Human Reality

I recently received a thoughtful email from a young graduate student. He had been reading my weekly magazine columns and is now a reader of my blog. With curiosity he noted while I have clearly stated my understanding of what the Bible does and does not say about gender dysphoria, to the best of his knowledge I have not written about homosexual relationships. He is correct. The only thing in print is the written conclusion of a debate position I was assigned in my Doctor of Ministry program. While I never publicly circulated that paper, someone did. Copies have been floating around the Internet for years.

In today’s post I want to go on record on the subject of homosexual relationships. Over the years I have read dozens of books and academic papers on the subject. I have considered just about every theological argument proffered. A very long time ago I came to the conclusion “conversion therapy” was not only misguided, it was dangerous. I also knew sexual identity was not a choice. In fact, until I watched Ben Carson’s recent interview on CNN, I didn’t think there was anyone left who still thought it was a choice!

I have reached the conclusion the scriptural passages on same sex behavior do not address today’s long term gay relationships. I believe being in a committed gay or lesbian relationship is not contrary to the will of God.

I know many of you are Evangelicals who have not reached the same conclusion. I understand how you have arrived at your conclusions but I do not agree with them. (I do want to note that my conclusions are not necessarily shared by my previous employers. For their own views, you will need to speak with them.)

From a practical perspective, I believe the Evangelical church will change its stance on homosexual relationships in much the same way it changed its stance on remarriage after divorce. The Gospel of Matthew says remarriage after an unbiblical divorce is adultery. Until the last few decades most of those who were divorced (with the exception of those whose spouses had been unfaithful) were instructed by the Evangelical church to remain celibate. Some churches actually instructed those who remarried to divorce their new spouses and return to their first spouses.

Comparing divorce/remarriage and homosexuality, Lewis Smedes, the revered Professor of Theology and Ethics at Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote, “as long as (the church) read Jesus’ words with no regard for the devastation that its policy inflicted on the human families involved …the church could go on believing that it was only following Jesus’ own instructions. But once it factored human reality into its reading of the Lord’s words, it was bound to ask, Could Jesus actually have meant the church to cast away people?”

It has been a long time since I’ve heard of an Evangelical church that rejected a member who was divorced and remarried. The culture moved on and the church fell in line. I like Smedes’ term, human reality. The church realized these were normal people, no more or less healthy than their peers. They just happened to be divorced and remarried.

I believe the church will reach the same conclusion on LGBT issues. Again, these are normal people, no more or less healthy than their peers. Virtually every major medical and psychological association in the developed world has declassified them as mental illnesses. These are folks who just happen to be lesbian or gay or bi or trans.

Gay people are not going to abuse your children. Pedophiles abuse children. Trans women are not a danger to the women and children in a public restroom. We’re in there for the same reasons you are, nothing sinister.

The church will move on these issues because the church has never allowed itself to get too far behind the culture at large, sometimes even when scripture is clear (divorce and remarriage.) American culture has moved rapidly on gay marriage. I believe most Evangelical churches will not be that far behind, and I believe it’s a good thing too.

I thank the young graduate student for prompting me to address this issue on my blog. I have little doubt my readers will have opinions.

Copyright c 2015 Paul S. Williams. This document is not to be reproduced or conveyed in any media, neither print nor electronic, without express, written permission of the author.

Just Okay Chicken

Some people consider him the most famous resident Kentucky has ever known. My mother hails from Kentucky. She was the third child of a gentle tenant farmer and his good-natured wife. This particular man was neither gentle nor good-natured. In fact, I have read he was rather mercurial, difficult to please. Which seemed odd given his public image of southern gentility.

I happen to love fried chicken. Just a couple weeks ago I ate at Hill Country Chicken, my favorite New York City fast food restaurant. (If you go, try Mama El’s style, and be sure to get the mashed potatoes.) My love of chicken is deeply rooted. Grandma’s fried chicken was the best. Back then chickens were chickens, not bred to develop thick breasts in a week. They ate scraps from the kitchen and lived in a pen by the barn. Grandma fried her chickens in lard, which also had its impact on the taste, not to mention our arteries. Nowadays you don’t find many people frying chickens in lard. Still, I imagine if Grandma were alive she’d find a way to do her magic on today’s genetically modified birds. Mom’s chicken was next, after Grandma’s. After that, the chicken of everybody else.

