I arrived at the Brighton, Colorado conference center at 7:45 on a snowy January morning. Given the condition of the roads, I was surprised to see the parking lot was full. Inside were a few dozen mayors from the Denver Metro Mayors Caucus, all ready for a full day retreat, despite the Colorado weather.

I serve as mayor pro tem of Lyons, Colorado. I am a member of the Board of Trustees of our town and was chosen as mayor pro tem by the mayor and members of the board. If the mayor is out of town, I chair meetings, sign checks and whatnot. Under normal circumstances I would not have been invited to the retreat. However, I had been invited to give the keynote address to kick off the morning of the retreat.

It was quite an honor to speak to the mayors representing pretty much the entire Front Range of Colorado. Sixty percent of the state’s sales tax revenue comes from those cities. You might expect these mayors to be ambitious folks with a lot of ego need and not much ego strength, kind of what we see in national politics nowadays. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

Only the mayors of Denver and Aurora (you know the city “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs) have full time jobs. The rest have a day job, and for most of them, a pretty demanding day job. From my observation these mayors had the kind of strengths Henri Nouwen talked about as being common in great leaders – equal parts confidence and humility. They were not particularly enamored with themselves, but they did take their task seriously.

These folks certainly do not serve for the pay. Our mayor in Lyons earns $8,000 a year. Most of the folks there earn $20,000 or less. And though it is not full time, serving as mayor is pretty consuming. In most locations the job is nonpartisan. With a couple of exceptions, I had no idea about the party affiliation of those at Saturday’s retreat. In a late morning session all of them gathered around tables to set priorities about ways in which they can work together for the betterment of their citizens. It was fun watching them brainstorm priorities among subjects that might put the rest of us to sleep, like infrastructure, construction defects, and zoning.

They also talked about the character traits most important to them in their coworkers. Highest on the list were trust, honesty, and follow-through, traits I saw in the mayors themselves.

I was able to stay through mid-afternoon, through the presentations by the kinds of organizations known by their acronyms, CML, DRCOG, RTD, and such. These organizations serve the needs of the cities. The general public might not know they exist, but the mayors do.

I was greatly encouraged by the retreat. This is where most of the real work gets done in America – at the local level, and these people refuse to be deterred by national politics. Of course they have concerns, and when the new president arbitrarily halts all federal funding, they know their citizens will be the ones who are hurt, regardless of how they voted. But these local leaders press on, because nobody else is going to repair that box culvert, secure those water rights, or increase services to senior citizens.

I thought of our own town board meetings, starting at 5:30 pm and often lasting over four hours. There are some really late nights, with most people getting up early the next morning to go to their day jobs.

In these days in which all the ego-needy national pundits desperately grasp for power, it was good to be reminded that the people who actually keep this nation running are meeting together on a nonpartisan basis, keeping our democracy functioning and stable.

I’m reminded of the phrase commonly attributed to former Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill – “All politics is local.” I hope it is true, because if it is, I see some light at the end of the tunnel.

And so it goes.

The week after the election I took a break from thinking about what action I can take related to the future of our nation. What happened at and after the inauguration brought me out of my stupor.

Four years ago today I was speaking at President Biden’s Inaugural Prayer Service. It was quite an honor. Today, at the same hour four years later, I was reading Trump’s executive order stating that gender dysphoria is not real. I renewed my passport a couple of months ago – because I knew I needed to renew it before new orders went into effect. Same with my TSA Pre-check and Global Entry renewal. I’ve also been stockpiling estrogen, because Medicare coverage for that will go next. In the midst of this madness, what can I do? What can any of us do?

Initially I will put my head down and continue my work as Mayor Pro Tem of Lyons, thankfully a non-partisan body. If all politics is ultimately local, then this must be the place to begin. I consider it an honor to serve my town, and I greatly appreciate how my town receives me – warmly and fully accepting. But that is here, in Lyons, Colorado.

What can I do about national affairs and the state of our democracy? Over the past couple of months, as I have ruminated on the election loss, I attended to a number of facts, not always easy to come by in today’s Internet informed world. Donald Trump won 49.9 percent of the vote, compared to Kamala Harris at 48.4 percent. This was not a landslide. Yes, for the first time Donald Trump would have won an election with the popular vote, something that would not have happened in 2016, but not by much. Also, for the second straight election, he did not win half of the American vote.

Still, he won. I believe one of the reasons he won is because of the lack of serious engagement with public issues. Most people do not bother checking their news sources for accuracy. I am often shocked that people watch the opinion shows of Fox News as if they were fact. The inability to separate fact from fiction has always been with us in America, since the days of competing newspapers in the late 18th century. But the Internet takes it to a whole new level.

