a moho haiku and a question about friendships

I love my buddy
His smile brings me joy
A blessing of male

Throughout much of my life, I've been frustrated by the lack of reciprocity in many of my male relationships. I expected more than most straight men could authentically give and because of my own homophobia I was unwilling to explore opportunities for friendship with gay or bisexual men. Given this background I'm so grateful when there is reciprocity with a male friend.

Just before Thanksgiving, I felt inspired to make a simple thank you card and give it to one of my friends. Yesterday he reciprocated. Not with a card but with an early Christmas present. Maybe that's not reciprocal  but it was a wonderful surprise. Now I'm smiling as I think about some modest but meaning present I can give to him.

I'm curious about the friendships you have with straight males. Do you seek out these friendships? And do you exchange gifts at Christmastime?

It's You I Like

Again Vic has inspired me. This time in his Gay Gospel Doctrine Class posting today. His take on God's unconditional love for all of his children reminded me of this Fred Rogers song:

It's you I like.
It's not the things you wear.
It's not the way you do your hair,
but it's you I like.
The way you are right now.
The way down deep inside you.
Not the things that hide you.
Not your toys.
They're just beside you.

But it's you I like.
Every part of you.
Your skin, your eyes, your feelings,
whether old or new.
I hope that you'll remember
even when you're feeling blue,
that it's you I like.
It's you yourself.
It's you.
It's you I like.

So the takeaway for me is that thanks to God's unconditional love for all of us, we all have multiple opportunities--I have multiple opportunities--to feel his love for me and for others. If I know I am fully loved for who I am right now; and if I know that unconditional acceptance and love is in place right now for all of us on this planet; I can feel less critical, I can love myself, others and God with greater depth and understanding.

And if not, I can at least listen to Mr. Rogers and remember that I have felt this love before and it is possible to feel it again. The problem isn't in God's always beaming sunshine, but in my own cloudy days and nights of darkness when I fail to remember that dawn is only a few hours away, that blue skies will eventually prevail. God loves us, no matter what.

Thursday Morning Prayer

Dear Father in Heaven, Thank you for the blessings of this day, of this week, of this year and the years preceding it. I'm grateful for the beauty of this week's snowfall, and I'm so thankful that I regained my balance so many times when I slipped and almost fell. Was it me alone? Did I have some steadying help from my guardian angel? Thank you, however you delivered the miracle, that I did not fall. Thank you for our planet, our country, our lives and fortunes. I'm grateful for the moments of optimism I felt as I watched the State of the Union and listened to the State of the State addresses. I'm grateful that I have been able to work, worship, write, read, rest, laugh, eat, sleep, dream, shower, shave, breathe, move, walk, sit, feel, love, mourn, pray and plan this week. I pray that I will continue to live life in thanksgiving. Thank you for the wonderful family, friends, associates, neighbors, citizens, activists, leaders, writers, programmers, singers, musicians, artists, strangers and all of those unseen contributors and laborers who touch my life each day. Please continue to bless them, please continue to bless me that I might not take them for granted. Bless this planet, your planet, our planet this day. Bless all of us here that we may comfort those who die, rejoice for those who are born, and help all of us who live that we might be grateful for our lives, but see beyond ourselves to those we love, those who love us, those we find easy to love and those who are not so easy to love, but need love, need a smile, need a hug, need our blood, our company, our expertise, our substance, our encouragement, our creativity this day. May we contribute what what we can with gratitude for what we have, in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Monday Morning Moho Prayer

Dear Father in Heaven, I'm grateful for this day, another day to breathe, walk, smile, work, eat, and interact with my family, associates and friends. Thank you for granting me, and so many others on this small planet another day of life. Please bless us all. The nearly seven billion of us now on the planet. Please bless my loved ones, known and unknown. My future sons-in-law and grandchildren. My wife, my children, my grandchild, my sister, and those on the other side of the veil, my mother, my father, my grandparents. Bless and help me to bless the men and women I will meet. The men and women I know now. Please bless my wonderful moho brothers and sisters. Bless us that we might feel loved and loving. That we might reach out to those we know and don't know. That the light we sometimes see in each other's eyes, will been seen in our eyes by someone who needs to see that light this day. And bless us that we might also be warmed and illuminated as we do. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

My thanks to my toes, and you, and you, and you, and you

As I awakened on this Thanksgiving morning of 2010, I thought of my toes and other things I'm thankful for on this cold wintry day in Salt Lake City.