We had departed Eastern Kentucky’s close-in orbit and moved to northern Ohio, Akron to be exact. A new sit down restaurant had come to our neck of the woods. It was called Kentucky Fried Chicken. I guess we must have decided to eat there on the day of their grand opening, because as we sat nibbling on chicken legs, a big white Cadillac pulled up and a white-haired man in a white suit emerged. The staff said we were being visited by Colonel Harland Sanders, yep, the Colonel Sanders, goatee, cane and all. He came to our table and Mom told him she was from Bourbon County. We didn’t realize it at the time but Colonel Sanders was not from Kentucky. He was from Indiana, but Indiana Fried Chicken just didn’t have a ring to it. Colonel Sanders smiled and acted as if he knew where Bourbon County was and asked if we liked the chicken.

The truth is the chicken was okay. Just okay. But we kinda lied and said it was great because we had learned to be polite and all, no matter the circumstances. As quickly as he had come Colonel Sanders and his white Cadillac were gone, headed off to the next grand opening I suppose.

It is now over a half-century later. Colonel Sanders has been dead for quite some time, though the advertising folks keep resurrecting him. And me? I’ve been a Kentucky Colonel for better than 20 years. I knew the Assistant Secretary of State and he made me a Kentucky Colonel. I have the declaration somewhere in the basement. I haven’t started any restaurants though.

Grandma’s been gone for over three decades and Mom doesn’t fry chicken anymore. I count calories now and haven’t been to a KFC in forever. On most days I can still remember the taste of Grandma’s fried chicken, seasoned with plenty of humility and gentle goodness.

I suppose we only truly know a thing when we can place it in contrast with another. Colonel Sanders chicken let me know just how truly extraordinary Grandma’s chicken was, no Cadillac necessary – just love in a cast iron skillet.

And that’s my offering for today. Sometimes it’s not about changing the world. It’s just about good chicken.

Already Been There

As I navigate through a plethora of changes, James W. Fowler’s book, Stages of Faith, has often come to mind. Fowler was a developmental psychologist from Candler School of Theology who defined religious stages in much the same way Erikson or Piaget defined developmental stages. In Stage One, Wishes and Magic, Fowler says we project onto God the traits of our parents. By the time we realize we have our own religious viewpoint we have moved into Stage Two and Stage Three, the Law and Order and Conformist stages. These two appeal to adolescents and young adults, but prove inadequate when life becomes more subtle, nuanced, and mysterious.

For several decades I would have placed myself in Fowler’s Stage Four, Individuative Faith, in which inner authority and informed conscience comingle with and often replace more traditional faith. Laura Thor, a therapist and spiritual director I know and respect, calls Stage Four Disenchanted Faith.

Stage Five is Conjunctive Faith, in which head and heart reconcile, diversity is valued, and there is a new depth to one’s prayer and a new intimacy with God. Laura simply and descriptively calls this stage Re-enchanted Faith.

It is a paradoxical reality of this good life that we do not grow unless we suffer. If we finally make peace with life’s suffering we have arrived at Stage Six, Universalizing Faith, in which we gain our proper creatureliness. We are imperfect, simply human, yet empowered by the Spirit. Grace, mercy and forgiveness come more easily. Understanding and acceptance become second nature. Judgment is more discerning. Dialogue is welcome and nonthreatening because we know where our grounding lies.

The turmoil surrounding my gender transition and a rereading of Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss have nudged me toward the next stage. Wiman cautions his readers, “There is nothing more difficult to outgrow than anxieties that have become useful to us.” One of those anxieties is doubt. There is a certain smug assurance in a life of embraced doubt. While always present and often instructive, doubt should never be one’s destination.

Wiman defines different types of doubt. One he calls “a furious, centrifugal sort of anxiety that feeds on itself and never seems to move you in any one direction.” Yep, know that one – too well. Another is exhibited by, “an ironclad compulsion to refute, to find in even the most transfiguring experiences, your own or others, some rational or ‘psychological’ explanation.” Yep, know that one too. Then there is what he calls, “an almost religious commitment to doubt itself, an assuredness that absolute doubt is the highest form of faith?” Yep, got miserable living there.

Wiman suggests a different approach to doubt. What he calls devotional doubting is marked first by humility, making ones attitude impossible to celebrate, then insufficiency, which makes it impossible to rest. The third mark is mystery, which always tugs you upward and outward. Wiman believes devotional doubt is where, “faith, durable faith, is steadily taking root.”

