8 Simple Rules for Being a Queer Godfather

This month I decided to write about an event that changed my life: the day I became a Godfather.  I am honored that I am able to write about issues on the Feminism and Religion Project but proud that I have the ability to share my story with our readers.  Enjoy.

xoxo

________________________________________________________________________________

I often wondered why I wasn’t asked to be the Godfather of my niece and nephew.  It made perfect sense to me that I would be the best person to guide and provide spiritual care for either of them as I was the only member, in both my family and my brother-in-law’s, getting a PhD in Religion.  I didn’t think there would be much to it.  I would go, hold my nephew, and watch a priest pour water over his head, and then go and enjoy some very sugary cake in my sister’s backyard. 

On August 18^th, 2012 my wish came true and I became the Godfather to my sister’s second child, Drew.   I had always believed that there was nothing to being a Godfather.  That it was a title in name only and a tradition that many individuals bestowed upon members of their family as ritualistic habit rather than a sacred institution of spiritual care and upbringing.  Boy, was I wrong.

In various posts housed on this blog, authors discussed their hopes for the future and their wish to change the systems of domination that many believe to be a source of entrapment in specific religious traditions.  As an advent agnostic, I always found religion to be an interesting force of social control rather than way of life that some people believe it to be.  Becoming a Godfather was more than just a reentry into the Catholic traditions I had long given up but rather a journey back in time that would grant me the ability to rewrite the wrongs I felt as a kid growing up in a tradition I not only didn’t understand but also didn’t feel like I belonged in. 

Looking into my nephew’s eyes as he quietly sat in my arms while the priest poured water over his head, I made a wish for my nephew and said my first prayer in a long time:

Dear Nameless Deity,I know I haven’t been the most faithful as of recent but I want you to know that I promise to take my role as Godfather seriously.  I understand now that Drew’s journey is just beginning and that I am here to help him along his way.  Bestow me with the ability to answer Drew’s questions when he gets older and to be there to guide him through life as a friend in his spiritual journey rather than an authority who dictates instead of listens.  Keep him safe and keep him in your thoughts, amen. 

(Me Holding My Godson Drew, my mother holding my nephew Brady, and my niece Emma dancing)

I realized that I wasn’t going to be the a-typical Godfather.  As a self-identified queer male, I realize that Drew, if raised in the same traditions that I was, would one day have questions not only about faith but also about his Uncle and now Godfather.  How would I answer them and more importantly, what would I say when and if he ever asked me if I was going to hell? 

While he slept in my arms I came up with 8 rules I promised to live by when and if Drew ever would require the spiritual guidance I was sworn to deliver.  I reinvented the tradition to create a better future for my Godson rather than the recapitulate the dominating forces that entrap rather than empower and confuse rather than answer:

1. Answer all his spiritual questions regardless of how hard they may be for me and how awkward they might be for him to ask.
2. Treat him with respect and dignity.
3. Give him the resources he needs to continue his spiritual journey if he so chooses.
4. Do not lie to him about the Bible.
5. Educate him about various interpretations of the Bible and g-d. 
6. Go to church or whatever religious institution he chooses to attend without hesitation or judgment. 
7. Teach him the differences between theological questions and religious ones. 
8. Love and listen to him, no matter what he chooses to believe or what he does throughout his life.

It is my dream that one day we can create a world with new traditions started by the simple actions of making new spiritual promises rather that reifying old ones.  One step at a time and one wish and a prayer later, change may be right around the corner or in the hopes and dreams of a child just starting their journey in their Godfather’s arms. 

(Me Holding my Godson Drew and his sister Emma)

“Vaginas are Everywhere!”: The Power of the Female Reproductive System

Having the ability to share my thoughts and my ideas with the Feminism and Religion Project is a continual honor.  I hope you enjoy this latest piece. 

______________________________________________________________________

I have a beautiful picture of vagina hanging on my wall.  However, for the longest time it was in the back of my closet, with a plastic bag covering it.  I wasn’t ashamed of it but my ex-boyfriend, like most gay men, refused to have it on the wall where he could see it.  He is now long gone, the vagina is now out and proud. 

