A million and one years ago on Long Island, I was a co- editor (they needed a dyke presence), wrote a column called Caution: Living Writer (under a pseudonym) and one called Press RE-Views, (to give our perspective on what was passing for mainstream news) for the nascent gay and lesbian press. These various publications were the outgrowth of the radical self identifying of the "Gay Liberation Movement" of the 70's and 80'. It was exciting and frankly more necessary than most people realized when the AIDS Crisis hit.
Recently someone asked me to a contribute to a column called To Be A Blessing in Community, The Monthly News Journal of the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Council. People from various congregations of faith contribute to this column. The column below ran in the Dec/Jan edition.
In some way, I feel like I've just passed myself the baton...again.
TO BE A BLESSING…Two Rallies Move the Spirit
By Shelley Glick
I stopped regularly demonstrating and marching about 15 years and two kids ago. I was however profoundly moved by two recent rallies initiated by the current face of the LGBTQ movement and community. On the evening of the first, “Wear Purple Day,” the Capital District Gay and Lesbian Community Council invited people to the park to memorialize and respond to recent gay youth suicides. The following week Queer Rising, called for a rally dedicated to ending anti-LGBTQ violence and anti-Muslim discrimination after Aiden Webster, a gay man was beaten by Jamil Karmina, a Muslim man. I am so grateful to both these groups for these events. They were for me a blessing, healing and recognition of a shifting and evolved paradigm for change both personally and politically.
Some 30 years ago I gave a workshop on Long Island called “Spirit and the Gay and Lesbian People” to the Gay and Lesbian Organization at SUNY Stony Brook. My point centered on the belief that gayness and lesbianism was not a choice, but the nature of our spirit, which of course seemed to me at the time to have absolutely nothing to do with any type of G-d consciousness.
The workshop itself was a disaster. The word spirit appeared to most of my audience to be wholly and holy the property of organized religious institutions and simply could not be seen as existing in any other context. Back then I didn’t have the language or the wisdom to talk about it terms of the deep spiritual need of lesbians and gays to live a life of authenticity in connection to who we are. All I could do was use the word spirit to define this animated conviction. So the workshop flopped, but I think it was the first of many steps in my exploration of spiritual consciousness.
I have spent much of my adult life engaged in trying to make the world a better place, shaped mostly by the Gay Liberation and Feminist movements of the 70’s and beyond. I marched, wrote, read and confronted and tried to evolve and express a moral conscience true and consistent with recognition of one’s wholeness and being. It was a loud, exciting and challenging time and sometimes so extremely dark and painful.
Entering Washington Park to honor the pain and loss of the kids who killed themselves as a result of being subjected to torturous bullying and humiliation, I remembered how so not new this truth was to our community and carried it’s sadness in my bones. But what was new enough was the media and societal attention to this horror. I saw this event not only offering support to those still targeted, but also making evident to the “outside” world what has been really happening to gay youth and kids simply perceived as different for a long time.
But this time I was walking in not just as gay activist but also as a mother and I found myself carrying the grief of a parent for a child. My perspective on the world was bigger and more inclusive. This time I found myself more sad than angry and still just as willing to express both. As I walked into the rally my eyes opened to gay, straight, young, old, families, singles, young school children, college kids, many colors, many religions, acknowledging the painful loss and demanding change. To actually see the diversity, visibility and inclusiveness of this moonlit community was such a blessing to this old soldier. I hold such gratitude for all who were there. What did we all want? Safe schools, safe space for kids to be unafraid to be who they are, to be authentic, to be real. Gay, straight or just different - it didn’t matter. Safe Schools. The change we can all live with. Put that on your bumper!
The following week I find myself in Townsend Park listening to a bullhorn call two communities to tolerance. What could have been an angry and reactive action to a violent act, thus furthering increased splitting and wounding, was instead a compassionate, thoughtful and proactive response. People of communities so often bruised by bigotry and violence simply ask of each other to respect each other and honor differences. How simple. How golden. I used to think that tolerance was a cop out. I don’t any more. I think it may be a real first step in healing. I have never heard a bullhorn used so sweetly, which I guess, is a great metaphor for our own capability to behold opposites and difference and still exist as we are.
So what’s the big deal here? It’s really all about the journey called life and life is a spiritual journey. It’s a journey we take to heal our wounds, live as authentically as we can and be fully who we really are. There is no difference between what we think is our personal life and our spiritual life. It’s all the same. And sometimes you get lucky and notice in the middle of the ups or the downs or at an event or two that you and the person next to you are indeed a blessing.
Shelley Glick is an IKH Nondual Healer and Workshop Leader. She also designs bumper stickers and is a congregant of Berith Sholom in Troy.
