A couple of days ago, I got the most lovely text message from my friend Sara. Sara and I met each other twenty years ago when we both worked at a summer camp in Mississippi called Camp of the Rising Son (CRS). (If it’s not obvious, CRS is a Christian Camp.) If you ever want to see my heart melt, ask me about the people at CRS. Ask me about the kids. It’s truly a magical place, and I guess as long as I live I’ll remember all the silly songs we used to sing, and all the ridiculous costumes we used to wear to entertain the children, and that one kid named Charles who threw up his chicken strips on my white shorts because he was homesick. (Thanks a lot, kid.)

(The above photo is of Sara and me, at camp. Funny how I thought I was in the closet back then, I know.)

Even now, I think of people like Sara and think, Family. And actually, for several years, I used to drive to Kansas City to see Sara and her brother Zach and her sister Joanna and their friend Liz, all of whom worked at camp. I’d spend holidays with them. I was there when Sara married my dear friend Mark (also from camp), and I was there for Sara’s mom’s funeral. Like I said, Family.

But for all the years I spent at summer camp and all the nights I stayed up late with my friends after the kids had gone to bed and all the soul-searching conversations, I never talked about my sexuality. Not that it wasn’t there, I just didn’t talk about it. I guess that was during the (really long) phase when I hoped it would change. (It never did.) I mean, I knew the camp’s policy. It was a sin. That was the line I used, even believed, when I went through my job interview when I was sixteen. So it was never discussed.

And it’s not like CRS was the only Christian institution where I’d heard that line. Hell, I grew up in the Bible Belt. I went to a Baptist Church on Sundays. I attended a Christian High School. And whether it was explicitly said or not, the message I internalized was, “This is wrong and I’m wrong. This is something to be ashamed of. It’s certainly nothing to brag (or blog) about.”

So that sucks.

As the years have gone by, I don’t believe that stuff anymore, and I can’t tell you how good that feels. But the residue of it all has been that anytime I get around Christians I grew up around or worked at camp with, I automatically assume that I would be judged or not accepted if I were to be completely honest and vulnerable about who I am (and whom I like to do). God, Marcus, you don’t have to type every thought that pops into your brain.

Tonight I had dinner with my friend Jim and his wife Sue. I met Jim years ago when I worked out at a gym he owned, and we ended up being working partners. There for a while (before I rediscovered my love for carbohydrates), we were working out all the time. And we pretty much talked about everything, but again, nothing that touched on my personal life. Well, when I broke up with my ex, I was a wreck. At first, Jim didn’t ask questions, even when he helped me move out. But I clearly wasn’t myself, and eventually I stopped working out so I could spend more time crying and eating pancakes.

One day I got this text message from Jim that said something like, “What the hell is going on with you? Whatever it is, it’s okay. NO JUDGMENT. We can talk about it.”

So I told Jim that guy wasn’t just my friend. He was my boyfriend. And my heart was broken.

And guess what? Jim cared about me, but he didn’t care about that other stuff. It didn’t change a thing.

(Here’s a picture of a really cool piece of art from Jim’s house, just because.)

One of my favorite spiritual teachers is a guy named Eknath Easwaran. (He’s dead.) He teaches a type of meditation that I really like called Passage Meditation where you repeat a spiritual passage (like the Lord’s Prayer or the Prayer of St. Francis) over and over again. Anyway, he wrote a book called Original Goodness, and in it he explains that whereas some faiths teach that man is inherently sinful or evil or bad, many faiths teach that man in inherently good, that at the core of each of us resides a spark of the divine.

I can’t tell you how much I like this idea.

There’s another spiritual teacher whom I like named Byron Katie, and if you’ve been around me much, you’ve probably heard me talk about her. Now I just say, “My therapist says,” but I used to say, “Byron Katie says.” Well anyway, Byron Katie says something similar. She says that our nature is good, kind, and loving. She says that she knows this is true because anytime we act differently, it feels like stress.

In my personal experience, I find this idea to be true. It never feels good to be angry or unkind or un-compassionate for very long. I always feel more “at home” when I’m patient or generous or giving.

What’s more, I find this idea to be true in my experience with others. It’s not that people don’t do or say shitty things. But overwhelmingly, I find people to be more good than I do sinful or evil or wrong. When Sara sent me that text message, she said she’d spent part of the day with my blog, that she’d read every word, that she saw my insides and my guts. And it was a really long text message, so I kept scrolling, just waiting for some judgment, any judgment, somewhere. But then I got to the end and didn’t find any. Sara’s exact words were, “Please know I love you—FOR ALWAYS.”

And I guess when I think about those messages from Jim and Sara, I’m reminded that people are good. (I wish I could tell you about all the wonderful folks who have, without even knowing it, shown me that my fears of judgment have been unfounded. I mean, it’s really good news to find out that the world isn’t as scary as you thought it was.) Sure, we all have our moments, we all forget our true nature at times, but we were made to love without conditions. That’s the packaging we were sent with. That’s what we are capable of.