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Also on this website:
Toby
Johnson's books:
TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the
Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams
GAY
SPIRITUALITY: The Role of
Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness
GAY PERSPECTIVE:
Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature
of God and the Universe
SECRET
MATTER: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press
with Afterword by Mark Jordan
GETTING
LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE
PLAGUE:
A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.
CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into
Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story
About ordering
Books on Gay Spirituality:
Articles
and Excerpts:
Read
Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The
Dimensional Structure of
Consciousness
Funny
Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San
Francisco"
The
Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate
A Bifurcation of Gay Spirituality
Why gay people should NOT Marry
Wedding Cake Liberation
Gay Marriage in Texas
What's ironic
Shame on the American People
The "highest form of love"
The
cause of homosexuality
What is homosexuality?
What
is Gay Spirituality?
What Jesus said about Gay
Rights
The purpose of homosexuality
Interview on the Nature of
Homosexuality
What the Bible Says about
Homosexuality
Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men
Varieties
of Gay Spirituality
Waves
of Gay Liberation Activity
Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality
as Artistic Medium
Easton Mountain Retreat Center
Andrew Harvey &
Spiritual Activism
"It's Always About You"
The myth of the
Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara
Joseph Campbell's description of
Avalokiteshvara
You're
Not A Wave
Emptiness & Religious Ideas
Experiencing experiencing experiencing
Going into the Light
Meditations for a Funeral
Meditation Practice
The way to get to heaven
Advice to Travelers to India
& Nepal
Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva
John Boswell was Immanuel Kant
Curious
Bodies
What
Toby Johnson Believes
The Joseph Campbell Connection
Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy
The Nature of Religion
Being
Gay is a Blessing
Freedom
of Religion
The
Gay Agenda
Gay
Saintliness
Gay Spiritual Functions
The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.
The Sinfulness of
Homosexuality
Proposal
for a study of gay nondualism
Priestly Sexuality
"The Evolution of Gay Identity"
"St. John of the
Cross &
the
Dark Night of the Soul."
Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.
Eckhart's Eye
Let Me Tell You a Secret
Religious Articulations of the
Secret
The Collective Unconscious
Driving as Spiritual Practice
Meditation
Historicity
as Myth
Pilgrimage
Next
Step in Evolution
Teenage
Prostitution and the Nature of Evil
Allah
Hu: "God is present here"
Adam
and Steve
The Life is in the Blood
Gay
retirement and the "freelance monastery"
Seeing with Different Eyes
What
are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?
The
mystical
experience at the Servites' Castle in Riverside
The
Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis
The Techniques Of The World Saviors
Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the
Tar-Baby
Part 2: The
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3: Jesus
and the Resurrection
Part 4: A
Course in Miracles
The
Secret of the Clear Light
Understanding the Clear Light
Mobius
Strip
Finding Your
Tiger Face
How Gay
Souls Get Reincarnated
About Alien Abduction
In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke
The
D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance
More
about Gay Mental Health
Psych
Tech Training
The
Rainbow Flag
Toby's friend
and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.
Harry Hay, Founder of the gay movement
About Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, the first man to really "come out"
About
Michael Talbot, gay mystic
About Guy Mannheimer
About Dennis Paddie
About Sterling Houston
About Michael Stevens
Our friend Tom Nash
Second March on
Washington
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Extinguishing the Light
B. Alan Bougeois
Creative House Press
Reviewed by Toby Johnson
 Extinguishing the Light
is an allegorical account, a parable, set in a modern Texas prison, of
the appearance of a Christ-like figure who reaches out to his fellow
offenders with a visionary message of love and acceptance.
Juan Carlos—JC to his friends—is mistaken for the perpetrator of a
botched robbery of a convenience store which resulted in the death of
the owner. Just as JC is coming into the store, expecting to carry on
one of his usual conversations about religion with the Muslim
storekeeper, the robber having fired his gun in anxiety rushes out the
door and into JC—and in the confusion the gun ends up in JC’s hand.
JC is described as a believer in God, though not any particular God,
and not a follower of any religion. When he sees his friend the
storekeeper has been killed, he goes to his side and speaks to him in
Arabic and welcomes him into paradise with Allah. Then, as if knowing
he would be accused of the crime, he calls 911 and begins the
“spiritual journey”/ordeal that is the story of this novel.
Obviously, he is Christ-like; his initials give him away. Once in the
prison he gathers around himself a group of friends/followers with
names like Simon, Philip, Bart, Andrew—even Mary. Mary’s a nellie
flamboyant black queen. The book’s a little heavy on the symbolism, but
that’s okay. The appeal of the book is less the plot than the wisdom
that JC conveys.
This appealing and gentle innocent soon runs afoul of the pecking order
and authority structure within the prison. Offenders, as the prisoners
are always called, are not supposed to be well-motivated, loving
teachers. JC inadvertently makes enemies with the warden and with the
bosses of the racially divided prisoner cliques/gangs.
The story moves rather quickly as JC tries to teach his message of
God’s love while being taunted by the enemies. He performs a couple of
healings and one clear miracle that prove him to his friends and rile
his enemies. You can tell where the story is going…
One of the most interesting and perplexing things about this book is
the writing. It is styled in what might be called “prison writing”: an
uneven mix of overwriting, circumlocution, cliché, tortured
syntax along with beautiful, touching passages and lyrical, inspiring
expressions of spiritual wisdom. It’s just right for this book. The
narrator is never identified, but you can imagine this is just how one
of JC’s followers would have written the story.
And though the plot is so transparently Christian, the wisdom is
several notches above traditional popular American religion. The vision
of God is transpersonal and transmythological, modern and
psychologically sophisticated. God is the energy inside each person.
JC’s wisdom includes a little Buddhism, a little Islam, a little
Hinduism, but transcending any and all of them.
Here’s an occasionally inspiring and interesting, if a little
predictable, tale of a modern hero who passes through ordeal, goes
beyond death and returns; and out of his story, arises a sensible
modern spirituality. This is modern myth-making with a modern myth.
The “spiritual novel” is a subgenre of speculative fiction. Not all
so-called spec fic contains spiritual teachings, of course; werewolves
and vampires and strange space aliens have their own shtick that
doesn’t have to be profound. But even those stories usually resolve
positively with a life-affirming maxim. So with prison novels.
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