Imagine my joy, relief, gratitude and wide-eyed wonder when, in 1994, as a redneck queer from dirt road Mississippi, I finally escaped the redneck iron curtain and immigrated to the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco. I centralized command of this Promised Land from an old Victorian at the corner of Page and Lyon one block north of Buena Vista (Good View) Park – notorious for cruising in a pre-Grindr era, a fact I learned later from locals who burst out laughing at me when I naively said I loved the park’s views! The old Victorian perched on a steep incline across the street from where Janis Joplin had lived (pre-“Pearl”) at 122 Lyon #3. From my window I could watch docent-led walking tours of crusty Hippies, clustered in memoriam, marveling at my Bon Vivant Tableau! This was NOT Mississippi. I felt right at home.

I had no idea who the muscley studly was who lived downstairs until Castro locals (some probably had autographs) balked in disbelief that I didn’t know he was the famous X-rated gay “daddy” known as “Steve Regis.” His real name on the mailbox was just plain ole Randy. We all shared the building’s one washer and dryer in the downstairs garage. He would often forget his bleached tighty-whities left in the dryer. Every time I had to move them to dry my clothes, I thought some fan would probably pay good money for what was annoying me! 

My front door opened out into a hallway across from another apartment’s front door. On occasion, the two doors would open at the same time. The first time it happened, I tried to act as cool as I could beholding the largest haul of bondage gear I had never seen. Part of a “throuple” before I think that was a common term, this neighbor had an unforgettable manly verb for a name (think Rock, Stone, Trip, Chase or Scout). The throuple were civic-minded activists. I came to admire them while still being amused at such things as wooden clothespins being spray-painted flat black down in the garage far enough away from Randy’s vintage British racing green Jaguar to avoid getting sprayed accidentally.  

How did this move to San Francisco even happen? 

A cinematic image catalyzed a 7th grader’s escapist fantasy! What dreams may come and when is a divine outcome. I’m not entitled to a blessing. It is bestowed. Mine is only to do the work without attachment to any outcomes.

Here’s the story behind that spiritual lesson. 

A year before the move, I had seen Robin William’s movie “Mrs. Doubtfire” (the second highest grossing film of 1993) where, as often in cinema history, San Francisco glistens as an uncredited character. The 7th grader in me, bullied to tears, had long dreamed of escaping dirt-road Mississippi. Back then “San Francisco some day” was the  F-all-y’all I escaped into to survive since I could imagine San Francisco from the opening credits of The Doris Day Show. In the opening of every episode, Doris drove a convertible across the Golden Gate Bridge into the city from the Marin headlands. 

Seeing San Francisco so gorgeous in “Mrs. Doubtfire” reminded the 7th grader in me to dream. My venture into dreaming by any means necessary came in the form of law school applications around the country. I applied to four Bay Area law schools. If I got admitted to any, that was my ticket to 7th grade fantasy come true. I was admitted to two of the four law schools, enrolled in one, hated every minute of it, and quit in the first year with no regrets. From dirt-road poverty, I’ve now lived in one of the world’s most beautiful (and expensive) places for over 30 “I-still-can’t-believe-it” postcard years.

Miracle-working is a daily thing for anyone in recovery! My recovery has been a discipline of discovering when to “lean in” vs when I can pass on any given lesson. I was seven years sober when I saw “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Steeped in recovery aphorisms like “wherever you go, there you are” I learned that simply adjusting the view does nothing to change the viewer. 

That life-long lesson remains one of the most important commitments of my spiritual path. The “Lean In or Pass Formula” is about 97% lean into the lessons in this Earth School since that’s the point, and 3% pass, reserved because there is a merciful God for how much a soul can take. For nearly any degree of hell in the moment, my prayer remains, 

“Thank you for this lesson – may I learn it to the fullest.“

That prayer is essential practice alongside the Buddhist Lovingkindness Meditation (as taught by Jack Kornfield)

“May I be filled with lovingkindness

May I be well in body and mind

May I be safe from inner and outer dangers

May I be truly happy and free“

Jack teaches that one can personalize “Lovingkindness” so I add a sentence at the beginning,

“May I be filled with gratitude for my wonderful life” 

(I admit it’s tainted with a 7th grader’s F-All-Y’all)

and I add a sentence at the end,

“May I wish these things for all beings in all places at all times.”

If there is someone or something I absolutely can’t stand, that something counts in all beings in all places at all times. 

How might that apply to you?  It could be something inarguably despicable or it could be someone you love but struggle with, or it could be you learning how to love yourself – perhaps the hardest hurdle in this lifetime for too many of us. 

Like many at first, you may have thought the lovingkindness meditation sounded sweet – something like a child’s prayer “Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep.” Plug in what you detest the most. There’s nothing “sweet” about it. All beings in allplaces at all times is exCRUCiating – by design.  It’s the CRUCifixion of an entitled self who is incapable of being anything other than “only human.” 

