Today, while in what I call the “Post-Meditative State,” I wondered if something spiritual might have occurred when I was much younger. I then thought of a time when I was in first grade at a Roman Catholic Church School. Sister Saint Leonard had chosen me to be one of the so-called angels. The duty of an “Angel” was to guide the second graders to the front of the church where they were to receive their first Holy Communion from a priest.
While growing up in a Catholic School, I met all kinds of nuns. Some I liked more than others. I was kind of like the class clown, or a class-clown wannabe, and got called out by many of the good teachers wearing the black coverings with the bullet-proof white vests covering their chests. I went to Saint Ludwig’s, a church school in what was then a predominantly German neighborhood of North Philadelphia called “Brewerytown.”
A friend of mine is “into” Angels. “Suspend your disbelief,” he told me, explaining how belief in angels re-materialized into his life recently. I knew at that moment that the resistance he had spoken of was puffing out its chest and stepping between me and the computer screen where his words appeared.
(Written by Melanie Kriebel)
It took several hours for the effects of the Sweat Lodge ceremony to kick in, but when it did, I realized the control I always thought I needed was not in my hands, but in what the Greeks called the Fates; the Christians, God; and the Buddhists, Karma.
A Divine source, referred to by some as the “Force,” the Divine Feminine, the Creator, has dealt a hand to play with our own free will. We get to choose which cards to keep and the ones to discard. By standing pat or by seeking new ones to “change our luck” or to improve our hand, we cast our lot to the future. None of us expects to lose or to face tragedy or a financial crisis. We hope for improvement, to enrich ourselves through our card-playing skills and years of studying the game of life.
In the end, the winner is not necessarily the one who drew the highest hand – a royal straight flush versus a pair of kings and deuces. It is the player that can place the bet, and deal with the loss or win with equanimity, that emerges the victor. There is no win, there is no loss. There is just an awareness of the game and how to view it from a state of grace, the right frame of mind, the right attitude. All disappointments arise and end.
All roller-coaster thrills must end. In understanding that everything that comes into my existence must someday leave, I can live with its impermanent nature more easily. Treat it the same whether it is good or bad, foul or fresh, holy or unholy. The moment of pleasure and the moment of dissatisfaction will pass. Each will arise and reach its crescendo of joy or sadness, and then each will fall, dissipating and returning from whence it came, leaving naught but a memory we can choose to relive or to drop if similar conditions arise to trigger its recall later.
None of this was clear when the sweat poured out of me as 10 men and women crawled on hands and knees into the Sweat Lodge outside of Pottstown, PA. We took part in a ceremony honoring the “Great Spirit,” while offering prayers to the four corners of the earth and beyond. We sweated as the lodge leader spread bits of sage, tobacco, and other herbs onto the red-hot coals, causing an eruption of tiny flames that shot upwards and out of the stones but remained safely in a pit dug earlier to contain a total of some 15 hot, glowing rocks.
Each one had been baked in a much bigger pit built a slight distance outside of the lodge, where a stone-bearer had been heating them over a slow-burning fire for several hours. Two to four rocks were requested for each “sweat,” or prayerful focus in a given direction. We offered three prayers each for the West, the South, and the North.
Then just as the sweat seemed to be unbearable for the likes of me, the number of prayers for the East increased to five, six, seven, eight, and beyond . . . I lowered my head to the floor of the lodge, taking in the cooler air and praying a silent prayer that all the prayers would stop so that I could get the hell out of there!
The prayers did stop, and we offered a blanket thanksgiving for all. I believe, however, that my silent prayer even helped to cleanse and purify me, removing and burning away the hellish traces of lower, base nature.
Hours later, I revolted against a group of Born-Again Christians. All of them were what I called “lily whites.” The men wore handsomely tailored suits, and the women gorgeous dresses with just the right amount of jewelry. All appeared with the greatest tans that money and lots of free time at the beach could offer.
“I don’t belong here,” I cried to my partner in crime, Melanie, a young Hispanic woman whose mother was raised in Colombia and passed on the natural shade of tan we ethnic types have acquired — her from South America, and me from the southern European countries like my father’s Greek homeland. She had left the sweat lodge and agreed to go with me on this next leg of my spiritual journey
“They’re too white for me,” I said, pointing at their pale faces, their blonde heads, and the white hairs of their elderly wise ones. “I haven’t seen one Black,” I added. “We’re their token brown-skinned people.” Eventually, she helped me to overcome my resistance, and we entered the church even though Melanie was still a little wet from swimming in the pool after the sweat and unable to change out of the bra and other underthings that had gotten soaked!
There we were. Two “Recovering” Catholics, walking into the Valley Forge Baptist Church to take in the solo performance of the daughter of dear retired friends I had made while breakfasting at an IKEA restaurant in Conshohocken. They waved to us, and Melanie and I parted the sea of white folks and sat in a pew behind the proud parents. Their daughter played divinely, and despite an apparent ban against applauding in such a refined church of God, the audience cheered her and I whistled as loudly as the most boisterous fan at a Phillies/Mets game.
