This is a picture of me taken last night around sunset. The men are half my age, bare-chested and painted green. There was loud music playing in the background, and a woman wearing star fish on her breasts and wrapped in fishnet was dancing on a stage to it.

Did I sin? Do Christians attend such events?

And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. — Romans 12:2

Brethren, while each of the blog entries here are testimonies of sorts, I can’t really say that I’m penitent for anything I did last night. I danced, mostly with the men in this picture, who were more interested in running their fingers through each other’s green hair than through mine. I spent the evening talking to people, including a man in a kilt, wearing a strange mink stole. He was straight, and I thought he was kind of cute, but our conversation was civil and one that might have taken place after church at a fellowship brunch — nothing untoward. I do regret that twice, one man who was a volunteer for the event — he judged the mermaids — and a man disguised as King Neptune, wearing a loin cloth made of material almost identical to my top — flirted with me in front of their wives. I told the men how lucky they were to have women in their lives who would tolerate them.

I also spoke to a burlesque dancer, who called herself Fin Ray. She was dressed half as a mermaid, half as a gorilla. During the course of the evening, where dancers performed in between rock bands who were very good and of no surprising kind, except that they were in fact better than some wedding band for hire, Fin Ray kept her half-monkey persona and otherwise dressed in bridal lingerie. She pantomimed an imagined King-Kong Fae Ray wedding night. Much of the action involved her eating a banana suggestively handed to herself by her gorilla arm. At the end, the Gorilla arm (again, her own) tore off her negligee, and she was wearing something slightly more revealing than what one sees wearing on the beach. It was far less lust-producing than laugh-producing.

Again — should Christians not have attended this event, which was a fund-raiser to preserve an arts community on Coney Island?

I am amazed at the success of the movie Rent among people who have never set foot in New York City. When I saw the movie (after having seen the musical on Broadway), I wept.

That was really my life back when I moved to the city in the late Eighties. I lost a lot of men (ones who looked like the men in green with whom I danced last night) friends to AIDS. I was kind of like the performance artist in the movie who got everyone to protest artistically — I ran a guerilla theater squad for women’s rights. For instance, I crowned myself “Miss Sports Ill-Lust-Raided 1992″ on the day the magazine launched its swimsuit issue and vogued in front of the Time-Life Building while reporters snapped pictures and women older than me gave out statistics about women athletes. I did this as a protest in order to gain greater recognition for the accomplishments of women athletes. My protest was reported internationally, and Sports Illustrated not only started to cover women athletes with greater seriousness, they started a women’s sports magazine that lasted for some years.

I did some other kinds of protests as well. I marched for AIDS research funding wearing a leather jacket and lingerie, because that was what our cohort had chosen to wear as a uniform to get attention. I dressed in a long, red robe with some men who wore dresses like Dana Carvey’s church lady character from Saturday Night Live to protest some of the ugly, nasty things that were being said in a very unchristian manner by certain Christian leaders of the time against people with AIDS and against women in general.

At the time, I also attended church every Sunday, and I read the Bible. I wasn’t a lesbian, the way that the character was in the movie that I referred to earlier. I was straight, dating a lawyer who was more conservative than I was in almost every way.

So those of you who know about what is called “La Vie Boheme” in the movie Rent — I wonder what you think of those characters. Paul says to avoid the appearance of evil. I agree, but what does that mean? I never did drugs. I was not into what might be termed by some “alternative lifestyles.” I did, however, choose to keep company with drag queens, people who pierce their tongues and their genitalia and are willing to show others both, people who do drugs, talk about sex that churches do not condone, and these people who were in my life during that time — we protested together for the world to change to be more compassionate, more patient, more fair. Were they sinners? By any definition of Christianity, I’m sure they all were without exception. But if they were the only ones not conforming to the world — the system of Babylon that is still here and according to the world will still be here until Jesus comes — not willing to accept injustice, weren’t they actually the only ones obeying the command above from Romans 12?

Brethren, as for the last part of the directive above, about the will of God — let me address that. Let me speak plainly to you about it. If Bohemians of every sort aren’t Christians, it’s not really as much their fault as it is ours, the church’s fault. I was often the only Christian that they knew who would really talk to them without judging them outright. I brought a small number to the foot of the cross, but quite frankly, it was an uphill battle, especially while their friends were dying of a horrible disease and the church responded largely by telling them that God was punishing them for fornication. Fornication is a sin. So is pride. So is anything short of the Good Samaritan’s response to pain and suffering of all kinds.

