MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

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How to Pray for the End of LGBT Teen Suicide

What is the best SPIRITUAL response to LGBT teen suicides?

We're shocked and sad and angry every time the news breaks about another tragedy. We share the news on Facebook. We hold candlelight memorials. We speak out against bullying. We donate to The Trevor Project. 

Now, let's also focus our SPIRITUAL POWER on ending this suffering.

Each of us who believes in the Power of Prayer (or The Secret, creative visualization, tonglen, or Ho'oponopono) must now dedicate some portion of our practice to LGBT young people.

What does this mean?

We live in a creative universe. What we think about creates our individual experience, but those of us who believe in prayer also believe that what we pray about effects the world. 

DO NOT PRAY ABOUT LGBT TEEN SUICIDE.

Prayer and similar practices are creative - you get more of what you put energy toward. "Whatsoever you ask in my Name, that will I do." (John 14:13)

So when you do your spiritual work around this issue, do not pray from your grief, your anger, your compassion. Do not pray about the tragedy. Do not pray for this epidemic to stop. These would be negative prayers.

Instead, use positive prayer.

Pray for peace and healing and protection and Light and angels and Love to surround and lift up LGBT youth.

See it in your mind while you practice.

Imagine every LGBT teen laughing, living in joy, receiving love and support from all directions. 

If you can't wipe the memory of these tragedies from your spiritual practice: close your eyes; consciously witness the lost child's experience of bullying or loneliness - like a movie; and then, do it again, but make different choices. That is, imagine what the scenerio would have been if everything had gone right - if they'd found the strength, known what to say, who to tell, where to turn, how to get through it. Focus on this new sequence, and send it out into the universe as the new story of How Things Go. 

And then, BE THE CHANGE YOU WANT TO SEE IN THE WORLD.

As I have written about before, there are actual concrete things we can do to bring the number of LGBT teen deaths by suicide down to ZERO.

But we have to do it together.

And we have to do it NOW.

 

ANGEL PHOTO: http://drakator.deviantart.com/art/Why-126135568

Just Married and So Worthy!

~Mary Anne Flanagan/Toning the OM

I wanted to share how powerful it was to get married in New York City! After 17+ years, my partner and I were married last week (Thank you New York!). We have been in awe of all the support and love we have received over the years, especially when New York passed the Marriage Equality Act. Many of our friends asked us when we were going to get married. We wanted to plan something big with a party and blessing. As we became more overwhelmed by the planning, we decided to just go ahead and have a small civil ceremony – for us.

As we entered the Office of the City Clerk, we were welcomed by city employees. Everything was very well organized. After a couple of hours, we were called into a small chapel to be married. As the officiate bellowed out the words, “We are gathered here today…” I began to cry. I never thought I would ever hear those words. I took a moment to compose myself. I looked at my partner and had the thought, "We deserve this. We are worthy." I exhaled and my eyes filled with tears again. And I realized how worthy we are - we all are. This year I paid attention to worthiness, and I had the gift of celebrating marriage.

As I said "I Do" to my partner, I was saying I do to all the love I deserve. I was saying I do to life and the love that I am. And I invite you to do the same.

Say "I do" to you - YOU ARE WORTHY!

(Oh, and the Office of the City Clerk is on "Worth" Street!)

All love, always, Mary Anne

Mary Anne Flanagan is a Certified Life Coach, Shamanic Practitioner and Teacher workshop facilitator, inspired speaker, and creator of Toning the OM™.  Mary Anne Flanagan/Toning the OM™: maflanagan@toningtheom.com or 917.238.9726. Visit http://www.toningtheom.com

Rejection culture and the True Self

By Joe Perez

What's the best way for one gay man to reject another gay man online? NYC writer and sex educator Lucas writes:

I'm beginning to think that a simple no-response response is sometimes the wisest solution, although not the most friendly or guilt-free. Unfortunately, we have created a world in which a returned 'hello' often translates through the screen as "do me" rather than a polite greeting. Friendly conversation still works in real-life interaction, of course, but if you actually engage with someone on Dudesnude, Grindr, etc., for more than a couple of exchanges, interest will be assumed and declining an offer will be even more difficult.

via Top to Bottom.