Toes - They're the farthest or is it furthest from my heart, yet they still live. Their nails grow much more slowly than my fingernails. I keep them in the dark almost year round, only letting them out a few days in the summer or a few minutes a day when I shower. They must love it when I swim when they're not only free from sox and shoes, but when the gravity and the weight of body they usually endure are all topsy turvey and wonderfully different. Thank you toes for supporting me. For helping me balance. For giving me perspective about those I care about even when you're far from my heart physically, I still love you. I rely on you. I'm grateful for you. Thank you, toes.

Pipes - I'm grateful for you, too. You pipes in my walls, and in my yard and under my street and your cousins the wires in the air and underground, copper and fiber, all of you. Without you, taking a drink or taking a dump would be so much more difficult. I couldn't write these words as easily and effortlessly save them in the cloud, the cloud wouldn't even exist, nor would the orange "publish post" button, if not for you, dear pipes of all sizes and functions. Like my toes, you are hidden, but like my toes I rely on you so much. Thank you. Thanks for water, heat, electricity, television, telephone, and all that is online. Thanks for quietly and almost flawlessly carrying away gray water and worse. And thanks to all the people behind all the pipes. I sometimes think of myself alone in my home with my loved ones, but we are not alone, we are connected to so many necessities and much more thanks to you, our dear pipes, and those who maintain you and make possible the contents you carry.

ABCs and QWERTY - In the beginning, we're told, was the word. If so, then in the pre-existence there was the alphabet. I'm grateful today for alphabets and words and the expression, and creation and communication they make possible. I learned the QWERTY keyboard in junior high. It has served me so well though the decades. I'm using it at the very moment I write this, and you could not so easily read my words without it. I did not have to form the letters with a pen or pencil. I did not have to find the bin and then find the letter made of lead in reverse and then place it in a tray and then find the next letter and the space and the ink and the paper, the press and the labor, the drying time and distribution. No, all I had to do was press a key and my fingers knew exactly where it would be thanks to QWERTY. For letters, words, keyboards and sentences, paragraphs, typewriters, computers and broadband, I am grateful this day. 

Fingers - Just because I wrote of toes first, did you really think I would fail to mention you, my ten good friends? Thank you for your beautiful functionality. Thank you for your length ratios which, like my counter clockwise hair sworl, are a physical indication of my great challenges and gifts as a bisexual man. Thanks for all you do. Ringman for working with that extra weight of gold more than three decades now. Thank you all for helping with so much everyday. Thank you for letting me touch and feel. For helping so much with buttons, zippers, keys, driving, holding and so much more. For being an integral part of so many handshakes and hugs, caresses and the holding of hands, pets and more. Thank you for working as a team. Please accept my apology for sometimes forgetting you. I try to clip your nails weekly, but as you know, I sometimes procrastinate. In this weather I should make sure that you get lotion and wear my gloves out in the cold. Thank you for all you've done, all you do, all you will do. Thanks, my fingers and thanks for the fingers of others who have touched and served me in countless ways.

FAM - Thanks to mom and dad, grandpas and grandmas, a dear wife, caring offspring, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, nephews and nieces. And those of you who read these words, you, in my book are also family. We are all brothers and sisters, are we not? Like the family members I have listed above, you have helped and loved me, each in your own way, and I appreciate and love you, too. How can that be possible when so many of us have not met face-to-face and we hardly know each other, if at all? Well I've never met two of my grandparents face-to-face either. They were dead long before my birth, but I still appreciate them. I appreciate you, too. Not in the same way, of course, but in an important way nonetheless. I can write without readers, but what a difference it makes to write knowing that someone will read and a few will comment. Thank you for that and much more my moho fam. 

