Everyone kept asking if I’d seen Will and Harper. I mean, geez, it came out five minutes ago. Besides, I’m tired of television shows, movies, and books focused on the first year in the life of a person who has transitioned. Where you are at year one is so different from year 10, but nobody wants to put the spotlight on that. It’s not dramatic enough.

Nevertheless, when the recommendations turned into a cacophony of voices including one of my closest friends, I figured it was time to watch it. And sure enough, it does have all the elements of that “early transition” period. They also do not devote enough time to Harper’s family or even acknowledge Harper’s ex-wife, but I’ll write about that some other time. On the whole, the movie is wonderful and it affected me greatly. I had to pause it eight or nine times to cry. It’s been a while since anything about transitioning has made me cry.

The way in which Harper’s SNL co-workers responded was exceptionally moving. They were all so supportive and accepting, and  Will Ferrell was amazing. No, he wasn’t perfect and did stuff wrong, but that’s part of the point. At least he tried. Every time an SNL actor was in the documentary, I wept. I’m not sure why, but the brief section with Will Forte made me cry so hard I could not catch my breath.

I know I have never really dealt with how awful it was to lose most of my friends and all of my coworkers when I transitioned. I have not talked with the vast majority of them since the day I came out, over ten years ago. They were well-known leaders, Christian leaders. Yet to them, I may as well be dead. The contrast between the loving reaction of comedians and the devastating reaction of pastors was jarring, troubling, and just plain sad.

What it would have meant if a couple of my friends, and they know who they are, had chosen to stand up publicly for me, and go on a road trip with me, and support me in my transition? It could have changed so much. They had a chance to shift the narrative about what it means to be trans, and they rejected that chance. Instead, they chose to never speak to me again. And thereby they showed me, and every person I know, the fruit of evangelical Christianity. Not compassionate love, but strident judgment.

I always give my former friends and co-workers the benefit of the doubt. A handful have remained in touch with me, and are privately supportive, if not publicly. But Will and Harper showed me, viscerally, what real love looks like, and I wept.

I received that kind of love from Cathy, Jonathan, Jubi, Jael, Kijana, Jana, my grandchildren, and my closest friend, David. But outside of those people and one or two others, crickets. It was devastating to be completely rejected by all of my friends and colleagues. The contrast for Harper with her co-workers at SNL could not have been more striking.

Another thing that struck me about the movie was how fortunate I am that the world receives me as a woman. In the language used by most transgender people, I pass, meaning I pass in public as a woman. In today’s world in which there is so much misinformation about what it means to be transgender, those who do not pass in their new gender are subject to incredibly mean-spirited comments and behavior. I have experienced that exactly once in ten years. That one time was devastating. The person was very mentally ill, and I was not safe.

Being trans has not affected my success in life. In fact I have had more outlets and opportunities to use my gifts as Paula than I had as Paul. I’ve done three TED Talks that have had millions of views, published a best-selling memoir, spoken all over the world on issues related to gender equity, and been elected to public office. When I speak with those considering transition (which is rare – I receive far more requests than I can accommodate) I tell them their experience is not likely to be as positive as mine. I have been fortunate and I am acutely aware of that good fortune.

There is a downside to passing in your new gender. Those who knew Paul cannot find Paul in Paula. They say I look nothing like Paul, and they tend to see me as a completely different person than the one they knew. There is continuity with Harper between the way she looked before and her appearance now.

Harper’s pre-transition experience was very similar to my own experience. As a long time head writer for SNL, she had become very successful. Because of that success, she was terrified of being found out. I know that terror. It is awful.

Also similar, try as she might, she could not understand the genesis of her gender dysphoria. It was just there from childhood, that’s all. Is it brain chemistry, genetics, prenatal abnormalities, environmental? No one knows, and who knows if we will ever know. The political environment does not encourage studies that might shed light on the causes of gender dysphoria.

What was most strikingly similar was the abject despair into which Harper descended before she finally transitioned. I sometimes forget just how bad it got, and how hopeless I felt.

