Is 'Home' Where The Heart Is?

Last week, I closed my account at a credit union in Albuquerque. Now, generally this isn't the sort of 'news' that is worth talking about. One does their banking, moving funds around as necessary and as rates are advantageous. I had had my account with this credit union for 44 years, since I first went to college in New Mexico in 1969. The credit union and I had had a 'good relationship'. I liked their service, I appreciated the slogans about how "members own the credit union", about being a 'family' building a future together, that sort of thing. Now, it's not as though I actually believed that I was in a 'family', but the sentiment nonetheless was motivating.

I finally closed the account, though, when the credit union started deleting funds from my savings account because (they claimed) they thought it was a 'dead account', since I hadn't done any business with it in over a year. When I complained about the deletion of the funds, the credit union largely ignored my request to reverse the charges, and I was left with the choice of having to redeposit the deleted funds and 'keep the account alive' or just close it. And close it I did. Much to my surprise -- given all the 'family' and 'member ownership' slogans -- I didn't even receive a letter from the bank about how they had appreciated my membership for 44 years and were sorry to see me go. They simply sent a check for the balance. As my tax attorney brother noted, when I told him about their actions, "a business relationship is different from a personal relationship" and since I didn't have much in the way of funds in the bank, they just didn't care one way or the other. I guess I encountered the world of modern banking. The 'old time small bank' that cared about their depositors just isn't there anymore, at least not at that institution.

This particular event, though, marked a 'watershed' for me, in that it was 'emblematic' of a much larger issue. I had largely kept the account to have a place to cash checks when I was in Albuquerque, and frankly, as a bit of nostalgia. But as the old cliche goes "nostalgia isn't what it used to be". In this case, the nostalgia touched a sort of haunting issue in my life: that of defining for myself what "home" is.

Having lived in Albuquerque for 29 years as an adult (plus about 3 accumulated years, at various times, as a child, when my father deposited the family there -- because my mother was from Albuquerque -- until he established his next military duty station), it had become 'home' for me. As a child who grew up in a military family, I had never had a definitive place that I called 'home'. Unlike children who grow up in the same location, there was no one place, in the whole of the world, that felt 'like home' to me, that 'contained fond memories of continuity'. So when I moved back to Albuquerque in 1969, to attend college (my parents had 'residency' in New Mexico, so it was simply less expensive for the in-state tuition), I never quite got around to leaving again for a very long time. (One of the jokes in Albuquerque is that half the population there was driving through town when their car broke down and they could never afford to leave. I was quite poor for most of the years I lived in New Mexico -- the economy in the state is somewhat on a 'boom and bust' cycle -- so easily moving anywhere else was simply economically difficult to achieve.)

Now, New Mexico is sort of a bedrock location in that my mother's extensive Hispanic clan lives there. I have literally hundreds of Hispanic relatives there (many of whom I only see at marriages and funerals, but know I'm related nonetheless). My father never 'kept up' with his own family, so although I'm 'Anglo' (as 'white' people are called in the Southwest) in appearance, I was taught to take particular pride in my Hispanic 'roots' by my maternal grandmother. And pride I did assume: when the Chicano movement was active in the 1970's, I thought of myself as a more Hispanic than Anglo (or German/English, which is the ethnicity of the paternal side of the family) and became actively involved in the Hispanic rights movement.

In New Mexico, I also became quite involved in politics and could 'use' my ethnicity to an advantage. Unlike many Southwestern states, New Mexican Hispanics control the 'balance' of political power, at least in state government, and are a well-established 'group' in the state overall. So, my 'connections', both from the campaigns I worked on, as well as New Mexican relatives who had themselves attained political power, helped in securing employment as a state movement worker. But over the years, political work began to feel 'less than satisfying' and the employment I secured from my political work was simply not very stimulating or challenging. Overall, my 29 years in New Mexico began to feel quite frustrating to me (in spite of some very good and warm friendships) and I began to 'look elsewhere' around the country for better work opportunities and 'a larger playground'. As I often joked after I left the state in 1998, "it took me 15 years to accept New Mexico as my home and another 14 years to leave the place". Now, when I do return to New Mexico for visits, I enjoy seeing my many friends and some of my relatives, but after about a week I've 'had my fill' and want to "go home" to St. Louis, where I've now lived for the past 15 years.

At this point, I often laugh about being enmeshed in my own version of "A Tale of Two Cities". I spent 29 years of my adult life (and 32 years overall of my entire life) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the last 15 years in St. Louis, Missouri. There's much to love about both places. I miss the sunsets in Albuquerque (silhouetted against the West Mesa), the tall mountains, the dry air, cottonwood trees along the Rio Grande bosque, the quiet life somewhat isolated from the rest of the nation, my many warm friendships, Hispanic people, New Mexico cuisine. In St. Louis, I love that they have four distinct seasons, many rain showers, a close and loving relationship with my Unitarian Universalist congregation, multiple universities in the local area, a lively music, dance, and arts 'scene' (which I partake of in 'deuces' as an usher at many of the venues), again many good friendships, an intimate relationship for 5 1/2 years now with my loving female partner, more financial resources for projects, and just a 'larger playground' to do all kinds of activities that are simply unavailable in the smaller, more isolated environment of Albuquerque.

But -- here's that 'emblematic issue' -- I'm still 'haunted' by that 'sense of home' subject. My female partner noted last week, as I was beginning to compose this blog (I tend to write my blogs in my head for several days before addressing the thoughts in a written form), my family-of-origin was never 'home' to me. My so-called 'caregivers' (my parents) created, unfortunately, an emotionally unhealthy home environment by perpetrating, singly and jointly, sexual molestation, rape, and extreme terror upon their children, with the youngest child (me) getting the worse end of the behavior (since I was the 'low person on the totem pole'). So, it was sort of a double whammy: I had no 'sense of home' due to being raised in a military family that moved a lot, around the United States and around the world, and I had no feeling of 'security' or even 'stable loving' in my own family home. When I try to remember events in my childhood, I am often left with sort of a 'haze', as though there isn't much I want to remember about that period of my life. When people ask about my childhood, other than the pain, I don't have much recollection. I often feel like I'm in one of those science fiction movies where the character has 'implanted memories' of their past, events that actually never occurred, but make them feel 'fully human'. It's not as though I don't have any positive memories, rather that the positive memories are few and far between, jumbled up with all the memories of abuse.

Now, having a 'solid sense of home' isn't particular solely for abuse survivors like myself. Political refugees, immigrants, diplomatic families, children who are raised in corporate families, homeless families, etc. have similar issues. I'm not trying to say that I'm so utterly different. Many of the neighbors in the area where I live in St. Louis are immigrants from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and the stories they tell about their experiences are equally horrific, for very different reasons. When I first moved here, I was talking to a couple of the neighbors who had a mangled hands, which they said were the result of industrial accidents after they immigrated to St. Louis. When I winced and noted my sadness at their disabilities (they are in better shape now after multiple surgeries), the fellow noted that unlike many of his friends in Srebrenica who had been slaughtered by the Serbian Army, he was still alive. And his niece noted a similar story: she said while she had experienced physical pain from the industrial accident, she was 'safe and alive', unlike many of the women she knew in Bosnia who had been "raped as a instrument of war terror" by the Serbian Army.

But at least, in the sense I'm discussing 'home', while they have made a new home for themselves in St. Louis (and plan to be here henceforth, as 'new' Americans), they have a distinct knowledge of where their original home was. They may not want to return there (maybe to visit, but not to live), but they know what 'home' means to them, in a 'solid and stable' way.

