Lavender Graduation

Tuesday night, I attended Lavender Graduation at Millsaps College.  You probably don't know that that is.  I didn't either until about three weeks ago.  I'll explain more about what it is later.

Once upon a time, I took an oath.  It went something like this "I swear, my life long to (among other things) defend the weak."  That sounds like overly-dramatic, false masculinity smoke and mirrors.  For me, it's not--at least, I try to make sure that it's not.  We're born into a world where there is an immoral imbalance of power.  An oath like this seeks to mend that by making the strong the vassal of the weak.  Not everybody takes it seriously, but I do.

I hesitate to call homosexuals "weak."  It might offend them.  It would offend me.  Individually, they are generally better educated, healthier, and wealthier than the rest of us.  The problem is that, as a group, they suffer from a political weakness because their numbers are fewer than other demographic groups.  That means they are politically vulnerable, and right now, there are people, particularly in the South, who are bullying gay people for their own political gain.  It's a sad fact that in our democracy, demagoguery can win elections.  Anyone who can convince two people that a third is their enemy is halfway to being king.  Mississippi doesn't lead the way in this, Florida does, but Mississippi is doing its best to catch up.  

When you look at what's been happening in the Florida legislature, Tennessee, Lousiana, Mississippi, and more, it's quite clear that there are people seeking to turn back whatever gains have been made in gay rights, just as they turned back whatever gains have been made in Women's reproductive rights, and they're using the same mechanisms to do it.  When you pair that with what's going on currently with the United Methodist Church, the sponsors of Millsaps Collge, it's not hard to get the feeling that homosexuality is under siege in this country.  

There are those who say the United Methodist Church is on the cusp of changing its policy and allowing the church to sanction gay marriages.  I don't know if that's true, but I do know there are thousands of people who are so worried that they might that they are leaving the United Methodist Church.  I know scores of people who are in gay marriages.  There's not one of them I could say to them, "I do not accept your bond."  The man sitting next to me, Tuesday, is married to a boy I knew from his days at Millsaps.  I would fight for them.  

There are a number of reasons why I would side with homosexuals in this political battle.  For one thing, they're often very good, if not the best, at things I consider very important.  That's not the real reason, though.  The real reason is that I find it immoral to hurt someone who hasn't hurt you, and it's doubly immoral to hurt an entire group of people who never hurt anybody.  I find it immoral to attack or to seek to contain people just because they are different, so this is where I draw my sword.  This is the weak I will defend.   I'm old.  If this is the hill I die on, I'm satisfied.

Lavender Graduation is a ceremony celebrated by over two hundred colleges and universities that acknowledge and celebrate LGBTQ Plus students.  It was created by a woman who wasn't allowed to attend the graduation of her own children because she was a lesbian married to another lesbian not quite thirty years ago.  Now that I've seen thirty years go by twice, I can tell you that 1995 was not very long ago.

When I attended Millsaps, there were very few openly gay students or faculty.  Last night, the event in the Christian Center event space was so full they had to call out for more chairs to hold everybody.  When I attended Millsaps, there were several people who were either closeted or "quietly open," which is a phrase I learned meant that they told a few people but didn't mention it very often.  There was one person who told me they were gay way back in 1985 but still have not told their parents.  I hope they'll read this.  

Before I attended Millsaps, there were at least two incidents where people called either my dad or Dr. Harmon with proof that a professor was gay in hopes that they would lose their job.  It happened once more while I attended Millsaps, and probably more than that because Dr. Harmon and my dad never really told me everything, just those things they thought might affect me because I knew the professor in question.  To my knowledge, no one was ever fired at Millsaps for being gay.  Daddy's response in situations like this was usually that his hands were tied because of tenure and "thank you for calling."  His thought was that engaging these people gave them the confrontation they wanted, so he kept it brief.   Mind you, this happened with straight professors too.  Jilted lovers or angry wives would call about Doctor So-and-So running around with a student.  In one case, he was openly cavorting with a lawyer downtown that I also cavorted with, and shouldn't we fire him for cheating on his wife.   He didn't get fired, either. 

There were three professors at Millsaps--I don't have permission to say their names.  I  feel pretty strongly that the individual chooses if they are out or not.  There were three professors who were very dear to me and very influential in my life and who spent most of their lives working at Millsaps and were never able to say publically what they were.  One of them pulled me aside one day,

"Boyd, you will hear things about me."

"I know."

"These things are true, but I need you to understand that I am very discrete and careful about these things."

"I know.  I need you to know something, man to man.  What you've told me changes nothing.  My feelings for you, my respect for you doesn't change.  Your life, outside of this room, is your life.  Not mine."

I don't know how many other students he told.  That was thirty-five years ago.  I don't know how many colleagues he told.  I do know that he died, not ever feeling comfortable saying who he loved, while I cavorted with every co-ed I could find without any repercussions.  While we both attended Millsaps, I was able to take whoever I wanted to formal dances, but he could not.  That's not fair.  That's not right.  He died, not ever knowing that would change.  I hope that there's some way he could look down from heaven and see Lavender Graduation and see that things have changed.

One of the most remarkable things the theater program at Millsaps ever produced was Sam Sparks.  As a student, he was the go-to kid.  The go-to kid is the one with the confidence and knowledge, and responsibility that you can go to with serious jobs.  One summer, Brent had to be away all summer, so he gave Sam and Erin keys to the theater.  Tens of thousands of dollars in lighting equipment, power tools like you wouldn't believe, dangerous ladders, and catwalks were all in the hands of these two young people with the keys to the kingdom.  It strained the relationship between Sam and Erin because it was so much responsibility and sometimes so much of a pain, but they made it through, and Wednesday Night, I had dinner with them both to celebrate Sam's first year as the Director of Theater at Millsaps College.

Besides being only one of two responsible kids in the whole department, Sam was also an incredible artist.  Very young, he returned as a guest artist to direct Equus.  If you know this play, it's a remarkably difficult hill to climb that requires so much out of the actors and the director, but he made it through, and it was beautiful.

Sam sent out a notice that Monty had asked him to deliver the address at Lavender Graduation.  Monty is our everything kid.  The everything kid is an awful lot like the go-to kid, except they're everywhere.  Everything I go to at Millsaps or at Galloway, Monty is there.  There may be clones of him.

