I never saw it coming...

I'm 34. I don't have a problem with it at all. I never enjoyed being young. I have gray hair on the sides and a little on the top and I have a high forehead. It's all going according to plan. I'm not being snarky at all.

When I was 21 I was lucky enough to be part of a core group of people that started Columbus, Indiana's first HIV/AIDS care group. At a coffee one day after a meeting, I was sharing with one of the founders how I was really excited to have such an opportunity at such a young age. She acted shocked and asked, "How old are you?" I could tell that she clearly thought I wasn't so young so I made her guess. Thirty-one. People thought I was older the entire time I was going through my twenties but would always act like they should've known how young I was when they found out. They would respond with, "That explains it." There has often been confusion because of the depth of thought I seem to show at times juxtaposed with how absolutely irreverent and immature I behave at others. I think it's how you get through life. One of my current role models for such behavior, I hope this is a compliment to her, is my adopted, Jewish mother. She is one of the most spiritually wise people I know and also one of the most seemingly irreverent.

I've been trying to make this concept understandable for people for a long time. In my current understanding, things in the world are sacred because of the meaning we apply to them. While that is hard for some to fully accept, the opposite is easier to see. What is profane is completely arbitrary and defined by the culture and society in which it is seen as such. Taboos are made so by the creators of the norms. People make things sacred or profane. Regardless the reason the first person decided something was holy, it was still decided by them.

I'm a big fan of these sacred objects. It's true. But only the ones that I have decided are sacred for me. And I am not all that sacred with those. So, irreverence, to me, is the decision to know that I can hold something as sacred and know with all of my being that there is power in that and that that power is not diminished by my also knowing that it is just a thing that I have named as sacred. In fact, the opposite is true. The highest form of reverence is to acknowledge the power that is within me innately. The power that may reside in my sacred objects is there because of me. No one can take it away. However, I also have the power, through sacred objects, to point you towards what I have come to love if you are willing and desire to take that love into yourself. This is religion. It is how we point again and again back to the source of all that we are as a people. We invite others more fully into themselves so they might find it as well.

I do some interpreting to video for Cassia's synagogue (my Jewish mother). One trip she showed me around the area where they have services and let me see where the Torah's are kept and would have shown me the Torah but she didn't want to go get the gloves and do the washing and the praying and all that is entailed. She was very offhand about it and I was walking around in awe. I tend to hold the sacred of those I care about even more highly than they do. It's how I love. Cassia is all at once completely kosher and keeping of the laws while knowing that those things are for her to do because she was born Jewish and it is just what you have to do because it just is. She says she's not spiritual. I think she might be all Light, personally. Mostly because she says fuck a lot and I particularly like that.

All this is to say that, being 34 (a year older than big J when he was... well, you know) people sometimes seem more apt to accept what I have to offer than when I was in my twenties. I am happy with being older. I am maturing in a way that doesn't make me less ridiculous but in a way that makes me feel... milder. I feel milder in ways that I used to be quite pungent. It is good.

AND my birthday was a rough one. I worked. I didn't do much socially except for an afternoon awesomeness with Greg Gilmore. I was entirely more emotional than I thought I would be. I had to cry on the phone to Heather and say all my crazy out loud to her to get through it and then, out of no where, Frank is driving to my house to be with me because he knows I've had a bad day... he came to my house to hold me without asking first. He just did it. It makes me cry right now, even. The best part is...

I never saw it coming...




Yeah, that's him. :)