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The last few days at The Well have been exciting and eventful days. First we had the wonderful experience of meeting the friendly and very special people of She Planet.
A few days ago we had just finished an HIV support group get-together where we discussed the 10 essential elements of a personal plan for wellness when living with HIV, and more excitement was in store.
It was followed by a support group for problems with homophobia, stigma, and coming out. It was an emotional and moving time of talking with a young professional accountant who had never discussed his gayness with anyone who was positive and affirming with him.
He was extremely fearful of coming out, but he did not want to continue a double life. He had had several traumatic experiences with people meaningful to him who quoted the Bible and described his ultimate and eternal doom if he chose a gay lifestyle.
Flashback: I remember that was just where I was in 1971 when I discovered the Gay Liberation Front.
Just like the accountant, I had been wandering in a confused life of great love for my family and church on the one hand, and an emerging reality of my sexuality (which in those days had absolutely no recognition in society in TV or movies or anything). The only thing that was loud and clear was the dictated, imposed sexuality approved by the church and its scornful denunciation of what we would call same-sex love today.
While we were in the support group with the accountant that flashback reminded me that after 42 years the battle is not over. It is still going on for people pulled way and pulled apart from their God-given self by doctrines. It comes up in all the support groups of The Well.
When I joined the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1971, Fr. Paul Breton (who consistently sends us LGBT news of the world) was already serving in MCC. But at that point in time GLF was a bright light for me, an alternative to the vacuum every place else in my world. For the first time I saw it spelled out. There is an alternative to the rejection and damnation. GLF pointed out that human nature does include people with same-sex love and these people do have human rights.
For me, though, there was something missing. Where is God is this puzzle of life?
Troy Perry had filled in that part of the mystery of life already since 1968, at least a year before Stonewall and the Gay Liberation Front.
In response to my observations about GLF the other day, Fr. Paul, who has been there, done that, and knows everything, emailed me his memories of GLF. I include them below. But first let me complete the story of my own journey away from wilderness and ignorance and self rejection along with church and society rejection.
Fortunately, at the same time I was meeting with some gay Lutheran pastors and other gay and lesbian Christians. We discovered Rev. Troy Perry and the Metropolitan Community Church. And eventually that same year brought MCC to Detroit.
From Troy I learned how to round out the picture GLF had begun to reveal. It filled in the essential part about God’s unconditional love and the whole theology of creation and the goodness of all God’s creation. Now there are five MCC parishes in the Philippines: Makati, Marikina, Quezon City, Olongapo, and Baguio. And Fr. Regen Luna in the Church of God of the Catholic Diocese of One Spirit in Dasmarinas, Cavite bringing that saving message to God’s beloved people who are LGBTIQ.
I want to share Fr. Paul’s observations and comments about GLF to show how GLF was a backdrop and introductory stage for me to make the transition to the full answer of liberation and truth which was presented prophetically by the Rev. Troy Perry.
********************
from: Paul Breton
to: Richard R. Mickley, CDOS, OSAe, PhD
date: 13 August 2013 02:16
subject: Re: From Gay Liberation Front 1971 to MCC Manila 1991
The GLF was a movement which grew out of the enthusiasm of Stonewall. The movement presented itself as open and inclusive. Most of the young people who joined the movement (there was no actual method of membership) were concerned about the Gay issues. Underlying the movement was the politics of the movement, which were clearly and definitely Marxist. Early political leaders encouraged people to go and spend time in Cuba to help with the sugar harvest. Then stories started coming out about how gays were persecuted in Cuba. The GLF was thoroughly disorganized - much more so than the Democratic Party. Little was being accomplished by the movement. Some of the early members started the Gay Activist Alliance or the Gay People's Alliance. Each became an organization which was more focused, more directed. The Gay Activist Alliance of Washington DC still exists and owns property in the city. The early GLF had virtually no tolerance for religion, in spite of the fact that they often found meeting space in Episcopal or Unitarian churches. The Marxists actually promoted antireligious propaganda. But it was a necessary development. Across the US, the GLF was assisted greatly by reporting by the "free press" and inexpensive classified advertising in the same.
I received an email the other day from the Peter Tatchell Foundation. I was fascinated by it. It described Peter Tatchell joining the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in 1971.
