pantoum's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- CHURCH LIBRARIES AND PEACE CAMP (No. 228 � Thursday) I�m working late because I took time off to spend with my sister Penelope, who arrived yesterday for a visit. She tried hard to convince me to let her read my novel draft too, but I only agreed to reading the first two paragraphs aloud to her. (She liked them.) I just don�t like showing my writing to people before it�s done unless they�re critiquing it. Plus, it�s going to cause World War III in my family when I publish it, so why start the war now? ... and I have worked way too damn hard on it to use a pseudonym! I guess I�ll just tell my family why I believe we should write from our life experiences and give them advance copies, to be fair. And speaking of families and World War III, my rabidly Baptist aunt Becky who wants to �cure� my homosexuality (see my 7.21 entry �Live As If Your Life Is on Fire�) apparently made note of the fact that I took Pottergrrl to my uncle�s funeral, so she gave my brother-in-law a message for wife to deliver to me. So here�s what the card said:Dearest Bird,
She attached the program from her church service this past Sunday (where my uncle's funeral was). Their so-called Message from God�s Word was �What The Bible Says About Homosexuality: Isaiah 5:20.� She also scribbled the following: 1 Tim 1:9 Now the first time she sent me one of these cards and those two highlighted books about what an awful sinner I am, I decided the best response was no response�mostly because she was writing in response to an article I wrote about how my family does not ask about my life, how I am a stranger to them. (A church member found this article on the Web and shared it with her, my mother, and the church.) Becky�s letter reinforced everything I said in the article, so I decided to let the article speak for itself that time. This time, though, I am pissed. She seems sincere, in her own way, and genuinely worried about me though�even though I know she is mostly rabid�so I have that the thing to do is to send her some literature about how other Christians interpret the Bible, a list of scripture and information on what led them to support their gay relatives instead of condemning them. (The pissed-off part of me wants to donate these books to her church's library, too, but I just don�t believe they�d keep them.) I do think I�ll send copies to my mother too though. � In other news, too bad Cindy Sheehan had to leave Peace Camp. The paranoid, X-Files�watching part of me wonders just how hard it is to cause someone to have a stroke so that her daughter returns to California and the president is no longer on the hot seat. � LISTENING TO: Oxford American�s 2005 CD compilation (it rocks!) READING: Poets and Writers BEST OF SPAM SUBJECT LINES: spectroscopic trout � charlie absorption � burden creole (Hmmm. I just might have to write a poem about Burden Creole, maybe one like Wander, Indiana. That�s an obscure poetry reference that few people will get. Sorry.) 8:09 p.m. - 2005-08-18 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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