Second, I have concluded that most Americans are not much interested in doing the work necessary to get to the truth of things. Belonging has always been more important than the truth. Look at any family system that backs an abuser, even when they know the truth of the abuse.

Third, I believe the American education system, focused as it is on the left brain subjects of higher mathematics, science, engineering and the like, has left right brain subjects like literature, history, and social studies behind, no longer requiring a balanced education in the humanities. Without an understanding of world history, there can be no understanding of how democracy can slip from a nation’s grasp.

Fourth, the left did not help themselves. As Yascha Mounk so ably has written in The Identity Trap, the left’s obsession with standpoint theory, essentialism, cultural appropriation, identity sensitive public policy, progressive separatism, and limits on free speech all created a backlash, not just from the right but from the center. These excesses of the left have also effectively killed the very important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI.) Universities have played a huge part in these excesses, but an argument could be made that the Democratic establishment and the mainline Protestant world also contributed to these excesses.

Fifth, I want to be clear that the single most significant factor in the election was white evangelical Christians, 85 percent of whom voted for Trump. Without their vote, Harris would have won 59 percent to 41 percent. As I explained in a sermon I preached recently, the evangelical world wants a left-brain Christianity, where the Bible is seen as a book of literal meaning, scientific explanation, and certainty. It is not. The Bible, like the teaching of Jesus, is metaphor, not literal meaning, awe for the creation, not scientific explanation, and mystery, not certainty. Evangelical Christianity long ago sold its soul to the modern age, which fascinatingly has more power in evangelical Christianity today than it does in the culture at large. The culture at large has moved on to postmodernism.

In my quarter century as a non-profit CEO, I always said to our employees and board, “Do not tell me about a problem if you are not ready to suggest or work on a solution.” How do you combat the spread of misinformation, or counter society’s loss of interest in intellectual pursuit? These are massive problems with no easy solutions.

This much I do know. I still believe that proximity and narrative can solve a host of our problems. If we can get close to one another, in the same room, we will see each other’s humanity and hear one another’s stories. I find that people’s understanding of what it means to be transgender shifts significantly when they have spent time with me. Unfortunately most of those on the right refuse to spend time with me. Social isolation is a disease that cannot be cured by anything other than ending the isolation.

I am in conversation with people who could provide a large platform in which to come face to face with those opposed to transgender people. It would not be easy, but I believe it would be good. I’ll let you know what happens.

In the meantime, please know that I will be fine. It is the transgender kids and those who have only recently transitioned that I worry about. Pray for them and pray for America.

I have always struggled to identify my feelings. My therapist used to say, “I did not ask what you thought, I asked how you feel.” Having been raised in a fundamentalist home with hardened categories, I was taught that all decisions should be rational and feelings get in the way of good decisions. I had no practice feeling.

The core emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust all live on their own in the ether. They have no place to lay their heads save the space they demand in your being. And they do demand space. They show up at the door with their bags and inform you they are staying until you deal with them. This is especially true of the substantive trio of anger, fear, and sadness. Fundamentalists lock them in the basement, but everyone knows they are there, beneath the tidied surface.

I have since come to understand you have to allow these emotions entry when they arrive. They have an easement to come and go as they like. They do with all humans. You cannot stop them. You can decide to address them in the living room instead of putting them in the basement. And you can demand their departure when they have overstayed their welcome. But I get ahead of myself. I did not know any of this way back then.

By “then” I mean most of my married life. I, like a lot of husbands, relied on my wife to tell me how I felt. For Cathy, that was exhausting. Not only did she have to deal with her own feelings, she had to feel mine, in an exaggerated way, like you do as a therapist – “Your mother did WHAT!?” People don’t know how abnormal some actions are until you tell them. Wives routinely do this for their husbands because apart from anger, most husbands have no idea what they are feeling. Our culture allows men anger, but none of the other core emotions.

Post transition I did it again, with a friend, and then with another close friend. I finally came to see I was wearing souls out and I needed to feel my own emotions, unaided by another benevolent female. That is when I started memorizing poetry.

Poetry is the right brain finding its expression in language, not straightforward left brain language, but language used slant, as Emily Dickinson might say. I memorize poems that speak to me. I do not ask why they speak to me. They just do, and when they do, I memorize them. Then I pay attention to when they arise unbidden in the course of a day. The right brain is charged with bringing into consciousness what is unconscious.

The lyrics of songs also arrive unbidden, which is interesting, because I almost never know all the lyrics to a song. For me, songs are about the tune, especially the harmonies, not the words. So when the words arrive without invitation, I take notice.

I cannot tell you how often, as a child, I started belting out the African-American spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” I sang it with all my heart. No one in my family took notice. That is the fruit of fundamentalism.

