One more post about flying. Unlike last week, this post is not about the differences between flying as Paul and Paula. Today, I want to talk about the differences between flying in the 70s and in the 20s. And yes, the differences are a lot greater than the differences between a YS-11 and an Airbus 321Neo. Is anyone else still alive who knows what a YS-11 is, or what US airlines flew it? Well other than the one pictured here, I mean.

Things I remember: They used to serve a hot breakfast to all 74 people aboard an Allegheny BAC 1-11 on the flight between LaGuardia and Buffalo. It was pancakes with butter and real maple syrup, a cheese and bacon omelet, and fruit, all included in the price of the ticket, for everyone on the plane. This on what was, on one particular January day in 1976, a 58-minute flight. I was in the first row and the flight attendants were talking about what an accomplishment it was to pull that off in 58 minutes. They were excited, not sad or angry with management for doing that to them.

Not long after that I was flying on the same airline on a one-stop from Buffalo to Detroit to Cincinnati. You stopped in Detroit, but didn’t get off. Some folks got off, but they were the ones going to Detroit. Most folks were going on to Cincinnati. The flight had been delayed in Buffalo on account of a mechanical problem. Not a bad delay mind you, just a half hour. (It didn’t take a long time to write up repairs back then.) But the shift manager came over to the gate agent and said, I’ll sign off on free drinks for everyone. So, on our way to DTW, there were free drinks for everyone. Well, if you were over 21, which I was by about four years. I didn’t drink, but still, it was a marvelous gesture.

Last week, when we waited almost two hours for a mechanic to fill out the logbook on the repair he’d made (I wrote about that last week,) we didn’t get free drinks, or even water and a granola bar. And I was in first class. After we finally got to SFO the captain said, “Sorry about the delay in Dallas.” Apparently, that was the extent of the airline’s concern.

Here’s another thing folks did back in the day. They looked out the window of the airplane. On my flight from DFW to SFO last week, there were five rows of first class with 20 people. I was on the aisle in the first row – 1D, my usual seat. No one had their windows open – from pushback to landing – not one person. Everyone had their eyes on their phone or tablet. Every single one. Even I was reading a book on my phone, though I would rather have been looking out the window. The Rockies are beautiful to fly over, and it was a perfectly clear day, or so I heard later from the folks back home, because I couldn’t tell, window shades being closed and all.

If you’re flying over the Ohio or Missouri rivers, you can see how they turn back on themselves 180 degrees time and again. The Army Core of Engineers straightened out the Missouri and ruined the Mississippi for 100 miles with silt from the Missouri. Turns out there’s a reason rivers turn back on themselves 180 degrees. It’d be best to trust their flow. It is fascinating to see when and where a river makes its detours. It’s not concerned about hurrying the trip. It knows where it’s going, and knows it’ll eventually get there. I’m sure you can google during your flight where rivers are going. Or you can look out the window, you know, the one that’s closed.

Things I never saw on an airplane in the 70s or 80s: someone taking their shoes off; people getting into a fight because the person in front of them reclined their seat; people yelling at a flight attendant; flight attendants talking loudly in the galley; flight attendants slamming overhead bins shut (there is actually a way to quietly close them. Just fly an Asian carrier and you’ll see.) And now I’m sounding like Tom Hanks in the movie Otto.

Back before Jimmy Carter deregulated the airlines, it wasn’t unusual to be on a flight with seven or eight other people. It was wonderful, with lots of space and personalized attention. Airlines made a profit. Airline executives weren’t hell bent on not leaving a dollar on the table. Gate agents could give you an upgrade just because they felt like it.

I had a friend who was the station manager for USAir at Long Island Islip airport. She quit her job when America West took over and told her she couldn’t give upgrades anymore. She said, “If I can’t reward our best customers, then why am I here?” She was old school. So was her successor, who retired not long ago. I’d known both of them for decades – salt of the earth kinds of people.

Some things are better than they were thirty years ago. My Apple MacBook Air with its M2 chip and 1080p camera is state of the art, though there is still a special place in my heart for my first Mac PowerBook. That thing was a tank. We took it on outdoor television shoots at 17 below zero and it still fired up.

Well, I’m done complaining like an old man. “But you’re a woman,” you say. Yeah, that’s true, but I still have a Y chromosome.

And so it goes.

When I transitioned genders I found it difficult to compare my new experience of life with my old experience. I had traveled life as a white man, better educated than most, financially secure. I ran a non-profit, preached for large churches, was the editor-at-large of a magazine, the host and head writer of a television program.

