"...All of me has been invited. I have not had to leave one inch of my existence outside the door to come to this Feast." Sawnie E. Morris

When we are different in a way that is devalued by the world we live in, we learn to compartmentalize. We learn where we are safe, whether from physical assault or from verbal condemnation, and where we are not safe. We learn where we are not allowed to be visible, and where we are not allowed to be at all. It may be okay to be out at work but not at church. It may be safe to come out to a friend but not to the boss.

If we feel excluded, Ellen Goodman observed recently, we count where and how often we appear and work to correct that omission. Her point was that when we are included, we stop counting. She reminded us how we used to attend to whether Italians or Jews or Catholics were elected or appointed to high positions in our government. We rarely do that anymore.

That is my goal. I want to be included. I want to be able to stop counting. I want all of me to be included. The scientist and the lover, the psychologist and the baker, the Jew and the writer, the graying middle-aged woman, the teacher, the lesbian. Jewell Gomez wrote of Audre Lorde, that her "genius resided in her insistence on bringing her whole self to whatever she was doing." That is what I want to do, to bring my whole self to whatever I do.

I heard Romanovsky and Phillips sing earlier this year. One of their encores was a song that has been part of my life for a long time. I must have been in my teens the first time I heard it. It was a rallying cry, a call to arms, for the generation that came of age under the shadow of Viet Nam. While I cared about the war and the young men who were at risk, there was a way in which I was not completely engaged, not emotionally drawn by the cause. I realize now, hindsight being the clear form of vision it is, that no matter where you stood on the issue, women were excluded from the important arenas. We were not eligible for the draft. We did not play a decision-making role in the debate about the war, not in government and not in the anti-war movement. Coming out as a led me to an even greater appreciation of how much my country excludes me, an exclusion highlighted and underlined by the passage of Amendment 2 in Colorado and the debate about whether I should be allowed to serve in our military.

The good news, of course, is that many people in this country are no longer willing to be excluded, whether for gender, race, disability or orientation; no longer willing to let others make decisions for us. When I first heard the song Romanovsky and Phillips sang, I was unformed, unaware of who I was. I had a sense that the world needed changing, but I lacked clarity about why change was important for me. I lacked clarity about how I fit in to a social change movement. I hardly remember that unformed young woman anymore. She's become a woman who knows who she is, and knows she wants to live in a world where all of her is invited.

So, when they sang that night in January, when we sang along,

"Come senators, congressmen,
Please heed the call,
Don't stand in the doorways,
Don't block up the hall,"

I saw Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms being replaced by the likes of Barbara Mikulski, Carol Mosely Brown, and Pat Schroeder. When we sang:

"The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last"

I saw Phyliss Schafly and Ronald Reagan being replaced by the likes of Harvey Milk and Gerry Studds and Roberta Achtenberg. When we sang:

"Please get out of the new one If you can't lend a hand"

I was engaged in it in a way Dylan never dreamed of, in a way I didn't know then that I needed. When we sang:

"The times they are a-changing,"

It was not just for my straight friends. It was not just for the men in the room. It was for me. It was with hope for the day that I can stop counting because I am included, hope for the day that all of me is invited to the feast.

5/28/98

Author and psychologist Gail S. Bernstein, Ph.D. has a psychotherapy practice in Denver, Colorado. Dr. Bernstein speaks and writes about gay, lesbian and bisexual people for both general and professional audiences, and is the author of the new audiotape, NOT HETEROSEXUAL: An Educational Program About Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual People.