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?

Studebaker Avanti

I got to thinking about an Internet page I saw a while back. Seems this guy had a life-long yearning for a Studebaker Avanti. Not just any Avanti. He wanted a red convertible, with a tan interior, please, and low mileage would be nice too. Quite a yearning. At most, there were twelve cars on the entire planet that would fulfill his desire. He found one, but it wasn't really available. Finally another fell into his lap. Read the link for the whole deal. (By the way, what can be more gay than his father buying a lavender Packard station wagon?)

I got to thinking of that, and I thought of my repeated complaint that there are absolutely no Studebaker Avantis (certainly no red convertibles) in my neighborhood. OK, I phrased it differently. Nobody to date within at least 100 kilometers, and certainly nobody that would make my heart pound (and, not to be selfish, nobody whose heart I'd speed up either). Well, OK. That's what the philosophers would call a "brute fact." Mansfield plus AIDS plus age have ensured that the population of gay possible dates is close to zero. Twelve at most.

So I asked myself what would my ideal Avanti look like? I got a list.

• Age I just don't want age to be an issue between us. I don't want someone who needs his mother's permission to stay out at night, nor do I want to change someone's Depends. I want someone who can keep up with me, but not call me "geezer."


• Spirituality I'm not too hung up on someone being exactly my denomination, but I certainly don't want a fight. I don't want to get slugged if I say a bad word. Nor do I want to get ridiculed if I claim that the Bible is really reliable.


• Appearance Wouldn't it be nice if I look at him and say "Wow!" Wouldn't it be nice if he had the same reaction? How about a reasonably flat stomach? For both of us? Asian is kind of nice.


• Tastes I like modern art, Greek food, red wine, choral music, and cartoons. Wouldn't it be nice to find someone who also enjoys some of these things? Wouldn't it be nice if I enjoy some of his things too?


• Distance I'm sure there's an ideal someone (an Avanti) in San Francisco, and another in Vancouver. Maybe one in London, England, too. I'd like to drop in for coffee at short notice. I'd like to find my someone within an hour's drive.

So I got to thinking. Praying too. I've been sort of frustrated, praying for ANYONE AT ALL, and nothing in particular has happened. Why not pray for an Avanti? At least then I'd know what I'm looking for. And when a 40ish gay single Christian Asian guy who likes Greek food and red wine happens to move into my apartment building, I'll know what I'm supposed to do.

Tasks for the Summer

I always over-book myself in the summer (winter too), but here are the things I'm hoping to accomplish this summer:

1. Read! I've got a handful of books that I've put off, from Harry Potter to The Elements of Style. I'm going to hit a few of them.


2. Paint! The back bedroom is going to finally get a makeover. It's been a cluttered and inefficient office for years, but I'm hoping to actually paint over the landlord's glossy beige walls and get a decent desk in there.


3. Work out! I'm going to push for at least four gym days a week plus some bike trails stuff. It's nice to look down and see my belt buckle without a protruding stomach in the way.


4. Write! I've got a beginning of a textbook for my remedial students. I hope I can pull together enough for them to have it as handouts by September, then perhaps send it off to a publisher for an opinion.


5. Edit! A friend wants me to look over his manuscript and do something to make it more acceptable for general publication. I hope that works out. I've never actually been in a book under the "Special Thanks To" category.


6. Travel! I'm going to Los Angeles for Becky's wedding, and even though gasoline is certain to go over $5 by the end of the summer, I'd love to do some other stuff too.

My boss at the community college is only giving me one course (though another is possible), so all this really could work. I'm not too worried about the lack of teaching, since I've got six for the fall. The community college course is a literature survey. Haven't done one of those in a very long time. It should be fun.

Back Again

I look at my blog history and I see that I'm mainly a summer blogger. That's not too surprising. My winters are incredibly busy, so summer is my writing time. Looking forward to Fall, I've got six courses (three of them are 4 credits each) for a total of about 21 credits—or double what a full professor usually teaches. That's why I'm not too troubled that the community college is only giving me one course this summer. It should be a good course, too—a literature survey/appreciation course. Haven't really done one of those before.

For the moment, I'm visiting my mom in DC while my sister and two of her kids (ages 12 and 14) are here. I'm hoping to do some reading and writing here, but I know that things will be too chaotic for that. I do hope to pop out a few blogs before I get back to Ohio, and I hope to hear from my half dozen faithful readers too. (By the way, it is OK to let others know about this blog address.)