Melting

"Do not let your heart calcify."  Those words rank amongst the greatest my ears have ever received.  They come from a homily given by a Jesuit at my old parish - St. Francis Xavier, in Chelsea - and were about love.  Don't reject love because of pain; it is through the pain of lost love that we are reminded that we - and others - have tender and living hearts.  If we shut ourselves off from love for fear of pain, our hearts will calcify and we will become cold as stone without love's touch.  We will withdraw from others and forget our humanity.

Or something like that.

Reading today's headlines (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/23/AR2011022303428.html?hpid=topnews) I felt my cynical heart tingle a bit.  I've never voted for a winning president until Obama, and to see decisions that impact me -- in a way I want to be impacted -- is odd.  Government, for me and for now, is working.  I feel heard and represented.

I know many people hate me, and many think I'm "less than."  Friends from high school, my parents, people I've worked for have all let small commments slip here and there that remind me that I am a second class citizen.  "Don't call it marriage, because it's not.  Two men can never be married like your father and I are."  I smile, and shrug, and let the wound sink silently to pile on top of all the others that everyone else has given me over the years.  Most people think that all my smiles and shrugs belie a dim mind; instead, they camouflage a wounded animal who, some days, can barely see his own humanity in the mirror.

But tonight I feel a bit less cynical, my heart a little thawed.  Because of today's headlines, I feel like I am heard and am represented in government.  It gives me hope.