Two Degrees off Center
Stay true north, find your authentic self and keep finding it. Try to see yourself a little more as God sees you, and rely less on the world to define you. Make friends with someone who’s not like you. Find something that needs shaking up, and then do what you can, but behave yourself. Keep learning and wondering what’s over there.
Over 370 religious leaders from across the world signed a declaration asking for forgiveness for harm caused to the LGBTQIA+ community, but the Church doesn’t practice what it preaches. It doesn’t say “sorry.”
This year everything turned odd, quirky, strange or bizarre, even tragic—anything but normal, and by June, most of us were ready to give up on the year, flip the calendar, and move on to 2021. Gay Pride was no exception. Throughout the world, all things Pride were shut down, canceled, or reduced to a virtual reality online, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Course corrections come in all different shapes and sizes. A torpedo may look like it’s aiming directly for its target, but it’s actually a series of small course corrections back and forth to keep getting back on track until it hits the bullseye. I’m grateful for a God in my life who helps me make those course corrections and get back on track, and also for my drinking buddies* who are always there, especially when I need them the most and I don’t realize it.
I tend to take a big step back, try to get the big picture, analyze things, and put it on my list of things to ask Him when I see Him. It’s saved me a lot of wasted energy that I’ve put to better use elsewhere in my life.
Whether the wrath of the storm-crossed sea, or demons or men or whatever it be, we’re looking for something, anything, to hold onto these days—an anchor or two that will hold the ship of state steady rather than trying to pull it apart, and to do it with facts that come from a credible source.
When I first heard the word “coronavirus,” I had flashbacks to the early days of the AIDS crisis, and something told me to take this seriously, and I’ve followed Dr. Anthony Fauci like a prophet guiding us through this crisis.
We must make choices that will decide which way we go, to look inward and be brutally honest with ourselves, to focus less on our rights and more on our should, and then to stop…and listen…listen to others…to really understand things as they see it through their eyes…to admit we don’t know, we don’t have all the answers, and our only hope to get through this is Christlike love—for us and our fellow man.
All of us have been seriously affected by this evil little microbe, from rationing our toilet paper to being out of a job to a sudden and painful death of a person close to us. Fortunately, I’m better off than many others. I have plenty of TP, I’m retired, and I don’t know anyone close who’s suffered from it. I’ve also tested negative, and I stay six feet away from others and wear a mask whenever I make a run for essentials. But my biggest loss during this stay-at-home order—the issue that hits me where it really hurts—is not having someone to cuddle.