I have one other specific comment that is important. Harper talks about her “dead name.” A lot of trans people talk about their dead name. Paul is not my dead name. It was my name. When you are referring to my life during those years, it is fine to refer to me as Paul and he. I refer to myself as Paul and he. For me, the notion of a dead name does absolutely nothing to create continuity in my life. It is already difficult enough to maintain any kind of continuity without exacerbating the problem by talking about a dead name. But as I have said many times, when you have talked to one transgender person, you’ve talked to one transgender person. My feelings about dead naming are different from most of the trans people I know.

Do I recommend Will and Harper? Yes, unequivocally! While her experience post-transition is quite different from mine, the movie is a very positive expression of the transgender experience, and more importantly, of enduring long-term friendship. This is a movie about the abiding nature of love, and it is a wonderful celebration of life.

I have fished once in my adult life. It was the late 80s and we were on vacation in the boundary waters of the Thousand Islands, downstream from Kingston, Ontario. We were fishing the St. Lawrence River for northern pike, a feisty fish that fights like the devil when you try to get it above the surface. Once caught, it’s not a particularly good fish to eat because getting the bones out is nigh on impossible.

I think about that trip often because of how much that experience reflects my life. What exists beneath the surface wants to stay beneath the surface. It’ll fight like the devil to stay there, and if you finally reel it in, what you’ve caught is hard to swallow.

It is always interesting to me when people quit therapy before they really begin. I usually can tell it is coming. They have hooked a fish in the depths, and they have no interest in reeling it in. Sometimes they do not have the energy. They know dealing with the past is going to be hard work, and they cannot bring themselves to do it. Occasionally, they just aren’t ready to deal with it. Whatever the case, I am always disappointed. With a qualified guide, you can reel the fish in, no matter how hard it fights.

What we refuse to deal with eventually deals with us. My mother broke her ankle and refused to rehabilitate. It was exasperating to her doctor and physical therapist. Ankle breaks are often hard to heal, but it was an ordinary break, not one that required surgery. Still, she refused physical therapy. She said it was too hard and painful. She did not walk, and rarely got out of bed, for the last ten years of her life. It probably shortened my mother’s life and definitely negatively affected her quality of life, but for reasons I will never know, because they remained beneath the surface, it was easier for her to be non-ambulatory than it was to rise up and walk.

It reminds me of John 5:6 in the gospels when Jesus asked the man at the pool at Bethesda if he wanted to get well. For some people, it is just too hard to get well. It is tragic, but you have to respect their freedom to choose.

Generational trauma results from the accumulated layers of trauma that have not been brought to the surface, confronted, and healed. When I first started therapy in 1993, my therapist said, “You are breaking patterns that have been there for decades, if not centuries.” I thought she was being dramatic. She was not. I fought with a lot of northern pike beneath the boundary waters. Occasionally I still go back to therapy because I need to go fishing again.

What have I gained from all of that fishing? Wisdom, compassion, empathy, knowledge, understanding – those for sure. Given those positive lessons, you’d think I’d be free of the effects of trauma by now.  I can point you to people who would say I am as messed up as I ever was. They might be right. I can still be self-serving, blind to injustice, and inclined to speak too quickly when it would be better to keep my mouth shut. There is always work to do.

Here are a few gems I have gained from my fishing expeditions:

