Spring break is over

I never get a real spring break. One school goes out for a week, then the other goes. The result is two weeks of half-time work. It's always kind of dreadful. For one thing, I usually collect a major paper just before they leave, which means I've got a stack of papers (and guilt). I have a terrible time getting around to grading during those times, and usually postpone it. On the other hand, I don't usually go out and have any fun either. More like sitting around the apartment, feeling guilty that I haven't done much with the schoolwork and feeling lonely too.

Glad it's over. Sanity is back, and so is some pleasant weather.

Re-Reading

Now that I'm finally finished with Harry Potter, I need new bedtime reading, so I picked up (again) Mr. Right Is Out There: A Gay Man's Guide to Finding and Maintaining Love. Just for the record, I do generally appreciate books written by psychiatrists—they are often really sane, gentle books.

Anyhow, I've tried to get through Mr. Right more than once. I love its lyrical view of the positive side of actually leaving loneliness and finding someone. The author doesn't seem to think that it's inevitable for me to simply sit here alone on a Saturday evening, polishing my shoes and wishing for someone to talk with. He doesn't buy the "too old" idea, nor even the "nobody within 60 miles" notion (both of which seem transparently obvious to me).

I've tried the book more than once, as I said. I usually bog down about page 60 or so. He's got a lot of practical exercises, and I usually run aground when he wants me to find a typical gay venue and actually go and initiate a conversation. Maybe I'll just blast past that one. Maybe I'll settle for talking with the guy behind the counter at Angel Falls and count that as fulfilling the requirement.

Dating update

Nope.

I was remembering the early days after D. pulled me, kicking and screaming, from my closet. I drove lots and lots of miles to any gay gathering I could think of. Lots of time on AIM. I really did think Prince Charming was somewhere just around the corner.

I think I'm saner now. I haven't had a decent AIM conversation for weeks and weeks. Prince Charming found a partner in 1976, so he won't be at any meetings.

The Ohio GCN folk had a get-together a few weeks ago, and I had to choose between that and a church banquet. I chose the church. Another GCN thing happens this weekend, and I might find myself at the church's bowling evening (first men's recreational get-together in about eight years).

Someone will ask why I've given up on the idea of finding a date. Part of it, of course, is simple availability. It's insane to keep pining for a guy when there are so few to choose from. Like six. Part of it, though, is that I'm simply facing the fact that a decade of living alone has made me totally unfit for a relationship.

Let me give you an example. Yesterday was sort of a "day off" (but not really). Here's how I filled it:

1. Got up at 9 and did lesson plans until noon. No breakfast.
2. Lunch and an antique shop with a friend.
3. Paper grading in the afternoon. Dinner was an apple, a chunk of cheese, and a couple of brownies. Yes, I found time to bake brownies while grading papers.
4. Went to the gym at 8 p.m. and returned at 10.
5. More school work until midnight.

Who on earth could ever fit into that life? I scarcely have time to water my plants.

I think one of the advantages of aging is that we finally learn that we really can live alone. We have to. The kids always have a large contingent, but the old guys? This afternoon, I grade 15 papers (in a small, windowless office) then go home, make some dinner, and back to the gym. My life is pretty full after all, and I really don't have the time or energy to invest in a lot of cruising or desperate trolling for a date on a Personals website.

Return of the blogs

As you can see, I have trouble blogging. It's lack of a sense of audience, I think.

I have a bunch of them, though. One is sort of a "Freshman Survival" blog; another (totally inactive) was supposed to be for adjunct faculty at Ashland University (but they don't care to communicate with one another). Etc.

I've always worried about people finding out too much, since these blogs are all linked at the "owner" level, and I'm not out to everyone. Finally thought of the answer (duh!) and simply registered as a new person for the family/church blog. And there I'll have a very complete biography, my full real name, and all that. Very open and public.

All this got started because a friend got me into Facebook and I realized how shallow and dead-end the thing is. I need to say more. And I'm following a blog that's smart and fun, and won't work on Facebook either.

So I hope I'm back.

Painting

Who would have guessed that painting a 13 by 15 room would be so much trouble? The problem, of course, is that I have no real place to go with the stuff in there, and I've been accumulating new stuff faster than getting rid of the old. Enormous art poster. Second desk. Large wall clock. Etc.

