helen-louise's journal

When I am in Rochester with Grant, we go to Community Christian Church which is, in my words, a "hippy church". The first thing you see when you enter the building is a sign saying "Refugees Welcome", and they actually mean it. The minister is a gay man married to his husband, some of the lay people who help with the services are visibly queer, and it's genuinely welcoming. Even though I'm not a Christian, I still feel more at home there than in the UU church we went to once, where people came up to us afterwards and enquired as to whether the service was the strangest thing we'd ever been to. The idea that we might be Unitarians already didn't seem to occur to anyone. (There is a second UU church in Rochester, and I might try it sometime, but I don't feel any particular need to.)

Some people from the church work for a charity which helps children who may have been abused (TW: site talks about child abuse). When they come for assessment, they can choose a plush friend to help them through the process. Apparently they get through 4 to 6 plushies per day, which is a lot of new referrals. One of these people, Bob, died recently and in his honour, the church decided to collect Bears for Bivona because it was alliterative.

When we arrived and saw a giant box of bears (and other soft toys), I decided to go through the box and hug them all. So I did so after the service. When people asked what I was doing, I explained that you can't just buy a teddy bear from a shop, stick it in a collection box, and expect it to be able to help a hurt child. You have to give it some love first. And Rev Steven considered this and decided to put the teddy bears out in church the following week.


(click through for bigger version)

So the bears sat through the church service and were filled with the love of the congregation. They were pointed out during the "share with children" part of the service and each child went to hug one of them. Then the bears were blessed so that they could bring joy to their new owners. If you get the impression that this is not exactly a standard, mainstream sort of church - you'd be right!

Also the sermon featured Banksy art. (Did you realise that Steve Jobs was the son of a Syrian migrant?)

( More bear details. )

I am visiting Grant in the US!

My flight on Tuesday was one of the least unpleasant transatlantic flights I've ever taken. No turbulence at all until the final descent, enough spare seats that I didn't have someone immediately next to me, they fed me twice with food which was labelled as allergen-free, my own wheelchair got delivered directly to the plane (!) only a little more broken than it was before and easily fixable. I should probably emphasise the last point because it's really unusual for an electric wheelchair to make it directly to the gate. More usually they bring me a manual chair and a minion to push, and then I pick up my wheelchair either at the top of the ramp or down where you pick up cases.

We went for a meal at the wonderful Veggie Planet in Mississauga, about 10 minutes away from Toronto Airport. This place almost literally saved my life when my flight was delayed for 26 hours in April. I mean, I have enough body fat that I wouldn't have actually dropped dead of malnutrition, but you do not want to know how grumpy I get when I have low blood sugar - let alone when I've slept for an insufficient amount of time in my clothes in an overpriced hotel room.

Clearing both Canadian and American customs was super easy and friendly. The Canadians were just like "What are you doing in Canada?", I said, "Going to have lunch and then going to the US", and they waved me straight through. American customs are often highly suspicious when someone on an overseas passport crosses the land border, because they think I might have been living in the US and I've just crossed the border to "reset" the 6 months that a tourist is allowed to stay without a visa, but we've done it enough times now to know the "correct" answers. Plus I can prove exactly where I've been thanks to location stamps on my photos and Google Maps timeline. Rather than me moving to the US, what we really need is some way to move Grant to the UK, but that's... complicated.

So it was all good, but travelling for this distance with chronic fatigue syndrome and having been unwell immediately before (I really thought I was going down with a cold, but it evaporated), and having had no sleep for 30 hours is going to knock me out for several days. (To be fair, I did fall asleep on the plane 5 times, each time for less than a minute.) Yesterday was a fun day of... sleep. Today I woke up at noon and am currently contemplating some form of breakfast.

Well, I am an idiot. On Friday I went into a complete panic because the official invite for the party with Grant's cow-orkers got sent around, and it was very actively Christian. I generally have no problem with Christians who I meet through queer or poly circles, or who are members of the same political party as me, since I know they are likely to share my liberal values. However, given the state of American politics and the people currently running the country who call themselves "Christian" but share none of the values of tolerance and love expressed by Jesus Christ, I have something of a phobia of American Christians.

Grant says that I am being judgemental and jumping to conclusions, but it is a real problem when people who are in favour of love, equality, and social justice use the same name for their religion as people who are in favour of hatred and rich-white-cis-heteros being superior to everyone else. Of course, neither of them are willing to change to a different name, with the argument from liberal Christians being that they need to reclaim the name of Christ from the hatemongers. I can understand their point of view, but it makes it really difficult to know whether a person who calls themselves Christian is the "good" kind of Christian or the "bad" kind.

( of course this gets long, it's me after all )