Lately I keep having the entire David Whyte poem, The Soul Lives Contented running through the course of my days. It is not a poem about contentment. It is a poem about restlessness. The soul lives beneath the ego. The ego wants power and safety. It is a tyrant. The soul is here for the ride. Trembling, it reaches out for your hand, to get your attention, to invite you to the thin places where the ego is bedded down and the soul can speak directly to the gods.

See, not the language of the rational, reasonable, explicit, abstracted, compartmentalized, fragmented, left brain, but the singing, praising, feeling of the right brain. In Jung’s language this is where the self resides. In Christian language, it is the realm of the soul.

The soul is what answers the front door and allows the core emotions entry and takes them to the guest room. It knows what has to be dealt with. It might even help them unpack their bags. It is the soul that brings poems to mind, helping tease out what is going on in the realm of feeling that I learned to suppress so well. It is also what tells those emotions when it is time to go.

Though I am not certain, it seems to me that estrogen and anti-androgens make it easier for the soul to slip forth like a “tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion” as Mary Oliver said in Maybe. Testosterone is the fuel of anger. Its absence I experience as pure blessing, one of the indicators that I am, in fact, transgender.

I always say I come from the borderlands between genders, a holy liminal space. I once had dinner at a house built by William Roebling, the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge. He put thick girders, left over from the construction of the bridge, in the walls of his house. The door jambs were thick, almost like passageways. That is the kind of liminal space in which I live, neither this room nor that, but a place in between not quite once before a time, but also not quite once upon a time.

Anyway, that is why I still look to my close female friends to tell me what I am feeling, like a man. It is also why I find myself having very strong emotions that demand expression. It feels like that is the estrogen at work, like a woman. As I said, I come from the land between the genders. Sometimes it is the land of the lost, but as I say so very often, it’s okay, because lost is a place too.

I am not sure where this post is going. I want it to circle around and reach a conclusion chock full of insight. Seems like that’s not gonna happen.

And so it goes.

I have a few thousand readers who regularly peruse my blog. Many have it sent to their inbox. I am grateful for all of you.

I am thankful for those from my past life who read this column regularly and occasionally reach out via email or text to thank me for a post. You have no idea how much it warms my heart when you write. My life is lived with discontinuity between what was and what is, so whenever there is some small gesture that comes over the continental divide of my life to thank me for a post, it boosts my spirit far more than you know.

I know some of what I write is painful to those who remain in evangelicalism, and that you disagree about more than a little of what I write. I appreciate your graciousness in taking the posts at face value and that you do not take them personally. Many of you have remained within our denomination and I completely understand. I would have remained if I had been allowed. Sadly, both my transition and my theology no longer allow it.

I also have a lot of transgender people who follow me, both those who have transitioned and those who have not. I am not particularly active within the trans community. I rarely speak on transgender issues. Most of my public speaking is on the subject of my first TED Talk – gender equity. Even with my lack of involvement in the trans community, I am touched that you take the time to follow my journey and let me know the parts that resonate with your own.

Some of my trans readers reach  out to have a conversation. Sadly I receive far too many requests to be able to schedule those conversations. I am so sorry that is the case. Thank you for sticking with me and reading my memoir. I am appreciative.

A lot of my readers are folks who have stumbled upon one of my TED Talks and have signed up after searching my name. I heard from one of you this morning. I hear from folks pretty much every week, and I always try to answer your emails as quickly as possible. Taking the time to write me is a precious thing, and not something I ever take for granted.

I’m pretty sure my kids rarely if ever read my blog, unless I specifically ask them to read one. My girlfriend doesn’t either, or my therapist. Cathy, my former wife, usually reads them and I take comfort in that. Same with my best friend, who reads every week, and three of my five former copastors, who let me know when they like a post.

Some read every week. One person writes me an email after almost every post. She has been such a loyal follower. Others wait and read eight or ten in a single sitting. Some friends pick up the phone and call me after a particular post, wanting to talk further. I cherish those calls.

For all of you, I am grateful for your faithfulness and for the respect you show just by reading my words.

A lot of what I write is stream of consciousness, whatever I happen to be working through on the particular day I start writing. Sometimes I have no idea what I am going to write until I type the first sentence. The subject unfolds as I type. I love those days. Sometimes the ideas come so fast my fingers can’t move quickly enough to record the cascade of thoughts. Occasionally I stare at a blank screen and type a sentence or two before waiting for another day.

I will keep writing as long as you keep reading. As this, my twelfth year as Paula unfolds, and I approach the completion of 600 columns (columns – language from bygone days with the Christian Standard) I pray that my thoughts may lessen the suffering in the world just a bit, that my words may bring a little insight into people’s minds, and that my heart comes through to show my respect for each and every one of you who treat one another with dignity. I am grateful for your particular journey on this green earth.

And so it goes.