IQD: More Insights

I'm making some real progress with In Quiet Desperation.  I've got some other thoughts here, here, here, and here, if you're interested.  It's got some pretty amazing nuggets of wisdom in it that, in spite of my flippant and bipolar attitude towards same-gender attraction and homosexuality, seem to make sense in my brain and help me gain some perspective, at least in the moments directly after my reading.  I'd also like to add a caveat that I intend no offense to my gay readership.  We are all given over to making our own choices and the circumstances which lead others to make different choices than me are their business and I have no place in offering judgment.  These are my musings and my musings only; if they help others, great.

Chapter 7 of Ty Mansfield's section deals pretty exclusively with Romans 1, a part of scripture I admit I knew nothing about before reading IQD.  I read it before reading Ty's commentary and it kind of made me feel a little bit sheepish.  Verse 27 reads:

And likewise also the men... burned in their lust one toward another, men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet.

I had a few thoughts about this verse.  One, I can't help but ponder if those of us, gay and straight, who behave recklessly receive "in [ourselves] that recompense of [our] error which [is] meet," in the way of unwanted pregnancy, STIs, and emotional heartbreak.

Second, I hate the phrase, "that which is unseemly."  Unseemly means inappropriate or improper, but to me and to many of those like me, our desires don't seem improper or inappropriate.  I know that lots of bad things don't seem "unseemly" to lots of people, like Jackie Gleason's wifebeating or Hannibal Lecter's fashionable fleshsuits, but even so, I hate hate hate being denigrated for a desire that seems so natural.  Alright, moving on.

Verses 11 and 12 helped win me back a little bit:

For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift, to the end ye may be established; that is, that I may be comforted together with you by the mutual faith both of you and me.  

Without being too irreverent, I long to see you too, Paul.  I'd like to know how I can be a little more like you, so that we can be comforted together by our faith.

I'm impressed by Paul's love for the faithful Romans; he wants to bear their burdens and share in the joy of the Gospel with those who share his faith.  That's the goal of the stakes of Zion; we are drawn together by our mutual faith and try to bear one another up, at least in theory.  It's also the goal of missionary work.  It's called serving a mission for a reason, because missionaries are intended to serve the people of the world, not to coldly and emotionlessly convert them.

If you read Romans 1 in its entirety (and you should), you'll find, as Ty did, that homosexuality is mentioned and alluded to in but a few verses amid a much larger framework of chastisement.  It is one flower in a garden of spiritual insights, and yet, Romans 1 has been the scriptural guidepost for homosexuality and little else.

As Ty eloquently points out, homosexuality is but a manifestation of the sin of pride, of placing your own desires ahead of the Lord's, and as such he hopes that "Romans 1 will cease to be a theological stick used to beat those who experience same-gender attraction and will instead become a way by which each child of God, regardless of what trials or attractions he or she experiences, may gain a deeper and broader perspective that will enhance their worship of our Father" (163).  He continues: "If the devotion we should be giving to God and others is misplaced, then we are committing idolatry, and this idolatry is the principle underlying Paul's discussion on the worship of God" (164).

Tonight, I had a good conversation (two of them, actually), with a few friends that illustrate this point well, I think.  In the first place, my friend said that one problem he has had with going to church is the constant emphasis placed on hard, fast rules and on the restraint of agency that those rules cause.  Anyone who has experienced a midnight curfew or a facial-hair infraction at a church school knows what I'm talking about.  He spoke of the admonishment parents receive to teach correct principles, then allow others to act on them, giving poor decisions a moment of reproof followed by an increase of love afterward.  Wouldn't it be nice if some of the church organizations followed that advice?  Perhaps those struggling members would feel that increase of love, rather than the constraint and reproof often plaguing members of the church.

The second conversation followed Paul's advice and Ty's explication a bit more closely.  My friends and I were talking about how backwards it is that the deeper we get into our doctrine, the more we see the mistakes we and others are making, rather than seeing the good they're doing.  In that respect, by learning more about the Gospel and without viewing it through the charitable crucible of Christlike love, we doom ourselves to censure and vilify others, a trait that Jesus Himself found deplorable.

Romans 1 can be used to crucify the queers of the world, or it can be used to purify our own thoughts and make our own actions more in line with the will of the Lord.  We can view it as a spiritual whip with which we lash sinners, but in doing so, we commit the sin that it warns against by ignoring our own spiritual weaknesses in favor of satisfying our "righteous" indignation at the sins of others.

More Thoughts on IQD

Ty Mansfield relates the story of a friend in his section of In Quiet Desperation.  His friend's emotions frightened me for how accurately they mirrored my own.  Speaking of the first experience he had with another man, Ty's friend wrote:

I finally understood how it felt to want to write and sing those cheesy love songs, and even what it was like to naturally want to kiss someone.  Whenever I dated a girl... the drive to keep the relationship going was never there.  Homosexuality is such a misnomer.  It is about so much more than sexual attraction.

...

