In memorandum

I've had a lot of thoughts and emotions since I woke up at 10am yesterday to a text message informing me of Jack Laytons passing. I find it surreal that due to my inconsistency as a blogger only four posts ago I explained why I voted for him. On many levels Laytons death feels like a death in the family, as a person who came of age in the new millennium it feels as though he's always been around. He expanded his party's relevance within the nation exponentially without compromising any of the things it stood for. He helped Canadians across the nation to see that a country is only as successful as it's least successful person, that a nations survival depends on the ability for all it's people to survive. He was a populist and a pragmatist who seemed as approachable as that teacher you had who always had the classroom in stitches and who always came across as more of a friend than an authority. With Layton you felt if you saw him you could just go say hello and start a conversation. He was a multi linguist and brilliant mind who never lost touch with the people he came from. In the eighties as a city councilor while everyone else was trying to make sense of the new gay cancer he was doing everything he could to help it's victims. Down in the states meanwhile Reagan hadn't yet acknowledged it's existence. Layton was pragmatic, he knew tax cuts to the rich would hurt the poor more so than services to the poor could hurt the rich. He believed that no matter your income you deserved access to the highest quality healthcare and education the country could offer you, that no one deserved to go hungry or cold. He believed women, gay, transgender people, ethnic and religious minorities were not something for the country to tolerate but rather what makes the country's heart beat. He wasn't a perfect man but he tried with everything he had in him to stand up for the mandates he was given. He was relentless in fighting for what he knew to be right. He had integrity, a quality rare in humanity and almost non existent in politics. The world lost one of it's strongest voices of reason, may his voice never be forgotten. May his party carry the orange torch high in his memory.

A month to the wedding

With all the political activism in new York complete I find myself about a month away from my wedding. My nuptial hour draws on apace/ but oh how slow the old moon wanes. Don't get me wrong we have plenty to do (and spend on) between now and then. We severely limited our guest list so that we could afford to do something nice for those we did invite. We focused only on those who have been firm supporters since we came out in our families and friends we've known for several years. This means our wedding will be intimate and full of support. We are having an eleven am church service at the metropolitan comunity church presided over by reverend Pat Bumgardner. Reverend Pat has been performing spiritual ceremonies for gay and lesbian couples since the seventies and has been at every protest for marriage equality in new York she could possibly make. Shes a rockstar in the movement and she's marrying us. We will exchange rings designed by a close friend Ashley Stevens, shes brilliant and you need to look her up on etsy. We will also go through the Greek Orthodox tradition of Stefana, a ritual crowning involving two crowns tied by a ribbon. The crowns are blessed then placed on the couples heads crowning them as joined by god the crowns are then interchanged over their heads by an attendant and they are led on a procession around the alter. It is the (pardon the pun) crowning moment of an orthodox ceremony. After the service were going to a French bistro for a private brunch. A friend Jennie Mouio is making our cake. In the evening were having a very casual ( read plastic cups) cocktail party which will be broader, all our local friends who we wanted at the brunch but had to be pragmatic can come wish us well and have a drink or two. Us, my uncle and mother mother will make food to put out. Researching weddings it was very herd to find advice that wasn't bride centric and or, from our perspective overblown. For us the wedding is about being with loved ones, and joining our lives,everything else is secondary. I can't wait to be married. Then it will be time to work on DOMA so our marriage will still exist when we leave the state.

a video of the efforts to marriage equality

I fell in love with Robert right at the beginning, I knew he was the one. He made me laugh like I'd never laughed, he was never predictable and to this day constantly surprising me and showing me there is even more to him. I love this man. On September twenty fourth of this year about sixty of our closest family and friends will sit in the pews of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York where I attend service and watch as Robert and I promise to love honour and obey eachother until death do us part. Then if the senate does the right thing we will sign our marriage license issued by New York City and the reverend Pat Bumgardner will submit it. We will then be introduced by her as married to these same family and friends. Both of us had complex journeys in our lives we come from faith traditions that would not perform same sex marriage. We were taught homosexuality was a sin. Our journeys to self acceptance and self love were also complex so being able to stand before everyone in our adopted home and has tremendous meaning for me.

