There is a man that is unpartnered it seems, my senior, fairly not well off at all, is caucasian, gay, has hiv, recovered from addiction, but graduated from a prestigious school and appears from a military background and has an uncanny solid artistic temperment, and is now in his late 50s, with the most beautiful speaking voice I have ever heard. And he grew up Catholic but wandered and came back to Jesus Christ. I would hate for the beautiful and helpful qualities he has to be ruined by the sort of popular Christianity that is not at all respectful of him or the church he serves with. I love going to his church and listening to him speak although he does not appear to be a main leader but serving in a supporting role. It’s probably the main reason why I even go there. He is the type of person I would want to have as my priest that I’d feel comfortable confessing to so amazing is this person through whom I have connected to an understanding of God in a way I never could before because of the sort of religious Christianity I had been around. I learned things indirectly from him because he is the type of person I could never socialize with although he tried to say hello many times but I could not talk to him because of my poor social and intellectual mind life. Most of the time I feel like a vegetable like oxygen has been cut off from my brain. It makes me want to stay alone away from church but I go anyway and I’m sure people find it worrisome that I behave in a way that troubles them. I often wish I were invisible or go unnoticed so I could help and listen and hang around such people as this very small group that has walked together for a long time …I often feel unable to give them what they might need to feel that I am interacting with them because I know from experience that if I did I would then get distracted by the social complexities and thoughts that come because I am different and because of social rules and I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on God or learn this life saving communication. I remember coming to this church because I knew I wanted to stay single and celibate all my life as a devotion to God and something led me there to learn how to do that well. And the first person I really met was this man I spoke of who is living such a life it seems of prayer and service and intellectual contribution with such grace and beauty and sincerity of having recovered from life threatening things and hardships of those peers that drove him to dealing with pain in that manner. My fear is such a person is too easily imposed on as they have devoted themselves so much and I am a very needy and taking kind of person. I wish there was some way I could continue to visit this church discreetly without notice and serve and learn from this person in particular as well as the others without destroying all that I love about it. They are so willing to take in others not of their family to be its face, but i’d hate to see the beauty that is only really possible from the expression of their own people to be broken because of a strain to bring in others who do not have that cultural heritage. I want to learn their ways. but i think they just look at how i look or seem and think they have to change things for who they think i am, but then there would be no point in me going there. i love this man’s way of following Jesus and I want so much for that relationship to be what I learn and his way of prayer and meditative practices that many do talk about and teach but only he seems to exercise in such a beautiful way that i want to be my way also. i would be very sad if he died or was too ill or grew weary or felt wrongly that people did not like him in favor of younger or other people even if it is to prepare for the future. He has a beauty that I cannot really explain. the irony is that if he ever changed so that I could be friends with him or even his disciple in following christ as he has an order and way to his life then that quality which is so effective about him would be gone. I would even say I am in love with him I think so much about him, but I know that that is not true because i barely know the man. I am in love with what Jesus Christ is able to show of himself in this man and those that he has surrounded himself with at this church. When I see him and hear him and see the kind of jobs he’s had and the things he has done that makes up his life..much of it minus the behaviors that led to his illness is everything I want to be. He’s like a gift to me after having prayed to God that I want a certain kind of life path that is not one I saw exampled in my family life where everyone is very focused on matters of this world.. I wish there were some way I could express how much I like him as I fear he may think because of his past or present difficulties and poverties and impending indignities of older age and solitude and the more conventional needs of families and people that he shouldn’t be meditating or leading people in his way. And I fear that the other leaders that have the degrees and ordainment and more presentable lives may cause him to feel he should step out of the way…but he is really the only reason i come there as he is a once in a lifetime genius . I would say hello to him but i am afraid because i am so ambivalent about what i want in a friendship as i am very unwilling to be a public figure and this is a small group and i’d be this noticeable issue. i hate how in the beginning when i would make inquiries i could tell this was like a town where no one locked their doors in that they were not afraid to just speak one to one to a stranger, but i think because of cultural climates and my being different and an outsider they changed tone and are now more formal and cautious and business like. And i fear my presence causes these changes to what was otherwise an easy going family atmosphere where people have been together for decades. I question