1. “I can’t do that!” are usually words spoken when we are navigating from a childhood map, back when we actually could not do a lot of things because the powers that be stopped us from doing them. It is more accurate to say, “I won’t do that.” That forces us to acknowledge the empowered decision we have made to not do something. To say “I won’t” instead of “I can’t” is empowering. It is owning your decision. No one else made it for you. It was yours.
2. When someone says, “I’m just joking” they are never just joking. Just as the blush betrays the secret wish, the quick jab that necessitates a deflective, “I’m just joking,” has been just beneath the surface for a long time, ready to strike when one’s guard is down.
3. Some fears will always be with you. No one likes being humiliated or shamed. For me, it will always take me back to a very early wound that has never quite scarred over. I wrote about it in my book. No need to repeat it here.
4. Sometimes all you get is a decision between two evils, and you must choose the lesser of the two. I never wanted to transition. Transitioning was better than dying. My wife and my best friend thought I was headed in that direction. They might be right. Gender dysphoria is a difficult diagnosis. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. And in today’s America, it is harder to navigate than it was even ten years ago. It turns out that the general public having no information about what it means to be transgender is better than having the wrong information.
5. Your problem is usually not the thing you fear. It is that which gave birth to the thing you fear. Beowulf’s problem was not so much Grendel as it was the mother of Grendel. For almost all of us, that which gave birth to the thing we fear is a conviction there is something inherent about us that makes us unworthy of deep human connection. We began life with a 360 degree perspective. Those who raised us quickly let us know that 345 degrees of that were not acceptable. We learned to live within the 15 degrees that was acceptable, but from that day forward we were pretty sure our desire for the other 345 made us unworthy of unconditional love.
6. If you were raised as an evangelical Christian, the majority of #5 was centered around your gender and sexuality. Most of what you were told is wrong. This keeps therapists in business.
7. You are more capable than you believe you are. One single negative comment can undo the good of fifty positive comments. To understand the reason for that, see #5 above. Find a person who truly sees you, sees what you are capable of, and relentlessly encourages you in that direction.

I’ve learned a lot of other lessons in my seven decades on the planet. I’ll share some others another time.

And so it goes.

I walked this meandering path in the early morning mist in the Grand Tetons. I did not know where the path went. I followed it because with each step it became more beautiful. Alas, I had to turn around because I had run out of time.

You never finish answering a call because the demands of the call are many, unrelenting, and ever changing.  And eventually, you run out of time. Joseph Campbell talked about following your bliss, but I’d like to ask him to explain just a bit more about what exactly bliss means. As it relates to work, I’ve always said it means moving in the direction of your gifts. But in life in general, it seems a call can be far more difficult to discern.

When I decided to transition, it was after seventeen years of therapy and two bouts of moderate depression. (As I’ve written before, moderate depression is like moderate turbulence on an airplane. It is a lot worse than it sounds.) Some who transition say either they transitioned or they would have died. I am not sure that is true for me. I certainly have friends and family who believe that is true for me. I believe I might have stayed alive, but at great cost.

As I have written often, including in my memoir, my call to transition came during a television show. It was the final season of Lost and there came a point during that season in which Jack, the protagonist of the show, realized he had been called by the God figure (Jacob) to die. (If you are a Lost fan, it is the episode in which he saw his childhood home in the lighthouse mirror.) I knew I had been called, and cried until dawn. Most of the time a call is not received as an, “Oh Joy!” moment. It is received as an, “Oh Shit!” moment.

That call came early in 2010. Almost fifteen years later, my call keeps shifting, like the early morning light. When I first transitioned, few knew what it meant to be transgender and gender dysphoria was not even a diagnosis in the DSM. Today, thanks to the far right and Donald Trump, transgender people in America are under siege in ways I never could have imagined ten years ago. When my first TED Talk took off in 2017, outside of the evangelical world most of what I received was good will – worldwide. Not so today. I have lost at least three high-paying university or corporate speaking gigs this year because the powers that be said, “No transgender speakers on my watch!”

I am fortunate to live in a very accepting town in which I serve as an elected official (Mayor Pro Tem and Board of Trustee member,) one of fewer than 50 elected transgender officials in the United States.

Outside of Colorado, and particularly when I am in neighboring states, or when I am in the south, if people find out I am transgender I do not feel safe. Unless my speaking gig requires it, I never out myself in those states. I do not feel called to be an activist for the transgender community. I do not avoid speaking out on trans issues, but I feel far more called to speak on gender equity.

Sometimes I find a calling emerges by trusting the flow of my life. My counseling practice has picked up again, primarily with two groups, CEOs and other c-suite individuals, and with those exiting evangelicalism with all of the accompanying complexities of religious trauma. My practice is growing in both areas. The other realm that has arrived by complete surprise has been coaching speakers. I currently have a dozen speaker coaching clients, most of whom have come because of my work at TEDxMileHigh or my TED Talks. (If you are interesting in counseling or coaching with me, reach out to me at paula@rltpathways.com)

Each of these areas of endeavor lines up with the oft-quoted phrase from Frederick Buechner that where you are called is “where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger.”

