"Under This Beautiful Dome"

Under This Beautiful Dome: A Senator, A Journalist, and the Politics of Gay Love in America by Terry Mutchler

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Such a well-written, compelling book about the life Terry Mutchler shared with Penny Severns. The 1990s were not that long ago, and yet seem to be, for some of us. There are far too many still living the life that Terry and Penny HAD to live, and my heart aches for those couples. I cried multiple times as I read this book, and this passage is just one of those times:
"Nearly two decades later, I still do not have any of my things, not even the limited list that I asked for...I still ache for certain pieces of our life together, whether it's a jacket she wore, a book she read, or a piece of art we bought. I now know I possess the most cherished aspect of my life with Penny: our memories and our love. The things I lost are just things in a material sense, but somehow, things mean a great deal in death. Even the smallest item that belonged to a loved one becomes a token of the life shared, and the essence and elements of healing. You touch these items, you cry a little, you laugh a little, and you put them back down--they're conduits between this dimension and the memory of those we loved and lost."




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My Gift to You

During this holiday season--and it IS a season, with many holidays and ways of celebrating--I hope you take a moment for reflection. As I celebrate two holidays, I am reminded of the reason for each:  The Winter Solstice is a time for pondering the darkness and celebrating the return of the sun, and asking ourselves what light we can bring to the world. Christmas is a time to remember the message that was delivered with the birth of Jesus--peace and hope. If  I could give each of you some gifts, I would give you two:  First, I would give you the gift of gray. Our world, and we humans, are complex. NOTHING is black and white--for every issue, my hope is that you take time to see the gray. For instance, it's OK to mourn the deaths of young black men at the hands of police officers and to cry out for justice, while at the very same time having deep sympathy for the families of police officers killed, and being utterly devastated by their senseless murders. When we are only thinking in black and white, "one or the other", we miss the gray area of this issue--the area where we could all gather and agree that SOMETHING, anything, should be done to control the guns that are finding their way into the hands of those who should not have them. The second gift I would give you would be the gift of another person's shoes, so that you could walk in them. It's far too easy to flippantly say that another person does not "deserve ______" (a higher minimum wage, health care, education) when you know nothing about what their life is like, or what their life has been like. There are forces in this world who love to find ways to divide us, for if we worked together for the common good, they would be unable to profit from that.
I truly believe that if we were all to take time to reflect, to receive the gifts of gray and the shoes of others, then we could make the world a better place for all. We would finally be in a place of peace and hope.
Happy holidays.