"I Don't Have a Suit"

READING

The House of Belonging by David Whyte

I awoke
this morning
in the gold light
turning this way
and that

thinking for
a moment
it was one
day
like any other.

But
the veil had gone
from my darkened heart
and
I thought

it must have been the quiet
candlelight
that filled my room,

it must have been
the first
easy rhythm
with which I breathed
myself to sleep,

it must have been
the prayer I said
speaking to the otherness
of the night.

And
I thought
this is the good day
you could
meet your love,

this is the black day
someone close
to you could die.

This is the day
you realize
how easily the thread
is broken
between this world
and the next

and I found myself
sitting up
in the quiet pathway of light,

the tawny
close grained cedar
burning round
me like a fire
and all the angels of this housely
heaven ascending
through the first
roof of light
the sun has made.

This is the bright home
in which I live,
this is where
I ask
my friends
to come,
this is where I want
to love all the things
it has taken me so long
to learn to love.

This is the temple
of my adult aloneness
and I belong
to that aloneness
as I belong to my life.

There is no house
like the house of belonging.

SERMON

Last November, my dear friend and GLIDE colleague, Rebecca Weinreich invited me on behalf of her 11-year-old daughter Shoshanah to be Shoshie’s adult escort for the special holiday cotillion party at the Wilshire Ebell… not having an adult of the opposite gender handy. (And I’d like to think my history as a professional dancer moved me to the top of the list.) My initial response? I was over the moon! On so many levels.

I was honored, of course to have been asked. But what’s more, I went to cotillion myself in Long Beach in the fifth and sixth grades… fifth grade-- square dancing, sixth grade-- ballroom. My mom didn’t want to send me when my Aunt Gloria invited me to join my cousin Randy’s school group—“You’ll quit that just like you did the piano!” ”Oh NO Mom! This is different! You’ll see!” Never quite like the other children… during the time of Vietnam, protests, and the Beatles… I lived to cha-cha… a chubby little waltzing anachronism. Even though it was quite the social liability-- if ANYONE at my school found out that I went, and what’s more, that I LOVED it… well, I might as well go into witness protection and just change schools then and there. (See, we live in all kinds of closets don’t we… mine was a split-level.) How did I feel? I was thrilled! This invitation represented a rare opportunity to re-visit a very sweet aspect of my past as well.

Becky made a date for Shoshie to come over to the house and show me what manners and what dances they’d learned so far and to give me the low-down on what was expected of me, “Well Michael, first you need to wear a suit.” Oh God. Here it starts: I don’t have a suit. Becky assured me that a jacket and tie would be fine—that Shoshie isn’t yet up on the finer distinctions of menswear. So Shoshie then showed me her basic foxtrot and waltz steps. I told her I could teach her a routine to clear the floor—but that isn’t exactly tops on an 11-year-old girl’s agenda—standing out. There will be no one-armed lifts at this cotillion. (It’s not about you Michael!)

So the big day arrived, I raced home from work, showered got dressed in my jacket and tie and headed over to the Ebell. Only minutes after parking the car, I was slapped awake into a reality with layers of meaning that were not all sweetness and light for me. There I was, feeling so conspicuously less than, in my light khakis, olive shirt and chocolate blazer, and there were all these men emerging from their BMW’s, dressed in expensively tailored suits-- lawyers and corporate types I’d assumed, coming over from their offices downtown or Century City—rushing to meet with their beautifully turned out wives and children. Successful. Giving their kids the best of everything. Heterosexual. They’d done life the right way.

To put these feelings of insecurity, of being the outsider, in a kind of context-- a few weeks earlier I’d found out, in the most unceremonious fashion possible, that I was to be laid off from my chaplain job, a job which doesn’t even pay enough to feed me as it is. And a week before that, the voters of California passed Prop 8—largely through relentless TV ads that terrorized enough voters with the unthinkable possibility-- that their children would find out in school that I even exist. I was not feeling on top of the world.

Insiders and Outsiders. Here it was again at the Wilshire Ebell Cotillion.

I’d remembered the dress code given to me when I started cotillion 40 years ago. Same thing-- suit or jacket and tie. I didn’t have a suit then either. My mom went to Unimart… the forerunner to Target and got me a shiny, olive, polyester, wide wail corduroy jacket with plastic buttons made to look like real leather buttons. I hated it – especially the buttons, and I knew then it wouldn’t pass muster with some of those Mormon boys who, like those lawyers, looked as if they were born in their suits.

