spirituality

Sex and The Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth, by Daniel A. Helminiak (Binghamton: Harrington Park Press, 2006), 235pp. (Review by Scott D. Pomfret, www.sincemylastconfession.com.)

Daniel Helminiak’s project in his 2006 collection of previously published essays, Sex and the Sacred: Gay Identity and Spiritual Growth, is a naked act of reclamation. Helminiak, a Catholic priest, professor of psychology and longtime member of the gay Catholic group Dignity, sets his sights on terms like “spirituality”, “Christianity”, and “natural law,” and wrests them from those who would use them to oppress gay people. He provides a cogent re-description of these and related terms in an effort to draw gays and lesbians back to the Eucharistic table. Helminiak’s manner is gentle and affirming: he knows that he is preaching to a GLBT audience of the wounded, who regard religious concepts with wariness at best and an understandable outright hostility in many cases. Heroically, he barely acknowledge Sisyphusian nature of his project; he says one thing that brings GLBT spiritual beings close; religious authorities say something new and hurtful that drives them away all over again.

CHALLENGE: I post this article, hoping it will create much discussion on Crossleft---pro or con! We need to air out all the cobwebs and assist Christians in learning to think for themselves ... to seek Truth on their own ... to discern Truth that feels intuitively right to them ... to know that my Truth may not be your Truth ... and that is okay!

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NOTE: For the purposes of this article, I use the term “Source of our being” to refer to the omnipresent energy of Divine Love in which we live and move and have our being—-the Ultimate Source of all creation.
I use the term “Awakened Christian” to mean the one who follows Jesus as A Wayshower on the pathway to individual ascension. Jesus, as a Wayshower, reveals the way; He cannot walk the path for us. The awakened Christian recognizes this fact and strives to tread his/her own pathway to ascension. See the article entitled “Ascension” and the 16 Lessons on the Book of Job on www.pathwaytoascension.com.

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THAT DAY, 27 years ago when John Lennon was murdered remains as vividly sureal to me, as THAT DAY when JFK was murdered too.

John Lennon would have turned 67 on October 9, 2007. Although he hasn't spoken in 27 years, he has never been silenced.

At the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by John Lennon’s honesty, I tuned out the Catholic Church.

Up until I was about six years old, every Sunday morning was spent in a glass-encased room at St. Bernard’s one holy Roman Catholic Church, in Levittown, Long Island. The glass-encased room was called, and literally was, the Cry Room. Growing up with television, it was natural for me to stand up close against the soundproof glass and watch the show on the other side. Every so often, I’d hear the priest’s voice filter through the loudspeaker above my head. But it was all Latin to me: and back then, it really was!

John Lennon would have turned 67 on October 9, 2007. Although he hasn't spoken in 27 years, he has not been silenced.

At the age of 12, in the summer of 1966, inspired by John Lennon’s honesty, I tuned out the Catholic Church.

Up until I was about six years old, every Sunday morning was spent in a glass-encased room at St. Bernard’s one holy Roman Catholic Church, in Levittown, Long Island. The glass-encased room was called, and literally was, the Cry Room. Growing up with television, it was natural for me to stand up close against the soundproof glass and watch the 'show' on the other side. Every so often, I’d hear the priest’s voice filter through the loudspeaker above my head. But it was all Latin to me: and back then, it really was!

In 1979, Mother Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and acclaimed world wide for her work among the poor, outcasts, diseased and cripples in Calcutta, yet she wrote, "Where is my faith?...Even deep down ... there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. ... If there be God -- please forgive me."

In the just released, 'Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light', a compilation of her letters to friends, superiors and confessors, the world now knows she still had doubts about her faith when she died in 1997 at the age of 87.

As a member of the TIKKUN [Hebrew for heal, mend and transform the world] community of supporters, I was encouraged to learn its founder and visionary Rabbi Lerner has visited this site.

In his honor I offer you my experience at TIKKUN'S first conference for spiritual progressives very slightly fictionalized: everything happened just as reported, but I told it through the fictional character of Jack Hunter, for I am an Irish American dissenter and story teller.

THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN…

“The Revolution starts now, when you rise above your

"While Governments can make a difference, in the final analysis it is the individual – that is each one of us – that will bring the dream of a nonviolent world to reality. We, the people must think and act nonviolently. We must not get stuck in the past as to do so will destroy the imagination...To change our world we need a spiritual and a political evolution."-Irish Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Maried Maguire.

On June 13, 2007, Stephen Colbert interviewed the author of Muses, Madmen and Prophets, Daniel B. Smith who spoke about how hearing voices is not always psychotic and could actually be a good thing.

I began to 'hear voices' shortly after I began the practice of lectio-divinia/holy reading, in the year 2000, which was two years after beginning the practice of Centering Prayer as outlined by Father Michael Keating.