I have therefore spent every moment I had spare in Adabbos Queens district talking to the people there about what same sex marriage means to the gay and lesbian new yielded who so desperately crave it. I literally implored people supportive of my rights who felt they were too busy to ca Adabbo to call him. I used my cell so they didmt have to use their minutes. Call him they did. When he declared his support for marriage equality he cited 4800 calls in favour of marriage equality compared to 1200 against it. His people spoke and he's going to represent their voices. When he made his announcement I cried, I laughed, I danced and I came to a sense of hope I can only call euphoria. Tommorow I go to Staren Island to talk to Andrew Lanzas constituents, I know they too will stand for justice, I pray for our love to be recognized as valid and beautiful by the state of New York

Why I'm voting for Layton

Ideologically I have always loved Jack Layton. I find him to be the most earnest politician I've ever encountered. It sounds like a contradiction, earnest and politician. He stands for something though and always has. It would be good politics to merge the NDP and liberals but the NDP under Layton understands that the canadian people need a true progressive voice in parliament.

Having said this, this was going to be my first election not voting NDP. I think Harper is worse for Canada then Layton is good for it. I was ready to vote for Ignatieff as a strategic vote against Harper. I told myself the debate would cement it. I would watch the debate ready for Ignatieff to impress me, I wanted him to convince me I could feel good about him as prime minister.

As the debate began I consciously chose to take my beloved Layton out of the running and focus on the Harvard professor. Something interesting happened though, as Harper and Ignatieff did dances around their questions and acted smug and Duceppe behaved like a crazy uncle this little figure with a moustache actually answered questions being asked, offered real solutions to problems, spoke out against the broken senate. He spoke with a respect for Canadians.

I'm not voting for Ignatieff, if I'm throwing away a vote and handing Harper another government that's the risk I have to take, because whether we get a conservative or liberal government I will feel better knowing we at least have a strong new democratic presence. And crazy things have happened maybe this year will mark the first new democratic government of Canada, it will never happen though unless we learn to vote for who we want not against who we don't.

On God

This is a story about God, or at least my own understanding of God. I swear to God that every word I am about to tell you is the truth, or at least truth as I see it. I have come to realize that anyone who claims to know anything as an absolute is a liar and a bigot. I am fully aware that I just stated that as an absolute and am thus not above throwing myself into the lying bigots category. One thing I endeavour never to be is a hypocrite.  I was baptised in the Greek Orthodox church at two years old. had I died before then many Greeks believe I would have gone to Hell, my parents anticipated a second though and they knew that a Greek Orthodox baptism was not about a child coming to belong to God, no it was about the amount they would spend on the party afterwards and the quality of the liquor they intended to serve. Being of modest means they could only afford to go into foreclosure for this end once, thus my sister and I were jointly baptised.

Ironically despite the thousands they had spent to initiate us into this new incense laden club, only on Easter and random Sundays did we ever attend Peterborough's Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church. My mother was not Greek and she had come to prefer guilt in the Pentescotal variety, as my father couldnt stand anyone in the Greek community anyway, except when he could, we as children more often went to the evangelical and charismatic Calvary Pentecostal Church.  To further convolute our upbringing my mother was horrified at the lack of prayer in public school and unable to afford private schooling opted instead to put us in the government funded Canadian Catholic School Board. So there you have it I was raised as Greek Orthodox, Pentescostal, and Catholic and told by my mother that all I was was a christian and denomination didn't matter. When I asked her if this logic extended to Jews, Muslims, Hindu etcetera, she prayed vigourously and told me dear God no, Jesus is THE only way to heaven. The Bible is THE only divine word of God and it is infallible, and whether lighting incense, getting spanked by nuns (this never happened in my day but its a great image n'est pas) or watching people speak in tongues ultimately the only thing that mattered was the bible. Thats what I came to believe, and so as a child I believed the bible to be a bearer of absolute wisdom.