There is a deep gladness in counseling leaders who know the loneliness of leadership every CEO experiences. With a quarter of a century of experience as a CEO, I come to that work with lived wisdom and painfully earned knowledge.

Working with people who have experienced toxic faith is gratifying because of my extensive knowledge in the area, and again, because of my own personal experience. Enough time has passed with both that I have few issues with counter-transference, the problem that occurs when a counselor does not have enough distance between their own painful issues and a current client’s similar issues. (It is also a reason I do not counsel transgender people – too much counter-transference.)

I have also been called to an ever-changing understanding of what it means to be transgender. I now use language I rarely used when I first transitioned. I feel I come from the borderlands between genders, or the liminal space between genders. I do not experience life as a cisgender woman, but there are so many ways in which a cisgender male experience felt so very wrong. The best explanation I currently have is that I am far more comfortable living as a female than I was living as a male. For those who have over a decade of lived transgender experience, that is something I hear often.

I have a lot of questions and concerns about the meteoric rise in the number of young people who identify as transgender. What was consistently a diagnosis of about one half of one percent of the population is now often up to five percent. Unfortunately, that is also accompanied by a large increase in the numbers of those detransitioning. I’m carefully following the studies being conducted of this phenomenon in Europe. It is too much of a politically charged issue here in the United States for truly objective studies to be completed and published. There are extreme reactions from the right and the left.

I received an extremely positive response when I shared these concerns with a large group of therapists, pediatricians, and psychiatrists at UCLA. I received the opposite response when I shared them with a mainline Protestant church in the same region. That’ll leave you scratching your head.

I shall be discerning the call of my life for as long as I breathe. One of my mentors said when he was approaching 97, “I am called to the final conversion, to leaving my ego behind and following my soul to the other side.” He had spent his life as a Christian leader. Both of my long-term mentors were Christian leaders, one Catholic and one from my former denomination. Both had passed on before I transitioned. Both would have been supportive of my transition, of that I am sure.

Discerning a call is a learned skill. Sometimes it arrives via a still small voice, and sometimes via a hard virtual smack up the side of the head. Either way one is grateful, because at least for the moment, you know where to step next.

And so it goes.

 

The call toward authenticity is sacred and holy and for the greater good.

Those words grace the dedication page of my memoir. They are also the last words I wrote for my 2017 TED Talk that has had over 7 million views. I chose the words carefully. No one is authentic. We are called toward authenticity and it is quite a journey. We are always in pursuit of it. We never arrive. All manner of distractions get in the way.

I try to live wholeheartedly, but I have tended to struggle with dysthymia (low grade depression) throughout my life, which can make wholehearted living difficult. I always strive toward authenticity, regardless of my mood. The desire for authenticity has brought me to this place in the year of our Lord 2024. I do not pretend to know where that call will take me next. It has not been made clear. It rarely is. You catch a glimpse of something in the mist and move in that direction. That’s all you can hope for.

Self-knowledge is holy, and the search for it is sacred. Throughout my life I have sought self-knowledge through various means, conventional and unconventional. Traditional depth therapy, with Jungian and Freudian flavors; writing, whether it be the journal I kept for 18 months after going through a difficult time, or these posts, or my memoir, or any of the other books I have authored.

Music has always been a part of the search. For someone who makes a living with words, it is ironic that I pay little attention to the words of songs. With a few exceptions, like Handel’s Messiah, or Hy Zarat’s Unchained Melody, or most of Billy Joel’s ballads, I don’t pay much attention to the words. For me it is all about the melody and especially the harmonies. I believe the most compelling argument for the Trinity is the existence of three-part harmony. God dwells there, in all of God’s parts.

Whether it is what Maslow called “peak experience” or the church fathers called “mystical experience,” we are all called beneath the ego and its incessant demands for power and safety. We are called to the realm of the soul where the deepest self-knowledge lies and we are most alive. We usually have to get there through a side door. The ego guards the front and back doors. You have to sneak past the ego to get to the soul.