That’s the year I joined the Gay Liberation Front. I came out in 1971, and the only organization I heard of was GLF. I joined. Wow. I was excited.
Before long, my friends, meaning my gay friends, began asking me, “Why do you belong to that “leftist” organization?”
I said, “I don’t know anything about Leftist, but I do know they are fighting for the gay and lesbian cause, gay and lesbian rights (LGBT was not coined yet then).” And that is what I want.
That was two years after Stonewall and three years after Troy Perry started the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), but actually I heard of GLF shortly before I heard of MCC.
The interesting story of the early years of GLF and Gay activism in New York is told well in this link -- A Brief History of the Stonewall Riots and the Gay Rights Movement (Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activist Alliance and Early Gay Rights Organizations) = http://gaylife.about.com/od/stonewall/a/stonewallhistory_3.htm
The story of MCC (http://www.mccchurch.org), of course, was better rooted and more enduring. I heard of MCC by 1971 and became a member of the pastoral staff of MCC Detroit after helping a group of Christian pastors and Christian gay and lesbian people to find Troy and to get MCC set up in Detroit.
I have never regretted joining the Gay Liberation Front, and most especially I thank God that we found a tape recording of speech Troy Perry gave in Buffalo, and we determined to find him and bring his church to Detroit. I remained in MCC ministry for the next 24 years until I passed the MCC retirement age by two years, and I will cherish the love and friendship of Rev. Perry till my last breath -- after serving in MCC ministry in Detroit, Chicago, Phoenix, with him in his office in The International Headquarters (in LA at that time), Pomona, Auckland, New Zealand, and Manila.
The 1971 Gay Liberation Front Manifesto was read by Oscar Atadero when we held the first Pride March in Asia in 1994 (25 years after Stonewall) with a Pride Mass and rally in the Quezon Memorial Circle.
---------------------------------
What follows is the email I received from the Peter Tatchell Foundation...
Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, London 1971
London, UK - 8 August 2013
“The London Gay Liberation Front Manifesto 1971 transformed my consciousness and shaped modern LGBT identity. It gave us pride and vision. We dared to dream of a different, better world - with liberation for all of humanity,” said human rights activist, Peter Tatchell, a GLF veteran from 1971.
Read this edited Guardian article: http://bit.ly/14iD0is
Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, London 1971
By Peter Tatchell, Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation
The Gay Liberation Front Manifesto, published in London in 1971, was a revolution in consciousness and it remains so today. It offers a radical critique of sexism and what we now call homophobia; as well as a pioneering, far-sighted agenda for both social and personal transformation.
Amazingly, it was not written by high-powered intellectuals but by a collective of grassroots activists, driven by idealism and passion for the betterment of queer humanity. They included anarchists, hippies, left-wingers, feminists, liberals and counter-culturalists.
The final text was a compromise between these different factions - and it shows. Some of it reeks of writing-by-committee. In places, the style and language is dated and inelegant. Some ideas are expressed too crudely and simplistically. Often you have to read between the lines to comprehend the full implications of what is being said.
Despite these shortcomings, the central theses stand the test of time. They remain fresh, innovative, challenging and inspiring; stratospheres above the frequent mediocrity of today’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) politics.
Although I did not write the Manifesto, I was a Gay Liberation Front (GLF) activist at the time and involved in the discussions - and rows - about it. Inspired by the ideas of the black civil rights movement in the US, I had already conceptualised LGBT people as an oppressed minority, similar to black people, and that we had a comparable claim for equal treatment.
But the GLF Manifesto went much further. It was an eye-opener; expanding my civil rights perspective into a more radical critique of heterosexism, male privilege and the tyranny of traditional male and female gender roles. It woke me to the fact that queer liberation involved both social and personal change; that we could, within the bounds of the existing society, begin to create a new alternative culture that would liberate everyone, regardless of gender, sexuality or gender identity.
I can vividly remember my excitement on reading the finished text. It was revolutionary and mind-blowing; challenging the straight male supremacism of centuries. The LGBT equivalent of the Communist Manifesto? Well, not quite.
Although it included demands for an end to heterosexist discrimination, equal rights was not the main focus of the GLF Manifesto. Equality was a far too limiting agenda. It went beyond mere equal rights; seeing society as fundamentally unjust and seeking to change it, to end the oppression of queers – and straights.
