Being Ravaged by Love with Carl Siciliano

Carl Siciliano is the Founder of the Ali Forney Center, which he built up to become the nation’s largest organization providing housing to LGBTQ youth. He is also the author of Making Room: Three Decades of Fighting for Beds, Belonging, and a Safe Place for LGBTQ Youth. In his youth, Carl spent several years living with and serving unhoused people as part of the radical Catholic Worker Movement and spent eight months living in Benedictine monasteries. 

My brief backstory with Carl is that I worked for the Ali Forney Center for the bulk of my time living in NYC where I served as their director of special events and got to see the org grow very quickly. I love the Ali Forney Center and all the folks connected to it- especially the people it serves, and reading Carl’s new book gave me a deeper perspective about the importance of this work. 

We start by talking about Ali Forney, a homeless queer youth who is the namesake and inspiration behind the Ali Forney Center, and we talk about what was so profoundly impactful about that relationship for Carl.  

Carl speaks of his admiration of Ali’s and their ability to own a relationship with God, describing this as the conscious divinity of Ali. 

We look at what it was like to bring awareness of the plight of homeless LGBTQ youth by initiating rallies and other forms of activism, and this was a transformational moment of the consciousness of the LGBTQ community (and beyond) in New York. 

 Next, we dicuss the spiritual significance of supporting our most disenfranchised community members. And then we look at how Carl has contended with the hypocrisy of some religious leaders essentially doing the opposite of God’s work by creating more division rather than unity. 

In addition to looking at the shadow side of religions, Carl also makes a passionate case for what queer Catholicism can look like and how it can be experienced (leaving me wanting to attend mass..!). 

All these and many more topics in this very personal and inspiring interview. 

Learn more about the Ali Forney Center-

https://www.aliforneycenter.org/

Check out Carl’s new book-

https://www.amazon.com/Making-Room-Decades-Fighting-Belonging/dp/0593444248

Connect with Wil-

https://www.wil-fullyliving.com/work-with-wil

Transcript

Wil Fisher  0:02  
Queerly beloveds, We are gathered here today for some juicy conversations about all things spiritually, queer and queerly spiritual. I'm Sylvia. Will gather rainbow, a spiritual life coach, retreat host with the most and a drag queen, and I'll be chatting with the most amazing folks, or simply sharings of wisdom on my own. If you like what I'm serving, please remember to subscribe so we can keep hanging out. All right, let's get super woo together in this spiritual AF, queer AF, cosmic container.

And blast off. Hello, beloveds, and welcome back to another episode of queerly Beloved. This is a really special one, because in it, I interview my former boss, a man who I love and admire, Carl Siciliano. Carl is the founder of the Ali fornet center where I used to work, which he tirelessly helped build up to become the nation's largest organization providing housing to homeless LGBTQ youth. In his youth, Carl spent several years living and serving unhoused people as part of the radical Catholic Worker Movement, and he spent eight months living in Benedictine monasteries. So many other interesting things about Carl, but one of the main ones that we focus on is the book that he recently published. It is called making room, three decades of fighting for beds belonging and a safe place for LGBTQ youth, and it is an incredible, incredible book that I highly recommend. So my brief backstory with Carl is that I worked for the Ali fornay center for the bulk of my time living in NYC, where I served as their director of special events, and it was the very beginning of this amazing organization, and I got to help it and be with it as it grew very quickly to support more homeless LGBTQ youth. And I really love the ALI for nay center and all the folks connected to it, especially the people it serves. So reading Carl's new book gave me a deeper perspective about the importance of this work. And we start in this interview by talking about Ali fornet, who is the namesake and inspiration behind the Ali fornet Center. And we talk about what was so profoundly impactful about Carl's relationship with Ali and how he came to be inspired to found the center in his name. We also talk about Ali's ability to own his relationship with God as a queer person, and the conscious divinity that was so present in Ali, and what that meant to Carl to observe. We then talk about what it was like to bring awareness of the plight of homeless, LGBTQ youth through the form of rallies and other activism, and how that was a transformational moment of the consciousness of the community in New York City. We then talk about the spiritual significance of supporting our most disenfranchised community members. Next, we look at how Carl has contended with the hypocrisy of some religious leaders, essentially doing the opposite of God's work by creating more division rather than unity. And in addition to looking at the shadow side of religions, Carl also makes a passionate case for what queer Catholicism can look like and how it can be experienced, leaving me wanting to attend mass. We end with Carl telling one of his favorite stories about Ali that illustrates the purity and depth of the love they shared. All these and many more stories and a lot of beautiful wisdom threaded through this interview, I can't wait for you to get into it. Enjoy. Hello, Carl, welcome to queerly Beloved. I'm so happy to have you.

Carl  3:45  
I'm happy to be had by you. Will.

Wil Fisher  3:48  
It's so sweet to come together in this context. I hadn't really began my spiritual journey to the degree that I am on it now, when I was working with you at the Olive Renee center, and you always, I always knew that you were a spiritual person and had a profound relationship with God, and that it was part of the mission. It was, it was an undercurrent of the mission in some way, even though it wasn't explicit of the ollie for nay center, but it wasn't something that I was fully aware of or embracing. And so to have this opportunity to connect in this way is really heartwarming for me. So thank you.

Carl  4:36  
Thank you will, I mean, you know, I'll just say that God is with us whether we're conscious of it or not, whether we're thinking about it or not. And I think God is especially present in acts of love and mercy and compassion. So I would argue that when you were at the ALI Fornes center, you were very much on a spiritual journey. It just. May not have been conscious.

