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January 30, 2000 Ecumenical Welcoming Sunday
A convocation of cemetery cats perched on fallen stones in La
Cimetiere de Montmarte, and Jeff and I stopped to look. We had made
plans to meet in Paris, and I was leading him on a quest. Five years
had passed since I left New York, which meant five years of missing the
daily company of my best friend. It was as if we needed the backdrop
of Paris to say all the things we had to say to reaffirm our bohemian
friendship in the second half of our lives.
In another lifetime we had met often in our little run-down apartments
in their vastly run-down buildings to throw together what money we had
to make pasta, with chicken if we were flush, and perhaps a quart of
beer in those years of our early 20's.
And now we stood in these streets of the dead; those for whom
revolution had been reality, whose lives Hemingway harked back on and
Hugo knew intimately. To the right there were orderly rows of small
houses. They were roughly 9' tall, 6' wide, and 8' deep. Each had
gothic spires and a small window in the back, which held cracked
stained glass, or shards of glass, or nothing at all but wind and the
autumn leaves passing through. Most had a gate; many were locked to
visitors, and others hung open and beckoned.
But first, to our left on old tables of stone-those cats. I had heard
a romantic story about the cemetery cats of Paris. The ancestors of
these cats were brought to the graves of their departed at the burial,
and abandoned there. They do not look loveable because they do not
look like they have ever received love. We stepped closer. They
tensed their haunches, and stared us down. Each cat bore marks of a
rough life. Mange, missing parts, decrepitude, and overall filth from
a lack of self-care unusual in cats. But they could do something
powerful. They could look into our souls. What their eyes spoke we
felt deeply; "You-we know you-one of those who brought us up, took care
of us, told us you loved us. Then something happened, and we are
here-with no love, no mercy, and no justice. We recognize you." Jeff
and I looked long-and they looked back. Finally we turned toward the
streets of the dead, and I was haunted by something from T. S. Eliot's
Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats:
We looked back from a distance, and they still watched.
After walking past row after row of these mausoleums which looked like
little gothic or neo-classic chapels, we found what I was looking
for-the borrowed grave of Alphonsine Plessis, la Dame aux Camelias.
The door of the tomb was laid open, and Jeff walked in. I took his
picture in the doorway.
There was a real Camille, and Dumas fils, the author of the novel about
her life, is buried nearby. There was a real Violetta and her lover
Alfredo in a story that Verdi put to music in La Traviata. Her door
was open, as in the old days of her grand salon in Paris when gentlemen
came to visit, and we too, stepped in to join her as gentlemen callers.
Like the fictional Marguerite of Camille, and Violetta of La Traviata,
Alphonsine Plessis was cut off from the love of her family and depended
on the kindness of others. Wealthy male admirers set the beautiful
young woman up in style, and she was seen and admired in all of the
best places. She became a courtesan; her home was a salon where the
cream of society came. When she began having trouble with her health,
in what would become tuberculosis, a young man stated his love; he
would take her to the country and marry her. She loved him, and began
selling her effects so that they might make a home.
One day while he was away, his father paid a visit to Alphonsine. He
needed to make her understand how the world works. People like her
could be admired for their beauty and talents, but must be made to
grasp that they are outside the bounds of society and not a part of
decent family values. He convinced her that it was for her lover's
sake that this scandalous marriage should not happen. He convinced her
that she was not worthy of belonging to a sacred family unit, so she
agreed to go back to Paris and never tell her lover why she had left.
Her tuberculosis grew worse and, as depicted in Camille, she returned in poor health and finances. As she lay dying, she heard the auction
of her belongings taking place in the salon. She was far from decent
society now, dying alone in a hallway without her lover nearby. One
admirer lent one of these small houses, and we were standing in the
grave of Alphonsine Plessis, who gave at the least an equal love, yet
somehow the world found her lacking in traditional family values.