Well it is time for me to rise and shout, even though I'm much more red than blue in my Salt Lake County/Utah County affiliations. No matter where you live, north south, east west, East coast, or Alaska, overseas, or Texas, rural Utah or Hawaii or New York City, I am thankful for you. Thanks for writing and reading, being my Moho bros and sisters. I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving today, that you give thanks and find that the thanks you give are thanking you back. If you're here in frigid Utah may find joy in the warms that protects you. If you are warm Texas, Hawaii or San Diego, may you be especially grateful for the warmth of climate.

Again and again, thanks to my toes, and you, and you, and you, and you.

Suicidal Thoughts - Conclusion

An edited transcription of journal entries, 2001-2003.


June 10 - Finally got into the Nurse Practitioner my counselor recommended. In addition to the Celexa I've been taking, she's started me on Wellburtrin. Watched some of the Tom Hanks's movie Philadelphia last night. The character he played, based on a real life lawyer, kept fighting against his former employer and against his disease of AIDS. He endured to the end. It has been a good day, overall, a few tough moments, but overall a day as a Sunday should be, time with loved ones, time to find some renewal for the week ahead.


June 11 - Feeling a little panicky. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm glad to be alive. 


June 18 - Followed the plan to double my Wellbutrin to 200 milligrams a day. Still having a lot of ringing in my ears, but it comes and goes. On a scale of 1-to-10 I'd say my mood is up to about a 4. But given that it's been a 2 or 3 for most of last month, I'm glad for the progress. Yesterday was Father's Day, it was a pretty good day with some uplifting thoughts at church and from the fam.


June 25 - I'm still doing about the same but better in some ways. I'm learning about myself. What have I learned? Probably that I'm tougher than I thought I was. I'm learning just to live with whatever this down stuff is and there's the paradox, when I am just accepting of it and not trying to fight it, I seem to do better. Last Sunday I took a nap for a few minutes and when I woke up I felt "normal" for a while. I think the medication is helping.


July 6 - I want to let go, yet I want to hold on. I agree with the idea that suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem, but it's not really an answer. Still I want to let go. But I don't want to harm innocent people, my children, my wife, my family, my friends. I want to again be a basically hopeful person. 


Sept 11 - Our nation was attacked in New York and Washington, D.C. This is awful but I can see that I personally have a lot to be thankful for. 


Nov 22 - Thanksgiving. Mood is much, much better. I've found an anchor in the work of Dr. David Burns and his book Feeling Good about cognitive behavior therapy. I'm doing better physically, socially, even spiritually. I've learned that my thoughts have so much to do with my moods and that irrational thoughts, though the seem true, can cause depression and physical symptoms. We are what we think. Sounds simple. But it's pretty powerful. I've found affirmations that I can say and usually believe: I am healthy and strong. I can handle my responsibilities. I am a loving and caring parent. I'm a decent husband. I'm a capable man. 


Dec 31 - Wow the last day of one of the toughest years I can remember. I lost so much self-esteem and hope, but for the last couple of months I've done much, much better. Of course I need to continue make progress and plan to do so in 2002, the year of the Salt Lake Olympics.



March 3, 2002 - Journaling didn't save me all by itself, but it was a contributing factor. Same is true of prayer, therapy, Wellbutrin, exercise and a certain fear and lack of courage ((to actually try to kill myself)). I have left more than a trace. I have documented my journey, at least some of it. What have I learned? Things I already "knew" but now have a testimony of. The need for balance, for telling the truth, especially to myself, how much I need others, but how much more so I need to be able to LIVE with myself and my decisions. 