Wil Fisher  5:00  
Yes, yes. That really resonates with me. Yeah. Thank you. So before getting too much further into it, I want to start with the question that I ask all my guests at the top of the interview, which is, who are you in this moment on this day, in this moment in your life, but tell me by describing the perfect drag avatar that embodies that

Carl  5:27  
perfect drag avatar that embodies who I am at this very moment. Yeah,

Wil Fisher  5:35  
and it doesn't have to be like a drag queen, you know, like a Ru Paul's drag race drag queen. It could be, but it could be something else. And if you'd like, I can go first. Sure, go, go ahead. Okay, cool. So I am feeling into this, this moment of pride right now. I just passed my MCC coaching certification, which is the highest level of certification you could get in coaching. I just did that yesterday, and just announced it to the world today. And so I'm in this very like excitedly proud moment of strength and confidence and being in connection with you also feels like a moment, you know, a proud moment. And so as I was tuning in, as I offered to go first, this is really silly, but I think our conversation about your pig came to mind, and there is something like unabashed about pig's energy, like they just are themselves. And I don't know if pride is the best adjective for a pig, but it was coming through for me. And the other thing that was coming through is Mary, like, Proud Mary. And I don't know exactly what Proud Mary is about. That's something for me to read up on, but so what's coming through is this Proud Mary pig. This is like, proud pig that's just like, you know, just owning the fullness of themselves and and proud to be who they are. And so that is my drag avatar for the day, Proud Mary pig.

Carl  7:18  
Okay, well, you know what I will say that my drag avatar, for the moment, is not a drag queen, but probably somebody who's inspired a great many drag queens. I would say it is Betty Davis and All About Eve launching her party and saying, fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

And, you know, the reason I say that is,

you know, my book is coming out, and I'm just, you know, like, excited stress, like, you know, wondering how it's going to be received. Also, you know, Betty Davis had been so glamorous and beautiful, you know, like around now Voyager, but you know, by the time of All About Eve, she was getting older, and, you know, so I feel like when I first entered the public world, I was, you know, like, young and beautiful, and now I'm a little older. So, so all of those things make Betty Davis and All About Eve

Wil Fisher  8:24  
resonate, beautiful. Buckle up. Is it? Buckle up. Put on your seat belt. Pass in your seat belt. Great. Well, I am honored to be on this ride with you in this capacity, this, this book launch ride. And I just gotta say, I loved this book so much. Carl's book, making room. Three decades of fighting for beds belonging and a safe place for LGBTQ youth, I just ate it up. I mean, I couldn't stop reading it. I found it so profoundly inspiring and also really interesting, like it's also really a fun read, because so much happens in a short amount of time, and so much change transpires. And I'll say from from a personal standpoint, having worked with you for the ollie for nay center. It was a really touching experience to contextualize the work that I got to do the way I got to serve that organization, because although I knew some of these stories or had some sense of the history, I didn't nearly have the depth that I was able to receive from reading this. And so it has really shifted the meaning of that time for me, which was a significant amount of time when I was when I was serving the oliph Center. It has made it more profound in my experience of my. Self and my history, just knowing the the magnitude of that mission. And so there were definitely moments when I was crying, not just from feeling inspired by you and touched by the stories of the young, young people and and sometimes crying tears of sadness and empathy for some of the tragedies, but also tears of inspiration from knowing that I got to be a part of this journey, and not fully understanding what the journey was until I read the book. So I would just want to acknowledge you for this from a personal standpoint, how big of an impact it made on me.

Carl  10:47  
Well, thank you will it really moves me to hear that, you know, one of the things that I think maybe could be carved on my gravestone when I die is, you know, Carl Siciliano, he made homosexuals cry. But, you know, I think it's a moving book, and I feel like I put a lot of my heart and soul and consciousness and a lot of thought and prayer went into that book. So I'm grateful to hear that, that it resonates with you the way it does. And you know, frankly, you were there, you were part of it. So, you know, I love the thought that you found it meaningful.

Wil Fisher  11:35  
Yeah, I My hope is that all folks who have worked for AFC at some point, get a chance to read it. And the folks that are working there now, I hope that they get a chance to read it too. I mean, honestly, I commented on Chris constable's post about a place at the table. I was like reading this book. I want to move back to New York City and work for the Oli free center. Again. It just is so powerful to know what all was entailed in in this story. It's just so powerful. So let's get into it. So, you know, one of the things I really appreciated in the beginning part of the book was the history of Ollie frenet and your relationship to him. And you know, it strikes me that you have come into contact with so many homeless, LGBTQ youth throughout the years, but there was something particularly special about all A and so I'd love for you to share what it was about him that created this deep connection and this inspiration for you,

