Part of the Precipitate

In Solution Chemistry,
some compounds dissolve quite readily,
no matter what they're paired up with.

But there are not enough reactants
in this world
to let me be aqueous
all the time.

I am silver.

And the world is made up of Halides and Sulfates.

They can make anything part of the solution.
Except for me.
I am almost never soluble.


What happens when you're only seen as a precipitate?
When you draw out things people wish could stay hidden,
dissolved in liquid,
invisible.
When your very existence is something
others wish wouldn't happen?

What happens when you're never wanted?
When you're stuck in a liminal state
between two worlds
desperately trying to find your place
find your calling
find your voice

but no one wants to save you a seat
speak your name
hear you out.

When some say they're grateful for you
there will always be those who respond,
Oh really?
questioning your worth
wondering how anyone could see your benefit.

Because you're a troublemaker
you cause phase division
You are out
to promote your own selfish agenda
and raise awareness
about something no one else cares about.

One hundred eighteen elements to date
and you're the awkward combination of
quarks
that don't fit anywhere.

People appreciate the way silver
keeps the economy running
but they never care about it as Argentum
as Ag+
as 47 protons
and 60 neutrons
give or take a few.

But if you want me here.
You're gonna have all of me.
You'll have the pros and cons
the solubility constant
the electronegativity
the heat capacity
the reduction potential.

There are those
who will want to put me away
lock me up
only to be used
when they want
a coin of silver.

But I want to mingle
with the other elements
see what compounds I can draw out
see what solutions can come about.

I have worth.
Beyond just my market value.
But what happens when people only see you as a distraction?
When you're the crap at the bottom that they want to sweep away?

Yet even when a compound precipitates out
onto the beaker floor,
it's still part of the solution
if you'll let it be.

I want to be part of the solution.
Will you let me be?

Peter in the Garden by Melinda Selmys

"Christ’s action in the Garden is radical. When Christ reaches out and heals the High Priest’s servant, He does not see Himself as healing the enemy. That’s our category, our perspective. He saw Himself as healing the ear of the beloved: He had come to give His life for this man, just as much as He had come to give it for Peter. This is where we find the scandal of the Cross in Gethsemane. I suspect it’s also part of the reason why Peter got into such a funk in the courtyard outside of the High Priest’s house. Peter was ready to die for Christ, and to die with Christ: he had declared this publicly, and he proved it when he stood to fight at Christ’s side. To conceive of Peter’s denial in the courtyard as an act of cowardice is to miss the psychological unity of the narrative: Peter denies Christ here because something happened to his courage between the moment when he drew his sword and the moment that he said “I do not know him.” These words have a particular poignancy if we consider that, in a sense, Peter may really have meant them. Not “I don’t know the man” in the sense of “I don’t know who he is,” but “I don’t know the man” in the sense that He is not who Peter thought. In Gethsemane Christ confronts his most ardent defender with a mystery that Peter cannot understand, and that he is not yet ready to accept. The mystery of a lover who is willing to lay down His life for the sake of those who persecute Him.

… 

So what does the story of Peter in Gethsemane teach us? First, that our way is not Christ’s way. We are to sheathe our swords. Specifically, we are to sheathe them in order to provide an opportunity for Christ to do His healing work. So long as we are fighting against the LGBTQ community, or for that matter any opposing group within the culture war, we are wounding their ears: we are preventing them from being able to hear the message of Christ’s love. Not that Christ’s love for the servant of the High Priest comes in the form of a word. Christ says nothing to this man. He heals him. It brings to mind a saying of Francis of Assissi “Preach the gospel everywhere, and if necessary use words.”


Second, that if we sheathe our swords there will be a terrible darkness. Why do we take up the sword, why fight the Culture Wars in the first place? For obvious reasons. We want to defend America. We want to defend Christianity. We want to defend our children. We want to defend our way of life. These are all things that we love, and we do not want to watch any of them get nailed to the Cross. We feel about the death of any of these things much as Peter felt when he took Jesus aside and rebuked him saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This shall never happen to You.” To which Christ replies “Get behind Me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are not setting your mind on God’s interests, but man’s.”