That is why I titled this essay "Is 'Home' Where The Heart Is?", placing it as an evocative question, rather than a definite answer (as it is often stated). And in a way, maybe this discussion is allowing me to answer that question. I surely now feel 'at home' in St. Louis, given my connection to my church congregation, my intimate partnership with my female friend, the many people I've met via her and my church who have become good friends, the 'usher' family that I've loosely constructed over the past 12 years, and the fact that I own a house here. And Albuquerque is 'home' also, though it is no longer my 'current home'.

It's funny about how personal relationships continue [or not] when one moves to a new locale. I keep up with many of my friends in New Mexico either via email or, more loosely, via Facebook [though I rarely post much on it myself, other than notices of my blogs]. It's difficult, when one does not see people 'face-to-face' on a regular basis, to keep the cultivation of relationships fresh and vibrant. That's true with people I know in St. Louis, but it is even more true with people I knew in Albuquerque. They are still friends and I still fondly remember our times together (while I may indeed have rather hazy memories of my childhood, I have reasonably clear memories of my adult life). The friend I've known the longest in my life I met in Albuquerque during the one semester I attended high school there (of the 3 high schools I attended, the other two being in Tokyo, Japan and Wichita, Kansas). I rarely talk to him anymore and then only via email. The friends I know 'well' I met in the mid-1970s, in my 20's, and it is they who define 'home-ness' for me in Albuquerque.

Hence, I guess maybe 'home' IS where the heart is. It's just that my heart is in St. Louis… and Albuquerque. I've also developed a good loving relationship with my next eldest brother since shortly before I moved to Missouri, and when I visit Albuquerque, it's his home [and that of my sister-in-law, whom I also respect greatly] that I stay at. He is the kind of 'warm, secure family' that I always wanted as a child, yet could not have.

It's not that I've somehow 'solved' this haunting 'sense of home' by writing this essay, but it has allowed me to talk about that 'life lesson' that has bothered me for much of my life. I sense I'll never be entirely at ease with the subject, that I'll always have a lingering question about 'home'. But, for now, if home isn't where the heart is, I'm not at all sure where it is. It has to be somewhere, but I realize that for me it's a 'sense' that I have to manifest 'whole cloth' [just like I had to manifest 'love' whole cloth as an adult, not having had much of a healthy sense of that emotion as a child, due to all the profound abuse]. For me, 'home' really isn't a physical location at all, it's more a place of comfort in the heart and soul. It's not that Albuquerque, or St. Louis, or my brother's home, or my church, or my relationship with my intimate partner is 'home' as much as 'home' is that place in my soul that feels 'comfortable, secure, safe, and desirous'.

Accumulated Percolation of Thoughts

Every so often, I notice that I haven't written a blog in some time, that my devotion to writing on this forum has 'slipped'. I guess sometimes I wonder if anyone is reading it, since I receive so few 'comments'. Then, to my surprise, I hear a comment, in-person, from someone in my city who has been keeping up with my blog and yet never comments about it.

To wit: I was speaking with a colleague several weeks ago, who I was asking for assistance with anti-racism work at my religious congregation (he had given us assistance several years ago and I was very impressed with his skills). During the conversation, he mentioned that he also did pro-feminist work around educating males concerning abuse of women. I asked if he knew about my work on men's wellness and showed him my business card. He exclaimed "Oh, you're Mariposa!". He said he had been reading my blog for several years and didn't quite know who was writing it (guess he didn't recognize my photo on the blog site), but was quite impressed with my ideas. But he also noted, when I said I wasn't sure anyone actually read it because there were so few 'comments' registered, that he hadn't posted a comment on a blog for quite a number of years, that that simply wasn't his style. So, knowing that he was reading it, I was 'motivated again' to want to write more. Hence, getting around to it today.

I do have several friends and colleagues who respond with comments on a regular basis and that is most appreciated. One of them is a friend I knew from my college days in Albuquerque, who subsequently moved to California. I hadn't seen him in 20 years, just sort of lost track of him. One day, he sent me a request, via Facebook, to reconnect (social media does have the power to resurrect old connections from long-lost friends). When we were initially talking on Facebook, he said he had been reading my blogs for the past year, and had wanted to connect, knowing exactly who the writer was. And he posts comments often now.

The other thing about blogging, though, is that it isn't some sort of 'job' for me. I don't get paid for it, my nonprofit, to which it is attached, has been more a "no profit, no income" organization since its inception, so when I write and how much I write is purely up to me. There are no deadlines, no requirements, its a matter of 'when I feel the motivation'. And often my generally poor health gets in the way. I take good care of myself -- exercise, eat healthy food, meditate -- but the long-term side effects of the childhood PTSD has weakened my body and made me susceptible to hypersensitive reactions to environmental materials and substances that have little effect on most other people. And those hypersensitive reactions 'set me back on my heals' in some fairly traumatic ways. So, while I feel awkward sometimes for going for long periods between posting blogs, I write when I am healthy enough and feel that enough thoughts have percolated in my mind. I sometimes think I have to wait for some 'overarching' issue to arise, before I write, but other times I realize I just need to write down 'accumulated thoughts', which is what I have in mind this time around.

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So, to the 'substance' blog itself.

I was very happy about the settlement that Penn State University made with many of the child abuse victims of Jerry Sandusky. At least the employer of Jerry Sandusky, who perpetrated 45 counts of sexual abuse of 10 boys, admitted enough guilt in the cover-up of that crime to give some restitution. Nothing can 'take care' of that kind of trauma; having been the survivor of sexual abuse myself, I know that it takes a lifetime to overcome those insidious effects. And the larger question is whether Penn State -- or any other large institution -- has learned a lesson from this experience. The answer will come in the form of whether "the team/organization/institution" is more important than victims of their employees. The whole Jerry Sandusky situation, following on the heels of all the Catholic Church priest abuse cases, has surely raised public consciousness about the sexual abuse of boys (that sexual abuse is not solely an trauma experienced by females), and that's a good thing. But too many organizations continue to 'circle the wagons' and worry more about their short-term public image than the protection of innocent children.

The military is a good example of that: with the continuing information about the raising number of sexual assaults in the military services, clearly that problem is not being very well addressed. And what is disturbing to me, as a men's wellness advocate, is that while the number of males being sexually assaulted in the military constitute the majority of victims (52% of males vs. 48% of females, definitely not a tremendous difference), the emphasis of the legislation continues to focus on the assault of women. Maybe that's because the assault of women pulls more heartstrings, or generates more public sympathy, but it tends, again, to ignore, or discount, the sexual abuse of males.

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I attended a lecture given my Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, on the incarceration of African American males at an alarming rate, primarily for drug-related crimes. The statistics are truly distressing: more African American males disenfranchised from voting than were held in bondage at the time of the American Civil War. As a result of the laws in many states addressing the rights of felons, access to jobs, housing, voting, and social services are few, resulting in the recidivism of many of those males, resulting from an inability to survive outside the 'justice' system. We're addressing racial justice and anti-oppression at my Unitarian Universalist congregation this year (we plan it have it be a multi-year educational endeavor) and all this good information about the long-term deleterious effects of slavery on the African American psyche (and on the denial many whites display in reaction to that history) is influencing our approach to the subject.

