SOOoo, I resolve to start challenging my fears by doing that which is exactly what I shrink from in fear … with some measure of judiciousness and guidance from my always-accurate and increasingly- trusted intuition, of course.

I would share that when I first came out I had been a fundamentalist christian for quite a number of years. Heck, I had the entire new testament memorized (literally) in King James verse.

But when I decided I could no longer live as the tortured puppet of a “god” who had pre-ordained me to a life of utter lonliness, I did this: I went outdoors and shook my fist in the sky, said “Fuck You!”.

After that, I have never lived or thought of myself as a christian or constrained by christian “ethics”. It also free me. Otherwise, I might have followed the path of insincerity … to have done what many shocked fellow parishioners suggested at the time: Live like I wanted and then pray for foregiveness afterwards.

For what? For being who I am? Bull!

I also had the VERY good fortune to have then gone indoors and followed some seemingly innane advice I had read. I looked myself in the eye in a mirror and repeated over and over, out loud, “I’m glad I’m gay”.

And you know what. Somewhere within the next few minutes it came to me that I was/am truly, utterly QUEER TO THE BONE, and that I really was/am EXCEEDINGLY GLAD to be lucky enough to be QUEER TO THE BONE.

Those were the five most beneficial moments of my life. I’ve never spent a single moment since that day regretting being gay. Becoming GLAD about your own gayness is, in my view, THE STARTING POINT.

I still have lots of hangups and shame lurking around. It’ll take a lifetime to be rid of all the hangups and scars I acquired durng my formative years. But at my core, I have always since KNOWN that my gayness is the imprint of the divine.