We know people like her. Friends who struggle to give their love in
equal measure despite being told that their love is wrong. Friends,
sisters and brothers, aunts and uncles, who stand on the outside
looking in at empty chairs at the table where they would sit if only
the concept of "all persons are created equal" were meant to apply to
them as well. People who have been bashed physically or mentally who
hide their pain, who lick their wounds on the outskirts, not expecting
to be invited in. The family and friends of Matthew Shepard stood in
one such graveyard and can tell you more about that. We know or are
people who have felt the sting of racism, or whose gender or age has
consigned us to the outer circles of power. The political waters have
been tested to demonize gay and lesbian people in order to assure the
support of another specific voting base. The results may have played
out well in terms of elections, but the inflammation of hate from those
who know better has surely resulted in the recent death of a young man
who wanted to serve his country. And yet two weeks ago, a cartoon by
Michael Ramirez in the Los Angeles Times carelessly took this young
man's life as well as the lives of all gay and lesbian people who wish
to serve in the military, and demeaned them by making the comparison
that "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" equates sexual orientation with
bestiality. The cartoon is on our bulletin board.
More insidious perhaps than the hate stirred up today in order to build
a power base, heedless of the pain and suffering that is inflicted upon
the targets, is the low self esteem that is engendered in the targets
of hate.
I add Jeff to my list of friends who are living with AIDS.
Suffering from AIDS Dementia, Jeff was found in his apartment sleeping
and starving himself to death. His behavior had troubled us for a
while, but we never would have known that he had AIDS, as he managed to
hide his illness and his sexuality from all of us, even his best friend
of 20 years. I met him when he was in an unhappy relationship with a
woman. When it ended, he never had a relationship again. Only
anonymous meetings late at night when he could no longer stand the
suppression of natural needs, which he believed, were shameful; then
back home where he could pretend it never happened.
Because it's not supposed to happen, you see. There is a myth about
God that God doesn't accept. For eons people have attached the face of
God to their own prejudices in order to elevate the debased: People
can't be naturally attracted to their own sex, one race is superior to
another, and feminists are evil--they can't be good people from good
families, and you surely couldn't know any of them. It's impossible to
even think that they might find healthy love and happiness in a
committed relationship, because the good folk of decent society say so.
And they've got God to back them.
Virginia Woolf once said, "I sat up last night and read the Book of
Job. God doesn't come out of it very well." I can identify with Job,
admiring him as he holds on to his integrity. Faith is a difficult
enough enterprise for many of us, isn't it? Hard enough, without being
blasted by the righteous trance channellers of God; the Gary Bauers,
Alan Keyes, James Dobsons, Pat Robertsons, and Jerry Falwells who give
us a god at "his" worst.
Here today is a community of people whose churches turned against them
first for being born who they are, again in the face of the most
horrifying plague our generations have witnessed, and again as
political fodder to stir up fear. Why do these outcasts and their
loved ones maintain faith in spite of it all?
I think it is perhaps because of a secret knowledge. A knowledge
innate in those who are oppressed and hated for any reasons, who raise
themselves up without benefit of role models, who refuse to believe
what they are told about themselves, who dodge blows and verbal abuse,
who believe in their worth, and who seek after lasting love believing
they are worthy. Most importantly, here is a community of people who
know that God made them and loves them, as they are in the face of the
self-righteous who worship a god made in their own image. These are
people of faith, who refuse to believe they can be separated from God
by the ignorance of many who go about calling themselves Christian.
But like the cemetery cats, in this age where the victim is blamed, in
this age of hate crimes against minorities, we now look up from graves
and from the outside saying, "You. We know you. You brought us up,
took care of us, told us you loved us. Then something happened, and we
are here, without your love, with no mercy, and no justice. We
recognize you, but we don't recognize your notion of God".
Communities of outcasts learned the meaning of faith, grace, hope, and
love, by experiencing the loss of each in the withdrawal and disdain of
family, society, and the false idea of a God who wouldn't love us. By
being put to the test in the age of sanctioned hate. And by passing
that test in deepened compassion, self-examination, and caring, in
communities like this one with friends we can trust.
