If I weren’t leavin’, would I catch you dreamin’?
And if I weren’t gonna be gone now, could I take you home?
And if I told you I loved you, would it change what you see?
And if I was stayin’, would you stay with me?
And if I had money, would it all look good?
And if I had a job now, like a good man should,
And if I came to you tomorrow, and said let’s run away,
Would you roll like the wind does? Baby, would you stay?

My heart is dancin’ to a November tune,
And I hope that you hear it singing songs about you.
I sing songs of sorrow, because you’re not around.
See, babe, I’m gone tomorrow; baby, follow me down.

I don’t know why I have to, but this man must move on.
I love my time here; didn’t know ’til I was gone.
November shadows shade November change.
November spells sweet memory; the season blue remains.
November spells sweet memory; the season blue remains.

Your yellow hair is like the sunlight, however sweet it shines.
Bit by the cold of December, I’m warm beside your smile.
Oh lady, tell me I’m not leaving: you’re everything I dreamed.
I’m killing myself thinking. I’ve fallen like the leaves.
I’m killing myself thinking. I’ve fallen like the leaves.

Some children see him lily white,
The baby Jesus born this night.
Some children see him lily white,
With tresses soft and fair.

Some children see him bronzed and brown,
The Lord of heaven to earth come down.
Some children see him bronzed and brown,
With dark and heavy hair.

Some children see him almond-eyed,
This Savior whom we kneel beside.
Some children see him almond-eyed,
With skin of golden hue.

Some children see him dark as they,
Sweet Mary’s Son to whom we pray.
Some children see him dark as they,
And, ah! they love him, too!

The children in each different place
Will see the baby Jesus’ face
Like theirs, but bright with heavenly grace,
And filled with holy light.

O lay aside each earthly thing
And with thy heart as offering,
Come worship now the infant King.
‘Tis love that’s born tonight!

At any rate, Nickel Creek has an amazing song about this identification with Thomas. Lyrics are in the video, so I won’t repost here:

1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e., frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous, or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears at a natural counterbalance of laughter) and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are while, beige, and black?” Ans.: “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking your and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender.

Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983), xi-xii.

It has often been thought that the greatest moral principle of the Bible is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” I used to believe so myself. But I have found that there is yet a greater principle: “You shall not oppress a stranger, for you know the heart of the stranger—you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Or again: “When a stranger lives with you in your land, do not ill-treat him. The stranger who lives with you shall be treated like the native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.” In the century of the Holocaust these commands echo with unrequited force.

It is easy to love our neighbor. It is a difficult to love the stranger. That is why the Torah commands us only once to love our neighbor, but on thirty-six occasions commands us to love the stranger. A neighbor is one we love because he is like us. A stranger is one we are taught to love precisely because he is not like us. That is the Torah’s repeated and most powerful command. I believe it to be the greatest religious truth articulated in the past four thousand years. Throughout history, Jews were the archetypal strangers. Abraham says to the Hittites, “I am a stranger and a sojourner among you.” The Israelites were “strangers” in Egypt. Moses said, on the birth of his first son, “I am a stranger in a strange land.” They were strangers to teach that God loves the stranger. They were different, yet God set them on His love, to teach the dignity of difference.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, A Letter in the Scroll: Understanding our Jewish Identity and Exploring the Legacy of the World’s Oldest Religion (New York: Free Press: 2000), 93-94.

Then yesterday happened. A group of friends and I had found out that Noah and the Whale were performing at the Paradise Rock Club in Boston, and so we bought tickets and headed up. I was beyond excited to get back to Boston, to visit the places that made last year great when other things were threatening to make it awful. As I saw the tops of the Hancock and Pru peak over the tree line as we approached the city, my heart leapt. I parked two blocks away from where I lived last year in Packard’s Corner, I bought my T day pass at the Shaw’s grocery store I shopped at, and jumped on the 57 that took me into the city every day. It was all so very familiar. Walking around Copley Square (where I worked), wandering on the path through the Public Garden and Common (which I walked all the time), eating at Upper Crust in Beacon Hill (my standby when I was early for church), getting cannoli at Mike’s (my favorite of the two North End bastions). It was like reconnecting with a friend I hadn’t seen in several months.

