RevCyn

Robin Williams' daughter wrote, "while there are few things I know for certain right now, one of them is that not just my world, but the entire world is forever a little darker, less colorful and less full of laughter in his absence. We’ll just have to work twice as hard to fill it back up again." What I've noticed in the last few days is that the world is a little more honest, a little more caring, and a little more vulnerable.  I've noticed friends who normally chat about their child's latest achievement or complain about their latest work hassle open up about their own depression.  I've seen people show a vulnerability through honesty about their own struggles.  Among my colleagues, there's been a lot of writing about personal experience.  People are opening up about their own depression among friends on Facebook.  Some are even posting more publicly on blogs.  Rev. Tony Lorenzen writes , "It’s the depression, both his and mine, that makes...

Like a lot of other UUs, I got the message about "Spirit Day" and wore purple yesterday, and pink, too , since that was the color being used in my community.  Hopefully the national show of spirit helped someone, somewhere.  But we know it's not enough.  That point is made eloquently by Melissa Pope of Oakland University who said : While the national press has picked up this issue over the last two months, we have been losing high numbers of LGBT youth to suicide for decades. In recent years, we’ve labeled the cause as bullying. But the root cause goes deeper – it goes to the very core of our society that discriminates against the LGBT community on all levels, including the denial of basic human rights that are supposed to belong to every person. This response from Pope comes following the news of the suicide of a young Oakland University student, Corey Jackson. Meanwhile, I'm searching for answers after the death of this one young man that has hit close...

Tomorrow is National Coming Out Day, a holiday started over twenty years ago to mark a celebration for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender youth and adults who were coming out of the closet and sharing the fact that they’re gay. This year, the weeks leading up to Coming Out Day have been horrendous and sad as we’ve heard news after news of young gay people committing suicide because of despair in the aftermath of bullying or the accumulation of messages of hate they’ve received in their short lifetimes. Tyler Clementi , Seth Walsh , Asher Brown , Billy Lucas , Justin Aaberg , Raymond Chase , Zach Harrington , and others before them and probably some other recent ones as well—a string of deaths of young boys who thought they had nothing left to live for. It should go without sayingthat we do think their lives are meaningful and important, and cherished, and that whatever God there is or isn’t is a God of love. We think that people are born gay, and it’s not a sin, but a natura...

I got an e-mail today about the death of yet another young (age 31) gay man in Michigan, Ryan Ende.  This latest young man's life story was one of pain and rejection, including religious rejection.  Ryan went to seminary to train for the ordained ministry, but was refused ordination because of his sexual orientation. A loving eulogy can be read here on his church's blog .  The eulogy doesn't directly say how Ryan's life ended.  But too many lives of young gay men are cut short, whether it is through violence, suicide, or depression-related issues like alcholism.  Ryan's story is many things, but it is in part the story of a young man's life struck down too soon, a life filled with rejection, and with depression and alcoholism, as described in his obituary .  Reading Ryan's story I was filled with sorrow, because it's a story I've heard too often.  One of the ways I've seen lives cut too short is through suicide.  I had known that the suicide ra...