When I came out as Paula, all that was gone, most of it within 24 hours. My new life looks nothing like my previous life, so trying to compare the two is like comparing apples and oranges. Still a nourishing life, but wildly dissimilar to the one I led before.

Which made flying a wonderful laboratory. I had been Executive Platinum with American Airlines as Paul and I’m still EP as Paula. Unlike the church and all of my jobs, American handled my transition with nothing more than a shrug and a request for a legal name change. Now I could compare apples with apples, life in seat 1D as Paul and life in 1D as Paula.

What I discovered was sobering. Apparently, Paul was brilliant, knowledgeable, a customer to be pampered. Paula was not. Surely by some fluke Paula accidentally earned Executive Platinum status one year, but it was an anomaly not worthy of anyone’s attention. Yes, it really was that bad.

I talked about it in my first TED Talk, and still do in most speeches on gender equity. I always have a raft of new stories, fresh from a recent trip. Coming through DFW (my least favorite airport in my least favorite state) in June, a 12-year-old gate agent with an attitude said, “Ma’am, why are you standing there?” I looked around to see who he was addressing and when I realized it was me I answered, “Um, I’m waiting to board.” He said, “Well, you can’t stand there.”

Now my hackles were up. “And why can’t I stand here at the Zones 1-4 line when I am, in fact, in Zone 1, sitting in 1D, and the sign behind you says we are boarding in five minutes?” He said, “Because I may need that space.” I said, “And I definitely need the space in the overhead above 1D, because there is nowhere else to place my bags, hence my desire to board as soon as Zone 1 is called.”

Mr. Twelve-Year-Old said, “Why are you concerned about that?” Now, agitation registering, I replied, “Because FA’s put their bags above 1D in this type of 321 because there is no closet up front. So, they use my space to stash their bags. Unless I want to fight against the crowd when it is time to leave the plane, struggling back several rows to get to my bag, I need to board at the beginning, which I am, in fact, waiting to do.”

Then I added, “I have 2.6 million actual in the air miles with your company. I have been flying in 1D since before you were born, and in the 40 years since your frequent flyer program was started, this is the first time I have ever been told to move from the boarding lane because you ‘might need the space.'” He said, “Ma’am, are you going to move or do I have to call someone.” Not wanting to get arrested and all, I stepped aside. The man standing behind me, waiting to board, moved up to take my space.  In exactly the same spot I had stood, he did not get so much as a glance from Mr. Twelve-Year-Old gate agent.

How would all that have played out had I still been Paul. It would have gone like this. Mr. Twelve-Year-Old gate agent would have looked up at me, then looked back down at his computer screen and continued his work. That is how it would have played out. He never would have started the altercation. I know because as Paul I was never asked to move aside, not once, ever.

These micro-aggressions happen about every third or fourth trip, on average. Most aren’t that egregious. Most of the time, like most women, I just let it go, because you only have so much energy. And worse, I am getting used to it, so I barely notice the micro-aggressions anymore.

I thought about writing the CEO of American. The last time I wrote about a problem, their Director of DEI called me, which was pretty cool. But that problem was transgender specific, and American is far more responsive to LGBTQ+ issues than they are to “run of the mill” gender inequity issues. Treating a trans person badly might give them bad press. Treating a woman badly is just life in a patriarchal world.

I’m on a flight to SFO as I write this post, and we’ve been waiting for almost two hours for maintenance to complete the write-up of the repairs they made so it can be recorded in the logbook. Two hours to write up a repair in the logbooks! That is the state of flying today. I did leave my seat at 1D and ask the A flight attendant if the crew might time out. It’s late in the day. Blessedly, she recognized I knew what I was talking about. Motioning to the cockpit she said, “Those guys have about an hour to spare. The FA’s have more.”

She is a seasoned flight attendant who started with USAir 35 years ago. We talked about how wonderful Edwin Colodny was as chair of USAir back in the day. Then we talked about the utter mystery of what takes so long when mechanics write-up their repairs after they’ve finished. Do they take a nap first? If you’re an airplane mechanic, please enlighten me.

The captain heard us talking and stepped out of the cockpit and said, “You’d think someone might follow them back to their desks to see what they are actually doing. It’s a mystery to us all. Both captain and flight attendant treated me exactly as they might have treated Paul. It was refreshing.

We got to SFO about 90 minutes late. I checked in at the hotel and yet again, had a check-in agent who did not mention my Titanium Elite status with Marriott. They mentioned it to Paul all the time, thanking me for my loyalty to Marriott. Apparently, Paula’s loyalty doesn’t matter.

Apples to apples, here’s what I know. Life is a lot easier for men than it is for women. And nobody, male, female, or non-binary, seems to understand the murky underworld of airliner logbook repair notes.