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I felt satisfied by the news that voters in Albuquerque, my hometown, rejected a limitation on late-term abortions. The anti-abortion advocates had tried to get around the statewide opposition to those limitations by focusing on the municipal elections; but the Democratic Party marshaled its forces and successfully overcame those efforts. I'm proud that my fellow activists continue to uphold the liberalism and decency of our state in support of the rights of women.

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Well, that's all for now. My poor health is once again catching up to me today and I'm quickly running out of steam. But I wanted to put down some of my thoughts. And will return to more as I have the energy to address them.

Being Intentional About Racial Inclusiveness

The following is an Order of Service and Sermon that I [Donald B. Jeffries] wrote and presented at my congregation, the First Unitarian Church of St. Louis, on July 21, 2013. During the summer, our services are lay-led. This is a subject that I had wanted to address for quite some time, given my 43-year devotion to racial justice, diversity and inclusion, and my training as an anti-racism activist for the World of Difference program.

Chalice Lighting

from a quote on "Color Blindness" by Michael Eric Dyson, 1996

"The ideal of a color-blind society is a pale imitation of a greater, grander ideal: of living in a society where our color won't be denigrated, where our skin will be neither a badge for undue privilege nor a sign of social stigma. Because skin, race, and color have in the past been the basis of social inequality, they must play a role in righting the social wrongs on which our society has been built. We can't afford to be blind to color when extreme color consciousness continues to mold the fabric and form of our nation's history."

Prayer and Meditation

from Explorations Into Consciousness, a video interview with Deepak Chopra

"People have fear of the unknown. What they should fear is the known. The known is all the past training they've had that has locked them into a certain reality. The unknown is what we should be stepping into in every moment of our existence. By doing so, life would become more exciting. There's nothing like getting in touch with yourself."

Now, let us meditate on these words.

First Reading

The first reading is from an article entitled White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack. The article is considered a 'classic' by anti-racist educators. Peggy McIntosh is a European-American feminist and anti-racist activist. 

"As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something which puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

Many, perhaps most, of our white students in the United States think that racism doesn't affect them because they are not people of color; they do not see "whiteness" as a racial identity.

In my class and place, I did not recognize myself as a racist because I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.

My schooling gave me no training in seeing myself as an oppressor, as an unfair advantaged person or as a participant in a damaged culture. I was taught to see myself as an individual whose moral state depended on her individual moral will. My schooling followed this pattern: whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work which will allow 'them' to be more like 'us'."

Second Reading

A quote by Margaret Young

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards:
they try to have more things, or more money,
in order to do more of what they want,
so they will be happier.

The way it actually works is the reverse.
You must first be who you really are,
then do what you need to do,
in order to have what you want.

Sermon - Being Intentional About Racial Inclusiveness

The first portion of the sermon, concerning the elements of transformation, is quoted liberally from Living Deeply: The Art & Science of Transformation in Everyday Life, by Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Cassandra Vieten, and Tina Amorok, pages 92-112.

This morning, I will be weaving together two strands of thought which, I hope, by the end of my sermon will make sense. One topic is the process of 'being intentional' and how that produces transformational action, and the second topic is racial inclusiveness. So, let me begin this weaving.

In the book Living Deeply: The Art & Science of Transformation in Everyday LIfe the authors outline the four essential elements of transformative practice: intention, attention, repetition, and guidance.

They begin by noting that the first step of any conscious transformative path is personal choice -- the will to change, motivation, or put more simply: intention. It's an interesting paradox: even though transformation is a natural process -- one that you primarily need to recognize and surrender to -- it also requires making the choice, each moment of each day, to be in greater alignment with who you are at your core. In the process, you become a co-conspirator in your own evolution. In other words, intention is a choice you make about where to place your awareness.

Intention not only fuels the transformative process through commitment, it also imbues actions with transformative potential. In other words, bringing strong intention to any constructive action can make that action transformative.

A second key component of the transformative experience is a shift in perspective -- you begin to look at the world with fresh eyes. In the process, you begin to notice things in a new way. A transformative practice you can start today is paying greater attention to your everyday habits. If you're like most people, transformation may require that you break from some pretty deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and behavior, many of which you may be in denial about. But before changing any of these behaviors, we must become aware of them -- we must bring them into consciousness. 

Just as physical exercise helps form your musculoskeletal system and improve your cardiovascular health, transformative practice helps you move into a new way of being. Learning to live more deeply requires repetition. Part of the practice is the building of new habits -- it makes sense that you'll need to engage in the process on a regular basis to reinforce them. Since the brain continuously reorganizes itself, repeated transformative practices may allow us to consciously shape our brains and our behaviors.

Fourth, guidance from experienced teachers and sacred texts is helpful to learning a practice correctly and staying on course over time. External guidance must be balanced by your own internal wisdom.

Of these four elements, as I noted at the outset, my focus will be primarily on intention as it motives action, with reference to the other three elements.

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In order to create real change, we have to be willing to set aside significant blocks of time to work on them. If that means less time to sit in front of a TV, or less time to goof off, or less energy for social pleasures, then that's simply what it takes.

No major social movement in America -- or anywhere else -- succeeded without a core group of people putting a wealth of time and energy into its implementation. It is important to be intentional in your planning, but without the willingness to put out a lot of 'directed' time and energy, such processes will never change.

Many people think that work on political and social change occur 'when we have the time', as though they are some sort of 'polite social engagement in community work'. But social change is hard work and it takes a lot of time and energy and dedication. It's not enough to simply 'intend' to work on social change, it takes rolling up our sleeves and getting dirty.

But as important as it is to be intentional, even that is not enough. You must personally be willing to follow-up on your intentions and proactively implement them, instead of simply talking about them or hoping someone else will do it for you.

Hence, critical to any intentionality is the willingness to 'walk your talk'. As we all know, talk itself is cheap and actions speak infinitely louder than words. Good thoughts and fine speeches are positive, but they are worth little without a willingness to follow them with a change in behavior and action.

One of my favorite quotes about transformation is from Joseph Campbell. "Follow your bliss and doors will open where none previously existed."

In the process of the transformative journey, you create the doors, you walk through them, and then invite others to walk through them with you. You create change and consequences result from every change.

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Now that I've discussed intentionality and the importance of acting upon those intentions, I want to move to the second part of my sermon today.

In the past couple of years, our congregation has displayed a greater willingness to engage in a multicultural journey, by initially inviting, via our Welcoming Congregation, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people into our congregational life. And we have shown success in that effort. On June 30 [2013], via the joint efforts of the Social Justice Chairs of First Unitarian of St. Louis, Emerson Chapel, Elliot Chapel, and First Unitarian of Alton, Illinois, our four congregations marched together in the St. Louis Pride Parade, visually and vocally proclaiming our support of LGBT civil rights and inviting LGBT people into our congregations. I see that as a very positive development and one which assists us in opening our hearts and minds to the wider culture.

Having done that, I would now encourage us to take more steps on that multicultural journey. As we all know, the world in which we live is becoming more 'global'; the old narrow parochial view of the world, where only a small tribe grouped together, separate from the larger world culture, is becoming a thing of the past.

St. Louis has always been a gathering place for many different cultures; as the 'Gateway to the West', it has historically been a city where many groups gathered as a way-station on the journey further afield. But one of the other major historical legacies of St. Louis as a city was that it was located in a slave state, and, as a result, we have been burdened with a legacy of institutional racism. The degree of racial polarity in our city has dragged it down economically and engendered a fair degree of mutual distrust and animosity.