Since it's been several years since I've met anyone online or used social media to hookup, I feel a bit out of the loop. I hear there's something now called Grindr. LOL. But I doubt that I'm missing a heck of a lot.

I have enough memories of gay men's culture of rejection to last a lifetime, and have been on both the rejector/rejectee side of the fence. Maybe Lucas is right about keeping one's hookup protocol to the least offensive means possible; maybe it's best when injuring to keep the cuts quick and shallow.

At the same time, ever since reading The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimimons several years ago, it became clear to me that the LGBT community -- and gay men in particular -- are better served if we are also transcending a culture of rejection and not merely trying to make it less damaging.

At the individual level, it is difficult for the average person to shift a culture, but everyone can shift himself or herself. It can start one day at a time by treating other gay people just as you would want to be treated.

Don't be afraid to say "hello," and if a man says hello, don't assume he means, "do me." And don't be afraid to smile, make eye contact, or ask how someone is feeling.

This is a good start. Ultimately, what is at stake is much more important than whether our feelings get hurt or another person's feelings get hurt.

What is at stake is whether we are counterfeiting ourselves by perpetuating cycles of harm to the True Self that is in You and in Me and radiating secretly behind every facade on Grindr.

There is only one True Self, and there is a cost in wholeness to rejecting our beautiful, loving true nature. What are you avoiding by rejecting another person?

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Reposted from my new weblog Soulfully gay : the blog.

To boycott the Salvation Army or not to boycott?

By Joe Perez

I am  joining other leaders in the LGBT community in calling for a boycott of the Salvation Army during this holiday season, but I want to add an important qualification.

Join in a boycott of donating to the fundamentalist Christian organization during the holiday season IF you do so as a intentional practice of ethics that arises from your Unique Self. That is to say, boycott if it is the way you can most beautifully and splendidly express your inner divinity out in the world. And if a different impulse of Love arises from your perspective on the world which leads you to make a different choice, I want to respect and even applaud that impulse as well. There is no one-size-fits-all response to the Salvation Army's red kettle.

The fundamentalist religious organization needs to hear the message that if they are going to support discrimination and gays and lesbians, there is a price to pay. But it will hear this message no matter what you or I do, as there are already thousands of individuals committed to boycotting the organization. The choice you and I make could be one of following the hordes who donate or the hordes who boycott based on spiritual beliefs or ideological principles, or we can choose based on doing what comes naturally to us when we act out of our Unique Self.

The Salvation Army has a prominent presence at public locations such as shopping malls during the holiday season, riging bells and soliciting donations intended for charitable causes. You probably know the ideological rationale for not giving them money. If you don't, Bill Browning of Bilerco gives a run-down of the organization's shortcomings, which have included lobbying campaigns worldwide to make consensual same-sex relations illegal:

The Salvation Army has a history of active discrimination against gays and lesbians. While you might think you're helping the hungry and homeless by dropping a few dollars in the bright red buckets, not everyone can share in the donations. Many LGBT people are rejected by the evangelical church charity because they're "sexually impure."

The church claims it holds "a positive view of human sexuality," but then clarifies that "sexual intimacy is understood as a gift of God to be enjoyed within the context of heterosexual marriage." The Salvation Army doesn't believe that gays and lesbians should ever know the intimacy of anyloving relationship, instead teaching that "Christians whose sexual orientation is primarily or exclusively same-sex are called upon to embrace celibacy as a way of life."

On its webpage, the group claims that "the services of The Salvation Army are available to all who qualify, without regard to sexual orientation." While the words are nice, their actions speak volumes. They blatantly ignore the position statement and deny LGBT people services unless they renounce their sexuality, end same-sex relationships, or, in some cases, attend services "open to all who confess Christ as Savior and who accept and abide by The Salvation Army's doctrine and discipline." In other words, if you're gay or lesbian, you don't qualify.

The organization also has a record of actively lobbying governments worldwide for anti-gay policies - including an attempt to make consensual gay sex illegal.