The Manifesto aligned GLF with other liberation movements, such as the movements for women’s, black, Irish and working class freedom. Although critical of the misogyny and homophobia of the “straight left”, it positioned the LGBT struggle as part of the broader anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist movement, striving for the emancipation of all humankind.
Most importantly, it argued that LGBT people needed to embrace and ally with feminism:
“As we cannot carry out this revolutionary change alone, and as the abolition of gender roles is also a necessary condition of women’s liberation, we will work to form a strategic alliance with the women’s liberation movement, aiming to develop our ideas and our practice in close inter-relation. In order to build this alliance, the brothers in gay liberation will have to be prepared to sacrifice that degree of male chauvinism and male privilege that they still all possess.
The GLF Manifesto articulates a radical agenda for a non-violent revolution in cultural values and social institutions. It critiques homophobia, sexism, marriage, the nuclear family, monogamy, the cults of youth and beauty, patriarchy, the gay ghetto and rigid male and female gender roles.
As well as opposing the way things are, it outlines an alternative vision of how society and personal relationships could be, including living communally, gender subversive radical drag and non-possessive multi-partner open relationships. The message was: innovate, don’t assimilate.
The Manifesto’s idealistic vision involved creating a new sexual democracy, without homophobia, misogyny, racism and class privilege. Erotic shame and guilt would be banished. There would be sexual freedom and human rights for everyone – queer, bisexual and straight.
In echoes of Franz Fanon and Malcolm X, it stated that the precondition for this social revolution is transforming our own consciousness and lives:
“The starting point of our liberation must be to rid ourselves of the oppression which lies in the head of every one of us. This means freeing our heads from self-oppression and male chauvinism, and no longer organising our lives according to the patterns with which we are indoctrinated by straight society. It means that we must root out the idea that homosexuality is bad, sick or immoral, and develop a gay pride. In order to survive, most of us have either knuckled under to pretend that no oppression exists and the result of this has been further to distort our heads. Within gay liberation, a number of consciousness-raising groups have already developed, in which we try to understand our oppression and learn new ways of thinking and behaving. The aim is to step outside the experience permitted by straight society and to learn to love and trust one another. This is the precondition for acting and struggling together.”
Revolutionary not reformist, GLF’s Manifesto went beyond overturning homophobia and transphobia. The aim was to end "male chauvinism" and the "gender system", which were identified as underpinning both sexism and homophobia.
Straight male hegemony was seen as the common oppressor of both women and queers. Subverting the supremacy of heterosexual masculinity was, to us, the key to genuine liberation for LGBTs and the female sex.
The GLF Manifesto argues that much LGBT oppression results from the way we queers deviate from the socially-prescribed, orthodox gender roles of masculine and feminine:
“By our very existence as gay people, we challenge these roles. It can easily be seen that homosexuals don’t fit into the stereotypes of masculine and feminine and this is one of the main reasons why we become the object of suspicion, since everyone is taught that these and only these two roles are appropriate....popular morality, art, literature and sport all reinforce these stereotypes. In other words, this society is a sexist society in which one’s biological sex determines almost all of what one does and how one does it; a situation in which men are privileged, and women are mere adjuncts of men and objects for their use, both sexually and otherwise.”
In most societies throughout most of history, men have been expected to act masculine and desire women. Likewise, women are supposed to behave feminine and be attracted to men. Instead of fitting in with these expectations, LGBT people subvert the gender system. Gay men love other men and are often disparaged for being insufficiently macho. Lesbians love other women and tend to be less passive, feminine and dependent on men than many of their heterosexual sisters. This is a major reason why we're persecuted. Our gender non-conformity threatens the gender system that helps sustain the hegemony of male heterosexuality and misogyny.
Queer men don't need to sexually subjugate women. Queer women don’t need men to fulfil their erotic and emotional needs. This failure to meet traditional gender expectations is profoundly threatening to straight male supremacism:
“The long-term goal of Gay Liberation, which inevitably brings us into conflict with the institutionalised sexism of this society, is to rid society of the gender-role system which is at the root of our oppression. This can only be achieved by eliminating the social pressures on men and women to conform to narrowly defined gender roles. It is particularly important that children and young people be encouraged to develop their own talents and interests and to express their own individuality rather than act out stereotyped parts alien to their nature.”
