Matthew 19:16-22

       Sell what you have

       I noted in yesterdays blog that true happiness comes from within, not wealth. Wealth can easily give yourself the illusion of happiness. The most notable example I can think of is Christina Onassis.
I leave you to google about this woman of incredible wealth who died at 37. 

        In the reading today we hear of a man similar perhaps to Christina. He apparently had it all. He had the wealth, the success and obeyed the Ten Commandments. Yet this man had a burning in is soul that made him realize there was more, he was not fulfilled. It is an age old story. It is why perhps many Gold Coast mansions wound up in the hands of the Church. The wealthy realize there is something more. They live too greedily and it burns their hearts out. So what is a fellow to do? Jesus' answer to the man in this reading was to sell all his belongings and give it to the poor.

      I am not sure any of us ready for that move yet. This does however point once more to where we find happiness. It may be a twist of irony that gay men and women find more happiness than most. I'm not speaking sexually though I think we should all be happy with our own sexuality. That's a part of who we are and happiness is finding that and embracing it.

       Gay men and women often give up everything to find their happiness.  And That is the point. Not unlike myself, realizing I was gay at the age of 50, I eventually offered to give up everything and was graced with more than I had ever dreamed possible. In coming out, I could have very realistically lost everything I had ever found of value. Some of it money, some of it status, most of it people whom I love. This is what I had to do to find my own happiness, my happiness within, my wholeness. Our stories in the gay community are all different but similar non the same. We know what makes us truly happy and it comes from within and it is not based on money.

       I repeat,  know that true happiness and true beauty comes from within.