Carl  12:45  
sure. So, yeah, you know, look, I, I've spent it's going on 40 years, I think, since I started first working with with homeless people. And, you know, I've met a lot of people, and a lot of people have, really, you know, touched my heart and my soul, and, you know, impacted me in a lot of ways, but nobody more so than Ali. I mean, Ali is like, this seminal, life altering figure for me in my own life. Um, it's a little hard to put words to something that's that deep. So I think the first thing that really struck me about Ali was how unguarded. Well, first, let me say that Ali would identify as male and female in a time when there wasn't really the language of non binary, Ali would alternate between male and female pronouns, and so I'm probably going to do that somewhat during the interview, like sometimes I may call Ali he, sometimes I may call Ali she sometimes I may call Ali Bay, so I don't want to confuse people, but that's that. So, yeah, the first thing that struck me about Ali was just how unguarded they were. A lot of when I first started working with the homeless kids, they were in really horrible situations. Their lives were just abysmally cruel in terms of what had been done to them and what was being done to them, and they needed to have a lot of armor. You know, they needed to protect themselves, and that they had so often been failed by adults that they approached those of us who were were, you know, caregiving for them, with a lot of distrust, and it took a long time to open that that that that wall break, that wall down. Ali didn't have the wall. I mean, Ali was just very naked. In, in their ability to love, in their ability to kind of rejoice in, in the love that they felt for the people around them. And so it was just fun and happy and joyful to be around Ali in a way that it wasn't for a lot of the other young people. Then I would say the next thing that just really profoundly hit me was about six months into the time that I was at the safe space, this drop in program where I first met Ali in Times Square in New York City, we put on a talent show, you know, and it was like, you know, people voguing and singing and rapping and, you know, kind of the standard stuff that you would see at a talent show, except maybe a lot More femme than, say, in a high school. But you know, and Ali closed the show by singing this gospel hymn, his eyes on the sparrow, which was like Ali's favorite song. And then Ali just kind of got sanctified and started reform preaching about how you know, it doesn't matter if Ali's wearing a wig and a dress that God loves him for who who. God loves me for who I am. That's what Ali said. God has mercy in all people. God loves us for who we are. And I was just bowled over by Ali's ability to own a relationship as a queer person with God like to put aside all the rejection, all the baggage that gets put on us. And the thing is, at that time, I had a lot of baggage, and I was feeling pretty overwhelmed by the baggage of kind of my Catholic backgrounds, hostility to queer people. And so seeing Ali's ability to do that, it was just really profound for me. So after seeing that, I began to look to Ali as as a spiritual guide, in a way like, you know, Ali had a freedom and a liberation, and it was centered in a sense of a loving God, in a way that I felt that I wasn't and that I needed to be so. So it's not like, you know, I went to Ali and said, you know, be my spiritual director. That would have been very weird and bizarre. But, you know, in the context of my being the director of this drop in program for homeless kids. But, you know, I just from that moment, I was just very aware that there was something remarkable about Ali, that there was a kind of

conscious divinity about Ali, you know, and that there was something holy about Ali

Wil Fisher  18:00  
that's so beautiful, yeah, that they were modeling this relationship with God that at that point you didn't have in your life, and it was a relationship that perhaps you desired and were able to see as possible because of their their connection from that place of truth.

Carl  18:18  
You know, we were just in a situation where there was so much wreckage, unlike, you know, religious condemnation of queer people, yeah, and so many of the young people's lives had been brutalized by that. And I had in my own life felt brutalized by that, and I just felt like Ali just rose up from it, like middle of phoenix from the ashes or something, and was just able to to keep their eyes on the prize, you know, like God is love and all of this other stuff just doesn't it's not true. It I'm not. It was. It was really deep for me to to experience that,

Wil Fisher  19:02  
well, I imagine so it's a it's a devotion that is impressive amongst any any person, but to have someone who has suffered and faced that much adversity since They were a child to hold that level of divine consciousness, as you put it, that that faith of of God as love, that's incredible. It's just so beautiful.

Carl  19:35  
Yeah, um, yeah. I don't know how much you know about like Catholic mystics and things like that. But there's a famous Catholic mystic named Julian of Norwich, okay, and she probably had the plague like in the 14th century, and as she was on the brink of death, like, I think it might have been like a near death experience or something. But. You know, the priest was blessing her and held up a crucifix for her to look at. And the crucifix came to life and and she saw like how much Jesus suffered for love like that was. And she spent the rest of her life reflecting on that, and wrote, you know, she wrote a book called The revelations of divine love. The whole meaning of this was love. But, you know, just, I feel like seeing Ali at the talent show was my Julian of Norwich moment, like I just saw this divine clarity. And have spent the rest of my life like reflecting on it, trying to mold my life to it, trying to be transformed by it.

Wil Fisher  20:50  
The other theme that comes up for me as you share that story is this dedication and commitment to the truth, to embodying and expressing the truth of who we are, and again, it it's a noble journey for any person, even you know a straight white lawyer, to be able to connect with their truth and rid themselves of the egoic temptations to conform and deny who they who they truly are, and for alay to to model that, I think, is also such a point of inspiration that in in the face of the world telling them that they shouldn't be the way that they were, and telling them that it's a sin to be the way that they were to maintain so committed. And it's what's coming up too. Is not only the straight world telling Ali who he needed to be, but amongst the gay world, they stood out like they weren't going into a full femme expression or full masculine expression. They were also doing, you know, a gender expression in a time where that was not in vogue, and it was simply because that was their true expression of self. And that also strikes me as such a beautiful gift that we got to receive from Ali and his story.