July 6, 2002 - I am grateful for improvements. What a gift it is to be reasonably happy and hopeful. I can remember how last July 4, I sincerely believed I could never be happy again, and that whatever it took to be happy, I had permanently lost. I'm so glad I held on. I didn't realize how irrationally discouraged I really was. Well it took a long time but I have slowly improved. I'm grateful that I have had such good support from family and friends, and that I sought a multi-dimensional approach of biblio-therapy, counseling, meds, exercise and physical and emotional work.


April 25, 2003 - Now with the perspective of time I can say that the greatest loss, the greatest evil I have faced is the loss of hope. Amazingly when I wrote I almost always felt better even when I was writing about how discouraged I was. I made more sense to myself on paper than I did in my jangling mind. I'm grateful that somehow I had the wherewithal to seek to record my thoughts.



Post Script - November 11, 2010 - Thank you for hanging in there with me through this series entries. I appreciate the comments I've already received and look forward to hearing more. I welcome your insights and hope that despite the seemingly negative title of these blogs, that you have found some added insight and hope for the challenges you may face.


Post Post Script - September 5, 2011 - I've found and posted the full text from the 1990 newspaper article that I mentioned in an earlier entry. It's hard to find the archival version and the links change, so I just decided to make the full text part of my blog. Here's the link. 


http://moho50.blogspot.com/2011/09/newspaper-article-that-changed-my-life.html


Also check out the comments section.

Return to Part 1

Moho Films Win Tops Awards in Mormon Video Contest

It hasn't happened yet. But it could. Who better to make some highly relevant, engaging, and unforgettable videos about gospel principles like: 

• As I have loved you, love one another
• Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly, too
• Though though deepening trials throng your way

Ok, so those are song titles, but you get the idea. Here's the link to the contest site. Entries are due on the last day of January. Here's a quick idea. How about you use the text of the story of Jonathan and David as the basis of a story, but it is all done with contemporary actors in a typical Mormon home and neighborhood? Just something to get you thinking.

Way Over Yonder

All my grandparents are there. So are a few of my cousins. My dad and each one of his brothers and sisters and their spouses. Not just those aunts and uncles, but my maternal aunt and uncle, too. There are long gone mentors and professors. There are friends I knew fairly well, friends I barely knew, and people who I would like to befriend. 

When I make the journey, I'd like to meet some of the famous members of our club. Guys like Harvey and Stuart and Pyotr. If it were just up to me, the decision might be much easier. I've considered it before, usually just as a fantasy, but once very seriously. Not because I wanted to go, but because staying seemed so painful and pointless. 

I'm glad I resisted the temptation. I'm glad my mental health has improved. But when I read about someone like Todd Ransom and others who sought a way out, I realize I'm still vulnerable. Yes, in someways I'm stronger than I've ever been. I'm healthy, for the most part, and have so much to be thankful for. It has been a beautiful life, a good ride, a wonderful busy day at school. 

And there's more to come. More joy and more pain. More accomplishments and disappointments. More hot sunny days, cold dark winter nights, and those few perfect days we get each spring and fall here in the shadows of the everlasting hills. There are more rides, hikes, swims, fireworks and picnics. More doctor's offices, hospital stays, tears, deaths, funerals, graves and flowers to be placed on graves. There are more hugs and massages. More sunrises, sunsets and wild bells ringing out across the snow. 

I hope to be here. I've made promises I'm going to keep. And I've broken promises, too. Only in my dreams have I slept a summer by his side, but some of my days have been filled with wonder. But I know very well by now that there are dreams that cannot be and there are storms we cannot weather. Sorry to fill a post with so many ripoffs and cliches. 

Helping and Being Helped

Years ago, someone I didn't like very much at the time taught me something I'm now so glad he showed me. I don't think his intent was to teach, but teach he did. It wasn't through his words but what he did. He offered his time, talents and means to help someone who had once helped him. He did this year in and year out. It wasn't a flash in the pan. I wasn't paying much attention for a long time, but eventually I couldn't help but see that he was showing devotion, not with words but action.