I knew that Sam was interested in Millsaps Pride because we talked about it, and I was really interested in what was happening with Millsaps Pride, mainly because it didn't exist when I was a student. 

If you like to read, take the time to read Mississippi Sissy by Kevin Sessums and then read Diary of a Misfit by Casey Parks.  There's something like seventeen years between when Kevin was at Millsaps and when Casey was at Millsaps; while the school didn't change that much, the life of gay students was so very different that I doubt they would recognize one another.  Having known both of them as students, one older than I and one younger, that progression and the progression from when Casey was at Millsaps until today pleases me very much.

I had no conception of what a Lavender Graduation might be when I said, "I'm in."  They could have had strippers and snake handlers and dancing elephants, and I would still have sat there to take it all in.  I've seen dancing elephants before.  

It embarrasses me and always has, but I'm aware of what my name means to Millsaps.  I'm also aware that, if I had any other name, I've still devoted enough of my life to Millsaps that sometimes, just showing up matters, so that's what I did.  I showed up.  

I arrived early because I'm annoying like that.  One student was setting up.  He had a table with twenty rainbow pattern lanyard chords laid out.  I recognized immediately what this was.  Chords representing some aspect of the student's life are worn around the neck and shoulders during Commencement Ceremonies.  Sometimes, it's a fraternity; sometimes, it's a sport; in this case, at least twenty of the 2023 graduates would be wearing Millsaps Pride chords when they walked.  Monty, the everything kid, among them.  

I was far too early, so I went outside to wait.  I don't smoke anymore, but I still slip outside and sit on the stoop of a building to clear my mind.  Sometimes it's hard not to smoke when I do that.  The stoop of the Christian Center, if you're a certain kind of student from a certain period of time, is hallowed ground.  From there, I pulled out my little folding keyboard and wrote a short piece about my dad and Andy Griffith, and Atticus Finch.  I can't go to Millsaps without seeing the ghosts of my dad and Dr. Harmon, and Lance and Jack Woodward, and Lucy Millsaps and Rowan Taylor and Robert Wingate, and even Dick Wilson, even though he went to Ole Miss.  My brother is a ghost at Millsaps now.  One day I will be too.

After pressing "post" on my essay, I went back to the event space room and met Sam on the way.  Soon Shawn Barrick and Catherine Freis, Liz Egan and Anne MacMaster, showed, and I knew I was in the right place.  Our kids, the theater kids, were dramatically gathered at a table together laterally from us.  Theater kids are either always performing or always hiding--divided between actors and technicians.  Even at dinner, it's easy to tell which is which.  It's fun to watch them as a group.

Assistant Dean Ryan Upshaw spoke first.  Ryan invoked James Baldwin.  I honestly don't know how much the students know about Baldwin.  He's a name that's really from before my generation and far before theirs.  He was born in Harlem, both black and gay.  A rough hand to play in the twentieth century.  For a twenty-year-old Millsaps student, who was gay, of color or not, I think I would recommend Giovanni's Room by Baldwin.  They may not ever have to live through the struggles that Baldwin did--but I can't promise that.  One of the reasons I was there was that I can't promise things won't get bad again.  There are people who want very much for the life of homosexuals to go back to the way it was when I was a boy and before.  I specifically wanted to be there last night to say "NO" with my presence--and now, with my words. 

Sam's remarks were beautiful.  He's a fine writer.  Having been a student of Catherine and Anne and Brent, I don't know that he had much choice.  Every time I see Sam, I think, "he can do all the things Lance dreamed of but never could."  That's how much things have changed between when Lance taught at Millsaps and today when Sam teaches at Millsaps.  Lance did Equus; it shocked the world.  Sam did Equus; the world was more ready to receive it.  I think those bookends in time say a lot.  Sam spoke of many things, but he ended with the final speech of Angels in America Perestroika.  Although Angels in America is technically an "aids" play, it encompasses everything there is to know about being a gay man in America before the current century.  I'm hoping his speech will motivate at least one student to pick it up over the summer, either to read or watch the HBO production.

At the end of the ceremony, I turned to Sam and said, "You know... if you could cast it, there's nothing to hold us back from..."  

"It's SIX HOURS LONG," Sam said.  

"You can do it in parts, maybe a project over two semesters; not all the roles have to be students..." I said, and Sam, for a moment, starts thinking of people who could fill some roles who aren't students before he said again, 

"It's six hours."  Needless to say, I don't think we're gonna do Angels in America any time soon, as much as it would please some of us, but the point is, he could.  

Sam could do Boys in The Band.  He balked at doing Corpus Christi, but I think he could get away with it.  Lance put on Equus with a fair share of ferocity about what the world thought about it.  He did that play, but he couldn't have done any of those.  We talked about Boys in the Band.  Toward the end of his life, we talked about Love! Valor! Compassion!  In the days I knew Lance, we talked about maybe a thousand plays, most of which he had done at Millsaps.  That sounds like an exaggeration, but it's not.  He put on all those plays, but he never felt like he could put on these, even though he had high regard for them.   The point is Lance could be a bulldog for theatre, but for these plays, for these subjects, he believed he couldn't.  Sam can.  Sam can.  He can, and he would receive accolades from not only the students and his peers in theater but also from his colleagues at Millsaps and the administration.  Much has changed.

In 2023, with Ron Desantis passing bills that say "don't say gay," the Methodist church rending itself in half over whether to sanction gay marriage, and two remarkable pastors in Mississippi facing a church trial for marrying two of their students in love,  and suddenly the whole world really mad about transgenderism--twenty Millsaps students will walk at graduation with rainbow chords hanging on their shoulders.  

So, the question becomes: "Who's the old guy next to the theater professor?" and the answer is, "It's an old guy who believes more in your capacity for greatness than he believes in the people who would hold you back.  He's somebody who never thought in 2023 there would be people who wanted to hold you back, but there are.  He's somebody who doesn't know you but loves you enough to be counted with you." There's no color on the rainbow for old guys who just want the people he loves to be happy and complete and safe and able to reach the full limit of whatever gifts God gave them.

That's ok.  I'm still there.

You Are Safe With Me Lapel Pin - Amazon

If I had a muse

 They say that every writer has his muse.  They've said this for quite a long time.  Still, I'm not entirely sure what it means.  

