I Did Not Know What I Did Not Know

I have always been a bit of a Renaissance person. At one point I was taking home paychecks as a television host, adoption caseworker, non-profit CEO, Evangelical megachurch preaching pastor, operator of homes for individuals with mental retardation, seminary instructor, and magazine editor and columnist. I loved the challenge of mastering a plethora of responsibilities. Well, that, and I happened to be running away from myself. But that’s not the subject of today’s post. And besides, I’ve been writing about that for a while now. We’re probably all getting a little tired.

When I look back there are a number of threads running through those varied jobs, yet one stands out. I did not understand its importance until my life took a major turn. These jobs were all handed to me – a tall, successful, well-educated, white American male who was clueless just how entitled he was. Oh, I worked hard, but given my privilege, that hard work sent me to the top of the class.

Because I’ve flown well over two million miles with American Airlines, I know a bit about airplanes. Over the years, on a rough flight I might comfort a seatmate by saying, “There’s nothing to worry about. This is a DeHavilland Dash-8 100 series turboprop, one of the safest airliners in the sky.” People believed me because I acted as one with authority. I can’t tell you how many times a seatmate, or even a flight attendant, would ask, “Are you a pilot with the airline?” I looked like a pilot. I looked like the host of a national television show. I looked like the preaching pastor of a megachurch.

But that was then.

Last month I was on a very turbulent flight from LAX to Honolulu. The woman seated next to me said, “I can’t remember a flight this bad.” From my frequent flyer bag of tricks, I replied, “Well this is an A321, and it’s actually a little underpowered. When it has a full load of fuel and every seat is taken, it can’t fly above the weather.” The woman did not ask if I was a pilot for the airline, she just glanced as if to say, “You should keep your thoughts to yourself.” She asked a flight attendant why the flight was so rough. He answered, “We can’t fly over the weather.” She thanked him and settled less nervously into her seat.

I thought, “How on earth could this woman be so dismissive of me? I gave a more thorough answer than the flight attendant, but she acted like I was an idiot. What’s up with that?”

Of course I knew good and well what was up with that. The same thing has been up with that everywhere I go, from the airport to the car repair shop, to the hardware store. My bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, doctoral degree, and three page curriculum vitae stand for nothing. I am summarily dismissed for one single reason. I am a woman.

I do have a little sympathy for successful, straight, white American males. No matter how hard they try, they will never understand how much the world is tilted in their favor. Short of changing genders, race, or sexual identity, it is impossible for them to know. Cisgender females cannot truly comprehend how difficult it is for them to be heard. What they have experienced is all they know. It is all their mothers knew, and their mothers before them. They were enculturated to accept flippant dismissal.

For every woman with whom I have ever worked, I am so, so sorry. I thought I was one of the good guys. I did not know what I did not know. If you thought I was aloof, or arrogant, or dismissive, it is because I was. I was ushered into that entitled existence by an education system and church that elevated me above you. I am deeply sorry. I ask your forgiveness.

And now, a word about the church that entitled me so.

I have preached in three of the 12 largest churches in America. Today I would not be allowed in the pulpit of a single one. Not only would I be barred because I am transgender, I would be barred because I am a woman. The irony is the things I know now make me twice the person I was before. But women’s voices remain silenced while churches stumble in the dark with a leadership blinded by its own entitlement. It has made me into something I never expected I’d be – a feminist.

Just yesterday I was speaking with three Christian women I deeply respect.  I would consider each a strong feminist. I said, “Now that I live and breathe among you, I realize I am still far from an essence you gracefully carry. Maybe it is because you are mothers, and ponder things in your heart that accumulate toward wisdom. Or maybe it is because you process not in part, but the whole. Or maybe it is because you stand there with your defiant nevertheless, born of love but refined by fire.”

As we parted ways I looked at these powerful women and thought, “The day will come when the walls of Jericho fall and the church becomes whole and love wins. Maybe I won’t get to preach in those churches again, but these women will.” And so, I pray, it goes.

My Conscience or My Vanity Appalled

I was greatly impacted by the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn, At the Cross. Watts told us Christ’s death was “for such a worm as I.” In my fundamentalist childhood there was no shortage of judgment for the real and imagined flaws in my barely formed being. It was decades before I began to understand God might possibly, on Thursdays maybe, love me just as I was.