It wasn’t until the brewery tour at Harpoon that things started to shift slightly. Harpoon in many ways represents everything about my last year that was good. It’s my friend S. who was there with me weekend after weekend; it’s the unwinding after a long, hard week; it’s the comfort of having a place you know inside and out; it’s the motivation to drive 6hrs to Vermont just for passion’s sake. Being there with people from Yale was disjointing: new people from a new place in an old place associated with old friends, people who are now a source of a new joy in a place that was once a refuge from suckiness. My brain kept saying, “Wait, they aren’t supposed to be here…” But I left Harpoon happier than ever (with three growlers in tow).

As I stared out the window of the bus watching the sun set over the city skyline, my friends around me tipsily telling stories rather loudly, a wave of nostalgia washed over me and with it, swept away the rest of the bad feelings I harbored towards the city. My friend C. was on the phone arranging dinner plans in Harvard Square, and said, “Oh, yeah, we’re with someone who’s from here, so we’ll be able to find it…” My brain reeled for a second. “I’m from here now?” But I guess I really am. Boston is in many ways where I was born and raised as an adult, rather than as a child. I don’t know if “Boston” will be my response to the common question, “Where are you going to live after this?” that I keep getting asked, but it is where I’m from.

The profound “do not be” which the social and ecclesiastical voice speaks to us, and which forms the soul of so many gay people, was profoundly rooted in my own being, so that au fond I felt myself damned. In my violent zeal I was fighting so that the ecclesiastical structure might speak to me a “Yes,” a “Flourish, son,” precisely because I feared that, should I stand alone before God, God [Godself] would be a part of the “do not be.” Thus I was absolutely dependent on the same mechanism against which I was fighting. Hiding from myself the fact of having despaired of God, I wanted to manipulate the ecclesiastical structure so that it might give me a “self,” that it might speak to me a “Yes” at a level of profundity of which the ecclesiastical structure, like any human structure, is incapable. For the “Yes” which creates and recreates the “self” of a [child], only God can pronounce. In this I discovered myself to be an idolater. I had been wanting to negotiate my survival in the midst of violent structures, and negotiation in the midst of violent structures can only be done by violence.

[...]

And then, at root, what began this whole process of beginning to untie myself from the idols I had so assiduously cultivated, what I had never dared to imagine, the profound “Yes” of God, the “Yes” spoken to the little gay boy who had despaired of ever hearing it. And there, indeed, I found myself absolutely caught, because this “Yes” takes the form, not of a pretty consolation of a spoiled child. Rather, from the moment it reached me, the whole psychological and mental structure by which I had built myself up over all the previous years began to enter into a complete collapse. For the whole structure was based on the presupposition of a “No” at the center of my being, and because of that, of the need to wage a violence was so as to cover up a fathomless hole. The “I” , the “self” of the child of God is born in the midst of the ruins of repented idolatry.

James Alison, “Theology Amidst the Stones and Dust,” in Theology and Sexuality: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Eugene F. Rogers, Jr. (Oxford, UK and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2002), 396-397.

At the same time, I think it is a day for some mourning, because those reforms were bought at a great price: the further fracturing of the Church. Already, two great schisms had happened: first in 449, when the Oriental Orthodox split over the Council of Chaceldon; second in 1054, when Western Christianity and Eastern Christianity split. The Protestant Reformation meant yet another major split in the church, and within that movement, further fracturing. These splits cause somewhat irreconcilable differences between people who should be banded together, and is the source of much pain for those of us who claim in the Creed to believe in “one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.”

In light of all this, two prayers—the one more reforming, the one more unifying:

Gracious Father, we pray for the holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen.

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

1 shot whiskey (whisky, bourbon, rye, scotch, take your pick)
1 tbs. honey
1 cinnamon stick
3-4 whole cloves
1 lemon slice

Pour shot of whiskey into a mug and add honey. Fill rest of mug with hot water. Add cinnamon stick, cloves, and lemon slice.