more, less brief reflections from the on being gathering (part 3)

28 Feb 2018

continued from 26 feb post and my reflections about the on being gathering.

on the lack of queer elders

another weighty conversation had in that amazing infinity hot tub was about queer elders and lack thereof.

well, really i guess it was that i asked some folks who attended the “queering spirituality” open space conversation and that’s a big part of what they said got discussed.

i do have two people i think of as mentors who are queer (a gay man and a lesbian woman) but they’re pretty informal relationships.

why does that matter? well, imo, it means there are feelings and thoughts and experiences that my straight mentors can’t support me through with empathy. they can sympathize, but they’ve never had those things so they can’t know what it’s like. and, in some ways, that’s not a big deal, but in others, i think it’s a huge deal. there is nothing like learning how an elder went through the exact same thing you’re going through but in a totally different time period. it really helps put things into perspective and also has helped me move through situations with solutions i hadn’t even thought possible.

anyways, as we discussed this in the hot tub, i resolved to ask padraig about if he would be game to talk about it. but then when i saw a moment of opening at breakfast, i was in my “i’ve run out of language” moment. i asked if we could connect about it later and he said i should reach out to him on twitter. so i guess i’m gonna do that today and see where we end up. #fingerscrossed

now that i think about it, one of the things that i like about boston is that there is such a history of queerness and even black queerness. like… the combahee river collective started in boston. soooooo i should also probably just reach out to folks here, too.

words / writing / post-processing
305w / 9min / 4min