I'm new. Come and love me.

[NotJudeLaw]

My name is Melinda and I'm from Van Buren, Arkansas.

I am at the tender age of sixteen and lived most of my life as an athiest before recently deciding to find God for myself. I live in a pretty intollerant part of the United States, and it's very hard to be religious when you have every other Christian you talk to condemn you for your beliefs and tell you that every thing you have ever thought, everything you have ever loved, was wrong.

It's hard being open-minded in Van Buren, and much harder being religious when you have so many people who believe in the exact opposite things that you do. Here Christianity is not a religion preaching love of God and tolerance, but fear and judgement, which really repelled me from religion as a child. It wasn't until I found communities like this that I started to truly understand what religion was really about.

I'm still on my way to finding God, and I do believe, in years to come, He'll slowly reveal himself to me as I keep going and keep praying, as I do silently every night for Him. I've heard faith is a lot like love in the way that it can't be forced. It must come gradually, when God feels like you're capable of handling and understanding His love. I still find it hard to trust Him every now and again, and coming into such faith so suddenly is kind of disorienting, but I do believe that faith will come to me when I least expect it.

I'm a very ambitious highschool student, who hopes to go to college and get a PhD in Fine Arts, more specifically the two passions in my life: Theatre and music. I plan on getting my teaching degrees along with that so I can teach both in public school to better the conditions of the arts programs in my town's school system.

Some of my absolute obessions include Nathan Lane, Rufus Wainwright, the color red, Stephen Colbert, Anderson Cooper and British men. I'm a notorious lover of musicals and sparkly things, and in my own mind, I'm more fabulous than Elton John and Liberace combined.

I look forward to exchanging thoughts and ideas with you all.

God bless,

-Melinda

[Daniel]

Welcome.

Please don't be jealous, but I saw Anderson (on his way to work, most likely, at the Time Warner building about 10 blocks south) while on my way to the market here on the Upper West Side of Manhattan this afternoon (Oct 16th). His silver hair was tucked under a baseball cap, but other than that, he seemed much the regular guy. You know he's gay, yes? No. We didn't make eye contact. Being a good New Yorker, one learns to LOOK, but not STARE. That would be rude.

Hey. I went to school and did the music (but not theatre) thing and ended up in the opera world after getting my teaching degree and serving in the 'trenches' for a few years. It takes a special kind of person to be a public school music teacher! Steve (Keltic) teaches music- you'll undoubtedly cross paths with him here at some point.

And may I interject here? Don't forget the liberal (meaning lots of stuff) part of liberal arts. It really does count for something. More than the sum of its parts, a well-rounded education is still a good thing to obtain. The broader the better. It helps one think big. And we can always use more of that these days.

Keep on sparkling.

If I've learned anything being in the arts (there is a reason why it's called show business), it's that those who don't give up wind up on the stage one way or another.

[Pablo Rafael]

Melinda,

Welcome. Thanks for sharing your story.
It is encouraging to hear that you are searching for God. We all need to search for God no matter what our age or situation in life. It is discouraging as you have found out that so often the "Christians" stand in the way of the proclamation of Christ's love to all the world.

The Bible teaches a message of God's grace to all people and our response is to share God's love with all people. I'm a devout Christian, and a conservative Christian (as opposed to a fundamentalist) who believes that we gay Christians can be a blessing to the world. It is a tragedy that so many times we conservative Christians have discouraged rather than encouraged people in their walk of faith. The message of Christ cannot be law and judgement, but grace and love. I know that like you so many people have been discouraged by a religion that seems to be against everthing and everyone. The message of Christ is not a negative message but a positive one. I'm starting to preach and ramble on. (A bad habit of us teachers.)

Unlike Daniel I can't say that I've crossed paths with anyone famous. Out here in the sticks we don't see many celebrities.

Thanks for telling us about yourself. I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.

Tu Amigo, Pablo

[BruceChris]

Get to know some of the regulars, here. We have a lot of people who do theater, music, and voice. (And no doubt a whole lotta drama queens, sorry, I couldn't resist.) And yes, Christianity is all about God's love, not just about some zealot's beliefs about judgment. There are a LOT of groups of Christians who are trying to get their churches to accept gay people, but probably not too many where you live. I gotta run soon, (for bible study, no less), try the link below, and come back and ask me (or almost ANYONE here, come to think about it) for other sites. Or Google around a bit.

http://welcomingresources.org/

Peace and Love, Bruce Chris

[NotJudeLaw]

Thank you for your kind words, everyone.

I'm so glad there are other theatre and music lovers here! You don't know HOW hard it is, trying to find like-minded souls where I am.

Daniel, I'm very jealous. I love Anderson Cooper, and when I found out he was gay, I kind of jumped for joy, though the news of his orientation was very unexpected. Gay or not, he's a very attractive man, since I have a thing for premature silver hair.

It's so wonderful that you're involved with opera. I would say that, contrary to musical theatre, which is more comtemporary, opera is the most disciplined and refined of them all. It's very challenging in every aspect, whether you enjoy it or not. And music is a very hard thing to major in and TEACHING, oh, don't get me started on TEACHING. Though I am at a very tender age with very little life-experience under my tiny little belt, I'm very well aware that it is a challenge to understand music for yourself. Trying to convey music to other people is a challenge on a very high level. It takes so much ambition to survive a music major in college, and then not just survive but enjoy years of teaching it. I have the utmost respect for the music teachers of the world.

Pablo, thank you for your words. It's nice to see a Conservative Christian that I can actually agree with once in a while. It shows me that the world is not full of absolutes and makes the grace of God that much stronger.

Thank you, Bruce for the link you gave me. It's very refreshing.

With llove and sparkles,

-Melinda

[Zerbie]

Hi Melinda,

It's great to meet you! You've certainly found a lot of like-minded people here on this forum. I've been performing since I was a child, so that's over 20 years now. Opera all the way, with yours truly. You're right, living as a musician is HARD!!!

Arkansas - don't know Arkansas all that well, though I drove through briefly. Met Eureka Springs and the gigantic Christ of the Ozarks statue. Don't know if that's anyplace near Van Buren.

Come back and chat some more whenever you like - music, spirituality, life, questions or comments - we talk about practically everything here. We even had a thread going on recipes not too long ago.

:)