Then I see the girls and boys arriving… all the same prototypes to the adolescence as 40 years ago. There were those who were so proud, at ease, eager to see friends, gossip. show off their new clothes and talk about the holidays, and those who looked like they’d rather be going to their dog’s funeral. What was a glorious contrast to 1964 was the diversity of faces… the room looked like Los Angeles… Asian faces, Latino faces, African American faces… one of Thurgood Marshall’s great grandniece’s at a cotillion in Hancock Park! Imagine! And my friend, Rebecca, an out, fiercely proud lesbian mom and her daughter! Change can happen!

Oh and the dancing!! What fun! I especially enjoyed the boys, two feet shorter than their partners who somehow had intuited that this sport of fox trotting is all about who can take the biggest steps, not quite sure why they play music for this in the first place… and so damned earnest about it! There I am dancing with Shoshanah, feeling such a strange mix of pride, reverie, nostalgia, joy, wonder-- and of being less than—the outsider… I looked across the floor and saw the most beautiful little Latino boy, dresses in a jacket two sizes too big, dancing with his proud mom, who at maybe 5’ was still a head taller than her boy--dressed in what I’m sure was her best, a short sleeve, white knit top and navy blue pants, right next to the most glamorous holiday party dresses, cocktail dresses, heels and gloves. That was one, multi-layered picture, I’ll tell you, through the eyes of this little gay, Momma’s boy in the shiny corduroy jacket. Kind of exquisite actually.

Still I was hopelessly short-sighted to not have foreseen what a minefield this setting represents—insiders and outsiders. Even in my own micro-universe… “Hey! This was supposed to be MY territory. This was where I felt most at home when I was a kid. And yet even still, at 54, I feel like an outsider in my own universe? What gives?” Can we be insider and outsider at the same time?

The whole intention of the cotillion is kind of a two-edged sword, isn’t it? Teaching a kind of manners, grace, civility, confidence, poise … for what? Well so that we can go through life with greater manners, grace, civility, confidence, poise of course! And that’s a good thing, right? But is there a deeper agenda? Does it also imply a kind of stepping up in class, toward greater power, privilege, and influence? An affirmation of the hetero-normative, gender-specific universe? Becky had shared with me her hesitation in even signing up Shoshie for the cotillion. White gloves? To her white gloves had historically meant “no Jews allowed.” Not to mention the rigid gender norms and hetero-normativity. Such an irony, isn’t it, that this 12 year-old gay boy felt most at home in this particular universe-- ballroom dancing in such a prescribed role with girls? And just look at all the realms of insider/outsider status evident at this sweet little cotillion: Race. Class. Sexual orientation. Gender. Religion. (a big ol’ Christmas tree in the middle of the ballroom, but we closed the party with dancing the hora—whew! What a relief, huh?). Ability. (even though too much ability as a dancer is not a status-builder among little boys, let me tell you.) And why I was even invited in the first place… family structures. Hell, I just wanted to go to a party! This is so typical of what I do!

But the experience did get me thinking about the deeper ways, spiritually speaking, in which we can feel like insiders or outsiders, and where such feelings intersect with faith. Boy, all we have to do is look around the world to see how much religious faith is built upon notions of us/them—DEFINED by it in fact. We’re inside, you’re out. I’m so proud of our UU tradition in proclaiming the inherent dignity and worth of every human being… at least aiming for the notion that we are ALL insiders. Do we always succeed in manifesting that reality? I’m sure not. I know that I don’t.

And in talking spiritually, one can speak horizontally—that is how I see my connectedness and place among things here in the physical universe. But for many, spirituality is also a vertical relationship with that which is beyond the physical—fate, higher power, the Universe, God, the divine. In my own spiritual journey and certainly in the lives of so many of patients I’ve seen as a chaplain, that vertical relationship is fraught with the same notions of insider and outsider status—in religious language, to be within God’s grace or somehow to have fallen out of it. The same minefield exists as if it were the dance floor at the Wilshire Ebell. In more secular language, those same spiritual struggles are reflected horizontally in questions like-- Is there a place for me? Do I belong? Am I loved? Do I have all that I need? Am I enough as I am? Same issue, I think, just different vocabulary.

