I told the congregation that I know God is not an old man or woman in the sky, but possibly a drag queen-golden retriever mix. I also know that when I tell my terrible truth to someone, the air and sunlight gets in and somehow heals me. For the life of me I don't know how that works, but it does. It is the mystery of grace. I know when I was drunk and stoned and having tiny little boundary issues with men, sometimes several times a day, I staggered into a little church where I was no longer sure of one single thing, except that I was lost. The people were civil rights activists, and the music was beautiful, and that turned out to be enough.

After a year in that church, I started to call God "Jesus." I wish that this did not worry people so much. My friend Neshama calls God "Howard," as in "Our father/mother, who art in heaven, Howard be thy name," and this does not seem to worry people. When I was still afraid to call God Jesus, I called him my Higher Power, or for the sake of brevity, my old H.P. Then I started to think of Him as my old Hewlett-Packard, and that worked, and it worried people a lot less than this Jesus business.

I told everyone at MCC I know that there is a solution, and the solution is spiritual, and that it probably has nothing to do with the problem. Most of the time, I simply have to remember to breathe, and have a sip of cool water. Spirit is breath, and breezes. In the Christian tradition it's also expressed as living water, poured over us, poured into us, into our dark, thirsty lives, and that sometimes it streams down our faces in tears. It cleanses us, hydrates the ground at our feet, grows things, buoys us up and cools us down. Unfortunately, I do not actually like to think about breathing -- it leaves me gasping like a fish on the dock -- and I don't like water at all. I personally would have preferred the Spirit to be experienced as lemonade.

Now, I know that most of the folks at MCC, like the rest of us, had extremely well-balanced parents, in loving marriages based on respect and equality, who could delight in their children's gifts, protect them and listen. But I told the three or four people at MCC who didn't that since they had found their way into a tribe, they had sewn together a patchwork quilt of makeshift parents for themselves -- in friends, mates, pets, heroes. And part of this miracle is that friends aren't nuts on the same day, so someone is always more or less OK.

I think it's what Jesus meant by the good news: that we're loved, and not all crazy at the same time. Some mornings I wake up and I instantly feel discouraged by the world and my government and by my own worried mind. It's like my brain has already been up for awhile, sitting on the bed waiting for me to wake up. It's already had coffee, and has some serious concerns about how far behind we are already. So I always pray, first thing upon awakening, very simple prayers like the one Sam prayed years ago when his head got caught in the slats of a chair: "I need help with me," he whispered.

There are so many things I am praying for -- sick friends, peace, impeachment. Often I don't even know where to start, or what the point is. But I knew that the people at MCC had been pummeled by the deaths of their partners and friends and family, that there were years when they were going to two and three funerals a week. The answer then, and the answer now, is to stick close. When you're desperate to isolate yourself, cry instead. The world is unbearably sad. But you breathe, have a little water, and start trying to bear being alive again. You start anywhere, and do it poorly, clumsily, afraid.

I know that most of the time, for me, the only real problem is, that left to my own devices, I am on my own mind almost all the time. But we're not left to our own devices. People help us, and we help them. Some days I just try to give glasses of water to everyone. Maybe that means having patience with the children in my church school, or flirting with old people at the health-food store, or offering chocolate bar communion to the people in line at the DMV who don't have appointments because they're the most seriously afflicted of all God's creatures.

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