The GLF Manifesto positively celebrates queer deviance. It argues that the right to be different is a fundamental human right and this includes the right to disobey straight gender norms. The espousal of "radical drag" and ''gender-bender" politics is a call to opt out of passing for straight and seeking male privilege. We were attempting to subvert the oppressiveness of traditional-style heterosexual masculinity because we understood that it was one of the main sustainers of the subordination of the female sex and same-sex love.
The Manifesto posited that LGBT people were often in the forefront of breaking down the rigid, suffocating gender system:
“Gay shows the way. In some ways we are already more advanced than straight people. We are already outside the family and we have already, in part at least, rejected the ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ roles society has designed for us. In a society dominated by the sexist culture it is very difficult, if not impossible, for heterosexual men and women to escape their rigid gender-role structuring and the roles of oppressor and oppressed. But gay men don’t need to oppress women in order to fulfil their own psycho-sexual needs, and gay women don’t have to relate sexually to the male oppressor, so that at this moment in time, the freest and most equal relationships are most likely to be between homosexuals.”
The core, ground-breaking message still rings true: that true queer emancipation involves changing ourselves and then changing society, rather than adapting to it. What’s required is a revolution in culture, to overturn centuries of male heterosexual domination and the limitations of traditional gender roles. Then, and only then, will queers and women be truly free. Bravo!
Peter Tatchell was an activist in London GLF, 1971-74 from http://www.petertatchell.net
The comments of Fr. Richard, including the challenge to action are given in full as follows…
Presentation: Bishop Richard R. Mickley, CDOS, Ph.D.
Bishop Catholic Diocese of One Spirit, Philippines
Coordinator, The Well, LGBT Healing Center
Prejudice, stigma, stumbling blocks to spirituality and true religious expression – have been my personal lifelong experience – and a target of my life work for the last 42 years, 22 of them in the Philippines.
After years of personal experience in psychotherapy for the stigma of being gay, and then earning a doctorate in clinical psychology, I devote my life to helping others with these issues.
It is only right that I should express in advance that I can only speak from my own perspective as a Christian, and a priest. I do not hold prejudice against other perspectives, which I hope will be expressed here.
I came to the Philippines 22 years ago to address the same concerns that you are addressing in this dialog. I opened the first openly gay and lesbian organization in the country. It was an affirming Christian church, within the organization, MCC, founded by Rev. Troy Perry in Los Angeles in 1968. When I started MCC here, TLF was already doing great work in the field of AIDS.
My experience with HIV started in the early 1980s. Before scientists discovered the virus in 1983, I saw 50 of my friends die from what was thought to be a strange gay disease. We were helpless then. All we could do was be with them. Now we know we can do more.
Ever since then, I have been trying to add my little bit to make a better, healthier, longer life for persons living with HIV. And that was given a big boost recently, I think you can understand my emotion, when my gay son, emailed me, “Dad, I am HIV positive.” Then I worked even harder to develop healing programs instead of just saying, “Do everything right.” I went to work to show him and my growing number of HIV positive friends what is “doing it right” to handle the virus.
The AIDS Society of the Philippines gave me a chance to be the coordinator of their Faith-based program. I met and dialogued with many sincere and compassionate church people who wanted to see an end to the stigma which not only distressed many vulnerable people especially in the LGBT community, but even contributed to the cause of the spread of HIV. At a forum similar to this I gave a prepared speech on this subject in 2005. It was published by the AIDS Society along with the other presentations given at the Forum.
It came to the attention of the Vatican. An emissary from Rome contacted me and sat down with me. He opened, “You are hard on the church.”
I replied, “Monsignor, I am not hard on the church. I love the church, the Mass, the sacraments. I find it necessary to fight the harmful, destructive sex-negative theology of the church which leads so many to AIDS or suicide, or lives of hell on earth.”
“What do you mean sex-negative theology?” he asked.
“I mean a theology of sex, of God’s supposed attitude toward human sexuality, which makes sex forbidden to vast segments of God’s people. It is based on St. Augustine’s theology of sex which in short is, All sex is bad except for a married couple once a year, under the blankets, with the clothes on; get in there fast, make the baby fast, and get out of there fast, and don’t enjoy it. Our modern description of that is: NO MASTURBATION, NO CONDOMS, NO SEX EXCEPT WHEN MARRIED TO MAKE BABIES, AND NO SEX EVER IN YOUR WHOLE LIFE, ANYWHERE, IN ANY WAY, IN ANY POSITION IF YOU ARE AN LGBT PERSON.”
