The Cross

I was reading Davey Wavey's blog Break the Illusion yesterday, and came across this blog post:

The Cross: A Symbol of Love or Hate?

When I was driving into Canada, I passed a giant white cross on the side of the road. It was likely erected by one of the local congregations, and soared some 50 or 60 feet into the sky. For those that built it, the cross is a symbol of their faith. For me, the cross evokes a lot of mixed feelings.

On the treadmill last night, I caught a few minutes of a CNN interview with an openly gay woman named Barbara Johnson. At her mother’s funeral, the priest denied Barbara Holy Communion. He said:

I can’t give you Communion because you live with a woman and in the eyes of the church, that is a sin.

To add insult to injury, he left the altar when Barbara delivered the eulogy – and refused to attend the burial. On one of the hardest days of her life, the priest’s actions added insult to injury.

I know that the cross stands for many beautiful and compassionate teachings. But as a gay man who went through both Catholic high school and university, I’ve seen so many individuals and organizations hide behind the cross as a justification for their hate. After a while, it takes its toll on you.

When I see a cross, the teachings of love and compassion are overshadowed by the stories of people like Barbara Johnson.

I am not Catholic, nor do I claim to understand everything about Catholicism.  However, in my church (Church of Christ) where I am the person who passes around the communion every Sunday,  I have never denied someone the right to take communion.  It is their choice, and it is a choice between them and God.  That being said, what struck me about this blog post is that Davey wrote that for him "the cross evokes a lot of mixed feelings."  When I see a cross, it reminds me purely of the sacrifice that Jesus made for our sins.  Instead of having mixed feeling about the cross, about religion, or about God, I feel great sadness for those Christians who use the cross and twist the words of God to something that is negative.  Christianity is a positive religion, and when Christians make it a negative religion, then they are doing just what being negative means, they are making it less.  It is simple mathematics, 1 + 1 = 2, but 1 - 1 = 0, when you add negatives into the equation, you are taking something away.  In my belief those who use Christianity in a negative way are taking God out of it, and thus are moving further away from God and his love.

A friend of mine recently gave me a book God vs. Gay?: The Religious Case for Equality which I am reading that presents a religious case for equality.  As you all know, I have had a rough week, and I have not gotten far into God vs. Gay? but I have read a little of it each night.  When I am finished with God vs. Gay? I will write more about it on this blog. So far, it is a very encouraging and affirmative look at religion.

As always, thanks for reading and thank you for your support this week.  Your support and encouraging words have meant a great deal to me.

Moment of Zen: Sleep

The stress of this week has been difficult. I woke up yesterday morning with a stiff shoulder and neck, probably from tossing and turning for the past several night.  I took a pain reliever, but my medicine to relax the muscles always causes me to fall asleep.  So, I waited to take that when I got home and was ready for bed last night.  I did, and apparently, I needed that sleep and something to relax me.  Subsequently, I ended up sleeping most of the day today, but I feel much better.  Sometimes, we just need some rest and relaxation.

Resolution

Though I have been left high and dry when dealing with the parents over the cheating situation, and I have been told that I am the only teacher having discipline problems (I had conversations with several teachers, and they assured me that I was not), I did get some good news today.  I was told today that it has been confirmed that our principal is on his way out.  He has accepted a job elsewhere and will not be there much longer.  I do not know how long, but I hope that he will not finish the school year.  One of my closest friends at school told me that even though I feel that I am at my rope's end, that I just need to hang in there.

I also had a conversation with a board member last night.  His advice "Give 'em hell, and stand your ground.  He would always support me."  He also gave me some advice that was very uncharacteristic of him. Though he is a religious man, he is not a Bible thumper.  He reminded me of something important to keep in mind.

These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye may have peace. In the world ye have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.

John 16:33 (ASV)

Jesus knew that adversity is on the outside of a person, an individual’s attitude determines whether one chooses to become bitter or better from it.  I choose to become better for the experience.  I appreciate all of the advice and support that everyone has given me through this difficult week.

Thank You

Not me, because the Dr. Pepper would never be allowed in my classroom.