Many residents of St. Louis, of all racial groups, live in monocultural neighborhoods, their children attend monocultural schools, they worship in monocultural religious institutions. Most of their friends are from within the same racial group that they are. Oh, they might interact with other racial and ethnic groups at work or when out shopping, but their social and economic world is largely circumscribed by race. And that limitation is often quite conscious, at least to the extent that they feel a subliminal discomfort in the company of people who don't look like them.

As a person who both grew up in a multiethnic family [my mother was Hispanic/Mestizo and my father was Anglo] and later became an anti-racist trainer for the World of Difference program, I've always felt a bit incredulous when I meet a person in St. Louis who is white, and they say, in apparent innocence "I don't know what you're talking about when you say there is all this racism in St. Louis. I just don't see it." I now realize that, given the institutional racism, they may be 'telling the truth' from their perspective.

As Peggy McIntosh pointed out in the reading today, in America people who are white live in a sea of privilege and entitlement. And if you're a fish in the ocean, you are unaware of the ocean around you -- it's just 'reality'.

Generally, when white people refer to 'race', they are talking about people who are non-European white, as though being white is not a racial group. Tim Wise, who is a nationally-known speaker on racial sensitivity, speaks about how it is important that white people in American 'own their whiteness', own the fact that being white IS a racial distinction. Only by doing so can they begin to confront the entitlement that is conferred on whiteness in our country.

That is one of my personal discomforts about the current cultural and legal attack on Affirmative Action. It's as though after 20 years of allowing racial preference to be given to minority groups in an attempt to redress past inequalities and bring greater balance to the academic and economic environment, we are suddenly going to ignore the way in which whites in America have had 400 years of Affirmative Action, where having white skin gave a person a significant racial preference.

When students are given a preference in admissions to the best colleges in the country due to 'legacy' advantages -- because their parents were graduates of that school -- we fail to take into account the fact that until recently, African Americans were not allowed to attend those universities and therefore could not establish a 'legacy' for their own children.

As members of a larger Unitarian Universalist religious tradition which has a strong history of working for social change in America, we have distinct advantages in our overview of the world around us. But in confronting 'race' in America, being 'race-blind' is NOT advantageous. Culture does have a place in our dialogue, and ignoring racism around us does not cure the problem.

Being 'liberals' does not necessitate that we fail to notice our differences; in fact, to do so makes the problem worse. We are different and we are similar. It is equally important to be aware that skin color has historically separated us from one another, often for very illogical reasons, and at the same time to remember that 'race' is a cultural myth. This myth was promulgated in the 16th and 17th centuries as a way to divide groups and make it appear that people with darker skin were 'mentally inferior' and 'deserved' a lessor role in the economic sphere of the society. The 'lie' to that myth is that all humans share 99.9% of the same genetic markers, and that except for skin color, there is only one 'race' -- the human race.

It has been said that "Sunday is the most racially segregated day of the week." That has been historically true in our nation, not simply a legacy of our racist past here in St. Louis. While that has allowed us to gloss over and ignore the racial polarity around us, I would encourage us to actively challenge the cultural acceptance of the observation. Our congregation, the only Unitarian Universalist congregation in the City of St. Louis, located as we are three blocks south of the 'Delmar Divide', is in an excellent position -- and I would argue in an advantageous location -- to 'act upon' helping to bridge that racial divide.

We needn't start from scratch in creating that bridge. The National Conference on Community and Justice has sponsored a Dismantling Racism Conference since the mid-1990's for leaders in our region. FOCUS St. Louis has sponsored a Bridging the Racial Divide program for many years. The Jewish Anti-Defamation League, through their World of Difference Program, has been working on confronting racism in our community. Nearer to home, the Holy Ground Collaborative here in the Central West End [of which the First Unitarian of St. Louis is a member] has for the past 10 years been fostering interfaith and interracial dialogue in our neighborhood. And the Unitarian Universalist Association has many resources for engaging in multicultural workshops, that encourage congregations to become more racially aware.

On a more practical level, what kinds of steps can we take, as a congregation, to achieve both racial diversity and inclusiveness?

- We can partner with a politically progressive African American congregation on joint projects and in the pursuit of mutual education.
- We can use the materials and resources listed on the UUA website pertaining to multicultural change.
- We can engage in adult education courses on racial sensitivity.
- We can view, together, films such as "Traces of the Trade", a documentary about how the New England states actively fostered the slave trade in America, by building the ships that ferried slaves across the Middle Passage. Racism in the northern states has its own historical legacy -- it's not just a southern issue.
- We can engage in discussions about these issues and ways in which we can become 'part of the solution'.

Further -- and more importantly, I would encourage our congregation to:
- Actively invite African Americans into our congregation, by promoting awareness of Unitarian Universalism among communities of color.
- Encourage our present and future African American members to become leaders in the congregation, first as chairs of church committees, and then as members of the Board of Trustees [Policy Board & Church Council].
- Educate ourselves on how to truly become a 'welcoming congregation' on many levels, not just welcoming lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people, but also encouraging actual racial diversity in our membership.
- Promote 'Standing on the Side of Love' in all aspects of our congregational life, learning how to be more effective advocates for social change.

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In conclusion:

Will we make mistakes along the way, as we implement these changes in our congregational demographics and move toward a multicultural & multiracial religious community? That's a guarantee.

Mistakes are part of any journey. We ARE going to make mistakes and are likely to feel embarrassment about those mistakes. But what is critical is to learn to forgive ourselves, get up again, dust ourselves off, and continue the journey with open hearts and minds. Mistakes are all part of the practice, and being perfect will never teach you anything of value.

It is important to remember: What is the one most truly paradoxical aspect of this life, that is continual, timeless, and never changes? Change.

We can simply ride the wave of change and let it take us where it chooses, or we can choose to become 'change agents'. I believe the second option is more valid, and infinitely more empowering.

Hence, with all four elements of the transformative journey, we can 'make the change' into a consciously multicultural, racially inclusive congregation, by:
(1) being intention,
(2) paying clear attention to the steps we take and educating ourselves about what constitutes 'right relations',
(3) repeating the lessons we are going to learn, as we all grow together, and
(4) all the while being guided by our Unitarian Universalist theology and history, hand-in-hand with thoughtful anti-racism teachers in the present.

I believe it is time to move our Beloved Community into the 21st century, allowing us to once again be the 'Beacon on the Hill', our hearts open and ready for dynamic change.

--------------------

Benediction

We have the opportunity to lead the change in our church community in vital ways that include becoming consciously aware of racial entitlements that get in the way of being a truly Welcoming Congregation.

As you leave church today, I encourage you to take hold of the spirit of this transformation as a Clarion Call, and go out into the world, knowing that we can be the change that we seek.

Equalizing Social, Sexual and Political Reality

DOMA struck down

The news this morning that the U.S. Supreme Court struck down DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), along with Prop. 8 in California is, indeed, from a men's wellness standpoint, very wonderful and welcome. The law was, as the opinion stated, openly discriminatory toward a very specific group and therefore violated equal protection. Now, the battle moves to overturning all the other provisions of the law, which continue to allow states which don't allow same-sex marriage to ignore the laws of states that do allow it. At this point, it is relatively safe to be a same-sex couple in New England -- most of the states in that part of the nation recognize same-sex marriages -- but it remains quite unsafe to be in a same-sex marriage in most of the rest of the nation, which often have fairly virulent laws that limit the freedoms of LGBTQIA people.