I bid on the picture one fall during a showing of the Vagina Monologues at Claremont School of Theology.  One of my best friends was in the show and I had always loved its powerful message.  I walked out of the theatre, waiting for my friend, and there it was: the picture of the vagina.  I found myself caught up in its beauty.  Its gaze had mesmerized me.  The outlying layers of red, the contours of its shape, they all began to mold into a figure before my eyes.  While I have never thought of myself as a religious person, I realized that at that moment I was no longer looking the old photo but rather I was staring at the outline of the Virgin Mary.  At that moment, I realized that I had to have the picture.

My ex boyfriend was ashamed of the photo.  I let him shame me into putting it in the back of my closet and cast it away like it was nothing.  Like the experience, call it religious or not, had never happened.  When we ended our relationship, I found myself inconsolable and pacing up and down my stairs in a never-ending cycle of sadness and downheartedness.   As I was pilfering through our items, I came about the picture.  I saw it and for a split second, I was no longer sad.  I placed it in a position on the wall that used to hold a picture of my ex and I and proudly stood back and felt a sense of calm take over me.  Slowly but surely, I began to box up the rest of the stuff I had hidden away from my friend during the mass exodus of memories and replaced them with images that helped me begin to heel. 

That’s the power of the vagina: its births new life into the world, even when one does not think life is possible.  It is not just an organ but a vessel that proudly and respectfully births and re-births us all back into a world that has shunned and cast us away.  Vaginas are powerful not in the classic sense but in the uniting and ecstatic transformative bliss that they bring into the world. 

While they are a sense of beauty to some, they also serve as a symbol that needs to be controlled by others.   While some shove vaginas into the back of closets, covered in a plastic bag, others like to legislate against them.  Unlike traditional phallic sources of power, vaginas are an inward expression of beauty and power that take place within a woman’s body unlike external sources of power and size that men like to claim their penis’ represent. 

Nice girls don’t say the word vagina.  Rep. Lisa Brown (D-West Bloomfield, Michigan) learned this lesson the hard way after announcing on the floor that she “was flattered that [all the men were] so interested in [her] vagina, but no means no.”  She was subsequently barred from speaking the day and the controversial abortion bill, which makes it practically impossible for women to obtain abortion services in Michigan, cleared the House with a seamless majority of male support.

While men like to say that they respect women, I find it hard (specifically as of late) to believe anything a Republican (or a Democrat in some cases) says.  They would rather have women sit in a corner and wait silently with a dunce cap on their heads as men dictate what they should do with their bodies and how they should behave.  As of late, conservative men like to think of women and vaginas as two separate entities without realizing that without one you cannot have the other.  These men are afraid of women and more importantly their vaginas not because they signify difference but due to the sheer power they represent.  The ability to create, harbor, and in some cases, if the woman chooses to do so, take away life, is a gift and it is a gift, that as of late, is scaring men half to death. 

Wherever we look, there are vaginas.  From the birthing room to the floor of the Michigan House of Representatives, vaginas are everywhere and they serve an important part in shaping and empowering our everyday lives.  Regardless of whether or not these conservative men, not only from Michigan but also from all over the United States, agree is a matter worth fighting for and in some cases worth dying for. While Rep. Mike Callton (R-Nashville, Michigan) or Ari Adler, Press Secretary for House Speaker Jase Bolger (R-Marshall, Michigan) were outraged over Rep. Brown’s statements, they did not take the time to realize that they were only adding fuel to an already blazing fire within each and every woman who is sick and tired of having both her vagina as much as herself talked for and by men who believe they “know best.”

Well, to all those men, I, along with every other vagina wielding women and allies say, we’ll see you next Tuesday.  Vaginas are everywhere and well men, you’re just going to have to get used to it. 