Could it be true I did not have to do a single thing to earn God’s favor? Mary Oliver writes about the conclusion of a journey toward radical grace in her poem, The Wild Geese. The poem begins,

You do not have to be good

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert repenting

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

Love what it loves

I memorized the poem 20 years ago, but only recently do I no longer choke on the phrase, “the soft animal of your body.” I was an excellent example of a body and spirit that were not integrated. My spirit and body were each gendered, but the genders were not in alignment. Through my transition I began to integrate the two. Through the love of family, friends, and my new church I finally began to love the soft animal of my body.

I also began to see myself in a new light. I came to see, far more clearly than before, that I am a mess – a living, breathing series of considerable contradictions. I could identify with the words of Terence, the ancient Roman playwright, “Nothing human is alien to me.”

A secret of the Fundamentalist world is that while people acknowledge the idea of their sinfulness, they often believe they are not actually sinful. I used to do adoption casework. I would ask a couple their strengths and weaknesses. Non-church people easily named both. Fundamentalists could name neither. To speak of their strengths would be boasting. When it came to weaknesses, they acknowledged they had them, but could never seem to recall any. They might say, “I’m not as loving as I should be.” “Seriously? That’s the best you can do. What about your addiction to your work, your inattentiveness to your spouse, and your extraordinary capacity to judge others!” I never actually said those things, but I wanted to. What I actually said was, “Hmmm, interesting.”

I believe you must remove the fear of rejection to fully face your messiness. When I counsel Fundamentalists I find they often must reimagine God before they can really get down to work. They must put aside their notion of “sinners in the hands of an angry God,” and embrace a God of grace, mercy and love. Only then are they able to truly address their weaknesses.

I rarely use the word sin. It is too loaded. When I am working with Evangelicals and Fundamentalists, we talk about Paul Tillich’s view of sin as separation from the ground of being. We resurrect the meaning of the Greek word for sin, “missing the mark.” That language is helpful. Missing the mark feels pretty human. I do it every time I ride singletrack on my mountain bike. If you don’t hit the right few square inches of trail there is going to be a wheel strike. When a wheel strike occurs the physics is pretty simple. The rock and bike do not move. You do. The result is painful. But if you are going to mountain bike you are going to have wheel strikes. It is the nature of the sport. And if you are going to live, you are going to miss the mark. It’s okay to miss the mark. It really is.

In Richard III Shakespeare writes, “Alas, I rather hate myself, for hateful deeds committed by myself.”

Uh-huh.

I love the way William Butler Yeats puts it in his poem Vacillation:

Responsibility so weighs me down

Things said and done long years ago

Or things I did not say or do but thought that

I might say or do weigh me down

And not a day but something is recalled

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Uh-huh.

Yeats and Shakespeare name the reality of their sin. They are the people Jesus was referring to when he said, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” That word mourn means those who mourn the very specific nature of their known weaknesses – the ones they have had for decades. The ones that piss everybody off. The ones that made Nikos Kazantzakis say by the time we are 50 we have the face we deserve. Jesus says blessed are those who mourn that, for they will be comforted.

Jung called neurosis a “life designed around avoiding authentic suffering.” We cannot authentically suffer until we realize we are not going to be rejected for it. It is difficult to suffer through the reality of what was done to us and what we have done to others. But it is the only route to wholeness, a road you will not find the strength to travel until you know you are loved.

On his last day of public ministry Jesus was asked one final question, “Which of the laws is the greatest.” He answered, “Love God with all your heart, soul and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.” We understand loving God. We even get the importance of loving neighbor. But we completely miss the last command – to love our selves.   Until we stop mistaking narcissism or self-denigration for self-love, it will be difficult to love ourselves.  We will know we have come to truly love ourselves when we can say with Carl Jung, “I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I am the enemy who must be loved.”  When we can do that, love wins.

Working Together

Years ago I worked with an individual who was difficult to bear. I felt great relief when we parted ways. Throughout my 35 years in non-profit ministry I was fortunate to have effective work teams. That one exception reminded me how blessed I was. I loved being with my coworkers. We brought out the best in each other. Most of those good souls are no longer a part of my life, and I miss them.

The New York Times Magazine recently published an article by Charles Duhigg explaining how Google learned to identify well-functioning work teams. The author wrote about Julia Rozovsky’s experience as a graduate student at Yale. She was placed in a working group designed to enhance the educational experience of the students, but found herself dreading the days she was required to meet with the group. As her education continued, however, she and other students created their own unofficial group, a work team that became highly productive. The second group made her feel relaxed and energized. The first group had put her on guard. What was the difference?

