Inspiration is God making contact with itself. - Ram Dass
Sunday, September 5, 2021
Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 5, 2021 💌
Thursday, September 2, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // This Day in Gay History - JOHN M. MCNEILL
This Day in Gay History
September 02
JOHN M. MCNEILL, Jesuit scholar, psychotherapist, born (d: 2015); For more than twenty-five years John J. McNeill, an ordained priest and psychotherapist, devoted his life to spreading the good news of God's love for Lesbian and Gay Christians. One year after the publication of The Church and the Homosexual (1976), McNeill received an order from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican ordering him to silence in the public media. He observed the silence for nine years while continuing a private ministry to Gays and Lesbians which included psychotherapy, workshops, lectures and retreats.
In 1988, he received a further order from Cardinal Ratzinger (soon to become Pope Benedict XVI, the first Pope to resign in a millennium) directing him to give up all ministry to Gay persons which he refused to do in conscience. As a result, he was expelled by the Vatican from the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) for challenging the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church on the issue of homosexuality, and for refusing to give up his ministry and psychotherapy practice to Gay men and Lesbians. McNeill had been a Jesuit for nearly 40 years.
After enlisting in the U.S. Army during World War II at the age of seventeen, McNeill served in combat in the Third Army under General Patton and was captured in Germany in 1944. McNeill spent six months as a POW (Prisoner of War) until he was liberated in May of 1945. John enrolled in Canisius College in Buffalo after his discharge from the army and, upon graduating, entered the Society of Jesus in 1948. He was ordained a Jesuit priest in 1959.
In 1964, McNeill earned a Doctorate in Philosophy, with highest honors (Plus Grande Distinction), at Louvain University in Belgium. His doctoral thesis on the philosophical and religious thought of Maurice Blondel was published in 1966 as the first volume of the series Studies in the History of Christian Thought edited by Heiko Oberman and published by Brill Press in Leyden, Holland.
During his professional career, McNeill taught philosophy at LeMoyne College in Syracuse, NY, and in the doctorate program at Fordham University in NYC. In 1972, he joined the combined Woodstock Jesuit Seminary and Union Theological Seminary faculty as professor of Christian Ethics, specializing in Sexual Ethics.
In 1974, McNeill was co-founder of the New York City chapter of Dignity, a group for Catholic Gays and Lesbians. For over twenty-five years, he has been active in a ministry to Gay Christians through retreats, workshops, lectures, publications, etc. For twenty years John was a leader of semiannual retreats at the Kirkridge Retreat Center in Pennsylvania.
Via Daily Dharma: Patience Helps the Heart
Wednesday, September 1, 2021
Via White Crane Instiitute // SIR ROGER CASEMENT
SIR ROGER CASEMENT is born in Kingston, Ireland (d: 1916). A former British diplomat he was knighted for his services to the crown after exposing the horrible working conditions of worker in British colonies in the Congo and in South America. This made him a hero to workers suffering from colonial hardship throughout the British empire.
However, the Ulster Protestant became an ardent Irish nationalist and was captured and tried for treason after returning from a trip to secure Germany's aid for the Irish Revolution of 1916. What sealed his doom was the admission into evidence of Casement's diaries where he meticulously detailed the names and descriptions of his numerous sexual partners. That he was on trial for treason and not for buggery did not matter.
When he was found guilty, protest was world-wide. Among the voices William Butler Yeats and George Bernard Shaw spoke out in his defense. But then the British government leaked word of the contents of Casement's "black diaries," all protest suddenly stopped. Typically, the diaries were examined and re-examined looking for "proof" of the man's sexuality. The case against him was shaky – as his alleged treason had taken place in Germany and not the UK – and in the end, his guilt was determined by the placement of a comma in the Treason Act of 1351, which was written in Norman French. Casement famously wrote later that he was to be ‘hanged on a comma’.
Putting aside how difficult it is to prove the negative, the historical presumption that someone is, of course and by default, heterosexual unless proof certain is obtained otherwise, assumes that to come to that decision is a de facto smear on the man. In this era, it was, of course. And it proved critical in the undermining of his wide public support.