Now he and the person he helped are gone, never to be seen again in this life. But his example of service lives on. I've sometimes reluctantly helped someone, based on the way I remember he helped. As I've tried to help out someone who now clearly needs my help, I've sometimes thought of my old friend with new-found appreciation and respect.

How did he do it, year after year, on hot days like today, driving in a car without air conditioning? How did he manage in the cold of winter in a broken down car without snow tires? How could he be of good cheer when the one he served was sometimes difficult, when he knew that no matter what he did, the eventual prospect was death?

Today as I worked in a similar situation, I was blessed with some insights. My old friend was able give because others had helped him when he was vulnerable. He had grown from weak to strong, but in his strength he had not forgotten those who had pioneered and sacrificed on his behalf. I thought of such things today. Where would I be without the help and sacrifices of those who have loved and supported me? As a young man, I viewed the future as an endless supply of days. Now with perhaps a majority of my lifetime behind me, time seems more valuable. So when I try to help out someone who is more than 30 years my senior, I realize just how swiftly the seven, eight or nine decades of a human life disappear.

So what does this have to do with the life of a Moho? Maybe not so much, but maybe it can be illuminated through these lyrics from Garth Brooks and Kent Blazy:

Sometimes late at night 
I lie awake and watch her sleeping 
She's lost in peaceful dreams 
So I turn out the lights and lay there in the dark 


And the thought crosses my mind 
If I never wake up in the morning 
Would she ever doubt the way I feel 
About her in my heart 


If tomorrow never comes 
Will she know how much I loved her 
Did I try in every way 
To show her every day 
That she's my only one 


If my time on earth were through 
And she must face the world without me 
Is the love I gave her in the past 
Gonna be enough to last 
If tomorrow never comes 


'Cause I've lost loved ones in my life 
Who never knew how much I loved them 
Now I live with the regret 
That my true feelings for them never were revealed 


So I made a promise to myself 
To say each day how much she means to me 
And avoid that circumstance 
Where there's no second chance 
To tell her how I feel 


If tomorrow never comes 
Will she know how much I loved her 
Did I try in every way 
To show her every day 
That she's my only one 


If my time on earth were through 
And she must face the world without me 
Is the love I gave her in the past 
Gonna be enough to last 
If tomorrow never comes 


So tell that someone that you love 
Just what you're thinking of 
If tomorrow never comes

Almost Summertime

I know it's not officially summer until June 21, but for many of us summer starts when school ends or on Memorial Day weekend, whichever comes first.

By both of those standards summer has been here a while now, eventhough the weather here in the shadows of the everlasting hills has been unusually cold and rainy. Thanks to George Gershwin and Dubose Heyward, summertime isn't just a season but a wonderful melody and lyric:

Summertime and the livin' is easy
fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
oh your daddy's rich and your ma is good lookin'
so hush little baby don't you cry

One of these mornin's you're gonna rise up singin'
yes you'll spread your wings and you'll take to the sky
but til' that mornin' theres nothin' can harm you
with daddy and mammy standin' by

I also associate Summertime with this classic by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II from the musical Show Boat:

Fish got to swim, birds got to fly,
I got to love one man till I die
Can't help loving that man of mine

Tell me he's lazy, tell me he's slow,
Tell me I'm crazy, maybe I know
Can't help loving that man of mine

When he goes away,
That's a rainy day,
And when he comes back that day is fine,
The sun will shine

He can come home as late as can be,
Home without him ain't no home to me,
Can't help loving that man of mine

Which brings me to this thought: As one of the older guys on Abelard's long list of Moho bloggers I can tell you that even well into my fifties and still committed to my wife, children and faith, there are a few men on this planet and beyond that I can't help loving.

