The Vow of Silence

It seems that I have been reduced to silence as the only peaceful thing left to me.  My grandparents used to say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. For 50 years, I have had to integrate my sexuality in a world that plain and simple doesn't get or refuses to understand what that is like.

On top of that my body has turned against me and now my mind is following suit.  I was very vocal in my opposition to the Republican shame and the disaster of Trump who is not ever going to be my president.  I fear that this means that I have lost my country just like I lost my Church. I was forced to give the Church up because it was resistant to change and my country is following the same narrow path into the grave.

Personally, what this means is that I am now a traitor and/or treasonous.  Not to the America I believe we are called to be, but to the America we are. Some of my friends are of the opinion that we will overcome, and I do believe that Love Trumps Hate, nevertheless, this does little to comfort me in the present moment where I find myself an apostate and a traitor.

Spiritually, I belong to the Community of All Angels, where somewhere beyond this valley of tears, there is peace and serenity.  I have been a monk since I was 10 on the interior. Although I was forced to be a Benedictine in Exile, because the Benedictines aren't very good about their understanding of sexuality either..."watch his psycho-sexual development" is the warning they gave the Jesuits regarding my novitiate application.  The Church protects pedofiles but doesn't have room for gay monks who are celibate or room for people with AIDS even when the communities are so large that it isn't any hardship on them.  It is an unbelievable error in logic and rationality.

Silence allows for many things...and outside of the sound of my keyboard, SILENCE may turn out to be my most sincere application of the deep monastic impulse I have always felt...a call home to be One with my Creator God, in the realm beyond good and evil.  For this "intrinsically evil and morally disordered" person, I think I have said enough.

O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me! In Jesus' name, I pray.  Amen.

NOT MY PRESIDENT - No Reconciliation - Open Dissent and Public Opposition

Let me just preface my thoughts today with a warning to my friends, family and fellow Christians.  I do NOT want to be comforted or counseled.  I am sufficiently mature in the religious life to do my own moral reasoning.  If you want to be peacemakers and work for some united common good, no one is stopping you.  I, however, have drawn my line in the sand.  I will NEVER forgive these fools and will never reconcile with them.  I began my work in social justice at the age of 10 largely due to my own suffering around my gender non-conformity and my sexual orientation.  That gives me 40 years of attempting reconciliation and education and dialogue and the rest of the liberal fence-walking.  I am exhausted and completely debilitated.  As sick as I am and facing my own mortality, the very last thing I needed is for the country I love to publicly shame me.
  
I have confessed many times, that I am not a good person.  I have constantly fallen short of my own moral standards and am ashamed and accountable for how simply being White I have escaped the scourge of many of my worse battles.  Even my encounters with authority and police have been mitigated by the sheer fact that I am so pasty.  I was already livid about race relations in this country before the election and NOW, I'm quite beside myself.  The last 10 years of my life I have done some small work in the Diversity and Inclusion arena and from my experience, America has a Race and Sex problem of gigantic and immoral proportions.  My own employer of 18 years couldn't even deal with the topic and was entirely pretextual in their lip service to federal laws around race and gender discrimination.  When I went to the EEOC, I discovered they are impartial and that an employee's only real recourse is the courts.  I was horrified.  How in the hell does a private citizen have the resources to take on a corporation?!*!?  Elizabeth Warren is right, the deck is stacked against the average American but while she may take a more financial approach to America's problems, I see the underlying moral problem of selfish, greedy, ignorant asses vs. those who want to live in a better world for everyone.

CONGRATULATIONS AMERICA! You just elected the first openly racist, proven serial liar and sexual predator... not to mention a completely ignorant and unstable fraud. Now we all must reap the havoc of your actions! Be sure he will surround himself with deplorable scum, thugs and fascists. God help us all and God help anyone who voted in this election who did not vote for HRC. To those eligible to vote and who didn't, I hope God is more merciful to you than you have been to me for putting us in this tribulation. Thanks to your dim wits, I am now ashamed to be an American! 

As a casual reader of history, I am absolutely convinced that this past election was a disaster for the progressive cause.  After eight years of wonderful progress, Americans went an about face and drug us through the mud and slime by electing a man unfit for leadership let alone for the highest office in our nation.  I am demoralized and bewildered that this choice was made.  I am angry at those who voted for Trump and Pence the Puke and for those who voted third party.  Except for those who voted for Hillary Clinton, I consider all of them treasonous to my version of the American dream and with or without civil war, I now have enemies.  I will not live in their version of America.  Whether the progressive states openly leave the union or not, I consider myself unable to tolerate this man or his supporters.  It is a moral decision of my conscious that I will not support his government in any way or manner.  In fact, I am openly and publicly opposed to anything or anyone in favor of him or his election. I am ashamed of America and reproachful of the Republican cowards who put us in this state of affairs.

He is NOT MY PRESIDENT! Never! NO Trump (elected or otherwise) or Pence the Puke! That's just the way it is. If we are divided we may fall but as far as I am concerned he has already fallen (lower than the average sinner). I have no intention of ever giving him respect.  I see nothing in him but smug arrogance and no repentance whatsoever. My time is short and and I'm tired of shoring up ignorant people who can't see the wolves in wolves' clothing. I'm not doing it anymore. He has brought low one of the highest offices I can imagine. While I acknowledge that everyone has a right to their own opinions and citizens have a right to vote for whom they choose, morally I hold each of us accountable. I blame each and every voter for anyone other than Hillary for this nightmare. It is between you and G-d...But between you and me...you are now my enemies. I literally cannot wait to get out of here!!! Death, jail, the insane asylum or exile, I really couldn't give a damn. One way or another, I'm through with your ignorant asses! God help me, but here I stand defiant and pissed the f..k off!

As a Christian and a monastic, I should be more conciliatory and compassionate.  I am not!  If people would have resisted Hitler openly and publicly we may never have seen the Holocaust and I'll be damned if I keep silent about this atrocity to our Lady Liberty and the dreams of my immigrant ancestors.  Over the centuries, like the Hatfields and the McCoys, we have divided ourselves.  This time, my division stands firm.  I no longer care what my enemies think nor do I ask for their forgiveness. Today, my prayers are that God punish them according to his justice and somehow organize the March for the Saints to come home.  My bags are ready for the pilgrimage...