The monsignor agreed to take my concern back to the Vatican. Hehe. To the Vatican where it will be archived in the vast Vatican library.
There is much love and compassion in the Catholic Church. The Camillians and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul and other orders have long exemplified it.
In another age, Jose Rizal spelled out the problem in his own expressive way. In a letter to Blumentritt, he said bluntly, “The Friars are the root of all the problems of the Filipinos.”
But, to the credit of his greatness and wisdom, he did not throw out the baby with the bath water. He condemned abuses, but he clung to the faith his mother taught him. Throughout the final four years of his life in exile in Dapitan he regularly and consistently attended Mass with the Jesuits at St. James Church there.
How sad he would be to see that the problem still persists in the official sex-negative church theology today.
Of course Blessed Pope John Paul II wrote a beautiful theology of the body – for married couples. BUT the rest of us are forever condemned to celibacy, not even masturbation.
Where does the stigma come from? Stigmatizing persons with HIV is not the only stigma in our country. Seeing a psychological professional causes raised eyebrows. Having many wives can cause election after election – mayor, senator, president, mayor. And how do you think dark-skinned human beings from the mountains feel when they are shunned and pushed around in our cities. A person with leprosy is avoided because of a physical condition. People with HIV are victims not only because of their perceived physical condition, but because of the perceived disgusting sexual angle.
Are these not concerns for faith-based people?
In 2005 I spoke to a faith-based forum on the same subject. What progress has been made in this area in the last eight years? Today we have heard excellent, positive, thought-provoking presentations from each of the speakers: Fr. Dan Cancino of the Camillian Fathers and the CBCP, Commissioner Salem Demuna of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos, Pastor Kakay Palparan of MCC Quezon City, Merceditas Apellado of UN AIDS, Bicbic Chua of Catholics for RH. The concerns about the spread of HIV and the stigma attached to persons living with HIV have been well expressed.
But what will be our action plan? What will be the positive action that results from this very thoughtful dialog? I perceive we are one in spirit. I was particularly impressed by the quotations from the prophet of Islam about caring for the sick shared with us by the Commissioner.
Let me continue with a bit more background before I conclude my challenge to us today.
The church movement I set in motion in MCC Manila in 1992 to address the very same issues of discrimination and equality within God’s love that we are talking about today has now expanded to almost a dozen churches, several of which are represented here today by Pastor Kakay, Fr. Regen Luna, and myself.
They continue the Christian tradition in the sex-positive theology of Jesus and the Rev. Troy Perry. But they can reach only a small portion of the population. Even the Roman Catholic Church with its vast resources in the wonderful programs described by Fr. Dan cannot reach all the people.
Through the years, in my small circle, I have contributed in the Philippines with a cyber seminar in sex-positive theology. For counseling individuals from my perspective as a priest, I have boiled it down to Seven Spiritual Truths for LGBT Christians to guide them to know what God is really like: that God is Love.
My second contribution in recent times is The Well. Our servant leader counselors have moved beyond theorizing about the causes of stigma, and they offer direct hands-on life-saving support for persons who already have HIV. Other groups represented here today, such as long and wonderful work of the TLF do well with the prevention and testing aspects of HIV.
Our Prayer Partners decided that after four years of prayer, it was time to balance prayer with action. We invited persons already living with HIV to come together and support each other in living with well-being. In individual and group support, persons living with HIV joyfully support one another in wholistic wellness with resources provided by The Well and its Method – a sure way to conquer the power of the virus. And likewise The Well has programs for other serious life difficulties such as come with drugs.
I invite you to refer your friends for the free support offered by The Well, or email me for resources I will gladly share with you to evaluate for setting up your own HIV wholistic well-being support group or groups.
Anyway, in short what do we do about the stigma, the apathy, the inaction?
I do what I can in my little world. In New Zealand I was asked to coordinate the Interfaith Aids Ministry Network there. We came up with a plan for the country, a very clear action plan for the churches and society to work for the elimination of stigma and prejudice and they were successful. The National Council of Churches acknowledged that the churches, both Catholic and Protestant, had dealt with human sexuality poorly, and they made a plan for change.
