upon. But the other Richard from that alternate-reality shows them what would happen if they did. Suddenly we’d have the War of the Book as people who interpreted it one way disagreed with anthers interpretation of it and people would die to see their way was followed.  Like the crusades of our reality the truth would be forced upon people or they’d be killed for not believing.

    That’s what comes to mind when I think about an AA church or of forcing this upon others, it’s not how were supposed to do it. Its about attraction, not promotion… I’ve had many religious folk ask me about prayer, meditation, helping others and resentments – I’m glad I can help, I’m glad someone else helped me to do those very things…. that’s the key, get out of self and help others.

     

  • Pondering in the Dark

    The kiss was electric, sounds cliche I know, but it was that kiss that changed it all. It was our first date and I couldn’t tell if he liked me at all, I decided to take a chance and ask for a kiss. He turned, grabbed a hold of me and gave me one of the best kisses I’d ever had – I felt good from my head to my toes and I wanted more, all of his kisses were like that.  As we were moving forward with the wedding plans, because I said yes, a thought occurred that disturbed me:

    I have to care about being alive and now I have to try to stay alive longer.

    That was the lingering thought during the rest of the engagement – the kiss was electric, the sex ok… but having someone to live for… not something I had thought about, it was an inconvenience. That isn’t to say that I don’t have other people in my life, but none of them need me to stick around. When you commit to someone else “for life”, til death do us part and all that jazz… then you should actually try to be there with them as long as you can.

    “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn’t it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They didn’t ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn’t your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like ‘maybe we should be just friends’ or ‘how very perceptive’ turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It’s a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”  The character “Rose Walker” in The Sandman #65

    So, kind of happy that that all didn’t work out. I figure 15 more years is all I really want (I don’t think want is the right word).

    I was re-reading the Harry Potter series over the holiday break and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was obsessed with living forever and I just can’t relate… after a while you’ve done everything you really wanted to do, what the hell would you stick around for? It’s different if you have kids or that other person I suppose, then you’re rather obligated to be there as long as you can. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had none of that, he had worshipers and fear but why would that be worth sticking around for, I think it would get boring.

    I’m not seeking death, not yet anyway (give me 15 years), and this isn’t a “cry for help” it’s just casual observations from my mind. The only thing that seems really suicidal in my own behavior lately has been a weird craving to buy a pack of cigarettes – WTF is that about? no clue

    “Life is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.”
    ― Neil Gaiman

    Then if you bring religions into it and we talk about afterlife or reincarnation – I just can’t grasp why that would be something you’d want. Here I am, having lived a life to it’s fullest (or as full as I cared to muster), then I’m dead and wait… what? now I have to sit around on a cloud for eternity (oh wait I’m gay… burn in hell for eternity). What’s appealing about that. They say things like “spend eternity with the ones you love”….. Seriously, I love my family and friends, but I can only take so much of them before I need to get away… if you want to give me something to look forward to in an afterlife, give it some rocking special effects or great music or excitement… you know, the stuff I was supposed to be searching for and enjoying in life. And reincarnation… why would I want to do it again? Hell no.

    “You get what anybody gets – you get a lifetime.”
    ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 1: Preludes and Nocturnes

    In this life I’ve done all those things I’ve wanted to do, someone asked me once “Like what?” I’ve sung at the Kennedy Center, had a story or two published, loved someone so much it hurts, escaped the cold winters of WI, made amends for the mistakes in my past and learned to be myself.

    I think that’s enough.

  • Newcomer

    Here we go again, I think as we stand and grab hands. We sure do pray a lot here, but at least everyone doesn’t hug me here like they did at the NA meeting I attended.

