Finding my place in the chaos

The past couple months has been extremely chaotic, so here is a brief summary of what I have been doing and a few highlights along the way.

May 15^th I was officially kicked out of my housing at Moody and moved into a storage room here in Boystown not really knowing what to expect. Essentially, the powers that be just kind of put me here and said go. And so I went, wandering to and fro waiting to see what adventures lie in store. Of course not really knowing what to do I was extremely lonely, so I would just go to random things, wandering about without purpose waiting for something to happen. I would talk to the canvassers (those annoying people who try to get you to sign up with your credit card for monthly donations to their activist organization.) That first week I did all the Red Eye crossword puzzles and sat around at the community center having random small talk.

A couple days into things, I found out that the Marin Foundation (I like them) was having their meeting just a few blocks from me at Roscoes. With the catchy title “Being Intersex in the Church,” my curiosity, boredom, and loneliness drove me to attend. There I was reintroduced to the brokenness found by the unanswerable questions here. I met an intersex “man” born both male and female to a genetic birth “defect.” PD was just who God made him to be: physiologically 80% male 20% female. His body was disfigured due to having both male and female organs. Hormones raged through his body causing him to have three times the strength of a normal man. His story was filled with brokenness and pain. In a relentless search for truth which he described more as a dog that would bite his ass if he stopped, he went to church after church and ism after ism. Because of his “condition” (which doctors didn’t know what to do with) he was kicked out of church after church. Yet, this was exactly the way God made him. There was no mistake, no sin in his creation. (I could go on but you get the point.) And so I sat, awkward and alone on the Roscoe’s dance floor made over into this meeting room, listening to his story of pain with several tears held back. Six months prior the truth found him (Calvinism anyone?) and gave him life. His description of God is what I remember most. He said that he would run up to his Father’s throne and touch him quick before scampering back to his corner before he could gain the courage to go back even though part of him knew he was welcome to stay at his Father’s side.

Things progressed and I found myself no longer an outsider to the street, but allowed into a strange new world; a world of brokenness and pain, families formed by choice and not by birth, a place where everyone and everything acceptable, where the supernatural is a present reality and I am learning to show my scars. The prerequisite to interact with this community is pain. Pain is the shared common experience. I have been forced to see my wounds and scars and see the places in my life where I am bleeding in a nonmaterial sense. I have learned that it has never been the better “moral” choices that show forth the light that dwells within, but in how we as children of light unashamedly bear our scars, our weakness, and our pain in a way that groans for our future glory.

My life has been a living chaos. Everything is unstructured and things are messy here. I have stayed out till dawn wandering the streets. I have slept at the lakefront trying to grasp what it is like to not know where you are gonna sleep. It has been the best summer, but also the hardest. I have made more mistakes than I can could and am learning what it is like to be in a place of small beginnings. I have learned how little I have learned. I leap cultures in a matter of minutes, yet am still a stranger to all the worlds I walk in. I say words like “finna” and “shank.” I give random compliments. I have a salon quality haircut. I know what a short is and where drugs can be obtained. I have an entourage who will protect me if I ever get in danger. I talk about organic food and anime. Sometimes I act 5 and others 26 depending who I am around. I’m a regular face to the night life which has created some interesting conversations as well as obstacles.

West Side, South Side, North Side, Gay, Street, Alternative, Black, White, Hispanic, Mixed, Young Urban Professional, Poor all come together here in Lakeview. So much is happening all the time. I’ve got the rhythms down. I see the fingerprints of sovereignty scattered in the hidden places. Something big is going to happen here and I want to play my small part in the grander story when it happens. In forging my own trail here I have found that there are others who have blazed further. I’m at the point where I want to take their shortcuts and finding my path as part of a community rather than going solo.

There are many unanswerable questions I still have and many stories I could tell if they were mine to tell. So that’s me right now in a condensed version.

Reality Check

First off, I would like to apologize to those few who want to read my thoughts here on the internet (though I do not know why you would want to...get off your computer and go outside or at least do something productive.)