In this country it is clear we are one in spirit, with similar prescriptions from Jesus and the prophet. Can we also be one in action to solve this societal problem?
Rizal made an action plan and wrote the Noli and Fili to get the plan started. In his day, the objects of stigma were “Filipinos.” Today there are new objects of stigma within the Filipino people – and the stigma now comes from Filipino people towards Filipino people.
I hope in this dialog today you will find the solution, for once and for all — to all the stigma and oppression of sex-negative theology.
Maybe we have to ask ourselves what is “faith-based”? Faith in whom? In what? For Christians, does the Jesus who never in his life showed prejudice have anything to do with our faith? The Jesus who defied his religion and talked with the Samaritan woman at the well? The Jesus who made Samaritans, hated by his religion, the heroes of his stories as in The Good Samaritan? The Jesus who healed the homosexual lover of the homosexual Roman Centurion – without prejudice? The Jesus who said that people were more important than the rules of his religion? Where does the example of Jesus fit into a faith-based ministry?
St. Matthew and St. Luke, for example, tell of many interactions of Jesus with persons with leprosy.
We must continue the healing processes started 120 years ago by Rizal.
But what does that mean to us today especially with regard to the marginalized, modern-day LGBT people of our religions? Perhaps it means some brainstorming, some study, some caring, some work.
For us Christians, it could mean no more statistics, just the compassion of Jesus put into a modern-day plan. Thoughtful, compassionate, Biblically-based approaches. It starts out with, “Here’s what we believe about equality, human dignity, and the Way of Jesus.” It then spells out, “Here’s what we are going to do about equality, human dignity and the Way of Jesus in order to eliminate stigma and build a better world.”
I don’t know your processes for making such plans. Committee? Task force? In the workshop that follows immediately after these remarks, you have a chance to make an action plan that has never been made before. I hope today finds the answer. The response of people of faith will be a testimony to our faith.
God bless you all for what you are doing to build a better world and a longer happier life for God’s beloved marginalized, stigmatized LGBT people living with HIV.
NOT SPOKEN FOR LACK OF TIME:
The heart of the HIV Wholistic Well-being Support Group is supporting each other in the following ten essential elements.
Ten Essential Elements of a Well-being check list:
1. I take care of myself with around balance and harmony in the good things of life.
2. I take care of myself by maintaining a balance of my intellectual, physical, spiritual, and emotional parts.
3. I take care of myself by conquering HIV with all around health and wellness.
4. I take care of myself by following medical advice and taking medicines and therapies prescribed.
5. I take care of myself by maintaining a lifestyle that boosts my medicines and does not cancel them.
6. I take care of myself with a priority to build up my immune system by study and practice.
7. I take care of myself with proper sleep and proper exercise and proper nutrition.
8. I take care of myself with positive thoughts, a joyful outlook while I pursue the meaning and purpose of my life.
9. I take care of myself by having friends and being a friend with sexual enjoyment as appropriate.
10. I take care of myself by supporting myself and my friends in our “Doing Everything Right” Support Group.
The leader invites one by one to share which of the Ten Essential Elements of a Well-being check list
* anyone may be having trouble with,
* what are the obstacles,
* what are the helpful things to do in any one’s experience.
Successes are welcome.
And closing with an optional and agreed-upon prayer.
The following prayer is inspired by the “Spiritual Survival Pamphlet While Living with HIV” of Rev. Dr. Steve Pieters, 30 year AIDS survivor:
This is How it is, Lord, And You are My Friend.
Lord, first of all, I want to be honest with You.
I know I can find meaning and purpose with your help.
You are not only my Lord and Savior.
Most of all, you are my Friend.
I know I am living with a real virus,
but I fully believe, even when I am sad and down,
that you did not give me this challenge.
A virus did.
I know you are with me as my Friend
and you want to help me to be fully alive
and have a full life.
And you want me to do my part,
to do everything I can
to defeat the power of this virus,
to work as best as I can
on the important elements of maintaining wellness.
I know I am responsible for my health,
and I need to collaborate with my health care providers.
I know you want me to continue
toward my goals, dreams, and unfinished business.
You want me to overcome obstacles
with new-found coping skills
in a support group with like-minded friends –
and to add my own support to all my friends.
I will do my best,
with your help, Jesus,
to live the 10 essential elements of well-being.
