What endures in the gay spirit
If you read nothing else this summer, make sure you read Armistead Maupin’s newest, “Michael Tolliver Lives” (HarperCollins 2007). One of our favorite characters from “Tales of the City” — Mouse — is alive and middle-aged and going strong. I won’t review the book except to say it is a powerful, can’t-put-it-down read, and I won’t reveal the story except to say it moved me deeply. An opening scene finds Mouse near the mouth of the Castro district listening to someone rant about the mall-ification of the Castro — Michael decides his spirituality will survive and survive it does.
What is it that endures in the gay spirit? One might want to respond immediately that love is the thing that endures, but I think the answer is deeper than that. Love is important, like bedrock. But love changes over time. Love is a vital, living part of each of us, and as we change, the way we love changes too. Relationships mature and the love that forms them matures as well. Romance, which too often in American society is equated with love, also changes. All you have to do is clean out the attic (or the garage, or dare I say it, your closet) to see how time changes everything. “What did I save that for?” I think as I toss out old theater tickets or concert programs — and yet at the time I saved them as mementos of famously romantic moments. I thought they would keep my heart warm forever.
What about the search for happiness? We all search for happiness, maybe too much. Sometimes I think we are so busy searching for happiness that we fail to notice it is all around us. I know folks who spend every vacation with a camera glued to their faces. Even in this digital age (now the camera is at arm’s length), they never see anything around them except through the lens of the camera. Life is experienced past-tense in the post-vacation slide-show. But reality is more intense, the colors of life are more intense when they are just experienced live. This is a problem of every faith community. Most religions arise out of a revelation about how to achieve the ultimate reality of peace and happiness in community. And yet most of us are too busy metaphorically photographing the present, too busy running to chase happiness, to see that all we have to do is respect ourselves and each other.
In the end, I think the thing that endures is hope. Hope is like a pilot light, a tiny bit of warmth just waiting to expand into flame when just the right ingredients come together. When we have hope, we walk bravely through whatever comes our way. Gay folks need hope — we always have and we always will. We have love and we have romance and we have each other, and we have happiness in measured bits. Like everyone else, we need to have the hope that there will always be something new around the next corner in life. But we also have to have hope that someday we will achieve real equality. We have to have hope that when we grow old, we will still be able to love and be loved. We have to hang on to that pilot light, to the flame of a hopeful future.
The Rev. Richard P. Smiraglia is Convenor of Episcopal Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Outreach (www.ecglo.org). He is on staff at The Church of the Holy Trinity, Rittenhouse Square, 1904 Walnut St. He can be reached at fatherrichard@ecglo.org.