I’ve certainly seen my share of patients who are quite certain of their insider status, vertically speaking. As a chaplain intern, I was assigned for a term to the liver transplant unit. I was making rounds one morning and walked into Earl’s room and introduced myself. He was, for that floor in particular, uncharacteristically chipper and bright-eyed. “Oh yes please! Do come in chaplain. I’m a Baptist minister myself,” he declared smugly, “I’d love to visit with fellow clergy.” (Oh brother! Here we go! Quizz time!) “So what’s happening with you Earl?” “Oh I just couldn’t be better! I was sick, and the Lord blessed me with a new liver! Isn’t it a miracle? I’m going to be just fine. You see prayer works, and the Lord blesses and keeps His own.” Well this just pissed me off. Earl AND his theology. Not very “chaplainy” I know, but I just couldn’t help myself. “I see what you mean Earl. It’s indeed a wonderful thing that you’ve been given this second chance. But what about the person who died and gave you that liver? Where is the blessing in that for him do you suppose?” His smile flattened out. ”Well I have no idea if that person was even saved or not.” His insider status seemed inextricably linked to his donor’s outsider status.

Walt, a cancer patient, was the quintessential, self-described, self-made man… Irish Catholic. Rough and tumble beginnings who then grew to amass millions in the oil and the defense industries (and NO moral discomfort with that whatsoever)… because he simply “used the gifts God gave me. That’s all any of us has to do.” It was as if to him, his financial success was proof of his favor with God—that he had done it right, by himself, by the world, by God. The American capitalist success story as theology. Insider all the way. Like Earl, he had the match—theology and circumstances, no struggle, no conflict, and no paradox. One proved the other—air tight. It makes me wonder if it still can accurately be called faith when one’s theology and beliefs match one’s circumstances in such a tidy way. Isn’t it more in the realm of faith when there isn’t such a match… when our beliefs are loftier, aspiring to maybe something grander than could ever really be within our reach?

On the other side of that coin, I’ve been with countless patients who cannot understand why God has not answered their prayers, has not saved them from these tortures or from devastating loss and death. Why they are spiritual outsiders, as it were, especially when the very faith that had held them up throughout their lives had told them quite the opposite. Gary presented a most confounding confluence of all these ideas.

I was a relatively new chaplain intern, doing one of my first all-night on-call shifts at the hospital—a grab bag of adventures every time the pager would wake you from a not-so-sound sleep. I was paged to go see Gary on the 10th floor, hematology/oncology. Gary was about to undergo a stem-cell transplant and was feeling extremely anxious about it. He was a fundamentalist Christian and when he found out that I was neither a fundamentalist nor a Christian, he threw up his arms in incredulous disgust, as if I were contagious… “What?? I can’t talk to you! I have nothing to say to you. We have nothing in common. What are they doing at this hospital with a chaplain who isn’t a Christian?” Ever the earnest chaplain, I hung in there for another hour or so, slowing teasing apart his resistance to a conversation with me. The guy was suffering. He’s alone. It’s late at night, and I’m the only one who’s there to listen.

“You see, the thing is, I was told to have this transplant six months ago. At the time, I thought, ‘NO, the Lord will heal me.’ So I refused the treatment. And I told the doctors, if He won’t heal me in six months, you can say I told you so… but if He does, I’m going to tell YOU I told you so. I was going to stand on my faith. So here I am, six months lost.”

Despite his antipathy toward me, I’m feeling a compassionate affinity with Gary. Several times in my life I’ve taken what might have looked like reckless leaps of faith, which outwardly did not turn out the way I’d hoped. (not the least of which being this journey into chaplaincy eight years ago.) My world’s been rocked dozens of times, and each time, the very nature of my faith was challenged and reconfigured. I do know about putting all your eggs in one basket and then dropping the basket. I had naively thought that I could make a connection with Gary on that level.

“So when the Lord did not heal you, Gary, did you feel betrayed, abandoned, or guilty… disappointed, ‘Why me?’… What went on with you Gary?”

“I have NEVER felt why me. God sees fit to heal those who have a strong enough faith, and I didn’t, I guess. So God has this path in mind for me (gesturing to all the pumps, tubes and paraphernalia). I don’t know why. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest. That’s His argument. I’ll find out when I get to heaven.”

