Angels I Don't See (Spotting Love) returns soon

The latest chapters of Angels I Don't See have been written and I am excited to announce that they will be posted here soon.

25th AIDS Walk New York 2010

Team Friends In Deed on the walk (Team Friends In Deed was the 3rd overall top fundraising team in all of AIDS Walk New York for 2010

The Friends in Deed Banner. There's Osvaldo and um, Mark, Mark, he's Mark (FID Board Member Anthony Rapp)

Manhattan Samba entertaining the walkers

Team Friends In Deed Walking the Walk

Who's that in the hat? Why it's none other than Jon-Marc McDonald!

Whose hand is that? Why it's none other than Jon-Marc McDonald's hand!

Team Friends In Deed from the back

Opening ceremonies at AIDS Walk New York 2010

Team Friends In Deed waiting to get a move on
(aren't my captions just the cleverest things you ever did see)

That's my cowboy, Ric, having some coffee prior to the walk. He walked an incredible 5 miles at the AIDS Walk New York. Last year at this time he could not walk at all. A miracle, he is!

The Friends In Deed table prior to the big crowds

Until there's a cure...we

There is hope!

With each day that passes we are one step closer to finding a cure. The rapacious executioner that AIDS was is no more. The idea that it is a plague is a thing of the past.

However, as my household knows all too well, AIDS still debilitates and scars and even still sometimes kills swiftly. And until we find a cure, we must remain vigilant.

Did you catch that?

We.

It is up to we to find a cure for this disease, it is up to we to care for those afflicted. It is is up to we to make sure that this disease does not claim thousands more lives. We give, we pray, we hope, we live.

And we walk.

I am walking this year in the AIDS walk in New York City. It would be such an honor if you could sponsor me. The link below will take you to my fundraising page where you can give anywhere from $25.00 to $1000.00. If you want to donate less than $25.00, just email me and I will give you instructions.

Thank you in advance for giving of your hard earned money to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.

I will walk on May 16 for Ric. I will walk for my friends. I will walk for me. I will walk for you.

I will walk, most importantly, for we. Until there’s a cure…we

Donate here: Jon-Marc's AIDS walk page

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet with Leslie Jordan

I was a bit nervous when Ric and I walked into the Midtown Theater to see Leslie Jordan’s new one man show, My Trip Down the Pink Carpet, and I realized it was cabaret. We were quickly escorted to table 20 where a waitress promptly took our drink order.

Crap, I thought. I didn’t see anything in the press notes about this. What the hell? Isn’t Leslie in recovery?

“Yeah, I’ll have a ginger-ale and he’ll have a coffee” I said to the waitress, still a bit put off by the entire setting.

I mean the tickets didn’t say anything about a drink minimum. I hate this. I hate this!

About that time I looked at our table and noticed a special drink menu made specifically for My Trip Down the Pink Carpet.

Well ain’t that a kick in the balls! So glad I could come to this booze fest with a splash of Jordan for good measure.

There is no drink minimum the top of the menu declared.

Oh?

Well, uh, ok! That works. Very well then. Carry on. Don’t mind me and the conversation I am having with myself. Nothing to see here.

The show started about 15 minutes late but that was quickly forgotten the second Leslie stepped on the pink carpet.

What can I say about this show? It’s crude, foul, chock full of tawdry anecdotes and lurid details about some very bold faced names.

It’s also fall on the floor, laugh until it hurts and your ass falls off, downright hilarious. From the beginning until the end Jordan captivates with stories so cray-cray (wearing gold flecked contacts in the desert with Boy George, anyone?) you begin to wonder if he can top himself (ba-dum-bum). And he, of course, does!