For Christians, charity begins with recognizing the dignity of other human beings as created in the image of God; at higher degrees of consciousness it can include identification with Love itself, and a felt sense of being one with all beings through Christ. There is no charity in the Salvation Army's prejudiced decrees and harmful, disrespectful acts.

Personally, my challenge to myself this holiday season in living my Unique Self is to not hold judgments the bell-ringers outside the grocery store or Westlake Center, or even towards the fundamentalist leaders of the organization. I do not believe they are bad people. I do not believe they hate gays. I believe they are ME.

Occupy Forgiveness

The peace you are seeking is seeking you. The forgiveness you are waiting for is waiting for you. ~Mary Anne Flanagan/Toning the OM

This week I picked up an old favorite to re-read — Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist, was imprisoned in Auschwitz and Dachau, and he writes eloquently about his harrowing experiences in the death camps. It was through unimaginable suffering that Frankl was able to find meaning not only in his life, but to fully understand how others find meaning in theirs. He writes in his book, “When we are no longer able to change a situation…we are challenged to change ourselves.”

How can we change ourselves? Viktor Frankl writes, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” I have been choosing an attitude of “Occupy Forgiveness” for a few months. Forgiveness has taught me to live in the present and leave the past behind. When I find myself seeking peace, I have noticed that peace is seeking me.

Are there people and situations in your life you are still carrying around with anger, disappointment, and sadness? Please join me on a journey of peace in an upcoming telecourse on Forgiveness. Resting in Radical Forgiveness telecourse starts Monday, November 7 at 8PM (ET).

What would it take for you to Occupy Forgiveness?

Peace, Mary Anne

Mary Anne Flanagan is a Certified Life Coach, Shamanic Practitioner and Teacher workshop facilitator, inspired speaker, and creator of Toning the OM™.  Mary Anne Flanagan/Toning the OM™: maflanagan@toningtheom.com or 917.238.9726. Visit http://www.toningtheom.com

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I’m coming out of the closet … again (part 2)

By Joe Perez

...Continued from Part 1

Of course, I'm not really a virgin. But there are certain traditional notions about virginity that I have learned to appreciate in a new way: purity and worth. Looking at these two notions will help to establish the context for the conclusion to my new coming out story.

Purity. I must say that as I've begun to notice and accept a greater fluidity and flexibility to my erotic constitution, I am able to look at my sexuality with more curiosity and less robotic reactivity to "my eros as I've known it." Child-like playfulness accompanies a sort of unexpected innocence, a willingness to approach desire with "beginner's mind" (Shoshin, meaning openness and lack of preconceptions).

Worth. There are layers and layers of self-acceptance and self-esteem which can be accreted to the self. For sexual minorities, the "coming out" process often progresses in stages of gradually increasing comfort in expressing more of one's self in wider contexts. And yet the question remains at every stage, "What am I coming out into?" Without deeply rooted self-esteem, the suffering associated with coming out can seem more trouble than it's worth.

With these notions of purity and worth in mind, consider the idea I want to present today: that sexuality is the force of Eros, the guiding principle of evolution, a sacred movement which is rooted in the embodied self and which unfolds differently at different stages of the self. And at later stages of development, the sexual self busts out of conventional and post-conventional identities into new emergent forms.

Eros and Evolutionary Emergence

To approach sexuality from a state which is simultaneously lacking in preconceptions and deeply affirming of worth is a peculiar way of being a sexual being. It is a constant moment-to-moment innocence, a sensual opening to novelty and joy and wonder. It requires greater tolerance for paradox and spontaneity than other approaches. But for many people this simply isn't an evolutionary possibility alive for them at their station of life. It is, I think, a peculiarly late post-conventional style of relating.

Contra late conventional styles (i.e., orange altitude), it is not merely a rejection of obedience to traditional strictures and negative attitudes towards having sex. It appreciates that traditional guidelines can help preserve the integrity of societal institutions yet it also makes room for acknowledging that individuals in certain post-conventional situations can transgress traditional models responsibly.

Joe Perez, author of Soulfully Gay, comes out of the closet again...

By Joe Perez

Today on Awake, Aware & Alive, I make an official coming out announcement Here's how the announcement begins:

Please read the words of this post carefully, because there's a tricky question at the end.

