taking pride in a rainbow

Synchronicity is something which has been happening more and more to me in the past year.  One could say that it is the paw of the Divine, one could say that it simply that I am being more observant.  The bottom line is that it happens and happens a lot.  To wit, the tale below.

Our parish is putting on a series of thought provoking seminars about contemporary social issues.  The first set is about homosexuality and it is instructive to recall that our parish is mostly of the 'boomer' - 'mature' vintage.  The presenters of the series (proud PFLAG parents) explicitly asked me to come and join their seminar because I'm a genuine gay person, you know, and they'd like to have 'the real thing'...or something like that.  Raise awareness, dispel myths and boldly come out to the parish all in one shot? Sure!

At work, we are doing a week-long series of seminars on cultural diversity and to kick the week off, we invited a local professor of cultural studies to speak about such things.  The gentleman was an excellent speaker and although he didn't really mention gender preference or identification, one of his points struck home - that people are people first and parts of stereotypical groupings second.

As I am driving to an appointment yesterday afternoon, I was thinking about these things and trying to come up with some cogent, reasonable and original thoughts.  That's when I saw this beautiful rainbow which made me stop in my tracks (figuratively).  It was bright and shining against the darkened clouds with a reflection not unlike the image above.  The image brought to mind the pride flag with it's colours representing unity in diversity, but something there didn't sit right.  The pride flag has six distinct colours, each crisp and differentiated from each other.  Looking at the genuine article (as above), one notes that those neat, clean divisions are absent and that the spectrum of colour is contiguous. 

There it is.

We don't fall into neat, distinct little boxes, crisply differentiated from our neighbours who live 'over there'.  Instead, we are all on our own wavelength, each of which rests next to the others in a tapestry of life but still unique and special.   No two of my friends are identical - emotionally, mentally, physically, sexually or spiritually.  We all are on that continuum of the rainbow and although some stereotypes can apply to any of us, no stereotype truly defines who we honestly are.  We are all unique individuals created in the image and likeness of the Divine.