Carl  22:27  
Yeah. I mean, when I think about Ali's ability to be true to themselves, where they were when they were, there's so many dimensions of like, oppression that they were like, overcoming, you know, I've mentioned, like, the religious dimension, you know, like, if you're queer, you're a sinner and you're going to hell. So that very much shaped Ali and most of Ali's friends lives in terms of how their families related to them the city at that time was utterly inhospitable and neglectful in a deadly way to the lives of homeless, queer kids. There was only one shelter for for youth in the city, it didn't have nearly enough, you know, resources. Most of the kids were just stranded out on the streets, but the queer kids, if they tried to go to the shelter, would get gay bashed and brutalized. And it was also run by a religious group who would tell them that they were going to hell. But then there was even another layer of like, where the queer community was at that time. You know, it was very painful for me to meet some of the people who were in the Stonewall riots, who were homeless, street kids who played pivotal roles in the Stonewall riots. Several of them would tell me things like, you know, the gay community looked at us like we were trash, like they were ashamed of us, like, you know, we were a plight on the image of the community like, like, I think that when when a community is oppressed, there's a lot of pressure internally to put the best face forward and to kind of have PR for your community and homeless kids are not the best PR. You know young people who are surviving by work and who are just completely outrageous and who are maybe high and who kind of don't give a you know that that's not necessarily the image that an oppressed community wants to put forward. And at the time that Ali was experiencing homelessness, that kind of shame and not wanting to to own that as part of our community was still pretty. Prevalent so, so there were, like, so many layers of oppression and rejection, and, you know, for Ali to just be able to stand there and be like, I am, who I am, you know, I'm gonna wear this wig, I'm going to wear this dress. I'm not going to shave for three days. I'm gonna have my shoes undone. I'm gonna, you know, be wild and true and free, like it was just beautiful and remarkable and like this shining light of liberation and truth that I saw as emanating from Ali's connection to divinity. That was the bedrock, you know, like if everything else was going to reject Ali. Ali knew that, like there was this divine truth and this divine love that that would allow Ali to be themselves.

Wil Fisher  25:57  
Yes, yes, yes. I just want to sit with that reflect that back is divine liberation of truth founded in the bedrock of their connection to God as this source of unconditional love. Because when we are connected to God as a source of unconditional love, then we allow ourselves to be in that liberation of truth. It's when we, when we put God into our egoic societal lens and see God as a conditional, loving God, that we start to get screwed up. And Ali did not allow that. That's wow, that's really powerful.

Carl  26:45  
Yeah, I remember when I was first coming out of the closet back in the 1980s I was just coming out of the monastery, and I was very conflicted and scared, and there was a guy that I had a crush on named Gary, who I ended up being in love with for Well, I still love Gary, but, you know, we were together for many years, and I remember, like, going to he was the first person I ever came out to, like, about two weeks out of the monastery. And I remember as I was sitting there, like at his kitchen table and on Second Street in Avenue B, he had, like, this little quote on his wall that said, I will sing to God with the voice he gave me, and to me like, if we're not going to sing to God With our true voice. Then what's the point? You know, and Ali knew that, like Ali got that in the depths of Ali's soul. Beautiful.

Wil Fisher  27:51  
Wow, yeah. The other piece I wanted to comment on is this piece around the the heroes and hero and heroines of Stonewall who were disregarded as as trash. And I love the healing that gets to happen when in this generation, our heroes that we see in the faces of these homeless, LGBTQ youth get to actually be seen as heroic, and I really consider AFC and the work you've done as a big reason why that's possible that these young people now can march in the Pride Parade and be celebrated for the heroes that they are and can be the spotlight for, you know, benefit generating two and a half million dollars in one night, because people care on this deep level about this population that, in the past, has been disregarded and and, you know, considered the trash of our community. And so, yeah, I just want to acknowledge the the incredible transformation that has happened in that, in that shift in, again, a short amount of time, you know, we're talking about, like, decades, you know, a few decades. Yeah, I

Carl  29:15  
feel like there's been a real shift in the last 10 years. And you certainly see it in the queer community in New York, there has been like this ownership of, you know, who Sylvia was, who Marsha P Johnson was, the pivotal role that they played in a way that didn't exist before. You know, and I have to say, when I think about like the work that we did with the campaign for youth shelter, where we were really trying to leverage the political voice of the LGBT community on behalf of the young people, to stop the situation where the vast majority of queer youth were like Strang. Out in the streets without shelter beds, and you were there for that will. I mean, I can remember you being at some of the rallies that we were on. I think back to those rallies, and I think of them as kind of transformational moments in the consciousness of the community in New York, because I feel like absent some of the work that was done with act up around, you know, acquiring housing for homeless people with AIDS, overwhelmingly like the focus of the LGBT rights movement had not been on poverty issues, had not been on on young people, had not been on issues that primarily impacted people of color and people who were not cis, trans people and non binary people. And I feel like when we had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people coming together and standing with our young people, you know, demanding that they be treated better. I feel like that was like one of the early moments where something was beginning to shift. Now, having said that, I think that, you know, for me as, like a CIS, white person, like there was only so far I could take that. And I think something that's been even more important in recent years is that so many trans people, especially trans people of color, have really claimed their power and their ownership in the movement. And I think that that's been, you know, something beautiful and remarkable, but yeah, I do think that, like our work, kind of shifting the political trying to center our young people in the political consciousness of the community was like part of the first step of that.

Wil Fisher  31:53  
Yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of that came from visibility, and the efforts that were made to make the the problem more visible, because as shocking as the statistic of 40% of all homeless youth are LGBT, which, by the way, when I shared that recently to a group of folks, they were like, Oh, well, that must have been true when you worked there, but isn't true anymore. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, maybe you're right. And then I saw in the book that it still says 40% so I'm kind of shocked that it hasn't changed.

Carl  32:26  
If anything, it's worse. Wow.

Wil Fisher  32:28  
So, but statistics are alarming, right? So from our heads, we go like, wow, this is a problem, and we think about it on this mental level when we think about numbers, but the visibility is what helps us connect with our hearts and to be able to soften into the reality of this moment of this crisis. And I feel like that had not been done before that so many in the gay community and beyond were not able to fully process or understand what we were talking about, when we were talking about kids coming out of the closet and being thrown out of their homes at very young ages. And so when they were starting to be able to see stories and understand, I think that really shifted. So it was like, you know, there was a mind consciousness. But then it became a heart consciousness too.