whether I should have assumed that because something was publicly available that it meant strangers were welcome but i later learned that that was not really their intention but they had just been very open to make it easy for their families to easily see what is happening. it is very odd for me to go there as i am not used to this kind of Christian culture but i love it and fear they will try to be like other places because of the money or desire to be more modern or social. I could tell my cultural understanding and intellectual attention is far below these people as well as my background and financial means. It’s like even when these people have great problems they have a grace to their life that is hard to explain. it’s like some people have bad ways but at least they did it while achieving some end but me, i have bad ways and have nothing to show for it. i feel like i deceive them because they have no idea who i am and what is my life…i don’t think they’d want to associate with me if they knew what my real potential was. there are those that don’t do well but people know they have potential but me there is none for the things i’d want to do. it would be bad that they’d stop for me in the way i see them doing…it ruins everything about why i like them and want to attend. i don’t actually think like this all the time…I have a great time just going and meditating on God and what Jesus Christ is for me that I may have life..it’s like going to a hospital for me in a way as i often feel ill with some thing i do not understand. but i can see from experience that things will come to a head and people will change and be disturbed just by my presence just as any family would feel if a non family member came into their private family gathering. it’s not that they do not like me or do not welcome me..it’s just there’s a quality of regular social way of being that is not possible with those they necessarily cannot think of as their inner circle that are too different from them in some way unless they are serving some very special role with them as minister or priest where it’s understandable that they do not have their own wealth and family. even now the relatives i stay with are discussing how they will selltheir home if they retire and the home i love will be taken from me. i feel i have no stable root to even start relating with people i like. and i do not want the kind of things people want me to do or seem easy to do in order to make myself financially and socially more understandable. i know i will have hard choices in the future where people like my family will make me decide between abject poverty and social isolation or joining myself to someone they feel the universe means for me to be with that has money or at least will be the social status i need. and indeed there will be such a lure to draw me to make such a decision simply by taking away the options to do any other path . I want to go back to school and work in certain things but I do not think our culture is supportive of that happening. the feelings and passions are not helpful to me feeling like i am okay to live that life as it is an unpopular notion. so i feel more attracted to some other option taught me by media and social norms and how i was brought up and what is available to me. I hope that God will help me as he helped this man to have the kind of life and thought life to live that way and be able to contribute in this career of mathematics and physics and philosophy. I know this is very unpopular with Christian people and indeed worldly people for someone like me. And indeed I do not feel up to the task. It’s very hard to move away from my mother or father’s identity but i cannot live their life. please pray for courage to change and go on this path that I have asked God for and that I would have abundant finances and good friends such as this man and the church and others at work that i can come to accept as my family in God just as many religious sisters and brothers come to accept their family in Christ as their family instead of getting married and starting their own. Please pray for this spiritual formation that i lack from my family upbringing and cultural mindset to be able to walk in this new way and job path. It’s very hard for me because i am so attached to wanting my family to love me and accept me, but soon they will die and grow old and i cannot live for them for one day i will be the oldest and will have to come to terms with my own relationship with God like abraham leaving his parents and going to a strange land. that is what it is like fo rme to follow jesus in this way that this man does and to try to work as a physicist and mathematician and philosopher when none in my family appreciate those things but only the comforts of food and the latest technology and sports and whatever has prestige and money clothes and things that immigrants want to feelt hey have status. please pray for the means and jobs to buy this home from them so that i may stay in this land and have some independence from them that i may not so easily feel i must be in a position of going their way or choosing where i want to be. they have this philosophy that people will do well when things are what they really like and no matter how much money and things they get doing what they don’t like they won’t do..but they are not those like me that live in fear and they do not know what it is like not to have a cultural acceptance and means to be in what they want to do. they do not see that it is their own desire and will and work imposed on our own family culture that makes me have to choose a way i don’t want. they don’t seem to want to acknowledge how much they prevent me from what i do want by making my way so hard. please pray for release from this and be able to do these works.
Dear Lord Jesus, please bring my two little sons back to me. They need their mum and I need my sons. Change the heart
Rashini