blessed be and peace be with you. today i said a prayer

[cubby]

hello,

Im new to using forums so hope this is right lol. well....

I am a spiritual person and always have been. I am a 23 year old guy, who happens to be gay. i dont come from a religious family and ive found things out step by step for myself. but one thing confuses me. I have found that i cant seem to define myself by a religion specifically - i have followed what i consider to be a christian path and taken a wiccan one as well...never turning my back on anything i felt was right. I know that God has helped me through some rough times but I know the lady has too. They feel to be one and the same and yet not at all at the same time for me. there are just so many through lines in so many religions but even so I guess I sometimes find it hard to see the wood for trees. but i wonder if thats because of outside influences..a south african girl at work shocked me recently. a lovely girl, but she just came out with a the simple statement that shook me a little. she said that the way she was brought up being gay is wrong. with no malice or ill intent behind it at all. i cant understand why it should affect me...but it did. I know in my deepest heart that the love i share with my partner is not wrong. but i have been confused. so today i knelt at my altar and said a prayer. I said that i can not believe that christ, a being of total love could possibly see a true love as an evil thing. I prayed for some kind of clarification. i do not ask this to test god - i never would intentionally. I feel so much of the witch inside me and yet so much of me reaching for christ; i do take some comfort in knowing that we are loved, but should i be following a specific path, a specific way to worship? is it that structure i need however loose and heartfelt?

I think it may help just to be in touch with anybody who can understand...

I hope this is an appropriate place to voice these feelings.

blessed be and peace be with you Xx

[Zerbie]

You've found a perfect place to voice these feelings!!!! Glad you are here.

I'm exhausted and going to collapse any moment now, so what I type may not make sense/ I may break off mid-sentence and go lie down. But you and I should dialogue some about these questions. We're a little bit similar. Here's why:

I was raised with no religion. Both parents nominal Christians who celebrate Christian holidays but never went to church and never talk about God. I don't think they even think about these sorts of questions.

I am not a Christian. In fact I do not affiliate with any religious orientation. Several people close to me are or have been Wiccans. I went through a phase of reacting negatively to Wicca, then came back to a sense of respect for the tradition (long story behind that, not really interesting for you to read so I skip it). I am somewhat familiar with Wicca, was once attracted to it. I also have a reverence for Jesus, though I am not Christian. When I pray, those prayers address themselves to the Mother first and foremost. My experience of God is that She is female. Except that I also hear ya: there is a time when I worship the Lord in His masculine aspect.

Rather than believing that there are more than One, a Mr. and Mrs. God, if you will, it makes sense to understand that I am worshipping the same Being whether I view Him as male or Her as female, and I'm simply responding emotionally to various aspects of His vastness. If S/He is the source of all, then masculinity and femininity are embedded in That Being, not separable.

To answer your question more directly: No, you do not need to follow a prescribed path to be spiritually "safe" or something like that. What matters is that you strive for understanding, wisdom, self-knowledge, compassion, love, authenticity. There are many paths and many disciplines that you can practice. What matters is drawing deeply from one or two deep wells and plumbing the depths of what those traditions have to teach you. All the enlightened masters, whether Hindu, Christian, or something else, if you observe their teachings closely, have the same core. Only the externals are so different.

Trust yourself to take the time to pursue your path - the travelling of it is the wonderful part, as new mysteries appear daily and your authentic self unfolds further and further.

If you know that at the core of your being is love, then the fact that someone you speak to believes homosexuality is wrong may cause you sorrow, but you also know this: that what she believes is "wrong " is a concept in her own mind of what homosexuality is about, it is *not* the reality of your being. She is not yet in a place where she perceives your innermost being and "homosexual" as linked together (it's another question whether anyone ever even should). To her mind, they are separate things. So it is not you she is judging, even if she thinks so.

I am so sleepy my eyes are clouding over - I have no idea if what I've just written makes sense. If it doesn't please feel free to ask me questions about it and I'll do my best to re-articulate later.

Long enough post - but again, welcome welcome welcome! Glad to have you here. Do come back and chat some more!

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by cubby

I am a spiritual person and always have been. I am a 23 year old guy, who happens to be gay. i have followed what i consider to be a christian path and taken a wiccan one as well...never turning my back on anything i felt was right.