A muse, I suppose, is a memory of someone or something that pushes you to create.  Sometimes it's a beauty that inspires, but more often, it's a wound that won't heal or a memory that can't resolve itself.

Williams' muse, they say, was probably his mother.  Her name was Edwina, but on stage, she was Amanda, Cat, Blanche, and more.  Memories of his mother and her efforts to deal with the declivity in her life inform nearly all of his work.  It's not a loving memory, either.  A muse doesn't have to be a pleasant force.    

Shakespeare had his "Dark Lady."  Nobody really knows who she was, although there are some interesting theories.  It's very likely that she was no Anne Hathaway, his wife.  

Wilde's muse was a beautiful young man that sent him to prison and kicked off the Victorian effort to eliminate homosexuality.   Queensbury was very clearly the inspiration for Dorian Gray.  Known for his chamber comedies, his most revealing work is a gothic horror about a murderous young man with a mirror that kept him beautiful--very much a description of his experience with Queensbury.

If I have a muse, it's an imaginary dog a man on the radio talked about when I was a very little boy.  There are certain memories of smokey-eyed beauties that sometimes motivates my work, but feist-dog is the summation of my life from my flickering waking into sentience through my life until the day my father died.  Feist-dog is a well of all the souls that moved in the firmament above me when I was young, including Jim Neal, who invented him--although I'm sure even he would admit that Feist-Dog really came from Faulkner, and Faulkner would most likely say, Feist-Dog came from the fecund dark loam of Mississippi.  

One of the reasons there are so many great writers from Mississippi is that being from Mississippi is a very complicated thing, and living here is still complicated, even if you're not from here.  I include Memphis in my definition of Mississippi because it's more delta than it is mountain.  The northernmost point of Mississippi is the fountain in the Peabody Hotel.  

What makes Mississippi complicated is we'll kill you for acting up.  We'll kill you for being different, but then we'll invite you into our home to watch over our infant children.  We send our children to cotillion so they'll have proper manners, and we'll have debutante balls so our daughters can lead the next generation into polite society.  

If a muse is a thing that pushes you to write and gives you things to write about, then my muse is an imaginary dog that holds Mississippi inside of him.  

In Absalom, Absalom! Quinten Compson is asked why he hates the South; he famously says, "I don’t, I don’t! I don’t hate it! I don’t hate it!”  That's very likely a reflection of Faulkner's complicated feelings about his homeland.  Faulkner died in Oxford.  He had the money to go anywhere, but he died in Oxford.  He may have hated the South, but he never left it.  

Faulkner nursed large quantities of bourbon while his muse bubbled over in his brain.  Miss Eudora did, too, but in much lesser quantities.  Twelve years younger than Faulkner, they will always be the bookends of Mississippi writers in my mind.  Everyone else fits between them.  

Ultimately, I don't know what makes anyone write.  Whatever it is, sometimes it won't let me alone.  On nights like tonight, when I just can't stop writing, it's not hard to imagine a little dog fiercely tugging my pants leg, trying to force me to do something; I don't know what.  

Andy Griffith and Atticus Finch.

Before he got old and started putting on weight and losing his hair, My daddy bore a strong resemblance to Andy Griffith in terms of dress and speech, and mannerisms.  There was a time, in the seventies, when he wore sideburns down his cheek toward his chin, but Billy Nevill told him that looked silly, and that was the end of that.  My mother had told him the same thing, but there are things a fella just needs to hear from another man.

Among Southern men of my dad's generation, Griffith was a pretty good model for behavior.  Being white and male and from Mississippi was reviving criticism all over the world, so I can imagine many men seeking a way of saying, “I’m not one of those types of men.”

Another role model for men of his generation was Atticus Finch.  Most lawyers I knew (and a fair portion of doctors) did their best to take on the airs of Gregory Peck.  Peck’s portrayal of Finch was not only not offensive, he was positively heroic, and for men born in the twenties and thirties in Mississippi who had been through World War II and Korea, being heroic was just about all they wanted to do.  

These men were in their thirties when the Civil Rights movement broke out in Mississippi.  They were still too young and hadn’t ascended to their full adult potential economically, politically, or socially, but they would be judged their entire lives by what happened in those years.

For men who never ventured outside of Mississippi, it wasn’t so bad, but for men whose business took them to different latitudes and different longitudes, being from Mississippi could be used against you.

Daddy taught me to turn my accent on and off.  Some people found it charming, while some people found it offensive, so I learned.  My sister is better at it than me, but she’s also more charming than I am.  

When I went to Los Angeles or Chicago for business, I had o be conscious of this.  In Hollywood, once, a gentleman in his cups approached me and said, “I’m a Jew!”  

Taken aback but also a bit in my own cups, I said, “Hello, I’m a Methodist.”  Then he said, “If they had their way, people like you would kill people like me, wouldn’t you?”

He must have been an Irish Jew because he clearly wanted to have a bar fight.  His accusation of me hurt me more than his knowledge that Mississippi was sometimes cruel to Jews hurt him, but not by much.  We were at a stalemate.  

I wasn’t going to fight this man.  When you’re my size, you learn to either not fight or be thought of as less than fully human and certainly not a gentleman your whole life.  I was already having a problem with that this night.   

Even though I’d been raised with the Andy Griffith model of Southern manhood, that night, I switched to Atticus Finch and explained to this man the history of Jews in Mississippi, including the bombing of Beth Israel.  I told him about Emmitt TIll and Medgar Evers.  My plan was that if I owned up to what happened and showed that I fully understood the gravity of what happened, I could convince this man that I, Boyd Campbell, had no desire to kill any Jews, least of all the ones drinking with me on Hollywood boulevard while I try to imagine myself back in the thirties when some of the movies I love the most were being shot over on Gower Street.

I don’t know who young Southern men model themselves after now.  I don’t know how many of them have even seen Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch or read the book.  I suspect the prejudice against us still exists, though.  It’s gonna take a lot for that to wear off.

“Buddy, you need to know that your accent can work for you, or it can work against you.  You need to learn to control it and figure out what’s right for the situation you’re in.”  Daddy and Andy Griffith are both gone now, but I figure that’s still pretty good advice

W. B. Selah Clarion Ledger

The following is a printed statement from Dr. Selah, after the Galloway Board enacted rules that would bar Freedom Riders from entering Galloway for service.  I was six months old.