I want to thank all of you for your support.  I did not expect to get so many comments on yesterday's post.  I can't say things are much better.  Today will be the day to tell.  The parents were sent home a letter stating the offense and the punishment, and I expect to hear from some of them.  Whereas we have a protocol that the principal is to deal with parents first, my principal has decided that I must deal with any parents who call to complain or want answers.  I can support what I did, and I will stand by my guns on this one.  My principal is attempting to make this as hard on me as possible.  He should tell the parents what happened and that should be the end of it.  Instead, he is being a coward about the situation.  I have spoken to one parent already, and he said that he fully supports me and wanted to tell me that it would never happen again with his child.  It is nice for a parent to tell you that you did the right thing, even though the principal is refusing to do so.

Because we are a private school, there are sensitive issues handle.  We do not have a school board, but a board of directors who govern the school.  As with most boards, each member has his or her own agenda, but from what I have heard from some of the board members, they are supporting me on this issue.  One parent (not of one of the kids caught cheating, but who works at the school) called one of the board members herself and summoned him to the school to discuss the situation.  I will be meeting with a board member tomorrow night.  I hate to be the center of a controversy.  I am there to teach, and I wish they would just let me do my job.  Instead, I am being forced on the offensive.

However, I will say this, with this particular group of students, we have a vastly different class today.  I shuffled the students around so that no friends are sitting next to each other, and I explained to them that the days of even the slightest leniency (which by the way I had to explain the meaning of) was over.  One of the student complaints to the principal was that I was inconsistent with my rules (by the way, I am not, they just chose to ignore me) and therefore, they did not see a problem with cheating.  So, if I need to be a holy terror and a bitch in the classroom, then so be it.  It is not my style of teaching.  I prefer a more relaxed atmosphere, one in which makes learning a more enjoyable experience.  However, the students do not know when to joke and when to be serious.  So the dynamic of the room has changed.  They were quiet and took notes.  Some slept, but at least they were quiet.  Those sleeping will suffer the consequences of their actions when the test comes.

I hope that this principal will not be there next year.  He has another job offer on the table, and from what I have heard from most board members, it would be advisable that the take the other job.  However, only time will tell what he is going to do.  I know what I will do.  I will continue to instill in these children the ideas of honesty, morality, and the lessons of the past.

Bad Day

Yesterday was, to say the least, a bad day.  First of all, I caught some students cheating quite blatantly.  Our student handbook has a very specific punishment for a cheating offense.  When I took the issue to my principal and expected that he would back me up on the issue, he instead informed me that it was my fault because apparently I am unable to keep control in my class.  This is a man, who refuses to back up his teachers and each time we take him an issue, he turns it around on us.  It is never the student fault, it is always the fault of the teacher.  We do what we can to control our classes.  I try to create a good learning environment. Similar to this blog, my classroom is a fun (sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes very serious) approach to education.  Apparently, I am unable to tell a joke in the classroom, or attempt to make the subjects I teach fun and interesting because it leads to the students not understanding that cheating is wrong. How, I do not know?

Instead of the principal backing me, I felt like I was thrown under a bus.  I was berated by him for over an hour, part of that in front of students, making me look like a fool.  To say that I am furious, is an understatement.  I have attempted to address the problem with academic dishonesty with him in the past and been rebuffed.  I guess, I should not have expected more from him, though I did.  Instead of being a teacher who is attempting to make the school a better place, I feel like a scolded child.  The children feel triumphant because they are not going to have to deal with the full punishment that is accorded to them.  Why can't people understand the value of an education?  Cheating is wrong; end of story, or at least it should be the end of it.  I was proved wrong about that yesterday.

I can only hope that this principal will only be at our school for the rest of the year at the most, and we can truly have a fresh start next year.

Sorry about the bitching.  Thank you for reading.

Teach Me

TEACH ME
By Donald (Grady) Davidson

Teach me, old World, your passion of slow change,
    Your calm of stars, watching the turn of earth,
Patient of man, and never thinking strange
    The mad red crash of each new system’s birth.

Teach me, for I would know your beauty’s way
    That waits and changes with each changing sun,
No dawn so fair but promises a day
    Of other perfectness than men have won.

Teach me, old World, not as vain men have taught,
    —Unpatient song, nor words of hollow brass,
Nor men’s dismay whose powerfullest thought
    Is woe that they and worlds alike must pass.

