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308 pages, Paperback
First published January 10, 2007
I said, "Mary, tell me something. Why do you have that picture from The Wizard of Oz on your wall?" Mary chuckled at my question. "Oh, that's my favorite movie. I saw it the first time when I was five. But it's more than that. The story is so relevant to my life. That big, wise Wizard, you know. He's nothing. You pull back the curtain, it's just a man. I went through my whole life looking at the men at church as the Wizard, practically as God. I believed every word they said, every way they interpreted the Bible, every condemning judgment on my gay son. After Bobby died, I started to study on my own, and I see the Bible through my own eyes now, not through theirs. I pulled back the curtain, and it was not God, just men. The tin man, he had a heart all along. The lion had courage all along. I knew the truth about Bobby all along, but I didn't listen inside, I listened outside. Most of us go on dancing down that yellow brick road to find the wizard and be told the secret. But the secret is, the kingdom of God is within, inside every one of us. That picture, I keep it there to remind me."
"Gerald," I said, "what would have happened it you had just made yourself stay? If you had just made yourself put away that other part of you, just gritted it out, what would have happened?"
He thought only a moment. "You would have watched me die in a different way, that's all. Bit by bit, I would have gotten bitter and empty and ugly. That 'other part of me' isn't just a part, you know. It's the center. People don't understand that."