Later, as an employee at Google, Ms. Rozovsky was part of a group charged with determining the factors that made for high functioning work teams. As her work progressed, the elements she expected to be important turned out to be almost irrelevant. Good individual workers did not necessarily make good team members. Groups of more creative and intelligent workers were no more effective than groups of workers with average intelligence. Groups of high achievers did not stand out from other teams. It took much research, but finally they determined what differentiated effective teams from ineffective teams.

First, the best functioning teams had equal input from each member. While any one person might dominate conversation during any one part of the collaborative process, by the end of each day there had been no one dominant talker. All team members had spoken roughly equivalent amounts during the workday.

Second, the best functioning teams shared personal stories and were emotionally vulnerable with one another. They might go off track for long periods of time before returning to the meeting agenda, but when they did return they acted quickly and effectively.

By the time the study was concluded the group had identified two words that defined the highest functioning work teams – Psychological Safety. If the workers felt valued, safe and understood, they freely gave of themselves. If they did not, the group’s effectiveness was limited.

It is my very good fortune to currently be a part of four work teams. Three of the four were well established before I arrived. All four are made up of mature individuals with a high relational intelligence.   All create environments of psychological safety. In some groups it is second half of life people who set the tone. In others it is younger leaders. In all there is a collaborative energy born of good formation, shared values, open emotions, and equal representation.

When I worked with megachurches I served with some amazing lead pastors. On occasion, however, I watched an interesting phenomenon unfold. A lead pastor would create a senior leadership team in which there was psychological safety and genuine openness. As the church grew, however, the lead pastor became isolated. As the pastor’s star rose within the congregation and the broader Evangelical world, he (they were all male) became less inclined to hear “bad news” from his coworkers. The senior pastor was not to be challenged. Psychology safety vanished.

These lead pastors had consciously or subconsciously surrounded themselves with coworkers and elders who would not challenge them. It was painful to watch the churches begin the long slow slide toward irrelevance, with not a soul willing to tell the emperor he had no clothes.

The Google study did not consider gender. I wonder what they might have discovered had they chosen to do so. My personal experience is that women are more collaborative than men. They seem more naturally inclined to create environments of psychological safety. There is less posturing, more recognition we rise or fall together. Of course that is not a universal experience. You do occasionally encounter a female work environment reminiscent of The Devil Wears Prada. But my experience is those people are the exception that proves the rule.

Since reading the Times Magazine article I have been fondly remembering the many work teams I have known throughout my long career. The majority were teams I created when I was a CEO. I suppose I must have intuitively understood the importance of psychological safety. I am glad I did. Because all those folks made our ministry very successful. For that I am grateful.

I no longer feel much interest in leading a team. But I do want to serve on effective teams. There is great joy in sitting down with a group of open, talented, hard-working souls, and tackling problems together. We were created to find meaning and pleasure in work. I am pleased I am able to serve with good people, for a lot of work remains in this great ministry of reconciling the creation to the creator.

Where There Is No Enemy, We Create One

A study published by LifeWay Research said between 2007 and 2014 the number of religiously unaffiliated adults in the United States increased from 16 to 23 percent.

In the past this “religiously unaffiliated” group was a demilitarized zone between the religiously affiliated and the unreligious. Their increasing numbers may be representative of any number of phenomena. Ed Stetzer, director of LifeWay Research, suggests many of the religious affiliated no longer want to be identified with the increasingly polarized religious landscape. I mean, who could blame them. Do you want to be identified with Evangelicals supporting Donald Trump?

More and more people are creating as much distance as possible between themselves and the institution they see polarizing American society. Those Millennials you thought might return to church when they had kids – well they are not likely to do so without some changes.

E. O. Wilson is a Pulitzer Prize winning sociobiologist at Harvard University. Wilson identified the tribe as the critical unit of social necessity for the human species. Wilson identified nine eusocial species that have what Wilson calls a “tribal gene.” They will sacrifice themselves for the sake of the tribe. But Wilson says there is a fundamental problem. Humans are the only one of the eusocial species that has evolved to believe we need an enemy for the tribe to survive. Where there is no enemy we create one. If we do not reverse that trend, Wilson believes it could spell the end of the species and the planet.

