Dancing your problems away

"The future belongs to those who prepare for it today."

So said Malcolm X.

Every since I read his autobiography as an impressionable teen I've always liked Malcolm X.

I was at Groves High School as it was being integrated which actually went pretty smoothly in that there were only a couple of riots and I was the cause of one when I asked a black girl to dance at a school function.

All the black kids were dancing and having a good time while all the white kids stood against the gymnasium wall talking about how good they can dance ... if they were going to ... which they weren't.

So I wander across some imaginary line to ask this girl to dance.

It's one of those scenes that is crystal clear in my head.

Wearing a purple gown she sheepishly looks down because every black kid in the Gym have their eyes set on her and I immediately sense the awkwardness of the situation.

Then her large brown eyes look up and she grins so I take her hand and spin her to the dance floor.

All the black kids immediately join in.

All the white kids stood against the wall talking about how good they can dance ... if they were going to dance ... which they weren't.

The next day a riot broke out.

As I walked down the hall to Gretchen Johnson's English class a bunch of white kids beat me up for dancing with a black girl.

There is another moment forever frozen in my mind as they kick the crap out of me.

My best friend Gene Prevatt comes flying through the air like Superman into the middle of the pile to make it a fairer fight.

They kick the crap out of him too.

Later we're both laying in the Nurses office when Gene asks, "Elliott did it never dawn on you that when you danced with that girl it was going to piss some people off?"

"What do people have against dancing?" I retort, wiping blood from my mouth.

Gene ponders this for a moment before answering.

"Well," he begins sitting up on the table and for the first time I see his black eye, "we do live in the South. There are lots of Baptists and they don't like it worth a damn."

"So?" I cleverly reply.

"Just give me some warning next time," he sighs laying back down. "Okay?"

It was sometime before or after this happened that I read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X."

Decades later Denzel Washington made a movie of the book which I watched and was pleased as punch to learn that Malcolm X danced.

It all makes sense now.

If everyone would spend more time dancing there wouldn't be as many problems in the world.

Happy Pre-Father's Day

I don't understand people who buy brand new cars.

The moment they drive the spiffy little model off the lots it depreciates by 1/3.

Plus the new owner spends a tremendous amount of time and energy keeping the new car NEW which, in spite of the most valiant effort, is doomed.

Climbing in and out of the car means grass and dirt grind in the carpet, bugs hit the windshield and that wonderful new car smell evaporates while new unexplainable odors appear.

This is why I've long been a proponent of "pre-dented" vehicles.

Sure they may cost a little more but it saves you all the worry and consternation of the first dent on your new car.

Just as there's no such thing as a perfect life, cars don't stay perfect for very long either.

It was with great surprise then that I received a "Pre-Father's Day" card yesterday.

I had no idea such things existed.

It was custom made by hand by Sarah's middle daughter Laurel who I've been carting back and forth all week to paddle board camp.

Honestly we've been miffed at one another most of the week.

She's a ten year old who knows everything, hates to get up in the morning to actually attend paddle board camp and then it's somehow my fault for making her go against her will when she's the one who's wanted to attend since last year!

Sarah was gone with her two other girls and I was responsible for taking Laurel to meet them after paddle board camp.

Of course Laurel did not want to go and fired excuses at me as though her mouth is a machine gun that never needs reloading.

I stomp my foot down telling her to get ready so she busies herself while I remind myself I'm the adult.

After dropping her off by slowing down to 35 miles per hour and thrusting her out of the car to Sarah, I return to the peace and quiet of home and ... discover my "Pre-Father's Day" card tenderly laying on my pillow.

"Well Hell," I say out loud reading that she loves me and thanks me for everything I do.

You can never figure kids out. Just when I have her where I want her ... meaning gone! ... she does the sweetest thing, touches my heart and I miss her.

Well ... until Sarah got home and kid-less for the first time in weeks, we quickly busied ourselves with other, long overdue activities.

I'll thank Laurel after the fact when she gets back home tomorrow night.

My Gay Life

I don't remember in High School.

Integration was happening and, on the football team anyway, blacks and white got along well.

Besides one of my best friends was Paul Walker, a very tall black kid, and we'd crash parties at the Desoto Hilton exchanging dates so we entered the ballroom as interracial couples. The moment we strolled inside everything stopped and you could hear a pin drop.

No one knew what to say in those uncomfortable days so nobody said anything.

Paul and I and our dates ate and drank for free before laughing all the way to the Garden City Methodist Church where we parked ... making out until the girls had to be home.

At Georgia Southern I had friends who were gay, one on our Intramural Football Team "The Smokey Jays" and never really thought much about it.

