Subtitle: Your friendly neighborhood atheist's trip to the mountaintop :-)

Pflag-talkers --I decided to post the url because of Angie's message this morning- consider this is post to the list-- it's not public
Maggie 8/14/96.

August 6-11, 1996 I attended a Interfaith Political Action Leadership Training Conference at a UU camp/conference center called The Mountain. At the get-acquainted session we told who were were, where we were from, three gifts that we bring and three gifts that we seek. I said I was seeking 1) R&R, 2) Vision, 3)The Mountain. I've been to The Mountain twice before, and the location was a primary reason for attending the conference.

I've been strugging with Internet addiction, and its fallout, in my personal life. The Vision that I seek relates to the Bridge Project that Steve Calverley and I are dreaming about. After getting a highly negative reaction from Chris Purdom of the IWG I've become extremely cautious about moving forward. Still, I consider it my most important work, and what I seek is vision about the Bridge Project. I know that there are certain things that I must accomplish in other areas before moving forward on the Bridge Project--the personal issues and a certain body of work in the pflag-talk library. The Internet addiction is hurting me physically, interfering with my web work, and devastating my marriage. I have decided I don't want to follow the lithium recommendation, and I do want to use meditation as a tool for recovery.

Gossamer Bridges, Visibility, The Pool

One of the women at the conference is a PFLAG-Mom, who has four children, three sons and a daughter. One of Jean's identical twin sons, is gay. The other twin, is married and has 4 children and the fifth on the way. Straight-twin's wife is a birthright Morman. The neice of gay-twin overheard a conversation in which gay-twin told his twin that he surely is also gay. Niece then goes to Mommy with "Why does Uncle J. say that Daddy is gay?" Mommy was not pleased.

I wonder to what extent straight-twin is fighting his natural gay-orientation or whether he is truly straight by orientation. Are they both equally bisexual at birth or was there intra-uterine environmental differences that account the difference in orientation?

PFLAG-Dad is a retired Methodist minister, Gay-twin is now a nonbeliever.PFLAG-Mom thinks it likely that straight-twin will figure out that he's gay when he gets to be 40. It's interesting how people interpret things-- I think that the twin studies show both nature and nurture-- since so many identical twins are not both gay. Do gays think that all straight-twins are in denial? I don't. Gay-twin lives in Philadelphia. Straight-twin and his family live in Hawai. He's just finished medical school and he has a three-year payback.Of course I will contact them and hope to interest them in the Bridge Project which I now think of as a ministry "by and for families on opposite sides of the culture war."

The argument about homosexuality is essentially a religious argument between fundamentalists and other people who either don't read the Bible at all, or don't read it the way fundamentalists do. How does one carry on a respectful dialogue with fundamentalists? Love is the answer. I'm particularly interested in finding families where love continues even though the family members are on opposite sides of the culture war. I'm not talking about the families where the parents see the error of their fundamentalist ways, I'm talking about families where love and respect continues through the pain of a religious conviction which judges the loved one as immoral. I'm not interested in taking an MCC approach to the discussion either. I think it's important to validate nonbelievers as well as people of faith. As a UU I'm used to that. UUs identify variously: Secular Humanist, Christian, Atheist, Pagan , Hindu, Jewish.

I decided to do journal work at last week- I'd never done it before. Turned out my cabinmate does it every day. She follows the program in The Artist's Way and loaned me the book. Much of the book was annoying, but I think that it offers some language which may be useful in helping Christians and nonbelievers communicate. Perhaps not, but we can find out.

My journaling during the week took the form of describing interesting things that I saw, beautiful things in the natural world. The Mountop Experience. Naturally since I'm obssessed with the Bridge Project, all the metaphors related to that. Gossamer Bridges describes an amazingly beautiful product of a spider-- not a web, but a mobile extending horizontally, supported only by the wind. It was really quite beautiful and amazing, and it gave me a new way of looking at the unsupported Bridge Project. Visibility is a short piece of free-verse referring to the clouds at the Mountain and refers to the human desire for vision. It ends with the line "soon it will be light enough to see what the spiders did last night." The Pool describes observations made during four successive visits to the same 4x8 pool at the edge of the escarpment. Like the other two writings it is descriptive of a natural phenomenon and provides metaphors relating to my work. [additional pages not yet written will elaborate on how I relate the writings to the bridge project.]

My writings, Gossamer Bridges, Visibility, and The Pool, opened our closing celebration on August 10. The evening closed with the group in a circle, arm and arm, singing:

How could anyone ever tell you, you were ever less than beautiful?
How could anyone ever tell you, you are less than whole?
How could anyone fail to notice that your loving is a miracle?
How deeply you're connected to my soul.

I've been humming it ever since. Monday morning I sang it to my mother. --I already told pflag-talkers about me and George after the love-fest :-)

Maggie, updated 8/14/96 (just prior to announcing url to pft)