Lightworkers and Making It Through

I need to tell you about my cousin, Joanna. 

So I’m really good with people.  It’s equal parts education and intuition, I think.  I spend a lot of time watching people and I’ve spent a lot of time working with people.  It doesn’t take me long to figure a person out.  It comes with my background and training.  People talk to me or I listen to people and things just click into place, giving me an insight into the person’s goals, interests, fears, and challenges. 

For example.  If you tell me that you have a difficult time having a relationship because you exhaust yourself and neglect yourself for the energy you invest in the relationship, I can tell you that you haven’t had people to connect with in the past and you’re so desperate not to repeat a pattern of broken connections that you put everything into your relationships.  You are driven to connection but by the time you’ve poured all you have to pour into a relationship in order to secure that relationship you’ve burned yourself out.  (This is just an example from a conversation I recently had.  It’s not a universal truth.)

It’s easy for me, given some time, to figure people out. 

My cousin, Joanna?  It takes her absolutely no time to figure a person out.  She is so good at intuiting people, their motivations, their fears, their emotions, that it makes a lot of people uneasy.  She’s so good at this she’s developed this shtick in which she “reads palms.”  She’ll hold your hand, point at the different lines, tell you the names of the lines and what they all mean, and then she’ll completely ignore your hand and tell you everything about yourself.  I’ve seen her do it hundreds of times and it’s fascinating. 

It’s not always received well.  Once people know she does “this palm reading thing” they’ll race up to her, holding out their hands.  Once people see how accurate she is in her observations, people’s hands start disappearing into their pockets.  I have family members who actually stay on the opposite side of any room Joanna’s in for fear that she’ll see their secrets and truths in their eyes.

My cousin Joanna is unconventional.  She’s a free spirit.  She’s a seeker.  She’s deeply spiritual but challenges a lot of ideas about traditional religion.  I’ve learned a lot from her—about people, about myself, about faith and spirituality. 

I’ve held onto something Joanna taught me a few years ago.  It was such a brilliant way of explaining and describing something I see in certain people and how these people affect the world around them.  She taught me the concept of a lightworker.

One of the reasons I held onto this information the way I have is that nearly every approach I take to explaining how people react to and interact with the world around them is based in traditional Christianity.  I use Christian terminology to explain, in Christian terms, how God works through people to improve the word, specifically in providing care for the least and the lowest.  This works great if it’s Christian people of faith I’m speaking with, but as regular readers of my blog may have figured out by now, I have a particular interest in reaching out to the people the Church has hurt in some way.  Who wants to hear about how God works through people when the people who should be God’s hands and voice in the world are the very people who have rejected you, called you names, and stripped you of your humanity for simply not conforming to their expectations?

So I’ve held onto this idea of lightworkers.  I’ve used the term before with people.  The trick of it, for me, is that I’m abandoning Christian terminology and concepts for the language and metaphor of another religion…and that doesn’t make me feel comfortable either.  My discomfort isn’t that I think Christianity is right and the other religion is wrong.  My discomfort comes from the fact that I’m not a part of the faith tradition that speaks of lightworkers.  I don’t want to be one of those people who picks over other religions, philosophies, and cultures for “the good stuff” and then, in my arrogance and ignorance, misrepresent the thing I’ve stolen.  I also never want to speak for a group or culture to which I don’t belong.

But I find myself using this term more and more because I think it accurately represents a phenomenon that can be seen in people regardless of faith tradition.  So as I talk about lightworkers, I hope that I do so respectfully and accurately.

What exactly is a lightworker?  One resource suggests the following:

Lightworkers are souls who carry the strong inner desire to spread Light – knowledge, freedom and self-love – on earth. They sense this as their mission. They are often attracted to spirituality and to therapeutic work of some kind.

Because of their deeply felt mission, lightworkers often feel different from other people. By experiencing different kinds of obstacles on their way, life provokes them to find their own unique path. Lightworkers are nearly always solitary individuals, not fitting into fixed societal structures.

I think this description might be a bit conservative compared to others I’ve seen in that the individual actually may not realize how spiritual they are or recognize how their work (light) actually affects the people around them.  I do think it’s universal that these individuals are “helpers” in some way.  It may not be some sort of therapeutic or healing job in which they work but somewhere along the way they engage in healing activities to help people around them.  Healing in this case is more than just physical healing.  They are motivated to see healing in the world—healing within communities and healing within individuals. 

