brileyrebecca

All sexuals are equal. Some are just more equal than others.

We are all sexual creatures of some ilk. Male and female created He them. Whether one believes in intelligent design or crazy chaos, that’s the easy part: the black and white, the yin and yang, the yes and no. But nothing’s really that easy. There are more than 50 shades of gray, more maybes than yes and no. At least that’s how it seems to me.

I’m a doctor, but not that kind of doctor. Certainly not a Sex Doctor, and certainly not like Dr. Ruth or Dr. Phil or whoever is in vogue these days. As they say, the higher one climbs the education ladder, the more one knows about less and less. The less and less part is becoming more and more apparent as I get older. But, as I age, the more and more I think I understand about life and living and who I am. Whoever that is. Ok, maybe I don’t know any more, but I’m just more comfortable with not knowing.

I don’t claim to be an expert on very many things and certainly not on the subject of homosexuality. I don’t know if it, like life, begins at conception or if environment plays a role. Probably a little of both. I don’t know if anyone would choose to be gay, if given the choice, or not. I’m not even sure where I slide on the 0 to 6 Kinsey Scale. Probably, like most people, somewhere in between.

I believe that God (yes, God) created male and female primarily for two purposes: 1) procreation (so the Creator wouldn’t have to populate the world by making mud figures every seven days) and 2) companionship—God’s and ours. Those who procreate maybe provide all the companionship they need. Those of us who don’t maybe need to find it somewhere else. Life can certainly provide strange bedfellows, so to speak. Currently, I am content with the furry four-legged kind—for companionship, that is; we certainly don’t even consider procreation (though if I could have kittens, I might have a litter)—but it’s definitely not in our nature.

I also believe what’s natural is generally the best way. If it fits, you must commit (or something like that). As the song says (in spite of its poor grammar), “if it don’t fit, don’t force it; just relax and let it go.” I mean, there’s a reason things are made the way they are. And, yes, I still believe in reasons, in spite of all the inexplicable chaos swirling around us. I have a Touchstone, kind of like “Base” or “Home” when playing Tag or Hide and Seek—a rock, an anchor, if you will, that keeps me centered, (for the most part) calm, primarily positive and optimistic in a way that is even more inexplicable to those around me than the chaos they readily concede. It’s a peace that truly passes understanding.  I like that, because I don’t have to try to figure it out.  I can just Be.

I recognize anomalies. Diversions, perversions, in and out of the box, and all that. Mistakes are made (so I’m told), but one man’s ceiling is another’s floor, so who’s to say which is up and which is down. Alice certainly had a hard time wrapping her elongated head around it. I don’t know if what is normal is just more predictable or probable. For example, I have the most common type of blood—O+ I think—but that doesn’t deny the As and ABs, just because they are more rare; the negatives, just because mine’s positive. I embrace the differences, celebrate multiculturalism, prefer the unique over the commonplace most of the time. I even received a Diversity Award; it’s hanging on my office wall, if anyone needs proof.

I don’t believe the tail should wag the dog, not in a democracy. Majority rules, but it shouldn’t rule with an iron hand. I do believe any percentage of the population deserves the same rights as the rest, regardless of how small or different. That’s America, land that I love, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

But bigger and better than America, land of the free, is the Kingdom of God where there is no male nor female (gay nor straight), black nor white, Jew nor Gentile. We are all equal in the eyes of God: equally sinners, yet equally forgiven. More than equally loved beyond all measure, inexplicably so. That’s certainly worth embracing, even if it passes comprehension.

As an educated scholar, I know what the Bible has to say about homosexuality—I’ve researched it, from Old to New Testament, Greek to English. What is direct and what is interpretation, what is black and white and what is gray, who’s to say—maybe someone else can and will, but not I. I leave that up to the Source itself. When Jesus forgave the woman caught in sin and sent her accusers (who were not without sin) away without throwing a stone, he had a private conversation with her. “Neither do I condemn you,” he said when they were alone, adding, “Go and sin no more.” If gays are sinning, that’s between them and God; if they are to go and sin no more, let them hear it from God themselves. IF they are listening; that effort has to be theirs. Whether or not one can help being the way one is pales, I think, when one considers what pleases Almighty God. That’s a daily task, an individual quest, if we’re really serious about hearing God’s voice and placing priority on following the direction of the Holy Spirit.