This need to create enemies where none exist is one of the great crises of modern religion. We shake our heads as Shiites and Sunnis wipe each other out with abandon, but turn a blind eye to Christians who figuratively do the same. We claim our exclusionary stance is based on scripture, but on closer examination it appears more often based on isolationism.

A good-hearted Evangelical recently asked how I could be opposed to pedophilia but supportive of LGBT relationships. I have been asked that question on several occasions.  While this thoughtful and gracious person’s question was more nuanced than others, I still had the same response.  Pedophiles harm innocent children, always, while LGBT people do not.  LGBT can indeed misuse sex in the same way straight people can misuse sex, but it is not an inherent part of being in a gay relationship any more than it is an inherent part of being in a straight relationship.

Many critics of marriage equality have not had contact with people in healthy LGBT relationships.  If you have no contact with LGBT individuals it is easy to develop straw people, predators who are a threat to American society. You create reasons to hate the people you believe the apostle Paul writes against in the first chapter of his letter to the church at Rome. “That’s a pretty nasty group he identifies” you say, “and it includes homosexuals. So they must be predators or something pretty awful.” The raw facts, of course, are LGBT folks are pretty normal. Spend some time with us. It will become obvious.

I preached at my church last Sunday (highlandschurchdenver.org.) Highlands is six years old with about 850 attendees. When you look over the audience, some 40 percent of whom are LGBT, you are struck by absolutely nothing except their eagerness to hear the Gospel. Highlands is an ordinary group of moms, dads, executives, school principals, teachers, psychotherapists and others who laugh at the same jokes you do, cry at the same movies you watch, and want to be a part of the ministry of reconciling the creation to the creator, just as you do.

I do not want to have any more debates with Evangelicals about LGBT issues. I just want them to come to my church every Sunday for a year and see if they hold the same theology at the end of that year that they held at the beginning. Proximity enhances understanding.

Unfortunately that is not likely to happen, as the Evangelical subculture is becoming more and more of an isolated ghetto. As it withdraws from culture its influence is diminished. For instance, the Evangelical world is behind many of the laws recently introduced to deny basic rights to transgender people. But only a handful of those laws stand a chance of being passed. The broader culture has moved on. Yet angry Evangelicals remain locked in their ideological fortresses determined to create enemies where they simply do not exist.

No wonder more and more Americans are religiously unaffiliated. We do not need fear and isolationism.  We do not need tribes creating enemies where none exist. We do need tribes of trust who realize we are in this together. We need communities of faith in which the religiously unaffiliated feel at home. We need hope.

Though Questioning Everything

I was in a dinner conversation in which one table mate said to another, “Tell me, exactly what do you mean when you say he is real?” Our fellow diner replied, “He is authentic.” The first person asked, “Authentically what? Authentically human?” My friend felt caught in a battle of semantics, but I was actually sympathetic to the questioner. What does it mean to be authentic?

I do not believe it is accurate to say someone is authentic. There is no magic point of authenticity in one’s past or future. There is no authentic self, only authentic living. Authentic living involves constantly creating and reinventing oneself.

Authentic living is a journey undertaken not in some vacuum, but in a complex world of relationships, where actions have consequences. My decision to transition involved authenticity. It was important to be on the outside the person I had always felt I was on the inside. Many people thought I was brave and courageous, while others said I was selfish and foolish. Both reactions were heartfelt. I was in the middle, wrestling with the veracity of these disparate voices. It took every ounce of wisdom I could muster, but all of that was an essential part of living authentically. Without the reflection and reaction of others, my attempt at authentic living would have been little more than an exercise in self-absorption.

As a child, living authentically is impossible. We can only hope to have an environment in which those who care for us provide reasonable boundaries that are clear and supportive. We hope for parents who are able to delay their own gratification so they may attend to our needs, assure our safety, and provide us with a solid sense of self. That is the kind of environment that enables us to strike out on our own. For all of us, the time comes when we must differentiate from our families of origin. Still, some refuse to leave, enmeshed in a family system so toxic it irreparably damages their souls. For most of us, however, we eventually muster the strength to start out on our own. It begins in fits and starts in our teens and is not completed until we are in our 30s or 40s. Only then are we able to become who we truly know ourselves to be.

I was speaking with a delightful woman whose father is an Evangelical leader of national influence. We were talking about ways in which she can find gratitude for the home in which she is no longer welcome. I suggested, “Well, at least you are not cowering in some corner. Your parents gave you enough security to find the strength to be true to yourself, in spite of their objections.”

