Self Love Haiku 4

Monks in Tibet snow -
a distant gong sounds three times
- carrying warm bread

Self Love Haiku 3

Deserving full health

like fresh mountain stream water

flowing free and clear

Self Love Haiku 2

my impaired body

(feeling like a funny ape)

still, God's creation!

Self Love Haiku 1

a loud roar today...

my Lion-shaped heart beating:

the strength inside me.

Sacred Storytelling: a Father and Son Pow Wow

Sacred Storytelling: a Father and Son Pow Wow

by Richard Allison and Ronald Allison

My dad and I had a serious conversation last night, perhaps what some people used to call a Pow Wow. That word has a connection to Native American culture that does not go unnoticed to me. In fact, I had just been talking with some friends about the importance of naming rituals in native cultures and spiritual rituals. So it was interesting that my father said what he said last evening because he spoke directly to the idea of naming as part of initiation. Ironically, knowing that my dad would be visiting, one of the things that I wanted to discuss with him (but did not know how) was, "What does it mean to be a man." Being the middle child as well as gay, I have always felt a sense of not being enough in regards to being a man and have always wanted my father to give me guidance in this important area of self worth.

So it came as a very pleasant surprise when my dad initiated the conversation by talking about Native American naming rituals. Let me step back for a moment and share that my father and I have experienced uncannily similar health challenges for the past year. Some native cultures might even define these challenges as initiation rites of their own. Initiation into a deeper and richer sense of life and love and nature not unlike the vision quests that tribal elders demanded from young boys, sending them off into the forest for days without food or human contact to test their strength and perseverance. If the boy survived the forest and all the tests that he encountered in that time of hardship, then he would be called a man and a warrior. He would then be given a new name to reflect this great accomplishment. So how appropriate that my dad, visiting while he is still recovering from his own time having survived the dark forest of induction chemotherapy and at the same time I am recovering from my third brain surgery and now paralysis would share a story about Native American naming rituals.

My dad, always a great Storyteller for as long as I can remember, shared this gift of words with me yesterday, first verbally, and then in writing, after my request:

I've always been interested in Native American Indian history and lore. I learned that once Indian babies are born, in certain tribes the males are initially named by the father and females by the mother. Their initial names were often the very first thing the mother or father saw. For example if the father saw two running deer, the son would be called "Running Deer" or maybe the mother would see a beautiful yellow flower and name her daughter "Yellow Flower." After about a year the child would receive their formal name, and it was always associated with nature. A few days ago upon reflecting on my son Richard and the tremendous struggles he has encountered with brain cancer, I decided that I would, if I were a Native American Indian, I would initially have named him "Kicking Feet" because he was constantly kicking his feet rapidly as a baby. Later, I would have formally named him "Strong-Son-Shine." Strong because of his resilience and strength, Son because he is my son but moreover I also translate Son to also mean sun because of the extreme warmth provided by the sun such as Richard has provided to so many people. Then the word Shine for Richard''s brilliance and love that he has shared with so many thousands of people through his life. So my son Richard's indian name, to me, will forever be "Strong-Son-Shine!"

With great admiration, affection and love, Dad

As I followed my father to the front door as he departed for the hotel for the evening, both of us now using canes to assist us in walking, I thought about another important aspect of native cultures, that of the Sacred Storyteller...and that would be my Dad, Ronald Dean Allison.

EXTREMELY EXPLICIT MATERIAL WARNING

The Gospels of Nelly Christ

By His Disciples Matt, Marc, Lucas and Johnny

Matt

1 I wasn’t there for his birth, of course, but his mom told me all about it. Many people today don’t believe everything Mary said was true, but it’s definitely a good story. That Madonna, like a virgin, knows how to tell a tale.

2 Mary got pregnant after years of complaining that Joseph couldn’t get it up, so all her friends thought she must have been cheating. She told them, the only one I been cheating with is God the Father.

3 I mean we all now know that everything is true, but then her friends told her that she was crazy for saying it was some kind of immaculate conception.

4 So on the night of his birth, the word got out real quick that Mary was delivering and folks just started showing up. Never heard of a woman having a baby without a real daddy, they said. Three old Rice Queens showed up there, saying they had traveled for weeks, following a star in the sky.

5 One of them, that night, as Mary told me, lifted the baby from her arms, holding it up towards the star, and said, “His name shall be Nelly, he is the Savior, he is the Christ.”

6 Of course this was all after the prophecies that a Savior would be born to the gays. This time, it seemed like it was actually true. Well, for me, I know it is true.

Marc

1 I am an angry man now. He died so long ago, but it still feels like yesterday. Others have started writing about him, so I wanted to tell my story. I felt so special knowing him. He was the nicest queen I ever met. And he made me believe me in my own power, like never before. Since he died, I have not felt the same since, and I find it insulting that so many men live their lives in secret, or even outwardly as gay, but inside, they hold onto a secret shame. I want to tell everyone, He died to set you free, so live like you know it. If you had been around him when he was alive, you would have known it, you would have felt it.

2 He made others feel this too. Like Mary Magdalene, that drag queen that everyone hated because she had stolen money from everyone, even him. But it didn’t matter to him. Her drug addiction had made her so sick, her own parents had thrown her out onto the streets and she was eating out of the trash.

3 The day I saw her, Nelly was telling his prodigal son story, about the boy who returns to his father’s house after a long absence of thinking his dad hated him for being queer. But upon his return, the son is embraced with such love by his father that it completely restores him.

4 Mary was obviously moved emotionally by this story, as I could see her slowly sneaking her way through the crowd, closer and closer to Nelly. When she was right behind him, she reached out her dirty, skinny hand to touch his garment. Those around him tried to stop her but Nelly asked her to come forward. She muttered that she felt if she just could touch him, she would feel forgiven.