But make no mistake (as someone who makes a lot of them is fond of saying): there’s no ambiguity about the Gospel—the Good News for Everyone. As for Christians, gay or straight, if we are listening, then none of us can help but hear the proclamation: “God so loved the world.” And if we continue to listen even with half an ear, the subsequent commandment comes through loud and clear: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself.” Later, John even reduced the sermon to just three words: “Love one another.”

So this is what I do know for sure: we are all loved. We are, in return, to love everyone else. That’s what makes us all more equal than others.

End of story.

I dreamt of gold and woke to sheets of it streaming off me.

We were waiting around the royal swimming pool for Queen Elizabeth to arrive to celebrate her royal birthday.  The hours passed slowly, and Her Royal Highness was yet to show.  Prince Phillip appeared from time to time to promise us she would be there soon, but most of the gathered royal-watchers were beginning to give up hope.  Disappointed and disillusioned, several moved to retrieve their coats, leave their presents on the royal table.  Desperate to prove them wrong—to ourselves as much as to our fellow partiers—my friend Mary Ann and I grasped hands and jumped fully clothed into the deep-end of the pool.  Instinctively we knew that if the water turned to gold when we resurfaced, the promises would be true.  We also knew it wasn’t Her Majesty we were waiting for, but Him.  As we ascended, sheets of gold streamed from us, head to toe.  Tears of joy mingled with the shimmering water; we shouted in our elation, our conviction, our blessed assurance.

Thus, my dream.  My dreams are vivid and unique, incessant and recurring.  People often wonder at their meaning, ponder their source.  Some would say I read too much.  Guilty as charged.  I always have.  From before I could read the words myself, books have been my drug of choice; since I have learned to read, I have mainstreamed words and stories like any self-respecting junkie.  And I horde my paraphernalia in rooms of shelves like used needles piled in every corner.

One of my favorite books when I first learned to read was Shadow Castle, a modern fairy tale by Marian Cockrell. I still have the worn Scholastic paperback somewhere, in spite of cat pee stains (and odor), testament to my dedication never to part with it:  throw it away or wish it on some unsuspecting book sale.  I loved fairy tales—The Blue Book, the Pink Book, Grimm’s, Anderson—and even those by authors whose names I can’t recall.  They were more than stories; they were possibilities.

More than anything, I wanted to be a fairy.  As a child, I haunted the bright green “fairy rings” in my grandparents’ pasture, hoping against hope of glimpsing an ethereal form, listening for the whirr of iridescent wings.  I dreamed of flying, escaping all manner of wicked pursuers, blending invisible with the friendly shadows.  I was beyond grateful for my blue-ringed green eyes and slightly pointy ears, acquiesced to being “corrie-fisted,” switching the pencil readily from my right hand to my left.  If only, if only…

Like Emily, I dwelt “in possibility, a fairer place than prose…”  And when the mortal man in Shadow Castle who had fallen in love with the fairy princess was obliged to exchange 100 years and a day in fairy land while his elfin love was sentenced to serve the same time on this side if they wanted to spend eternity together, I entered that banishment with him, just in case, clapping my hands as Peter commanded, lest some fairy’s light become extinguished.

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales; if you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales,” that genius Albert Einstein supposedly opined.  As a child, I was a voracious reader, obsessed; as an adult, I am just as ravenous, addicted. As I have aged this side of paradise, I read more fairy tales, discovering Tir-na-Nog (Land of Forever Young) and W. B. Yeats and Lady Gregory who, being Irish and intelligent, took the wee folk (nee, “The Shining Ones”) more seriously even than I have.  Like Yeats, older and wiser, I follow the light cast by the sacred mythology out of the darkness of the abyss.