Leslie has more energy on stage than someone (moi) twenty years his junior. And with the sweat pouring down his face he keeps moving. Pratfalls abound, he’s on his knees, dancing on a box, jump-roping with a pink velvet rope, jumping and bumping from here to there in no time flat. In fact, one of the best lines in the whole show results from Jordan’s profuse sweat (I won’t give it away, but you’ll know it when you hear it)

The thing that makes this show so effective is that a) it’s true and b) Jordan weaves just enough tenderness into the story that you walk away not only with new laugh lines but also with new lessons learned.

“The saddest thing in the world is a man at war with his own nature” Jordan proclaims in clarifying seriousness. At that moment you realize that Jordan’s trip down the pink carpet is meant to serve more than just laughs. It’s meant to make us think. About us. About what we think about ourselves. About our own “internalized homophobia” and self hatred.

To say that I enjoyed this is an understatement. There are not enough superlatives in the English language to attach to this show. Go see this. Go laugh. Go learn.

But whatever you do, don’t go order the ginger-ale. It sucks!

Spotting Love debuts on Broadway!

My brother's play, based on my writing, will debut on [technically] Broadway this April! Please go to Grant's site and click on the words "Spotting Love". Click here

The Mindfulness of Merton

"Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself," - Thomas Merton, "Letter To A Young Activist"

h/t Sully

Let this be my daily prayer

I received this email from a friend today. After researching the content, it seems the author is unknown. However, I claim this as my clarion call for each day of the new year.

On this day...mend a quarrel · Search out a forgotten friend · Dismiss a suspicion and replace it with trust · Write a love letter · Share some treasure · Give a soft answer · Encourage youth · Manifest your loyalty in a word or a deed · Keep a promise · Find the time · Forego a grudge · Forgive an enemy · Listen · Apologize if you were wrong · Try to understand · Flout envy · Examine your demands on others · Think first of someone else · Appreciate · be kind · be gentle · Laugh a little more · Deserve confidence · Take up arms against malice · Decry complacency · Express your gratitude · Worship your God · Gladden the heart of a child · Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth · Speak your love · Speak it again · Speak it still again · Speak it still once again.

A Week of Thomas Merton to end the decade ~ 4

“Be careful of every vain hope; it is in reality, a temptation to despair. It may seem very real, very substantial. You may come to depend far too much on this apparent solidity of what you think is soon to be yours. You may make your whole spiritual life, your very faith itself, depend on this illusory promise. Then, when it dissolves into thin air, everything else dissolves along with it. Your whole spiritual life slips away between your fingers and you are left with nothing. In reality this could be a good thing, if only we could fall back on the substantiality of pure and obscure faith, which cannot deceive us. But our faith is weak. Indeed, too often the weakest thing about our faith is the illusion that our faith is strong, when the "strength" we feel is only the intensity of emotion or of sentiment, which has nothing to do with real faith"

A Week of Thomas Merton to end the decade ~ 3

"If we want to understand alienation, we have to find where its deepest taproot goes--and we have to realize that this root will always be there. Alienation is inseparable from culture, from civilization, and from life in society. It is not just a feature of "bad" cultures, "corrupt" civilizations, or urban society. It is not just a privilege reserved for some people in society. . . . Alienation begins when culture divides me against myself, puts a mask on me, gives me a role I may or may not want to play. Alienation is complete when I become completely identified with my mask, totally satisfied with my role, and convince myself that any other identity or role is inconceivable. The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free. But God help him if all he wants is the mask the other man is wearing, just because the other one does not seem to be sweating or itching. Maybe he is no longer human enough to itch." ~ Thomas Merton, Why Alienation is for Everybody, 1968

A Week of Thomas Merton to end the decade ~ 2

"The earthly desires men cherish are shadows. There is no true happiness in fulfilling them. Why, then, do we continue to pursue joys without substance? Because the pursuit itself has become our only substitute for joy. Unable to rest in anything we achieve, we determine to forget our discontent in a ceaseless quest for new satisfactions. In this pursuit, desire itself becomes our chief satisfaction." ~ Thomas Merton, The Ascent to Truth, 1951

A Week of Thomas Merton to end the decade

"The deep secrecy of my own being is often hidden from me by my own estimate of what I am. My idea of what I am is falsified by my admiration for what I do. And my illusions about myself are bred by contagion from the illusions of other men. We all seek to imitate one another’s imagined greatness.