That’s kind of the “ground floor” explanation of lightworkers.  From there the definition and identification of traits becomes more and more spiritual.  I don’t want to go any deeper into the spiritual conversation for our purposes here mainly because I’m not qualified to speak to the deeper spirituality.  What I want to focus on is the fact that these are people who, consciously or subconsciously, reach out to the hurting people around them to ease their pain and make the world a better place.

Think about everything you know about the imagery of light.  Light is used to connote healing, knowledge, wisdom, life, and good.  It can convey grace or blessing from divine forces.  The disappearing of light can reflect fear, anxiety, cold, illness, and death.  The coming of light can convey understanding, growth, healing, and salvation from difficulty.  Light metaphors permeate our literature (“…what light through yonder window breaks?”) our music, our movies, and our religious expressions.  It’s universally known imagery within the whole of human experience even apart from a religious context—and that’s why I’m drawn to the term.

To me a lightworker is an individual who has a knack for understanding things differently, through compassionate eyes that see deeper into the humanity of struggles most politicians and religious leaders choose to over-simplify.  With that unique understanding comes the ability to connect with people to pass the light which is within them along to others. 

I believe lightworkers are able to make these connections through common struggles and pains.  I think that’s why, within the context of the LGBTQ community and relationships/friendships, it’s through the recognition of common struggles, themes, and pains that create the bridge for the light to pass between the lightworker to the person in need of healing.  Why do you think the “It Gets Better” campaign is so successful?  People who watch these videos and hear these stories are able to see themselves in the “expert’s” story. 

Why am I even bringing this up?  Over the past couple of weeks my blog has focused on taking control of your own story along with some serious discussions about homophobia, bullying, and suicide.  I’ve spent time taking my faith tradition to task for continuing to hold onto ignorant and superstitious interpretations and institutionalized prejudices.  Why am I suddenly talking about this concept of lightworkers?

Like all of you I’ve been watching the news.  Brussels was just attacked; another city of innocents drawn into a war of ideology and politics that the Western world created but refuses to take responsibility for.  North Carolina has legalized bigotry by passing a law that does not protect LGBTQ people from discrimination.  The state of Georgia is on the verge of signing into law a bill that would give religious officials in the state the option to refuse to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies and for tax-funded groups to deny services to gay people.  Donald Trump’s rise to power continues.  The Senate GOP refuses to do its job by calling for hearings to confirm Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.  Iran sanctions, Obama in Cuba….it all just gets to be too much.  The news is so incredibly discouraging and that just the news.  The talking heads on the 24/7 news networks have no idea of the struggles of my life or yours, the pain that doesn’t hit close to home but lives in our homes.  It’s easy to feel like the darkness is about to swallow us whole.

But one of the things I’ve noticed more and more is this:  The darker things seem to get, the more people I would consider lightworkers I seem to notice.  I guess it’s true: You can’t appreciate the power of a candle until all of the lights have gone out. 

I see a lot of candles in the darkness.

They’re all around us.  They come to us from a variety of places, usually unexpected places as the world continues to change.  They reach out to us, to reassure us and bring us healing and hope, to remind us that we matter and have value.  The tell us it will get better. 

I think the old saying still holds true.  “The world is going to hell in a handbasket.”  But that’s nothing new.  Humanity has been visiting pain and suffering onto itself since we learned to walk on two legs and make fire.  But more than that and much more importantly than that:  We are able to do so much more good.  Sometimes I wonder how our public mood would change if 24/7 news networks would start reporting light-related stories rather than the headlines that have traditionally made them money—headlines of murder, terror, and fear.

So, look around you.  I guarantee that no matter how dark it seems right now in your life and how overwhelmed you are by the horrible stuff that is going on in the world and in your life, there are lightworkers right there with you, ready to share their light.  I also guarantee that everyone who is reading this right now has enough light inside of themselves to reach out to the broken world around them to make life a little better for the people around them as well.  You are both worthy of the gift of hope that people will offer you and able to share that gift with others.  I promise you.

