It’s Been One Year

It has been one year since I came out as transgender. Many people have been supportive. Some have been critical while others have just remained silent. Fundamentalists have been my most vocal critics. The decision to write my blog was called narcissistic, exhibitionistic and immodest. All are words of judgment, something at which Fundamentalists excel. Nevertheless, you cannot hear such attacks without questioning yourself every now and again. But as I have written, embedded within my identity are responsibilities, and I believe it is important to provide an alternative picture to what the mass media portray about the trans journey.

To write this blog I have given up a few things. The most precious is my privacy. My readers have watched me trudge from denial to anger to acceptance. All I have written has been honest, but some of it has not been pretty. I have also given up any possibility of anonymity. I could have chosen to live a stealth life as Paula. There is a blessed freedom in the times I am able to move about in a world in which Paul was never known. But when I chose to transition publicly, I forfeited that opportunity.

I do find writing to be therapeutic. I have tried to maintain a balance between keeping readers informed and maintaining some modicum of dignity. When the subject is so deeply personal, however, it is difficult to maintain balance. Blogs, not to mention Facebook posts, can become little more than diarrhea of the keyboard, self-referential and superficial. While I have tried to avoid such self-indulgence, it has occasionally been present. I do appreciate your grace and forgiveness when I cross the line.

I do not want my trans journey to be the only thing about which I write. I wrote over 500 columns for Christian Standard magazine, and I enjoyed writing about all things theological and church-related. Some of my recent writing has returned to those familiar themes. I have always liked wrestling with life’s spiritual issues and the tribes they spawn. As time goes by I am confident I will return to those themes with greater regularity.

The vast majority of you, my readers, have been very gracious. Even when you have not understood my journey, you have given me the benefit of the doubt. You have been warmly encouraging, steadfastly loyal, and unendingly supportive. With all the difficulties of the past year, I do not know what I would have done without you.

Life is linear, not circular. As I continue this journey with its twists and turns, obstacles and opportunities, I deeply cherish your willingness to come along as fellow travelers. Your companionship will never be taken for granted and your love will never be forgotten.

I Let The Money Decide

We were hiring a staff member for a new church. My colleague and I already knew the candidate and the interview went well. After it was over, the candidate said, “You do know I am gay, right?” I replied yes and added, “As long as you are not going to be sexually active, we will have no difficulty.” After several years of good work, it was apparent the project he was a part of was not going to justify the continuation of his position, so we all knew his work with the project would have to end.

I didn’t want him to resign. He was exactly the kind of generalist we needed in our office. He was thoughtful, hard-working, intelligent, and an irenic spirit. But I did not offer him another job. Somewhere along the line he had told me his theology on LGB issues was one of inclusion and I made the assumption (accurately) that he was ready to look for a relationship. So I did not offer him another job.

If I had made that decision because I was convinced the scripture said gay relationships were wrong, I would have had less difficulty with my decision. But I already knew my theology was inclusive. I was not struggling over the issue. I knew where I stood. But I also knew the ministry I directed was not ready to be inclusive – not the board, not most of our ministers, and especially not our financial supporters. As a card-carrying member of a capitalist society, I let the money decide.

Now I stand on the other side of the silence. I observe as others make similar decisions about me. I understand their dilemma. “There are bigger issues here than one person.” It is true, there are. Some believe my transition is morally wrong, and they need to take their stand. I understand that. Others dance around a controversial topic to avoid offending any constituents, or question when the timing is right to initiate change.

Am I angry? Well if I am, I’d better include myself in my anger. I was guilty of the same pragmatism. This is one of the reasons the church is among the last institutions to accept cultural change. There is little question the Gospel calls for racial and social justice, but too often the church waits until the entire culture has shifted before it tepidly tiptoes into the waters of justice. It happened with slavery, interracial marriage, women’s rights, racial integration, and now LGBTQ rights.

When institutional health is at stake, pragmatism trumps ideology every time. But the Gospel is not built on pragmatism, but on radical love and inclusion. When neither is good for the bottom line, the problem is not with love and inclusion. The problem is with the bottom line.

As a long time parachurch worker, my friend completely understood my position, and was even supportive of it. When I talked about it with him recently, he said, “It wasn’t time back then.” My friend is very gracious. In fact he has been far more gracious with his former colleagues than I have been with many of mine. I am very grateful he is still a friend. In fact he was one of the first from my old world who embraced the new me. I will always be grateful for his love and encouragement during a difficult season.

As for me, I have had a hard time getting past the fact I did not offer him another job when the first one ended all those years ago. My pragmatism got the best of me and it still bothers me. Hindsight is always more clear when considering questions of character and courage. Truth is, I probably just need to give my self the grace my friend has given me, and move on.