A wonderful choir next offered every one the Sound of Angels. That was followed by a group of teens who had recently attended a church-sponsored camp in North Carolina who explained to the thousands of congregational members how Christ had entered into their lives and changed them forever. Each boy reminded me of a miniature “preacher-in-training” with the fervor of zealot for God, while the girls talked of the gentler side of a divine forgiveness, unconditional love, and spiritual camaraderie. Then Satan raised his ugly head.
No, Lucifer made no appearance, although one of the adult preachers brought up his name while chastising the youth for listening to the foulest of foul music provided in the world today. He asked for money to develop Christian music as an alternative to evil sounds my generation had been warned against when Ed Sullivan chose not to show Elvis Presley’s lower parts on national television and “race songs” — those performed by Black artists and Doo Wop groups years ago got banned in Boston.
I couldn’t wait to escape, bid farewell to the lovely white-haired couple who invited us, and put a distance between them and my sinful self. It was while I was drinking water in my car and reflecting on the day’s events that divine insight struck me like the proverbial bolt of lightning.
God and the Divine Spirit of the Cosmos are the same one we all talk about, but we use different languages to praise and worship. He or she is the clear light, the Buddha Nature existing in all that we can tap into when we want to live a life that Jesus lived, or that Mohammed said was possible if we but give up our will and let a more powerful Will control the major part of our lives. Yes, we still have free choice, free will.
But we know where our internal moral compass is directing us to go. It tells us what is good or bad at the moment and that all we need do is seek the stillness and silence where a “Shekinah” — what the Hebrew language calls the “Feminine Side of God” — dwells. She is always available to guide us. Seek her out, this great spirit, this energy, this Great Vibration, and give up all resistance.
You’ll find out you can do it with no sweat, and with no loss of anything God hadn’t planned for your personal purpose in life.
Deborah loved with a love that was more than a love. Cupid’s arrow struck her just as a choir of angels sang and a special cherub played the most beautiful music in all the land over an ancient lyre, the same instrument that a shepherd boy named David once played to honor the God of the Psalms. 
She loved Fran with all her heart, her mind, and her soul. And she wanted to shout it out to the whole world that there was a love that would never end, never grow old, never die. She needn’t say a word, however. Her devotion and adoring demeanor spoke volumes to those of us meeting the lucky couple for the first time in Philadelphia, my City of Brotherly Love, on Friday night, the summer solstice.
Love shone all around Deborah when she spoke of Fran, and a well-disguised, shy girl from within her nearly blushed as her lover looked deep into her eyes to acknowledge an almost palpable affection. Light from a thousand stars sparkled from their mutual smile, their caressing eyes, their in-tune and synchronized hearts, which seemed to beat as one.
Taking her hand, Fran walked alongside this beauty of a woman, offering a silent prayer of gratitude and thanksgiving step by step through the long summer night, the longest night of the couple’s young lives. Too soon, they disappeared from view, leaving behind just a memory and an image of what any one of us would give a million dollars to have: the unconditional love of another human being, another man, another woman, even for but one moment of a gay, rich life.
Here’s to Deborah and Francesca. Two women in love. True Love among true lovers, if you have ever seen it in this or any other lifetime!
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They were a sight to see and to glorify when you need to recall what love could be, and is, all about. The purest emotion God created for His creatures to share with Him and with one another, sans color, creed, national origin, or sexual orientation. Love has always been color-blind and gender-neutral for the young and old, the sick and the well, the poor and the not-so-poor; even for a 64-year-old whose soul mate just turns out to be a 21-year-old.
Love has triumphed in our world. It’s exploded into space, signally all the many universes that Planet Earth will allow all love to flourish from whatever source or sex it manifests.
Today, I am Gay. Today, all of us are as Gay as we would like to be or not to be. That is the question the US Supreme Court answered in a shout to the entire world that all who love will never be prosecuted or persecuted for whom they choose to fall in love.
I feel elated and so happy for those who have hidden themselves for far too long. We, society, could not see until now that love is not confined to procreation. It can’t be regulated and legalized only to those wearing opposite types of clothes or having genital differences. Love arises in all of God’s children, no matter how dissimilar one person might be to you or to me.
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Fall for anyone you like. Fall in love again with someone you don’t even like but stay together for the sake of the children. It’s legal. It’s holy. It’s fun!
It’s as gay as gay can be, and it’s all free for you to be or not to be.
O Grand Master, it is your females that will save this species. It is through their power, their innate abilities, that man will be saved. Compassion and love must rule the day again. And power must be crushed by the mallet of humility before any dare sends another child into war that old men dream of winning as if playing games of adolescent ruffians. 
Ouch! Give up my manhood? Turn in my boxing gloves, my rifle, my drink? What will I become when I grow up? Who will I protect, gather food for, “sexualize” in thoughts actions and deeds my every waking minute?
You will bow and respect for evermore your Divine Mother forevermore. I will take your life away as quickly and as surely as I have given it to you. Obey this: Be Still and Know that I Am God.
