Now I Understand … I think.
Last Saturday was October 20, 2012 and on that day two events of significance in my life occurred. The first event was the 68th celebration of the birth of this body and soul. The second event was the re-baptism of the spirit and person of “Georgia Lee McGowen.” I had not planned on taking part in the baptism ceremony beyond being there to lend moral support, but a few days prior, I was startled by an unmistakable urging to be baptized yet again. I had felt, up to that point, as if being baptized again was equivalent to saying to Abba that I wasn’t really satisfied with the degree of re-birth represented by the first baptism. I’m still not certain of why I was directed to a second baptism, but I was. So, along with 24 other people I was baptized again on the occasion of our 68th birthday.
The following day during Sunday morning worship I realized that I was recalling a feeling from out of the past. It was a feeling, a notion, an unspoken sense from many years ago that I had not thought of for a long time. When I/we were young adults and the notion that life was not interminable began to be a periodic subject for quiet mental rumination I/we had never been able to envision life beyond his/our mid-fifties. There was a complete inability to envision living to be 60, 70, 80 much less 90 years old. For someone who was able to visualize just about anything else imaginable that just didn’t compute. Maybe that’s normal, but I/we aren’t even close to normal now are we.
It did dawn on me that I was now in a somewhat unimagined future which explained some of the feelings I’d been having lately. But it did not explain why exactly I could now envision living to a very ripe old age and that “his” portion of this soul had no vision beyond mid-fifties. It had to be tied to either the birthday or the re-baptism, maybe both, but how?
While I was sporadically mulling this over Sunday evening, Pastor Jabowa called in response to a text I’d sent him. The text was something of a minor scolding about a posting I’d seen on Facebook. What ensued was a mostly political conversation which lasted more than an hour and twenty minutes and ended only when the battery in his phone died. Before that, I received something of a responsive scolding on his part. Both of us experienced frustration in that neither of us felt that we were understood.
At one point he said that I didn’t understand what it was like to be gay and the reason I didn’t was because being gay was not a choice for him but that I had a choice to be either George or Georgia. Furthermore, it was his opinion that I could still get married and he couldn’t because he was gay. That evolved into a discussion that eventually led us to realize that we have far more in common politically than we might have assumed at the beginning of the discussion. In the course of the conversation about the relationship between the two halves of our soul a light came on.
I was reminded of the evolution of my being and when the real beginning of the expression of me and who I am, the process of “George” spiritually and visually beginning to relinquish the actual use of this body began to take place. And then it hit me. “George” was 56 years old when all these changes began to take place. I began to take over and my emotions, desires and ambitions took the place of his. No wonder “George” couldn’t imagine growing old; he was still there in spirit but no longer in person. Was he was not intended to grow old? Was I the one intended to grow old? Only Abba knows the answer to those questions and they are now on my list of “Questions for Abba” when I’m face to face with Him.