No less a supporter than Mario Vargas Llosa presented a mixed account of Casement's sexuality in his 2010 novel, The Dream of the Celt, suggesting that Casement wrote partially fictional diaries of what he wished had taken place in homosexual encounters. Dudgeon suggested in a 2013 article that Casement needed to be "sexless" to fit his role as a Catholic martyr in the nationalist movement of the time. Dudgeon writes, "The evidence that Casement was a busy homosexual is in his own words and handwriting in the diaries, and is colossally convincing because of its detail and extent."
Research published in 2016 again casts doubt on the Black Diaries. In The Casement Secret, it is argued there is no evidence of the existence of the diaries during Casement's lifetime since only typescript pages – allegedly copies – were circulated; no-one was shown the diaries now in the National Archives. An official memorandum by the British Secretary of State dated March 6, 1959 states: "There is no record on the Home Office papers of the diaries or the copies having been shown to anyone outside the Government service before Casement's trial".
This argument reflects the question raised in 1955 by Bertrand Russell concerning their existence at the time of Casement's trial. The argument proposes a paradigm shift – the diaries were fabricated after Casement's execution as forged versions of the original typescripts. Anatomy of a Lie, another research essay, purports that the homosexual dimension was largely the invention of British Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary Mansfeldt Findlay in Christiania, Norway (now Oslo) in a false memorandum on October 29, 1914. The rarely-seen document containing the first innuendo has never been analyzed before and is unmentioned by all Casement authors save one. It is posited that, in the following months Findlay amplified his allegations because he feared exposure of his written bribe through a threatened lawsuit against him by Casement; a subsequent diplomatic scandal which might have destroyed his career.
Such a lot of bother. Roger Casement was hanged on August 6, 1916. A good man who'd been knighted for his service to humanity had become a martyr to men who love men everywhere.
Esteemed historian Martin Duberman has a "biographical novel" about Casement Luminous Traitor: The Just and Daring Life of Roger Casement being released on October 1 of this year. It promises to be a real pleasure read.
Via Daily Dharma: Don’t Fear Yourself
—Scott Tusa, “How to Be in the Body (Without Jumping Out of Your Skin)”
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Via Ram Dass - Love Serve Remember Foundation // Words of Wisdom - September 1, 2021 💌
I think in relationships, you create an environment with your own work on yourself, which you offer to another human being to use to grow in the way they need to grow.
-Ram Dass -
Tuesday, August 31, 2021
Via White Crane Institute // Noteworthy: A SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE OF RADICAL FAERIES
The first day of the first Faerie Gathering that called itself "A SPIRITUAL CONFERENCE OF RADICAL FAERIES," was on this date, held in Benson Arizona, on Labor Day Weekend, 1979. Harry Hay, the "father of the gay rights movement" began the Mattachine society in 1950. In 1970, Hay moved to New Mexico in a quest to find a living berdache (a Native American Gay male spirit guide). In 1978, Hay, along with life partner John Burnside, and Don Kilhefner, and Mitch Walker, issued a Call to a group devoted to ecology, spiritual truth and Gay-centeredness. In 1979, the first gathering of Radical Faeries took place in the Arizona desert with over 200 gay men in attendance. Kilhefner continues to make slanderous statements about John Burnside's participation in a vainglorious attempt to claim for himself the title of "Founder of the Radical Faeries". But anyone claiming to have "founded" the Radical Faeries simply doesn't understand the core beliefs of the group. The Radical Faeries was the product of nothing less than a zeitgeist moment in the Gay men's liberation movement. The ideas that are core to the movement had been circulating widely in San Francisco, the Midwest, Los Angeles and no doubt elsewhere for a long time.
There had been earlier usage of the term "radical faerie" employed in San Francisco by author ("Witchcraft & The Gay Counterculture") and Gay philosopher, Arthur Evans, which a group of men who met regularly including Murray Edelman. The desert Gathering seemed to create the "tipping point" for the movement which is now spread internationally, with Radical Faerie groups and sanctuaries in Europe, South America, India and Australia.
The text of The Call for the first gathering:
THE FIRST CALL:
To share new insights about ourselves; To dance in the moonlight; To
renew our oath against patriarchy/corporations/
Via Daily Dharma: Why Do We Practice?
—Fredericka Foster in conversation with Philip Glass, “Music, Meditation, Painting—and Dreaming”
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Sunday, August 29, 2021
Via Daily Dharma: Be With Your Body