Carl  33:26  
Yeah, you know, something that I think was really important that we did. I really tried to think of ways to make the young people visible and to get their voices heard. You know, I think that in some ways, like young people have been helplessly, kind of complicit in their own invisibility, because teenagers are so conscious of how other people judge them. Sure, it's like you're young, you don't really have that very strong sense of yourself, and so if somebody else looks down on you. You just feel that so appallingly. Look, I still feel it appallingly. And I'm like 1560s so, you know. But when I was a teenager, it was worse. So it wasn't like the young people were walking around with like bow board saying, Look at me. I'm a homeless queer youth, you know, look at me. I have nowhere to sleep, you know, like they didn't want to be seen. And I think in some ways, the fact that we at the alley fina center had given them a certain degree of safety and stability made it more possible for them to put themselves out there and be seen. Yes, when I would go out with the young people and have them take me to the places where they slept in the streets, and, you know, have them tell me their stories, and we'd create these social media posts about that, I really do think that that was an important piece of. Waking up the community.

Wil Fisher  35:02  
Yeah, that makes sense that when, and I'd say in general. But of course, especially with teenagers, when you're experiencing that level of embarrassment and shame and and instability, it is too daunting, too overwhelming, to consider actually exposing yourself and exposing your story. And so it makes sense that as a result, in part of this stability and healing work that got to happen at AFC, there is more there's more openness to being more visible, to being seen. And so in this theme of helping, you know, one of the things that I used to share when I would talk about working for AFC is that this was a mission that was helping our most disenfranchised community members. And, you know, it felt like a powerful way to get across the need for support, especially when I feel like the right to marry was so prevalent. You know, everyone was giving their money to that organization, but I remember that being, you know, as a fundraiser, something that I was quick to point out, and I'd love for you to speak about what that means to you from a spiritual standpoint, for us to stand with our most disenfranchised members.

Carl  36:37  
You know, it's interesting when I think about what is most broken in humanity. You know, in the Catholic Church, there's this concept of, like, original sin. You know that, like, somehow, like, because of Adam, disobeying God, or whatever, you know, like, like, you know that that, but it got tied in with this notion of Like, in the Catholic Church, like Original Sin got that got very much tied in with and and, you know, like, there's this sense that, like, somehow is the root of all the evil. I think that's really wrong. I think that there is maybe something very broken about humanity. I think it is our craving for power and wealth and our willingness to ignore the ways that other people are made to suffer while we get that wealth and while we get that power. So but now I'm lost, like, what was your question? No, we're

Wil Fisher  37:52  
looking at the the way that supporting, standing with the most disenfranchised, oppressed members of our community is a spiritual act,

Carl  38:01  
yeah, so I think that at the heart of any kind of authentic spirituality, it's got to be rooted in compassion, and in a way, it's got to be rooted in humility, like, you know, like we have to understand that all of this posturing that we do, that, you know, we're fabulous, that we're wealthy, that we're powerful, it's all you know, like when push comes to shove, we're all these vulnerable, contingent beings who, you know, are struggling to survive on this earth and who are going to die. And like, We've got to help each other take it, you know, like, we just, that's just, to me, that's that's just the heart of any kind of true spirituality. We've got to recognize our solidarity with one another. We've got to realize that we're all up, and we've got to, like, help each other through and yeah so, so that's why, at the beginning of this interview, when you said, like you weren't on your spiritual journey yet, I was like, No, everything you were doing to help these young people was a profoundly spiritual act. Thank you. We tend to, like, put all this kind of Woo, woo, like stuff on spirituality, like, you know, oh, it's all exalted, and, you know, Transcendence. And there are that aspects of, yeah,

Wil Fisher  39:34  
I like that. Sometimes.

Carl  39:38  
I'm not going to deny it. But, you know, because I can get very woo, woo myself, but, but, you know, fundamentally, I think reality is spiritual. Yes, you know, like, like, just the heart of being, it throbs with love. That's how I see, that's how I see existence. It's like it God loved everything into being. And everything is held in being by love, and to the extent that we can connect to that love and act it out in our lives, you know, that's the most spiritual thing we can do. And so, you know, I often think about like the staff at the Ali fornet center who are sitting there listening to young people pour their hearts out, you know, who are sitting there cooking the meals, who are staying awake at night so the young people can sleep safely and in peace? And do they know that they're doing something spiritual? You know, some obviously do. Many of them probably don't think that at all, you know. And may even think that spirituality is but you know, I just think that what they are doing day in and day out, is the heart of spiritual reality.

Wil Fisher  40:49  
Yes, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah, one of the things that struck me is the contrast between what we're talking about here, which is standing for the most outcast of our community, outcast members of our community, versus the ways that some of the I don't know if this resonates, but it's almost like some of the villains in the story showed up in The book, and many of them representing religious institutions, and how the way that they were showing up was was standing for the opposite of unity right standing for separation. And it had never fully occurred to me how religions and some of the folks that represent them or subscribe to them, they use religious doctrine to create more separation by judging and by pointing at sinners and saying, that's wrong, and that's not me. And I am this, and they are that, and so part of what I'm present to in this idea of standing with our most Outcast members as a spiritual act is in opposition of that and a commitment to to unity and the truth of unity, the truth that we are all one and and doing our part to bring in those who have been pushed out, so that we can be one, so that we can love and support each other in our oneness.