...but i wonder if thats because of outside influences..a south african girl at work shocked me recently. a lovely girl, but she just came out with a the simple statement that shook me a little. she said that the way she was brought up being gay is wrong.

...but i have been confused. so today i knelt at my altar and said a prayer. I said that i can not believe that christ, a being of total love could possibly see a true love as an evil thing.

Hello my friend,

You are not alone on your journey. There are many who have found their inner light- if I may call it that- after first passing through much darkeness.

There are many Paths. I started out as Hungardian Reformed, was Assemblies of God as an adolescent into my 20's, left that faith when I came out and then studied many things: Buddhism, meditation, Zen, A Course in Miracles, Hinduism, Rumi, Gnosticism, The Desert Fathers, The Silva Method etc. What I found, or distilled from these many practices, was that the Way is truly that which you have done: kneeling at your altar. That's where it begins. And your openness to that inner experience will tell you what you already know in you heart.

Meditation has helped me tremendously. Not only in getting various thoughts and feelings sorted out, but also in helping me learn to be compassionate- to myself and others.

All to often we see what others do or say and judge our experience by theirs. All our attention is geared towards looking out- rather than towards looking in. Once one gets the knack of it, it is possible to see, hear and feel what another person or situation is all about and not fall into it hook line and sinker. That's the gift of meditative or mindful conciousness.

It may be hubris on my part, but it's been my observation that gay people have a particular knack for this. Why? Because they spend an inordinate amount of time monitoring their thoughts and actions before they reveal themselves. They get 'inward looking' real fast when they realize they are 'different' from others.

I came to the conclusion you uttered in your prayer: Jesus could not see me as evil or undeserving of love, giving love or being loved by my beloved.

In my undergraduate days, the writer Madeleine L'Engle (A Wrinkle in Time) was invited to my campus- Evangel College (this was in 1980). I was shocked that several students stood up and challenged her on what seems to them to be her 'universalism' (God draws all to himself in the end- ie. there ain't no hell- at least not in the End) in her book. Well. That was something. I had to look up the word. And when I did, I realized that I was a Universalist. Was that the view of most of the people surrounding me? No. It still isn't. There are pleny of people ready who believe in hell and some of them are happy to send us there! Be that as it may, I learned from that it I didn't have to adopt thoughts or opinions that didn't sit right with me, no matter how well intentioned.

I think our particular hardwiring re spiritual matters will let us know and assert itself eventually- just like the knowledge re sexuality does. So I don't think you need to rush out and join up somewhere. Some people aren't joiners anyway. Some are leaders- a very different breed so to speak. Trailblazers even. Maybe that's you.

[cubby]

Thank you both for taking the time to respond to my post. much appreciated. Definately provided some comfort and food for thought.

:-)

[Emproph]

Originally Posted by cubby

I know in my deepest heart that the love i share with my partner is not wrong. but i have been confused. so today i knelt at my altar and said a prayer. I said that i can not believe that christ, a being of total love could possibly see a true love as an evil thing.

I prayed for some kind of clarification. i do not ask this to test god - i never would intentionally. I feel so much of the witch inside me and yet so much of me reaching for christ; i do take some comfort in knowing that we are loved, but should i be following a specific path, a specific way to worship? is it that structure i need however loose and heartfelt?
-I think it may help just to be in touch with anybody who can understand...
-I hope this is an appropriate place to voice these feelings.

{I'm sure Zerbie and Daniel have covered this but I wanted to get this out.}

Your post says it all. I think many people on this forum feel exactly the same way, or at least at some point have. You're in exactly the right place. You've figured out everything you need to as far as what's important. You just need the confidence to realize that.

I posted something similar to this earlier, but it applies here: If anyone tells you that you need to seek/find/pursue God in some specific way, RUN!

Just take a look around, there's a lot of people here that feel exactly the same way you do.

P.S. As long as you don't limit the when and how of it, asking for clarification or a 'sign' is one of the best things you can do.

When was the last time you heard a preacher say, "Ask God if I'm right, pray on it, I might be wrong!" Your relationship with God/Love was never meant to be confined to a book or a building.