This woman is living boldly, honestly, and authentically. I wish her parents had the capacity to feel the pride they should feel for their extraordinary daughter. Of course, her parents would tell you they have rejected their daughter because they are also striving to live authentically. But I believe there is a difference between parent and child.

This woman’s parents have determined that authentic living is not determined by them, but by the church of which they are a part. They have passed along the painful and difficult responsibility of making up their own minds and ceded that power to others, choosing to be unquestionably obedient to the boundaries established by their church.

Their daughter, on the other hand, has decided to follow the words of M. Scott Peck, who said, “The path to holiness lies through questioning everything.” To be holy is to be whole, accepting full responsibility for how you choose to live. It is deciding which tribal land will be yours and which expression of spirituality will be yours. If that sounds like hard work, it is because it is, harder than most of us want to do. That is why it is so much easier to allow someone else to determine the boundaries of our lives and the limits of our curiosity.

When I was in Bible college one crusty old professor said, “Your problem is you think too much.” He was actually correct. In that environment my thinking was a problem, both for the professor and for me. The professor chose to live out his days within the bubble of Fundamentalism. That was his right, and by all appearances, he was comfortable. But his journey was not mine. I chose the road less traveled by and I have no regrets.

I Could Have Had Another Meeting, But Then…

Two weeks ago I returned from seven days with two precious granddaughters. I watched over them while their mom and dad were at a pastor’s retreat. Because the gods smiled on me, I got to see them again last week. Since they live close by, I see the other three more often. I adore all five granddaughters, but over the last couple of years there have been more than a few changes in my relationship with them.

Some changes arrived with my gender transition. When Grandpa became GramPaula, the adjustment for the girls was less traumatic than I feared. Their parents did a great job preparing them. In fact, once they met me their adjustment was pretty much instantaneous. Not to say there were not some interesting conversations. Like the time we were in a public restroom and one granddaughter asked, “Hey GramPaula, are you allowed to be in a women’s restroom if you used to be a boy?” We had a little conversation about private versus public conversations.

I know I risk pandering to stereotypes, but as a father I felt a deep need to provide for my family, to keep them clothed and fed, safe and secure. I loved spending time with my children and I knew each of them very well, more than many fathers I’m sure, but providing for my family took precedence over nurturing. While this has probably been true of fathers since the dawn of humanity, I now find myself able to take at least a peak from the other side.

I’m sure some of the changes are simply because I am now semi-retired, with more time available to my grandchildren. But there is more to it. There are chemical changes brought about by the arrival of estradiol and the departure of testosterone. I do not know how to define these changes other than to say all five senses are heightened when I am in the presence of my granddaughters. There is an awareness that is deeper and more tangibly experienced than anything I knew as a father or grandfather. It’s as though I can see into their hearts and feel the timbre of their expectant souls. I cherish each moment with unspeakable joy.

As comfortable as the girls are with me, I notice a difference in how they relate to their Grandma. They are a bit more free with her body, (though they are pretty comfortable with mine. Last Friday my back served as a surfboard for four little feet. “Come on GramPaula, make some waves!”) But I must admit their little bodies do fit a little more snugly in Grandma’s embrace. I assume it is because of who she is, this person who always gives. It is also because she is a mother, with all the instincts and rights thereof. That is one of the many aspects of female experience I will never know.

As for me, I’m happy to be in a position in which I can truly attend to these five little lives. Last Friday morning I could have had a business meeting. The folks I was with the day before, women I thoroughly enjoy, were open to meeting again. But I declined their generous offer because I was in New York and had a chance to let my son relax while his wife went to work. So I fixed breakfast, finished making their lunches, and walked the girls to school in the 20-degree weather, two precious gloved hands resting in mine. Why work when you can begin your day with a little bit of heaven?

Dad, Grandpa or GramPaula, my children and grandchildren have been the finest blessing of my long and fulfilling life. They make me grateful to live and have my being here on God’s green earth, where I have heard many little voices laughing and known the unspeakable joy of love offered without condition.

There are still days in which it is difficult to accept how much pain I have brought into the lives of those I love, but then I am struck by the grace offered to me by Cathy and my children and their spouses. And I remember that to these little girls, I’m just who I am. It doesn’t matter whether I’m Paul or Paula. And that feels like pure goodness sliding into my life on some myseriously generous moonbeam.

And so it goes.