I need your strength to build, not tear down; to give hope and not despair; to “fight” without lifting a fist but by raising your spirit so mightily it will dash to pieces the most formidable enemy your kind has ever faced.
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Shed tears not for fallen comrades but for the joy in conquering obscurations you never thought could be overcome.
March proudly waving flags of festive, holiday colors to announce a new day is here, and that you will never return to the days of old guts and glory.
You will thrive only when realizing that skillful means discerned with honest and gentle wisdom must be employed in all human endeavors.
Love, tolerate, and above all, learn patience as the antidote to all the poisons your kind has been exposed to. Do it now. Tomorrow may be too late.
I will spare man, but only if he spares the feminine within himself.
Reality shifted on me the other day, and it helped me realize that I have more control than my “resifted” thoughts allowed me to see. Now, with a “time-control outlook,” I can try to change my world for the better.  Continue reading
We should accept Rush Limbaugh’s apology for calling a woman a slut only if he agrees to take and pass a course on female reproduction. Then, and only then, can we be assured that someone other than locker-room juveniles has finally taught him the real facts about the birds and the bees. Continue reading
I don’t understand all the fuss that Catholic universities and hospitals are raising over providing health care for women that includes mandatory birth control provisions. Why not let “Practicing Catholics” follow the teachings of their church to “opt out” for the coverage, while permitting non-Catholics what doctors and women’s groups say is a health benefit?  Continue reading
Well, if you trace the history of something called corporate “personhood,” you can blame this inglorious recognition on an unelected clerk writing a summary of a court decision that never actually decided this issue.  Continue reading
Actively seek out someone in your church, synagogue or temple and befriend him so that what happened in Philadelphia last week never happens again.  Continue reading
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
I’ll take them in all shapes and sizes, the old and the young, the rich and the poor.
If it wasn’t for women, I — and a lot of guys I know — wouldn’t even be here! Continue reading
Indulgences are some things I never thought I’d think about once I finished with my Catholic upbringing and moved onto Eastern Studies and the spiritual advice from the Kabbalah. But there I was reading how someone could limit their time in purgatory by performing certain acts and saying prayers.  Continue reading
“Oh my God,” I said as the ad in “Lucky Magazine” finally registered. “Oh my God,’ echoed the 62-year-old woman seated next to me after showing her the promotion to “taste” the “additive” and “natural” flavor of American Spirit Tobacco.
Getting over my shock of seeing such an ad in print, I looked closer at the magazine. Continue reading
On this Veterans Day, 11-11-11, what would you tell yourself if you could go back in time and greet that young man recently returned home from the war?
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
It’s so wonderful to welcome you to visit. You return when I least expect you, embracing me and bringing peace and calm just when I still myself and end needless thoughts.
Are any thoughts actually needed when I go within? I need but seek a quiet moment with no thought save the intent to be free of the past and the future, thus ensuring I will rest “In the Now.”
It’s not based on my part alone. I find that I need the inspiration that others give me. You, who give your love so easily by opening your heart, unafraid of any consequences, allowing me to touch your soul and be one with you. Yes, I become one with you when the truth from the Source touches me as I hoped it would while writing from the depths of my inner being. It is then that I feel the kinship, the brotherhood with men and women alike.
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I seep into your arms, feeling the comfort that you offer. It is palpable, this feeling that arises. It is like a warm, fully lined coat, puffed up with weather-protected soft materials wrapped around me. I feel totally protected. Like a baby in a car seat with padding upon padding to ward off any harm.
I approach this level of consciousness by remaining perfectly still, freezing my body and then my mind. I sit with my eyes closed, taking in the sounds of a pet bird, motorists driving outside my home, and the ticking of a nearby clock.
It’s as close to heaven as I could ever imagine one could reach. I have no wants and no desires. I simply “am.”
Uh oh. I feel a slight pain in one leg, so I crossed over the other. Do I dare try to relieve this suffering by breaking the stillness? Can I remain in this state by easing my leg into a more comfortable position?
There, my leg is straightened out. I send my concentrated awareness to that part of the body that signaled the discomfort. I feel a warmth spread over that area. It is soothing. It blends in with the focus I still keep in this moment. I am still “In the Moment.” My peaceful calm has not been destroyed but simply adjusted. I need not fear slow, methodical actions to curtail my new, higher level of consciousness.
Should I experiment? Open my eyes and try to do something mundane? Ok, Michael, pay the bill. You can’t get any more mundane than that. You’re writing the check, placing it in an envelope. You’ve just used the left hemisphere of your brain; now let’s scoot back to the right side.
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There, you have it. Peace and calm are still here. You worked mindfully, just like the Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, said you would.
Someone now asks you a question. You answer from what feels like a different world inside of you. You answer a second and third question, undisturbed and completely surprised that you can continue your feelings of love and happiness despite a break in your “meditative” posture. No, you don’t need to keep your eyes closed or to stay seated on a mat to be mindfully engaged with the world.
You just have to do it. Do these actions mindfully.
If you could only sell it to the world, we’d all live in peace and harmony. Hell, why don’t you just give it away freely?
Contoveros 