Carl  42:26  
Well, at the start of the book, I'm sort of putting that forward a mission statement for the book. And I know that I say something like one of the things that bound Ali and I together was we each realized that in order to live an authentic spiritual life, we had to resist the really the religious devaluation of queer people. And I think that that's a very important part of the book that like, if you are living in the middle of a structure and a system that is going to systematically devalue you and demonize you. Like to stand for truth and to stand for love means to oppose that and resist that. And whether it's overt or whether you know, like just being true to yourself and rejoicing in that, is an act of resistance against you know, folks who want to control you and use your sexuality as a weapon to oppress you.

Wil Fisher  43:31  
Yeah, and one of the things that I've found you did so beautifully and vulnerably was your trajectory, your journey with contending with the institutions and the folks that represented them, and your devotion and dedication to God and that it wasn't always so easy for you that it was a roller coaster. Is there anything else you want to share about what it was like for you to follow this, this purpose, this calling and and to face this adversity, and perhaps sometimes have it put into question, your awakening, your your spiritual calling, your connection with God.

Carl  44:19  
So Well, I want to tell you a story. I remember when I was first trying to come out, like in the Catholic Worker, which is this radical Catholic movement that I was part of when I was young people like living in poverty, living with homeless people, serving homeless people, but living with them in community. You know, I was talking about I wasn't ready to like out myself yet, but I was talking about how important it was that our community stand on the side of queer people. And one of my closest friends started saying, you know, well, but gay people can't. Have It's like against God's will for gay people to have and that's the cross that they have to bear, that they have to not have And, you know, I've often thought for me to follow like Christ in a way, like, Yes, I do have to bear a cross. But what I've realized is that the cross that I've actually had to bear is like seeing the young people that I serve, seeing how their lives have been devastated by the religious tradition that raised me and inspired me, I mean, to see this wreckage done, to see this cruelty done to all these kids in the name of God, when I love God so much, like, like, it tears me apart. Like, sometimes I don't even know how to cope. I will tell you like, I think about, you know, the things that so many young people have gone through. I think of like their voices telling me what, you know, what their parents did to them. I think about the look in their eyes when they tell me that, you know, they were cast out and told that they were abominations, like, I don't know how to deal with it, like I really do feel like I don't know how to deal with it, and it causes a lot of anguish, and knowing that it's My own faith tradition that promoted so much of that harm. It's just it's really hard to deal with.

Wil Fisher  46:27  
So how are you in that relationship with God now? And I'm curious maybe, if there's a separation of your religious background and beliefs and now perhaps the way that you see God and and spirituality.

Carl  46:44  
So, you know, when I was young, I was very inspired by a lot of the saints, by a lot of the Catholic mystics. I was very inspired by the Catholic Worker Movement. And that stuff is really deep in me. I kind of feel like I'm always going to be Catholic the way that somebody from France is always going to be French. Okay, I may never go back to France, you know, they may France, but, you know, they've got a French accent. Yeah, I got it. It's just I feel like I think and I feel, and I conceive of God with like a Catholic accent. That's just the way it is. There's an obsession within a lot of organized religion, and very much so within Catholicism, with like authority and control and I really have no interest in that. I have no interest in subjecting myself to that. And I think that you know, when Jesus said the kingdom of heaven is within you, it's like I do better by focusing on where to find that within, then looking to some structure outside of myself. But having said that, you know, I'm often reading like st Therese or Thomas Merton or Dorothy Day, it's like they are an inherent part of my spiritual language, and I can't, you know, renounce that without renouncing something too deep in myself. And then, in a strange way, my Catholicism is also very intertwined with my queerness. It's like, you know, so many of these mystics like St John of the Cross or Bernard of Clairvaux that they would write very erotically about God, like, you know, like the God's love, it just overpowers you, and you submit to it, and it's tender, and you're and they often even place themselves in the female role, like, you know, like They're into this gendered thing where, well, if God is the male, then I'm the female. And there's something very subversive about it, like you, and that's very much in my, in my spiritual DNA, I think of like, like, I love to listen to like, French monk singing Gregorian chant. Like, there's something so yearning and tender without it, and that it's like it's very embedded within my own sense of desire. So, so it's not all negative, like this. You know that there's some of it that's very, very rich for me, like, yeah, no, like the Sacred Heart crown surrounded by thorns, like the passion, the blood, the guts. There's something in Catholicism that that's very earthy and sensuous, and all of that was very present as I was coming out and thinking. About what it meant for me to be a queer person. But I used to go to St Francis Xavier, this, this church in Chelsea, and they had, like an altar to the Sacred Heart. And like, you know, I was, like, had a crush on Gary and like this heart, with all my heart, with all my heart, I love you. I write little notes, like praying for, you know, to figure out my way forward, and I'd throw them behind the sacred art statue. I remember Gary we used to they had the dignity mass. It was like a mass for Catholics at St Francis Xavier, until they got thrown out by Cardinal O'Connor, which is in the book. Like that scene in the book where, but Gary was working at Bailey house, which was, you know, this residence for homeless people with AIDS that had just opened up. And he would show up at the dignity mass a little late because he was getting off his ship from from Bailey house. And he would always like kneel to pray underneath this painting of Jesus being stripped by of his garments, like one of the Stations of the Cross, like Christ is stripped of his garments, you know? And I'd look at Gary and I look at Jesus being stripped of his garments.