I’m not buying any of this. He is SO angry, so scared, so anxious. But after an hour, I had given all I had. Thinking I had maybe opened the door just a bit, “Before I go Gary, would you like to say a prayer together?” “I CAN’T PRAY WITH YOU! (again his hands are up in the air.) I can pray FOR you. But I can’t pray with you! How could I? You’re not a Christian! There’s no common ground.” So I left.

I walked down the empty hall feeling so drained, sad, angry, and wondering whether this chaplain thing was really such a good idea. Definitely on the outside.

So there is Gary, having this crisis of feeling the outsider too… vertically—he didn’t have enough faith to be healed, after all-- and yet claiming that his faith is sturdy and he is at peace. And alienating the one hand that was there in the middle of the night that could possibly connect him horizontally, if only for a moment. There’s something tragic in that to me. A missed opportunity. His attachment to his insider status as a Christian guaranteed his outsider status in his hospital bed, alone and scared in the night… waiting for the transplant he should have had six months ago.

It may be tempting for us UU’s to perhaps dismiss Gary’s experience, such notions and beliefs as obviously self-inflicted, divisive or for some even as ridiculous. But before we do, I invite us to look at those times when our own faith has been rocked—maybe not the vertical variety but certainly the horizontal… our faith in our own principles… our faith in friendships, loved ones, families, careers, our own abilities or our capacity to make wise choices, and certainly these days… that if we work hard, do the right thing, save our money, that we may be safe. I have to look at my faith in the democratic process too, one of our UU principles, and yet in contrast to that faith how did so many of us feel on November 5th last year to hear of the passage of Prop 8. What a soup of feelings was stirred up within me, especially in tandem with the election of Barack Obama! But in large measure, I felt bullied I think-- by the masses, evoking very old but familiar reactions to such cruelty on the playground decades ago as that sissy. The very same little waltzing anachronism who now found himself at the Wilshire Ebell Cotillion. Has anyone here NOT felt the spiritual outsider when looking through that lens?

So what does the outsider experience offer us, if anything? Jane Wagner, the author behind all of Lily Tomlin’s brilliant material, has posited through her character, Trudy the bag lady, “After all, what is reality anyway? Nothin’ but a collective hunch.” The outsider perspective does give us that very necessary point-of-view outside of the collective—that collective hunch we call reality. It may be the only way as we move (or are moved) from time to time into that outsider place that we can ever really question-- re-evaluate all the assumptions and understandings that we have held and accepted to be the truth or as sacred. The Native Americans have the concept of the two-spirited beings, that we might call gay… the one who has the spirit of both the feminine and the masculine in one body, the one who is seen as gifted with a vision beyond those who are locked into the narrow perspective of one gender or the other. The two-spirits are revered often becoming healers and shamans.

Well all that insight afforded the outsider is wonderful, isn’t it—but being the outsider can certainly also be very painful—hurts like hell. And likewise to feel a sense of belonging, to be part of a family, a community, or in that vertical sense, to feel that I am held within divine grace, can feel as safe and cozy as a big comfy chair by the fire, Who wouldn’t want that all the time, huh? Clearly life doesn’t seem to offer too many the opportunity to sit by the fire forever. So can I hold the tension between the two, and move with a little more grace between the warmth of the fire and the cold wind outside as life beckons me inside only to then show me the door? In a bigger way, can I even get a glimpse of another possible reality… that the whole notion and experience of insiders and outsiders, vertically or horizontally, is an illusion… the pain and the coziness both an illusion of separation that there even is anything but the Oneness of life? Maybe my pursuit of the coziness of belonging is even kind of trap... luring me into that quest for looking for acceptance outside of myself. Can I discover a knowingness in my bones, as David Whyte suggests, that, “I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life?”

So much of all this, I’m sure, may just be a story we make up about ourselves and each other, as changeable as the wind-- the whole sense of being inside, being outside, feeling secure or not. There I was in my khakis, laid off from my job, slammed by the voters of California, feeling so less than. In an instant, I was 11 and I was 54 at the same time. And for a flashing moment thinking-- “If I just had a suit…” A few days after the party, Shoshanah sent me this note:

Dear Michael,

Thank you for dancing with me at the cotillion. I really loved your colorful tie. I hoped that you enjoyed yourself. I also loved your brown and tan suit. See you soon.