    “Who keeps us sober?” comes a voice from across the hall and then the chanting begins:

    “Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever. Amen”

    I try to let go of the hands but this group does another ritual – “Keep coming back, it works if you work and you’re worth it” they say while pumping our hands in unison together. The man next to me has sweaty hands and I try to wipe off my hands without him noticing, I don’t know why it matters, he must know he has sweaty hands. Try as I might every time I hear that prayer and any of the chantingI picture a Borg Cube talking about assimilation. (more…)

  • Weird Funeral Experiences

    I read a lot of different blogs and read random things that I find on the internet – WordPress helps by giving me suggestions for blogs that have similar themes ore that are comparable to ones I’ve favorited.

    dead dead, mostly dead ...probably
    dead dead, mostly dead …probably

    I read this blog piece the other day and commented on it:

    The Wednesday Question: What was the Weirdest Experience you  had at at Funeral

    (more…)

  • Run Out of Hate

    My first thoughts when I heard about what happened in Boston yesterday was “this is religious based”. I wasn’t thinking Muslim at all I was thinking US “Christian” that feeling in the back of my head wont go away. It’s a sad state to think organizations that should be teaching love and peace are the first to pop into my mind when I see acts of terror and hate – or maybe not so surprising. I saw on the net all kinds of people jumping to conclusions and all kinds of other people telling people not to jump to conclusions. So I’m not going to start pointing fingers at a million hate spewing, discriminatory assholes in US churches, but I really want to.

    My next thought jumped to the OK City Bombing and Timothy McVeigh and the rampant amount of gun nuts that need machine guns to hunt deer and wild pheasant. Some of those people call upon Jesus’s name and have bumper stickers that say “Guns, God and Guts” or some crap – like their god is perfectly all right with the continued killing of innocent children, mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers and friends.

    But the phrase that keeps coming back into my head is from AA:

    “If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the sudden rage were not for us. Anger is the dubious luxury of normal men, but for us alcoholics it is poison.” – As Bill See’s It, Page 5

    That applies to me as a sick individual that shouldn’t hate anymore and when I do I have measures/tools to take care of it. But it should apply to our country now too. We are a country that is filled with hate, fear and intolerance of others. We are a country that reacts violently, forcefully and dangerously.

    I think we’ve had our fair share of hate and violence and oppression and need to give it up. Maybe it’s time we found a different way, a better way. Perhaps so many people in other countries that hate us would look more kindly if we were in fact kinder and less concerned with oil and the size of our tanks. Maybe we could again be the land of the free and the home of the brave by helping other people to become better people and finding ways to make the planet safer for even the lowliest members we have.

    Something has to change and someone needs to lead the way. All this hate and fear are dangerous to us as individuals and even more so as a country … a nation… a world.

    We have to be free of anger – or it kills us.

  • Why Don't We Just Leave

    I’ve been thinking it a long while before the most current riots by Islamist that have led to destruction and death – Why don’t we just leave.

    Instead of having our young men and women scattered all over the world in military bases and embassies – I’d rather we had them here and we rebuilt our failing infrastructure and became better educators and students. I’d rather we spent the money we spend on wars and interfering in other countries right here.

    “We have to be responsible” you say or they say “the US is the world police” but I don’t know why either has to be true.

    I say we would be more responsible tot he human race if we focused on science, math, medicine, biology – hell learning and studying new ideas and concepts to better the world. Wouldn’t that be a better way to commit our citizens. If we have an army can’t it be an army for the betterment of man?

    Think of the billions of dollars we spend on wars and covert wars – think of the good we could accomplish if we focused on what we could bring to the world instead of meddling over there in others business. I’d rather our young adults were here building something instead of over there shooting, bombing and enforcing our way of life on others – who apparently don’t want it – and losing their limbs and lives for the sake of corporations after oil profits and opium.

    I mean I think it’s really stupid to protest over the US when an individual made a movie. Lets just get out and leave them to their ways. I say the same for all countries. I don’t give a rat’s ass about Israel or Beirut or anywhere else that decades of peace negotiations have come up with nothing – this is not our problem and clearly our involvement isn’t helping anyone, just pissing off others.

    So bring them all home, set them on a better world, but let that better world start here in our back yard with new innovation, new technology, advancements in medicine, philosophy and the arts.

    I may not be informed enough to make such a call, but I still think it’s a good move.

  • Bill Nye: Creationism is not Appropriate for Children – hear, hear

  • My Tattoos

    More than a few men recently have commented on my tattoos (and piercings) and said that having tattoos means your into kinky sex. No really, this is what they keep telling me. This really kind of throws me, I’ve had tattoos much longer than I’ve been having sex. Also I’ve had sex with people who have tattoos and really – a few of those encounters were pretty boring.

