Find a Safe Place to Die

On the About page of this blog I admitted I was by nature a provocateur. I incite, agitate, and provoke. An example of what I mean is found in these words from that page: I am in love with another man.

I provided no explanation of this admission, but its omission was intentional. I wanted readers to ponder what that statement could possibly mean. I wanted to force them to make a judgment about me from only seven words and nothing more. This was my bait and it worked.

A longtime friend called me soon after I launched this blog both to commend and to express concern. He said if my lover were Jesus Christ, then that would be fine, but if my lover were some other man, then that would be appalling…and very disturbing.

Implicit in his judgment was the notion that if I did love another man then that would certainly mean we were sexually intimate. It would be fine to be in love with Jesus Christ since Jesus is asexual and is so far beyond celibate that he nearly becomes a phantasm. But to my dear friend, whom I love like a brother, loving another man meant the relationship was sexual.

See the rush to judgment? A conclusion based on speculation. My guess is there are many first-time readers of those words who hold the same assumption.

What about the name of my blog - Quare Quidem? What does it mean? Is that some kind of code for queer? Why Latin? Am I deliberately trying to confuse people? What about those pictures of men kissing, hugging, and cuddling? One guy is naked, for god’s sake! And he’s smoking!

What about upcoming posts that look like they might deal with questionable topics? And using the F-word! Was that really necessary? Why do I have that GIF on my site? What could that unrelenting assault mean? How many more posts with content warnings will there be?

Dear God, help this man … this guy has got to be gay … he’s absolutely obsessed with sex … he shows so much contempt for evangelicals … obviously he has no friends and is lonely … he needs to see a counselor or a psychiatrist … it’s quite clear he’s conflicted with so many things … help him change Lord, and for the better … make him like the rest of us! In Jesus’ name, Amen.

So many questions with no answers. So many conclusions with no proof. So much to think about with no explanation. I love it! For this I live, but let’s move on.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist whose work in archetypal phenomena fascinates me, wrote Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge. My son’s tagline for his AR company, Ingrate.com, is similar. Thinking is hard, that’s why we do it for you. My own iteration: Think before you look stupid.

People who don’t want to think still have to make judgments or conclusions about what they see and experience. Without a conscientious, systematic process by which analysis is engaged, the thoughtless are left with nothing but gut feelings, hunches, and innuendo to define and describe the world around them. Even if they are lucky enough to be half right, they’re still half wrong, which is wrong enough to be stupid. And stupid judges make dangerous, destructive judgments.

Everyone who has seen my posts and read my comments above have already made judgments about me and my blog. They think they can read the signposts and come to unbiased conclusions supported by facts. The facts may not be readily apparent, but by conjecture they do exist. I wonder if they’re as thoughtful and nonjudgmental as they think they are. The thoughtful and thoughtless alike can be equally judgmental. Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.

I suppose I have met thousands of men in my life. The memorable ones are those who were the most and the least judgmental. Ironically, the most and least judgmental men I’ve ever known share the same first name, but for this post their names will be Sean, the subjective one, and Oliver, the objective one.

I met Sean when we both worked as volunteers on the Pat Robertson presidential campaign in 1987. He was well-known and well-liked among evangelicals. He was warm and engaging and when he smiled he was almost welcoming. He could work a room just as good as the governor, who was an expert when it came to instant-on charisma.

Sean was a man for whom there were no shadows. Everything was either bleached white or pitch black. He had embedded himself into far-right conservatism. He was passionately opposed to anything outside of this political milieu and he considered those who disagreed more like enemy combatants than those who simply had a different opinion. His adversaries were your run-of-the-mill liberals, feminists, homosexuals, lesbians, socialists, pro-abortionists, long-haired intellectuals, and presumably, most Democrats.