Inspired by Wiman’s benevolent rebuke, I departed my domicile in the land of perpetual doubt and entered a new place in which my faith has been, if not re-enchanted, at least disturbed from its slumber. If I live long enough and continue to learn from suffering, perhaps I shall enter the land of those who have claimed their proper creatureliness and embrace being simply human, empowered by the Spirit. We will see where life leads. I am grateful to be on the journey.

And so it goes…

Too Small A Pot?

(A small offering today, one that has been waiting in the wings.  After a mild winter it has been back to back snowstorms on the Front Range of Colorado and my thoughts have turned to my indoor plants, an eclectic bunch of oxygen generators that lift my spirits, especially on these dark winter days.)  

In May of 1977 I became the proud owner of a schefflera plant. I bought it from a nursery in Buffalo and brought it home in my 1976 Ford Maverick, blue with a white vinyl roof.

A couple years later, after we moved to Long Island, I took the plant to my office. It was in a twelve-inch pot, happy as a schefflera could be. New shoots erupted every season and the plant looked beautiful against the window. Whenever Cathy came to the office she told me I needed to repot the schefflera. The plant seemed happy so I rejected her overtures until we moved to Colorado.

Shortly before we left East Islip I repotted the plant in a much larger container and moved it to the Long Island apartment I kept for seven more years. Much to my chagrin the plant grew – like kudzu. The schefflera turned into a very spindly tree. Every time I returned to Long Island the plant looked like it had sprouted another arm. It looked like the leader of the Knights who say “Ni” in Spamalot. The plant made me want a nightlight. The person who watched the apartment for me watered the plant once a week. I thought of asking her to skip a month, or six. I should never have repotted the plant.

I had a friend who was a fine husband, a devoted father, a good pastor. Yet everyone told him he should leave his vibrant ministry to take a big church in a big city. Insinuating he lacked courage they would ask, “Are you afraid to grab the brass ring?” But my friend had already grabbed the brass ring. He loved his wife, tended his garden, cared for the parishioners in his small church. Like the protagonist in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, he loved well and was well loved. Nothing was broken. Nothing needed repotted. He had bloomed where he was planted – a happy man.

When I gave up my New York apartment I gave the gangly schefflera to one of Jana’s friends. Much as I disliked its looks I couldn’t throw it out. I’d had it for 36 years. Instead I cut it back, squeezed it into my SUV and took it to her house. It’s still in its gigantic pot. Jana’s friend says it is beautiful. I have my doubts.

Knowing One Place

There was a lean hiker who climbed New Hampshire’s Mt. Monadnock every day for seven years. One June, after an hour and a half scrambling up granite boulders, I saw him on the summit. It was my 4th or 5th trip up the second most climbed mountain in the world. (Mt. Fuji is first.)

Mr. Every Day Climber was carrying a walkie-talkie to relay the summit conditions to the rangers at the trailhead. I did not talk with him but my hiking partner did. Mr. Every Day said sure enough, he was the guy, and he had to get down to go to work. Not exactly an inspiring conversation.

Mr. Every Day knows every inch of every route up Monadnock. He knows the subtle changes in each season, and the exact spot where the skyscrapers of Boston can be seen on a clear morning. He knows the slabs of granite that hold warmth on a brisk fall day and misery in a January nor’easter. Mr. Every Day knows his mountain.

My paternal grandfather was a railroad man who lived on the left bank of the Ohio River all his days. My other grandfather was a Kentucky farmer who rarely ventured beyond the next county. Both men knew every nook and cranny in their neck of the woods. They gained the wisdom that comes from knowing one place.

And me? As I write this I am sitting in an A-321 flying 30,000 feet over Missouri. Last December 31st marked 20 straight years in which I flew more than 100,000 miles. I can tell you everything you care to know about a 727-200 or an E-175. In my sleep I hear the propeller wash of a deHavilland Dash-8 and the three bell signal the captain gives the flight attendant five minutes before we land. Why do I take this short detour to commercial aircraft? Because that is what I know. I do not live on the banks of the Ohio River. I fly over it – quickly, thoughtlessly. I do not have the wisdom that comes from knowing one place. I have the wisdom that comes from knowing one airline. Somehow it just does not compare.

