How may I help you?

She interviewed for a job, but it didn't feel right because she didn't feel like she would be helping people. I have never heard of a more beautiful job rejection. Today, albeit unnecessary, I reminded her...

"At some point in time someone answered the phone and asked 
'How can I help you?'
An industrial complex of service and helping one another was born. Today, I'm not sure that question carries the same genuine desire for doing unto others. There lacks an authentic want to help others. That being said, I do not see that in you. In you is the spirit of that first person I mentioned. Your desire to help others, change lives, and better the world is real. It's intact. Do not let corporate ennui, conglomerate apathy, or overgrown complacency take that diamond within you. Be today as beautiful as you were yesterday and will be tomorrow. Love you. "

Blessings on all who help and those who ask for help...

It does get better...

Hi Friend, 

I'd love to tell you it gets better. As life goes on people become nicer and seem to be more pleasant in general. I wish there was nothing for you to worry about, nothing for you to lose sleep over, and nothing for you to wish you could change. But I can't. I just can't. You will cry yourself to sleep sometimes. 

I can promise one thing though. You'll have little flashes of hope. They don't last long, but these are moments when everything seems to work. Everything seems perfectly placed and runs in the exact manner that it should.

It's usually a quiet moment, and it can go unnoticed. You're amazingly talented, so much potential artistically, theatrically, and just as a human soul. I know you have it in your spiritual capacity to steady your mind and spirit enough to find yourself enveloped in these moments. 

These moments, take special notice of them. The more you notice them and acknowledge them, the more they will happen. Follow them, they will lead you. They are moments of clarity. These are God moments, where you are wrapped in the mantle of Love. To notice these takes a spiritual muscle. Notice, acknowledge and you will grow it. You will be led and the word Savior will take on a whole knew connotation to you. 

And should you ever write a letter that starts "dear mom and dad, I swear to God I tried" and seal it, you will have

this Moment and realize that all around is Love. It always has been and always will be.  You won't ever get the chance to slip the envelope under the door. 

It won't be a flash of light as I described so much as magnificent sunrise. I'm asking you to stare at it and feel it's warmth. Beside you will be a hand. Look over. Accept it. Hold it. Hands were meant for holding, not clenching fists. Hands receive and never take. Hands give and never pass off. The same hands that push away are the hands that can pull all the is Good within you.  

See the Good within your reach. It's there. It's in your Mom and Dad. It's in your sister.  Reach out, so will they, and suddenly what was two became one. If Christ said He came so that all may be as one, then any experience of duality's dissipation can be only of the Divine.You will see so much Good everywhere. It is then you are Blest. Friend, Child of Divinity, Angel of Peace, Bearer of Truth...you are blest. When you know this, it's then I can promise it gets better. I promise. 

Always yours and with Love, 

*note - some metaphors borrowed

Things I would say if you were here...

Love,
Did I ever tell you why I enjoyed writing haikus and sending them to you every morning?

A spiritual teacher of mine had me write them every morning before journaling as a way to codify my thoughts into a particular pattern. 5-7-5, as you know. What it became was a meditation. Sitting with

my feelings for that amount of time allowed for me to get in touch with them and to know them deeper. As I counted on my hand the syllables, trying to find the right words, the perfect words...the way they could fit into the mold, I was forced to continuously be with this feeling.

I was forced to continue feeling until a perfect, succinct, seventeen syllable pattern emerged to give verbal representation to something so interiorly real. By then a few things happened: I knew how I was feeling. I could look at from an objective standpoint what my feeling looked like, and finally, I felt I had come face to face with me and could meet myself where I was at, and from that point, go about my day.

Sending you haikus was like that. During a shower or a 30 minute drive, my distance from you enabled be to think about you and capture what I was feeling in the same way. Maybe it contained an

element of the previous evening's conversation. It could have represented a fleeting daydream of a time yet to come. Perhaps it was just seventeen syllables that boiled down to an I love you. Either way, despite the distance, I felt it brought us closer. I couldn't wait each morning to send you one, because I felt I was sending you Truth. Yes, Truth with a capital T.

I still write them. Just let me know when you'd like to receive them again?

Can you be Catholic and an LGBT ally?

Dear friend, 

In short, yes, you can say you’re a catholic ally. 

If the worry is that if you call yourself an ally you misrepresent your self as a catholic, and if you call yourself a catholic you misrepresent yourself as an ally, please place that worry aside. 

Let’s talk about your conscience, from the Catholic perspective. In the Catechism it states:

1778 Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law:

Let’s dissect that. Your judgment of reason is to be an ally, someone who supports the journey of an LGBT friend. NOT to judge any part of it, but just to be present for it as any friend would be, just as they don’t judge your journey which is uniquely yours. The moral quality of being an ally and the concrete act of holding the hand of a friend(s) and supporting their equal ability and to use their conscience as they express love is a perfectly acceptable judgment of your and their God given reason. 