Clarion Ledger
Jan 7, 1963 Monday 

Selah States Stand On Race Integration

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS 

The pastor of the largest Methodist congregation in Mississippi said Sunday he believes forced segregation is wrong and advocates voluntary desegregation of all public facilities.

Dr. W. B. Selah of Galloway Memorial Methodist Church in Jackson stated his beliefs in answer to an Associated Press query about his position concerning a statement last week by 28 young Methodist ministers endorsing an official "no discrimination" church position.

Since the “born of conviction” statement was published last Wednesday in the Mississippi Methodist Advocate, the movement has slowly added numbers and age to its list of supporters.

However, the bishop of the Mississippi and North Mississippi Conferences, Dr. Marvin A. Franklin, said Wednesday he would not like to be quoted concerning the statement and has maintained silence since.

Thursday, Dr. J. P. Stafford, lay leader of the Mississippi Conference, praised the statement as "very worthwhile." He said "it is hard for many of us to go along with the great Methodist Church and changing times, in matters of race, but this is an adjustment Christians can make." 

As lay leader, his position in the conference is roughly the lay equivalent of that held by Bishop Franklin among the clergy. Dr. Stafford's remarks will appear Wednesday in his column in the Advocate.

Francis B. Stevens, a Jackson attorney, an associate lay leader of the Mississippi Methodist Conference, said Saturday he endorsed the statement of the 2 young ministers. He said that a climate of "fear and hatred, created by pressure groups, had kept many Mississippians silent on the race issue.

Also last Thursday, 23 ministers along with Dist. Supt. W. I Robinson of Tupelo voted "enthusiastically" to endorse the original statement of the 28, which did not ask desegregation and made few specific references outside of a denunciation of communism, but stressed the freedom of the pulpit.

Dr. Selah's statement, however, tackled racial questions direct and answered them directly. The church's own obligations in racial matters was the central theme of Dr. Selah's statement Preference for segregated worship is not sinful, he said, but sin is committed when a church erects a color bar.

"I've been saying it-announcing those principles (in his statement) lots of times," Dr. Sela said. His 17 years at Galloway mark the longest tenure in a Mississippi Methodist church.

He said most of his statements Sunday came from a sermon delivered at Galloway on Nov. 19, 1961. He has had it, entitled it "Brotherhood," put into print. His statement Sunday bore no title

Dr. Selah's statement is as follows:

"Jesus said, 'One is you Father and you are all brothers’ The doctrine of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man is fundamental in Christ’s teaching. For seventeen years I have preached the law of Christian love from the pulpit of Galloway Methodist Church. This law means that we must seek for all men, black and white, the same justice, the same rights, and the same opportunities that we seek for ourselves. Nothing less than this is Christian love. To discriminate against a because of his color or his creed is contrary to the will of God. Forced segregation is wrong. We should voluntarily desegregate all public facilities. We should treat men not on the basis of color but on the basis of conduct.

"In the light of Christian principle, there can be no color bar in a Christian church. It is not sinful for white people to prefer to worship with white people or for colored people to prefer to worship with colored people. The sin comes when a church seeks to erect a color bar before the Cross of Christ. As Christians, we cannot say to anyone, 'You cannot come into the house of God.' No Conference, no preacher, no official board can put up a color bar in the church. That matter is determined by the nature of Christianity which is an inclusive fellowship of those who seek the Lord. The house of God is a house of prayer for all people. black and white.

"When a person seeks membership in the church he is not asked about the color of his skin. He is asked about his faith in God as revealed in Christ. Salvation is not by color but by faith. There can be no color bar in a Christian institution.

"Race prejudice is a denial of Christian brotherhood. Any kind of prejudice racial or religious weakens the nation by dividing it into hostile groups. It sets race against race, church against church. This plays into the hands of the Communists and makes it easier for them to do their diabolical work.

"Every American citizen, black or white, is entitled to the best educational opportunity the state affords. In our struggle with Communism we need to offer all our people the best possible training; for in the long run the fight for freedom will be won by that nation which produces the finest brains and the best character. The public schools must be kept open.

"No doubt there are some places where laymen expect the preacher to echo their opinions. The freedom of the pulpit must be maintained. The preacher must get his message not from the community but from Christ. He must state his convictions and allow others to disagree. I'm sure that many of my people disagree with things I say. But they want me to declare my convictions. "Think and let think' is the genius of the Methodist Church. Thoughtful laymen will demand a free pulpit. Only a free pulpit inspires people to think.

"All these things I have stated to my people many times before."

Not What I Expected In Church

I'm probably gonna get in trouble for this.  Don't you love it when I have to start with a disclaimer like that?  I'm not gonna lie and say something like "some people feel" or "there is a perception" This is what I feel, my perception, me, nobody else, and I'm just vain enough to think that hearing it might help something somewhere.

When I was in high school, at an expensive, upper middle class, mostly white, private school, I had four unlikely friends from football that became known as The Travelers.  Someone suggested we took the name because that was the name of Robert E Lee's horse, but Mike Shepherd said, "No, man, That's Trigger!" and that was that.  We called ourselves Travelers because, in my old Ford LTD, we traveled three in the back seat and two in the front seat and saw Mississippi.  

We took our white privilege, little prince asses, around Mississippi and saw things we never would have been exposed to in our Fondren Neighborhood high school.   We nearly got arrested for driving the wrong way down the only one-way street in Bolton, Mississippi, but it was ok because the cop was drunk and sent us home.   We met the famous wrestler Ernie Big Cat Ladd and bought him dinner at Jobie Martin's chicken restaurant and lounge and danced with women much older than us while Jobie promised if he ever got his show back, he wanted us to be on it.  We would have too, but he never got his show back.

We visited Charles Evers at his radio station often enough that he knew our names.  The engineer let us in while he was on the air, and he'd talk to us while the record played.   He, too, promised to put us on the air but never did.  To us, he wasn't the guy whose brother was murdered because he fought to integrate Mississippi.  He was a guy on the radio who was willing to talk to us.  

Back at school, James Meridith wasn't the guy who integrated Ole Miss or even the guy who got shot marching for more integration; he was the dad of two kids in our lower school.  Ed King was a guy I ran into over and over with issues relating to Millsaps.  Sometimes, we were on the same side.  Sometimes, we weren't.  He's in my Sunday School now.