I have recently found myself in uncharted territory, a brave new world for someone like me, a serial overachiever. I have entered a land devoid of striving. There is no one to impress, nothing to prove, no kingdoms to create or evils to conquer. I am a new resident in the land of being, undistracted from taking in the four robins that stayed for the winter, or the mourning doves nesting beneath my aspen. I watch fingers of snow claw their way over the Continental Divide and listen to the winds howl against my worried windowpanes. I do not beat myself up for being unproductive. With Mary Oliver I declare, “Tell me, what else should I have done. Doesn’t everything die at last and too soon?”

Mary Oliver concludes The Summer Day by asking, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Today, as clarity arrives on tentative wings, pixel by pixel, I am only certain of what I will not do. I will not return to the Kingdom of Striving. I will not revisit the State of Perpetual Production. I will not fly over 100,000 miles again this year. I will keep my feet on the ground. I will fall down into the grass and be idle and blessed. I will pay attention to the robins and the mourning doves. I hear there is wisdom there.

 

 

 

 

 

The Soul Lives Contented

The soul lives contented by listening 

If it wants to change into the beauty

Of terrifying shapes it tries to speak

That is why you will not sing

Afraid as you are of who might join with you

The voice hesitant and her hand

Trembling in the dark for yours

She touches your face and says

Your name in the same instant

The one you refused to say

Over and over

The one you refused to say

                                                David Whyte

The illusion of control was my comfortable companion. I kept it in my hip pocket, near my wallet. I unfolded it whenever I smelled panic. The future was mine to create. I controlled the variables.

Since I kept my pocketed illusion all the way through my 50s, I suppose it was working pretty well for me. If I didn’t like something thrown my way, I ducked. As a successful white male, my ability to dodge bullets appeared to be a divine right. I was comfortable. Then came the traumatic occasion in which I joined the human race and was forced to relinquish my illusion of control. I became angry with the people who took it from me. I ranted and raved and called down fire from the heavens. I was royally pissed.

Now that a fair amount of time has passed, I am reminded of how easy it is to hold onto hurt and blame and how hard it is to hold onto joy. Anger is a strong emotion, worthy of consideration now and again, but never worthy of an extended stay. After a certain point it is you being devoured at the feast of anger, made bite-by-bite a little less human, more a caricature than an embodied soul.

Richard Rohr says we suffer when we are not in control. He also reminds us that if you happen to be human, suffering is the norm. The question is not if we suffer, but if we suffer well. For all the distortions it bears on account of its adherents, I think Christianity still stands a notch above. It is the only religion in which God comes to earth and suffers with us, an acknowledgement of the random and capricious nature of things. God saying, “I’m so sorry, but this is a dark and dangerous ride. Proceed with caution.”

On this frightening ride most of us carry at least two iterations of our selves. Rohr calls one the false self. This lesser self is convinced we are unworthy of love. Since that self is sure our flaws will find us out and cause us to be banned from the garden, we are especially vulnerable when someone wounds the false self. Rohr suggests when we are offended and hurt by others, it is virtually always the false self that suffers the wound. The true self is already one with God, loved and accepted for simply existing. It cannot be destroyed by the insensitivity of others. It is grounded in love. When we are able to abide in the true self we can say with Dag Hammarskjold, “For all that has been, thanks. For all that shall be, yes!”

My decision to transition to life as a female came from within, from my true self. But great unkindness came my way and found its target in my false self. I was wounded, angry and hurt. Much of my anger was appropriate, even necessary. But anger too long nursed becomes bitterness, an emotion with no redemptive arc. There comes a time when you must move beyond anger and leave bitterness to fend for itself.

It is time to move on. I have been gnawing on my own bones long enough. For those who read the anger I chose to express on the written page, I am grateful for your graciousness. For those afraid I am giving up on a worthy cause, there is nothing to fear. My righteous anger is alive and well. Injustice toward humans is never okay. It is always wrong, and we all share the responsibility to be a part of the solution. I will not back down from the fight.

But I am ready to let go of the personal anger that only wants to nurse old wounds. I have dealt with the reality of what has been done. This is no cheap superficial moving on. I have wrestled with God and God did not decline the fight. We wrestled till morning, and the new dawn showed no open wounds, only scars.

It is not about me. It is about all who suffer – those close to me- Cathy – my children – their spouses – and those distant, the countless souls wounded by the capriciousness of nature, the arrogance of man, the silence of God. It is time to make crooked ways straight. It is time to speak with great confidence and paradoxically, great humility. It is time to trust my true self and speak the name I have been refusing to say, over and over.

That name is not Paula. I have no difficulty calling myself Paula. The name I have been refusing to say is Beloved.