If I do not know who I am, it is because I think I am the sort of person everyone around me wants to be. Perhaps I have never asked myself whether I really wanted to become what everybody else seems to want to become. Perhaps if I only realized that I do not admire what everyone seems to admire, I would really begin to live after all. I would be liberated from the painful duty of saying what I really do not think and of acting in a way that betrays God’s truth and the integrity of my own soul." ~ Thomas Merton, No Man is an Island, 1955

That worth knowing...

A year ago today I didn’t know.

Oh sure, I knew something was wrong with him. He had not been to work in over two weeks, we had been to so many doctors that I had given up months prior, he was dreaming and scheming about things that were neither real nor plausible nor true.

One year ago I knew nothing of what t-cells meant or viral loads or Kaletra or Truvada or Isentress or Seroquel or Risperidone or B6 or Folic Acid or Tricor or Levocarnitine or Lamotrigine or Ativan or Isoniazid or Rifampin or Rifabutin or Marinal or TMP/SMZ or Plant Sterols or the difference between an ID doctor and a GP. I didn't know what AIDS Demetia Complex demented or exactly how AIDS Wasting Syndrome wasted.

I knew nothing about SSI, SSDI, WIC, HICP, PACO, LIHEAP, ACCAP ADAP or any of the other sterile chains of letters used to abbreviate sterile names of sterile programs that suck the marrow from the last vestiges of one's independence.

I didn’t know tricks to make a grown man eat or how to change an adult diaper or how to carry the living dead to their next doctor appointment or how to go nearly a week without so much as a minute of sleep.

I didn’t know the agony of putting my precious dog to sleep or the pain of my father walking out of my life due to a relapse or how the words "six to twelve" would knock me off my feet. I didn't know how heartbreaking it would be to say, yet again, "My name is Jon-Marc and I have one day back" or the anguish that possibly losing a friend would bring or facing death and wishing beyond all else for it to carry me on to the side unknown.

Today I know.

I know that my arrogant and selfish expectations of life are never met and that ‘s ok, that life is hardly fair and never simple and that sometimes it just doesn’t break my way or it breaks me in two or it shatters me completely. I know that a man I once called my husband will never be the same, that his mind has deteriorated and is arrested at a 10 year old child’s development, that he withheld a secret so potent it could have killed me. I know I will never know the answers as to the where and how and with who. And I know that at this point it doesn’t matter.

I know now that slipping beyond the reach does not mean I’ve slipped beyond the grace, that the darkness is temporary, that hope won’t get you far but that a mustard seed of faith will destroy the mountains blocking tomorrow. I know that right at this moment, the present, I am always safe and always right where I need to be.

I know that Jesus calling to Lazarus was not an isolated incident, that I have seen miracles – life altering miracles – right before my eyes, that the lame do walk again and the blind do see again and those left for dead spring forth from their resting place. I know that God dwells in the dirtiest places and keeps company with the dregs and the bums and the ones just like me. I know that he restores the friendship in due time, she quiets the chatter and he rocks gently the ship. I know that she moves just beneath the current and just above the storm and he is just what you need when you don’t know what is you are looking for. I know also that God cannot be reduced to a simple pronoun.

I know I cling with reckless faith to a God that clings to me with reckless compassion, that my problems are only as big as God’s ability to handle them, that holiness is the currency of eternity and that my circumstances do not dictate my happiness in the here and now.
In this season of advent – expectant waiting – I know that waiting is the trickiest part of the game.

And tomorrow I will know what I don’t know at present.

And I know, above all else, that life is worth the living whether or not I ever know again!