And so it goes.

(This post has been altered from its original form. I had gotten some details wrong. This is my attempt to get the details right.  Accuracy counts for somethin’.)

 

One Crazy, Holy, Evening

Humans have a lot of basic needs you wouldn’t necessarily think about unless someone pointed them out. For instance, humans need stories. We do not just like stories. We need them. We cannot live without sleeping. We cannot sleep without dreaming, and we only dream in stories. So you see, the need for story is downright physiological.

We also need people, tribes to be exact. The most basic social unit, the one that guarantees the survival of our species, is not the nuclear family. It is the tribe. Yep, being a Mets fan might be important to your survival. Well all right, that might be a bit of a stretch. But we do need to belong to a group of like-minded pilgrims.

I stopped going to church after I was let go from all of the Christian organizations with which I worked. (I call those days my “Once Before a Time.” This period of my life I call “Once Upon a Time.”) But in the process I lost my tribe. My first Sunday back brought great tears and satisfied a deep longing. We all need a tribe with a great story. Which brings me to Friday evening, July 24, 2015.

The people at Rebel Storytellers and Rebel Pilgrim Creative Agency are a varied bunch of wildly creative, intelligent outcasts, misfits, nerds, and the like. They are my kind of people. Among other things, they make videos and feature films, produce podcasts, run a delightful website, help corporations tap their creative core, and put on live shows. Their offices are on the 13th floor of the original Proctor and Gamble headquarters in beautiful downtown Cincinnati. Crisco shortening was dreamed up where they practice their art.

Last year they started doing shows with Joe Boyd, their CEO. From soap operas to sermons to improvisational comedy, Joe is a seasoned performer. He does one-man shows on books of the Bible. Not what you think. They are quirky and thought provoking and delightful. But last Valentine’s Day they invented a new kind of variety show – not exactly Ed Sullivan – not exactly Jimmy Fallon – something different. They did it again on July 24. This time the subject was Heroes.

The evening consisted of seven speakers, each with 10 minutes to tell whatever story he or she wanted to share. Interspersed were segues by a terrific band and three great improvisational sketches. Stories were about a dog named Miss Jackson, a bad uncle with a big heart, a father who put a lawn chair in a one-seat car, another father’s tribute to his remarkable daughter, a granddaughter’s memories of her grandpa, a Peace Corps’ worker’s moving tribute to her hero, and a transgender woman who took a big risk (that would be me.) The evening went from laughter to tears to laughter to tears to… you get the idea. No speaker knew what anybody else was going to do, yet it all fit together as though crafted by the Holy Spirit. Yeah, the Holy Spirit.

There was a bar and beer and people with various and sundry sexual and gender identities and when the whole thing was over, the only words I had to describe it were “transcendent” and “holy.” Brad Wise put the show’s sequence together, and his instincts were perfect. When the evening was over I told Brad and Joe how moved I was. Without the tiniest bit of irony Joe said, “It was church. This was church.” And you know what? It was. A group of people joined together in common cause to produce the miraculous. A tribe of outcasts creating an experience that was good and true and holy.  I was honored to be a part of it.

 

Because He Could

When I left for Cincinnati last week I flew out of Denver International Airport. I have been in over 100 commercial airports in the United States and some of the TSA agents at DIA are among the most power hungry I have encountered. I always fly with a container of dry powder – okay – it’s Metamucil – I know – TMI. Anyway, I never need to take it out of my bag, except when I am at the Denver airport.

Knowing it’ll be flagged, I place the orange container in one of the dog-dish bowls and put it through the x-ray machine. They pick it up – shake it to satisfy themselves it is a powder, and I’m on my way. On this day there were no bowls so I placed it at the top of my open purse, obvious to all. They stopped the x-ray machine and waited two minutes for someone to come and pick up my purse for “additional screening.” The guy sitting beside the x-ray machine said, “Oh never mind. It’s only Metamucil.” But the agent who came decided to make a show of the importance of searching my bag.

Mind you, to even get to this dedicated screening lane I submitted to interviews and fingerprint clearances with both CLEAR and TSA Pre-Check. Yet this one person decided he had to search my bag, the one with the dangerous Metamucil in it.

I said, “This is so frustrating. This is the only airport in the entire frippin’ nation that pulls a bag for Metamucil. The only one.” To which the TSA agent responded, “Ma’am, if you are going to cuss at me we can call my boss over and you will be in a heap of trouble. Do you want to get into that? Do you? Do you want to fly today or not? You’d better treat me with respect.”