So Much to Learn

I understand Evangelical Christianity fairly well. I’ve taught doctoral and masters level courses on contemporary American Christianity. I understand church planting among Evangelicals and have a pretty good awareness of Christian higher education, church growth, megachurch administration, worship, and more esoteric topics of Evangelical life.

Truth is I have always been curious. Talk with me about fracking and I will listen with interest. Strike up a conversation about the lives of women on the American frontier and I will enjoy the interaction.  Anything about America’s airline industry will get my complete attention and probably an opinion or two. Years ago a mentor told me, “You need to give yourself permission to be the Renaissance person you are.” Permission granted, I have learned at least a little bit about a lot of stuff.

These days, however, I am once again a novice. I know very little about the inner workings of the LGBTQ world. It is all so relatively new to me. For instance, in some settings you can use the acronym “LGBT” and all is well. In others you must add the Q (Queer) and in still others you must add an “I” (Intersex.) And no, queer is not the pejorative term you remember from 40 years ago. So much to learn.

Even within the LGBTQ community there are pockets of unknowing. Gays and lesbians are often uneducated about transgender issues, and a lot of us do not understand much about bisexuals.

We are all lifelong learners, some more committed than others. Both of my mentors were voracious readers and curious observers, right to the very end of their long lives. I have no doubt both would have been surprised to hear about my gender dysphoria, but their curiosity would have been immediate and their spirit, generous.

Most of my adult life was spent among well-educated straight white American males, so I tended to know the things they knew. None of us were aware how much Western civilization was tilted in our favor. Not until you go through a radical change like mine do you begin to understand the pervasive nature of white male privilege.

Now I am learning what it means to be a woman, or more specifically, a transgender woman. I am part of a tiny minority, seldom studied and little understood. I am humbled when I read about those LGBTQ pioneers who have gone before. They were truly courageous.

Many great truths are paradoxical. Light is both a particle and a wave; man both finite and infinite. The road to maturity requires both radical openness and wise discernment. It is a road of ever-increasing knowledge, held loosely, coupled with ever-increasing wisdom, held tenaciously. It is a life grounded in the past, yet leaning into the future, happy to be a part of this great mystery in time and space.

One of my mentors talked about the multiple conversions of his life. Each came when radical new information took him through liminal space onto a new road of trials. He discovered each road, traveled with open mind and inquisitive spirit, led to holy ground. He said he finally came to understand all ground is holy.

I will always be a student, grateful for the teachers who have come into my life. As I once again accept the role of novice, I hope both wisdom and understanding result from the many things I come to know.

“That I Was Blessed, and Could Bless”

I once had a coworker who never seemed to feel pain, offloading it instead of dealing with it. He passed his pain along to others. His father was an alcoholic and his mother an enabler and he was not willing to walk his way through his emotions. Instead he passed his anger along, almost without thought. When I no longer had to work with him I vowed to never again hire a person unwilling to experience pain. I wanted to work with people who believed the truth would set them free, though they also knew it was likely to make them uncomfortable first.

Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck once wrote about the need to entice a client into therapy. Many come to counseling eagerly, but leave prematurely, as soon as they realize the amount of work necessary to truly deal with their issues.

Most people do not want to actually grow. They just want the pain to stop. They will trade a more fulfilling future for a quick fix today. As soon as an emergency tourniquet stops the flow of acute pain, they leave therapy. Only the brave remain, the ones willing to feel their pain instead of offloading it. And what do these brave souls discover?

They discover becoming more fully human has little to do with happiness. Happiness comes and goes throughout life. Becoming more fully human is all about power, not power expressed as lording it over others, but power restrained, what the Bible calls meekness. It is the power of refusing to be defined by other people’s opinions of you. It is the power of knowing you can dialog with anyone, because you are comfortable with where you stand. It is the power of knowing what you know.

This is not the power of the desperate, but the power of those who believe in abundant life, those who influence others not through argument, but through generosity of spirit. It is the power to do what you are called to do and let go of the consequences. It is accepting the weaknesses you are never going to get ahold of, and learning to be okay with that.

People with this kind of power discover there are not many kindred spirits on the journey. They often feel alone, though some are grateful for the solitude.

Do I consider myself to be in this company of the humbly powerful? Sometimes yes, more often no. I am too aware of my need to be accepted, not a particularly helpful trait for a transgender woman. I also remain impatient, addicted to speed. (Show me any great master addicted to speed – not one out there.) Plus, with all of the humility forced upon me through my transition, you’d think I would be the picture of generous tolerance. Alas, I still do not suffer fools well. I suppose those might be some of the traits with which I need to make peace. They are so very unbecoming.