At the same time, though, the 'equal protection' didn't seem to apply, in the minds of a majority of the justices, to voting rights for non-white minorities (decided yesterday). It's like two realities living side-by-side and not affecting each other. Equal protection for same-sex couple but not for the legal freedoms of minority group members. (Though, soon we're going to have to change those terminologies, given that the demographic projections are that by 2040, 'white folks' are going to be a minority in population terms, though they may well maintain, like in the formerly-apartheid South Africa, political majority advantages.)

And then there was the SCOTUS case this week concerning affirmative action at the University of Texas. In a narrow decision, the justices allowed academic admissions programs that are partly focused on racial balance to continue, though with more oversight. What all the challenges to affirmative action continue to ignore is that white people in America have been allowed affirmative action for 400 years; after 20 or so years of affirmative action for non-white minorities, we aren't likely to balance out the damage done by a system that ignores 'white advantages' by simply saying 'that's just the way it is'. It doesn't have to continue being that way, and is frankly unequal protection under the law.

This simply means the 'good fight goes on', not that anyone is surprised by that. I saw an interview with the late Howard Zinn a couple of days ago, and he was talking about how American history is a story of the 99% fighting for their rights in the face of the 1% control -- of money, resources, the law, the police, etc. So, today we can cheer for DOMA going down and feel most uncomfortable with the key provisions of the Voting Rights Act being crushed as well.


NSA Leaks

The other bit of recent news that has struck me as lacking in 'balance' has been the security leaks at the National Security Agency. The focus has been on how Edward Snowden, the whistle-blower who leaked the information about the massive surveillance of the American populace, has broken the law, while ignoring how the NSA itself broke the law in the extent of their surveillance of the citizenry. Even the loose nature of the Patriot Act, which allows for a profound invasion of the civil liberties of Americans in the name of 'protecting their freedom', was routinely violated by the NSA and its subcontractors due to their 'secret interpretation of what the law allowed them' to do.

Through the various programs which were exposed by this leak, the security-survaillance state routinely compromises American freedoms in the defense of those freedoms -- which strikes me a weirdly paradoxical. I was always concerned that after 9/11, when the United States, without provocation, invaded Iraq, we would end up "exporting democracy and importing dictatorship", sort of like the old Pogo cliche of "we have met the enemy and they are us". And this situation seems to support that concern. As many articles on Salon.com have pointed out, the government regularly 'leaks' confidential information to the media in support of their political perspectives, but is aghast and profoundly lacking in 'balance' when a whistle-blower 'leaks' information which makes them look bad. Not a very consistent policy! To say "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" should work both ways: if the government has nothing to hide, why not let the public know the general outlines of what they are doing 'to protect American freedoms'?

The old cliche that "just because you're not paranoid, it doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" has been sort of trumped by this recent news. As one writer pointed out "we are all now persons of interest", whether a citizen is completely innocent or not. As Caroline Kennedy said recently at a book-signing at the St. Louis County Library (in reference to a question about her 1997 book The Right to Privacy) "there is no longer any such thing as privacy in America, it's an illusion". That's sad and quite regrettable.

I just hope that Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado and his liberal colleagues have some impact on reining in these egregious violations of law. We do, indeed, need security from non-state terrorists, but at the price of an abrogation of civil liberties by what Noam Chomsky terms 'state terrorism'? I question whether that is worth it. I value my rights under the U.S. Constitution and the attendant Bill of Rights; having the government violate those rights in their attempt to defend my rights makes me wonder if Big Brother isn't taking this all just a bit too far.


Rape in the U.S. Military

The continuing story and evidence of ongoing rape in the U.S. military, and that, in spite of year after year statements of 'extensive training' and 'zero tolerance' by the top brass, the percentages keep rising, is a sad tale of the patriarchy allowing itself wide latitude while ignoring and even further victimizing vulnerable populations. The Independent Lens film The Invisible War this week on PBS portrayed both female and male military personnel, who were victims of rape, who were, after that sexual violation, then charged with crimes [such as, absurdly, adultery, even when the victims were single and their attackers were married] while their perpetrators were let off 'scot-free' -- and in some cases, those perpetrators were even promoted or honored, but rarely ever charged with a criminal act.

How can our military claim to be going around the world implementing 'democracy' when the personnel in that organization don't have rights? In one of the cases, the court ruling was that "rape is an occupational hazard" of military service. Really?? An occupational hazard? That is an egregious interpretation of the law. At least in civilian life, there is some redress to various levels of court systems; in the military, even if a court finds a perpetrator guilty, his commanding officer can vacate the ruling -- and apparently often does.

The other issue that the Independent Lens film brought up is that 50% of the rapes are of men. That is a statistic which very few of the critics of how the military has handled (or ignored) the issue have paid much attention to. As in many areas of the society, the rape of females is what is emphasized, while the rape of boys and men is either ignored or trivialized. Men who are subjected to sexual rape in prisons are ignored, as though that is 'just part of being a criminal'. (Back in 2006, a man in Texas sued over this issue, noting that while he was incarcerated for a specific crime, part of the imprisonment was not that "you will serve 10 years and be subjected to rape quite a number of times". I'm not sure what ever happened following his suit, but I hope it had some salutary effect on the 'justice system'.) There was a recent article on Salon.com talking about rape of boys in the juvenile justice system, and another article on rape of boys in school gymnastics programs (by other boys of the same age group).

My point isn't to minimize the quite horrific effects of the rape of females, but to note that it's not only females who experience rape. And to once again -- as I have often brought up in my blogs -- note how our culture willingly chooses to ignore the sexual rape and molestation of boys and men, often trivializing that kind of abuse as 'toughening up men', when in fact it is traumatizing and profoundly destructive on an emotional level -- just like it is for females.

Sexual Insecurities

This morning as I was reading articles on various websites, I came across a reference to a British video which challenges cultural notions about masculinity and male sexual insecurities. The film My Penis and Everyone Else's is a mildly humorous, but nonetheless serious documentary about male sexual insecurity about penis size, a subject that many men mention to close friends, but are uncomfortable talking about anywhere else. And yet it is a subject that affects their 'emotional sense' of being 'good enough' in many areas of their lives. As the filmmaker notes "what is important is not what's in your pants, but what's in your head", i.e. a man's perspective about the whole issue.

For years, I assumed the primary synonymous issue for females was breast size. In American culture, women are far more concerned about that issue than are most men, just like men are far more concerned about their penis size than are most women. (I've always argued that most women are far more focused on the size of a man's paycheck than on the size of his sexual organ. If their paycheck is large enough to satisfy women's financial fantasies, everything else 'seems' large -- or large enough -- as well.) Then, recently, I was reading an article on Salon.com about a website devoted to women sending in photos of their genitals and discussing their insecurities around that issue. The Large Labia Project is truly the 'equal concern' place for women to discuss matters that are incredibly similar to male concerns about penis size.

It just goes to show, once again, that sexual insecurity is hardly a gender-specific problem, though the 'nature' of an insecurity may be specific to one sex or the other.

The Old Boys Network Revisited

The continuing news in recent months about the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and the rape of female and male soldiers by personnel in the military exposes, once again, 'systems' that are managed by 'old boys networks' that look out for one another, rather than for those whom they should be protecting.

First, there was the demand and finally, due to a court order, release of hundreds of documents in the Los Angeles diocese that documented many decades of sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests, and the avoidance of responsibility to correct this problem by the management of that institution. The Catholic Church once again (this has happened so often it is becoming a cliche) displayed that it cared far more about their employees than about the parishioners for whom they are supposedly responsible. Apparently they were concerned, to a far greater extent, about 'their image' and 'covering their tracks' than they were about the care of vulnerable children. Of course the paradox is, now that the documents are being released and they display this avoidance of responsibility, the 'image' of the Catholic Church is once again becoming tarnished.

