Stories that Shaped My Life

Early on the nursery rhyme “Georgie Porgie puddin’ and pie, kissed the girls and made them cry, when the boys came out to play Georgie Porgie ran away” spoke to me because my mom sometimes called me Georgie Porgie. I may have been that little boy. But in my version he liked looking at the boys he sometimes ran away from. He learned to play with them also. Well you can imagine more parts to that story.

James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans grabbed my attention in 9th grade. I little understood it except to know that Indians were living where whites wanted to live and that Indians had Indian enemies and used the whites against them just as the whites used Indians against each other. While Cooper was a white, he opened the idea for me of becoming friends and benefitting from the Indians who knew the land so well and had their own ways of understanding and relating to it. Back then I understood little of the real conflict except to realize that these native people were being manipulated in ways I judged immoral. I was fascinated by the tribal ways of perceiving the world and appreciated their familial and tribal loyalties.

At church, missionaries told stories of carrying the gospel to other lands. I didn’t want to be a missionary but I did want to meet the people who understood the world so differently. This story structure challenged me to be open to others from far-away places and to appreciate the otherized perspectives of those who lived nearby. Dr. Victor Rambo’s story of finding a true and useful medical mission in India made sense to me. Son of missionaries, he wanted to help Indian people. His first attempts were unsuccessful. He earned a specialty in ophthalmology and returned to be very helpful for many years. Emulating him, his determination and courage, I realized his practical approach could help guide my own personal and ministerial development. I realized I needed to see real people with real needs.

For a long time the David cycle in the Bible, those stories about the boy, the young man, even the older man who became King of Israel, helped shape my moral life. I liked the David stories of loyalty, bravery, friendship, love, sin, and most important, of being a person one biblical author described as “a man after God’s own heart.” I liked that and its great flexibility. I was able to pattern myself somewhat like David (although I had little power and never murdered anyone for personal or political reasons), and I often used his stories in religious education resources I developed.

The stories of my Cambodian friend Narin Oum inspired me with his collecting and valuing of various religious traditions, seeing their connection in his own life journey. His conversion model was very tolerantly Asian Buddhist as he studied and became a Muslim and later a Christian. Hearing his story opened my imagination to new outcomes for my own life. I learned to value all my experiences and to let them instruct me how to understand my new life.

Ethan Mordden’s series of books about gay life in Manhattan with titles like I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore, Buddies, and How’s your romance? helped shape my gay life. These stories, some of them extreme, opened me to a vast world of information that exceeded what I’d learned from other writers and from my gay friend Ted. I got a view of the diversity of what is sometimes called gay identity and community. I realized my own experiences would be a tiny part of what actually takes place. I did find my own space within this diverse world of my own people, one that embraces GLBTs and many other queer folk.

I’m sure I still little understand how all these stories came together even in my mind. Still they help me navigate my life and open my eyes to possibilities that were never directly part of the curriculum of any school I attended or any theological or philosophical approach I encountered.

I love stories and their power to transform. I hope to keep learning in my maturity and plan to keep listening to your stories told here at The GLBT Center of Colorado.


© 2 October 2017

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

Death and Growing Up, by Phillip Hoyle

I recall clearly when in my mid-twenties I first had a new thought related to death, specifically regarding the death of my good friend James, a man I appreciated, with whom our young families spent time together (he and Sue and their son Charlie, Myrna and I and our son Michael and daughter Desma), and who with my friend Ted planted and tended a garden in my backyard one summer. My new thought was that wherever my good friend James lived, I’d travel there to attend his funeral. I was stunned by my newly-discovered perspective on friendship that seemed a mark of maturing and represented for me an aspect of friendship and love that has become an important signifier.

My work as a minister took me to many funerals, many of which I led. In the process I learned how to tend to the needs of family and friends of the deceased in calls I made on them and comments I shared concerning memories, grief, and hope at the funerals and memorial services I led. In fact, I learned to do this work well since the congregations which I served had many elders. I limited the time of my speeches, Bible readings, and prayers on these occasions (and as a side effect of my brevity, I became popular with the funeral directors).

Some years later, death and funerals took on a new aspect, the one I had anticipated in my twenties, when my longtime friend Ted died in his mid-forties. Our friendship had endured over twenty years. He lived fifteen hundred miles away, but I visited him several times after he became seriously ill. I wanted to help take care of him when his condition became critical but was not asked to do so. I did fly to San Francisco to attend his memorial service and pondered what I would say when folk were invited to deliver verbal tributes. I was unable to say anything and stayed firmly in my pew appreciating the speeches made by others. I wondered at my inability to talk but appreciated my ability to cry.