I have found myself in a new world and have yet to catch my bearings here in the chaos around me to find time to write. I find myself either caught up in work, stress and mess around me to find time to be still and reflect. The time I do find is spent wishing I could just have a bit more sleep (I find myself sleeping less and less these days.)

Perhaps another reason that I have put off writing and most likely the better reason is that I am comfortable in my repression of things. I fear that if I were to relive all the experiences and emotions that have become a part of my new life here, I would break--for writing to me is much more than putting words on a page (or a screen). I do not feel my self anymore. I am being shaped, carved, broken and reformed into something new. I am lost in a world with different rules and do not know what to do or who to be here. I do not know what church is supposed to be or look like anymore. I have been swept of the chaos of real life and it will take me some time to drudge through all the words swarming in my head waiting to be written. (Sorry Allison, you'll just have to wait some more.)

Somewhere over the Rainbow

(I meant to finish this essay three weeks ago, but life is chaotic here, so here is the updated and revised version)

“Halsted Street” reads the signpost just around the corner from my new home. Rainbow bands cover the sign signaling to all who pass by that they have just entered the rainbow district of Boystown. It is one of the biggest LGBT communities in the world. Rainbow flags hang from the surrounding households and every business bears a rainbow sticker in their window to show their support for the gay community. Every type of person and every type of place can be found here. It is a neighborhood with its own rules and its own rhythms.

If you were to take Boystown and divide it by the color spectrum, I would live somewhere between orange and yellow, which happens to be right around the corner from a gay bathhouse. I guess that puts me in the middle of the rainbow and not over it, but the metaphor works regardless. I am truly in a different world. (Although to clarify, I have spent a good amount of time in Boystown before when I worked with Emmaus ministries, so my story is one of those that starts in the middle of the action—en media res.)

The purpose of this blog is to record my discovery of truth. I’m here learning how to live and how to love as my Savior did. I am in a search for alethic realism, the ultimate reality, what is really real. Boystown is a place of illusion. People here hide who they really are. This world wears a mask and puts on a façade of immense proportions. Yet, the smoke eventually fades and what seemed like magic is revealed to be trickery. I want to find the world that lies beyond smoke and mirrors. I want to pull back the curtain and find the man who was pulling the strings all along. God is active here and I want to find what he is doing in this dark place.

Boystown is a land of broken dreams and sleepless dreamers. My mom recently discovered YouTube and as a result, she watches Susan Boyle sing “I Dreamed a Dream” from Les Miserables. In the book/play/musical Fantine is the character who sings this song. She fell in love with a man and had a child with him. He made her promises that they would be together, but left her destitute. At this point, her factory has found out that she has a child out of wedlock and fires her because of her immorality. In order to survive, she has to become a prostitute. The song goes as follows:

There was a time when men were kind

When their voices were soft

And their words inviting

There was a time when love was blind

And the world was a song

And the song was exciting

There was a time

Then it all went wrong

I dreamed a dream in time gone by

When hope was high

And life worth living

I dreamed that love would never die

I dreamed that God would be forgiving

Then I was young and unafraid

And dreams were made and used and wasted

There was no ransom to be paid

No song unsung, no wine untasted

But the tigers come at night

With their voices soft as thunder

As they tear you hope apart

And they turn your dream to shame

He slept a summer by my side

He filled my days with endless wonder

He took my childhood in his stride

But he was gone when autumn came

And still I dream he’ll come to me

That we will live the years together

But there are dreams that cannot be

And there are storms we cannot weather

I had a dream my life would be

So different from this hell I’m living

So different now from what it seemed

Now life has killed the dream I dreamed.

When I heard this song in its context, it really hit me as the perfect description of the Boystown community. People are convinced that the longings of their flesh will give them fulfillment in life, but in reality, it only results in death.

I have entered a world of broken dreams. People wander around as the living dead, floating through a waking nightmare. I feel my heart and soul screaming out for this community. Those who were once strangers and guarded are now friends and brothers. Yet, they are lost. Oh God, I pray “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Wake them up…