Honeymoon

            So this is the drive to a honeymoon. There are foggy windows and a hand on a thigh. There are absolutely zero rest stops and there is a late hotel check-in. There are two people and they are staring at the street in front of them, as it winds up beneath the car, like a film reel reaching its end. There is a soft score playing on the radio and there is a familiar humming.

            So this is a Sunday morning together. There is a long walk to the café and there is black coffee to pair with sweetener and cream. There is a rosy barista and there is a smiling couple to pair with two piping-hot drinks. The two smiling halves are one part of the world’s whole cup, but they float on their own sugar cube.

            So this is sleeping in with someone. There are Hallmark “bests” and “wishes” torn in two on the floor, and there sit the dollar-amount insides – neatly stacked on a bedside table. There are legs stacked on top of one another on a bed, like kindling. There is a fire always starting and then there is the comfortable gnaw of hunger. The crackling duo calls for pizza and when the man asks his wife what she would like, a match is lit. There is a white-hot understanding.

So this is what a new name feels like. So they can jump in the fire, and come out

intact.

“God damn it, you've got to be kind.”

I saw this video on Facebook today. Reza Aslan says, quite well, what I have been thinking. I would like to add this sentiment:

There has been a mucky surplus of agony this week. It is exhausting for me, when so many are wounded (emotionally, physically). To the aching and the enraged, I would like to quote one of my favorite authors. Kurt Vonnegut, an atheist and humanist, wrote, “Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you've got to be kind” (God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater).

I have seen quite a few of my Facebook and Twitter relationships slipping into the bigotry that Reza Aslan describes, in discourse about a new LDS church policy and about Islam. It is - quite frankly - lazy, harmful, and thoughtless. Bigotry is a waste of your immense aptitude for judicious reasoning. It is reckless to say one religion or religious stance is entirely "bad" or "good." Religion becomes what humans offer it: Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Mormonism, etc., all have a great capacity for virtue and a great capacity for cruelty. There exist good and faithful Muslims and Mormons; I am privileged to be acquainted with both. It is the job of each of us to think for ourselves, avoid the ease of generalization, and apply charity always.

If you are religious, and that religion gives you grace and the capacity to allow others grace, you are improved by it and I fiercely support you in it. If you are not made gentle by your belief system, and you continue coldly towards the meek or the misunderstood, I cannot sustain it. In the words of Abraham Lincoln: “I care not for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.” Good people live on both sides of most every debate, but the best people will have one trait uniformly: empathy. Even in complete disagreement, there is room for empathy. Where empathy resides, we are all better for it. 

When kindness is not paramount, religion drops its most base purpose. It is a brave person, who remains thoughtful where skyscraping emotions loom. “Whoever is patient and forgiving, these most surely are actions due to courage” (Qur’an, Ash-Shura 42:43). I understand there are many lanes that lead to light. There are quite a number of things I do not understand. I do know the world is a massive, little house; I do believe most of the tenants are doing their utmost.

I have to admit, it's getting better

I am a dreadfully irresponsible journal-keeper, but I wanted to write about Quinn’s birthday the other day. After a few failed attempts at remembering the password to my neglected Word document “Journal,” it unlocked - presenting my most recent entry:

Seeing this entry made me curious about where I was and what I was thinking around a year ago (give or take a few months). I read this:

I know I’ve said it before: “things get better.” I’m going to keep saying it though, because it’s true, and things that are true ought to be said often. I don’t know if it’s overly personal or unnecessary to give out these entries, but here they are, hopefully helping some other tender constitution like mine.

What You Called Me

I was crying (because of a B+ and the handful around my hips). You were waiting until I was all wrung out, because there really is no calming that; it’s something like that penny in preschool, something like that glass top that bursts when you test the surface tension of water on that penny – not that – but something like that.

I cried so much and I called it nerves, and I called it silly, and I called it a mystery and then you called me a garden.

“Ellie, you are a whole garden.”

I have never been called a garden before. You lifted my stone head and told me about the florae in my frame. I have never been told that truth before. You told me I am the totality of the things I grow.  

I like to think I am something easier to see than a sum, but I am not. Nobody is very easy to see. I like to retreat to denim and foil, but I know I’m bones. I know I’m a whole heaving soul – and, thank god, you know what that soul is made of.

*Doodles inspired by the botanist that takes careful care of me

Family

This is one of my favorite videos, not least because of the tiny adorable accents:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG0yqhzVuYA

The subject of gay marriage has been a hot one, for a long time, but a particular article has been floating through the Internet lately and it has me wanting to break my usual silence. The article presents the testimonies of children raised by homosexual parents, speaking out against gay marriage.

Now as young adults, the individuals in the article detail some of the abuses they suffered at the hands of their homosexual parents. The argument in the story is that homosexual marriages are inferior, and that a family with a homosexual parenthood breeds only sexual and emotional perversion.

I think this argument is ridiculous; to me, it becomes obsolete when you consider the vast amount of research done that shows that gay/lesbian parents are equal if not superior to heterosexual unions, raising “happier and healthier children.” It makes sense that a couple who has had to go through a great deal in order to stay together, be financially stable enough for adoption/surrogate pregnancy, and wants children – would create the ideal environment for a child.

I do not want to dismiss the pain of the children speaking out in the article, they had rotten parents. The victims in the article did suffer at the hands of their gay/lesbian guardians; I could never say that all homosexual parents are a success – they are not – but then we have to look at heterosexual parents: clearly, not without fault.

1 in 10 children suffer from child maltreatment. 1 in 16 children suffer from sexual abuse. Nearly 1 in 10 children are witnesses to family violence. Considering that only 3.5% of Americans even identify as LGBT, and only 25.3% of homosexual couples have children – they could not possibly comprise of all this abuse – it isn’t mathematically possible.  

The argument that “gays/lesbians aren’t fit for parenthood” is a cruel and senseless one to me. The comments section of the article about it was grotesque, calling homosexuals “sick,” “animals,” “heathens,” and perhaps most frighteningly things to be “extinguished.” Family is something hard to define. To me, families love and protect each other. Families are units of growth and progression, many homosexual parents provide that.

Whether you support marriage equality or not, it is above all, most important to love people. 

“Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another’s world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.”

— Bill Bullard

For some nice videos concerning the LGBT community:

This asks children:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TJxnYgP6D8

This uses hugs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1WEtFFPVBU

And this is an amazing Irish ad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ganRbr-WBiI