But I'm committed now. The holes are all spackled and I've sanded down all the lumps (including the odd bulges where an incompetent wallboard guy drove his nails then covered his mistakes with wallboard mud).

The finished product will be ocher, wheat, and cinnamon. I'm tempted to do something to the living room too, but first the back bedroom.

Half-Blood Prince

I'm about halfway through reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I guess Rowling is a pretty good author of mysteries because I still don't really know who the Prince might be (though have a couple of ideas).

When the first Potter came out, the conservative church folks went crazy. This was going to glorify witchcraft and lead all our children into Satanism. I wasn't too impressed with their hysteria because I'd heard it all before—advantage of being an older guy. Before Harry Potter, we worried about Lord of the Rings and even Narnia.

I guess we can forgive the hysterical people for condemning Potter without reading him. After all, Christians are definitely on the losing side in every way, and there's no real probability that God will win the final conflict, right? Jesus is, according to these folks, a nice but weak guy who got hauled into a political conflict he's not really ready for. That's why his followers have to be so strident and political, and why even the whiff of non-Christian religion is so terrifying.

They forget a couple of things. For one, good British folk have, for generations, been fascinated with the occult, paranormal, and non-Christian religion. We all listen to Holst's Planets and think it's about the balls of dirt cycling around the sun. It's about astrology. For another, the only real biblical example of terrified Christians is in the odd little period between the crucifixion and Pentecost.

Anyhow, Potter is interesting. There's never any discussion in the books about the source of all this magic power. It seems to be genetic, like the ability to curl one's tongue into a tube. Christmas is mentioned, along with a couple of other Christian references, but there's an unusual lack of anything religious. If anyone ever worships anything, it's the Death Eaters worshipping the Dark Lord—and that's a very evil thing according to the book. Lots of battle between good and evil. No discussion of the eventual source of it all.

But Potter himself is sort of an Everyman. He's suffered greatly. Not too comfortable in most social situations. And has enormous power that he doesn't know how to tap into.

Yearning for Episcopalian

My GCN profile says something like "Yearning for Episcopalian" under denomination. I need to do something about that.

I was talking with a friend's parents a while back and one of them said, "I can't imagine why you've stayed with Grace all these years." A few years ago, one of the elders of the church said (in almost identical words), "I can't imagine why you've stayed with this church so long, considering how we've treated you."

Well, the reasons are many. Most of it is that I felt God called me and my family to Mansfield (and to this church) way back in 1977, and that the call has never exactly been retracted. After my wife divorced me, I did just a bit of church visiting to Trinity Lutheran in Ashland, where I attended for about two months before anyone said a word to me. I scanned the websites of several Mansfield churches, including the Episcopal Church (which featured a very long diatribe by a well-known anti-gay writer). For several years, a few of us tried to start up a GLBT church in Columbus, but we never got more than half a dozen of us, and finally we just got tired. With my friend David I visited an open and affirming (and very vapid) Presbyterian church in Ashland. Then I visited an Episcopal Church that appeared to be on its last legs.

Over the years, I've just sort of concluded that I have a very limited range of Ohio choices:

• Open, affirming, and low on content, but at least with some allegiance to church tradition.


• Decent content, homophobic, and a tradition that goes back to about 1970.


• Really good on all counts but about to die.

So I stayed with the somewhat-fundamentalist nondenominational church where I know I'll never be part of things. I'll never be part of any leadership structure and I'll always sort of grit my teeth when they sing the "old favorites"—songs from the 1970s with shaky theology and sort of a "hooray for God" mentality. I've found a few friends here. It's OK.

This always seems to work well until I visit my mother and make a pilgrimage to Washington National Cathedral. Last week I shepherded my niece and nephew through. I found myself talking (again) about what "we" do in "our" church—meaning the Episcopal Church.

As I think back, almost all the really important spiritual moments in my life have been linked with the Episcopal Church. The first funeral of someone I actually knew—a friend in my Boy Scout troop. Lots of college InterVarsity stuff, including all the writing of John R.W. Stott. The writing of Robert Farrar Capon. A visit to a small Illinois church where God sort of hit be between the eyes with the comment, "I really do love you."

What will happen when I return from Washington? Will I slip comfortably back into the default? Or will I go back to the struggling Ashland church and see whether I can find a place there? Do I have enough nerve to leave the comfortable anonymity behind?