I thought I was finished with having to criticize this after the furor over the 2006 movie and book The Secret died down, but the so-called “Law of Attraction” has been coming back into conversations lately, probably thanks in part to my association with a New Thought group. The LoA […]
Reprinted from RFD: a country journal for queer folk, Fall 1995, #83. ©1995 KHLeFey. (This essay contains coarse language and sexual content.) Before I was political, I was “Political.” In my college days and a while beyond, I was a Religious Right evangelical, I was a card-carrying member of the […]
A lot of people, when they start another career, leave previous careers behind. As an artist, I simply add to what I’m already doing. I knew when I was in the eighth grade that I wanted to be a writer. As I planned my life at Ohio State I was […]
I came out in 1988, and within two years I was working as a gay-rights and -advocacy professional. I was Christian-identified at the time, and religion was central to why it took me from age 14, when I knew that I knew that I was gay, until age 28 finally […]
I spent a number of years as a Unitarian Universalist, and during that time I was exposed to the assertion that poet Edwin Markham was a Universalist. I now understand that, regardless of his church affiliation, he resonated deeply with Universalist principles, especially if you define the philosophy broadly as […]
I have a master’s degree in theology, the one offered at my theological school that I called “M.A. Lite.” I wasn’t a biblical scholar or a theologian; I specialized in worship arts and pastoral theology; that is, spiritual care-giving. But I have a history of immersion in Bible study […]
When we left Our Hero, he was reflecting on how Beesing et al had said, matter-of-factly, “[Enneagramic Eights] do not like to face the fact that in spite of their outward behavior of strength they are marshmallows inside.” I think often of the advice, “Love like you’ve never been hurt,” […]
Nearly half my life ago, circa 1990, I was first exposed to the Enneagram as a personality-typing tool that might give me insight into how I operate vis-à-vis members of my family of origin. The first book I read on the topic reflected Jesuit explorations of the tool for spiritual […]
We have mashed up two old essays about the name that I changed to and have posted them here, but now I want to talk about the nuts and bolts and about the social implications of changing one’s name as I have viewed the process up close, once when I […]
A conversation today highlighted something I have often thought about. I have always been someone who errs on the side of giving unnecessary information. It has always been easy for me to spill my guts, to tell the story in great detail, to spin out the yarn. My friend Eileen […]