Iron/Lube/Mormon/Golf

I'm not the type of person that is just impulsive about things. I think. I ponder and I make sure that my decision is sound and real and good and solid. Most of my decisions have been good ones, including my decision to marry my wife. I remember feeling like I should pray about it and ask Heavenly Father if it was the right thing to do, but once again I played the "I don't want/need/have/like/care to pray" card and thought to myself: "Yo, Elbow! If you pray about this, it might be wrong, and you want to get married, so just get married and don't look back." I mean I made my decision based off of clear and intense decision making skills and I didn't need anyone coming in and screwing that up, even if they were a member of diety.

And I'm approaching a whole other level of decision making in my life. I am now in the process of deciding what I will do with the future life of Elbow. I need to set intentions, clear one's and positive expectations for myself because this is the time for me to "go out and get what I want" (from Shoes). And that's scary. I can live a celibate life, I could live a semi-celibate life, I could also live the life of a gay Mormon whore which might be fun, or I could even return to the life of a gay married Mormon (most definately not going to happen). So yeah, I have a lot of opptions. And as my last post so eloquently described my ambigiously bitter/love/hate/confused/grateful/fun relationship with the Church. I have a hard time trusting what "The Church" says because let's be honest, they aren't saying many coherent and relevant statements about homosexuality, and if I were to change my life in conformity with every new statment/revelation/conversation the Church puts out about homosexuality then I would be schizophrenic at this point.

So I must rely on the arm of the flesh as my haters would say or as I like to call it, the smooth/latin/thick/masculine bicep of flesh (kidding, haters). No. I have to do what all you good guys out there are telling me to do. Pray. Get down, get dirty, kneel, make it hurt so good prayer. And I've started. I'm praying and it feels like nothing, but I'm doing it because it makes sense.

After I kneeled to pray last night I remembered why I don't pray anymore, because I don't feel anything. But maybe that's ok for now. I mean I feel a lot of God's love and peace when I'm going about my daily business and thinking about Him and the many blessings. But praying for me is like shutting off the fountain of water and sitting in a sound proof box and waiting for a homing pigeon to send me morse code through the sound proof door....nothing.

And that's why it's so rediculous for me to tell myself to just hold to the rod and endure to the end because I don't feel it. What is the point of holding on to the rod of iron to the word of God? The word of God changes and the word of God is love so yeah I guess I hold to the iron rod if it's love and acceptance and being able to get married to someone of your own gender. But the Church places these expectations and hypothetical constructs on the word of God to make it more complicated than it is. Or maybe I'm the one laughing from the big and spacious building at all the people holding to a rod of iron, but I have better things to do, and I suspect that if the people in the large and spacious building were really that wicked then they'd be doing a lot more than just laughing out the window. I mean if there's pot to smoke and an orgy to perform I think they'd choose the bong/lube over laughing at some dorks who are holding onto a peice of metal.

I have a buddy who is now in his thirties and he just realized that he hasn't explored himself sexually and that developmentally he feels behind in his progress as a human being because he's a gay mormon who has not dated girls because it feels wrong and who hasn't dated guys because he's worried about letting go of the iron rod in the eyes of the Church. The other day I was talking to him and he was thinking seriously about exploring himself sexually and letting himself experiment without guilt. He wasn't going to have sex or anything, he just wanted to see what it was like to be intimate with someone who he cared about and who he was attracted to. And as he was making the decsion to go forward and let himself be ok with his sexual expression he said "the only iron rod I'm holding onto is my penis!" I laughed and so did he, and I'm still laughing at it even though it sounds irreverant.

So the iron rod is there. I'm looking at it and I'm thinking about what it means in relationship to my life and the future that I see for myself and the future that I don't want for myself. And then I look up at the orgy/pot/debauchery/wicked/lube party in the large an spacious building and I don't want to be there either. Isn't there a section that gets you to the tree and the fruit but you can take a golf cart or something? And if there is a golf cart, can I drive it?