I'm coming out of the closet again. In 2004, I told my coming out story in a newspaper column called "Soulfully Gay," the discovery of Integral spirituality by a 34-year-old gay man. But my coming out story is probably not what you think it is, even if you've read the book inspired by the newspaper column, Soulfully Gay (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007).

Here's something you don't know about Soulfully Gay

So far as I know, not a single person has ever noticed and remarked on one of my book's odd facts: in the course of a 314-page spiritual autobiography, you will not find a single sentence in which I say exactly that I am gay or homosexual. (I think once I let the words "my homosexuality" skate by, which I didn't think was a big deal.)

Nobody noticed. Readers just kind of make up their own story by bringing in tons of assumptions, but the plain words just aren't on the page. The words "I'm gay" or "I'm homosexual" or their most common variations are simply not there. They weren't true to my inner voice, and I could not speak them into the words of the page, preferring to always find expressions that did ring true, such as talking about "same-sex desires."

I don't even say that I'm gay in the book's coming out story. I talk about "labels" instead, as in an essay that starts like this:

When I was 20 years old, I first put a label on my sexuality. Actually, I was spared the chore of coming out to my mom, because a university librarian outed me.

I had secretly known that I was different from most other boys since I was in junior high school. To explore my sexuality, I had checked out books on the topic at the university. Unfortunately, I returned a few books a day late.

The university's library system was very efficient. They immediately printed out an overdue notice and sent it to my permanent address on file. My mother opened the letter from the library, saw the titles of the books, and mailed the notice to me. My process of "coming out" had begun!

At different times of my life, I have worn various labels for my sexuality. Since coming out, I have used labels including bisexual, gay, and queer. I am a man more attracted to men than to women, so the gay label works just fine for me most of the time.

What I didn't mention is that the books that I checked out from the library were on male bisexuality (which, incidentally, has recently been proven to exist by pioneering scientists!) I didn't think of my omission as hiding anything. It just felt like an unnecessary distraction in the context. You see, I wrote elsewhere in the book:

By my senior year of college, I grew comfortable expressing my sexuality. I came out of the closet and had my first sexual experiences. I struggled with picking a single label and deemed myself too inexperienced to know for sure what to call myself. I chose the bisexual label, deciding that it was best to keep my options open...

You can't expect a memoir written by a 34 year-old man to be fully transparent. I didn't want to call the book "Soulfully Gay-Identified Person with a Not Insignificant Degree of Fluid Bisexual Expression."

In my 30s, I was highly invested in remaining identified as gay and was nowhere ready to start contemplating what alternatives might be out there. And yet, my sexuality was always more complex than anything that I wanted to reduce to one label. I just wasn't always ready or able to act on the full spectrum of Eros within my potential.

 

Continue reading "I'm coming out of the closet (again)" at Awake, Alive & Aware.

Remembering Tyler Clementi: Gay teen driven to suicide by cyber bullies

By Kittredge Cherry (Jesus in Love)

Tyler Clementi (1992-2010) brought international attention to bullying-related suicide of LGBT youth when he jumped to his death on Sept. 22, 2010 (one year ago today). Clementi was an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey when he died. A talented violinist, he came out to his parents as gay before leaving home for college.

Three days before his suicide, Clementi’s room mate used a webcam to secretly record Clementi kissing another man in their dorm room and streamed the video live over the Internet. In messages posted online before he took his own life, Clementi told how he complained to authorities about the cyber-bullying and asked for a new room assignment. Then he jumped off the George Washington Bridge. It took a week to find his body.

The room mate, Dharum Ravi, also 18 at the time, is charged with several crimes in connection with Clementi’s suicide, including invasion of privacy and bias intimidation. His accomplice, Molly Wei, avoided jail time by agreeing to testify against Ravi. He is scheduled to be back in court Oct. 20.

Anti-LGBT statements by public figures are also partly responsible for Clementi’s death. They created the hostile environment that drove Clementi to suicide. Artist Louisa Bertman emphasizes this point in her powerful ink illustration, “Tyler Clementi, JUMP!” She makes visible the hateful voices that may have been in Clementi’s mind. In her drawing, his head overflows with people urging him to jump.