Tweetable Stories

17 Tweets.

Tweeting my final project was a challenge but in the end, like all of the projects for this class, I feel more liberated and changed than I did before the start of Visual Research Methods.

If there is one thing I have learned after researching and discovering not only my grandmother's but also my own story is that storytelling is truly, universal.

Where does the simple, "old school" ORAL story end and the new digital, tech-savy story begin? When do mediums shift? When do stories evolve?

It's easy to say that my grandmother's story is weaved into my essence as both a person and scholar. To say that she has played a large role in my life is an understatement and where modern language to me, fails.

However, where modern language and storytelling fails, I believe the digital begins. Digital storytelling allows stories, both like my grandmothers and my own, a whole new medium to reach people. Where digital technology changed the way my grandmother told her story, Twitter changed the way I can both listen and then re-tell my own story in context of my grandmothers.

I posted 17 tweets, each with pictures, videos, links to my grandmother's own digital story housed on Wisconsin Public Television's "Wisconsin Stories" site and to the book Digital storytelling, Mediatized Stories: Self-Representations in New Media.

If you are unfamiliar with Twitter it prohibits the amount of characters to 140 in each Tweet. Although I tried to stay within this framework, I sometimes had to post my Tweet with TwitLonger. There is a preview of the Tweet and then it has a link. The link takes you to the rest of the Tweet and if there is a picture/video attached that too is linked and will direct you to the appropriate YouTube/TwitPic Webpage.

All in all, Tweeting my final paper was challenging but more importantly it showed to me how FAR story telling has come. From the oral, to the digital and now to the Tweetable. Stories just like technology evolve.

I would be lying if I didn't say that I will be coming back to this post for years to come for one reason: To hear my grandmother's voice. My grandmother recently passed away this summer and if there is one thing that I miss about her, it's her voice. It always pushed me, inspired me and made me believe in miracles since I was a little child.

Her voice now lives on, thanks to Digital Technology and for that, I will be forever grateful.

I hope you enjoy her story, along with the others in the series, as much as I do!

Happy Tweeding :

http://twitter.com/StoriesofSelf

Beauty and the Beholder

Sitting down to think about the process of making our video documentary, to me, is more daunting than actually filming it. Throughout the process of making this video, I felt both the awe and terror of what we were actually doing. How do we begin to challenge the way in which we view our bodies or how other people see them? To me, it always seems to come down to power and how power is both presented and used especially when it involves our bodies.

Power is a tricky thing. Throughout this video, we all made the conscious decision to play with the power of being the "Filmer" or what is meant to be "filmed." After much internal debate, I made the decision that I did not want to be the one to film, at all. Power is scary and I wanted to make sure that dynamic, me a man filming two women's very personal account of their bodies and how editing affects them, wasn't taking away from our overall message of reclaiming bodily power.

More specifically, reclaiming that bodily power needs to happen by us and not by the "authority." I discovered this after our second draft of the video was complete. We had taken out both a "male and female" authoritative clip that we had found that dealt with the issues we were discussing. If we were talking about reclaiming bodily power back from the media then why did I, or we, feel that this voice was needed? Why did I feel that something was missing when we took it out?

To me, I felt that this issue really got at the heart of what we were doing. We crave this "authoritative" voice whether we like or not because it is socially and culturally written all over our bodies and in our lives. Through the process I realized that we were that voice and more importantly, the reason why I felt so uneasy about it being gone was because change isn't easy. Changing the way both we and society view our bodies and our power is difficult, but in my opinion, our video does just that. I don't feel uneasy talking about my voice now because I have critically reflected upon how people judge me and how culture judges me and used my own voice, not someone else, to be the authority. We critique the media and culture because we can and that is both power and being powerful. In doing this project, I feel like I have freed myself in someway and it is both empowering and scary but that is why it needs to be done.

It is not until we recognize our own power, that the "authoritative power" that has dictated our lives thus far becomes obsolete. It is not until we reclaim power of our unedited bodies that we become truly beautiful.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder but now, the eye belongs to me and that,
is truly
beautiful.