I Thought I Made My Grandfather Die

When I was a child I had a pet rabbit named Lightning, one of a succession of rabbits. One was run over by a car. Dad didn’t tell me until I was twenty-three. He always said, “I dunno, he just got out of the cage and ran away.” Yeah, right Dad.

We donated another rabbit, Cotton, to the Akron Zoo after it scratched my arm and left a scar I can see to this day. The zoo had a little rabbit village. Cotton went with the other rabbits into the little church where they put the feed. I liked the idea of being fed in church.

Lightning didn’t get a chance to chow down on feed at the little rabbit church. One Saturday morning I came downstairs and Dad called me from the basement. “I have some bad news. Lightning died.” There was no apparent cause of death. He just died. But as I walked away from the house toward Pritchard’s Drug Store, prepared to drown my grief in a nickel’s worth of candy, I worked the sad magic of a ten-year-old.

I knew my grandfather was sick. Dad had told me about the cancer around Christmas time. At some point soon I would have to experience the same emptiness I had felt five months earlier when Mom’s father had died. The same feeling I was having now, at the corner of Roslyn and Maple, as I walked to the drug store. Moving across the concrete squares, taking care not to step on a single crack, I thought the terrible thought out loud – “If Lightning has to die, then Papa might as well die too. Let’s get it all over with.” There. I said it. I prayed it. And then I stepped on a crack. A few days later Papa died. Just as I had prayed. I dared not talk to a soul about it. All through the funeral all I could think about was that I had prayed a terrible prayer an awful God had answered.

I trudged unknowingly through the cycles of grief. Every now and then I thought about what happened at the corner of Roslyn and Maple, but I pushed it deep inside. I grew up and the torn memory was relegated to some cobwebbed corner in my heart. But these things always find their way to the light of day.

Thirty-three years after my grandfather died I was on vacation with my family. After getting gas at a station just off Interstate 70, I looked across the highway to a cemetery on a hill. Though I really had no idea where my grandfather was buried, I had a sense this serene spot in the gently rolling hills of eastern Ohio was his final resting place. I had only been there once, on a cold April day in 1961. Yet here it was the summer of 1994, and I was confident an unhealed memory lay nearby.

Over the mild protestations of my family I headed into the cemetery and drove around until it felt right. I stopped the car and started walking past the gravestones, all flat markers flush with the grass. I walked about thirty feet and looked at seven or eight markers before my heart caught in my throat. There was Papa’s grave. I fell to my knees and cried. I pulled weeds away from the marker, touched the stone and traced the letters. I had not been to that spot in a third of a century. I had never asked where the grave was. I had not wanted to know.

But now, the grave marker wet with tears, I finally redeemed the memory of a child’s lonely prayer. I thanked God the Spirit speaks for us the words we do not know to speak, and I finally forgave a little child for being, well, a little child, full of the kind magical thinking that can hobble a memory for decades.

It is all these little graces, given quietly in tender moments, that convince me there is a God in whose image I am made, a God who gently cleanses vulnerable souls.

 

 

 

 

A Matter of Perspective

We were shooting television shows in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, a picturesque Canadian fishing village.  I was on camera working on the third of three segments of a 15-minute show. Every single take had been interrupted by some intrusive sound – a boat motor, a truck backing up, seagulls so noisy they weren’t ambiance but interruptions, a mother yelling at her child – those kinds of things.

Everyone was desperate to get the segment done before Nova Scotia’s notorious tide started coming in.  I was on the last couple of sentences of a take that was going well when I saw a worker turn on a power washer to clean the walls of a boathouse across the bay.  With the great difference between the speed of light (186,000 miles per second) and the speed of sound (.213 miles per second) I knew I had a few seconds to finish the segment before the sound made its way to our set.  I was down to the very last phrase when the power washer arrived and the take was ruined.

We tried three or four more times but the power washer was just too loud. Finally one of our production assistants drove over to the boathouse and paid the guy $100.00 to stop for the remainder of the afternoon, but by then the tide was coming in and we had to strike the set.  When we got back to the hotel we were all tired and cranky. I could usually shoot 10 – 12 segments in a day, but we had only managed 8. We would have to work twice as hard the next day.

I remember that day in Lunenburg very well because it was September 10, 2001.  While shooting the next morning on a bluff overlooking Portuguese Cove, our videographer received a call from his brother who worked in the Air Force Strategic Command. His face turned ashen as his brother told him America was under attack. Suddenly the previous day’s frustrations were put into perspective. They meant nothing. There was a whole new bar for what could be considered disturbing.