All of this was spoken with a palpable condescension designed to bait me, pure and simple. He wanted to flex his power and pull me into a bigger conflict. Knowing I was in a position without power I said, “Just do your job.” I was livid.

The TSA agent treated me this way because he could. He was one of far too many power hungry men in positions of authority. In his book, In Sheep’s Clothing, Dr. George Simon says there are more power hungry abusers in the military, law enforcement, and the ministry than in any other profession. All three give men with weak ego structures the unchecked power they lack without their positional authority.

I said nothing more, took my bag and walked away. I was able to walk away because I was White and at a busy airport in Colorado, not Black on a quiet highway in rural Texas.

Sandra Bland’s response to the officer who arrested her was utterly and completely understandable. It was the response of a woman flabbergasted she was being treated so ridiculously. I do not know what happened in the jail, but I know what I saw on the arrest video – a Black woman showing justified frustration, initially expressed no more vociferously than I expressed my frustration to the TSA agent. While I was treated condescendingly, my civil rights were not violated. Ms. Bland’s were. This kind of behavior will not stop until we all show outrage and stop it. I do not care what color you are. This will not be a just society until we all realize Black Lives Matter!

Saying Yes To What Is

For years I remained within the institutional church, situated at what Richard Rohr would call “the edge of the inside.” From my Bible college days I asked questions that had no answers. I did not see things dualistically, black/white, right/wrong, in/out. My struggle with my gender identity taught me this is a complicated world in which suffering is the norm. I was not going to accept a faith that did not acknowledge that reality.

People in the church often became angry with me because they wanted to hear something with which they already agreed. They did not get that from me – not from my preaching or my magazine columns or the seminary courses I taught. My mentor, Dr. Byron Lambert said, “The truth is hard to tell and the truth is hard to tell.” What he was saying was the truth is hard to discern and equally difficult to communicate. That instruction formed the heart of my ministry.

We cannot start the religious journey without structure. We need boundaries to control our developing egos. But when our faith never leaves those rules and regulations, religion becomes little more than an evacuation plan for earth dwellers. Follow the rules and heaven is yours. All it takes is a willingness to color inside the lines. It is still all about you – your ego – your personal comfort. That kind of religion does not even demand love.

Rohr suggests the first phase of faith could be called the construction phase, and the next is the period of deconstruction. We enter this phase when we encounter suffering, life’s greatest teacher. Suffering occurs when we are not in control. Having to stop for a traffic light is an infinitesimally small form of suffering. Losing your work and your friends because you dare to live your own life instead of the one mapped out for you is another form of suffering. Cancer, or the loss of a loved one, is an even greater form of suffering. Suffering helps us see that a religion of rules and regulations is utterly inadequate. For many this is the stage in which faith is dormant, if not altogether lost. In this period we are often angry. But if we work through our anger, we come to the next phase of faith – reconstruction.

In reconstruction we lose our superiority complex and return to Jesus in genuine humility. We understand Christianity is not about meritocracy. It is about grace. We realize our soul never needed answers. It needed meaning, and the story of redemptive suffering found in Jesus holds all the meaning we need. We embrace mystery and realize, as Rohr says, that mystery is not unknowable, it is endlessly knowable – truth unfolding in deeper and surer ways as we live into it. And when the day is done that kind of faith will bring us to a place in which we can accept the profound truth that love is saying yes to what is.

I’m not there yet.

It Begins in the Dark

I grew up in Carter County, Kentucky.  About ten miles west was Carter Caves State Park.  As with most Kentucky parks there was the obligatory lake, lodge, campground, golf course, etc.  But I went there for the caves, especially Bat Cave.  Cave Branch creek flowed out of the cave, meandering through rhododendron, beech, yellow poplar, and sugar maple.

I always entered Bat Cave with at least one friend, each of us carrying two sources of light.  About 100 yards inside the daylight dimmed to a dull distant flicker before leaving us totally in the dark.  When our lights were extinguished it was darker than any night I have ever known.  Yet there was something comforting about the dark.  In David Whyte’s poem, Sweet Darkness, he writes about the work of the heart that can only be done in the darkness, “The dark will be your home tonight.  The night will give you a horizon further than you can see.”

The nighttime is when the distant light gets in, the kind that takes countless years to make its patient way to our perceiving eyes.  In Learning to Walk in the Dark Barbara Brown Taylor suggests we go to a counselor when we want to be led out of a cave, but we go to a spiritual director when we want to be led further in.  All life starts in the dark, from conception to that first Easter morning.  It is when we willingly venture deep into the darkness that new life begins.