Confession Time

I want to make a confession.  It’s nothing terrible.  It’s nothing tabloid worthy.  It’s kind of embarrassing to think about it now.  But in order for you to appreciate the confession and what’s behind it, I need to give you some background and context. 

I know that you know that there was a time before satellite TV.  Our phones were tied to the wall with wires.  Our movies weren’t on demand; we had to rent them on VHS or Beta tapes at the local video rental place, usually at a mall.  And believe me if your parents were anything like mine there was definitely no “demand” about movies. (Oh, yeah—we shopped at malls.  Amazon wasn’t around back then.) Our music was on cassette tapes and MTV actually was Music Television.  And all the wonders of the internet had yet to be dreamed of.  In fact, computers were just become “a thing” in school when I was in fifth grade.  Some of you might recognize one of these if your parents or partners drag you around to antique shops.

Not having the internet complicated life in the closet.  It wasn’t just the isolation that we experienced at a time in which tolerance for LGBT people was ever fluctuating.  The advent of the internet also made it easier for LGBT people of all ages to appreciate, in relative privacy, the attributes of their attractions.  I’m not just talking about the ease and availability of porn, but I’m talking about being able to “fanboy” and “fangirl” in secret as well.  Today it’s nothing to pull out your smart phone and look up facts and photos of that movie star or lead singer.  Back in the day it was a little more complicated than that. 

So, now, my confession.

When I was a teenager I had a HUGE crush on Corey Haim. 

In 1986 the movie The Lost Boys was released.  It was one of a flurry of Corey Haim/Cory Feldman cinematic team ups that came out in the 80’s.  The best one of if you ask me.  Though, I suppose, Dream a Little Dream comes in a close second.  The Lost Boys had all the big names of the time:  The two Cory’s, Kiefer Sutherland, Jason Patric, Jami Gertz.  Beautiful people, dressed fashionably (for the time—don’t laugh), and gyrating to one of the best soundtracks of all time.  But at the center of it all, for me, was Corey Haim.

So, picture it.  It’s the 80’s and you live in one of the most conservative pockets in the region.  You’re surrounded by the small town mentality of “traditional” values, where deviation from the time honored norm resulted in bullying and harassment and even violence.  You know you’re gay; you have no interest in girls and panic regularly in the locker room before and after phy ed.  You watch a movie and become enamored by one of the lead actors.  What do you do? 

You get creative and you get sneaky. 

It wasn’t long after The Lost Boys came out that I was able to talk my dad into buying the family a VCR.  Shortly after that the VCR migrated from the family room to my bedroom where I connected it to my little 12” black and white TV.  Somehow I got my hands on a copy of The Lost Boys and voila!  My crush was in my bedroom.  To this day I’m not sure how I didn’t wear out that video tape. 

 

Let me pause for a moment and make an important point.  My crush on Corey Haim wasn’t just teenage lust provoking the typical reaction from a teenage boy.  Even back then I was more relationship oriented than “sex” oriented.  I would rather connect with a person than hook up with a person.  I just don’t want you going away with the wrong idea. 

So, I had “my Corey” on the huge 12” black and white television.  But there was more to feed my crush.

If you were like me, growing up in the 80’s from the safety of a closet, you may have had a sister.  Somewhere in that sister’s bedroom would be a collection.  Sometimes this collection would be proudly displayed.  Sometimes it would be tucked away for safe keeping.  Sometimes this collection would be inconveniently gutted and plastered all of the walls.  I’m talking about magazines.  But not just any magazines.  I’m talking about THE magazines filled with beautiful teenage boys, occasionally flashing some skin, smiling boldly.  In that smile was an unspoken message:  “So what if you’re gay.  I’m here for you.  Let’s talk about how hot I am.”

Occasionally one or two of these magazines would come to visit me in my bedroom.  They would bring New Kids on the Block with them along with Johnny Depp, Jonathan Brandis, Ralph Macchio, and Jay R. Ferguson of the dreamy eyes who I recently blogged about. 

You see, we didn’t have YouTube to watch clips of our crushes dorking around or sending greetings to their fans.  We didn’t have Instagram or twitter.  Time spent with our crushes was planned out, two dimensional, and required considerable imagination.  And if you were like me, isolated and afraid that the real you would be discovered, a certain amount of calculating resourcefulness was also required. 

