He takes me beyond this door,
beyond this neighbourhood,
beyond this city where I lived all my life.
He takes me beyond this country,
beyond this continent,
beyond this sea where I ran to all my life.
I feel safe in the palm of his hand.
His love is like an elevator lifting me up.
He lifts me up!

I wrote this song on 25 September 2012.
Filmed on 16 February 2013. I was 34 years old in the video.

With this song I would like to remember Ascension Day. I found this old video from 2013 in my digital archive. I wasn’t happy with my performance at the time, but now 10 years later I’ve grown to feel more positive about it. It wasn’t so bad after all. The song is based on dreams. Christ started appearing in my dreams when I was a child growing up in the 1980s and 1990s. He’s the kindest and most loyal man I have ever met. This might surprise a lot of people, because I’m a gay man. As a child I was bullied because of my girlie voice and manners. As an adult I still get a different treatment by a lot of people. The Bible calls feminine men like me an abomination. People think it’s alright to mock gay men, especially effeminate men and transgender women, because the Bible calls them demonic. It saddens me that Christ is misunderstood by so many people all over the world. They keep using his name to justify their discriminating and hateful actions towards people who are different, people who are outcasts. Christ has always been kind to me in dreams and never disrespectful and he never gave me the feeling there was something wrong with me. He has always accepted me for who I am and never tried to change me. He knows that homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality and hermaphrodites have always existed. Same-sex relationships not only occur in humans but also in animals. It has always existed and will continue to exist whether you like it or not, because it’s part of nature. Anyone with some common sense knows that. You don’t have to be an academic to understand this. The reason that a lot of people deny the truth is because they are brainwashed by a sick dogma that has torn apart people for centuries. Anyone who discriminates LGBTQ people in the name of Christ is not a real Christian. First of all, because Christ is not a hater and has always chosen love. He would never bully or mock another human being, for he would always show compassion to outcasts. The hatred lives in you, not in him. The Christ that people see in images in the mainstream media is not the real Christ. Nothing but lies. His name is not Jesus, because Christ never had an English name. He also never had long hair on his shoulders and he was not blond. He was a Jewish middle eastern man with dark hair and he loved outcasts. Deal with it!

He lifted me up in dreams. He made me fly. With this song I lift him up on Ascension Day. After all the abuse that you’ve endured, fly away, Christ!

Ryan Maurice Roemer, 18 May 2023