For children, the soul comes forth through play. When I was a kid I loved building blocks and could play with them for hours. I would build castles and forts and then I would tear them down. Tearing my creations down was a part of the play. It prepared me for all the tearing down that accompanies even the most ordinary life.

For some a calling is birthed through a recurring dream. For others, it is a conversation you randomly hear on an airplane that feels as if it was meant for you. I still remember the time in the 80s when I was on a flight from Pittsburgh to Syracuse and the woman behind me, a pastor, said to her seatmate, “God is nothing if not subtle.”

Sometimes the soul comes forth through song lyrics I cannot get out of my head. As I already said, I don’t remember the words to songs, so when a phrase or snippet of a lyric comes to mind, I pay attention.

One of the most effective ways for the soul to speak to my consciousness is through the poems I have memorized. I haven’t quoted David Wagoner’s poem Lost in a couple of years. Lately I cannot get it out of my mind. I think I know the reason, though I am still pondering.

Sometimes instructions arise from the silence of meditation. Initially you take them as interruptions, and then you blessedly realize they are actually instructions. At least that is what people tell me. I have never been able to sustain any kind of meditation. I once took a doctoral course on the spiritual disciplines and told the two professors teaching the course that I was spectacularly bad at them. They assured me I was not. At the end of the week one of the professors, a very kind-hearted soul, said, “Maybe this isn’t the path for you.”

Sometimes a movie or television show awakens me to what the spirit is trying to say. As I wrote in my memoir, the television show LOST was hugely important in my life. Halfway through the final season there was an episode in which the protagonist realizes he has been called by God to die. I wept uncontrollably because I knew I had been called to transition genders. I think often about that night.

Throughout my adult life I have asked two questions. “What is right for me?” and “Where am I willing to be led.” They are the right questions. The problem is that I sometimes refuse to listen. I like to move fast, acting as if speed itself is holy. Speed is not holy. It is just speed. If I take the time to listen, the spirit emerges.

I am not artistically inclined, but I remember the cold winter day in Akron, Ohio when I noticed that a big chunk of ice had formed beneath a dripping outdoor faucet. I got a hammer and chisel and started shaping the block of ice. I sat there for hours carefully chipping away sections of the block. I had no idea what I was making until I saw what appeared to be a nose emerge. Following that clue, I sculpted two eyes, lips, and a square jaw. When I finished, the block of ice looked a little like Frankenstein, but I was proud as a 12-year-old can be. I had found a face in a block of ice.

Sometimes a call emerges when you chisel away at the detritus. If a face was in a block of ice then maybe a call might be embedded in the frozen sea that develops within me. I must find a hammer and chisel so I can get to work.

I’ve given a lot of speeches over the years, and on hundreds of occasions I have quoted Frederick Buechner’s words from his book Wishful Thinking: “God calls you to the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” On scores of occasions people have thanked me for giving them that framework to understanding calling.

If you answer the kind of call Buechner identified, you will also be answering the call toward authenticity, and that is sacred and holy and for the greater good.

My life is marked by discontinuity. There is a very clear break between once before a time and once upon a time. Once upon a time began just ten years ago. Everything from  once before a time is difficult if not impossible to revisit.

I spoke for the End Well Conference a couple of years ago. I had been asked to speak because of a piece I had written entitled, “Dying Before Dying.” I talked about how little access I have to any part of my former life. Thousands of people I knew no longer have anything to do with me. Many had been friends for decades. Outside of my family, there are few with whom I can reminisce about old times.

This past weekend I had a very short period of time in which to visit my hometown. I had hoped to stay the better part of a day and visit with a friend or two, but as it turned out, all I had was an hour. That hour packed an emotional punch.

I spent the hour at the cemetery in which my parents and seven other relatives are buried. I walked from grave to grave, reading headstones and remembering everyone’s birthday, duly etched in stone. Occasionally I stopped and stared into the distance at the foothills of the Bluegrass State.