It says women is obliged to follow what is just and right. Do you see being an ally as being just and right? If you do, great. If you do not, I would ask yourself if the moral high ground you would appear to be taking is worth the friends you would lose who stand confused looking up confused as to why you’ve put yourself on a pedestal. And as you perfectly well know, the Church is not always current in its ability to recognize what is truth and based in sound science and reason. (crusades, Galileo, holocaust, etc.) Since the church has repeated the stance of ‘intrinsically disordered’ for many years, I would question how much effort they have expelled in honestly looking at the years of research and understanding that have passed since those two words were penned.

Even Ratzinger said not to silence your inner voice and that we are called to be a people of (informed) conscience. Again I would ask, how much has the Church done in the past years to inform itself as to the many complexities of human sexuality, gender, gender identity, etc? 

If your conscience says to be an ally, then natural to assume that you are recognizing that which is divine as the Catechism says. And I think anytime you can be a witness to love, especially when you can be an ally to two people who themselves are witnesses to love, what else can one see but the Divine (with a capital D)? 

So can you be a Catholic ally? Sure. Just because the institution where you find religious or spiritual solace has not caught up with how the Holy Spirit is providing us examples of beautiful love in her movements, does not make you less Catholic as you see your friend and her partner’s love as beautiful as an ally. As that ally, I would say you become more Catholic, in providing an example to the world of where our collective conscience needs to move, namely, to a place where we stand beside our LGBT brothers and sisters, admit that love is love, and maybe there’s something intrinsically disordered about not recognizing their love. 

I hope this helps. 

Love always, Adam

On two people, who loved each other...

Little did Dolores know that when she went to dinner with her landlord that she would end up falling in love with him, as her eyes locked with those of her future husband’s. He owned the restaurant, and in his non-existing spare time pined over the local seamstress who happened to be the daughter of a friend of Dolores’ landlord. Immediately captivated by her beauty and elegance, they conversed, laughed, and fell deeply in love. Within a year, this educated, spry and worldly woman would be engaged to this hard working, troubadour of an Italian man. His name was Phil.

There was something about Phil’s unconditional kindliness, featherlike manner, and a presence that invited unfailing trust. You felt comfortable telling him your deepest secrets before you would even think to tell him your own name. It was no surprise people love and adored this barbershop crooner, prince of a fellow, and affable Italian, not the least of which - his beloved Dolores.

Later, underneath the vastness of an east coast sky, the scrolls of providence would scribe them on a private beach on a still evening, sitting and listening to the droning of the evening waves. She had her suspicions that the moment was impregnated with something monumental because Phil insisted on accompanying her to the beach instead of working his normal routine. If not for their sitting hand in

hand, his knee would have found the sand to ask her the question she had answered a thousand times in her head. As the heavens smiled down, a symbol of this monument was placed upon her finger, as carefully as a flower upon a grave.

One humble wedding and a Puerto Rican honeymoon later, they moved into an apartment on the east coast and began their fairytale with furnishings purchased with the little they had saved. Their love would produce two beautiful children.

Throughout the days, Dolores would be with Gianna and John to attend to their coming into their own. And despite Phil’s daily laboring at the hotel and restaurant from 6am to midnight, he stayed up with the babies as they cried and demanded father’s exhausted attention. Besides for the love of his children, he so wanted a weary Dolores to rest peacefully throughout the night.

Both shared a strong Christian faith and felt strengthened within that community. It would be a lie to say that the barbershop community didn’t also give them marital strength and supportive community, fine tuning their laughter and joy to the sound of Divine Love.  A common determination to raise aware, fiercely independent, and self motivated children also gave them a common resolve, and this tied the strings of their love all the tighter, allowing them to walk further hand in hand.

Her daughter, with all the care given to her, would give it in return the day health required both of them to move from the East to the southwest, bringing them into her home. Gianna and her loving husband welcomed them as their own, giving them the care and strength they needed and certainly deserved. Their adopted daughter now had the blessing of having her grandparents living with her, becoming the apple in both their eyes.

Mortality seems to find us all at some point. As Phil inevitably would enter into his final days, Dolores would gently hold his hands, with the same gentleness he embodied daily, singing and sharing so many happy memories they had collected over the years. Even if he couldn’t physically respond, she sang on because Dolores knew he heard and relived each one. These would be the final songs he would hear. I’m sure if you listen quietly enough, the echoes, however faint, can still be heard. It might sounds like the song their life in constancy, sang:

"Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. 

O, Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love; For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life."

On Cecil...

Cecil the Zimbabwean lion was hunted, killed and beheaded by dentist Walter Palmer of Eden Prairie, Minnesota. Unless you dwell in a treehouse, you know that the backlash has been vitriol, unrelenting, and caused social media outrage that has turned the hunter to the hunted.