The poet William Butler Yeats had similar feelings. He expressed them in verses four and five of his poem Vacillation.

My fiftieth year had come and gone

I sat a solitary man in a crowded London shop

An open book and empty cup on the marble tabletop

As on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed

And 20 minutes more or less it seemed

So great my happiness

That I was blessed and could bless.

Yeah, I feel like that. But listen to what he writes in the next stanza:

Although the summer sunlight gild cloudy leafage of the sky

Or wintry moonlight sink the field in storm-scattered intricacy

I cannot look thereon

Responsibility so weighs me down

Things said or done long years ago

Or things I did not say or do but thought that I might say or do

Weigh me down, and not a single day but something is recalled

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

Yeah, I feel like that too. Ah, the marvelous inconsistencies of being human.

Long ago I chose to take the road less traveled by. It is a rocky path, strewn with all kinds of debris. But it is my journey, not the journey someone else imagined for me. On my better days I do not offload the pain my journey brings, but reap the wisdom contained therein. On those days, if I can offer that wisdom to others, I will do so.

And so it goes.

It’s Up To You, New York, New York

I was in Brooklyn watching my two granddaughters during last week’s monster snowstorm.  Between late Friday and Saturday evening the neighborhood was inundated with 30 inches of sideways snow.  When the storm finally ended the city was blessedly silent, like when the refrigerator kicks off and you hear nothing, absolutely nothing.  On Sunday morning there was still no sound but Frost’s, “easy wind and downy flake.”

Twenty-four hours later the city had pretty much recovered and returned to its noisy energetic self.  My son and his wife flew home Sunday evening, LaGuardia being already open.  My granddaughters headed to school on Monday morning, streets being clear and clean.  Shortly thereafter I left for LaGuardia and an on-time flight to Denver. Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. and Baltimore were still shut down, quieter than a cornfield. Not so long ago it would have been the same in New York.

In the 80s I was preaching in Brooklyn.  On our Sunday morning drive from Long Island the kids would count the number of burned out cars on the Belt Parkway, vehicles that had been at someone’s home 12 hours earlier.  On average there were about 20 stripped down and burned out vehicles on a 21-mile stretch of highway.

In 1983 I approved a single mother for adoption.  She had purchased a brownstone in Brooklyn for $92,000, a dump really.  I wasn’t even sure I could approve it for the placement of a child.  The whole city looked like that house – a wreck.  I wouldn’t take the subways after dark and wouldn’t park overnight in the city, ever.  But that was then.

Nowadays there are no burned out cars on the Belt Parkway.  The litter has been cleared and the marshlands turned into a national park.  And that brownstone in Brooklyn, the one I was convinced was a money pit?  Yeah, it’s worth a few million dollars now!  What a difference a couple of decades can make!

In 1969 a smaller snowstorm shut down New York City so badly it was a contributing factor in Mayor John Lindsay losing his job.  This weekend’s snowstorm made even a mediocre mayor look good.  What changed?

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell suggests one of the reasons New York began to change was Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s campaign to end petty crimes like subway graffiti and turnstile hopping.  The leadership of Mike Bloomberg took the city to an even greater level of efficiency.  So this past weekend, a snowstorm that still has Washington and Baltimore shut down was handled in stride by the Big Apple.

I am currently reading City on Fire, a novel about New York in the 1970s.  It reminds me how much has changed in such a short time.  Years ago I heard a lecture in which M. Scott Peck enumerated his reasons for believing in God.  Among them he said, “Even though the second law of thermodynamics says the universe is wearing out, I see a world reinventing itself time and again.”  Many called Peck a deluded optimist, but I believe he was right.  Everything does not have to move from order to disorder.  If you can change the culture of America’s largest city in less than a quarter century, why stop there?

With passion, hard work and cooperation, New York became America’s crown jewel.  Michael Bloomberg was hardly the darling of the African-American community when he first took office, but over his tenure he won many over.  The “can do” attitude that triumphed in New York came together when warring factions finally learned to work together.  What happened that made such a cooperative spirit appear in New York City and disappear from our national political arena?  How did we get so fragmented?  I mean, not to frighten anyone, but Donald Trump will not be winning over the African-American community, or any other community to whom Jesus might have taken a liking.  Is Trump really the best we can do?  Come on people, it’s almost February.