I took a picture of the oak tree that remains on the property where my grandparents lived, just south of the cemetery. It is the only thing remaining of their house, barn, chicken coop, and outbuildings. Where my grandmother’s lush garden once soaked up the sun there is now a manicured lawn, turning brown in the August heat.

Not fifty yards away I took a picture of another tree that is in the background of the cover of the first album my vocal band ever recorded. Our tenor climbed into its branches for the photo. It was 1970. That branch would require a long ladder to reach today.

A few feet west of the tree was the small gravestone of a child who was born about six months before me and died one day after she was born. There is a lamb carved into the headstone. When I was a young child, I was very intrigued by that lamb. Today, you can barely read the name. Even etched in stone, all things eventually fade from view.

When I was a small child my grandmother would bring us into the cemetery for a picnic and to play in the cool grass. I wrote about those picnics in my first book, Laughter, Tears and In-Between – Soulful Stories for the Journey.

After my brief visit I drove back through the verdant hills of northeast Kentucky to the Cincinnati area where I indulged myself in one of my favorite acquired tastes, a “large three-way dry” order of Skyline Chili, with extra oyster crackers. Then I was back to the hotel for a zoom conversation with a young woman I recently met and greatly respect. That conversation brought to mind my favorite quote from the novels of Wendell Berry. The quote is from Jayber Crow.

Jayber is a student at a Bible college that sounds suspiciously like the one across the street from the cemetery where my parents are buried. Jayber seeks out an older professor he trusts and asks questions about God. The professor says, “You have been given questions for which you cannot be given the answers. You will have to live into them a little at a time. I will tell you a secret. It may take your entire life. I will tell you another secret. It may take longer.”

Eternity is not in the future. It is outside of time and space. It is the place where the unanswerable questions are answered, if there are answers. Sometimes when I return to the warm, humid evenings of Eastern Kentucky, it seems as though no time has passed at all. I can hear my mother and aunts laughing in Grandma’s living room as I lie by the bedroom window, listening to cicadas, trying to fall asleep.

Late Sunday evening, after dinner, I ran three miles by the light of the moon, something you cannot do in the foothills of Colorado, lest you end up a late night snack for a mountain lion. Just yesterday a mother lion and her offspring strolled through my next door neighbor’s yard. They posted a picture online. As I ran in lazy circles through the Kentucky neighborhood, I felt so calm, back in the nest of my youth.

Monday I saw a former co-worker, a very good friend. We have the kind of friendship in which years can pass, yet we pick up where we left off. Of late, for vastly different reasons, life has not been easy for either of us. He still exudes gentleness with his wide smile and kind eyes. He also wears his heart on his sleeve, as he always has. Me too. We hadn’t seen each other in years and I realized just how much I’ve missed him. For well over a decade we served a venerable institution. I believe we served it well, balancing each other thoughtfully and graciously.

After our long lunch I had a couple of hours to wander downtown Cincinnati before I met for dinner with a remarkable man I’ve known for over thirty years. He is a Renaissance person, gifted in so many ways. He is one of the best public speakers I know. He knows what the young woman I spoke with the night before and my former co-worker know, that we all have been given questions for which we cannot be given the answers. We will have to live into them a little at a time.

Now I am on a plane on my way home. I am thinking of one of my friends in my hometown who has never lived anywhere else. She knows the wisdom of one place. As for me and my peripatetic life, I know the wisdom of one airline. The captain said before we departed, “It’s 90 degrees in Denver now, but who knows, it’ll probably be snowing by the time we arrive.” The pilot knows Colorado. They will prepare for landing early because of expected turbulence as they fly into DEN. I know the drill. It happens every flight.

I type as my seatmate watches a movie on his phone. One of David Whyte’s poems is coming to mind. It begins with the words, “The soul lives contented while listening…” My soul listened carefully this weekend. It is contented.

And so it goes.

One of my friends serves as a counselor at a private rehab center in Colorado. Just last week one of her clients said a friend had sent him a sermon from a church in Denver that talked about the importance of parents giving their children a blessing, something the client had never received. He said to the counselor, “I thought what the woman said was pretty good stuff, though she was transgender.” He gave the sermon link to another client who said he was looking for a church. He told the therapist that the sermon was okay, but that wasn’t the church for him. It was too progressive. They had a transgender pastor speaking.