Sean’s attitudes about these groups of people were never hidden from any one. He literally despised them and he found peculiar joy from disseminating these attitudes as far and as wide as possible. Somehow, he grounded his contempt for these Americans inside the Bible and labeled it righteous indignation. He believed he had every right to revile these people because in some fashion God abhorred them, too. His vitriol was unmatched by any one else I’ve ever known. Not surprisingly to me, in all the years I’ve known him, I’ve never thought he looked particularly happy. Rather, he looked like an embittered man on an endless quest to find his very own bitterness saturation point.

Oliver was as different from Sean as something is as different from nothing. I met him at a conference under circumstances that later I would consider providential. I had gone to a retreat center in the mountains but had failed to pack a light jacket for higher elevations. When I arrived and was unpacking my luggage I mentioned to a companion that I lacked a jacket. Oliver, a complete stranger, heard this and gave me a hoodie for the weekend. A friendship was born and a year later our relationship grew into a brotherhood.

About that time, we had the chance to reconnect in another state over steaks and priceless conversation in a place quiet and isolated enough to allow a man’s soul to be stripped bare. I was only a few years into the most painful journey of my life, the loss of my youngest son, when Oliver invited me to trust him with the deepest, blackest muck I had hidden in my inner vault. He wanted me to open that vault wide and allow him to see and touch things no one else on earth had realized even existed. He was asking me to do something I’d never done with another man, but I never gave it a second thought. I jumped at the offer to stand naked in front of him and show him the shroud of shame that cloaked everything about me and my life.

For four hours Oliver and I rummaged through that rusty, musky vault. Nothing was off limits. All of my fear, sorrow, anger, guilt, depression, hopelessness, and apostasy was exposed to a relative stranger. He probed and when it hurt he probed deeper. It was a remarkable experience for me because I’d never known a person so void of judgment as Oliver. I expected him at some point to launch into his list of things I needed to change along with a 10-point plan to accomplish transformation. But he never did that. He just listened. Not once did he make any attempt at fixing me. Nor did he give me the opportunity to shovel a pile of excuses at his feet. All he asked was that I tell him all the truth and nothing less.

Finally, the time came for me to close the vault. We were both exhausted from having traveled that day, and it was close to midnight. When I left him, I was leaving the most profound conversation I had ever had with another human being. And curiously, I had done all the talking. I would never see Oliver again. Yet, I have thought of him 10,000 times since. One man without an agenda and no real solutions decided to hold the man who needed someone to listen, and only listen.

How is possible that a four-hour conversation can change a man’s life forever? How can a man have such profound power over another? It is because matters of the soul possess a commanding presence when viewed with enough courage to withstand the misguided judgment of others. When a man permits another man to see the deepest, darkest things in his life, he’s allowing that man to see the truth – the naked truth – about who he really is. Granting that kind of permission alone is life-changing, but even more momentous is the acceptance that comes from an unprejudiced man who could just as easily condemn the blackness in front of him.

The freedom that comes from being exposed in front of someone who makes no judgments is almost spiritually supernatural. There is power in a liberty that is not limited or channeled. Oliver gave me the opening to feel that power and it has never left me to this day.

Every man needs an Oliver. A man who makes no judgments and doesn’t take time to fix what’s broken. A man to whom a vault can be cracked wide open so that fresh, masculine air can dry up the rotting past and wipe away the residue from a thousand mistakes. This kind of man refuses to become a magistrate or form conclusions even when the truth in front of him dares him to judge. He remains neutral but not unaffected. He’s thoroughly immersed in the swamp of that man’s life and allows his heart to be gripped with everything that man reveals but he doesn’t make any assault, unlike the fist on the front page of my blog pummeling that man for making the mistake of opening his heart to someone like Sean.

Steer clear of Sean and all those like him. Let the dead bury the dead. Find a man with whom you can freely be your authentic self. Open your dark vault and let the light in. Let this Oliver touch the things too shameful for you even to mention. Bring to a good, quiet, and necessary death the painful memories and wounds that have been held far too long in the deep soul. Let him see the things that are true that no one else knows exist. With enough light, those genuine, essential parts of your individuality that have been draped your entire life will come to life. You will discover as I did that Oliver is the safest place to die that we’ll ever know.