Spiritual Stuff.

I’m not a religious person. I’m a confirmed member of the Methodist church. I was baptized when I was a baby by the minister of the church, who happened to be my great uncle. Rumor has it I peed when they sprinkled the water on me but I don’t know if I’m remembering that correctly or not. I was a baby so I don’t remember the incident but it sounds like something I would do.

My grandmother was the organist for the small Methodist church that we went to when I was a baby. I can barely remember her playing the organ and me waving at her; the church closed and combined with the slightly larger congregation in the village. My grandmother rarely went to that church as she believed the organist shouldn’t be paid to play for Sunday service and that organist was paid. She rarely talked about this but she mentioned it to me once when I was in my teens. That side of the family rarely talked about such matters but once in a while there’d be a small discussion. It’s like when my grandmother told me she could spot those “gay boys”, usually a waiter encountered during travels, and that was ok, she could just spot them. She knew what was up with her only red-headed grandchild. Like my grandmother, my dad never talked about these things either but he was adamant that his two children be confirmed by the church and that I sing in the choir when I was old enough to drive myself to choir practice. My dad rarely made demands of us (outside of the usual family stuff), but that was one of them. I’m happy about my time singing in the church choir and the couple of times that I filled in as director as a senior in high school.

With the constant barrage of news in today’s world of chaos, I sometimes think back to those times when things were calm and people didn’t throw around their beliefs like so much up chuck, much like I do when I spout opinions here, there, and everywhere. My it’s years of not talking about things that’s fueled my impulse to talk about these things to do. Silence wasn’t demanded, it was expected. The only time controversial topics were really banned from discussion is at the dinner table; apparently too many family meals my father attended as a child ended up in yelling and tears, and he wasn’t going to have the same thing at his family meal, so we’d just talk about school and work and various things like that. The only time the family dinner had any sort of turmoil is when my mom forgot to put in meat in the chili (don’t ask), or my father couldn’t fathom what to make of sloppy joes, or my mom plopped a grilled hamburger patty on top of spaghetti. My father would question, my mom would start to take it away and throw it in the trash and I’d eat it so that no one would cry.

What does this have to do with “Godspell” (as pictured above)? Well, “Godspell” is one of my favorite Broadway shows, and listening to the soundtrack helps me find my center. The simplicity of the performances, especially in the original Broadway cast album and the follow-up movie soundtrack, remind me of the simplicity of my youth. There’s no screaming to be found as performers try to “out run” each other with yodeling noises in place of notes or crazy embellishments. The simplicity of the music, and the heart in the performances, help me reconnect in my spiritual beliefs: do good things, work hard at what you do, and love. Make people smile. Be a light in the world.

As I was walking about the other day I was daydreaming and wondering why the louder Christians don’t talk about all the great passages in the Bible. During my grandmother’s funeral in 1996, the minister, a lovely woman named Betsy, began the service by loudly proclaiming Proverbs 6:6 “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise.” She said this with such a booming voice that to this day I’m convinced that even my grandmother jumped. That’s such a simple verse, though. Don’t be lazy, work hard at your task. God or the Goddess or the Universe, or whatever name you choose to use, if you choose at all, just asks that we work hard to be good people and to love one another. All of that other stuff about being gay and eating shellfish and mixing clothing fibers… that’s all a bunch of crap probably inserted by a crabby human and/or translator that felt they weren’t getting enough attention.

The truth of the matter is, my spiritual beliefs are not anyone’s business but my own. Your spiritual beliefs are none of my business. Just keep it simple. Do unto others as they would do unto you. Be a good person. Work hard. Give more to society than you take. Love.

Keep it simple. Day by day.

I have no doubt that there’s an “other side” when it comes to what happens when we die. I believe that we see only a small portion of the total picture of the Universe, that there are many stages of life, even before we are born and after we die, and this knowledge gives me peace. When it’s my time, I won’t be afraid.