I rarely get to receive that kind of feedback. Painful though it is, it reminds me of how much my privilege and white male entitlement affect my outlook on life. It rarely occurs to me that people might not listen to one of my talks, or be a part of something of which I am a part, simply because I am transgender.

Another friend sent correspondence from a mutual friend of ours indicating the grief that person had received for posting a picture with Michael Smith and me, two former leaders of non-profit ministries in the Restoration Movement of churches. We were all together at the Wild Goose Festival. Michael is one of the most character-filled and Christlike people I know. Those giving the person grief wanted the post removed, and apparently replaced with information related to what they perceive to be the shortcomings of Michael and me, though that part was not all that clear.

Thankfully, the friend’s boss backed up my friend and refused to ask his employee to remove the post. I know the courage it took for his boss to do that, someone I’ve always respected, and now respect even more.

I forget just how frightened that world can be. I also forget just how powerful it is. I forget that a wonderful Christian man could be in trouble just for spending time with two of us who are no longer a part of his denomination, and are viewed negatively by many, if not most, within that denomination.

I was completely ostracized by that world ten years ago, and fewer than a score have reached out to encourage me or renew connections since that time. I am grateful for the reconnection at Wild Goose, and for the mutual friend who brought the four of us together.

Of the 592 anti-transgender laws introduced in state legislatures, and the 90 passed into law in 22 states, most were not driven by Republicans per se. Sixty percent of Republicans feel transgender people should have the same civil rights as everyone else. Those laws were driven by evangelicals, 87 percent of whom believe gender is immutably determined at birth, 67 percent of whom believe we already give too many civil rights to transgender people, yet only 31 percent of whom know someone who is out as transgender.

I wonder how many of those people would say I am the person they know who is out as transgender? To be clear, they do know me. I am the same follower of Christ I was before, with the same character, integrity, and heart. It is sad that most of them do not see it that way.

Last month at the Wild Goose Festival, Mitchell Gold, the furniture magnate, recorded several of us who were from an evangelical background. We all spoke about the importance of not electing Donald Trump to another four years in the White House. He, and we, are all disappointed that the evangelical world has so fully backed Trump, and how negative that has been for the entire LGBTQ+ population. Those recordings will be released nationwide this month. I will post a link on my Facebook account.

As sad as the loss of so many friends from my former denomination, I am greatly encouraged at the support I see building among Christians for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Last week, on the day she announced her VP choice, I spoke for a Harris campaign event for LGBTQ+ folks. This week I spoke for the inaugural event of Christians for Kamala. Over 4,000 people watched the online rally live, and as of this writing, ten times more have viewed it since the event. Here is the link, if you’re interested.

Immediately after I finished speaking, I heard from several people who had watched it live. Over the last two days I’ve heard from several more. I went back and looked at audience comments during the rally, and it was encouraging to see how many people were grateful that there are Christians in America, thousands of them, and likely millions, who feel like they feel. Many had felt alone in their opposition to the anti-Christian rhetoric of Donald Trump and J.D. Vance.

I will be very active during this campaign. Not only is the safety of transgender people at stake. Our democracy is at stake. It is beyond me how evangelicalism can have fallen so far into the trap of MAGA extremism. Fear is a powerful emotion, and sadly, many of these people have a faith and world outlook that is profoundly fear based.

Fear is not the foundation of Christianity. Loving God, neighbor, and self is. Until we return to that foundational truth, evangelicalism will be lost. These friends from my past seem to be terrified of entering the swamplands of the soul. The truth is that the swamplands of the soul is where love is, grounding and firm. But you cannot discover that love if you refuse to face your fears and go into the swamplands. An entire movement of Christians is chained to fear, which is a more terrifying place to abide than any swamplands.

In the swamplands you are forced to examine your prejudices, your own shortcomings, and the truth that much of the time, evil is not out there, it is in here. Only when you can see the shadows in your own heart can you be open to finding the firm footing that is always available in the swamplands of the soul. My life is no longer fear-based, and that is what gives me the strength to withstand all the vitriol I receive.