As a child I was also ostracised, I was an outsider. This was especially true during the sacraments, imagine as a child being in grade two and having all the other kids go to their first communion classes and you and the one united kid got to colour pictures of Jesus instead. ( The Catholic Jesus didnt look like the Orthodox Jesus by the way) I was also not interested in sports and loved musicals, I know cliches abound. I cried easily was scrawny as hell and I let my mother part my hair and put me in overalls. Until my voice broke I squealed when I spoke, and I had one volume loud, if I needed to whisper I simply yelled with a hoarse voice directly into someones ear. I believed in God though and I prayed he make the other kids like me.

As high school approached it came to my attention that the evil public school board (the one that didnt have prayer) had a local school for the arts. The program made so much sense for me and I asked my mother to let me go. Shockingly she said yes without a fuss. I went through the application process, was accepted and was off to create a new life. It was within the first week that I met my first pagan, and my first homosexual, I also got more involved in community theatre at this time too, so all of a sudden they were everywhere. I also met another first, an atheist. Not only that but I found out they too were everywhere. Naturally I didnt tell my mother lest she send me back to the Catholics who hated me but I needed to pray and pray hard.

I also had questioned my own sexuality for awhile already, as the bible was the absolute truth I knew God didnt make gays and that with enough prayer he would help me. I set myself apart in high school and became the holier than thou kid who tried to save everyone. I did that until I didnt. Eventually I realized God wasnt making me crave the men any less and that the gay people, atheists and pagans I knew seemed like decent, moral people. How could this be? They were intrinsically evil! Werent they? This is when I came out at school, I also denounced God. Eventually I told my mother who called every pastor at Calvary one by one. Eventually she figured one of them would get through to me. So there was pastor Victoria (name changed), a mother of three who admitted that as a woman she should only ever be an associate pastor, pastor Dave (name made up, dont even remember the real one) a father of twin toddlers who was really cute and hipsterish, he was supposed to win me over by peerish coolness, this too failed, I also got the intellectual guy, who came to Jesus after a lifetime as an atheist, and ultimately the big guns I got to meet an ex-gay who told me he was engaged to a woman and was almost into her. All these people ironically only made me feel more confident in that I was gay and God was BS.

I dont believe God is BS anymore. Through conversations with progressive Christians and other faith leaders and through a recommitment to prayer in my own life, I have come to take on a different view of God. My current view of God is very much shaped by my muddled religious upbringing. I have come to believe God meant for me to be gay and that he did that to take the blinders my mother had installed off, perhaps it was for her too. God is the force that drives life. Throughout history we as humans have struggled to understand him, her or it. We all created narratives for God, this is something that connects all cultures and why I find denying God to be so difficult. A belief in the higher seems to be in our DNA.

I do believe though that ultimately what ever narrative we are most comfortable with, they all lead to the same God. God is too large to be explained by a Bible, a Torah, A Rumi, or a Qu'Ran. God is personal and through meditation, prayer and an open mind we can come to understand only a small piece of this awesome power. All of these faiths understand some piece of God but none of them completely have it. Whats more I believe if we put them all together into one giant faith we may but graze the tip of the proverbial iceberg. I guess my point and I do have one is that we need to adjust our conversation and language in discussing God. We need to stop compartmentalizing ourselves as people of faith and we should all come and worship and explore together. We should drop what divides us and embrace the fact that we are all ultimately searching for the same thing. Hell even the atheists. I spoke the truth as I see it, nothing I have said is an absolute.

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The river

The river is always there
the same one
but it is never
the same
for even a second
never will a moment repeat
no boundaries to the patterns
it can create
none
its relationship with the coast never exact
the people, insects, dog shits, trees along the way
constantly in flux
it flows into an ocean
that constantly moves
towards ever shifting continents
on a spinning earth
the earths relation to the heavens
though it can come close will never exactly mimic now
this moment is it
are you enjoying it?