I greatly mourn the loss of Cecil, on the list as a ‘threatened’ animal. As an animal rights activist, a vegan, and as someone who believes in common decency, I share the general sentiment of being appalled and outraged. If the laws exist, Mr. Palmer should be prosecuted to the full extent of them, especially because the circumstances of Cecil’s death seem quite manipulated and frankly immoral.

We know his dental practice has closed. (read the letter he sent to his patients) I am sure at sometime he will move from his hometown. (Sometimes it’s not good to go where everyone knows your name.) The Lion Killer will most likely become his suffix.

Most likely he will change his cellphone, email, haircut, and anything else that can make him as traceable as the GPS monitor that he allegedly destroyed.

We cannot bring Cecil back to life, no matter how many tweets with the hashtag #walterpalmer we angrily send out. Mr. Palmer will still think hunting, particularly large game a perfectly acceptable hobby. Karma in her form will take care of what needs to happen, so what are we the outraged able to do now? We can scream at Palmer until our vocal chords bleed or fingers numb from typing. Or we can reflect…

·      What causes people to believe large game, trophy hunting is okay?
·      Have we contacted legislators to enact laws against this?
·      Have we spoken to our kids about this?
·      What is our attitude toward small game?
·      Can we lose eliminate term game?
·      Are we are that game etymologically comes from ‘joy, merriment, sport’?
·      How do we treat animals in general?
·      Have we invited a hunter into dialog to achieve at least an understanding?
·      What is the relationship of humans and the animal kingdom?
·      Can we wrap our heads around the idea that we are part of that kingdom?
·      Why do people call killing a sport? Trophy? Really?
·      What are we doing to prevent this from happening again?

Game killing will continue. A hunter might think twice before going, but those who are adamant will continue with even greater resolve. If seeing another Cecil survive, how do we reach those people who wish to hunt? I’m not sure, but tearing down Mr. Palmer more than he already has is not be the answer.

On gender...

A friend of mine had a few questions about gender. Please, I am no expert, but I did the best I could. I'm more than happy to be corrected if I am wrong...

My dear friend,                                                  

I will do the best I can…

Gender identification is a realization unrelated to one’s anatomical reality. A biological male can identify as decidedly female and a biological female can identify definitely as a male no matter what lies between the legs.

If a place of identification has been attained, it's up to the individual, how much of their internal disposition they want to have reflected to their outside world, sometimes referred to as gender expression. If I internally identify as a female, do I want to paint my nails, grow my hair, wear what we have identified as women clothing? These are external instruments sounding internal melodies. Does a female who feels male want to wear a tight sports bra, dress in long jeans, shorten their hair? Again, these are all things we have decided over generations are decidedly male features. If it helps their internal identification feel more authenticated, a society should embrace their desire to show that (or at the same time, not to show it)

That brings us to your question of surgery. The first is the trend of body manipulation, or reconstruction in order to become physically more of a woman or a man and it has become an unfortunate societal pressure. (This could also include hormone therapy). Any sort of surgery or drugs would predispose that one has embraced the question of identity and being and has decide what amount of physical change they feel they need to more fully embrace their self. (An issue I see here is that this need is not felt by the individual so much as it is imposed by a people who desire to see a woman as a woman and a man as man.) Society is accepting transgender slowly, but to them, identification on the continuum of external to internal is still obsessed with external ‘proof’. Those who feel the internal, whether they know it or not, are heavily pressured to physically ‘prove it.’

I think a biologically born male can be a woman and identify as a woman without ever having laid upon a table or experienced any incisions. The degree that this person (and I use this term non biologically) needs affirmation of identity is unique and strictly dependent upon person, their journey, and what they feel they need to do to accomplish their process of self-authentication. If the cosmetic reality is an important component to be an external reflection of an internal reality, then so be it. It does not make one any more or less woman or man.

I also believe that is why we have begun to see the emergence of ‘gender fluidity.’ One doesn’t identify at all. This might be a direct effect, again on our obsession of wanting physical proof of your internal disposition according to norms that have been established, perhaps arbitrarily, but still deeply engrained in within all of us. People who identify as gender fluid do not feel the need to identify as one or the other. 

In so many spiritual traditions, spiritual masters have spoken of a consciousness of non-duality. Oneness. I think this phenomenon we are witnessing is the raising of our collective consciousness. We are being forced to accept a reality of non-duality. No longer do people feel they fit into neat little compartments of male or female, this or that, here or there. I think we saw this first as gender roles began to disintegrate and women gained more prominence and participation in society. On some deep level, we’ve always known that we are one and all should be treated with love, compassion and equality. I think with so much gender speak, we are beginning to this shift happen.

Always yours,

Adam