Our nation changed quickly on marriage equality, but it did not happen because of the legislative branch of our national government.  They cannot agree on how to change a light bulb.  It was a judicial decision.  But the Supreme Court cannot bring massive change to an entire nation.  Only the people can.

Is it possible to have a nation turn around as quickly as New York?  I believe it is.  I believe it is possible to focus on people, the planet, peace, and poverty, and arrive at solutions that are financially viable and socially sensible.  I believe it is possible to create a more resilient nation in which snow actually gets plowed because we finally realize we are all in this together.

New York was at work Monday because New Yorkers learned to work together.  Washington was not at work.  We all know the reason.  I’ve not been much involved in the political process.  Maybe it is time to reconsider.

 

Wisdom is Her Name

Earlier in life I was an inveterate thinker. My logical, rational mind occupied most of the active space in my being. I wanted to know things. Of paramount importance was the attainment of knowledge. In that way I was not unlike my contemporaries. The Evangelical world was captivated by the trappings of the Modern age. From Descartes to Locke, we were taught to focus on what the mind could unearth. At its best this led to amazing scientific discoveries. At its worst it led to a religion in which believing the right doctrine was more important than living a virtuous life.

In such an environment only the mind could be trusted. It became such a hallmark of the Evangelical church that the charismatic movement, a reactive community, emerged as an attempt to restore balance. Among the gatekeepers, however, that movement was seen as incompatible with “Biblical Christianity” and dismissed as frivolous and irrelevant.

In a world in which only the mind was to be trusted, feelings and emotions were seen as secondary, or even extraneous to the human experience. This was true in the scientific world, in which “hard” sciences like math and biology looked down on “soft” sciences like psychology and sociology.

In a world dominated by such factually oriented intellectual thought, not only were feelings and emotions lost. Wonder became suspect. Wisdom was secondary. And trust became nonexistent. Think about it. The mind does not trust. It is always skeptical, demanding a never-ending stream of information. Only the heart and soul trust.

The natural inclination of a child is to freely express emotion, embrace wonder, and trust life. As long as we have the basic building blocks of childhood we remain beings of wonder. If we sense the safety of our existence, have feelings of self-worth, and role models able to delay gratification, we remain trusting of our feelings, students of the heart, experts in intuition.

At some point, however, the education system of the Western world kicks in, and trust is replaced with skepticism. Pascal’s heart with its reasons that reason does not know becomes the antiquated musing you might expect from a man who walked around with the words of a religious experience sewn into the lining of his coat. Trust becomes a casualty, feeling and intuition an afterthought.

In my pastoral counseling I often ask, “And how did you feel about that?” Pundits make fun of that therapeutic question, but we ask it because we must. Clients often cannot identify their feelings. “I don’t know what to think,” they cry. I suggest thinking might not be what is called for. “What does your gut tell you?” I ask. The answer lies beneath the rational mind.

It will not surprise you that men have more difficulty identifying their emotions than women. Their hard wiring gives preference to the rational left side of the brain. Neurons do not fire as freely across hemispheres as they do for women. A woman’s neural connections resemble a ball of twine, with countless pathways from the rational side of the brain to the more feeling, intuitive right side. Men’s neural connections tend to happen within hemispheres. A man’s brain is able fire from one hemisphere to the other, but it’s like driving across town in rush hour. It’ll take some time. (For the curious, it appears the brains of transgender women function about halfway between males and females.)

Since men have determined the path of our civilization, we should not be surprised we have been in a 500-year reign of fact before feeling, knowledge before wisdom, skepticism before trust. We lose the truth that on his last day of public ministry Jesus did not say love God with your mind. He said love God with your heart, mind, and soul. In a civilization that questions the very existence of the soul, those words remain as radical now as they were then.

Intellectual understanding does not necessarily lead to wisdom. A well-lived life leads to wisdom. Wisdom is personified as female in the Hebrew scriptures. That would come as no surprise to a child. Children intuitively know wisdom is a she. But of course, there are also countless wise men, like Dag Hammarskjold, the Secretary General of the United Nations during the height of the Cold War. His book, Markings, is a journal of great wisdom. And then there’s Blaise Pascal and the Péensees, his unfinished masterpiece of knowledge and wisdom. I would have loved to sit at the feet of either man.

As for me, I still have a voracious appetite for knowledge. But it’s my heart and intuition I have learned to trust, and wisdom I seek.

And so it goes.