Yet the darkness is so terribly frightening.  Though I loved Bat Cave, I barely tolerated the 40,000 Indiana bats that hibernated there during the winter months.  A January visit brought the unsettling view of 1.4 miles of undulating walls of mouse-eared bats.  It was scary in there.  Yet on the other side of the fear was exotic beauty.  Deep in the cave were shallow ponds with ribbon-like walls and delicate translucent fish.  There were large caverns with stalactites of shimmering crystals that welcomed our temporary light.  And we always knew if our lights failed us, we could follow Cave Run creek back to the light of day.

Though I learned long ago there is beauty in the darkness, I still resist going there.  We all do.  It’s human nature.  The last 18 months have brought a lot of dark days I could not avoid.  But in those dark days I discovered my true grounding in the faith that found its way through cracks and fissures into the dark night.  It has been a long 18 months, but I discovered even in the deepest of caves, trusting the flow eventually leads you back to the light.  Trusting the flow was all I had on which to rely, and it was enough.

Yesterday I returned to one of the churches planted by the Orchard Group, Forefront Brooklyn, and received a genuinely warm and inviting welcome.  I participated in unique, meaningful worship and listened to a well-researched, imaginatively crafted message I did not want to end.  I saw ethnic and cultural diversity, and observed a community moving boldly forward in radical grace.  All of it the reward of trusting the flow.

Sweet Darkness ends with the wise words, “Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn that anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you.”  I was brought alive in worship on Sunday, and it was good, very good.

Crossing the Threshold

Joseph Campbell wrote about the hero’s journey, which has consistent qualities across all cultures and times. The call has three basic elements – departure, initiation, and return. For our purposes, I will break it into seven additional parts.

The individual exists in a particular environment, but is (1) called to a new life. Terrified, the person (2) refuses the call. Life is comfortable and the voices of convention are strong. But a mentor or guide (3) enters the person’s life and gives him or her the courage to act.   The individual now (4) crosses the threshold into uncharted territory. They enter the (5) road of trials or the long dark night. They have an encounter with the father in which the ego is defeated and they gain the prize, such as the Holy Grail, or great wisdom. The person must now (6) bring the prize back home for the good of the people, before he or she has (7) the freedom to move on.

I loved the work of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the head writers and showrunners of my favorite television series of all time, LOST. The series dealt with all the great themes of the hero’s journey, and in captivating fashion. Though it ended five years ago, legions of LOST fans remain.

A cathartic moment in my own life came from the final season of LOST. The protagonist, Jack, who has steadfastly refused the call, finally comes to see he has indeed been called to cross the threshold. He must lose his life to find it. He goes through the road of trials and eventually, through a fascinating twist of plot, gains the freedom to move on. When I saw the episode in which Jack gains the strength to cross the threshold, I knew that in my own developing story I had been called to cross the threshold in a profoundly life altering way. I cried and sobbed and screamed at God for hours, evoking language more typical of a longshoreman than a pastor. I was terrified, but I knew I had been called. I knew what I knew.

The road of trials has been everything I feared it might be, full of obstacles and plot twists and monsters, many of whom reside within me. It has been the most difficult and perilous journey of my life. Earlier in life I feared I might not be a person of courage. I no longer have that fear.

Every week there is a reminder of something I have lost. This is the week of the national convention I attended for 33 straight years. I was on the program 20 or 25 of those years. This week I lectured to a class at the University of Colorado, hung out with a couple of good friends, and road my mountain bike a lot. When pictures of the conference popped up on Facebook, I quickly moved past them. The pain is still palpable. But as Richard Rohr reminds us, some of the decisions we make in the second half of life feel as though they are demanded of us. So we accept the losses and move on. When you cross the threshold, part of your old life is left behind.

With great fascination I have watched each of my three children grapple with the hero’s journey. Their stories are theirs alone to tell, but I could not be more proud of all three. They are people of great character and courage. Cathy too, but again, that is not my story to tell.

As I continue on my journey, the road of trials is leading toward the prize. I believe it is wisdom, and the ability to love with greater empathy and humility. I already know the land to which I must return. It is the church. And if my experience last Sunday (about which I will write later – when I find the right words) is any indication, I will be able to say with T.S. Eliot, “we arrived where we started and know the place for the first time.”

And so it goes.

 

 

 

 

Crazy, Holy, Grace

This past Sunday it was my privilege to be the featured speaker at the Boulder, Colorado PFLAG Awards Banquet. It was the first time I had done a scripted presentation (which is how I write and present sermons) since November of 2013. My talk was at the end of a long program, so I wanted it to be tight and brief, no extraneous words. The audience was wonderfully responsive.