NYRR Holiday Run in Brooklyn at Prospect Park

Here are some pictures from the New York Road Runners' (NYRR) 4 Mile Holiday Run in Brooklyn at Prospect Park on 2009-12-12. The temperature was 26 degrees, it was very hilly and I finished in 37:00 at a pace / mile of 9:15 shaving 42 seconds off my mile from the God's Love We Deliver Race to Deliver just 20 days ago on 2009-11-22. To see pictures from that race, click the link at the bottom of this post.

This race I went alone, no family or friends to cheer me on, and I had a great time.
Me, Jon-Marc McDonald, about 15 minutes before the race



View of the crowd from my phone


Another view
My post race ugly face!


Click here to see pictures from the Race to Deliver

Facebook down? Can't login or logon

This is so pathetic! Facebook has become such a part of my life and it appears that it is down. I should be able to move on and, oh, I don't know, go read a book but instead I am posting about it. My heart is beginning to race and I am breaking out in cold sweats!

Pictures from Rally for Marriage Equality at Union Square in New York City ( NYC )

Me (Jon-Marc McDonald) at the rally with my sign. New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate was found guilty of slashing his girlfriend's face with a broken bottle and yet had the audacity to vote against marriage equality.

Rally for Marriage Equality Tonight in Union Square

Be at the rally tonight in Union Square for marriage equality. Starts at 6 on the north side of the square. Deets here: Rally for Marriage Equality

The God of AIDS

In years past I have never really given much thought to World AIDS Day. Of course I knew the disease disproportionately hit my community hardest but AIDS never really affected me in any meaningful way. In fact, in the twelve years since coming out of the closet I knew only one person to die from the disease and that was the year I came out. But thankfully – yes, thankfully – that all changed this past year.

On Christmas Eve, nearly one year ago, I learned that the love of my life had HIV. Just a few short weeks later I learned that he had developed AIDS. My world shattered, the firmament cracked and every notion as to who I was or what I stood for was challenged.

I was, whether I liked it or not, in the throes of the fight against AIDS and the fight for Ric’s life. I did not ask for this role any more than Ric asked for his disease but I’d be damned if I was not going to fight like hell for his dignity and by extension the dignity of everyone living with this sometimes rapacious executioner.

Ric’s case was unique, I was told. Many said they had not seen the ravages of AIDS displayed so pronounced in twenty years. Doctors told me to prepare for his last days, social workers told me to put him in a home, friends told me to walk away, family shook their heads in disbelief.

Indeed there were dark days. For two months I carried Ric to the bathroom, changed his diapers, fed him, listened to his delusions. Many nights I wanted to give up and walk away. Many days I cursed the heavens and raged at a supposedly all loving God.

No doubt many look at our life and see some divine condemnation. No doubt it has crossed the minds of some of you reading this that Ric and I would not be in the situation we are in had we not chosen the sin of homosexuality. The only reply I have for you is that of great pity. What an ugly, monster of a god you serve.

There are still others that stop short of proclaiming divine retribution but consider homosexuality to be sinful and not aligned with the will of God. To you I echo the words of Bishop Spong and proclaim "I am ready now to claim victory. I will from now on assume it and live into it. I am unwilling to argue about it or discuss it as if there are two equally valid, competing positions any longer. The day for that mentality has simply gone forever"

Instead I am grateful. I am grateful that God has allowed this disease to touch so close. I am grateful that I have been able to see the ravages of AIDS in all its raw, brute strength. Because of this disease I have learned compassion in the face of judgment, hope in the face of despair, freedom in the face of bondage, life in the face of death. I have learned that God lives in the heart of the wounded and broken, that his glory is etched in the faces of the dying, that his light beams from the souls of his marginalized creation. I have learned I am far stronger than I ever imagined, far more capable than I ever gave myself credit, far more resourceful than I ever knew possible.