I mention these names because I was born at a time and in a place where the Civil Rights movement to liberate the descendants of African Slaves in Mississippi was very real and very present, and people who made real and genuine sacrifices weren't just names in a textbook, they were people I would meet and know under other, less painful, circumstances.

Knowing these people and knowing what they went through and seeing some small bit of it firsthand made me realize they understand more about bigotry and oppression than I ever could.  As much as I tried to understand them, their experience was so much larger and more real than mine.  

To me, black Southerners had a perspective on alienation that made them experts, and became people whose perspective I sought when discussing the alienation of others.  While nobody had it as bad as them, their experience offered insight into other oppressed people that I consider valuable.

There have been times when I expected Black Southerners to fight against the oppression of other people in one way and got something entirely different.  It's impossible for me to judge them.  Their experience is not my experience, and just because they may once have suffered doesn't make them obligated to think one way or another, but it makes things difficult when they stand in the way of someone else's liberation.

Because she is black, I expected Mississippi's new United Methodist Bishop to see something familiar in the act of civil disobedience performed by Elizabeth Davidson and the Paige Swaim-Presley.  I thought she would see it, as I see it, as two young ministers fighting for the civil rights of their congregants.  The Bishop didn't agree.  I can't judge her for that.  I haven't been through what she's been through in life, and she has an awful lot more concerns in this matter than I do, but her reaction was very different from what I expected.  

I'm not alone in confusion about how to respond here.  There's been maybe eight people I've looked to for spiritual leadership in my life more than all others.  Three are dead, and one has dementia.  Two of these people were discussing the Bishop's response, in this case, yesterday at Sunday School.  To my way of thinking, that's a pretty high-level conference in the United Methodist Church.  They felt like, as I feel that the Bishop was being unusually harsh with Elizabeth and Paige.  They also felt like she wasn't following the procedure set out in the Book of Discipline in cases like this.  Normally, I'd say that aspect was an issue for a lawyer; fortunately, there happened to be a few of them present.  You can't swing a dead cat at Galloway without hitting three lawyers.

I had hopes that a Black woman from the South would have been more sympathetic to this case, not less, but that's not what happened, and I have to respect that, and I do respect that, but I'm not satisfied that this is over.  I'm told there's a chance that Paige and Elizabeth will be defrocked.  They might go to another denomination, but they'd have to start the process of becoming a minister all over again.  I've seen that happen before, but I sure would like to keep people with their kind of energy and conviction within the UMC.

So, I sit in church, and I see empty spots on the pews where people I knew and loved once sat.  They lived their entire lives without being able to share with their beloved church what they were.  I see people who are still alive and who have lived a long full life in the church that, despite all, still doesn't accept them as equals.  I see young people, so full of life and promise, who I worry the church will lose because we cannot say they are equal to me.  I can say it.  I can hold them as much higher than me, but until the Book of Discipline says it, until our Bishop supports actions in that direction, I can't say that my job is done.  I can't say that our church loves them as much as me, even though it should love them more.

Life in Mississippi is complicated.  Life as a Christian is too.  Somehow people here always find room for rejection and alienation.  I don't get that.  We barely have enough talented people to make Mississippi work; I don't see how excluding anyone helps anything.  I can't parlay our bishop's experience as a Black Woman in the South into mercy and acceptance for two young pastors and two even younger Millsaps students in love.  To me, that tracks as my not being able to understand the experience of Black Southerners, Women, or Lesbians well enough to bring them together.  I accept that, but I'm not giving up.   I don't exactly know where to go from here--but that's never stopped me before.  Mississippi isn't a story that ever ends.  Sometimes, it doesn't even change that much.  I'll keep turning the pages, though.  After me, someone else will.  There is progress, but man is it ever slow.  

Her Name On Google

 I searched her name on Google.  It's been a few years since we lost her and many more years since we last spoke, but there was a time when I said I loved her, a time when I said I wanted to be with her forever.

I don't know what the policy for Facebook is for people who are no longer alive.  Her account is still there.  Eleven friends, nine are mutual.  That doesn't seem right.  I don't know anyone who didn't love her.  By the end, I had pretty good reasons not to love her, but I still did.  

It doesn't seem right.  A life, any life, should leave more of an impression on the world.  Her life, even just her smile, touched so many people, but when those of us who remembered it are gone, there will be nothing left.  

I don't know how to fix this.  When she was alive, I tried.  Sometimes I tried really, really hard, but whatever it was that tortured her just wouldn't move.  Most people never knew this about her.  Most people thought she was forever happy and forever carefree.  That wasn't the truth.  

I can't say something crazy like "She was the only one I ever loved" because that's just not true.  I loved as deeply as I could and as often as I could.  She wasn't the only one, but she was a very, very important one, but I was never able to make things better for her for more than just a few days.  I was pretty strong, but her demons were a lot stronger, and I'm honestly really bothered by that.  

My gift, it seems, isn't being strong or leading fearlessly.  My gift is muddling words together in a way that means something sometimes.  That's kind of an ironic joke because I was born with a disease that should have made words my enemy.  

Maybe one day, I can put words together that make a better monument to her life.  I want to do it in a way that I don't have to say her name because then people will say, "What happened to her?" and I don't want to get into that.  That's not the point.  What I want is something that makes people feel like they felt when she was around, when she was alive.  I'd like for that to be what the world remembers.

A lot of people carry really broken things inside of them.  Sometimes you can see it, and sometimes you can't.  It doesn't define them.  It doesn't sum up their existence in this world.  

Her smile was the most powerful thing I ever saw.  I would have done anything to see it.  I'd do anything to see it again.  Part of me can only say I'm sorry.  I'm sorry for not coming back for her.  I'm sorry for not being there in the end.  I'm sorry for not ever making it any better.  

One day, I'll write something, and even though I won't say her name, people will read it and say, "Wow, I really wish I had known her."  That's not enough, but I think that's something I can do.

Through The Desert

There's a lot of consternation about the changes you see in the United Methodist Church.  A lot of it, I understand.  If you look at my church as an example: this morning, we had a pretty small gathering.  After all the activities of Easter and Church on the Grounds, I expected that, plus there was a big concert in Oxford.  