This is definitely the hardest test of faith I have ever experienced!  After finally feeling for the first time what romantic love was really like, knowing what it was like to kiss someone and have it race through your mind for the rest of the day [or week, or month. Ugh.],  to meet someone that you connect with emotionally, socially, physically, spiritually, who seems to complete you in every way, to miss him so much when he isn't around, to have him fill a void that you didn't even know was there, to actually feel truly loved and to truly love in return, to know what it's like to want to spend your entire life with someone, and for everything logically and emotionally telling you that this is good and right and natural and that you should embrace it, and then to willingly give it up because something deeper--something more eternal-- tells you it's not right and that it's not God's will, that for me is the essence of sacrifice--that is the only thing that I know of that I could give up to truly show God how much I love Him and how much I want to serve Him and be with Him someday.

(112-113, emphasis and brackets added)

Damn you, In Quiet Desperation...  That entire, stupid paragraph hit so close to home when I read it last night.  I have such a hard time understanding why something that feels so natural is so wrong. If it were just about the porn and the masturbation, even though it'd be difficult, it would seem doable. But to that sex drive is added the emotional fulfillment that, even in my extremely limited and one-sided experience, still feels so natural and so essential to my happiness.  Even now, after weeks of separation, the memories of the kisses and embraces I've received fill me with twitterpations.  I practice playing and singing love songs, preparing for the day I meet my someone (and in my head, that someone is not a woman).  

It's difficult, and I don't have a super-strong testimony that it will be worth it, but somehow I know that I must leave those desires on the altar of sacrifice.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland is quoted in the chapter as well, saying, "We must be willing to place all that we have--not just our possessions (they may be the easiest things of all to give up), but also our ambition and pride and stubbornness and vanity--we must place it all on the altar of God, kneel there in silent submission, and willingly walk away" (117).  Even now, that sentiment brings me to tears of sadness.  I don't want to give up such a big part of me.  But, at least for now, I know I do need to obey that admonishment.

For the record, I am a happy person.  Blogging and journaling has a tendency to make me only write about things that are heavy and sad, but I'm nonetheless a happy guy.  Today was sunny and beautiful, I have great friends, and I am grateful for a million things in my life.  Me writing about the despair I sometimes feel has no effect on how thankful I am for the life I lead.

 

The Nature of a Trial: Some Thoughts from IQD

I'm still trudging my way through In Quiet Desperation.  I'm in the middle of Ty Mansfield's section and it's proving to be even more insightful than the first section was.  I think that Part I brought the emotional rain; I sobbed through pretty much the entire thing.  Part II is still very emotional, but it's also got a lot of pretty interesting insight.  In the chapter entitled, "That I May Prove Them," Ty brings up a few interesting points.

He quotes Professor Larry Dahl in saying, "We can lose our focus and our progress if we constantly examine every bump in the road to determine whose fault it is" (97).  Dahl is explaining that sometimes, struggles come from the Lord and sometimes they come from the natural consequences of living in a world where agency exists.  Either way, the Lord has the power to remove trials, even if they're caused by our choices or the choices of others.  And yet, he allows those trials to happen, for whatever reason, and it can be detrimental for us to always be questioning the reasoning and motives behind our struggles.

Another interesting thought Ty shares is that no struggle is more or less preferable to another.  Those who deal with alcoholism or drug addiction and those who suffer from poor body image and those who have to face powerful heterosexual urges each have a difficult road ahead.  "It has been difficult for me--as one who experiences same-gender attraction, a challenge that often seems impossible to bear and remain faithful--to recognize that my cross is not more unbearable than those that others might be called to carry" (107).

I once heard a general authority say that same-gender attraction is the most difficult trial man could face, but now I'm not sure I believe it's true.  I know plenty of people who have faced difficult trials: losing a child, suffering from sexual abuse, maintaining faith even through the destruction of a family, etc.  The people I am thinking of right now are facing their trials the best that they can and I can't say that I'd ever switch places with them.  The Lord knew that those people could handle their crosses and so gave those trials to them, instead of me.  Even those who are grounded and rooted in the Gospel have spiritual trials I'll never understand.

My mother, for example, has never had a problem with faith.  She freely admits that belief is something she was given by the Spirit.  She has never been tempted to disobey the law of chastity, the word of wisdom, or to break the Sabbath.  It's just not something she struggles with.  Instead, she was given four disobedient children and asked to figure out what she could do to help them come back.  I can't imagine a harder trial for a dutiful and righteous woman such as my mother than to have to usher sometimes-unwilling children back into the fold.

Ty continues:  "When we view challenges from an eternal perspective, however, we realize there is more equality in the trials than we would sometimes like to admit" (108).  Each of us is tested, and no matter the nature of the challenge, the trick is to find that eternal perspective and seek to turn over our sins to the Lord.  Whether those sins be bitterness, inappropriate sexual conduct, gluttony, or a lack of faith, we are asked to turn them over and are then guaranteed eternal life.