“Only human” is not my destiny in this lifetime. I am karmically orbiting in a transmogrifying faith that’s more than “only human.” I only understand Jesus this way when “Matthew” writes, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross (an excruciating crucifixion that dies to self will) and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). All my life, I’ve been trained to “come boldly to the throne of Grace” (Hebrews 4:16) since “to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

“Christ-like” to me has nothing to do with “do-gooder” compliance. “Christ-like” means “I and the Father are one.” “Only human” has never been an option for me. Of course, my humanity IS a gift of karmic opportunity, an opportune investment system to daily choose transcendence. Reckoning with that reality (acceptance) has been essential in my recovery. But the end goal of recovery is not an acceptance of my humanity. My humanity is but a vehicle. The end goal is freedom to fulfill my soul’s intended transcendence. If that is what recovery from alcoholism ultimately brings to my capacity, then I am grateful for alcoholism’s hidden treasure, this pearl of great price. 

Practicing (not perfecting) acceptance for 39 years, I have only asked God to let a “lesson” pass less than five times. Getting to finally leave the South in Autumn 1994 was one such mercy. For so many years, I would see others getting on with their lives while I mired in what seemed like a spiritual refusal. I know now that these seemingly barren epochs of our lives are not mires but seed germinating an abundant harvest in time. I’ve learned, “Don’t curse / disturb your seed.”

For whatever decadence you might imagine San Francisco could represent, for me, its spiritual decadence is the most profound. The energy of the area, from the waters of the Pacific Ocean and the San Francisco Bay tiding the SF peninsula to the steep hills that create stunning vistas at every turn, to the “Golden Sun that shines Holy Spirit on me,” to the ancient Redwood Forests and the Love Flower (agapanthus) to the freedom of a bondage throuple’s yoke of civic-mindedness, I am constantly dazzled by glory to say nothing of the world class art museums, the symphony, the opera and an international airport 15 minutes away! There is no amount of Fox News trashing this glorious gift from God that can affect my profound gratitude to live as I am blessed to be – a Mississippi dirt-road redneck queer alcoholic psychotherapist San Francisco liberal elite with a critical race theory doctorate and 20 years of leadership in California higher education. 

For this article, I interpreted a vista from a favorite hiking location that reminds me of Wyeth’s famous painting Christina’s World.^[i] My “edited” photo used with this article’s title artwork inserts Christina into a compositionally similar landscape. Her apparent incapacity to resolve some longing is the identification we all have with the painting. That’s what makes it endure as a must see at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art. I project onto Christina’s longing my childhood desire to escape a soul-sucking confederate gravity that stalked the first 30 years of my life. In my photo for this article, what awaits Christina at the top of that hill is a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean to the west and the entire San Francisco skyline to the north. I hike past this vista several times a month. I never take it for granted. I dreamed of this life from bullied despair. I know something of Shakespeare’s “… What dreams may come…”

My experience documents that a glorious existence of dreams-come-true await the hard work of recovery, a spiritual journey of constantly “taking up a cross” I don’t want and “accepting what I can’t change” even though it “may pierce my side while I asphyxiate”! While 39 years of crucifixion is hard to sell “to the masses,” I’m all in. The incredible reward of taking up that cross is what I’m selling to “white America” in “Twelve Steps for White America: for a United States of America” my treatment plan for democracy where race will no longer predict outcomes. As you might imagine, “takers” are hard to come by. I can’t make it easier by lying about what it takes. Individual repentance, atonement, and redemption lead to national truth, reconciliation and renewal. There is no shortcut.

In the USA we now endure, predictors indicate that this may not end well for us – so much damage abounds. Perhaps, after all of this, I remain hopelessly naive in what Obama called the audacity of hope. I grant you it may not generalize, but I can only testify that miraculous change can not only occur, but change may also exceed one’s wildest expectations! 

What dreams may come with these turbulent winds of change? I hope that the hell we are now living through in the USA proves in retrospect to be what it took to alter 400 years of slavery’s persistence and consequences. Frankly, I’m hopeless when I think of how excruciating the work ahead will be – too many (even in the choir) are woefully unprepared for the rigorous work ahead. I’m ecstatic to imagine that the same miracle that snatched me from the abyss can also form a more perfect union. Imagine us all arriving in THAT future “Haight Ashbury” as upstart-green as can be  – finally, a democracy where race no longer predicts outcomes. What is more aspirationally “American” than that! 

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^[i] Andrew Wyeth’s painting, Christina’s World, hangs in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Article retrieved September 6, 2025 from:  https://www.wshu.org/off-the-path/2023-07-31/christinas-world-wyeths-masterpiece-is-still-an-enigma