MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Who do you serve on World AIDS Day?

Who do you serve? So often we go about our days, doing our work, engaging with the news (or refusing to engage), never pausing to reflect on this basic question. Tomorrow, the first of December, let us ask whether our efforts to eliminate AIDS-related suffering are truly serving the World.

So this post is to those of us whose consciousness is already raised about HIV/AIDS and are committed to its eradication. We know that there is neither a cure nor a vaccine to prevent its transmission. We know that despite decades of education, ignorance about the disease remains high and risky behaviors unacceptably high. We know people continue to die by the millions each year.

On World AIDS Day, we may ask: am I serving myself? If I am HIV negative, am I taking good care of my immune system and taking appropriate precautions with every risky situation? Do I know enough to not get AIDS? If I am HIV positive, am I keeping the virus in my body under control and keeping my emotional and spiritual health high enough so that I recognize my own inherent worth?

We should also ask: am I serving my community? How many people living with HIV are on your street, in your neighborhood, and in your city? What needs and challenges do they face? In this time of budget shortfalls and health insurance belt tightening, do not assume they have what they need. Find out who helps them, and if those organizations are healthy enough to do their work. What can you do?

Then we may whether we serve our country. Are we supporting leaders who back up their words about the need to combat AIDS with intelligent strategies that use methodologies proven effective by scientific research or driven by ideology? Do our leaders understand the connections between HIV, poverty, education, drug abuse, and crime—and do they see the big picture?

Do you serve the world? Among 33 million HIV positive people in the world, only about 4 million are getting the medicine they need. If UNAIDS and WHO statistics suggest that the global epidemic may be slowing, where are the hardest-hit countries who are lagging behind? What do millions upon millions of people need? If you do not know, this is a good day to educate yourself.

Imagine a world without AIDS, and act as if that vision were already true. God's compassion reaches into the suffering depths of world through my hands and yours. Those hands can only reach as far as you let them, only as far as you let Spirit work through you. Compassion and love know no limits except those illusions and delusions that stop us from being who we truly are. Be who you are, let us all be who we are, and the suffering associated with HIV will vanish.

Cross-posted on Integrally Gay.

Art honors AIDS martyrs on World AIDS Day

The agony of AIDS and its treatment is expressed in “El Martir” (The Martyr) by Armando Lopez.  It is posted here today for World AIDS Day.

Lopez reinterprets St. Sebastian as an AIDS patient suffering under harrowing modern health-care procedures. Lopez, a New Mexico folk artist, painted it as a tribute to all those who died from AIDS in the early years of experimentation by the medical profession.

St. Sebastian, a third-century Christian saint, is traditionally presented as a near-naked martyr shot with arrows.  Lopez’s martyr is punctured not by arrows, but by the many needles used for medical treatment. 

Read more about “El Martir” at the Jesus in Love Blog

Image credit: El Martir (The Martyr) by Armando Lopez

Around the blogosphere: HIV positive bloggers rise up

Regan's HIV Blog- "Sisters Rise":

I think the formula for helping women rise above HIV is simple. We can borrow from the old Breck shampoo commerical from the '70s (the young women at UPenn will have no idea what I'm talking about). It goes like this: A woman with luxuriously shiny hair (she just washed it with Breck) flips her cascading mane around while claiming that she "told two friends, who told two friends, who told two friends and so on and so on" until the whole world of women with access to a grocery store knew about the wonderous nature of Breck shampoo.

Sean's HIV Blog - "The Return of the Living GRID"

Return of the Living Dead not only entertained the most morbid corner of my humanity, the movie also inspired my first post-diagnosis inner-dialogue of resurrection. Maybe, just maybe, if AIDS struck me down I too could come back from beyond the grave to extract a little revenge on those who were free to live a life of debauchery. As my teenaged peers dreamt of making sweet love to the Playmate of the Year after a hot date, I fantasized about eating her brains after a brisk chase through an eerie, decrepit cemetery.

HIV and AIDS News - "Research Finds No Advantages In 4 Drug Regimen"

Adding a fourth drug to the existing three drug antiretroviral treatment, for the initial stages of HIV has not shown any benefits, according to a U.S. study that covered some 765 patients for three years.

Joe's HIV Blog - "How Much Are You Willing to Pay?"

Until you really take a hard look, you will not know just how much you are already sacrificing. Once you slow down, you will be amazed at how much energy you expend in dealing with day-to-day living, add to that dealing with your infection and you can be on verge of mental meltdown. If you think you can ignore major issues and not pay a price for that, you are sadly mistaken. Stress can and does kill and its effect on pozzies health is well known.