God is in every crevice of this disease. He is in the t-cell, the viral load, the blood and the mucus. He is in every man, woman and child that has ever heard the words “Your test result came back positive”. He is on the death bed of every person that died alone, in every stitch of every patch of every quilt. He is in minister that embraces the afflicted, the volunteer that delivers the food, the advocate that pleads for more funding.


He is also in Ric’s prayer that he prays each night.

“They told me I was going to die but I proved them wrong, didn’t I God?”

To which the heavens respond “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”

Race to Deliver in Central Park 2009-11-22

Here are some pictures for the 4 mile Race to Deliver that I ran on 2009-11-22. I raised nearly 4,000.00 for God's Love We Deliver. Thank you to all who donated. Here is my official time: Jon-Marc McDonald - Finish time: 39:49 Pace / mile: 9:57





UPDATE: To see my results from the New York Road Runners' (NYRR) Holiday run in Brooklyn at Prospect Park, click here

From the darkness he prayed

I find this story poignant for two reasons. One is that I attended college in Waco and the only African-Americans I recall ever seeing were at a black church I attended a few Sundays. And the other reason I love it is that Sullivan references Merton, a man I have been fascinated by since my friend Christopher introduced me to Merton’s work back in September. And I am currently reading Seven Storey Mountain, Merton's autobiography, a book my brother gave me for my birthday.

The Oakeshott conference was quite wonderful in so many ways and I hope to blog about it soon. But leaving the rather poignantly named Waco International Airport, I came upon one of those little moments of grace worth passing along. On my way to the gate, the shoe shine man did a boisterous sales job. "You've got plenty of time, sir. Plenty of time." I brushed him off, but he kept at it. I find the whole process of a shoe shine faintly embarrassing (although it has its moments in a leather bar) and the idea of sitting up on a pedestal while someone bows and scrapes on your shoes ... well, it just feels wrong to me. Before me in line, Roger Scruton had sat there and been ministered unto and I had inwardly smirked (to my shame).

But the man insisted - he was African-American - and at that point my libertarian instincts kicked in. This was his job and my own snooty sense of p.c. amour-propre shouldn't get in the way of his making a buck.

So I climbed up, sat down, and by way of easing my discomfort, asked him where he was from.

"Waco, all my life, sir." I then asked him what it was like when he was younger (he seemed in his sixties, I'd say). He told me of a tornado, and of floods. I then asked him about segregation. He didn't hesitate to talk about it, but I could tell he would have never brought it up if I had not prompted him. Yes, he recounted the indignities, as he dabbed my shoes with polish, but without a trace of bitterness: of how he and a co-worker would have to enter a store by different entrances, how any hint of rebellion would be met with violence, how you had to keep your head down or "you had a problem", how certain neighborhoods were simply off-limits by day or night, how his relatives had been beaten, how he had learned to keep his peace and do his job. At one point, it got so bad he left for Nevada. But he soon returned.

I asked him how he survived. "Prayer," he instantly replied. "I just prayed. We all prayed. We're Christians and we prayed. Couldn't have got through it without prayer. And prayer for them too."

He meant, prayer for those who tormented him.

We hear constantly about what Christianity is, but it seems to me that this was as clear a statement as it gets. And when I hear some dismiss religious life, and argue, as my friend Hitch does, that religion poisons everything, I wonder what they would say to this man.

On the plane to DC I took out my Merton (I'm re-reading The Seven Storey Mountain these days) and came across this passage:

It was St Augustine's argument, that envy and hatred try to pierce our neighbor with a sword, when the blade cannot reach him unless it first passes through our own body.

The shoe shine was a Christian. And he was happy.

A man I am proud to call my friend

Corey Johnson, featured here on 360 with Anderson Cooper, is a man that I am proud to call a friend. He is also a fierce force in the gay community and has really come into his own over the past few weeks.


Today Corey will be at the White House to cover Obama's signing of hate-crimes legislation for Towleroad.com .

Way to go Corey. You make us all proud!