Brian’s Reflection: Monday, Oct 19, 2009

I gave up shame a long time ago.

-John Lithgow, actor, artist, born
on this date, 1945


Feeling “real” shame is a good thing. Keeps us honest. That is, providing we have a moral code by which we have committed our self to live. It has nothing to do (so say I) with anyone else. Nothing to do with anyone or any institution. I have come to see in my old age and vast acquired wisdom that anything that is “imposed” by others or by a culture or by a religion has little value until that “code” has been freely embraced with passion and abandon by the person them-self. (Why won’t my spell-checker let me say “ourself”?)

Rules imposed from the “outside”, I see from my study and thought and experience, can only be guides or Flash Warnings”. A little friendly advice from the Ancients. Jesus understood this. All great teachers do. “You can lead the horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.” Rules that come with punishment if you break them can “control” most people for a bit. The fact that every nation is building more prisons (if they are not, like some Islamic or other theocratic societies, summarily executing offenders) proves to me that externally imposed codes have a very short life span.

Besides: our goal, as the human community, and especially as a “religious” community, should not be to control peoples’ antisocial behaviour on a short-term basis. Surely the goal should be to shepherd people to that blessed place where we embrace a moral path voluntarily and rejoice both to follow it and to be reminded when we are not?

For decades, society and religion have been trying to shame me to conform to their standards by vilifying homosexuality. It hasn’t worked, and it is never going to work – with me or most other Gayfolk, or with other categories of people feared by the “majority”. Why? Because “God” made us in Her Image! God would never be intimidated into self-hate or hypocrisy, would She?

So, why should anyone???

“God Bless You” if you have found a religious or philosophical path that made sense to you and to which you have committed yourself to guide you on the “straight path” to your and everyone’s blessed and beautiful Humanity!

Thumbs up! Don’t give in. External controls will never bring us to a World in which we all can live in Respect and Peace. Only your personal integrity and faithfulness will do that.

Brian+