Some religions want us to believe that there is judgement and that if we screw up our life we are sent to eternal damnation in hell and we are surrounded by flames and torture and screaming and the like. It’s hot. Eternity is a long time. Why would an all loving Deity do that to one of his creations? No, that sort of hell is a human construct perpetuated to keep us in line and to control our thinking. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

I remember asking my mom in the late 1970s about hell and her thoughts on the subject. She said that she thinks we don’t get damned to eternal torture but that maybe we come back and learn again. I asked her if that meant this was hell and she said, “maybe”. But it was a learning place, not a mean place.

Last night I had a family reunion in my sleep. A dream, a premonition, contact with the other side, I don’t know. My gut says it was more than a dream. Perhaps my dreams are just quite organized. But many of my relatives that have passed on were there and lending their comfort and support to address some things that have been bothering me of late. Now, I’m not troubled nor unhappy (quite the contrary), but my analytical ways have had me in hyper-evaluation mode over the past few days, especially surrounding my pilot career. This has happened once before, where I felt a little down about flying and the circumstances surrounding being able to fly as frequently as I’d like to. Like the last time, my Dad, a private pilot that passed away nearly six years ago in a crash of his second home built, came to me in a dream and gave me a pep talk. Last night the whole family was there. He said he liked flying “low and slow”. I asked him why he didn’t like flying the Tomahawk back in the day, he said it didn’t give him enough view and “it could be slippery”. “You need to fly the airplane you want to fly.” I asked him if he’d fly in the right seat in “the Cherokee” if I flew as PIC (Pilot In Command). In the dream or the vision or the premonition I had last night, he said “absolutely. Go buy one.” We talked about some other things that are too personal to share in a public forum. They were all right on the money. Things started making sense.

My godmother was also there. She told me she’d break the alarm clock so we could talk. We talked about some spiritual stuff and about some of the other things that have been bothering me a little bit and she said I needed to calm down. Stop analyzing. Get out of my head. “You have a good head on your shoulders, you’ll know when you’re really in trouble. Stop worrying.” Have fun. Enjoy life. Again, we talked about more personal things.

Dream? More? All I know is that it felt incredibly real and that I feel amazing this morning. My head feels clear. And when I awoke, my Amazon Echo Dot, which I use as my alarm clock, was flashing but not making any noise. Normally it’d be playing some soothing sounds to awake me, but not so much as a peep this morning. It was 6:17 and my alarm had been flashing for 17 minutes.

Those 17 minutes were worth it.

Earl and I had planned to spend four days driving around Lake Michigan, starting last Thursday, to celebrate our 6th legal anniversary. On Wednesday evening, the husband of one of my closest high school friends contacted me; my friend was approaching the final days of his battle with cancer. He had hoped he would make it to Christmas. I talked about the situation with Earl and we agreed to change our plans. We drove from Chicago to Boston in one day. I sat at my friend’s bedside in the wee hours of Friday morning. His breathing was ragged and labored. His heart rate was very high. He was surrounded by members of his family. He opened his eyes once or twice. It was obvious that the end was very near.

I shared memories of high school. I revealed that I believed I was the first one that he ever told that he was gay and his husband confirmed hearing that story. I mused over other memories of us discovering who we were in the latest years of our teens. I recalled camping trips we went on together. I smiled. I worried. I said good-bye.

Earl and I left and went to the hotel. Friday morning we decided that it was time for him to be with his family; we felt in the way. I was good with that. By late evening I received word that he had passed over. His battle with cancer was done. He was no longer in pain. Cancer sucks.

Scott had thought he had cancer beat once, only to be told, on his 50th birthday no less, that it had returned. It was much more aggressive this time. He is no longer suffering. I’m happy that I was able to say goodbye.

He was a year and some change older than me. We debated the merits of Betamax vs VHS back in the day (he was a Betamax guy). We discovered computers together, we listened to ABBA together, we decorated a teacher’s home for Christmas together (most students would have TP’d her house, we put up Christmas lights).