Last night, I was there to dance and to get to know my neighbors, not so much to evangelize, but I did shout over the loud music to four men that I was a Christian. They were astonished. They thought of Christians as people who would never dance — even though our Jesus is the Lord of the Dance — who would never laugh as loudly as I was laughing, who would never have talked to people like them. Brethren, I want to remind you how many parties Jesus attended. He would have seen belly dancers. He would have seen drunks. Don’t think for a minute he wouldn’t have seen hookers. Don’t think for a minute he wouldn’t have seen homosexuality, adultery, and other things against the Word of God. Did Jesus go in there and shout at the front of the room — repent thou evil doers, for my kingdom is at hand? There is no record of Him doing so. On the contrary, he seemed to have danced, to have had some wine, to have eaten plenty of what was served, to have enjoyed the company of these people largely on their terms.

Be ye not conformed to the world. I submit that the truest sense of this is not in the wearing of make-up, green body paint, sequins, or other manifestations of fashion and fun. Let me amplify what I hear: Be ye not conformed to the cruelty of the world. Be ye not conformed to the indifference of the world. Be ye not conformed to the selfishness of the world.

All of the men I shouted to about my faith told me with some surprise in their voices that I was very sweet. They said they were not used to meeting sweet people at these kinds of events. They treated me with decency and respect. They made sure I had a place to sit, enough to eat and drink, a safe way to get home. I can only imagine the people who met Jesus at these parties reacted to him in even stronger terms. If people feel honored and sense a general goodness — it is convicting to them, whether they fully understand it or not.

Preaching the Gospel, I submit, is often less about Bible tracts than about living like The Living Word. So go ye into the World, everywhere in the World. Be ye not conformed. Hang with the non-conformists. Go change the world with the power of the love you have been given. Love never fails. Amen.

“Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares” — Hebrews 13:2

This week’s homily is about girlfriends, the ones I knew I have, but especially the ones I had no idea I had until they suddenly appeared. I have my good female friends, the ones I know I can count on all the time — the ones who attend parties with me. Here’s a picture of some of my A-List friends — I took this when we were at a Mets game.

These are the women that I always know I can count on to care enough about me to help me when times are down. The women in this picture have known me since I was in my teens (just a few years ago, I joke).

But this week, I became particularly mindful of the women who have helped me and treated me with enormous kindness even though they had no particular reason to do so. I was practically a stranger to them.

People who live outside of New York City may think that this is not the way New Yorkers are — that we’re a cold bunch. They couldn’t be more wrong. Look at the way we cradled each other after 9/11 — that’s our real character. We’re all toughness and bluster until somebody falls down. Then we gather around and pick each other up.

The women this next photo are virtual strangers to me, and yet, they behaved as kindly as sisters ever have. They met me first when my ex-husband and I were looking for wedding bands, just having been engaged. My ex had purchased my engagement ring from Rosanne, the owner of the shop, and he told them how much he loved me. They met me, and we tried on rings together. Rosanne employs only women jewelers — something that makes the shop have a terrific character. They give out terrific advice to men picking out gifts for women they love. It also has the chatty informality going there as if one were going to the beauty salon.

When my birthday and Christmas would roll around, my ex would swing by Rosanne’s and purchase a trinket for me — he gave me a couple of diamond pendants and some pearls.

Rosanne also buys gold and repairs jewelry. She has a terrific woman who works for her who delicately repairs broken jewels. She’s the one in the back of the photo. I went in there with a charm that belonged to my grandmother, and these ladies helped me buy a bracelet and attach the charm to it. I wear it on my wrist now.

When my ex-husband became scary and threw me out, I had to sell everything of value I had just to have enough to survive. I came to Rosanne’s and asked her to buy my gold. These ladies had already been nice to me, and I knew she would not steal from me. When I explained why I was selling, these wonderful women wept with me. Each of them hugged me as if we had known each other forever. They bought my gold, but they insisted I come back regularly for more hugs.

Here’s a picture of them with me taken yesterday. There is no more need for weeping. I’m the one wearing red, smiling the largest smile. These women are so wonderful. It’s amazing that they were so nice to me even though they barely knew me, that they are so happy for me now that I’m back on my feet living my life in joy. Why were they so kind? I am no one special to them — just another customer.

My accountant, Helen Kyrillidis, and her bff, attorney Susan Rizos, are another pair of suddenly discovered good friends. I had to see Helen about a matter related to old taxes, and she and Susan were sitting together laughing in their offices in Astoria, Queens. I wish I had a photo of these women to post here. They look smart, shrewd, confident, and a little tough. However, they have each expressed concern for me, delight at my triumphs, have worried about me like two clucking hens when I have made mistakes.

