Letter to Dad

Letter to Dad
By Michelle

Dear Dad,

I know that you don't want to hear this, but it's something I have to get off my chest. I think about you a lot, and every time I do, I am reduced to tears.

We live on separate coasts, living lives that make us both happy. Every week that I call you, I hesitate to pick up the phone. It kills me to have to talk to you about the weather and the news when there are so many other things going on in my life. I want to tell you that it's my partner's and my anniversary in a few weeks. I want to tell you that I just joined an anti-hate campaign. I want to tell the reason that I have to cut the conversation short is because I am headed out to my lesbian reading group. I can never tell you any of those things. You know I am a lesbian. You know that I consider myself married to Julie. But we can't talk about it without you saying mean things and me hanging up the phone and crying. I often wonder why we talk at all. It seems that the only reason we talk is because I am your daughter and you are my father.

I tried so many times to talk to you about my life. Remember the time I told you that Julie was considering getting pregnant? You said to me, "A pregnant lesbian? That's an oxymoron! There's no such thing as a pregnant lesbian. It's against God!" I hung up the phone and cried for hours. Do you remember all of the times you reduced me to tears with your lectures about being gay? After years and years of insults, I decided it was best not to mention the words "gay" and "lesbian" around you. Now we talk once a week and we talk about the weather and the news. I only allow myself to mention Julie casually. I can tell you that Julie and I are going grocery shopping, but I can't tell you that we are renewing our wedding vows.

This pretending has driven me further away from you than you could ever imagine. I love you tremendously for who you are yet you cannot offer the same to me. Sometimes I lie in bed at night and think about the good old days. I remember all of the fun we used to have together. I think about the walks through Metcalf Park [in Providence, R.I.], the trips to Rocky Point and the joy of simply having you as my father. You really did your best to be a great father. I looked forward to my weekends with you after you and Mom divorced. Then, in high school I came to live with you, and that's when things went sour. Things went downhill when I became an individual. If you ever wonder why I ran away from home, it wasn't because I was a hormonal teen-ager.

You didn't like it that I was a lesbian. I bet you can't even count how many times I felt so hopeless because of your words. You never laid a hand on me, but your words were enough to put me in the hospital. I am proud to say that I have since grown into the person who I wanted to be. I grew from teen-ager to adult very fast, and I suppose I have you to thank for that. If it wasn't for you I wouldn't have run away from home and followed the path to my destiny. I am 26 years old. I live in a beautiful house in California with Julie, with whom I intend to spend the rest of my life. I can be my own person, which you never wanted me to be.

Do you know what hurts me the most? I may not see you for years. It is a 7.5-hour flight, and Christmas would be the time that I would usually visit. I know that it is not an option for me to show up for Christmas dinner with Julie, and I refuse to have her sit in a hotel while I visit my family. As much as it hurts that I might not see you for a long time, I will never again compromise who I am. Do you know that we plan to have a baby next year? I will never ever put my child in a position to be shamed, and if that means not seeing you for 20 years, then that is what I have to do.

I love you more than I can explain, and it hurts me so deeply that you probably will go to your grave without ever knowing who I am. All I ever wanted was for you to know who I am and love me for it. I only asked for unconditional love, nothing else. I would like nothing so much in the world as to have you love both Julie and me as much as I, your daughter, love you. What tears me apart is the fact that I don't ever see this happening.

If I have learned anything from this, I have learned to love someone regardless of how he has hurt me. I will never stop loving you and not a week will go by that I don't think about the good old days between us. If you could only open up your mind and heart, we could return to those good old days again.

I understand that you were raised in a different generation. I understand that you probably listen to what bigots say about homosexuality. I understand that you are the way you are because of the way that you were raised, the social circle you have and your own personal beliefs. I also understand the true meaning of unconditional love, which is something you don't have for me. I promise that I will raise my own child with unconditional love so that she or he will never have to suffer this awful feeling that I have.

Love, Michelle

[Author's note: This letter was never sent. It has been sitting in my desk drawer for two years.]

I think that too often when we debate about abstractions we lose track of why we're fighting. This is a story I found on the website of the Human Rights Campaign.

British Catholic Bishops Warning Worshippers Not to Take Bible Literally

I recently clashed with JC Masterpiece over at his place after he wrote: "Thus evolution undermines almost every major religion in the world. The theory of evolution was formed and is at it's very core anti-religious as it's founder was." I pointed out that many religious people, including the last Pope, believed in evolution, but JC thought the late Pope didn't maintain that belief later in life.