Nothing I learn by any mortal rule;
Teach me, old World, I would not be man’s fool.

from The Fugitive, 1922

Donald (Grady) Davidson
1893–1968

Poet Donald (Grady) Davidson was born in Tennessee and was a member of both the Fugitive and Agrarian groups at Vanderbilt University. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from Vanderbilt University and remained at the University his entire professional career (1920 - 1968) teaching English. In addition to being a teacher, Davidson enjoyed an international reputation as a poet, essayist, novelist, and critic. His first book of poems, The Outland Piper, was published in 1924. From 1931-1967 he spent his summers teaching at Bread Loaf School of English in Ripton, Vermont. He served in the military during World War I May 1917- June 1919. In June of 1918 he married Theresa Sherrer, a legal scholar and artist. He was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, American Folklore Society, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, South Atlantic Modern Language Association, and the Tennessee Federation for Constitutional Government.

James Baldwin

February is Black History Month, and I can't believe that I have not blogged at all about gay black men. I hope that this post will make up a little for it. As a gay man in the South, there were not a lot of resources out there to help me come to terms with my homosexuality. So, I did the only thing that I could (the Internet was a very new resource at the time and not something that I had access to very often) so I did the next best thing, I read everything I could find. To search for something to read, I went to Barnes & Noble to find any books on being gay. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, about a white American expatriate who must come to terms with his homosexuality, was one of two books that I found. The other was Nightswimmer by Joseph Olshan. This was my first attempt at trying to understand. Both of these books still hold a special place in my heart. However, in honor of Black History Month, I want to talk about James Baldwin.

James Baldwin's novels include Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), probably his most famous book, Giovanni's Room (1956), and Another Country (1962), about racial and gay sexual tensions among New York intellectuals. As an openly gay man, he became increasingly outspoken in condemning discrimination against lesbian and gay people.

Although he spent a great deal of his life abroad, James Baldwin always remained a quintessentially American writer. Whether he was working in Paris or Istanbul, he never ceased to reflect on his experience as a black man in white America. In numerous essays, novels, plays, and public speeches, the eloquent voice of James Baldwin spoke of the pain and struggle of black Americans and the saving power of brotherhood.

James Baldwin was born in Harlem in 1924. The oldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty, developing a troubled relationship with his strict, religious father. As a child, he cast about for a way to escape his circumstances. As he recalls, “I knew I was black, of course, but I also knew I was smart. I didn’t know how I would use my mind, or even if I could, but that was the only thing I had to use.” By the time he was fourteen, Baldwin was spending much of his time in libraries and had found his passion for writing.

During this early part of his life, he followed in his father’s footsteps and became a preacher. Of those teen years, Baldwin recalled, “Those three years in the pulpit — I didn’t realize it then — that is what turned me into a writer, really, dealing with all that anguish and that despair and that beauty.” Many have noted the strong influence of the language of the church on Baldwin’s style, its cadences and tone. Eager to move on, Baldwin knew that if he left the pulpit he must also leave home, so at eighteen he took a job working for the New Jersey railroad.

After working for a short while with the railroad, Baldwin moved to Greenwich Village, where he came into contact with the well-known writer Richard Wright. Baldwin worked for a number of years as a freelance writer, working primarily on book reviews. Though Baldwin had not yet finished a novel, Wright helped to secure him a grant with which he could support himself as a writer in Paris. So, in 1948 Baldwin left for Paris, where he would find enough distance from the American society he grew up in to write about it.

After writing a number of pieces that were published in various magazines, Baldwin went to Switzerland to finish his first novel. Go Tell It on the Mountain, published in 1953, was an autobiographical work about growing up in Harlem. The passion and depth with which he described the struggles of black Americans was unlike anything that had been written. Though not instantly recognized as such, Go Tell It on the Mountain has long been considered an American classic. Throughout the rest of the decade, Baldwin moved from Paris to New York to Istanbul, writing Notes of a Native Son (1955) and Giovanni’s Room (1956). Dealing with taboo themes in both books (interracial relationships and homosexuality, respectively), Baldwin was creating socially relevant and psychologically penetrating literature.

Being abroad gave Baldwin a perspective on his life and a solitary freedom to pursue his craft. “Once you find yourself in another civilization,” he notes, “you’re forced to examine your own.” In a sense, Baldwin’s travels brought him even closer to the social concerns of contemporary America. In the early 1960s, overwhelmed with a responsibility to the times, Baldwin returned to take part in the civil rights movement. Traveling throughout the South, he began work on an explosive work about black identity and the state of racial struggle, The Fire Next Time (1963). For many, Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time were an early and primary voice in the civil rights movement. Though at times criticized for his pacifist stance, Baldwin remained throughout the 1960s an important figure in that struggle.

