Writer Larry Dean Hamilton talks about A Gathering of Angels... in his piece, "After a Long Silence, the Daddy Speaks"

A Gathering of Angels tells of a gay man’s search.... So begins the brief description introducing a potential reader to the book. Writing in a way is also a search, not only a search for the story, its characters, a beginning and an end; but a search for some truth revealed through the telling. The writing of a book then compels its writer in the search for a reader. The act of writing itself is a search—one that can lead the writer deeply within the self in a quest for answers, or at least, insights, into the most basic and consequentially the most profound questions a human can ask. What does it mean? Is there meaning? Where do I fit? For myself as a gay man, those questions became more acute: What do I mean? Have I meaning? Do I fit? In either case, answers are not easy; answers may be no more than insights.     Each individual coming out is the culmination of a search and the beginning of a new search. Coming out is both a death and a rebirth. It is resurrection into a new truth. For many, it is spiritual; for all it is personal; for most, it will remain among the longest of enduring memory. We transcend ourselves and the constraints of rigidity when we make the conscious choice to express the truth that lies within. A Gathering of Angels relates a story that is spiritual and personal; one that has remained in enduring memory; that has transcended self because the story beneath the story expresses a truth within. We of the Pink Triangle are sacred; we possess a dangerous memory; we are inheritors of the fallen cross.     Gay teens relating a recent Saturday night in a popular gay bar referred to the older gay males as daddies. I winced, fully aware that older to these teens was likely someone half my age. Then it occurred to me, we older are daddies to the younger. We who precede them have helped make the way. We have extended and kept alive the spirit, and we have extended and kept alive the hope. In that sense of daddy, added to all my brothers and sisters, I am doubly blessed with many sons and daughters. Who says gay cannot be procreative!     Jesus, or Joshua, used the term abba in the prayer he taught. Abba is always translated Father, but the more correct translation is daddy, a term of greater familiarity and one expressing a more personal, intimate relationship. Daddy up there in heaven, you’re the greatest! In the same sense I am daddy to younger gays and lesbians, Jesus, or Joshua, has given us a personal and intimate connection with his daddy.     The Rev. Dr. Hugh Jones, author of the Foreword to A Gathering of Angels, occasionally remarks, “Much of the book is a period piece.” Of course his observation is valid; others of the period, contemporaries of mine, comment that the book evokes in them a real feeling for the time and awakens memories long silent. Still other responses—these mostly from non-gay individuals—are to the effect, “That was so long a time ago, things are simply much better for young gays now!” I encourage such individuals to befriend young gays and hear their own words: things are assuredly little better for them today and may in fact be worse. Young gays suffer the same fears, threats, discrimination, rejection, prejudice, hatred, violence and marginalization related in A Gathering of Angels. We as a people are still hated and feared, and the larger awareness of today’s society may make for increased negative pressure on young gays. There seems to be a more virulent strain of homophobia rising to pandemic proportion.     A lady married for more than thirty-five years and suddenly divorced by her husband—the classic case of a younger, greener pasture—expressed to me her difficulty in reading parts of the book dealing with the extreme loneliness experienced in my youth. “I had to put the book aside time and again,” she said. “It was simply too painful, just too awful—it was the pain of my own loneliness I was reading. I had never been alone, until divorced. I had no concept of loneliness or of being alone. It swallowed me. One noon I threw an extension cord over the rafters, in the process of hanging myself—something came over me and I ran for help. No one should feel the pain of such loneliness!”     Comments such as these and others from readers give me encouragement. A Gathering of Angels is reaching beyond the boundaries of gay and touching with human feeling the real lives of persons who may never have understood that gay is also human. Why do I attach to this such importance? A Gathering of Angels is queer spirit and queer spirituality. Through its writing, I came to understand that I am much a product of the forces and conditions through which my life passed; but more than that, I am the product of a larger vision and a larger quest because of my queer spirit and queer spirituality. Being despised and rejected, denied and marginalized, forced me to look beyond the state of things as they are, but it allowed me to envision a state of things as they can be—the possibility of a future with hope. I came to recognize how deeply I have internalized the effects of homophobia—I, who have considered myself counted high among those out and proud! Christopher Hubble calls the process of coming out a spiritual process. We come out of ourselves into a community of acceptance and belonging. One powerful feeling I have held since my first visit to a gay bar is the knowledge that anywhere in the world I go I will be openly welcome in the company of other gays. We are bonded not by our difference from larger society but by the strength of our common needs, the knowledge of our shared struggle, and the compassion of our human heart. It is our queer spirit that draws us to one another; the “oneness” of our bond, part of our queer spirituality. We have a deep capacity to care for one another and to extend our sense of caring to others whose condition of life has been marginalized—those who also are pushed aside to be forgotten beyond the ragged edge of acceptance and those who also are swept aside into neat garbage piles.     