When Peter sheaths his sword, and Christ tells him “Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and He will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?” Peter is plunged into a state of spiritual darkness and confusion. Up until this point he had a solid identity: he was a follower of Christ. He thought he understood what that meant, and what it demanded of him. Now he doesn’t know what to do. His courage has come to nothing, his saviour has been taken away from him, his desire for martyrdom has been denied. He is asked about his Christian identity, and he is in no condition to give an answer for the faith that is in him. Instead, he says that he doesn’t know what the people in the courtyard are talking about, the cock crows, he realizes his denial, and he weeps.


This is a very accurate psychological portrait of what it looks like to stop fighting the Culture Wars. It’s hard. So long as you have that sword in your hand, you know who you are. You have an identity in Christ: an identity forged and tempered in violence. It doesn’t matter that the violence is the violence of a com-box war, or a letter writing campaign, or a series of articles. The pen, after all, is mightier than the sword. We can imagine Christ in the Culture Wars crying “Peter, sheathe your pen.” He who lives by the pen, shall die by the pen? If we look at the state of the Mass Media traditional Christianity certainly seems to be dying by the pen.

Third, Peter’s story teaches us that there will be faith beyond this darkness. It provides us with a way forward, a way to be Christian beyond the Culture Wars. “Feed my lambs. Take care of my sheep. Feed my sheep.” There’s an interesting detail here that you can miss in translation, which is that the first two times that Christ asks whether Peter loves him, he asks about agape, a form of love that is simultaneously more unconditional, but also less personal than philia. When Peter responds, he speaks of philia all three times. The third time that Christ asks, He rephrases the question in Peter’s terms and asks about philia, about the kind of love that we think of when we speak of intimate, personal friendship. It’s also interesting that Peter is hurt only this third time, when Christ throws his friendship, his affection into question.

So how do we feed Christ’s lambs, how do we tend His sheep? We start by listening. What are people in the LGBTQ community hungry for? What wounds do they need healed? What obstacles stand between them and the sheepfold? And then we remove those obstacles, and we heal those wounds, and we provide for those hungers.

This can be addressed to some degree in the abstract. We can talk about general patterns in terms of what LGBTQ Christians need from their parishes and from their faith communities. But the main thing that they need is love. Not just agape, but philia. Not just concern for their good, but comraderie, affection, friendship."

Read the rest here:  http://spiritualfriendship.org/2014/10/18/peter-in-the-garden-of-gethsemane/

Her testimony is CRAY CRAY.  seriously.

so a passing SIL person (the academic side of Wycliffe), who was living at the dorm that I live at and who is not related with the school, apparently saw me and the other gay student here hugging in the dorm kitchen and thought it was "too sexual/more-than-friends" or something and complained to the overall Center (which my school rents space from) and the Academic Dean told us this today and he said that it's apparently still working up the chain of command in the Center and who knows what their procedures are with this and whether they will just tell that person to calm down or if my friend and I will be kicked out of the dorm or if we'll be banned from being on campus (although my school would fight hard for us to be able to stay) and it's like... seriously?  They could do that from extrapolating from a hug?  The Dean doesn't even know the person's name or how long ago this happened.  Apparently the person didn't even know we were gay at the time, but it was just too much affection for two guys to share??

Like, person, you do NOT know our life situations or our sex lives or what's going on or anything about me apparently.

Just try and tell me that homophobia doesn't exist anymore or that it isn't unwarranted.  Part of me feels like it'll probably amount to nothing, but it is somewhat unnerving that something bad could happen.

And the psychological and spiritual manipulation is still continuing with the whole t-shirt fiasco.

i need to get out of here.

T-shirt Update

Thank you all so much for your support!  It really means a lot to me.  I'm still thinking of good things to say to some of you, but I will get there soon. I had a good conversation with the Dean, and it turned out to not be as serious as I thought.  But then, when I left, I realized that a number of things she said didn't quite make sense, so I sent her a follow-up email.  After about three weeks, she sent me a response (today).