For an institution that exists supposedly to save souls, they are doing a pretty poor job of protecting souls on this plane of existence. Of course, they are not alone with that problem; many other religious organizations and denominations, along with their faith leaders, have been tarnished in recent years with such revelations about abuse of children under their care. But the Catholic Church, in particular, just doesn't appear to be 'getting the message', and this is portrayed by one case after another coming to light where the upper echelon of the organization has continued, in the face of expensive lawsuits, to not heal itself or its followers.

But as the revelations of the last couple of years about rape in the U.S. military ranks have proven, the Old Boys Network is alive and well in many institutions. The military, which is also supposed to protect and serve, has been hit with several years of reports exposing a pattern of sexual abuse, primarily by male personnel, of both women and men, and the senior commanders covering up that abuse or overruling their own tribunals that hand down prosecutions. And the result of that system failing to protect its recruits is that the number of rapes has increased since the report of last year, rather than decreasing due to more vigorous oversight. The most 'telling' aspect of the report was that both women and men are being raped in more or less equal numbers in the military ranks. And the U.S. military continues, largely, to 'look the other way', or to the extent that the problem is being confronted, fail to adequately address it in a manner that will take control of this sorry situation.

In most societies worldwide, the military and religious bodies are paramount organizations that have enormous physical, financial and 'devotional' control over their nations, so what they do and how they behave effects all their citizens. Hence, how they handle problems that arise in their organizational systems is of enormous importance to everyone. That both of those systems, at least in the United States (and, for the Catholic Church, in many other countries as well), continue to betray the confidence the citizenry places in their hands is a travesty of monumental proportions.

In non-democratic countries, abuses by the military are not unusual and sadly common. But one expects that a military that serves to protect the liberties of democratic societies would equally work to protect the rights of individuals who serve in that organization, but so far, at least, the U.S. military is receiving a major demerit on that account. Even the officer who was supposed to enforce the code of conduct around sexual protection of female soldiers was recently arrested for being drunk and fondling a woman in a parking lot. We should expect -- and receive -- better behavior from individuals who are sworn to protect the rest of us. Clearly, though, it is not only female soldiers who are being subjected to sexual abuse within the ranks; as the recent report noted, male soldiers are being widely raped in the ranks as well. Not surprisingly, in a culture that refuses to admit that males are routinely sexually abused, that portion of the report has been largely ignored by the media.

Until the society begins to face the need for and addressing of men's emotional wellness, and the deleterious effects of a patriarchal system that fosters much of this poor behavior, such abuse will continue to be rampant and unregulated. We are only as healthy as a culture when we can adequately protect the most vulnerable members of that culture. And heretofore we've done a poor job of it.

The Prince and The Pea

In spite of quite Herculean efforts, I seem to be gaining increasing dismal results from my endeavors, at least as it is related to my physical health. Partly it's a product of aging: unlike viruses, for which we gain a partial immunity as we grow older and survive the ill effects of the virus (or flu), allergies appear to get worse and more prevalent as we age. And my efforts to resolve those allergies are met, over and over again, with an intolerance to the suggested remedies, even when those remedies are seemingly tolerated quite well by most of the population.

In recent years, I have been faced with one allergic reaction after another, to all kinds of materials, fabrics, food, mattresses, eyeglasses, rashes, etc. And this list just keeps extending.

Several years ago, I developed a rash on my chest. For a year or so, I was able to tolerate topical medication to 'keep it at bay', but after a while -- and ever since -- I could no longer tolerate that or any topical medications (my body absorbs them almost directly into my blood stream, causing severe nausea and disorientation), and as a result that rash has plagued me, with periodic itching, ever since. That applies to the long-term eczema that I've had in my ears; there is no topical medication that I can tolerate to relieve the symptoms, so I end up (as much as I try to stop myself) scratching my ears far too much.

Then, two years ago, I started having negative reactions to hair shampoo, resulting in a condition known as 'burning scalp'. I tried a slew of different brands, many which claimed to be good for resolving that condition, but to no avail. The result has been that when I wash my hair, with the only shampoo that I've found to be even minimally tolerable, it often 'burns' immediately afterward and for several days, and each time I rinse it, with even cold water, it starts burning again. It's feels, much of the time, like having a Bunsen burner on top of my head, resulting in a quite painful outcome. And the heat radiates down into my upper chest area. I've tried homeopathy and acupuncture to relieve the symptoms, but to no sustained effect.

Then, this past year, my Sterns-Foster mattress reached its usable life, and I discarded it to purchase a new one -- an issue that I covered, at length, in my previous blog post. The only other thing I want to say about that issue is that the mattress which I tried, after all the memory foam ones, that was supposed to resolve the respiratory and upper GI tract distress from the foam fumes, resulted -- after one night on it -- in a 'Ben-Gay' kind of neuropathy in both of my calves, which has continued ever since and, I suspect at the point, may continue for the remainder of my life. Every morning I wake up with my ankles either feeling like they are freezing or are 'on fire', which within an hour or so radiates a burning sensation throughout my calves. No matter how much I wash my legs, exercise them, or meditate about the issue, the burning sensation continues all day long. On rare days, for a few hours, it subsides to the point of feeling 'like it did before that night on the mattress', but then returns with a vengeance.

I thought I had found a solution to the mattress issue (though not the neuropathy symptoms) recently when I received a new issue of Consumer Reports and they had a review of mattresses, with recommended models. A Sterns-Foster innerspring mattress was listed and I thought "great, I can replace my old mattress"! But when I went to Sears to view the model, to my great distress I realized that it, too, was covered with a 'pillow-top' foam, though it claimed it was not memory foam. But, nonetheless, it was not the 'non-foam top' that my former mattress had, and which I know I could tolerate. I've tried a cotton futon at my female partner's house, but at least that one is far too firm, and I wake up with back pains. I keep hoping (against hope) that I will be able to find an unused Sterns-Foster mattress, circa 2000 or before (the 'old' style one without foam tops) at some discount warehouse, but I haven't found one yet; and I continue looking at cotton futons, though I haven't found one that was of a 'medium firmness' for a back sleeper like myself.

Then there are my allergies to materials and fabrics. For years, I purchased surgical strength anti-embolism hose from Ames Walker and was quite tolerant of them. But about 5 years ago, they changed vendors (though, when I noted this problem, they claimed they were using the same vendors). I knew something was amiss when the new batch had a strong chemical odor [that had never been there before], and when I tried them on (after, as always, washing them in Seventh Generation laundry soap), I experienced an immediate intolerant, profoundly nauseous reaction. And even after washing them multiple times, the chemical allergy remained. The result has been that I've used the same old ones for years now, and they are shredding out in a severe way (making their anti-embolism qualities increasingly more minimal), because I can't find another brand that I can tolerate.

Or the fabric of black slacks. Several years ago I purchased a pair of Dockers black dress pants (oddly enough with 32" legs, when I wear 34" in every other pair) which now are the only ones I can wear at all (in black, that is). I've tried multiple pairs of Dockers and other brands since, and each and every time I experience an immediate disorienting nauseous reaction to the fabric. [This is a major issue for me, since black pants are required in many of the venues where I usher.] The result has been that I've had to wear this one pair of black pants year after year, and they are getting quite worn, but replacing them with a pair I can tolerate has been, heretofore, not available. I don't know if it's the cotton I can't tolerate (not all cotton is equal in tolerance level) or the black dye in the fabric. But it's a very real problem.