All the sociologists talk about how disconnected we are one from the other in today’s society. With kinship ties less stable — divorces at such a high, non-marriage, single parenting, abandoned elderly folks — we can surely see that on this father’s day we are all less connected in traditional ways than we ever have been. Community ties as we have defined them are frayed.

However, I am encouraged by my women acquaintances. Without a strong exterior social structure, perhaps we females remain kind, loving , generous, empathetic, and full of the spiritual gift of hospitality. I trust that women have been given at birth a sense of connection that cannot be permanently disrupted by the bad behavior of men who leave us, cheat us, beat us, treat us like trash. I’m back on my feet in part thanks to women like these half-strangers, who treated me as somebody important enough to care about.

Medical science backs up my assertions. It is a proven fact that those diagnosed with cancer have a much, much greater chance of survival if they have women to talk to. This is equally true for men and women — women are the ones who make us feel better when we’re down for the count. Guys surely have other strengths. I thank God for some of the men in my life, too, who have been incredibly supportive. However, there is something about the way women talk to each other and to men that makes the human race feel, despite evidence to the contrary, that everything is going to be all right.

So go to Rosanne’s Jewelry store — the address is 1040 Park Boulevard in Massapequa Park, telephone 516-799-7722. Tell them you saw them on my blog, and I’ll bet they’ll give you a hug if you need one.

Go into the world and see if you don’t have friendships that take you by surprise. People are kinder, more compassionate, than you perhaps think. Thank God for that. And thank you to those who have entertained me as if I were an angel sent to them. I am no angel, alas, but I am your sister. Thank you to those sisters in Christ whom I will never meet on Earth but who regularly practice Christian hospitality. We are family, despite what the sociologists can quantify. Together, we will endure somehow until the sky cracks.

I am beautiful — I am not skinny.

I am a wall, and my breasts like towers: then was I in his eyes as one that found favor. — Song of Solomon 8:10

Let’s just say there was this woman. Let’s not say it was me. Let’s not even say it was anyone I know.

This woman lived in Manhattan. She went to an old neighborhood where she had not been in a long time. She laughed when she saw that the dive bar where she had gone before she got saved had become a pretentious hot spot — velvet rope-ringed, bouncer-guarded — when the cops were scared to go there before. She laughed to herself at the way the city changes overnight from one thing to another, ever new.

As the woman rounded a corner, a man her age locked eyes with her, almost sharing the existential joke she was laughing at. He gasped. He saw her, in a way that people rarely see each other in the city, whole, full of mirth, light shining from Heaven down on them to show them radiant. The man couldn’t help himself — it had been so long since he had seen a woman like this — confident, playful, and free. He let out of his throat before he could think about it a hoarse exclamation — “My God! You’re so beautiful!”

Like all men in the city, he was on his way somewhere else. She was on her way home. He phoned his appontment with a friend, canceled, said, “I’ve met a fantastic woman. See you another time.”

She broke the rules of the city, this laughing woman, perhaps out of sentimental feelings for her misspent youth. She agreed to have a cup of coffee with this man, let him talk her into getting to know him.

He was of a certain age. So was she. They both had places to go. They both had responsibilities, regrets, false starts, hopes for better things. They talked until it was dark. He held her hand. She let him hold her hand. Over and over again, he told her she was beautiful. She was beautiful. She had always known it, but sometimes, it felt hidden in this city, where there were people who made their livings at being beautiful — size zero models, whose hanger-bodies flaunted couture, actresses, women who make a living pretending to be something they are not, usually by pretending to be happy and sexy.

But this woman, this woman having coffee in the gentrified neighborhood, she was happy. She was happy to see things starting again, including this man moon-eyed across from her, sure he said over and over again that he must see her henceforth, over and over again. She was sexy, not sexy like the women who sell themselves to the camera, sexy like the Song of Solomon, a yet-unclaimed prize for a righteous groom, sexier and hotter than the sex for sale on the streets, the sex for free in the chat rooms.

The man said he was a Christian. He seemed moved by her talking about charity work. He worked in advertising, a place that sells everything to everyone, and everything is marketed with the cheapness of things that she didn’t even seem conscious of. He told her things he seemed to have never even thought before, but things he knew must be true — secrets about himself, his fears, his ambitions, his masculinity. She squeezed his hand tighter and encouraged him.