    In the gay community over the years they established lots of little tells to let other closeted gays know they were there or what they were into. Rainbow stickers are everywhere now, but 10 – 20 years ago and longer people had to be much more discrete about these type of things so they developed these markers for others. There is even a hanky code for what you might or might not be into – I should warn you clicking on that link might be TMI for you.

    For me it’s about art, about expressing myself and the things I like. Each and every tattoo I have is based on something I like or something that means a lot to me. Superman, lightning bolts, Greek gods, AA, bear paw prints, old nicknames…

    My first tattoo was done by my friend Ted or maybe his brother Tim (I was 14, stoned or drunk and my memory isn’t what it used to be) using a needle, some thread and india ink. That symbol was painfully put on one needle stick at a time and represented the 12 Greek gods. It was crude in comparison to what I have on my body now, but at that age it was pretty cool thing to have.

    Since then I’ve gotten more complicated with what I want on my body – my first tattoo as an adult covered up that tattoo that I got when I was young, but I wasn’t very clear about what I wanted it to be and gave the artist too much leeway so it ended up being a question mark that isn’t really very pretty – it looks better now that I’ve surrounded it by a dragon (which was hand drawn on my arm by this guy at Jinx Proof, so cool. The next was the Superman symbol, then the lightning bolt, armband, bear claw print, tramp stamp (Zeus), AA symbol on my leg, and finally the ancient Greek Gods tat on my back.

    None of those, well except maybe the tramp stamp and the arm band, says anything about sex. Well not that I know of. Its like when I wear a cross necklace – I don’t wear a cross necklace because I believe in crucifying believers – I just happen to like how cross necklaces look sometimes.

    Recently with the Sikh shooter the press has been throwing this statement out there: 

    An agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told ABC News that the shooter had tattoos.

    Tattoos don’t make a shooter anymore than sandals make a monk. That’s the motivation behind this post (even though I did have several men express that my tattoos meant I was into kinky sex – which I’m not…. well, what did you have in mind exactly? )

    I do sometimes worry about my tattoos and them being misinterpreted by others. Lightning bolts, dragons and Superman can all be associated with the KKK and I keep my head shaved. But really, I’m just an ordinary gay guy that likes tattoos – I have no hidden agendas (well none that I’m ready to share with the world, my manifesto will be on the New York Times Best Seller list – I’m certain) or particular hates of any kind of people. I dislike humans in general, but I don’t target specific groups to hate, really it takes too much effort.

    I just really don’t like when we associate bad/stupid/moronic/crazy people with what they wear or how they look. After the Aurora shootings movie theaters banned folks from wearing masks when going to the theater – the guy who shot those people didn’t buy a ticket, he came in through the back door. After Columbine schools across the country banned black trench coats. After the Amish school shooting in PA in 2006, our President expressed his concern of school violence (this last one I’m not sure which was the more bad/stupid/moronic/crazy  – the former President or the shooter).

    You know the old saying: don’t judge a book by its cover.

  • Equally Separate

    I was getting my haircut today at my regular barber – all the barbers are black (or African-American if you have to) and the conversation moved to President Obama’s stance on gay marriage. Another one of the customers (also black) said it shouldn’t matter what people do in their bedrooms, if they love one another that should be all that matters. One of the barbers said that there was a black preacher from SC on TV and he said it should be up to the states to decide. There was a lot of head nodding at that…

    But it can’t be up to the states to decide – that’s simply ridiculous. Loving gay couples will be discriminated against in different states, the Federal government wouldn’t bestow partner benefits to survivors, taxes couldn’t be filed together… these are some, non-religious based, rights that gay couples don’t have. Letting each state decide would be a disaster – its one thing to say in this state you can drive 85 MPH and quite another to say in this state if your partner dies you’ll be left penniless and without a say in what happens to his (or her) legacy.

    Our President has stood up and declared he believes gay people should be allowed to get married. That’s pretty amazing for a guy to say in an election year. I’m very proud of him for saying so.

    A lot of folks get all up in arms about the word “marriage” and state that marriage has always been about one man and one woman. I say it used to always be that people of different races couldn’t marry and sometimes still frowned upon when couples of two separate religions get married.