Or food allergies. I've gotten to the point where I can only eat poultry or salmon, and not all poultry reacts equally well in my GI tract. I can't even cook organic chicken at my own house (and I am a trained chef) without getting ill from it. I have found several restaurants in the St. Louis area -- Crazy Bowls & Wraps, Panera Bread, and San Sai, plus several sit-down restaurants -- where I can get cooked chicken meals that are tolerable to my body. But it gets expensive eating out every day. When eating at home, I can tolerate salmon and Butterball Turkey Bacon, but only that brand; all others make me ill. And at this point in life, I only ever drink water. No sodas, no alcohol, no fruit juices, definitely no caffeinated beverages of any sort, not even herbal teas [all of which I used to love as a younger man]. And all water isn't tolerable; some brands of bottled water, especially those with added minerals, make me quite ill. I can drink the tap water, in most locations in St. Louis, and be ok, but when I go across the river into Illinois, much of their water tastes like pond scum to me, and the water in many other cities I have visited (my former hometown of Albuquerque, and Atlanta and Chicago) has too much chlorine in it. So, I end up carrying the brands of bottled water, that I've learned that I can tolerate, everywhere with me.

Then, recently my eyeglasses needed to be replaced [the anti-glare covering is scratched]. I asked several friends for recommendations where to have them made, and decided to use a local university eye clinic. I had an eye exam prescription from the welfare medical system of which I'm a member, but the female eye doctor had said "here's what I came up with, but if you want to keep using your old prescription, that's fine with me". But the university eye clinic said that, since she hadn't written down that allowance, they, by law, had to act upon the new prescription. So they made me a new pair of glasses. The left lens was far too strong and the right lens far too weak, which caused severe headaches. I managed, through some connections at the school, to obtain a willingness to use the old prescription, which my present eyeglasses have in them [and which I tolerate quite well]. They did a 2nd re-make, but again I had the same problem with the lens. Then last week they did a 3rd re-make -- 'right on the mark of what we requested', especially in the prism, but when I tried them two days ago, the left lens was ok, but the right lens was far too strong, and the prism 'felt like' it had been set at a diagonal. The result was profound visual disorientation, headaches and resultant GI tract distress. At this point, I realize I'm going to have to 'eat' the $150 I spent on the eyeglasses, ask the university clinic for a new eye exam (hopefully with an optometrist who understands hypersensitive clients), and plan to try for a pair of eyeglasses that I can tolerate.

All of these allergies make me feel like "The Prince and the Pea", sort of a male version of 'The Princess and the Pea' fairy tale. The hypersensitivity that I experience, to all kinds of stuff, appears to be particular to me alone, though I hardly believe that I'm the only person with hypersensitive reactions. I date a woman who can eat and drink almost anything, with no ill effects sleep on mattresses which I find intolerable, wear most fabrics with no negative reactions, etc. And that appears to apply to the majority of the population. Many a doctor over the years (medical and ophthalmology) has commented that "I've never heard of anyone with those reactions", but they never write down my reactions and submit them to any kind of PDR tool (as far as I know). So, I keep ending up with reactions that aren't even listed as rare symptoms.

Alternately, though, my emotional health is improving all the time. My ability, as a sexual abuse survivor, to feel 'safe' within my own gender skin has become more 'tolerable' as my years of mental health therapy progress. The motivation to dissociate from my 'self', to emotionally 'run away' from any comfort with my maleness, which for so many years was the default position, has subsided to a profound degree in the last several years. My therapist has strongly suggested that my hypersensitive reactions to all these materials, fabrics, mattresses, food, etc. are the result of internalized anger and feelings of fear that I've lived with throughout my life, on the heals of [resultant outcomes of] being sexually molested and tortured at the hands of my parents. My former therapist in Albuquerque speculated years ago that trauma survivors have stressed out adrenal glans, due to being in more or less continual 'fight or flight' mode as children. And the result of that long-term stress is an lowered ability to deal with any foreign substance or traumatic situation later in life. I strongly suspect that is at least partly the problem for me and one reason, among many (not all of which I'm aware), that provokes the hypersensitive reactions that I experience.

It's not, though, that I feel 'hopeless' to resolve these issues. Hopefully I will find a mattress I can tolerate; hopefully I will find black pants I can tolerate (if I do, I'll probably buy 10 pairs to last me for many years to come!!); hopefully I'll discover foods that I can tolerate that allow me to widen my choices, rather than continually narrow them; hopefully I will find eyeglasses that I can wear without getting profound disorienting headaches. I no longer feel the situation is 'insolvable', like I did when I was seeing the world, exclusively, through 'deeply traumatized' emotional lens. In the last 5 years, I've found an intimate relationship which I can feel 'alive and respected' within, with a woman who I feel is truly a 'fellow traveler' on my life journey. Given my experience for most of my life before her, I had good reason to wonder if that would ever occur. So, there is clear and definite hope for change, even though my hypersensitivity limits my life, and in some ways -- at least partially because of aging and the breakdown of the body due to simply chronology -- will become more so in the coming years. But hopefully I will be able to 'cope' with those limitations. "Hope continues to be available". I sense there's some sort of Zen lesson to be learned here, though I can't think of what it is. But I'm sure it has something to do with 'acceptance of suffering'.

Hypersensitive In A Toxic World

I've been suffering from a "mattress nightmare" since last June. My 15-year old Sterns-Foster mattress had, I thought, lived out it's warranty and needed to be replaced. So I found a new Sterns-Foster Extra Firm mattress at Macy's and had them pick up the old mattress. That's when the nightmare began.

The Extra Firm was too firm. So I went a couple of weeks with no mattress while I searched for a replacement at Macy's. I tried a Serta iComfort mattress with 'cool jell foam'. After two nights of sleeping on it, and each morning feeling like my legs had been bathed in menthol (which degenerated from a freezing cold sensation into a burning hot sensation), I returned that mattress. Then I went another couple of weeks without a mattress (luckily, my female partner of many years agreed to let me sleep at her house while I was searching for a new mattress). Macy's wasn't too happy about my getting yet a 3rd mattress, until I emphasized that I was going to have to sell the Serta on Craigslist. So, reluctantly, they agreed to a 3rd choice (with restocking and delivery fees).

The third time around I picked a Sterns-Foster Comfort Firm mattress. It seemed to feel fine at the showroom. But when I got it back to my house and slept on it for several nights, I was waking up each morning with a massive headache, respiratory distress, and profound upper GI tract upset. So, I got on the internet and did some research on memory foam. Various sites suggested 'airing out' the mattress for 20 days, letting the sun hit it, and allowing it to 'de-gas' its fumes. I tried that for a month, airing it out on my sunporch.

After a month, I tried it again. The same horrible physical reactions were there. I aired it out another month, and then tried sleeping on it -- the same hypersensitive reactions. Then I aired it out for two months. I tried it again, and still was profoundly ill the following morning. So, I called Macy's again. The main customer service reps refused to allow me to return the mattress. But I went to the Macy's corporate website and wrote them a plea. A manager called me, and in the process of the conversation agreed to take the mattress back and give me a refund, minus another restocking and pick-up fee. (At this point, I had laid out around $500 in restocking and delivery fees -- and not had a bed to sleep on at my house for 6 months -- and still didn't have a mattress that I could medically tolerate.)