And so it goes.

I met with a church member last week who spoke about being traumatized by a church in the state in which she previously lived. The more she talked, the more I knew which church she was talking about. It is one of the respected larger congregations from my former denomination. The lead pastor, a sweet guy, was once president of our national convention. Though it has been a long time, it is a church at which I have spoken.

It is not the first time I’ve had someone at Envision Community Church tell me about being wounded by a church with which I used to be affiliated. In fact, the chair of our board attended one when she was in high school. Lots of people move to Colorado from lots of places, so I am not surprised at the breadth of states in which these churches exist: Arizona/Washington/Texas/California/Indiana Kentucky/Ohio/Pennsylvania/New Hampshire/Florida/Illinois/Colorado. I am probably missing one or two states. Three states have multiple churches on the list. They are Colorado, which given where my church is located, is to be expected, plus Indiana and Kentucky.

Our little church has only been in existence for five years, yet already I have had individuals talk with me about their wounding experience at churches affiliated with my former denomination in twelve different states. That is rather remarkable, and sad.

Most are megachurches. None of the people at my church knew of my former affiliation with the denomination. Over coffee or dinner they simply told me how hurt they were when they found out their church did not accept LGBTQ+ people. Sometimes it was in a very public way, spoken by the pastor from the pulpit. Other times the church would not be forthcoming about their stance on LGBTQ+ people, even when the person asked directly. A few times LGBTQ+ issues were not the cause of the harm. It was teaching the substitutionary atonement, specifically that a blood sacrifice is necessary to appease an angry God.

I loved my former denomination. Best I can figure, I am the fifth generation of my family to have been a part of it. Among church historians it is referred to as the Stone/Campbell movement, and I had connections on both sides of it. My mother was a Stone from Bourbon County, Kentucky. And yes, it appears Barton W. Stone is on my family tree. My father’s mother was baptized in Brush Run Creek, where Alexander and Thomas Campbell established a church in what is now northern West Virginia.

My denomination has no headquarters or church hierarchy, though pretty much everybody knows who the fifty or so most influential leaders are. Most would have included me on that list. I served as Vice-President of the national convention, and on its executive committee for a number of years. For those who know the Stone/Campbell movement, I was a part of the middle branch of the movement, the Independent Christian Churches, not the non-instrumental Churches of Christ, or the Disciples of Christ, a more liberal denomination.

Should I be surprised when these folks tell me their stories? Truthfully, no. After all, I knew well over one thousand people by name within the denomination. Post transition, I’ve heard from about 20 of them, and spoken more than once with just six. I am only in regular contact with two. The great majority discarded me faster than you can say “excommunicated.”

Yet still, I am surprised. My love for these churches runs deep. The pastor mentioned by the woman with whom I met last week is someone I have always respected. He has an irenic spirit and is a person of character. Yet he left my church member traumatized (her words, not mine.) And no, he is not one of the 20 people who have reached out to me since my transition.

I, too, once believed that gay relationships were wrong and the substitutionary atonement was true, though I was never comfortable with either doctrine. I read an article challenging the substitutionary atonement in the mid-80s, and kept it in a prominent place in my filing cabinet. I struggled with where I stood on that doctrine until after my transition. I had changed my position on LGBTQ+ issues in the late 80s. I did not go public, other than within my book club of Roman Catholic friends in New York. I thought that was okay at the time. It was not.

I am sure that I, too, traumatized people unknowingly, by not speaking out in support of queer people, or in support of what most call universal salvation, the notion that God loves everyone just as we are, no changes demanded to get into heaven.

One of the most difficult things about being transgender is the discontinuity between my life as Paul and my life as Paula. It is exacerbated by the fact that my ostracization from my denomination was total and unequivocal. The truth is that it would have been just as complete had I only changed my theology, not my gender. I imagine more than six people would have had conversations with me, but based on what has happened to others, my theological shift alone would have still brought about the loss of my denomination.

I think of how different it would have been had I been a part of the Disciples of Christ, the more liberal side of the Stone/Campbell movement. It would have been marvelous to have continuity in my religious community, to have folks who could say, “Do you remember when we changed the magazine from a weekly to a monthly?” or “The first time we met was at that CIY conference in the late 70s. Remember that?” But alas, any possibility of continuity within my denomination is gone.

Integrating the two halves of my life has proven to be quite difficult. My former church world certainly has done nothing to help. And it sure does hurt when time and again church members tell me of their wounding by a church in the denomination I once loved. It’s all hard, really hard.

And so it goes.