Over the past year I have had my times of self-pity. It’s been tough, the hardest thing I have ever done. I have lost so much – not just jobs and financial security, but friendships and good work. For two or three years I had been doing the best work of my life, and I knew it. Now, suddenly, no one wanted me to do that same work. Everyone says, “You could have anticipated this?” I did, in fact, anticipate this response from the Evangelical world, but that still doesn’t take away the sting of rejection.

Two movies I have recently seen have reminded me how small my suffering is compared to others. As I wrote two weeks ago, I was profoundly moved by Selma. I was equally moved by Morten Tyldum’s brilliant movie, The Imitation Game, about Alan Turing, the father of theoretical computer science. Turing saved an estimated 14 to 21 million lives in World War II by breaking the Nazi Enigma code. His thanks was to be prosecuted for being gay and forced to undergo chemical castration. The things humans do in the name of moral outrage. Turing died at 41 years of age, his death officially recorded as a suicide. In 2013 Queen Elizabeth granted a royal pardon to Turing, though his conviction has never been overturned.

The offerings I have brought to this world have been modest by any measure, certainly when compared to those of Martin Luther King, Jr. or Alan Turing. They made the world a better place and brought about lasting change, though their great accomplishments were accompanied by great suffering and early death. What I have gone through, by comparison, is little more than the disruption of a rogue power washer on a sunny Canadian day. For most of my days I have lived a very privileged life. Only now am I beginning to taste, in just a small way, what so many have known through the ages. It really is all a matter of perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

Twelve Bells

In April of 1968 I was 16 years old and a disc jockey at a radio station in Northeast Kentucky, quite a heady job for a high school junior. The station had an Associated Press Teletype machine that clicked away 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. In the age before “breaking news” referred to the release of the vacation plans of a movie star, news bulletins were rare and a very big deal. The most serious were accompanied by the ringing of 12 bells on the AP machine. I was at the radio station on April 4 in the evening when I heard 12 bells. I ran to the Teletype room and watched as the keys haltingly printed out the news of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We interrupted programming to read the announcement, but to me it was just news, little more.

Two months later, on June 6, I was doing the morning show. I arrived at the station at 5:30 AM to warm up the transmitter when I heard the same 12 bells, this time announcing the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. When we signed on the air at 6:00 I led with the announcement of his death. Again, it was newsworthy, but to me it was just the news, little more.

I had been heavily indoctrinated to believe the Kennedy’s were eastern liberals hell bent on destroying the nation. I had been taught Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a womanizer who just wanted to stir up trouble. In the spring of 1968 I shed no tears. Truth be told, I was excited to be the one to break such important news in our little corner of the Bluegrass State. It was an opportunity to shine, to present the news with authority and panache.

I grew up in Ohio and Kentucky, a privileged white male in a middle class family. There was a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, message that I was part of a superior race and a member of the only religious fellowship that got it right. I was also a male in an age in which misogyny was a primary thread in the cultural tapestry. The world was mine for the asking. Why should I be concerned about people who probably did not deserve the opportunities they would not be given?

Last week I watched the movie Selma, about the famous 1965 civil rights march. When the movie ended I sat in my seat, stunned. The movie was superb, and David Oyelowo deserved an Oscar nomination for best actor, but the experience of watching the movie went far beyond any appreciation of fine filmmaking. The movie brought great sadness. When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, I was there. I heard the 12 bells, read the bulletin over the air, but I had missed it. One of the most poignant, heartbreaking moments in modern history, and I missed it.

After the movie my friends Jen and Eric were comparing it to 12 Years A Slave, a movie they found life altering. Jen turned around in the car and said, “This one probably meant a lot to you, didn’t it?” I was overcome with such emotion I could barely speak. The movie indicted, convicted, and sentenced me. All I could think about were those 12 bells and my cavalier attitude reading the AP bulletin on that terrible evening 47 years ago.

Half a century later I finally get it. I understand Dr. Martin Luther King’s growing awareness that he would not die a natural death. Too many were too frightened by the thought of equality for those not like them, so he had to be silenced.

As a transgender woman I understand prejudice. I understand the frustration of being rejected and treated as an outsider just because of who you are. I understand the desire for revenge, and the restraint it takes to avoid lashing out. I understand the post-traumatic stress that comes from being mistreated by those convinced they are being thoughtful and caring when they let you go, but make sure you are “taken care of” with a good severance. I didn’t want a good severance. I wanted my job.