They are politicians as well as the actual students who bullied him. Their names are listed in a stark statement at the bottom of the drawing: “Message brought to you by Sally Kern, Kim Meltzer, Nathan Deal, Carl Paladino, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, Tom Emmer, Jeremy Walters, Rick Perry, Bob Vander Plaats, Dharun Ravi, & Molly Wei.”

Bertman, an artist based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is known for her non-traditional portraits. Clementi’s highly publicized tragedy made him into a gay martyr whose untimely death put a public face on the problems of LGBT teenagers. His story sparked efforts to support LGBT youth, raise awareness of the harassment they face, and prevent suicide among queer young people. Another result is new legislation stiffening penalties for cyber harassment.

Clementi helped inspire the founding of the It Gets Better Project and Spirit Day. The It Get Better Project aims to stop suicide among LGBT teens with videos of adults assuring them that “it gets better.” Spirit Day, first observed on Oct. 20, 2010, is a day when people wear purple to show support for young LGBT victims of bullying.

Unfortunately Clementi’s experience is far from rare. Openly lesbian talk show host Ellen Degeneres spoke for many in a video message that put his suicide into context shortly after he died: “I am devastated by the death of 18-year-old Tyler Clementi….Something must be done. This month alone, there has been a shocking number of news stories about teens who have been teased and bullied and then committed suicide; like 13-year-old Seth Walsh in Tehachapi, California. Asher Brown, 13, of Cypress, Texas and 15-year-old Billy Lucas in Greensberg, Indiana. This needs to be a wake-up call to everyone: teenage bullying and teasing is an epidemic in this country, and the death rate is climbing.”

Help is available right now from the Trevor Project, a 24-hour national help line for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning teens. Contact them at 866 4U TREVOR or their website: thetrevorproject.org.

___ Kittredge Cherry is a lesbian author who blogs on LGBT spirituality and the arts at the Jesus in Love Blog, where this is cross-posted.

Image credit: “Tyler Clementi, Jump!” by Louisa Bertman

Joe Perez's Awake, Alive & Aware

By Joe Perez

July is a memory. August was my second month back blogging since I returned from a public writing hiatus, and it afforded me the opportunity to explore a wide variety of topics on my mind while experimenting with quantity, frequency, style, and delivery medium. In 75 posts on Awake, Alive & Aware, my attention focused on giving you the contours of how I see the integral worldview in general and Integral Christianity in particular.

However, some of the most popular posts concerned the topic of finding one's vocation in life. This blog asked, "How much social media is too much?" and noted some of my experiments with finding a good relationship with Twitter. The former post caught the eye of career guru Penelope Trunk, who is the first "big name" blogger to visit my comment boxes. I'm stilling find my way into an appropriately integral relationship to Twitter, and I'll post more on the subject next month.

About the word "integral"

I've experimented with writing the word "integral" in different ways: Integral, integral, and just plain integral. I've called "integral" a consciousness, worldview, community, culture, perspective, philosophy and spirituality. And then there's Integral Theory, which has a definite style guideline. I don't buy into the idea that there is a big "Integral" for Ken Wilber's Integral Theory and a little "integral" for everything else. That's just too fixed. My approach is not to set a style and stick to it, but to gradually find my way into a good mix of usages appropriate for various contexts.

I'm gravitating towards a mix of integral (to describe a level of consciousness) and integral (to praise attributes that are positive). In this approach, I am putting into practice a distinction which I wrote about in the month's most popular post, "Defining Integral, or: What Harvey Milk might say to the Integral movement today."

One of my personal favorite posts of the month is "Are Big Ideas dead? Here's one to watch out for," because it helps to explain why integral thought is marginalized in the culture. It's not a reflection so much of the merits of Ken Wilber's thought, the article suggests, but a problem with modern culture's relationship to information. Many comprehensive, Big Idea thinkers are just as marginalized as the Integral ones, and this post offers recommendations for helping to break integral memes out of the cloister and a bit more into the mainstream.