Month: August 2013

An Unconditional Act Of Love

I received an inspirational story in e-mail some time ago that I felt was worth sharing here. While it may be fictional, it really is a testament to the power of unconditional love….

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There once was a man who was sentenced to death. Before he was taken away, the condemned man begged the king, “Please allow me three days’ time to put my affairs in order and to make sure that my family is taken care of.”

“How will I know that you will come back?” asked the king. Almost immediately, the condemned man’s best friend raised his hand and said, “I will take his place. If he doesn’t come back, you can hang me instead.”

Three days passed, and the condemned man had not returned. When it came time for the hanging, the king’s guards turned to the man who had offered himself as a substitute and said, “You will have to take his place.”

Just before the noose was slipped over the man’s head, a voice suddenly rang out in the distance. “I’m here! I’m here! Stop! Stop!” The condemned man ran forward from the crowd to take his rightful place on the gallows.

At this point, however, the friend had already made up his mind to die in the first man’s stead. “You were late,” he said. “So maybe this was meant to be my destiny. You have a family who needs you. I’m alone, already here and ready to go.”

The two friends argued back and forth, each one choosing to die for the other. Seeing this, the king declared a stop to the hanging, saying, “My sentence was meant for one man, but I see that if I were to kill one of you it would be as though I were killing two people. Both of you can go free.”

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The point of this story is that each friend was willing to face death for each other and through that act of love, it moved the king’s heart enough to set them both free. For any of us to grow spiritually in life though, it doesn’t necessarily require something this profound to take place either. Nor is it mandatory to diligently attend some form of weekly worship service, study a religious book, or pray fervently. While each of those can hold an important part of one’s spiritual journey, the more decisive actions that help to place us on that path is when we tap into our time, money, or talents and offer them unconditionally to others.

It’s easy for all of us to be in a receive mode, but there are many opportunities every day for us to extend ourselves lovingly to others in a selflessly giving one. A few days ago I was at a light waiting for it to change and there was a homeless man standing there in the steamy heat of the day with a cardboard sign asking for money. The unspiritual, unloving, and selfish me would have thought the person should get a job or that they are going to just take any money they get and go buy alcohol or drugs. But the spiritual and loving me that I’m trying to become today has removed much of those judgments and took action by giving a dollar out of my pocket to the man and telling him “God bless” as I drove away. None of us know just how profound even something like this smallest action of unconditional love could change a person’s life.

And while the story I originally shared above is an extreme example of how an act of unconditional love held great depth and weight, it is a parable that was written by someone to show the potential of love within all of us. Maybe each of us could start seeing that same potential within ourselves by shifting some of our thinking away from what God’s love can do for us in this world, and focusing that energy instead on what actions we can take to start unconditionally loving all of God’s people a lot more.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

The Tragedy At Fruitvale Station And Racial Profiling

Most people around my age have probably heard of the name Rodney King and the story behind what happened to him. A similar, and less well known story, but just as tragic, was what happened to Oscar Grant on January 1st, 2009, when he became another wrongful victim of racial profiling and was murdered by a Bart police officer named Johannes Mehserle at Fruitvale Station.

Recently with the release of the movie titled “Fruitvale Station”, the events that happened in that early morning tragedy have taken a much larger spotlight in the nation. I have to admit that up until I saw that movie the other day, which was directed by Ryan Coogler, I didn’t know anything about the terrible misfortune that happened to Oscar Grant.

While the movie did a fantastic job depicting the last 24 hours in the life of Oscar, it also shed even more light into the police brutality that still exists in our country which often arises out of racial profiling. Having grown up in a middle to upper class family that lived in a completely white neighborhood out in the suburbs, my family never experienced any of what people like Oscar went through. But back on an early summer night in 1991, I met someone very similar to him when I was hanging out at a house in the inner city of the area I grew up in. For the three months that followed, I spent time with this individual and got to see a completely different side of the tracks and one that Oscar Grant would have been all too familiar with.

I have often looked back at that summer and felt amazed that I even survived through it. Some of the things I did during that time period were definitely illegal and very insane. Sadly, this person who became my best friend at the time also became someone who was the object of my sex and love addiction even though I was never able to admit that to myself or him back then. He and everyone else I spent time with were black yet I was still readily accepted even though I was white. He was also a small time drug dealer just like Oscar was, who did enough of it just to get by. He had his group of close friends who drank and smoked weed with him at night too. And it didn’t take long for me to be quickly absorbed into his world as I started doing the very same things as him.

There was one night that I was hanging out without him and with one of our mutual friends instead and I can still remember what happened in vivid details. The two of us were lighting off small firecrackers on the train tracks and heading back to his house to crash for the night when suddenly police came out from all directions and drew their guns on us. We were both thrown up against a fence, roughly searched, and talked down upon with curse words even though we hadn’t done anything wrong. The officer who searched us definitely didn’t like how I looked. At the time I had a six inch high flat top, lines and zigzags throughout it and my eyebrows, and wore clothes that definitely fit the inner city look. He told me if he ever saw me downtown again, he was going to “put my wigger ass in jail”. It was the first wake up call I had in my life to how privileged I really had it, as compared to what that friend and all the others I hung out that went through, every single day of their lives.