So, I had a crush on Corey Haim (for obvious reasons) and in order to feed that crush I obsessed over a movie on a little black and white TV and snuck teen magazines from my sister’s bedroom.  There.  That’s my confession.  I’ll give you a moment to stop laughing before I continue.

Got it out of your system yet?

And now a disclaimer:  The tone of my thoughts from here on might sound judgmental.  I think it could be easy to relegate them to the “Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!” category.  I hope you don’t do that because my goal isn’t to be preachy here.  I just have a thought and, honestly, I’m curious what all of you have to say about it.

I admit that my opinion might be formed by a sense of nostalgia but I almost wonder if, at least where the idea of crushing and fanboying and fangirling is concerned, things were better before the internet.  I know that might be strange to hear.  It’s strange for me to say.  And it’s definitely not in keeping with the opinion I’ve shared in previous blog entries in which I celebrate the freedom LGBT people find through technology.  But bear with me and let me explain.

I think that there’s something to be said about mystery.  Mystery fuels the imagination.  Mystery fills in the blanks when reality fails or answers are evasive.  Mystery drives us to discovery, channeling us through a labyrinth of experience that helps develop identity and character. 

On the opposite end of this spectrum is everything that comes with internet:  Constantly flowing information, more than we can possibly consume and, sometimes, more than we want to know.  I had to laugh recently when singer/songwriter Sia made an appearance on James Corden’s “Carpool Karaoke” sketch.  Sia talked about wanting to maintain a sense of privacy in an era where stars have no problem tweeting out pictures of themselves from the dentist.  Just this past week Kim Kardashian West tweeted a picture that left absolutely nothing to the imagination.  A few months ago a photographer managed to “sneak” a picture of Justin Bieber sans clothes, finally showing obsessed fans around the world a side of the Biebster they’ve been wanting to see for years. 

I’m not saying these things are bad.  They just are.  I don’t think it’s possible to ascribe them a value apart from a subjective appraisal and those, I think, I pretty much useless in our culture today. 

I just wonder where the mystery is anymore when anything and everything you could possibly know is instantly available literally in the palm of your hand.  Music doesn’t dance around a topic anymore—it comes right out and says it.  Anyone with an internet connection, regardless of age, can watch total strangers have sex.  Heck, according to certain studies (which, admittedly, are problematic in their methodology), teenagers are having sex younger and younger, leaving absolutely no room for mystery and wonder. 

Do you know what I mean?

I think where I’m going with this can be summed up in this thought:  Everything we receive comes with a cost.   I think there is no better example of this than the internet.  Information flows, educating people, connecting people, creating community, liberating not just LGBT people but people who struggle with abuse, addiction, racism, sexism, and so on.  But when the information gate is opened we can’t pick and choose what information flows lest we make judgments about what information is “acceptable” and what information is “dangerous.” 

I’m not a luddite.  I’m not only fond of technology but I’ve grown quite dependent upon it.  Even if we could rewind time and figure out how to keep the “good things” technology does and eliminate the “bad things” that technology brings with it, I wouldn’t want to.  I wouldn’t want to meddle with that history any more than I would want to meddle with the history of my life and take “missed opportunities” to come out.  Time is.  History is.  We are at this moment in time, with all its good and with all its challenge.  The question isn’t “What should we have done differently?” but rather “What can we do now?”

I don’t know if you agree with me.  Maybe it’s just an observation made by someone who likes to think about things like this.  Maybe it’s something similar to what people who came before me thought about “my time” just like you will think of people who come after “your time.”  It might just be the nature of the universe, to see these positives bring their negatives, leaving people with way too much time on their hands to ask these kinds of questions. 

Regardless of whether or not you agree with my thoughts on the internet destroying mystery and imagination when it comes to the development of sexual identity and the feeding of that curiosity (whether straight or LGBT), I hope we can agree on two things.  First, I hope that we can agree that talking about these things doesn’t hurt anything.  I hope we can agree that coming together and having conversations about things that we either see ourselves or things that others see and bring to our attention can only benefit everyone involved.  Conversation is always good as long as all parties are listening and engaging.

I also hope we can agree on something very important.

I hope we can agree that Corey Haim was so hot!