“God! You’re so beautiful!” He whispered again.

He got up to pay the check, and when he came back, he squeezed into the booth next to her and took her face in his hands. He kissed her passionately. She responded.

They kissed in the booth for a few minutes. In New York, this surprises no one — sudden passions, sudden trends, sudden gentrifications — this is a day in the city like any other day. No one even glanced at them.

By now it was dark. They walked through a block of brownstones, and again. he grabbed her and kissed her, tenderly leaning her against the wall. They kissed for three hours, four hours. The streets were busy, and people wandered by. But in his embrace, the woman felt alone with him, as if they were in a private corner.

“God, you’re so beautiful!” He repeated between long caresses and kisses.

He caressed her thigh, her collar bone, grabbed her close, the small of her back. He was a gentleman. They had just met. He promised to see her again. He meant it. He seemed afraid that at any moment she might evaporate, and he held tighter and kissed longer. They seemed alone. The air was heavy around them. There were other bodies under the street lamps, the sound of trailing and nearing footsteps, but none of this penetrated their space somehow, even though they were only feet away. Again, he swore he would see her again, this laughing woman, this intelligent beauty, this good, Christian woman, that he wanted to know everything about her. He caressed her thigh again and told her how sexy she was.

Because he was a gentleman, he pulled away. He was too tempted. This was a city street. He caught his breath. He took a full half hour to catch his breath. When he did, he took her hand and hailed a cab. He would see her home.

The next day, he called and text messaged her. She was still beautiful. He was still determined. She responded in kind. She sent him a picture on her cell phone of herself, one she captioned with the words, “Thinking of you.”

He disappeared. He never called again. He never returned voice mail messages. He never texted back. He was gone, back in the crowd of bobbing heads in mid-town, near that advertising agency where he worked. He never saw her again.

The photo she had sent him — it was a photo of that same woman, the one with the laughing eyes, the same body he caressed, that aroused him terribly — but her photo was not like the photos of women selling toothpaste, floor wax, the other photos in the agency. Her photo was not like the photos of the actresses who showed up for photo shoots. Her photo was nothing like the photos of models who sauntered into the perfume commercial auditions. In her photo, she was ample, full-hipped, fully there, a tummy without a tuck, a substantial thigh, a woman with breasts like towers, a towering woman, a woman who was not pretending not to be there, not even in her body, which could not lie.  In her photo, the man could see her, and she would not do. She simply would not do.

The city renewed itself daily. New meat arrived in the meat-packing district, only the old butchers were gone — now there were high-end fashion boutiques, and everyone was starving herself. The city gentrified, and it left the woman out on the street where she would not be noticed as she walked by again.

We have a little sister, and she hath no breasts: what shall we do for our sister in the day when she shall be spoken for? If she be a wall, we will build upon her a palace of silver: and if she be a door, we will inclose her with boards of cedar. — The Song of Solomon 8:8-9

We live in a sick culture. Let’s not say it was me. Let’s not say it was anyone I knew. Let’s pretend, like skinny actresses, to be someone, something we are not. I am beautiful. Men find me beautiful. I am six feet tall, blonde, and voluptuous. That photo above is mine, the sideways one. I took it in the mirror sideways. However, I am not skinny. I am now who I am now. But we live in a society where some men out of vanity insist that women look a particular way, even while they are aroused by the women who are really in front of them.

Let us pray:

Heavenly Father, who made us exactly as we are on purpose, who despises gluttony and sloth but not womanly curves, not manly substance, we thank you that we have been given the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven with the knowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, your Holy One, and that which we bind in His name is bound also in Heaven, and that which we loose in His name is loosed also in Heaven.

Father, in that spirit, we rebuke the demon that plagues women in this culture, particularly in places like Manhattan. Let us name the spirit, for we have with Adam, the right to name lesser creatures, and the devils are under our feet and authority in Jesus’ name — let us name this spirit the fat demon. It is not that he is necessarily fat, but rather, he is a vain spirit who whispers in the ears of those who will listen that a gaunt femininity is the only beautiful one. Fat demon, we bind you in the name of Jesus. We loose you only away from us in hell. We bind you from speaking to any man or woman in this culture. You can deprive us no longer of even the slightest happiness.

We loose, in the name of Jesus, a Godly body consciousness, one that resembles you, where women have real bodies, men admire those bodies, and men and women both are free to live healthy lives in the bodies you have given them. Thank you, Father for backing us up in Heaven as we pray this prayer. Thank you for giving us through Jesus, more abundant lives. AMEN.