And that incident wasn’t the only one to happen to me like that either. When I went back to college, I retained that inner city look and went to house parties quite often. On one night I went for a stroll from one of those parties to go get a pack of cigarettes as I smoked them too back then. I was walking up a street headed to the nearest store when a police car passed by. With a screech and a quick turn around in the middle of the road, the car raced up to me and two policeman jumped out. They drew their weapons and threw me up against their cruiser and searched me. When I asked what I had done, I was told to “shut the fuck up”. They then literally forced me quite hard into the back seat of their cruiser without reading me any rights and took me to an apartment complex a few miles away. A person then emerged and walked around the cruiser looking in at me, then shook their head and left. After that, the police took me up the street and kicked me out of their cruiser with no explanation of what any of what had just happened was all about and I was miles away from where I needed to go.

It’s sad but what I experienced is probably only a mere fraction of what many black people, as well as all the other minority races, continue to go through. Oscar Grant lost his life to police that were racial profiling and acting violent because of it. Thankfully, my ending wasn’t the same from when I once fell prey to the same thing. But what did come out of all that for me was a greater understanding and compassion for what the minority races have to endure in this world from so many others, including the police. Fruitvale Station was a riveting film about that and a rather good portrayal of how inner city life can be like for a minority based individual like Oscar was. Hopefully there will come a day when things like his homicide won’t happen anymore. Until then, at least a movie like this will help raise greater awareness to the racism that still exists in our country.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson

Pope Francis And Gay Marriage

“When I meet a gay person, I have to distinguish between their being gay and being part of a lobby. If they accept the Lord and have goodwill, who am I to judge them? They shouldn’t be marginalized. The tendency [to homosexuality] is not the problem … they’re our brothers.“

These are the lines that were spoken by Pope Francis about a week ago that have generated many news headlines and talk around the world since. I first heard about this at a barbecue I was at the same day they were spoken by him. My friend asked me “Did you hear what the Pope said about gay marriage?” Of course I thought at first she was going to tell me a joke as it had the rhyme of one so I promptly replied with a “no” and a smile. But when she responded with a statement that it was all over the news and told me “the Pope is supposedly approving of it now”, I began to think she wasn’t trying to just get a laugh out of me. So I called my partner to ask the validity of such a statement and he too said something similar.

What’s ironic in all of this buzz that stemmed from the Pope’s words is that I don’t believe anything has changed at all with the Catholic Church’s stance on homosexuality. What I see instead was a very smart political statement and move made by the Pope that removed some of the strict judgments that have often come from previous Pope’s and the Catholic Church itself. If I was to make a venture on what Pope Francis was really saying, it is very different than what the rest of the world, like my friend and my partner were telling me. Looking at his words more closely, it appears to me that he is following in the footsteps that many political leaders of the world have already taken. I believe what everyone, including the Pope, is starting to say is to let gay people be gay people, allow them to have their gay marriages and sexual relations with each other, but if they choose to walk on the path that Christ walked in serving God, than that’s where things might have to change in those people’s lives.

To put it even more bluntly, I believe the Pope and many other leaders who have followed a stance like this really feel that being gay is still a sin, against God’s wishes, amoral, and completely wrong in God’s eyes. Across the world there have already been cardinals and bishops and leaders of the Catholic Church that have clarified their own viewpoints since the Pope’s comments emerged. Each have said adamantly that same sexual relations is still a sin. So while much of the world is moving away from chastising those that are openly gay and are working on equal rights on every platform for them, many still have hearts that are remaining resistant to the idea that God created people just like me, a homosexual.

In a nutshell, while I’m glad that Pope Francis is at least taking a less dagger throwing stance towards gay people than his predecessors did, I feel in my heart that if I was to have a private conversation with him about my homosexuality and the fact that I’m on a path to seek a deeper relationship with God, that he would tell me that I need to become celibate. Many people I have met over the past few years who have said they accept my sexuality, have told me in conversation that it’s not their place to judge me. But when I have pursued it further with them, they’ve admitted their belief that it’s still a choice and a sin. Those conversations usually end with each of them saying they will do their best to love me anyway.

I have come to accept all of those people in this world just as they are, even though most of them still feel deep down that being gay is a choice, a sin, and an abomination. I really am sad on some level because what I am really hoping will change one day is their hearts and souls surrounding this issue. When everyone can finally move away from staring at those few lines in the Bible that have been used against gay people and try to believe that maybe, just maybe God’s message is a little different, than our world might be able to finally move forward with a lot more light and love.

Don’t get me wrong, the Bible is amazing and does have a lot of wonderful lessons and teachings for the greater good within it. But in regards to those few lines about gay people that were written thousands of years ago in a period none of us were alive in, each have been interpreted and reinterpreted time and time again by man and by man only. It really is possible that man is continuing to misinterpret this one. And while the Pope may be lessening the polarity between his church and gay people, isn’t it really actions that speak way louder than words? When the day comes that the Pope and the Catholic Church begin to express God is ok with homosexuality and actions arise out of those words, then and only then will I think our world has shifted to a much greater place of unified love and light towards gay people.

Peace, love, light, and joy,

Andrew Arthur Dawson