After the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, Baldwin returned to France where he worked on a book about the disillusionment of the times, If Beale Street Could Talk (1974). Many responded to the harsh tone of If Beale Street Could Talk with accusations of bitterness. But, even if Baldwin had encapsulated much of the anger of the times in his book, he always remained a constant advocate for universal love and brotherhood. During the last ten years of his life, Baldwin produced a number of important works of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry, and turned to teaching as a new way of connecting with the young. By his death in 1987, James Baldwin had become one of the most important and vocal advocates for equality. From Go Tell It on the Mountain to The Evidence of Things Not Seen (1985), James Baldwin created works of literary beauty and depth that will remain essential parts of the American canon.

Atypical Sunday

Today was not the typical Sunday.  I got up a little late to go to church this morning, so I hurried to get there.  I was about 2 minutes too late.  Church had already started, and our preacher was leading the singing.  I had noticed that our regular song leader had not left his house yet when I went by, so I had hoped that I would make it before they started.  Apparently, our regular song leader has bronchitis, and so our preacher had stepped in to lead the singing.  It's a small congregation, so we don't have enough kids to have Sunday School, but we do start every service with "Jesus Loves Me" for the kids.  As soon as the song was over, our preacher stopped and asked if I wanted to lead the singing today.  I was the song leader before I moved away for graduate school.  I was never very good at it.  I'm just not a loud enough and confident enough of a singer to lead a congregation, let alone a small congregation where every singer counts and there is no musical accompaniment since it is a Church of Christ. Luckily, there was already a song service planned out that I had used the last time I had to be the substitute song leader.  I just wasn't exactly prepared.  I usually need to get mentally read to sing and make sure that the right tune comes out.  I admit, I faltered a few times today.  I even had to restart "The Old Rugged Cross" because I started it wrong.  Overall, I guess the song service went well.  I did my best. The Bible does say:

Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.

Ephesians 5:19 (KJV)

Today, we made a joyful noise only because we did it for the glory of God.  Others may not have agreed that it was a joyful noise, but to me, there is nothing more beautiful than a group of people in a small country church where everyone is singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord.

Moment of Zen: Sleeping In

It has been a long week, nothing bad happened. In fact, it has been a pretty good week. Technically, we were out of school on Monday for Presidents' Day, but with so much going on this week, it felt much longer than four days.  Last night, I spent the evening with some friends sitting out on the patio talking (and drinking), so I didn't get my post scheduled last night.  So, I decided that this morning I was going to sleep in...

Gay Marry-Land

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, centre, greets supporters and members of the House of Delegates after the House passed a gay marriage bill in Annapolis, Maryland

Gay marriage is all but legalised in the state of Maryland after the legislature gave its final agreement on Thursday to the law that's being sent to the governor, who said he expects to sign it sometime this week.

The state senate voted 25-22 for the law. The vote comes less than a week after the House of Delegates barely passed the measure.

Maryland will become the eighth state to allow gay marriage when Governor Martin O'Malley who sponsored the bill signs the legislation. The Democrat made the measure a priority this session after it stalled last year.

Six states allow gay couples to wed Connecticut, New Hampshire, Iowa, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont as well as the Washington capital district. The governor of Washington signed a bill this month that would make that state the seventh.

Opponents in Maryland have vowed to bring the measure to referendum in November. They will need to gather at least 55,726 valid signatures of Maryland voters to put it on the ballot and can begin collecting names now that the bill has passed both chambers.

Some churches and clergy members have spoken out against the bill, saying it threatens religious freedoms and violates their tradition of defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

"The enormous public outcry that this legislation has generated voiced by Marylanders that span political, racial, social and religious backgrounds demonstrates a clear need to take this issue to a vote of the people," Maryland Catholic Conference spokeswoman Kathy Dempsey said in a statement. "Every time this issue has been brought to a statewide vote, the people have upheld traditional marriage."

Leaders at the Human Rights Campaign, a group that joined a coalition of organisations to advocate for the bill, said they expect opponents will gather the required number of signatures.

Senator Allan Kittleman, the only senate Republican to vote in favuor of the legislation, said he is proud of his decision and not concerned about political consequences down the road.

"You don't worry about politics when you're dealing with the civil rights issue of your generation," said Kittleman, R-Howard, the son of the late Senator Robert Kittleman, who was known for civil rights advocacy.

Gay marriage remains on hold in California after opponents petitioned a federal appeals court on Tuesday to review a split decision by three of its judges that struck down a voter-approved measure that limited marriage to a man and woman.