I’m going to miss knowing that he was there in Boston. We hadn’t seen each other in a few years. Careers, priorities, distance: it all leads to a certain disconnect at times. The most important thing is that our memories together make me smile. And he is no longer suffering.

Some days, especially when it’s cold and rainy outside, I opt out of listening to music when I work and look for a TED Talk to watch or listen to as a source of inspiration for the task at hand. Today, I chose a TED Talk from 2013 by Angela Ahrendts, Senior Vice President of Retail at Apple since 2014. Prior to Apple she worked for Burberry.

A quote from the talk made me stop, rewind and listen again. Twice.

Trust, since the creation of man, is where we all derive our greatest strength and power. It’s like the exterior heart that all energy flows through.
-Angela Ahrendts, 2013

This quote, this statement really struck a chord within me today. The quote was surrounded by a discussion about turmoil in the world at that time. That was 2013 and quite frankly, 2013 has nothing on where we are today in 2017. It all suddenly clicked in my head: I’ve lost trust in the world. I don’t trust our government, I certainly don’t trust the president, I don’t really trust corporations and I’m finding it more and more difficult to trust that people will do the right thing. Without trust we have nothing. As Ms. Ahrendts stated, it’s the exterior heart that all energy flows through. Without trust, there’s no heart, there’s no energy flowing.

One of the most important things about our marriage and our little family is that I have absolute, unwavering trust in both Earl and Jamie. It’s the very foundation upon which my life has been built. We have no secrets from one another and I don’t think I could function if that changed. There may be hesitation for someone to share something but I trust that I will never be deceived and I will never, ever do anything to lose their trust. It’s bedrock. It’s what allows us to stand tall.

If we are truly going to Make America Great Again, we need to start with putting people we trust into positions of leadership. We need to trust our leaders and more importantly, we need to trust one another. There’s not a lot of trust going on in society today.

Here’s the entire TED Talk called “The Power of Human Energy”. Angela Ahrendts is one woman I’d like to meet in person, shake her hand and thank her for the inspiration.

Inspiration from the great Maya Angelou.

Technically I will never attain the title of “Clean Cut, Average American Guy”. There’s a few categories where I score above average. Conversely I score below average on one or two items on the list. And of course, there’s the whole gay thing that many believes sets me apart from the crowd. When I was younger I was told by a few people that I stood out like a neon light. One former beau went so far to tell me that I was kind of embarrassing to be around in public. I guess “personal expression” wasn’t really his forte. Or maybe I expressed myself too much. But that was thirty years ago and times have changed.

For a while I had a bad ass side to my personality. Cocky. Edgy. Alternative-ish. I’ve seen things, experienced things, done things that would make most average Americans blush at first glance. I’ve been to paradise but I was lucky to have been to me along the way. At age 48 I’m still a little cocky, a little edgy. I look at the world from a different angle.

But the clean cut, average American side of me has become my modus operandi. I like a beer or two from time to time. I don’t need a fine wine to make me happy. I like hanging out with the other pilots at the airport. I like just hanging out with friends. My radio career-fed tendencies to be out loud and public about my life has waned quite a bit. I don’t need to strut around like a peacock with a big, red beard for my feathers. I don’t want an outlandish mustache anymore. I don’t need to be the shiniest coin in the piggy bank.

For the relatively first time in my life, I’m pretty comfortable with who I am, today, right now, at age 48. I’ve never been really comfortable in my skin. I’ll never be a soldier, I’ll never be a centerfold, I’ll never be the slim jim that’s just a little bit zesty.

I’m just a guy with a dad bod that feels good about where he is today. I am comfortable in my skin, with who I am and where I am today. It’s taken me a really long time to come to this realization.

For the vast majority of my life, my personal quest has been, “what can I change about myself?”. My new quest is “what works now and what can I do better?”. After all these years my baggage is a matched set.

And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.