From Brian Croft:

I hope for a better world for all us LGBT’s in the next year. But besides this I hope that the Christian community can rediscover what is central in the Christian faith. Especially at this Christmas time when love came down to us and when we are called upon to be ‘men’ of goodwill. Maybe we can let go of all the hate that poisons our ability to follow the will of God. That ‘we shall love the Lord our God with all our strength and all our might and our neighbour as ourselves’ Then maybe all the Matthew Shepards of this world will not have died in vain.

My love to you all out ‘there.’

Praise be to God

From Robert de los Santos:

Many years ago I was very ill and despairing. My lover of 11 years recently had died of AIDS, and most of my friends had abandoned me en masse. One bitter cold night, to alleviate the tedium of loneliness, nausea, vomiting, and fever chills, I wrote this sonnet:

There’s frozen passion in a Winter storm,
while my storm rages violently within.
Again tonight the solitude takes form
and stalks the room: a shadow tall and thin.
I thought in time I would forget, instead
I still sleep on the left side of the bed
although the lovers I once slept beside
have long ago forgotten me, or died.
With courage here I tremble and await
the promised Spring I’ve hope for, but it seems
now, if it comes, I fear it comes too late:
my fever’s peaked the melting point of dreams.

I purposely left it unresolved. Perhaps it was superstition, or perhaps it was the faint voice of Hope telling me that it was not yet time for the crowning couplet to end my life. It wasn’t. I got better. I moved to a warmer clime. I found a job that was meaningful to me and made me feel that I had something important to contribute to the world and to others. I made new friends, better friends, friends who would linger around long after the dinner party was over, and even help clean up if needed. In time, I even fell in love again, and have been happily partnered for many years. We have three dogs.

It is necessary even in the darkest hour of despair to listen to that faint but insistent voice of Hope. It has a lot to say to us.