Last month I attended a memorial service for another longtime friend, Geraldean McMillin. She died unexpectedly at age eighty-two. Geraldean and I had been intellectual buddies and friends for over thirty years. I flew to Missouri and with members of my family attended the service. This time I had agreed to say a benediction at the end of the service. As person after person spoke, I cried; more specifically I had a constant stream of tears, mostly from my right eye, while others talked. I was afraid my weeping might leave me dehydrated, my voice too dry to speak at all, but when the signal came I went to the front of the chapel and said a few words about Geraldean and pronounced a benediction made up of some of her oft-repeated phrases and sentiments.

I miss her.

I miss Ted.

I miss James although I haven’t heard from him in many years and have no idea where he lives or if he is even still alive. I probably won’t need to travel to his service but sometimes I wonder who will travel to mine.

© 22 July 2014

About the Author 

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com 

Bricks, by Gillian

My mother, not someone I would identify as a religious person, used to read me stories from the Bible. She favored the New Testament, particularly the Parables. I think she believed, quite rightly in my opinion, that they would have a more positive influence on me than Fairy Tales, many of which seem to be about little girls coming to bad ends through little or no fault of their own.

Occasionally she chose readings from the Old Testament, and one of these was the tale of Making Bricks Without Straw. (This is how it is generally thought of, anyway, though to be accurate that is incorrect. Pharaoh did not tell the Israelites they had to make bricks without straw but rather that straw would no longer be provided for them; they would have to get it themselves.) I suspect that she liked the tale because, in this post-war time of severe rationing, she felt that she spent her life trying to create the necessities of life without the basic ingredients.

Be all of that as it may, it was my introduction to bricks.

The house I grew up in, like most homes in rural Britain, was made of local stone, not brick nor wood. Various ambitious British monarchs building various ambitious fleets of wooden ships had depleted British woodlands almost to the point of oblivion. Brick was expensive. Stone was frequently there for the taking. The problem is, rough-hewn stone such as that of my childhood home, is rather like a badly-cut jigsaw puzzle. The pieces don't fit together well, and require great amounts of mortar to keep things stable. The mortar requires constant repair, and even with that the incessant rain finds it's way into and through the walls. The house was always cold and damp.

When I rode the local bus to to the local town, with it's burgeoning suburbia, I looked upon the brick homes with envy. Perhaps they did, as my mother said with sniffing disdain, all look alike. But that look was warm, and snug, and cozy; none of which adjectives could be applied to our home. They were, perhaps, 150 years younger, but that failed to register. In the event, I moved from English fieldstone to American wood siding and never did live in a brick house until Betsy and I got together. Over the twenty-eight years we have been together we have had three houses, all brick, and all living up to my dreams of warm and cozy.

In the Britain of my childhood, I'm not sure about nowadays, we would call a certain type of person a brick. Ooh, you really are a brick! you'd say to the kind neighbor who, unasked, took your children to her house for a few days so that you could go to bed with that awful flu. He's such a brick, you'd say, about the friend who was always there to lend a practical hand in times of trouble. A brick is someone thoughtful, kind, reliable, generous. Betsy is a brick. It's a large part of why I love her so much.

Several years ago I signed up for a tour of Lakewood Brick Company. It was scheduled to start quite early in the morning, and we lived in Park Hill at that time, so I left home about 7.00 a.m.  There was surprisingly little traffic about. Was it some holiday I'd forgotten? Rather than wondering about it I gave thanks for quiet streets which gave me time to pop into the grocery store to get a snack for lunch. The store somehow had an odd feeling to it, rather the way the roads had. The few customers all seemed to be standing in little groups engaged in serious conversations rather than actually shopping. I was getting a cold feeling in the pit of my stomach.

'What's going on?' I asked two employees who stood muttering together.

'Oh! Haven't you heard?' They stumbled over each other to give me the news.

'A plane crashed into one of the New York sky-scrapers,' said one.  'Only, then there was another crash so they don't know what's happening,' added the other.

I forgot lunch and went back to the car to listen to the radio. Clearly what they had told me was what was being reported, but all in total confusion. The newscasters obviously had no clear picture of what exactly had happened and what continued to happen. The only certainty was; it was not good. It was serious. It was some kind of national emergency.

What to do? Should I go back home? To do what? Would they cancel the Brick Company tour?