I was busy working, going to school and my son had been born so there wasn't a lot of free time to wonder about differences.

But in Seminary my world changed!

In the early 80s there was AIDS.

Inexplicably I was the "Professional Christian" in charge of an inner city church where I was intensely focused on Ronald Regan's exploding homeless population.

AIDS scared everyone more and landlords were evicting gay tenants left and right who were sick and had nowhere to go.

Some heard about a hippy preacher who helped people find a place to stay so they came to me.

Young, naïve, with a good heart and high hopes, I believed in Jesus and everything he did so I did my best to help.

And I entered another universe.

People in love ... or desperate for it ... faced discrimination like I had never seen and God forbid if you were both black and gay because churches of all colors were so lovingly hypocritical.

"GOD DID NOT CREATE ADAM AND STEVE," an African-American preacher bellows as I integrated his congregation. GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE AND THAT'S THE WAY IT'S ORDAINED TO BE!"

"What a shit head," I remember thinking.

So in Louisville, Kentucky in the 80s and Savannah, Georgia in the 90s and 00's a big part of my life ... a big part of my heart ...was spent helping the gay community become one with the rest of us.

We opened Glade House in Louisville and Phoenix Place in Savannah so people with AIDS had a home when their own families kicked them out.

As important we helped "out" gay people through the St. Jude's Guild in Louisville and First City Network in Savannah.

I'm very proud to have played a small part in these things.

So this weekend, Sarah and I are celebrating "The Rainbow Festival" on Tybee Island where we live.

We are full of Gay pride!

"Red and yellow, black and white," keeps running through my head, "Lesbian or gay, transgender or any ol' way ... all are precious in his sight ... Heaven's come to us today!"

Amen!

And thank God!

The Oppression of Divorce

When I returned to Savannah I was asked to conduct the marriage of a High School friend at one of the City's old historic churches.

He was divorced as was his bride.

Standing there in the black robe I bought for $10 from a Preacher going out of business I quoted Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate Eli Wiesel.

"God's greatest gift is the chance to start over."

And the Bride and Groom cried because they had the chance ... and they were taking it.

Afterwards they thanked me for pointing out the Elephant in the room by acknowledging their divorces and still believing in love.

I remember walking through the moss draped Square after the service thinking about the oppression of the divorced.

"The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit," says whoever wrote the Psalms (34:18) and divorce certainly breaks hearts and crushes spirits.

I also wondered why it's the Church orchestrating so much oppression of the brokenhearted and crushed people so near the Lord?

Somehow the Church made it into one of the Ten Commandments ... "Thou shalt not get divorced" though it's not certainly not one!

"But Jesus says," according to the modern day Pharisees (e.g. Fundamentalists and other shallow thinkers) "whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery" ... and adultery is one of the Ten Commandments!

This verse if from the Gospel of Matthew and is the "Jewish" version of Jesus.

Quick lesson on the New Testament ... Paul's letters were written first ... THEN comes Mark ... closely followed by Matthew a couple of years later ... Luke was a decade after that ... and whoever the hell wrote John came out a decade or so later.

Just like Paul's letters were written to certain churches the Gospels were written for certain audiences.

Realizing everyone who knew Jesus personally was dying off Mark assembled his sayings and birthed the first Gospel which Matthew quickly plagiarized giving it a Jewish slant!

Lesson over.

The verse about not divorcing your wife unless SHE has sex with somebody else ... but it's okay if the husband does ... was all about Matthew trying to slowly bring the Jews over to Jesus' way of thinking ... by Jews I mean ancient Pharisees who believed in rules more than anything else.

Fast forward back to now.

It's a shame Pharisees run most Churches!

When I got divorced (X 2) lots of people ... church people! ... said horrible things when I was just trying to survive my broken heart and crushed spirit.

The same thing happened to Sarah and, because she comes from a background even more conservative than the First Baptist Church of Port Wentworth, Georgia, it was worse.

"Whoever does not love does not know God because ... God is love," I John 4:8.

A lot of divorced people know this WAY MORE than Church people.

Who needs right answers?

A kid's taking a science test and the extra credit question is "What is the strongest force on earth?"

She ponders for a moment, smiles and writes "Love."

The teacher marked it wrong with a slash of red ink.

I've seen a lot of red ink slashes in my life and they are not pretty sights.

Though in this case, like most every thing in life, of course, there's more than one right answer.

Gravity holds planets in place so it's at the top of the list.

Electricity holds atoms together making elements which end up making most everything else which is pretty powerful.