So, I asked around, talked to friends, did some research online, to find a mattress that I might be able to tolerate. (I've got to tell you, all this time I was having very fond memories of my 15-year old non-memory foam Sterns-Foster mattress, wishing I had simply put a plywood board beneath it and kept it for another 15 years!) I tried one that is locally manufactured. After one night on it, I awoke the next day with a very weird sensation on my lower legs like they had been bathed in Ben-Gay. It was a 'freezing-burning' sensation, very painful. So, I called the local company and they agreed to take the mattress back, with a full refund and no delivery/pick-up charges. I talked to the manager; he said that while they used 'standard, regular, non-memory foam' material, they did use a poly-foam material. Most people were fine with it (some good friends had recommended it and they had had no problems for 10 years). But that a few people, mostly women, had had hypersensitive reactions.

So, that was three weeks ago. My legs still burn daily and/or feel like they are freezing -- some days I feel both sensations at various times of the day. I find that swimming in pool water at the gym cools them somewhat, but I'm afraid at this point that this has provoked a form of neuropathy in my legs which will continue for years. I have already been suffering for more than two years from 'burning scalp syndrome'; no shampoo I use does not burn my scalp. So, my body is 'on fire' much of the time -- all really quite uncomfortable.

At this point, my only option is either to continue sleeping at my female partner's house (which is not a negative, but we agreed early on that we enjoyed having separate domiciles and it feels awkward to continue not having a bed at my own house), or sleeping periodically on my couch (the foam in those cushions doesn't make me ill, but the couch is not really a bed). My therapist suggested finding a 'non-manmade material', like a cotton futon. I tried one last night, to mixed results. This is all quite frustrating.

The one thing I do know or have learned about all of this is that there is a high degree of possibility that my hypersensitivity is caused by heightened reactivity due to emotional turmoil from the sexual abuse and torture that I suffered as a child (which I've discussed on this blog in the past). One of the results of sexual and physical trauma, especially in childhood, is that the adrenal glands are overextended from being in constant 'fight or flight' mode, and that therefore ones immune system and other bodily functions are overstressed throughout life. It's a major dilemma: I'm hypersensitive to mattresses, clothing material, food, fumes, chemicals, stress, etc. as a result. Materials that don't bother most people just devastate me. Unlike viruses, where we gain an immunity over time, my hypersensitivity has increased as I've aged, making even being alive, at times, a bit of a fearful issue. Even as I heal emotionally from the sexual and physical abuse, my body's ability to recover from or even tolerate toxins in the environment decreases.

That personal medical/emotional issue is mixed with the reality that there are more toxins in the environment all the time. Rachel Carson wrote about this back in the 1960's and the problem has only become worse; more and more chemicals are dumped into the environment which are either untested on human subjects, or the testing is so skewed and doctored that it passes government scrutiny with little oversight.

It's a challenge, no doubt. Finding a bed to sleep on which doesn't make me ill is a major disruption in my life; thankfully my female partner still has one I can sleep on (she says she surely won't get rid of that one). When just getting a good night's sleep without fearing that the mattress upon which one sleeps is going to be potentially deadly, that is indeed a major problem in anyone's life.

Pen To Paper

I've quite gotten out of the habit of writing this blog, having last posted in July 2012. It's not as though I don't have a lot to say or that constant relevant issues aren't running through my mind continually, but getting them "on paper" (sort of a old-style way of referring to a word processing document) has been, of recent, difficult.

In part it's due to the approach I have to writing this blog. Heretofore, I would compose it on my computer, engage in extensive editing, then sit down at my desktop computer and transfer what I had written to Blogger. I tried a couple of times to simply cut-and-paste, but that was a disaster, as the formatting is messed up in a severe way when it is transferred. So, I would end up typing the whole document again, editing as I wrote, and then publishing it. I couldn't figure out a way to 'save' what I had written and return to it at a later time, before publishing it, so I ended up having to wait until I had a dedicated 'block of time' to do the whole blog, all at once, which always ended up being quite exhausting.

Today, I have decided, at least for this entry, to simply sit down and write it, fresh, without extensive previous composing and editing, which may result in syntax and grammar errors, but at least I'm 'getting my ideas down' rather than procrastinating for months on end and never writing anything!! So, this may not be as smooth, but it's 'pen to paper' after months of not writing.

I'm thinking about moving this blog to WordPress (since it has been recommended to me to change my website software to WordPress formatting, so that new future iterations of Apple OS can access it), but when I downloaded the WordPress package a couple of days ago, the instructions talked about a zip file I had to open, but I can't find the zip file in the WordPress folder. I'm a bit lost, therefore, in even beginning the process. My present website was constructed using iWeb, which is an Apple-based software which Apple, at this point, no longer supports. Hence, I need to transition it to something else, and though I've considered Droppel (is that it's correct spelling?), I don't have the skills to use that and don't have sufficient funds to pay someone else to construct the website with it. So, WordPress is my best choice for now (it's free and I've heard that it's a good choice, as well), but figuring out how to make use of the package is, presently, stopping me.

So, my blogs henceforth will probably not be the 'opus' postings I've tried for in the past, but more 'stream of consciousness' shorter ones. Just lowering the bar for how I construct them will allow me to write them more often, and communicate my thoughts to friends and colleagues.

So here are some things that have been on my mind of late, some related to my life personally and some related to men's emotional wellness in the larger context.

I was gratified by the verdict in the Jerry Sandusky trial in Pennsylvania. From the evidence that I've read, he was clearly quite a monster, and got his just due. A lot of young boys were severely traumatized by his sexual predator behavior, and the institution where he worked spent far more effort covering it's administrative backside than protecting those children. Thank god the state prosecutor had more care and diligence. The larger issue, of course, is that that is the 'tip of the iceberg', that most of the sexual child abuse occurs within families, not outside in the larger world, and those circumstances do not 'see the light of day' often enough. But every little step is helpful.

I am happy to see that President Obama was reelected (I spent a lot of time and effort working on his 2008 campaign and would have worked on this last campaign if the Obama folks had not written-off Missouri to Romney). I spent most of my political efforts, hence, working on Claire McCaskill's campaign and was happy to see that she was reelected. Now, we have to keep working with the Administration to get the kinds of issues addressed that are important to us. Being the Loyal Opposition is a role I've assumed for many years and feel at ease with.

I am happy to see that both the ban on gays and lesbians in the military and the ban on women in combat roles has been dropped. Serving one's country is difficult enough without that kind of overt discrimination. Dealing with all the sexual abuse within the ranks, though, is something the military has done a poor job at, though they seem to be aware of the problem and seem to be feeling major 'heat' to face up to it.

On a personal level, I've been dealing with the negative fallout of having a memory foam mattress, which I finally got Macy's to take back (which I hear from others was a major coup, in that getting an outright refund is rare). I spent 6 months getting quite ill from the off-gassing of the mattress. I only slept on it 5 times in those 6 months, because each time it would cause significant upper GI tract distress, profound headaches and serious respiratory congestion. I ended up 'airing it out' for 4 months on my sunporch and still the off-gassing made me ill. Thankfully that problem is gone! I have a new mattress now, which doesn't have any memory foam, and I'm hoping it will solve the problem. What a medical nightmare! It amazes me that anyone can tolerate that material.

Well, that's enough for right now. I'll write more (or at least hope to write more), more often, with this different approach to my blog. If any of my readers has suggestions on how to access the WordPress zip file, I'd be appreciative of the information. I need to change the software, at least of the website and possibly this blog [to keep it as a whole package] and soon.