    This isn’t about religion, this is about equal rights.

    Our country supposedly has this thing called “separation of church and state” we aren’t a country that’s run by the church, but it seems like our politicians spend a lot of time worrying about what the church may think and what’s right “according to God”.

    Can you imagine our country if we let churches of all religions dictate what our laws should be?

    • No work on Sunday? Some religions no work on Saturday
    • A Tithe: 10% of your income goes to the church
    • Women are less than, like the Catholic Church where they cannot become priests
    • No naming your teddy-bear Mohammed or drawing your god as a cartoon
    • We’d all have to wear silly hats or headpieces
    • Child molesters would no longer go to prison, just be set up in a new town with access to fresh meat
    • Mormons would allow us to have multiple spouses, as long as they weren’t of the same gender as we
    • Some religions ban dancing
    • Some ban drinking
    • Some religions would teach us that Superman is teaching the use of witchcraft

    This list could go on for quite a few pages I’m sure, but the point I want to make here is your religion – my religion anyone’s religion should have no say on laws and basic civil rights of others in our country.

    I want you to consider what it would be like for you if someone wanted to limit your rights based on their religion or beliefs. I want you to consider what Jesus said about gay marriage:

     

    ” _____________________________________” Jesus Christ

    Keep your religion out of my laws and hope we keep our laws out of your religion.

  • Olympian Ink

    I knew I had wanted a tattoo honoring the ancient Greek gods for a long long time. I have been a fan, a student of the gods since … well as far back as I can remember. In high school I even worshiped them as a real religion for a while. There was even an elaborate story written with my friend Ted where he and I were children of the Gods trapped here on Earth due to the vicious jealousy of Hera (note: this is long before Hercules: The Legendary Journeys or Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson – the Lightning thief)

    my lightning bolt tattoo

    First I went with a lightning bolt, I got a blue and red one as I have blue and red Superman crest on my other arm, but that didn’t seem enough.

    So next I got the word Zeus tattooed on my lower back – a tramp stamp if you will (yeah, I can be a tramp).

    But even that didn’t seem to do it, so I thought long and hard about what it was that I wanted.

    Back in high school I had somehow ended up in woodworking class – I think this was my mothers idea, or maybe we had to take a class like that – kind of like gym or math – something stupid I’ll never do again unless I have to. Everyone else was making gun racks (it is WI after all) or chests and I started to make a chest but it was pretty awful – the teacher told me I should make something that mattered to me so I opted for a symbol for the gods. I called it a star chart – had nothing to do with stars, but had a symbol to represent each of the Major 12 Greek gods. At first I tried carving the symbols in, but I have no talent there, so the teacher taught me how to use a wood burner and I burned the symbols into the wood. I had a lightning bolt for Zeus, a peacock for Hera, a trident for Poseidon, a skull and cross bones for Hades, a sun for Apollo, a moon for Artemis, a sword for Ares, a heart for Aphrodite, a… um, I can’t remember what I had for Hephaestus, a caduceus for Hermes and grapes for Dionysus. In the center of the star chart was this drawing I used to put after I signed anything, kind of a mixture between the Van Halen V looking symbol and Johnny Quick’s symbol (Johnny Quick ironically got his powers by reciting a mathematical equation… oy). The star chart was lost during a move during my drinking days, probably didn’t survive – it was just stained and varnish varnished decorated wood – but powerful wood – lol, powerful wood.

    So I thought maybe I’d like a tattoo with those symbols so I started to design what I wanted over a year ago. I’m not much of an artist so it was pretty basic. My idea was given to my tattoo guy Matthew at Jinx Proof Tattoos in Georgetown, who came up with this basic drawing:

    Matthew’s drawing based on my rough idea

    He had also come up with a bunch of the symbols representing the gods, which eerily reminded me of the Star Chart, but I opted for the more artistic version.

    I had six sessions with Matthew over the last few months, with a minimum 2 weeks between each visit to ensure proper healing. Last night we finished and I’m really glad. It was expensive, it was time consuming, it was totally worth it!

    Olympian Ink Tattoo