Why is this? Why do we continue to elicit rage and contempt? Why do we continue to experience loss of intimacy and inability to achieve stability within our individual lives? The answer is self-evident, the reason less obvious. There is not to my understanding an evolutionary, organic or otherwise genetic predisposition for fear and hatred of same-sex affection/attraction individuals—modern medical and psychiatric science has tried in vain to produce one! I am not aware of any historical evidence pre-dating the rise of Christianity documenting or suggesting primary discrimination and wholesale murder of same-sex affection/attraction persons, except as a means whereby one power base attempts to neutralize another. The “reason” lies at the heart of the most far-reaching agency on earth. Robert Goss termed that agency “The Imperial Christian Church”—a term synonymous with obsession for power, abuse of power, and corruption of power. The ICC wields its enormous power against us because we refuse to allow it control over our bodies and our affections; we refuse to deny the truth within ourselves; we refuse to submit to false authority and to accept a lie. We represent a grave threat to the ICC because we have the ability to erode its power base. We possess within ourselves a dangerous memory—the memory that Jesus, Joshua, was a living flesh-and-blood man. This memory is at least part of our queer spirituality.     Why should our memory be perceived as so great a threat? The ICC has disembodied Jesus, Joshua, stripped him of flesh, blood and bone. He has been emasculated and rendered cold, lifeless and sterile—a plastic icon to a remote, unattainable, other worldly divination of love that is itself cold, lifeless and sterile. There is a widely known picture of a placid Jesus standing before a heavy wooden door, knocking for entry. He is not knocking at the door to your heart or at the door to my heart; he is knocking at the heavy wooden door to the church that bears his name—knocking but denied entry. The ICC deceives itself to believe it can have Christ inside but bar Jesus, Joshua, at the door. Jesus, Joshua, was a living flesh-and-blood man—a male who by one Roman account, presumably still preserved in the Vatican, was “a tall and well-proportioned man...his hair the color of new wine...his eyes gray and extremely lively...his hands large...his arms very beautiful...the handsomest man in the world.”     Jesus, Joshua, was the incarnation of the Word, the embodiment, the enfleshment, of the Word—the Word made flesh. He liked wine and food; he enjoyed a party; he hung out with the sick, the lame, the poor—those in need and those pushed aside got his attention; he spoke against hypocrisy and greed; he challenged those who held and abused power; he called for justice and right over might. He was a threat to the established power base, for which he was executed in a violent, cruel, gruesome manner—crucifixion on a cross, supreme symbol of Roman authority.     In his life, Jesus, Joshua, showed kindness, compassion and care. He exemplified love from the Creator God, but his was not a cold, distant, disembodied love. It was a hands-on love, extended to those who would reach out for it. It was more than a generic love and more than an other worldly love. Jesus, Joshua, showed through his life how to be compassionate and to care for others. His was not a love distant and removed from himself; Jesus, Joshua, loved another man, one of the disciples. Peter, turning sees the disciple whom Jesus loved. Peter said, “Lord, what about him?” Jesus said, “If I want him to remain alive until I return for him, what’s that to you?” Jesus, Joshua, made clear he would see to his lover, would bear on his own responsibility for the beloved, and would keep him in his care until I return for him. This is the dangerous memory, the memory of the flesh-and-blood man Jesus, Joshua; the memory held within and possessed by queer spirituality. The Imperial Christian Church is threatened because the dangerous memory threatens to erode its power base and thereby its control over the bodies of those it dominates. More succinctly, The Imperial Christian Church constructed homophobia to further its own ends. Now, political and economic entities intent on maintaining power and control according to their dictates have expanded homophobia into their weapon of choice—homophobia has become religion to a morally bankrupt socio-political group ensnared in its own treachery.     The dangerous memory cannot be expunged because it is possessed by queer spirituality and it arises anew with each spiritual coming out. Jesus, Joshua, said, “I will take care of the one closest to me, he is my business.” Through the telling of my story, A Gathering of Angels also tells of the dangerous memory. It is queer spirituality. It is testament to the love and the light related in the Gospel of John. It is affirmation that Jesus, Joshua, is still very much in charge, affirmation that he is still very much taking care of his business. We are his business. Daddy, you’re the greatest! Thank you, abba! A Gathering of Angels by Larry Dean Hamilton, 226 pages, Hardcover $19.95 ISBN 0-9754321-0-9, also available in e • book format, Sigma Σ Logo Books™ http://www.sigmalogobooks.com

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