In our pews were what you always saw, plus about twelve percent Black Methodists and twelve percent Hispanic Methodists.  Twenty-four percent is the beginning of a paradigm shift.  For people of a more progressive frame of mind, this is a wonderful thing.  For people of a more conservative frame of mind, this is a mild threat to their existence.  

Religion is one of the primary arteries that feed our culture.  In some ways, it is THE primary artery.  Education, literature, art, music, food, dance, film, theater, politics, and economics, these are also arteries feeding our culture, but Religion is bigger than those and often encompasses those, so any mild change in it has larger ripples throughout the culture.  Sometimes those ripples can be discomforting. 

If you add to this another twelve percent LBGTQ Methodist to the mix and the fact that a little over fifty percent of our pastoral staff is women, and this starts to look like a very different sort of church than what it was just thirty years ago.  Twenty-five years ago, I used to make church dates because I thought hearing Ross Olivier speak would impress the girls I liked.  We've changed a good bit even since then.  

People think of the church as a static thing.  As a fixed place.  That gives them comfort in a turbulent world.  It may not be the best way to understand what the church is, though.  To me, the church is like the entire body of Israel who left Egypt with Moses.  They had an idea where they were going, but none had been there.  It had been so long since anyone had seen the promised land that nobody knew the way.  Out of Egypt, through the Red Sea, to the foot of Saini, Moses led them.  The church is our Moses.  It leads us through time to a place we have heard about but have never seen.  We carry the bones of our dead with us so that they may see the promised land.  One day, my bones will rest in a niche in the walls of my church.  Wherever it is that we're going, I won't be alive when we get there, but, like Abraham, my bones will be.

The people who left Egypt were not the people who crossed the Jordan.  Some died along the way.  Some were born along the way.  The individuals changed, but the body of Israel remained the same.  This is true of our churches.  Some churches move out into other counties to be less changed, but it's a temporary fix.  Our neighbor, St Peters, has a one o'clock service in Spanish that's filled to capacity.  When was the last time you saw one of our downtown churches filled to capacity?  

Not everybody will be happy with all these changes.  Not everybody was happy with moving through the desert for forty years.  These things aren't up to us.  What we can do, is stick together and keep moving.  The faces will change, but wherever we're going, we'll get there.  This was promised to us.

Our Reputation

There's a culture war on.  Because of that, there have been a few times this week, including twice today, where people have made comments to me along the lines of: "Millsaps should work to appear more conservative because the other small private colleges we compete with are."

I'm most likely going to have an opinion on that.  First off, and the most obvious to me, is that this is a battle we can't possibly win.  Some of these other small, private colleges are so far out on a limb with regard to their cultural doctrine that we could never hope to survive out there with them.  I question not only their academic integrity on this but sometimes their sanity.  That's simply not a path Millsaps can travel down.  

Secondly, I don't think we should sell something we don't believe.  We're not a conservative Christian college.  We're just not.  What we can do is get better at telling the truth about ourselves, and that truth is that we work pretty hard to present a balanced view of things to our students and then make them work like hell to develop the critical thinking skills that enable them to make their own choices.  Producing students with the skills and the knowledge to make their own decisions is about the only thing I can think of that makes the effort and the money that go into a Millsaps education worthwhile.

We allow and encourage both our students and our faculty to go down whatever path they feel is the most truthful, and that sometimes means we have faculty and students who get involved in protests, and seeing Millsaps shirts at these protests means we're a bunch of communists to some, but to others, it signals that we're fighting for them, which sometimes makes a big difference.  For some people, one kid with blue hair and a picket sign makes all the kids with short hair and Bibles invisible.  Millsaps has always fought that perception.  We may enroll purple-haired lesbian communists sometimes, but there are not that many, and they don't describe us--but most importantly, we provide them with the academic freedom to pursue their own path, so long as they do the work, and there's a lot of work.  

When I was at Millsaps, there was a detente moment in the culture war, and the socialists broke bread with the Young Republicans fairly often.   I myself was pretty conservative until I figured out that Reagan wasn't going to keep his promises.   If you go to Millsaps today, you'll see that the Young Republicans are still active, and so are the Babes for Bernie Socialists.  They live together and take classes together because we allow them to and we encourage them to.  We don't make their decisions for them.  As much as people accuse us of indoctrinating students, the reality is just the opposite.  We provide them with a varied table of information and make them make their own choices.  We refuse to indoctrinate them.  We put a balanced diet on the table and force them to use critical thinking in what they choose to put on their plate.  

Over the years, I've come to realize that one of our biggest allies in this effort is Ole Miss.  Whatever they were in the sixties, they now work to present students with a balanced perspective.  You'd be surprised how many students go from Millsaps to do graduate work at Ole Miss.  It's a good fit.  Ole Miss doesn't have the same reputation for liberalism that we do, probably because they fought against segregation way back when and we avoided the fight by opening our roll books without being forced to.  Beyond that, we're very similar, and after college, we end up in the same law firms, the same medical offices, and the same banks as the kids who went to Ole Miss on day one, and it's a good fit.

We sometimes get the reputation for being a bunch of radical nutbags, and that isn't fair because it isn't true.  We have some people on one end of the socio-political spectrum, but we have people on all the other ends too.  Our best path forward might be to just get better at communicating the message that we're balanced, and we teach our students to seek their own path, and just how valuable that is compared to schools that make these choices for their students.

Weathering the Storm

 I find it interesting that some of the voices that were the loudest and most radical when it came to desegregating the Methodist Church are now the same ones advising caution and patience, and moderation with regard to the current conflict over sexuality. Some of these voices are pretty high up in the church. Some are very high up in the church.

A lot of this I attribute to the fact that our members fought to desegregate the church over sixty years ago. Time and experience have a way of tempering the raging passions of youth. Young pastors care little if their actions divide the congregation when they believe they are acting as Christ would. Older pastors are more anxious to wait and see.

These are not universal descriptions. I know some pastors in their thirties seeking caution and advising patience and some pastors in their nineties who are more than ready to storm the ramparts. Some are very concerned about showing that the rules of the church are important and will be followed, while others are adamant that the only rule that matters is the example of Christ.

What I know is this: there's no way out of this without some people getting hurt. There's no way out without some people having their faith in the church challenged. I think about this a lot, and I can't think of a path through this that doesn't alienate somebody, and alienating people from their faith is pretty serious business.