I understand how maddening it is when people say, “Well, you are the one who decided to be all in your face with your life, so you shouldn’t be surprised when you are treated badly.” I know how devastating it is when those who are sympathetic show no moral outrage. Because it is only when allies show outrage that real change occurs. But above all else, I understand I never knew how much I never knew.

As we drove back toward Longmont, my friends kindly but firmly told me my work is not done, that I too have been called to lessen suffering. They talked of my preaching when I was a male, and how the same spirit I exhibited then was needed now. They talked of how the church has failed as it did in the 60s, focusing too much on heaven and too little on creating a just and better world on earth.

When I got back to Lyons the house was empty. Cathy was in New York caring for grandchildren. I sat down in the living room, in my favorite big brown overstuffed chair, and I sobbed. The first time I sobbed was five years ago when I realized I had been called to live this honest and open life. I sobbed again when I screamed at God for making me this way, and not giving me the strength to make it all the way through life as a male. I sobbed when I realized how difficult my transition would be for Cathy and my children. And now I sobbed the tears of the repentant, the humbled, the tears of someone who finally knows what she never knew.

I still have no idea what it must have been like to live a lifetime on the back of the bus. For six decades I smugly took my seat in the front of the bus. Only of late have I come to know, in a small way, what so many have known for a lifetime – that those in power can be astonishingly cruel. Those same wise souls also know an eye for an eye does nothing but make the whole world blind.

Through much of the night I sat in that overstuffed chair thanking Dr. Martin Luther King, Ralph David Abernathy, Julian Bond, Coretta Scott King, and all the other heroes of the civil rights movement who made it possible for me, Paula Stone Williams, to live in these United States, a free woman.

Still, my friends are right. Much work remains to be done. In 32 states I do not have the legal right to keep a job after transitioning. In 32 states I can be denied housing. In all 50 states I do not have the right to keep my job if I work for a religious employer. And of course, there are those whose suffering is far, far greater than mine. What I face is nothing compared to what Rosa Parks, Frederick Douglass, and Solomon Northup had to endure.

Last week I caught a tiny glimpse of how I might have felt had I known what was at stake on that evening in April of 1968 when 12 bells rang. I would have dropped to my knees over the tragic death of the man who gave me the right to write this blog, the man who lived the teachings of Jesus on the big stuff – justice for the poor and the oppressed. I would have understood that some day, because of Dr. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent convictions, his soaring rhetoric and his dogged determination, I would be able to proudly sign my legal name, Paula Stone Williams.

And. So. It. Goes.

 

He Made A Difference

In 1987 I met Bud Paxson when he came to New York for a visit.  Thus began a long relationship with one of the most interesting individuals with whom I have ever worked. Bud was a major supporter of the Orchard Group, but it was through PAX-TV and the Christian Network, Inc. that I came to know him best.

After starting the Home Shopping Network, Bud moved on to begin PAX as a family friendly television network. During the overnight hours PAX aired Worship, a product of the Christian Network, Inc. Worship’s programming was unique, comprised of beautiful scenes of nature coupled with soothing music and short inspirational stories. It was simple, but very popular. As one of the on-air hosts, I was privileged to hear from people who stopped me in airports, on busy city streets, or at sporting events. These viewers told me about late nights up with sick children, struggles with severe depression, and difficult days caring for disabled family members. All of these struggling souls told me how much our programming meant to them in their dark night.

I loved telling Bud the stories I heard. He was moved by thousands of letters he read from loyal viewers. Bud may have invented Home Shopping and created a vast network with PAX, but Worship was probably his greatest work, touching more lives than most of us will ever know.

Bud was a complex man. There were times, when I was chairman of the board of CNI, that Bud would call screaming and yelling words I won’t print here. Just a few hours later he would call back, gentle and thoughtful. That was Bud.

I loved my 19 years in television work, and none of it would have happened, on air or off, without Bud. I learned much from him, and valued his friendship. We parted company around 2006 or 2007, but I have always thought of him fondly. This evening, on NBC Nightly News, I heard Brian Williams tell of Bud’s passing earlier today. Of all the things I could say about Bud, this one thing I know for sure, he loved Jesus – a lot. We’ll miss him. My thoughts and prayers are with Marla and the family.