Last Night's Reading

After finishing the blog post last night, I sat down to read In Quiet Desperation.  I'm muddling my way through, but every time I start reading, I fall asleep!  It's a really slow process and it doesn't seem to matter what time of day it is, haha.  Ah well, there are worse things to complain about.

In any case, I struggled my way through the chapter entitled "A God of Miracles" and came across a pretty great scripture reference, found in Mosiah 24:15.  In my scriptures, I highlighted the part that reads "... the Lord did strengthen them that they could bear up their burdens with ease..."  Through His strengthening, the people of Alma "did submit cheerfully and with patience to all the will of the Lord."  Already I know that I need more patience and I need to submit more cheerfully to the Lord's will for me, but it was the portion of the verse on strengthening that hit me the hardest and spoke most clearly of truth for me.

I've said before that it oftentimes feels like the hardest day of my life, and yet I always make it through.  The Lord never leaves me completely alone.  That knowledge makes the next "hardest day of my life" seem a little easier, because I know that I'll make it through with the Lord's help that day as well.  Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ have a pretty good track record for keeping their children safe and taken care of.  Looking back, I can't find a single example of a time when something didn't work out okay in the end.  Somehow, it always does.

The second part of the verse is where I need the most help.  I know the will of the Lord in my life and right now, that will is to be saddled with same-gender attraction.  His will is for me to have to manage my same-gender relationships carefully and to keep friendships within the bounds of propriety.  He wants me to learn to bridle my passions.  It's also His will for me to learn to serve in his kingdom and help His children anywhere I can.  I'm aware of these intentions he has for me.  What I have the most trouble with is forgetting my own wants and submitting myself to His.

Each day, I know I should break ties with friends who drag me down, but those friendships are so fun for me and they fulfill some of those wants I have, and so I just can't bring myself to cutting them off.  I know that there are certain men and women I shouldn't be around because they make it harder for me to maintain an eternal perspective, but those men and women say things I want to hear, so I keep going back for more.  The trick isn't learning the will of the Father, it's submitting yourself to it.

I think the process that's hardest for me is just that.  I don't need to learn His will for me, I need to cheerfully and patiently wait on the Lord and rely on that knowledge that I have that He will strengthen me and that someday, all of those wants for affection and love will be met with someone whom the Lord sees fit.

"In Quiet Desperation"

I was killing time at Deseret Book the other day.  I had been flipping through some of the books on love languages when another book nearby caught my eye, called In Quiet Desperation.  Ironically, it grabbed my attention because there was an attractive man on the cover.  I picked it up and read some of the cover material and the blurb on the back.  To my horror and embarrassment, it was about the struggle of same-gender attraction among Church members.  I quickly put it back before anyone could see that I picked it up, fearful that one of my neighbors or friends might walk by.

But a few minutes later, I stole over to the bookcase again, grabbed it quickly, and found a corner of the store to start reading.  I read almost half the book that day before I got feeling guilty for not buying the book and I decided to leave.  I went home, bought it through the anonymity of Amazon.com, and waited for it to arrive.  After a few days, I gave the book to a friend who I knew needed it, so I ended up buying a copy from Deseret Book anyway, so I don't feel too bad about reading it there, haha.

In Quiet Desperation is told in two parts.  The first is written by Fred and Marilyn Matis, parents of Stuart Matis who since his death in 2000 has become a poster boy for California's pro-gay rights group.  In their section of the book, Stuart's parents talk about how their son's suicide was not a political statement about homosexuality; instead it was a plea that Mormons strive to understand and reach out to members of the Church and community who struggle or succumb to same-gender attraction.  Their section of the book is touching and powerful, and many of the emotions they attribute to Stuart I have felt very personally as well.

I'm still working on Part II, written by Ty Mansfield.  In this section, he describes his own struggle with same-gender attraction and the road he has walked because of it.  Again, many of his feelings and questions square away with my own.

One of the things I really love about the book so far is the peace and calm that Brother and Sister Matis and Brother Mansfield express.  Sister Matis writes poignantly of an experience she and her husband had in the temple just a few days before her son's suicide: "When we were together in the celestial room, Fred drew me into a quiet corner where we could be alone.  He described what had happened. We held hands, said a prayer together, and turned Stuart over to Heavenly Father."  What a blessing to their family that just days before Stuart's death, the Lord was with them and prepared them for what was to come...

This is a wonderful book.  The strength and faith it has given me so far has been wonderful.  I've wept while reading it (which is a fun phenomenon to explain to your roommates) and it has brought me to my knees in prayers of supplication and hope.  Even some of the discussion about suicide is clarifying; although suicide has never been an option for me, it's affirming to see how Stuart's family reconciles it with the teachings of the Church.  It reminds me of the catharsis I and many others seek with same-gender attraction.

I've thought about buying copies for my parents and siblings and I'd like my mom to read it in her book club sometime.  It's a book I recommend with no reservations to anyone, as I think that everyone could benefit from the expressions of faith it conveys, as well as the understanding about the struggle that it furthers.