Why Being Gay Is Not The Most Pleasant Experience

I haven't blogged in far too long.  As I told a couple of people who asked about it, I guess I reached a critical point where so much has happened that every time I started a post, I'd get overwhelmed by how much I needed to say that I just stopped midway through the post.

But I still do remember Ann telling me that I needed to blog more when I was at her wedding (back in September!  Wow, that was almost a year ago), and Karen has told me to just write short blog posts, so perhaps I'll try and do that more frequently.

I don't think I've mentioned on here yet that my grad school campus is by far, the most homophobic place I've ever encountered.  You would think that the spoken word poem that I shared at the school's talent show would be helpful for people to gain empathy and compassion for gay people, but instead, the school administration just told me that I crossed a line, and many of the older people were upset.  The admin wasn't gonna take any serious action, though, since there weren't guidelines in place for what should and should not be shared at the talent show, and I did do a legitimate art form.  No compliments for the effort and thought I put into my poem though.  =\

(I'm gonna paraphrase a little from what I wrote to someone in January, cause I'm lazy, and want to get to the meat of the turmoil I'm currently in)

"In my time here, I've had people be really scandalized when I wear Rice's gay-straight alliance shirts, question me about calling myself gay,  think I have a "spirit of homosexuality" in me that I need to get delivered from, and show me video after video of ex-gay people who claim that they are no longer gay (and when they say they're no longer "gay," I'm guessing they're just defining "gay" as being in a same-sex relationship, not defining it as having same-sex attractions). 

Not to say that I don't like my new grad school--I do. And I can tell that it's where God wants me to be, not just for the chance to learn more about linguistics and Bible translation, but also for the chance to be able to speak into people's lives about what being gay means, and to encourage Christians to be more open and vulnerable about what they're going through. Thankfully, God has provided me with another gay person on campus, and he has been a tremendous blessing to me." (which has become a hot mess in of itself, but I think is more resolved now, hopefully)

Recently, though I've just been praying that God would give me the strength to follow through with the vocation he's given me.

-------

In late March, I sent an email to Wycliffe (the major Bible translation organization on campus, although there is a smaller, newer one that grew out of Wycliffe called Pioneer Bible Translators), in regards to their Code of Conduct page, where they state that "Unacceptable behaviors include, but are not limited to, the following: . . . Inappropriate sexual identification and activity including, but not limited to: . . . Homosexual and/or cross-gender orientation."  Other gay person on campus decided to alert me to this because heck, I want to know sooner rather than later whether I can even join their organization if that's the case.

Here's part of the response:

 David, I appreciate your honesty. And I am happy to see that you are trying to be celibate from same-sex relationships and sex. But any homosexual activities or behaviors are violations of Wycliffe’s Ethics & Conduct Policy and prohibit you from applying. I do pray that God will give you great strength as you pursue holiness and endeavor to please Him in everything. I do not struggle with what you are dealing with, but am tempted in other ways. I am so glad that His Spirit lives in us and helps us in our weaknesses.

I would encourage you David to seek professional help, and set up sound, biblical accountability structures as you deal with these behaviors. May God's presence continue to lead you in discerning His purposes and plans for your life.

That's... great.  I mean, what does "professional help" even mean?  Do they realize that that the American Psychological Association discourages against reparative therapy, and even the American Association of Christian Counselors has taken out their mentions and encouragement of reparative therapy in their code of conduct this year?

To be fair, I could probably get a couple of different responses depending on who I talk to, and a couple of my professors who are with Wycliffe were really surprised that just having a "homosexual orientation" was prohibited.

I really should dialogue more with this guy, because I feel like he might be confused about something.  But I just haven't quite gathered the energy to do so.  Especially now, as I'm involved in yet another fiasco.

-------

Remember when I said that some people above have been really scandalized by my Rice Queers & Allies T-shirts?  I've attached a photo of both of them below:

The black one has gotten the most attention, and I guess it's what's gotten me in trouble this time.  