I watched Oppenheimer last week and found it to be a very good movie. Over the years I’ve read a lot about the Manhattan Project. I grew up when the possibility of nuclear war seemed imminent. I remember only too well hiding under my desk in atomic bomb drills at my elementary school. We were all terrified of atomic war in the 1950s and early 60s, particularly during the Cuban missile crisis.

A couple of days after seeing Oppenheimer, I went with Cathy to see Barbie because, well, why not? I was not prepared for how good it was. I cried, like, a lot. I cried during America Ferrera’s monologue about the life of women. I’ve only been Paula for ten years, but I have already experienced a lot of what she described. But that wasn’t the only reason I cried.

Ten years into my life as Paula, I have come to feel comfortable in my own skin, though not always in the world I inhabit. I do not claim a cisgender experience. I do not see the world in 28-day cycles. I see it as linear. I do not have ovaries or a uterus. I have lots of estrogen and no testosterone, both of which feel right, and I also love that the world receives me as a woman. That is important to me, and it is true 99.9 percent of the time, which is very much  a blessing. But I have no illusions. I come from the borderlands between genders, from the liminal space between male and female.

I do not describe myself as non-binary because I am not. I am a transgender woman. Still, I do not feel like I belong in Barbie Land, though I give a big nod to the producers for including a transwoman as one of the Barbies. I also do not belong in the short-lived Kendom, inspired by Ken’s brief trip into the world of the patriarchy. I do not belong in either fantasy land.

Increasingly, I also do not feel like I belong in America. Given what happened to Anheuser Busch after their support of Dylan Mulvaney, I feel vulnerable. Corporate speaking engagements have dried up alarmingly quickly. Companies are afraid of having a transgender speaker. With 78 anti-trans bills signed into law this year, there are now 20 states in which it can be dangerous for me to travel. All of that was also on my mind as I cried through Barbie.

I also cried because of what Cathy and my daughters, daughter-in-law and granddaughters have gone through, living in a patriarchal system in which they do not even realize how heavy their handcuffs are. I know how heavy they are. I lived for six decades without them.

I watched both films while I am also watching Dickinson, the AppleTV+ show about the life of Emily Dickinson. The show ran for three seasons and thirty episodes between 2019 and 2021. In my opinion, it is a superb show, especially after the first few episodes. It takes a while to get accustomed to the somewhat jarring juxtaposition between 19th century New England and the show’s contemporary music score, as well as more than handful of current cultural colloquialisms. But give it time, it works.

There is a point in season two in which Sue, Emily’s sister-in-law, and according to many scholars, her life-long romantic interest, says to Emily, “You don’t want fame. You crave meaning. You crave beauty. You crave love.” That was when I cried hard in Dickinson.

Good storytelling brings tears, and laughter, and all manner of emotions. I cried all the way through Ted Lasso. I imagine you did too. Given how much the show runners were affected by James Hollis’s The Middle Passage, no surprise there.

People sometimes say, “You live life with too much drama.” My response is that maybe they don’t live with enough drama. Life, this short pause between two great mysteries, is complex, awful, wonderful, and profoundly difficult. I accept all the feelings that file in through the front door, bringing their bags with them, sometimes for an extended stay. They tell me I am alive, and making the most of my time on earth.

Life is peaks and valleys and long periods on the open plains. Sometimes bright sunshine, sometimes shadows and storms. Periods of elation followed by pensiveness, followed by the worst, boredom. I need to be busy. So did my father, and his father before him. So do Jonathan and Jana. Jael is more like Cathy, enjoying times of quiet solitude.

I want my work to be meaningful. If you believe the call toward authenticity is sacred, and holy, and for the greater good, you also believe in the importance of good work.

Oppenheimer’s legacy is complicated. Was his work good? Given the line he spoke to Einstein in the last scene of the movie, it is obvious he asked the same question.

Emily Dickinson was virtually unknown during her life. Most of her poems were not published until well after her death. Her legacy was her poems, and they endure. All things being equal, I’d rather leave a legacy of poems than a legacy that, in the wrong hands, could spell the end of the species.

How will people see the journey of a transgender pastor a century from now? Will anyone care? Will the fight for LGBTQ+ rights be seen as laudable, or will the conservative side have won, or will the controversy surrounding it be so far in the past that no one pays any attention? Who knows?

I do not care about a legacy. I care about living as authentically as I am able, given my flaws and such. I hope my children and grandchildren remember me fondly, when their lives slow down enough to allow them to remember the past at all.

I’ve only memorized two poems from Emily Dickinson. I memorized the first about a quarter of a century ago:

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.