Whole

Over the past few days I've been drawn to write a post. Largely the inspiration has been to explore the ways in which the limitation of my ability to surrender affects my experience. 'Give up and look up' my friend Mugo would say. Acceptance in the widest possible way. Do that which is asking to be done and release the need to try to be in full control so as to have everything just so. Sounds easy. But in the end there are (I have found) limits. In the wider spiritual sense there may be no limits but there is karma; cause and effect. Things are stressful just now for DC and I with a lot of disruptive work having to be done on our home. DC has been great fielding contractors whilst trying to work on the index for his book while I've been out at work. I've not been well enough to be as close up and involved at each tiny stage as I usually would. But of course I still feel the need to intervene to ensure we get what we need and hopefully avoid as many future problems as possible. Much childhood trauma has been triggered and it's been a difficult dance for both DC and I to negotiate. But as ever, our love for each other, our willingness to be open to as much of our reality as possible and our ability to support each other continues to make us stronger together.

It is not all this which in the end has prompted me to write today though. It is the words of Andrew Scott in his interview on BBC Radio 4's This Cultural Life. DC has been trying to listen to this for a few nights at bed time but falls asleep almost as soon as his sweet head touches the pillow. I was still awake and heard Scott discussing his experience growing up gay in Ireland where homosexuality wasn't decriminalised until 1993. Scott used the word 'desexualised' to describe the way society forbade queer people to be who they were. This still happens. A 'normal' adolescence is denied queer people by this. In place of the affirmation straight people get we get the opposite. It's something I've written about before but the word 'desexualised' struck a chord. Why? I think it sums up the gross indignity and more; it's the removal of part of our person, our being. We are prevented from developing in our natural way. We are not perverted as an adjective we are perverted as a verb. There isn't anything wrong with us but we are told there is and then we are erased. And this happens to a part of us which is so fundamental to so much of our life. The fear and shame induced compartmentalisation in which we engage is something I've also written about before but the added element made visible in the use of the word 'desexualised' is that part of us is removed by others. I have blamed myself for this. I have thought and felt that it was me who desexualised myself; I decided not to face up to my sexuality in my teens, I did it... But I didn't, society did. I didn't fail I just wasn't allowed. Any option open to me would set me as perverted. Society was the active abusing element and I could only manage the situation as best I could. The management, a process likened by a number of gay men I know of to putting together a jigsaw without the box lid picture, inevitably causes us to abandon and reclaim ourselves over and over again. Fortunately, most of us do get to the stage where we have our picture fairly well assembled and about as 'complete' as anyone can ever be. We are all a work in progress. Things are much better now than in the 1980's of my adolescent years and young men both straight and gay seem to be much more whole, without undue edge and artifice. The machismo of the past seems to be at last fading away and new men seem wonderfully gentle by comparison. And yet I also observe self censorship, compartmentalisation and much of the same prejudice still at work. As Scott also said in his interview, much homophobia would disappear if people stopped the assumption that everybody is straight. My own experience for many years now is that most people are fine with queer people. It's important for queer people to trust this and not assume others will be homophobic. We have to play our part in creating a more whole world.

Spiritually, what does all this mean? Well, DC and I were discussing the merits of a rich life over a happy if limited one the other night. I'm not sure to what extent we have control over this or what the best life might mean. I'd like to think that we are spiritual beings who live in order to see our true nature. What that might mean is a whole other post and probably the theme of the whole blog.