Category: Personal

Babtists

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists.

I was raised in Southern Baptist churches. Every moment of my young life I felt like an outsider. The Baptists helped with that. Inside me was the hard truth that every day, I secretly wished I was a girl. I heard over and over again from the churchy people in my family, who insisted (without knowing what was true of me, because I kept that secret buried deep inside) that people with sin in their hearts were bound for Hell, and that femininity in a male was a sickness and a sin.

I was presented with a choice. And my choice was to embrace my whole self: to be a good person, and to let the idea that I was inherently evil go, instead of internalizing the self-hatred I had been raised to. Every positive step I’ve taken since then has led to a larger worldview and a stronger sense of myself in the larger context.

My sense of right and wrong is well developed and is based in justice, not in following the second-hand pronouncements of a god that I no longer believe exists. This is not to say that I have not been a little shit at times in my life. I have. I acknowledge that I have made mistakes, as everyone does, and I continue to try to move forward and choose to take good action for myself and those I love as best I can.

But the Southern Baptist Council, the governing body of the churches I attended as a child, continues to dehumanize and marginalize people, and continues to believe that its views should rule this country and hold dominion over this world. At the 2024 Southern Baptist Convention, attendees voted to actively oppose Obergefeld, to exclude from membership any church with a female pastor, and to keep the SBC’s financials from being made public, thereby confirming their ideology as toxic.

Of course, they also have this effed up resolution, dated June 1st, 2014, that permanently separates me from the ideology of much of my family: On Transgender Identity, which is contradictory and hateful on a profound level. They claim that “we love our transgender neighbors” and in the same document resolve to “oppose all cultural efforts to validate claims to transgender identity,” rendering the whole document nonsensical and branding themselves once again as hypocrites.

And that’s at the heart of my exit from that religion and from the positive regard of much of my family.

not my family, not my church

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Where the Snow Doesn’t Turn Black

It all speaks to some kind of elevated daily existence…

I live in a house in the country. I’ve lived here for 4 years now.

The people are friendly. I have never felt so comfortable to participate in conversations as I do here. The conversational pace is slow enough that my introvert-standard split-second processing pause before I speak doesn’t ace me out of the craic every time, just maybe about half the time. It may seem counterintuitive, since there are so many more things to be a part of in the cities and towns I’ve lived in before, but I feel more a part of things here. I’m still an introvert, and that will never change, but the personal battery doesn’t drain as much in a crowd here.

The light is gorgeous around my house. It’s strange. Is this a byproduct of cleaner air? Perhaps. There is a more crystalline, more buttery aspect to the light, a kind of radiance that I find soothing and wondrous. I feel attached to the environment here. I have a large yard that needs maintenance (which I’m only OK at attending to, it must be said) but it pays dividends in many ways. The many beautiful shades and hues of green, the flowers — some planted by previous residents here, some volunteers/wildflowers, some we’ve planted ourselves — that one can see from every one of the many windows in this house, the purity of the snow as it hugs the ground, never going black, never taking on the smoke and cinders and road filth the stuff always did in the city, the open space… it all speaks to some kind of elevated daily existence.

I call this “motif #1.” I’ve taken this picture many times.

And that’s not to say that life is perfect. Nope, nope, nope. I don’t have a place to go walking here. There are no sidewalks. If I want to go for a walk, I have to either risk the traffic along Main Rd. (which is not insignificant, and some people drive through here at well above the speed limit) or get in the car and drive 5 miles to find a place to walk. Either way, it’s inconvenient, and as a result I’ve put on a fair amount of weight. My life is far too sedentary.

But this is a problem that I can address, and will. And if I can manage that much, I believe my life “out here” will be all the better for the extra effort, and that there may be some unexpected benefits to go along with it. One idea I’ve had to make these benefits manifest is to do some nature journaling. I’ve done it before. It’s been fun and it’s taught me stuff about the natural world and about myself.

So, yeah.

I love it here. In the places I can see from my window and in this beautiful crooked little house, life is sweet.

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Controversial Beliefs

  • Evidently, the most controversial belief I hold is that I am a woman. This one may get me killed at some point, or cause me to move to Europe. And then get me killed.
  • I think I would like to live in a small one-bedroom apartment in Bergen, Norway with Karen.
  • I think Yes’s Fly From Here – Return Trip may be one of the band’s best albums. We’ll talk more about this one at some future point.
  • I think when Donald Trump is dead and gone, all of this crap about him is going to come out and I think the world at large will be collectively mind-blown by the depravity the man has inhabited his whole life.

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Zeitgeist 11/25/25

It’s been 62 years and a couple of days since Kennedy was shot and killed, most likely by the CIA. Just this morning, I was thinking about how it feels to me like we’re living in the 125th year of the 20th Century, especially here in the US. I think all of the concerns of post-WWII America are still with us. We just keep dancing around the same old things — burgeoning fascism and the plight and willingness to fight of everyday people in this country to keep what we and our forebears have fought for in the past. I honestly can’t say what we’re headed for, but I know we’re still recycling our past, which is not sustainable.

I hope we manage to break the cycle of resentment and corruption that seems to be the biggest impetus acting on what’s going on in the world, but there’s no guarantee that we ever will. I’m convinced that if we don’t manage the feat, we’re in for a hellish time going forward – not that the 20th century has been such a picnic up until now.

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I’m playing my bass again

That’s been interesting. It had been long enough that my fingers wouldn’t do precisely what I wanted them to when I picked the thing up after a decade away from it. It’s nice to have the thing in my hands again, and this little combo practice amp I bought sounds better than my old live rig did.

I got it cleaned up and restrung by the guy over at Replay in Turner’s… Ray, I think his name is? I may be wrong about that. He has not been super-supportive, but he did do a moderately good job cleaning up my bass. He seems sure I’m not going to stick with it, and told me when I’m ready to sell my Rick to let him know. Thanks dude, I’ll keep that in mind.

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I just finished a revision to the novella I’m working on, and resisted the temptation to go right back to it. I definitely have more work to do on the thing, but I think that the story will benefit from my taking a little time to process. That being said, I admit it might be a year before I get back to that particular story.

In the meantime, I’m beginning the selection process for a chapbook. My conception of the thing right now is that it will look like a volume of poetry, and it will contain a few short poems, perhaps, but most of it will be prose. My idea is to walk the line between fantasy and creative nonfiction. Some pieces will be clearly on one side or the other of that line, but I’m hoping to find some way to synthesize the two things together. Based on the work I’ve found so far, I should be able to accomplish the feat for the 16-20K words I’ll need. Once I get that done, then I will go back to the novel for another pass.

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Finally, my wife’s health struggles continue. She’s keeping up her spirits as she spends sooo much more time interfacing with the health care industry than anyone would ever want to, feeling the impact of the various problems she’s in the midst of fighting. She’s still active and hardworking, which is amazing.

I am so glad we are together, she makes my life better in countless ways. She says I do that for her, and I am trying to believe her. I’m skeptical sometimes, but I do try my best to be helpful and supportive. I love her like nobody’s business.

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That’s about all I have for now. I’m going to try to be a better correspondent. People seem to like when I post here, so I promise to try. Do me a favor and leave a comment once in a while? The occasional like and subscription are also much appreciated.

TTYL.