Only one person had heard me speak before. I had lectured in one of her classes at the University of Colorado. To the rest I was an unknown quantity, this tall woman in white pants, coral sweater and floral scarf. One of the award recipients was a retired Methodist minister. As I sat down he looked across the table and declared, “You are a preacher.” I fought back tears and answered, “Yes, yes I am.”

The audience was mostly secular, with many who have been stung by the church, but try as I might I could not fashion a talk that did not mention the call of God, the grace of our Creator, and the abiding joy of the Divine Mystery. So I went with it, and based on the response, it was not a problem.

Throughout much of my adult life I was a skeptic, alternately thanking and screaming at the God I was not sure was there. I still have my moments. When life seems dark, much of what I see seems devoid of the transcendent. But that says more about me than it says about God.

Once I stopped fighting against the call to live my life, not someone else’s, a great cloud lifted and the world took on a whisper of promise. Though I was in the midst of great loss and turmoil and recently abandoned rage, I could not escape the sense there was a crazy holy grace at work, taking the rough edges off my existence and weighing the whole of the human story towards the redemptive.

Do I have proof of this holy grace? Of course not. Do I have evidence? Pretty much everywhere I turn offers a glimpse of that grace – the laughter of a granddaughter, a crisp spring day with a mountain bike and an empty singletrack trail, an old friend tentatively returning after a painful absence. All point to what seems best defined as the gentle work of the great I Am.

This crazy holy grace, this defeat that allows me to leave the shouting voices behind, this gentle rain that washes the anger from my dusty shoes, all this benevolence asks something of me. The Prince of Peace asks me to speak a word, to assure others the road less traveled by does not lead to fear and despair and hardening of the categories. It leads to light and love and hope and promise. This ground on the other side of emptiness and anger is a land of gentle breezes, golden hours of lengthening shadows, and blessed rest.

Soon this holy grace will find its expression in the place I know so well, the place that in different manifestations has both rejected and healed me. Through the great generosity of two loving pastors I have been asked to preach again. And I answered, “Yes! By all means, yes! So life goes on, and it is good.

The last lines of Mary Oliver’s The Journey come to mind:

But little by little, as you left their voices behind

The stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds

And there was a new voice, which you slowly recognized as your own

That kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world

Determined to do the only thing you could do

Determined to save the only life you could save.

And Now Caitlyn

I had hoped I would not feel the need to write about Caitlyn Jenner, but I probably should have known I could not remain silent. I am a public figure. Caitlyn is a very public figure. People have opinions.

Being transgender is no day at the park. We have known we were this way since childhood, and we have also known most of the world would freak out if we told them about our innermost struggle. I know you feel it is just too weird to see the same person who was on a Wheaties box now on the cover of Vanity Fair. Fair enough, it is weird for me too, and for every other transgender person I know. It has always been weird – a difficult thing to have to accept about our selves. We hated being this way and fought it with everything in us, until we could fight it no more.

I know you get tired of hearing about the 41 percent suicide attempt rate among those who are transgender. I’ve already written about the preacher who suggested it was a passive-aggressive way to get people to stop challenging us, an interesting way to both acknowledge and dismiss it in a single breath. But the truth is no other DSM diagnosis carries one-fifth the suicide risk. I would not wish this on anyone, not even my worst enemy. It is like having a bad relative who comes to stay and never leaves – and the person is living inside your own skin.

Long before the world got angry because Bruce chose the name Caitlyn, and long before Vanity Fair chose to promote its stereotype of women by dressing her in corsets and loungewear, Caitlyn Jenner was suffering. I don’t care what you think of her style, personality or taste, but I do want you to care about her humanity. One of the pastor’s at Caitlyn’s church wrote a blog post about her compassion, kindness and faith. It would be marvelous if the world would treat her with similar sensitivity.

Last week was tough. Hate mail returned. Former friends and family posted inflammatory and inaccurate information, especially Paul McHugh’s perspective on gender dysphoria. (Leave it to the Fundamentalists to find the one psychiatrist in America who has published a negative perspective on this subject, while ignoring the conclusions of every major medical society in the developed world.) In all these postings was there a single person who said, “My, how Caitlyn must have suffered?” Unfortunately, I could not find a single one.

Being trans has always been hard and always will be hard. Not exactly male and not exactly female, I struggle to find my way in a harsh world made more so by confident pundits shouting their bad advice. This is already a dark ride. To those screaming and yelling, incensed by Caitlyn’s coming out, you are not shining any light in the darkness. You are just reinforcing the world’s opinion that Christians are some of the most judgmental people on God’s green earth.

On the other hand, to those of you who in the name of Jesus, come to the subject with open hearts and minds and a willingness to study diligently to better understand our suffering, I will always be grateful. I do believe you have saved my faith.

And so it goes.