Some are dead. Some are far away. Some are on missions of various types. But one day there will be a reunion or even a meeting for the first time of someone that I've always known, someone who has always known me. That day will be fine. The sun will shine. And perhaps on that day I will know even more surely than I know now, that the love I feel is a good, noble and God-given trait that brings great challenges and even greater blessings. 

I played with dolls

My sisters had dolls and I liked to play with them. My parents gave me toys for boys like trucks, trains, Lincoln Logs and Erector Sets. I also had weapons including toy rifles, pistols and fake knives made of rubber. Some of this stuff was kind of interesting, but not anywhere near as cool as dolls.

I also liked purses. It seemed to me that guys got ripped off just having a little wallet, when girls and moms got to have these interesting and colorful compartments to keep their stuff in. Evenually I outgrew my fascination with dolls and purses. Maybe it's because my parents steered me in other directions.

I don't have any early memories of being called a sissy, pansie, faggot, queer, homo. Not when I was a little boy. But the I think I got called all of those in junior high. It's not like I was dragging dolls to school with me or carrying around a woman's purse. But I wasn't interested in sports and I wasn't good at them, and I was interested in art. I also remember that as boys my age talked about how wonderful girls were, I was noticing the guys. Everything about them seemed noteworthy: their eyes, their hands, how they combed their hair and if they could grow decent sideburns. I couldn't.

I wonder if there had been gay-straight alliances in Utah schools 40 years ago, if I would have participated. Probably not. I knew I was gay, that I was strongly attracted to the same sex. I could admit it to myself, but not to anyone else. I remember thinking I will never, ever tell anyone. I also remember the first time I made out with a girl. I became aroused and I thought, maybe I'm not gay after all. I enjoyed dating girls. I enjoyed kissing them, but I didn't want to go beyond kissing. I heard other boys talk about their sexual adventures with girls and I thought that sounds gross. Sometimes I'm amazed that I made it through junior high and high school. Sometimes it seems a miracle that I fell in love with a woman, married her, and that together we have raised a wonderful family.

When I look at this painting of the little boy sitting on the steps, I think, I know that boy. I was once that little boy. I'm glad he got so much love and affirmation for who he was. I'm sorry that he was sometimes taunted for being different, but he did the best he could with what he had, and somehow life has turned out pretty good for him.

Other little boys who liked dolls were not so lucky. Many have died from a variety of causes. Some have been murdered. Some have killed themselves. Some have lived lives of isolation and loneliness. And some have flourished. They've lived, loved and learned. Some have married women. Some have married men. All of us are human. What we have in common is greater than our differences. All of us have the need to touch and be touched, to love and to be loved, to belong to and contribute to something greater than ourselves, something that matters, something that makes the world a better place, even it it is for just one child sitting on a step holding a doll.

Not Saying Much

It's not that I don't want to talk. It's not that I can't or won't. I guess if I asked myself some questions that might break the ice a bit. How am I doing? OK, some days better than OK. I'm not getting as much exercise as I used to, but I'm shoveling a lot more snow. Maybe it's a wash.

Am I counting my blessings? Sure. A job in this economy. A fine family. The comforts of religion and somewhat clear thinking. The comforts of hazy thinking, too. Friends near and far, known and unknown, past present and future, gay and straight and some in between like me. A dog and a cat, a desk and a rug, a warm home and warm memories. People I care about and people who care about me. Things not to take for granted. Health, pharmaceuticals, books, music and laughter. Smiles, my own and those of others. Ten fingers, ten toes and connections from all of them to my brain. Mind, heart, soul. The ability to talk and listen, see and sense, write and read, maybe even some math if there's a calculator nearby (oh Sarah, if I'd only had real math teachers like you in my youth) , light, shadow, color. Notes, letters, pencils and pens. I can count blessings and it's easy to lose track of the count.

Well I said I wouldn't say much, and I haven't, but I've said more than I thought I would. The fingers can still hit the keys, that's not too bad for a cold Sunday night in December.