I know that how to tell you will, but there's just something. It's it's

there. There's like the shadow side of Catholicism for me, which is, you know, the authority and the control and the cruelty and the valuing dogma and teaching over the lives of human beings who suffer because of them. Like that is awful. But the other stuff that I've just been raving about, like, I love it, and I can't, you know, I can't, like, strip myself of that. Nor

Wil Fisher  51:46  
should you Yeah, nor should you Yeah, who I am. It's deep, and it's powerful, and I gotta say, it is the strongest, most inviting case for Catholicism I've ever heard in my life. I mean, I'm like, ready to go to Mass next week based on what you just shared. And I love the idea of of mapping out what queer Catholicism looks like and and I feel like you spoke to many of the the potential pieces of that. And I'm I moved to share one of my favorite quotes from the book which connects spirituality and and that that energy of longing. So you say, I believe that all Creation emerged from the throbbing heartbeat of God's longing, the chaos, the violence, the suffering, the beauty, the tenderness all of it, even its roughest, most jagged edges, every particle of our mad, gorgeous universe is shot through with divine love. I imagine that every one of us with our desperate, humiliating desires to love and be loved, carry that longing like God's spark within us. I'm

Carl  53:03  
glad you liked it. Well, I

was, you know, when I wrote that, I was like, Oh, cool. That was, that was a good passage.

That's a really good pass. You just get, like, inspiration when you're doing this. And that was like, you know, after I wrote that, was like, Whoa, where did that come from? But no, I know where it came from. It's something that I've spent much of my life thinking about but it kind of, I felt like it really crystallized when I when I wrote that, and yeah, no to me, we have this. I think we project our own creepiness onto God. And, you know, like the idea of God is like this kind of all powerful judging old guy sitting in the sky who either rewards us if we're good or punishes us if we're bad. It's this very like punitive transactional, which I think is like a projection of, like the most broken parts of ourselves. You know, like God is Donald Trump or something. You know, I don't see God like that at all. I see God as, like, profoundly vulnerable, craving love, like the whole universe came out of like, craving love, yes, you know, belonging the desire, like desire, is a it's not a sinful thing, it's the most holy thing. It

Wil Fisher  54:35  
connects us with God when we embrace our desires, you know,

Carl  54:40  
and I just to go back to Ali, I think about how much Ali craved my love, you know, like I could just tell that Ali loved me and enjoyed being with me and cared about me. And. Was so naked about it. And I don't mean this in a way. Was, I don't think it was a thing for Ali, it was just you know this, this love, like you know you love, you desire, you rejoice, you you need. You know. Oftentimes, I think people try to use religion to transcend our needs, like we want to not need. We want to not be broken. We want to not, you know, like I get why we want that, but, but I think we sort of missed the boat when we do that stuff, I think that the vulnerability and the brokenness is at the very heart of the spiritual truth.

Wil Fisher  55:53  
Yeah, and what was coming through when you were sharing that is you as the caretaker for Ali and Ali also the caretaker for your heart. It's like you both just cared for each other's heart in such a beautiful and pure way.

Carl  56:10  
You know, when I would be at safe space this, you know, this is the 1990s there was nowhere safe for these kids to sleep. Every couple of months, one of them would get murdered in the streets. Most of them were descending into more and more serious drug addiction. Many of them were getting infected with HIV and AIDS at a time when that was seen as a death sentence. The police were in the process of doing the gentrification of Times Square, and were really harshly, aggressively policing the young people they were all getting incarcerated. So you know, it was just like this really hard, tough situation, and it was just something about Ali's joy at loving and being loved that made it all feel okay, but not okay. Like none of that stuff felt okay, but it made it feel bearable. Yes, you know, like Ali was, like, for me was, was what would make me happy when I went to work, was just being Ali's face, like seeing Ali's love. Like it made it made the other stuff more bearable, and oh god, it was so I was so devastated when Ali got killed. I don't even know tell you, Well, I was just a wreck, like it was really hard to overcome that. I, frankly, I happened to overcome it, and then I still feel pretty broken by the fact that Ali was killed.

Wil Fisher  57:44  
Has your work for this population, has that helped in your healing process?

Carl  57:53  
You know, I think I told myself that the way to deal with Ali's death was, you know, to kind of undo the situations that cause dolly and their friends to suffer so badly and to die like, you know, I thought, if I can fix this, if I can change this, you know, if I could pull enough people together with me to help, you know, transform this. It will make it somehow make sense or something. And I don't know my feelings about this are very complicated, like I am grateful, like I feel like I was able to take my heartbreak and turn it into something that was good for other people, you know, and that feels sort of magical like that that was able to happen. So, yeah, I mean, I think like 1000s of young people have had safe places to sleep at night and have been treated with respect and nurturing and care, in part, because of that heartbreak, in a central way because of that heartbreak, and trying to figure out how to deal with it, but at the same time, and, you know, I talk about this at the end of the book, in some ways, when I got to the point where I felt like I'd gotten to the mountaintop, like, you know, where I had achieved most of what I had been longing to achieve over all these years,

I actually got very depressed, and I think it was because all of that fight, all of that effort, all of that struggle

had been sort of like harnessing my heartbreak to change things, and then after things were changed, well, there I was with my broken heart. You're like, the broken heart didn't go away and and, you know, the last couple of years I. I how to express this. I think that during most of the time of the ALI for news center, I was very strong, like I was like this force to be contended with. And terrible things would happen, and I would absorb terrible things. And for the years of my serving homeless people, I've just absorbed so much suffering and death and loss, and I would always just soldier through it. I would push through and keep going and try to be resilient and all of that stuff. And somewhere about four or five years ago, it just sort of collapsed on me, like the ability to be strong just sort of fell apart, and I had to start processing all of the pain and suffering and loss that I'd soldiered through for all those years. So, so, yeah, I mean, like I, I feel in some ways, like I've been ravaged. But you know, what will I will say that I, in the end, I'd probably been ravaged by trying to love. And you know, I don't I think love is meant to ravage us. You know, I think love is meant to tear us apart, and that's, that's part of the process of deepening and growing in love. So, you know, like, right now, I'm in this process of sort of recognizing it and contending with it, but also learning to, like, maybe accept it, like, like, I need to just be able to accept that. You know, the heartbreak of Ali's death is not going to go away, and there's nothing that's going to make it make sense. And you know, so I can be grateful for the good that came out as a consequence of my response to it, but I still just have to accept it as what it is.