Today, the professor that I've mainly been in contact with about all these things (the cultural anthropology teacher who let me have a day in class to show a powerpoint that I compiled about sexuality during our couple of days about Gender & Sexuality!  That was a good day at least.) has told me that the administration doesn't want me to wear those shirts anymore. Their complete words that he gave me about it were: 

“ . . . we will be adding an administrative . . . policy statement to the effect of ‘Clothing must be free of pictures or slogans with sexual references, drug references, or anything else the administration deems inappropriate’ (although it may not end up exactly that wording). 

We also believe that the student’s wearing of the shirt in question was also in violation of the Student Handbook (1) Expected Standards of Conduct: ‘…conduct should honor Christ in all activities on and off the campus’ and (2) Modesty Standards: ‘… students are expected to dress in a manner that will reflect Biblical standards for modesty and purity. All students are expected to encourage each other in accord with 1 Corinthians 8:9 (“But take care that this liberty of yours does not somehow become a stumbling block to the weak.”)’

This paragraph on Modesty Standards also contains the clause that ‘faculty and staff are… encouraged to approach any student dressed inappropriately and request a change in attire or behavior.’”

This is frustrating and upsetting in so many ways. And painfully ironic, when you consider the fact that I go to a linguistics school, and they don’t like the way I use language to describe my experience.  Maybe they're worried about conservative donors pulling their funding (a reason they gave me after I shared my poem about why they were upset) or something.  I guess I'll probs talk to the Dean of Students about it tomorrow in the first step of the appeal process.

I can't really think of a totally rational response without tearing up or just getting emotionally distraught, so we'll see how the talk goes. I started writing a response so I'd have something to say, but all I have is below:

"As upset as this whole situation makes me, I am not some angry, radical queer guy who’s trying to offend everyone. I am your gay brother in Christ. I am just trying to let others know that people like me exist. The primary message of my t-shirt is that gay, bisexual, and trans people are human too, which I am pretty sad to see that the administration deems that message as inappropriate. My t-shirts don’t identify myself for me; I've seen straight people wear those t-shirts, and it has no bearing on their sexuality.

I have lived years of my life believing that no one else struggled with this and that I was alone in all of this. While I had come out in college, I still never had anyone I could share life with about this struggle. I spent the last semester of college wishing I was dead almost every day, imagining myself drinking bleach and dying in my dorm room bed. I would prep my teaching for Sunday School with my friend, and then just sit in the room in the dark by myself for an hour after he left. I felt hopeless. Life isn't sustainable when your only role models and companions are internet blogs. I came here, expecting that God was bringing me to an environment where I could be open about my struggles and to talk with other Christians and receive their helpful feedback in how to cultivate a life of celibacy and being gay.

The only feedback I get from this situation, and the administration’s response to my spoken word poem, however, is that I am unwanted. Being gay is too messy, it’s too much, it’s crossing lines and it’s upsetting people and it’s too much of a liability. At all the conservative churches and Christians I've been around, I've never felt as marginalized as I do here. I understand so much better now why there have been so many gay teen suicides. They feel unheard and unwanted because they are. So how many more queer people have to die before more Christians listen and reach out to them?"

Like I said before, this response doesn't actually address the issues very well, but I still don't really know what their problem with it is.  I guess I'll find out tomorrow.  I've compiled a looong list of excerpts of gay chaste bloggers for reasons why I identify as gay as opposed to "having same-sex attractions," thanks to all the people who've asked me that question here, and I expect I'll probably have to pull that out tomorrow.  

In the end, it might just come down to the fact that they want to preserve some conservative image of their school that supporting queer people (regardless of sexual activity) is not a part of.  If it comes down to that, I don't know whether to be a good advocate for queer people by trying to stand my ground, or just giving up and letting them have their way.  Either way, it's hard to envision myself walking out of this mentally, spiritually, and emotionally unscathed.

Please pray for me.