Saturday, July 4, 2026
Years ago, there was a stick figure. He was called “faggot.” No one knew him, not even himself. He was a “sissy” who didn’t amount to much. Empty lies, believed.
In Sunday school, he learned just how weak he was. The “little ones,” as it were, “They are weak and He is strong.” No connectivity was there between They and He. He tried, only winding himself tighter. He didn’t dance or loosen up. He was inhibited, internally dead. He was a stick figure, literally skin and bones, no depth, no indulgence, no true freedom of expression. However, he wouldn’t totally conform.
He yearned to express love. His repressed loins were on fire, though! Like others his age, expressing his virility was verboten. It smoldered and festered like a seething infection. What he was offered, he did not want. Any female would have thrown herself at his beguiling cuteness. Truth was going to win, however.
So, he would pour what little heart was left into a silly “love affair.” Music. It gave him courage and a small outlet to release the pent up festering embers sure to have killed him in his empty suffering.
Much later, he realized love could not be contained in a vessel, nor could the wholeness of the most holy be carried in an ark of the covenant. That box was considered the holy of holies, but it’s the folly of follies. If Love could be confined to a case, it could be emptied, controlled, and filled again. The stick figure was on to something.
Naked youth returns, and it dances freely, unwound, uninhibited. It is a private, synonymous love affair of self and other.
When the prodigal returns, duality ceases. It’s simply the stick figure figuring himself out, becoming full-figured – transfigured.
He welcomes “back” the Love that never let him go in the first place.
Go figure.