Wil Fisher  1:02:04  
Well, yeah, and maybe that's, maybe that's the message that I'm, I'm seeking in this when I ask this question. But maybe there's something else. And the question is, if, if Ali were to hear of your tender heart, what do you think he would want you to know,

Carl  1:02:22  
oh, God, you know, I'm going to tell you a little story. It's in the book.

You know, we put on these talent shows every year, and the last year before Ali died, about six months before Ali died, it was a few days before the talent show, and Ali would, every once in a while show up at my office, knock on the door, come in, sit down, chat with me. And so Ali showed up, sat down and said, Carl, I'm I'm going to do a performance of Al Green and the talent show, I know you love Al Green. I had a poster of Al Green up above my desk. He's like, I'm going to sing for the good times by Al Green, and I'm going to have you come out. I'm going to sit in a chair, and I want you to lay your head in my lap, and I'm going to like, drop roses on you, like Al Green does it in his concert, and I want to do this to honor you. And I was like, you know, Ali, that's very sweet, but you can't do that. I'm not gonna be laying my head in any kid's laps. People are gonna think I'm like, you know, here to have with the young people. I'd be fired. But after Ali was killed, I just couldn't stop thinking about that. I couldn't stop thinking about Ali wanting to do that for me and wanting to express that tenderness and that caring. You know, I still feel bad that I couldn't let Ali do that, you know, but I think that if you know what Ali would say is, I love you, that's what Ali loved me and I loved Ali, and no, that's, that's, that's half, that's a lot of why I'm so brokenhearted about the whole thing. You know love. You know there's love between you know people who are, you know, partners. There's love between your siblings. There's love with your friends. There have been, not, it doesn't happen all the time, but there have been some very pure experiences of like, love that I've had, like, where I'm, you know, kind of the caregiver, the provider, and there's the person you know, being cared for, provided for. I mean, it's hard for that kind of deep love to happen in those relationships, because there's like an inequality built into it. So in some ways, you know, for the person on the receiving end to be able to open themselves up to that, and for the person on the giving end to be able to open themselves up to that, it's not easy. And I. Would say that, you know, I can think of like four or five people over the last 40 years that where, you know, I really had these kinds of special, deep love in relationships. But Ali was very much that,

Wil Fisher  1:05:17  
and you spoke to it, the superpower of his was to emanate joy in the experience of loving and being loved. And for someone who has faced as much as they faced, to hold that, to be able to stand for that, it's just so beautiful. And I just think it's such a noble honoring of their soul. This Ali fornet Center, and I'm so grateful for what you've created in honor of of Ali and and the beautiful, inspiring person that he was.

Carl  1:06:01  
Thank you will, I think at the beginning of the book, I say something like you know at its heart, this is a love story about the love that Ali held for their friends in the streets, about the love that Ali and I held for each other, and about the love that a community showed when it began to learn how to embrace its most vulnerable members, yeah, like, like, I feel like that all grew out of Ali's love. Like, you know, we just carried it forward.

Wil Fisher  1:06:36  
Well, I love you, Carl, and we didn't get into stories about Tyra Banks and Lady Gaga and Madonna all the other names that you resisted dropping in this book. But I'll leave that to the listeners to pick up the book making room so that they can read those stories themselves, as well as receive more of these beautiful, golden drops of wisdom and spiritual lessons that come so gracefully out of this book and the tremendous, epic story that you tell in it. Well, thank

Carl  1:07:16  
you will. You know, I would like to think that the book, besides being this kind of social justice and spiritual epic, is also fabulous. Yeah,

Wil Fisher  1:07:27  
it is fabulous. Absolutely, absolutely, any final words that you want to share with the listeners as we wrap up,

Carl  1:07:36  
you know, well, actually, I think the last thing I'd like to say is just thank you for all that you did with us at the Ali forne center. You were with us at the very, very beginning. I remember you being in one of those tiny little apartments where we were first getting started, and I feel like your skill and tenacity and goodness were a very important part of our moving forward from being that tiny, little grassroots, barely existing entity to, you know, something that serves 1000s of young people today. But I thank you for being with us at the start and for staying with us for, you know, the better part of 10 years, and for all the goodness and the love that you put forward during that time, I'm very grateful for it.

Wil Fisher  1:08:24  
Thank you that really touches my heart. I received that, and it was an absolute honor, and it still remains an honor to have our paths connected and to be able to share this time today. So thank you so much. Carl,

Carl  1:08:38  
thank you will and I love you too.

Wil Fisher  1:08:40  
Thank you for listening. Please do check the show notes. I'll have a link there for Carl's book, which I highly recommend, and also for the Ollie forne center, so you can check out the amazing work that they continue to do for homeless, LGBTQ youth. I'll also have a link there for you to connect with me. I am accepting new clients right now, and I would love to connect if you are looking for some life coaching support and I thank you for listening to this podcast. If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving it a five star review. Thank you so much. Much love to you. Oh my god, as beloveds, what a joy it was to be with you today. Let's hang out again soon. Okay? And if you can think of a friend who would benefit from hearing this, please share it with them, sending so much love and light to you today and every day until next time. Peace you.