For me personally, me Boyd here at my computer: I'm always going to side with the weak. I'm always going to side with the smaller force. Some of the best Christians I know are gay. Some of the best Christian couples I know are gay. Some of the most devoted members of my church are gay. I come from a time when these people had to hide who they were to survive. Some of them still do. It's hard for me to imagine this is what Jesus would want.  It's hard for me to imagine Jesus wouldn't fight for their full inclusion in every aspect of the church.

That being said, I'm not in a position of any authority in the church. I can say my piece and decide where I stand, but that's about it. This will be decided by other people. I'm getting used to the idea that some people I know, some people I support, are going to get hurt--and I'm sorry for that, but I can't figure a way out of it.

I don't like being in the position of having to say, "The church doesn't support you, but I do." I don't know how to stop that, though. I think that's what Jesus would have me do.  I think there are times when that is what Jesus did.

Churches that follow rules give many people a great sense of comfort and security, and I appreciate that. When they lose faith that their church doesn't follow rules it causes them great discomfort and feelings of insecurity. I appreciate how important that is. I also appreciate the damage it causes when you tell people, "You're not good enough to go with us." which I believe the current conflict does.

There are people I knew who are no longer with us, who were members at Galloway for many years and had someone in their lives that they loved enough to marry at the church but were forbidden to. There are couples, young and old, now that I would love to say, "The church sanctions your love as much as I do," but I can't.

When I can put names to an issue, it's no longer political. When I can say: This is about Patricia, or Lawrence, or Elizabeth, or Timothy, then it becomes something more than doctrinal; when it becomes about people I know, then it's deeply moral and considerably more important.

I feel like our roots are deep enough for the tree to weather this storm. Hopefully, the trunk is flexible enough. Sometimes, I think love attracts lighting, that caring for others lays the seedbed for pain--mine and theirs.

For the people I know who will be hurt by all this--I can't make it stop. I just can't. My ego is big enough and warped enough where that alone causes me considerable pain and embarrassment, but I can't change it.

I'll sit with you through the storm, though. It doesn't matter how wet or cold we get; I won't budge. Sometimes, that's all anyone can do.  

Till Justice

People are upset that Carolyn Bryant Donham died without ever being prosecuted for her part in the death of Emmett Till.  They're hurt because the scales of justice were never balanced in his death.

They're missing the point.  Because the scales of justice were never balanced is what gave the Till story its power.  Because Emmett Till was denied, justice moved the country to begin taking action on civil rights in the South and racism throughout the whole country.  That may not have ever happened if Till's death was met with equal justice when it happened.  

Sometimes the entire point is that a thing was broken.  Consider the crack in the liberty bell or the leaning tower of Pisa.  Were these things whole, you would never have known about them.   Emmett Till never received justice.  That imbalance, that brokenness of purpose, moved the entire world.

Good Ole Boys

Big parts of Mississippi politics are pretty wholesome. We don't have much money, so everybody kind of goes along to get along. Some of it could easily be an episode of the Andy Griffith Show. We do pretty well on issues about gender. The most powerful mayor in Mississippi is a woman, and Evelyn Gandy was once the most powerful person in the state, even though she couldn't get elected governor.

We get along pretty well on most things until it comes to issues of race, and then it gets murderous. I'd say improving the lot of Mississippi's black citizens was our third rail, but hardly anyone in Mississippi has ever ridden a subway, so they don't get the metaphor.

Why can't we have hospitals in the Delta? Black people live there. Why can't we have money for Jackson? Black people live there. Why did a football star, a professional wrestler, and a governor think it was ok to steal money for the poor? Black people are poor.

What ends up happening is in these districts that are mostly black, nobody wants to work with them, so they elect people nobody wants to work with, so these districts like the Delta and Jackson that need cooperation from the state don't get it. They end up electing candidates who are really good at civil rights rhetoric instead of economics and industry, and civic administration, which is what they really need. Jackson is the best example of this.

My uncle Boyd and my Dad were acolytes of Ivan Allen. Allen was the mayor of Atlanta, and he believed that there were too many black people who lived in Atlanta for the city to ever prosper if he, as mayor, continued with such brutal oppression as they experienced in the past. By today's standards, Allen didn't do much for the poor blacks of Atlanta, but what he did do was give Martin Luther King Jr. and his church enough room to breathe so that they had room to grow and whatever happened in Selma or Jackson or Memphis, they had a safe place to grow in Atlant, and that changed everything.

Mississippi has got to realize that the only way we're ever going to lift ourselves off the bottom of everything is if we enable our large black subculture. It's not going to be easy to incorporate a subculture that's been oppressed for hundreds of years with the culture that did the oppressing, but that's out only viable path forward.

What I'm writing sounds like it could have been said in 1960, and it was in several of my Uncle Boyd's speeches, then again in some of my dad's testimony on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce in the seventies. It's been sixty years, and the message isn't getting through.

It doesn't do any good for me to call for a Mayor for Jackson that's better at facilities management, economic development, or real estate because so many people in Jackson are more concerned about having their basic civil rights protected, and they have reason to. They're less interested in developing an effective police force because they're more concerned about what the police do to their people. I would be too.

I don't have any answers. That's gonna have to come from somebody wiser than I. What Ivan Allen said is true, though. We're never gonna rise unless we take everybody with us. Without that, we're gonna stay on the bottom.

When We Remembered Zion

 I had lunch on Zoom today with a friend who's thirty-two and lives in Seattle. She's Ashkenazi, a descendant of grandparents who immigrated from Russia in the twenties. She made a joke about how a Jew like her must seem very alien to people in Mississippi.

So, I told her Jews aren't aliens here at all. They came in fairly large numbers during the cotton boom and settled all over the South. I told her about Beth Israel Cemetary, where we told ghost stories when I was in college and how it was the most immaculately manicured cemetery in Mississippi.

Then I told her about what happened to Rabbi Nussbaum when I was a little boy. How the klan had bombed the Beth Israel Temple and Rabbi Nussbaum's home, and she had a look of confused pain on her face.

Then I showed her a clip of Driving Miss Daisy, which she'd never seen and didn't know was about a Jewish woman. I showed her the scene where Houke tries to drive Miss Daisy to temple, but the police turn him back because someone had bombed the temple, and he tells Daisy a story about a man who was lynched.