Apparently now the institution of marriage needs to be protected from
some of us by a pre-emptive strike. A sweet young thing marries for
money. A rich old man marries for something else. A CEO dumps his
middle-aged wife to marry a trophy wife. A multiple divorcee marries
out of habit. Dennis Rodman marries . . .period. Some marriages aren't
made in heaven, at least by majority standards. But the public doesn't
usually try to annul marriages of which they don't approve.
Yet now, the institution of marriage itself needs protection from some
of us asking for equal rights. But, as comedienne Lynn Lavner says,
"The Bible contains 6 admonishments to homosexuals and 362
admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't
love heterosexuals. It's just that some of them need more
supervision".
Those of us who have experienced hate or diminishment have had to learn
to love ourselves because of who we are, and to do so not just without
those whose command is to love their neighbors, but in spite of them,
and to say as Job did:
I don't think anyone ever has the right to break the law; but I do
think that upon occasion, everyone has the duty to break the law--when
the law begins to dominate rather than serve humankind. [Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Riverside Church -August, 1968] In another
month we will be asked to "protect" the institution of marriage.
I flew to New York to bring Jeff, in his state of dementia, to
his parents' home. We needed to discuss removing him from his drugs so
that he could die. When we got back to New York, his mind was close
enough to the surface for me to ask him if in any of his encounters he
had at least once felt love or even tenderness. His answer was swift.
"Of course not." He had believed what our culture told him about
himself; therefore he went about setting his life apart in a series of
denials of who he was, cutting off all opportunities for love or
happiness. He didn't deserve it.
On the morning I had to leave, I sat at the empty table where we had
shared so many meals and conversations, and looked at his empty chair.
It hit me that I might be saying good-bye to him forever. Every day, I
would go into his room. Each time I tried to leave the room he'd say
"don't leave." Now, I was leaving for good. We held each other for
the first time, and cried. It was a last "goodbye."
Jeff was taken to a new doctor, who put him on protease inhibitors.
The miracle in this friendship has been that he has been fully restored
to me, and that he has accepted himself and is learning slowly how
extend the part of God called "love" that is within him for the first
time to another human being.
On this Ecumenical Welcoming Sunday, we need to examine our personal
responsibility in the evil of crimes of hatred and the emotional and
spiritual crime of exclusion by looking at that table and saying that
empty chairs cannot exist. We need to build better bridges of
understanding. We need to examine the draftsmen of divisiveness and
the institutors of intrusiveness and unfairness who bring us reasons
why some of us cannot and should not approach that table as children of
God.
Theirs is the greatest disease today. "Too often we show symptoms of
a deadly disease called psychosclerosis, a hardening not of the
arteries, as in arteriosclerosis, but of the psyche, the spirit. As a
result our hearts no longer remain vulnerable. Our minds can no longer
see, let alone embrace others in our midst. For a cure, the trick in
life is to die young as late as possible. But sufferers of
psychosclerosis clearly seek to die old as young as possible." [Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Riverside Church - 1984-85]
If only they had a knowledge, a "gnosis" of a God who blesses and
restores, perhaps they would not ask us to step outside, away from this
table or the halls of privilege. This knowledge simply says, "I have
given you the great gift of knowing yourself to be born exactly who you
are, when others can't see. To know that God loves all, not punishes
the other."
To know that God loves you when the world and its institutions tell you
otherwise calls for a big leap of faith. In that leap, God is freed,
liberated from the perceptions, projections, and restrictions of
humankind. Simply, as Victor Hugo wrote in Les Miserables, "to love
another person is to see the face of God."
Those who suffer from homophobia, from racism, sexism, and the unset
place for the disabled, see the world through a window where everyone
else is at a feast and no chairs have been set for them. Yet in our
love, some of us are lucky enough to see the face of God. We are just
so astonished at first to find God outside standing with us, in the
graves of so many Alphonsine Plessis'; with our hands on the gates,
some open, and some locked. God standing with us; looking in at the
world through the broken shards of sharp stained glass hanging from
gothic windows, which have only served to cut at the light. Standing
with God, loving the unlovable, like the cemetery cats of Paris-with
mercy, and with justice. AMEN.
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Websites:
Mt. Hollywood Congregational Church
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