Shadow Castle got its name from the shady silhouettes flickering on its walls, evidence of those just across the border of the Other World.  As the century-sentence drew to a close when the mortal and his fairy love would be reunited, the shadows became more restless, fluttering with impatient anticipation for the spell to be broken.  Little more than a shade, a wraith myself, I, too, pace behind these boundaries, waiting to be set free.  And now, the days grow shorter:  99, 100, 1…

Many have called it a myth, nothing more than a child’s fairy tale, this promise of the Rapture.  But wiser men, like Einstein and Yeats, have seen beneath the surface, into the abyss and beyond, to where the Truth lives, shining and forever young.  “The foolishness of God is wiser than men…”

I dream of gold and wake to sheets of it streaming off me.

–Rebecca Luttrell Briley

A swath of gossamer veils the valley.

In the air, the whinnied evidence I’ve been listening for

And the hint of lathered leather wafting from what’s hidden in the trees.

Already, the morning sky prematurely October blues as bushes catch fire

And roses spill final petals in a pinked carpet for the arrival of the long-anticipated time.

But leaves remain uncoaxed, coated still in summer’s stubborn shade.

Patience.  Though we can taste it.

Reaching, I strip one tertiary branch to prime the pump.

Bad Joke: 

Q: What’s the difference between a Northern girl and a Southern girl?

A:  The Northern girl has a canopy over her bed, the Southern girl has a can o’ pee under her bed.

I got my feelings hurt the other day.  No biggie.  I’m not the easily offended, wear my heart on my sleeve type.  Not always looking for ways to feel “dissed” so I can raise a ruckus, “Poor me!  Look at me!  Wah, wah, wah!”  There’s been too much Political Correctness for my taste, and I would never contribute to it if I could help it.

So it’s still a man’s world.  What of it.  So there used to be slavery.  Get over it.  So I bumped my head on a glass ceiling.  Whatever.  So the circle is still unbroken, but I’m on the other side.  Blah, blah, blah.   Maybe if we weren’t so self-absorbed, we wouldn’t see so many bruises on our thin skins.  Fewer selfies=less whining.

So I got my feelings hurt.  That’s the last you’ll hear of it.  And the one who did the wounding will never hear of it, at least not from me.  And it won’t happen again.  But not because that person won’t ride rough-shod another time—they likely will.  And not necessarily because I will be more assertive and stand up for myself more readily next time, either.

But you need to know two things about a person, me:  where they were born and when.

That may seem irrelevant, but it’s something I’ve come to know, regardless of what I may believe.  Heart wisdom over head knowledge, so to speak. Let me explain.

It’s important to know if someone is from the North or the South (mid-west, west coast, maybe not so much).  North?  Abrupt.  Pragmatic.  Cold.  South?  More nuanced, multi-layered.  Temperate.  At the risk of stereotyping (is that some kind of profiling?), and though there are exceptions, it has been my experience that people from the North can come across as rude, at least to Southerners who aren’t used to such ascorbic speech.  People from the South may appear more amicable—the soft, proverbial “Bless your heart” (I really mean it), but really they are just more subtle. Just because they let you win, doesn’t mean you win.

Yankees, you may blunder your way in brusquely, like it matters—and I, Southerner that I am (albeit the upper South), may let you.  On the surface.  You may not mean anything by it, just saving time for clarity.  And I may understand that.  But it will never be water under my bridge.  Water from the North?  Cascades shallowly, noisily down on its way from somewhere to somewhere else.  Southern water runs deeper, more silent, may even appear somewhat stagnant.  Though it’s not.

You can skip all the rocks you want across my smooth surface, but they will collect at the bottom of my deepest pools and never get washed away.  Collecting, they will form a wall below that surface you will never penetrate again, a “glass” wall, if you will, that you will never even know is there.

And the other thing?  When I was born?  Just know I am a Scorpio.  Believe or not, but know this much is true: a Scorpio never forgets.

So bless your heart a hundred times.  You’ll never see mine again.

–Rebecca Luttrell Briley