I explained that the scene in the play was inspired more by a similar bombing in Atlanta in the fifties, but the impact was the same as the one in Jackson. To preserve their closed culture, men in the South would destroy places of worship.

A tear rolled down her cheek. In her young life, where she lived, the persecution of her people never really seemed that real. Somehow, me telling her the story made it feel real, and she wept.

By the waters of Babylon, we sat down, and we wept when we remembered Zion.

Men will do terrible things if you make them believe their culture is in danger, and there's great political power in making people believe that danger is real, even when it isn't.

I wish bigotry and hatred of the other were only limited to race and religion, but it goes so much deeper than that. There's always somebody willing to say, "They are dangerous because THEY are different," and someone will do something terrible because they believe it.

When I was a child, about the same time as the Beth Israel Bombings, even my church split apart over race and culture; now it's happening again over sexuality. Nobody's set off any bombs yet, but it's not a far journey.

You don't have to be "woke" to be afraid of what bigotry does to your community. You just have to be good at history.

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Sleeping with Feist-Dog

Sleep has always been optional for me. Part of ADHD is living, knowing that the slightest sound or change in light or temperature can keep you awake for hours.

Your mind starts pulling at the loose threads of the world, and once it starts to unravel, it's very difficult to stop. I would have made a great hermit monk with no possessions but a bowl for kind people to put rice in while I ponder the eye of God.

I'm certainly not qualified to make this assessment, but I often wonder if ADHD isn't aligned with, or perhaps an entry into, Autism Spectrum Disorder. My frontal lobes work; if anything, they sometimes overwork, but it's actually impossible for me to experience life the way you do.

I used to share a bed with a woman who would ask: "why do you hold your arm up in the air?" and I would say, "I do that when I'm thinking." and she would say, "What does your arm have to do with your thinking and why aren't you sleeping?" and I would say, "I don't know."

Fortunately, a woman can still love you when you're completely fucking weird, and I've experienced that. Loving someone with a complicated and conflicted mind can't be easy, though. So far, they've all found a way to say, "I can't do this anymore." and I don't blame them. My mind tortures me, but it's ok because it's my mind. It's not fair to let it torture somebody else.

I have feist-dog. I've had him since I was a little boy. I stole him from a man on the radio. Like our governor, Feist-dog has an uncomplicated mind. I can read my strange sentences to him, and if he turns his head to the left, I know I'm onto something. If he lays his head down and closes his eyes, I know I'm not.

Jim Neal sounded like a country fella on the radio, but he was pretty learned. He served in the legislature and made literate references all the time. I'm pretty sure he stole Feist-Dog from William Faulkner. Although he changes the spelling several times, Faulkner puts a feist-dog in several of his books, but none more famously than in Go Down Moses, which includes the story of The Bear Hunt, which includes two famous feist-dogs.

The first dog he gives no name. It's a smaller dog who has no sense of fear and manages to track Old Ben, the legendary massive bear, but can't corner him. Sam Fathers finds a new dog, a muscular feist-dog with some airedale mixed in him they call "Lion." Lion is savage and dangerous, so Sam starves him until he can be pet, then shares a bed with him until Lion imprints on Sam, and they go after Old Ben, together.

Both in metaphor and in reality, dogs are our companion animals. They become eyes for the blind and comfort for the shell-shocked. An infection made my Uncle Robert's leg grow shorter than the other one. When he was very young and his bad leg very weak, my Great Grandfather, Old Cap, trained a dog to pull a cart to take Robert to school. Old Cap had only one arm, and I don't know where the dog came from, but this was a famous story in the farmlands outside of Kosciusko, Mississippi, in the twenties. The pictures I've seen show what looks like a golden labrador mix, but I'm pretty sure he's part Feist-Dog.  That dog carried Robert long enough for him to give his life trying to save soldiers in France in World War I.  Sometimes dogs are your companions, but the journey isn't very long.

When I was little, my dad's best salesman was a man by the name of Doby Bartling. Doby had a fine springer spaniel who carried a belly full of pups.  Daddy had a baby girl in diapers, and our previous dog got run over, so Doby figured to give Daddy one of these prize pups along with the papers to file with the American Kennel Club.

What Doby didn't know was that his prize Spaniel bitch had been carrying on with somebody other than the Spaniel stud he intended for her, and by the time these pup's hair started to grow out, it was obvious that their daddy was a feist-dog and not a Springer Spaniel. Since their daddy wasn't who he was supposed to be, those AKC papers would have to wait for another litter.

We named him "Mugsy" because my grandfather thought it sounded funny, but called him "Puppy" because that's all the baby girl in diapers could say. Puppy was a feist-dog, and he was my companion from short pants until college. One day he hid under a chair in the living room, and Puppy was no more. Houses had living rooms back then, a variation on the Southern Parlor, where parents drank with their friends and children had to wait for an invitation to enter.

You'd be surprised how many of my friends are anthropologists. Is that weird? Anthropologists will tell you that sometime in the dim past, a wolf began to share a camp with men, and that's where dogs came from. I have no idea if that's true. It sounds true, but you never know. What I do know is that God sent feist-dogs to men because men need a companion with an uncomplicated mind to help them navigate the world.

At the party celebrating the seventy-fifth anniversary of Saint Andrews School, a friend cornered me while I sought refuge from the noise in the parking lot. "Is Feist-dog real?" They asked. That's a tricky question. Everything I write is real, and everything I write isn't real, and a lot of it used to be real but isn't anymore--some of it might yet become real someday. Farmer Jim Neal was real. Puppy was real. Doby Bartling was real. Go Down Moses was real and available on Amazon if you're looking for a book that offers you an entry into the difficult world of William Faulkner.

I can't limit my writing to what's corporeal at the moment. That's not how my mind works. Feist-dog is, was, and always will be "real." Can you see him? No. I'll try to let you get to know him, though. He's a part of nearly everything I've ever written. He's been my companion since the first day I tried to say a word but came out with only stammers. He's been my advisor since the first day I tried to read but couldn't. When the teacher yelled at me because I couldn't sit still, feist-dog sat silently beside me. Nothing can hurt me because I have my dog. I'll always have my dog.