Uncertainly I turned through the high fence gates and parked, to be joined in the next few minutes by a few other cars. The tour began as scheduled but with about a quarter of the number expected. Those of us who had turned up gave it our best but it was hopeless. The man leading the tour tried, but was clearly distracted. He wasn't concentrating on what he was saying and no-one was really listening. Cell Phones kept chiming and chirping. The recipient would listen, disconnect, and pass on the latest to the rest of us. Pretty soon, by some kind of unspoken but unanimous decision, we gave up and went home through streets that were, if anything, even more silent than before, to sit at home and stare in horrified disbelief at our televisions along with everyone else.

Where we live now is not very far from Lakewood Brick Company. We drive past it quite often.  But no matter how many times I pass it, it never fails to take me back to that terrible day which so changed this country, and indeed the world, forever.

Until I started to write this piece, I don't think I had ever realized that bricks actually loom quite large in my psyche, one way and another. Amazing what you discover about yourself writing these little Monday afternoon vignettes.

© 12 Oct 2015 

About the Author 

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30-years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty-years. We have been married since 2013.

Revelation, by Phillip Hoyle

Some biblical and artistic revelations combined for me in a most important way, one that helped me realize the ultimate revelation of God’s love. I begin with the image of a boy drawing illustrations of several visionary creatures in the Bible. These word monsters had origins in the apocalyptic literature of the Hebrew prophets, especially Daniel and several others whose writings were deemed apocryphal or became part of the extra-biblical collection known as the Pseudepigrapha. Jesus as a prophet was credited with some such images related to the destruction of Jerusalem, and due to a fourth century CE decision, the New Testament ends with one such: the memorable book, The Revelation to John. We didn’t hear much about these writings in our church until Stan Lecher preached a meeting one spring. He specialized in prophetic speculation in order to raise a crowd. The magical world of knowing the future held great appeal and Lecher knew how to use it. Although in my childhood I was too scared to be interested in monster movies, I did find these images in the Bible quite intriguing, not so much for their meanings about the future but simply for their inclusion in the sacred book. For me, the phenomenon seemed much the same as when I later discovered the Goodspeed translation of the Bible that used such clear words as ‘rape’ or the erotic images in the Song of Solomon, or the image of God’s love for Israel compared with the hopeless commitment of the prophet Hosea to his prostituting wife. I was fascinated by the unacceptable being found within the content of the holy. I still am.

So when sermons got boring I paged through the Revelation and entertained myself by drawing these wild monsters: for instance, in Revelation 12 a great red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and ten crowns on his heads and a tail that swept down a third of the stars of heaven and threw them on the earth and whom Michael and his angels fought; or in Revelation 13 a creature that rose from the sea and looked like a leopard with feet like a bear’s and a mouth like a lion’s and with horns and ten crowns; or in the same chapter another beast that rose out of the earth and featured two horns like a lamb and the voice of a dragon. I knew nothing of metaphor and symbol for I was a child as literal as he could be. I didn’t know what else to do with these visions except to draw them.

Mom was interested in my drawings, at least enough to put them in her purse. I don’t know what became of those scratchings, but I do remember not knowing how to distribute horns and crowns among the various heads of the angry monsters. Such is the life of even the most literal of illustrators. Too many decisions, too much specificity, and the revelations became a problem of literality and meaning. But my memory of the experience is one of artistic decision making not unlike what I face now when I am making paintings of centuries-old visions of the Ute artists of Shavano Valley in western Colorado or of Cherokee interpreters at Judaculla Rock on the Tennessee River in western North Carolina. I was making such artistic decisions as a youngster. All those years ago I was an artist and, of course, a frustrated one just like my son Michael years later when in disgust he threw away some of this drawings because he couldn’t get them perfect. I told him then what I wish someone had told the young me, that the art arises from incorporating your mistakes, trusting that they may be as important to your work as what you deem ideal. And to imagine that I was thinking somewhat that way even as a youngster trying to fathom the images and truths of the wildest symbols in the Bible.

The art is in the process. For me, the art of living religiously grew to mean being able to incorporate the common with the holy not to accommodate the sins of my own life within a vision of a perfect God but rather because the authoritative book of my religious upbringing declares that the murdering King David was in fact a man after God’s own heart. My deeply artistic and deeply gay heart knew life must recognize the good in all, in me. What a revelation!

As I mentioned before, I still feel that way.

© Denver, 2014  

About the Author 

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com