Water mixed with gravity can form tsunamis which is pretty overwhelming stuff too.

Any of these answers would likely have gotten at least partial credit but I'm with the little girl on this one ... love is most powerful thing on earth.

It could be because I am a hopeless romantic but I think it's mostly Sarah's fault who's love holds me in place, is electric and washes over me like a tsunami.

She combines three plausible correct answers into one which is pretty damn impressive.

That's not to say there are moments of doubt, fear, uncertainty, trepidation and frustration because we've mastered those too.

In fact, I wished we sucked much more than we do when it comes to doubt, fear, uncertainty, trepidation and frustration but ... if we were being graded we'd pass with flying colors (not red!).

So this is the funny thing.

Doubts, fears, uncertainly, trepidation and frustration kill most things ... relationships, good public policy, excellent academic thought, pristine theology, excellent nights on the town, sexual ecstasy or even hanging out with your friends.

But, hopeless romantic that I am, l think love really does conquer all.

Last night, long after my bed time, Sarah and I were having a "passionate" conversation.

I'm a terrible conversationalist after bed time but, as she's sitting there on the sofa making her points to me sitting on the floor, I can't help but notice the way a strand of hair falls over her brow and I think she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

I'm not quite sure what she was saying but ... damn she looks good!

Damn I love her.

I'm with the little girl on this one.

To hell with right answers!

Love and Money

Love and money.

The truly blessed have both.

Most have one or the other ... though they may question if there's an adequate supply of either.

The cursed have neither.

The vast majority gravitate through times when they're plush with cash and have love but one runs out while the other wanes or disappears altogether.

If you've ever had one of either you quickly acknowledge you want more.

They're like being addicted to crack.

If you have both then you're dually addicted!

Dual addictions are tough to treat though they can be quite ecstatic when you're high on both and you look so damn happy.

Those with empty pockets and no one to hold hands with look every bit as depressed as they actually are!

If God opened up the Master Prayer book so we could examine it, I suspect that prayers for love and money rank 1 and 2.

There's probably a big drop off before 3, which is HEALTH ... closely followed by 4 "PLEASE GOD GET ME OUT OF THIS!"

But it's love and money that consume us, keeping us up at night, forcing us to lose focus, make wishes, pour out our souls to anyone who'll listen, go to Church and buy lottery tickets.

I'm at a place where I've got so much love it's tsunami-like so that parts great!

And I count myself lucky because there's enough money to get through now and I feel guilty asking for more when I know so many who don't have any.

Though honestly, I want more money but not because I want more than what I have.

I'm just exceedingly happy with what I got.

Family Love

"So how is it?" Aunt Becky asked with bemusement on her face.

"What?" I reply uncertain of the question.

"Living with three little girls," she explains. "What are their ages?"

My Mom rolls her eyes as she flips through Sandy Bottoms & Duct Taped Hearts that I'd just given her.

"Maddie's 12, Laurel is 9 and Cass is 6," I say.

"Oooh boy," she says looking at the ocean outside of the window, as I roll my eyes at Mom.

"Becky," I continue plowing ahead. "I love being a Daddy. I'm a Kristen survivor. Nobody can throw more at a parent than my oldest daughter did and now she's the sweetest thing. She takes care of me."

"A Kristen survivor," she laughs.

"So I love the girls. I mean I could shoot every one of them at least once a day. Sometimes I'd shoot them a lot. They make me believe in the National Rifle Association and stupid things like that. But they make me laugh and they say things to me they'd never say to their parents ... including things about their parents."

"Will you tell my Mom this if I tell you?" Maddie asks the other day.

"You can always tell me anything," I answer. "Same way it is with my kids. If I think it's something your Mom needs to know, I'll tell you so you can tell her ... that way I steer clear of bad reactions."

"Hmmmm," Maddie mumbles never taking her eyes off the multiple texts she's sending from her phone.

"Listen," I explain. "I get in enough trouble your Mom. I'm sure as hell not getting into more because of you."

"Alright then ..." and she tells me.

"Yeah ... " I sigh, "you should tell your Mom."

"Alright then," she sighs as she continues to text.

The thing about being a parent is you never stop being one. My kids are adults going through all the good times and bad times that young adults go through. I do my best to love them through whatever it is and to let them know that home is always an option.

But ... they're still my babies. I don't care how old they are or what they're going through. And I'm still their Dad. It's a universal truth ordained by God Herself!

We're a fractured Brady Bunch with Sarah's little ones and my adult ones but it works somehow ... more times than not.

When we don't want to shoot each other ... family love is the best love.
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