5 He said, “Because you asked, it has already been given to you, there’s nothing you need forgiveness for, girl.”

Lucas

1 I am not going to say that I had sex with Nelly. I am not sure anyone ever did. But I probably came closer than anyone.

2 Nelly was the most effeminate guy I ever met. I met him at a wedding in Gaylilee. He was there for the celebration, just like everyone else. I knew both of the guys getting married, Adam and Steve, from some of the gatherings I had been to in years past. Already, at the beginning of the reception, a lot of people were whispering about how cheap it was that there was hardly enough wine; it was getting bitchy.

3 I sat on the ground and noticed this guy beside me. I introduced myself and noticed as he talked he kept touching my knee at certain points to hold my attention. About every third sentence was “Tell it!” and he called everyone his sister. But in the middle of all that swishing and swaying, he was saying some pretty deep things, including a theme that would continue throughout our friendship and his ministry: “The Queendom of Heaven is at hand.”

4 I didn’t know what it meant then; I thought it had to do with waiting on the heaven of an afterlife, after we die. But he meant it more literally, that right now, at hand, is your fabulous potential to be a powerful queen. As I am sure everyone knows by now, it was then that he stood up and said, “Your belief makes it so.” The wine bottle that was being passed around, previously running dry, was then unlimited. There wasn't a sober person at the reception after his miracle.

5 But I know you want to hear about the sexy stuff. At the same wedding, (this was before I was comfortable having sex myself with men, before I knew that my own Queendom was at hand), I found myself turned on with all the shirtless sweating men at the reception. I went behind a grove of trees to relieve myself in a carnal way, stroking furiously to get it over with and back to the reception. Halfway through I look up and there Nelly is, staring, standing right beside me.

6 He said, “This is not a sin, calm down, feel it.” I gushed right then and there, my jizz landing at his feet, my face burning red.

7 That’s as close as I got to sex with Nelly Christ. Before I knew it, he was being nailed to a cross.

Jonny

1 “Be ye a fisher of men.” I followed that invitation more than any other of his. I was a fisher of men, a lover of men, a seducer of men. I embraced my beauty and let others enjoy it too. I was, like Nelly used to say, “The Light of the World.”

2 But for me, I have never had a doubt that I was the Word made flesh. Just ask anyone who has seen me naked. A sight to behold.

3 I am older now, but I still live a carnal life, a meaty, fleshy life to go back to the origin of that particular word.

4 Being older, I cannot help but reflect, when I am asked about Nelly, on his last days.

5 I tried to stop them from killing him, I kept saying that everything he said was true; just because he was effeminate and he was gay, that doesn’t make him a liar. But they hated him for that; they hated all of us for that.

6 During the Last Supper, the night before he died, we all knew it was coming. We were so melancholy and yet he still was being the master caretaker, knowing how devastated we would all be after he left. He led us through a ritual, a ritual that I have shared with so many people who did not him when he was alive, allowing them to make Nelly Christ their own personal savior.

7 He passed around a chalice, and said, “This is my essence, drink it and you drink of me.” We all did. We all didn’t want him to go, but he said he knew that it was what had to happen. He had to die to make us all free, so that every single gay person who was born and lived after him, could live a life free of prejudice and shame and parental abuse and societal ostracization and pious moralizing. He died so that each one of us could love in the way we were born to love, with the same sex, in the way we wanted to have sex, with one or many partners. He died to set us free. “Do this in remembrance of me,” Nelly said. I still do to this day.

8 Three days after his crucifixion, some say the stone was rolled away from his grave and the grave was empty. Some say they saw him walking around. Some say they saw him ascend into the heavens on a pink chariot. Not just some. I did.

9 Nelly looked down with those eyes of love, snapped his fingers three times, flicking his wrist in that oh-so-Nelly way, and said, “Girl, I have risen.”

10 And so believers, we must rise to the occasion ourselves, to his mission and carry on his ministry. I say to you to spread the Word as I tell it to you now: I believe in free love and free sex and I believe in committed relationships and I believe in gays as divine teachers of beauty and sensitivity and art and compassion to the rest of the world.

11 I am the Light of the world, shining bright pink. The Queendom of Heaven is at hand. Tell it!

"Drishti, My Drishti" - a new poem

Drishti, My Drishti

Standing on one leg
arms held high
shoulders down
away from the ears

Body quivering
sweat pouring
calf muscles tight
balance your weight

Find a focal point
- your drishti -
calm your mind
notice your breath

Rotate your ankle - both ways -
Lean forward slightly
onto the ball of your other foot
don’t lose your drishti

Today,
lying down on the metal table
arms at your side
mask over your face
entering the MRI

Where’s your drishti?
calm your mind
comfort your fears
fill up with love

All day at the hospital
seeing three doctors
viewing your brain scans
what’s this all mean?

As scared as a young boy
sitting on a church pew
hearing that the way he loved
made him abominable

Where’s your drishti?
fill up with love
comfort your fears
calm your mind

Wondering where God is sometimes
WHAT God is -
Ommmmmmmmmmmm
over the sound of the MRI
Ommmmmm
Over the sound of your fears

letting yourself love again
lying down on his bed
arms wrapped around him
earthy masculine comfort
smile upon your face

“You...have been my drishti,”
you whisper to him

But now, he’s gone -
where’s your drishti
comfort your fears
fill up with love
calm your mind

Ommmmmmmmm, drishti, oh drishti

By Richard K Allison

***

A drishti (view or gaze) is a specific focal point that is employed during meditation or while holding a yoga posture. Source: www.yogabasics.com

http://www.yogabasics.com/learn/-focusing-on-a-drishti.html