Although the Bishops don't explicitly address evolution, I thought JC and my other Christian readers might find this article illuminating about the beliefs of other Christians, even if they be Catholics.

Catholic Church no longer swears by truth of the Bible

The Catholic bishops of England, Wales and Scotland are warning their five million worshippers, as well as any others drawn to the study of scripture, that they should not expect “total accuracy” from the Bible...

As examples of passages not to be taken literally, the bishops cite the early chapters of Genesis, comparing them with early creation legends from other cultures, especially from the ancient East. The bishops say it is clear that the primary purpose of these chapters was to provide religious teaching and that they could not be described as historical writing.

Similarly, they refute the apocalyptic prophecies of Revelation, the last book of the Christian Bible, in which the writer describes the work of the risen Jesus, the death of the Beast and the wedding feast of Christ the Lamb.

via Metafilter

Quote of the Day: Belief and Denial

I know that most men, including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity, can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives." -Tolstoy

What's at stake when we consider religious ideas? Why is it that people change their religions at most once or twice per lifetime when really there is more religious thought out there than an expert could learn in twenty? Why don't members of doomsday cults leave when the doomsday date comes and goes without so much as a thunderstorm?

As they say, denial ain't just a river in Egypt. Even in science, whose praises I sing from this blog, people who should know better often refuse to accept new realities. Einstein, who himself revolutionized our understanding of the world more than anyone since Darwin, refused to accept quantum theory, saying famously "God does not play dice with the Universe." The great scientist Max Planck said, "A scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it," and, more colorfully, "science advances funeral by funeral."

Maybe we have to want to change before we can accept truths which contradict our worldview. In Alcoholics Anonymous, there's the concept of "hitting rock bottom," before which people are unwilling to accept what AA offers. Maybe we all need to hit some sort of bottom before we're able to consider other views.

However, I think there are people who are seekers. I was one of them, and my quest led me to atheism. I did not know where I was going, only that I wanted to find out what was true more than I wanted to be comfortable. I know Orthodox Jews who became Orthodox Jews because that is where their quests took them, so I can't claim that atheism is special in that regard. Lots of Western intellectuals seem to find their way to Buddhism as well. I think that in the case of the seeker, he's born into a situation which does not fit and is driven to find the place he belongs.

So maybe there are two ways we change: we can be in such misery that we want to trade in our worldview for another, or we can have inherited a worldview we don't fit into. Or, maybe, we simply change so much that our old worldview no longer fits us and we must find another.

Anyway, none of this offers much hope for changing people's minds by debating on the internet. :-)

Quote of the Day - Other Religions

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also. - Mark Twain

Most people, raised in a religious tradition, spend no time wondering if they're in perhaps the wrong one -- it's obvious to them that all the others are silly. It's amazing that everybody is so lucky to be born into the correct one!

Happy Rosh Hashanah

I wish all my readers a happy Jewish New Year.

However, I must say that of all the things I can do now that I couldn't do when I was frum, not attending High Holiday services is my favorite.

The worst is of course Yom Kippur, in which they bring out every trick in the book to make you as uncomfortable as possible. You have to:

1) Fast. This includes not drinking water for some reason.
2) Wear a suit. This is usually combined with an overcrowded room in order to maximize sweating and therefore dehydration. The truly devout wear a white coat over their suit. Hats, too, of course.
3) Wake up early. To maximize fatigue.
4) Do a lot of standing. Get up and sit down like a puppet. The ark is open, the ark is shut, the ark is open, the ark is shut.
5) Wear uncomfortable shoes. Back in the day, forbidding you to wear leather was sufficient, however since comfortable non-leather shoes were invented, most Orthodox shuls have created the tradition of wearing bright white, uncomfortable Pay-less shoes despite the utter lack of real leather in many normal sneakers.
6) Keep you in shul all freaking day.
7) Intersperse prayer with the most boring speeches ever delivered.
8) SPEND THE LAST THREE HOURS OF YOUR FAST ON YOUR FEET.
9) Keep you late so that your fast is longer than it has to be.

I'm sure that some people find Yom Kippur meaningful. I was never one of them. Every year, sometime when it's still summer, it occurs to me that I don't have to attend this year and it hasn't yet failed to bring a smile to my face.