What is there left to say?

Below is an e-mail that I just sent to one of my closest friends and cousin. I'm blotting out his name. This is kind of an OH SHIT! moment.



Hey XXXXXX,

I don't know why the hell I am sending this to you. Perhaps in the hopes that I can stand before somebody naked, stripped of a dream and encountering reality. Read on, if you are still interested.

I'm finding myself entirely crippled in discussion recently. I live in a world entirely alone, it seems. I cannot relate to other people's discussions, and I find them fleeting and entirely uninteresting. The content is fascinating and relevant, but they demand a discussion for hope, a phenomenon which I find myself having in decreasing numbers in the adult world and in my own heart.

I hear about how you, Tyson, Joni, Jenna, and Kyle and Andrea are protesting the expansion of foreign industry in the community, and I am jealous. You are people who are using your morals and operating in the world with them.

I haven't felt this freedom for a long time, and even then I have only felt it in limited amounts while working with youth ministry. As I am no longer involved with that at church, I do not know if I will be able to change the world, or even hope to. I get frustrated by trying, and I am so thoroughly conflicted that even my most exciting of ideas seem to be flawed by imperfection.

I don't think I can call myself a believer anymore, or if I ever could. Agnostic - certainly. Trying desperately to believe in something as sexy as God, but always finding myself restricted and incapable. Disappointed by those who claim to follow Him, and frustrated by the being himself.

I am also immensely lonely. I feel like I live on a continent entirely alone.

I have no friends who fulfill me anymore. Nobody who challenges me, or who is interested in the same things as I am. Nobody who will discuss politics or religion and do so with interest, or immense, blunt, and painful honesty. Nobody will listen to my compositions and provide proper critical feedback. Nobody will actually become a part of my life - exist with my existence. Befriend me with any consistency. I am on the backburner, in a locale called Regina, alone in a sea of 200,000 souls that move like giants. My continent is shaken by earthquakes and I do not respond. And I know that i have done this to myself.

You talk about Meadow Lake and it sounds sexy. Fulfilling. As though you don't really want anything more.



I have recently come to the conclusion that I am developmentally and relationally retarded or immature.

The disgusting part is that I know that only people who care about themselves have self-esteem issues. And I want to be able to put down my concerns and pick up a cross for somebody else - to die to myself so that I may live. But I am at an impass that I cannot overcome; I stand at a cliff alone and insecure. Unfortunately I must jump off in order to go anywhere.

And so I leap, with a question I thought of while we were discussing my relationship with Danae on Tuesday night.

XXXXXX, what would you do if I told you I was gay?

Untitled

I hate these nights when I come home having had a bit too much to drink. My mind races to realities than dreams. And the reality is that I live in a dream.

Constantly.

For the past 22 years of my life. 23 if you are from Korea.




I am gay. This is the reality. The dream is that I am straight - and this is the dream in which I live. My friends are relatively convinced of this dream, and I am more than prepared to live in it.

Kind of.

Tonight I got a phone call from one of my best friends, saying that she was engaged to this wonderful man that she met in University. I am enormously happy for her - this man is gold, as best as I can tell, and I am enormously happy for the two of them.

The problem is this - I was part-way through partying with a good friend of mine, as he was celebrating the last few nights of his bachelorhood. And in the very near future, my best friend from high school is getting married.

Perhaps I am not making myself clear enough just yet.


It seems that everybody that I know is in love with somebody. Is permitted to be in love with somebody. And is moving beyond just being in love with somebody, and I am merely existing inside of a dream that I know is reality but that I kind of want to be reality. But I know that it isn't a reality that I can exist in.

And so I have to ask myself whether or not it is time for me to starting the process of declaring another piece to my puzzling existence - my homosexuality. And if it isn't - have I already missed the time? And if it is - how do I go about it, and how do I find counsel in doing it?



Now, I shouldn't pretend to be entirely alone. I have told some friends in the past that I am gay - and they have all been relatively supportive, and many have remained very close and reliable friends. Good people that I have been blessed by.

But the fear of rejection from everybody else is enormous.

Let me say that again.


The fear of rejection from everybody else is enormous.

Where else?

I recently quit my involvement in youth ministries at my church, for many reasons.

I am now confronted with the question of why I attend church. And I find myself entirely incapable of providing an answer, because I find the word "church" so limiting.



I go to church. Not regularly, but I go.

When I attend, I sit in a row of conference chairs rather than pews. I sing contemporary worship songs, filled with contrived music and poor theology. I listen to the words of somebody else praying and close my eyes thinking that something good is bound to be said. I listen to thoughtless, sentimental sermons that are based on the Epistles rather than on the Gospels. I hear announcements which keep the community more interested in itself than the outside, changing world. Then I enter the foyer and visit with friends, where I often wish that a strong wine was served for communion rather than juice to ensure the scars of the past hour and a half could be more easily forgotten.

And I spend a lot of time wondering where God is in our church.

Next to me in church, in an equally uncomfortable and equally transportable conference chair, is a person. Usually a person of my age, who seems to have this all make sense, or who buys into it more than I do. It is wonderful to watch this person communicate with their living God. Wonderful. And entirely foreign to me.

Why do I attend? Perhaps for the hope that something worthwhile and inspiring will transpire, that suddenly God will make some sense, or that I will somehow find the missing link that will convince me that Christ died for me. None of this has happened. And I'm not sure if I really want it to.

So why do I attend church? And perhaps, why do I attend my specific church?

I spend a lot of time wondering where God is in our church.



And I spend a lot of time wondering where God is outside of our church.



And I haven't given up on the world outside of the church, so why should I give up on the church?