I had to delete messages on social media today related to my words at the rally. I’m sure it will continue. It goes with the territory. Seems like the Apostle John might have said something about love casting out fear. I always did like John. I doubt I’ll live into my 90s in exile on Patmos like he did, but living in exile from my old world has proven to be more life-affirming than I would have expected.

And so it goes.

I believe Joe Biden’s presidency will be seen as one of the greatest in the history of our nation. His accomplishments are many, and his willingness to place nation over self is extraordinary – almost unheard of in today’s world. I am cautiously hopeful about Kamala Harris. Why cautious? Let me explain.

I was speaking on the phone with a technical expert the other day and he mistook my voice for that of a man. On the phone, It happens sometimes. In this case, I decided to take advantage of it. I knew if my voice was clearly that of a woman, I would likely be dismissed if I spoke as someone with knowledge about computers. I knew as a man I would be less likely to be challenged, so I went with Paul’s voice. To no surprise, the expert listened intently and quickly offered a solution that respected my knowledge. It has been a long time since that happened.

Much to my chagrin, women are still not taken seriously. As I have often said in my speeches, “Apparently I became stupid when I became a woman.” I cannot have multiple gifts, only one. I cannot have broad knowledge about a lot of subjects. If I am allowed to be an expert at all, it is about a single subject.

For a lot of folks, including many conservative women, Kamala Harris is too strong, too self-assured, too ambitious, and too aggressive. It’s 2024, yet I can still type those words, and not ironically. I deal with it all the time, and when I contrast my experience over the last ten years with my experience in the decades before, it astounds me.

People think we choose to transition genders because we think there is some cultural benefit. Uh, think again. Why would anyone give up so much power unless they felt called to do so? I will never again have the privilege and authority I had as a man.

Occasionally someone will speak positively about me as a “girl boss” type, strong and confident. They speak it as a compliment. And while that serves me positively in a few environments, it works against me in most. Too many men are threatened by a strong woman. More than a few women are threatened too.

Kamala Harris will probably choose Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro as her vice-presidential nominee, should his background check come back clear. Gretchen Whitmer would also be an excellent choice, but from where I sit, I cannot see that happening. Two strong women on one political ticket?

I live in Boulder County, Colorado, one of the most liberal counties in the nation. All three of our county commissioners are women. Since I’ve lived here, every Lyons, Colorado mayor has been a woman. I love living in Lyons and Boulder County. I currently serve as a member of the Lyons Board of Trustees and Mayor Pro Tem. The fact that I am a woman (and a transgender woman at that) has not been used against me, but I am not living under any illusions. If my name was still Paul, I do not doubt that I would be taken more seriously. I’ve lived in both genders. Almost nothing is easier as a woman.

I am encouraged by the enthusiasm I see for the Harris campaign. I have no doubt she is more qualified for office in every way than her opponent. Still, I worry. Unlike Germany, Finland, Norway, Iceland, Taiwan, and New Zealand, all of which had women as heads of state during the Covid crisis, all of whom did remarkably well, America is still pretty misogynistic. Equality might be in the Declaration of Independence, but in reality we remain a patriarchal nation. Hopefully, November 6 changes that.

And so it goes.

Most of the time I do not hide the fact that I am 73 years old. Most people think I am a good bit younger, a compliment I greatly appreciate, but the fact is that I am 73. At this age I’m not sure I need to be running anything other than a road race.

It is true that I run 7 days a week and have barely slowed down my travel schedule, even in today’s awful airport experience. I rarely take elevators unless the building has more than six floors, and I hold down five part-time jobs. Still, I don’t think I should be running anything. The closest I come is in my job on the town board.

It is not because I am not able. It’s that I’m a Baby Boomer and in great numbers we Boomers are refusing to get out of the way. Joe Biden is from the Builder Generation. Except for Rupert Murdoch and a handful of others, most of the Builder Generation folks got out of the way a long time ago.

It is time for younger generations to take over. Gen X, the Millennials, Gen Z, – they are all chomping at the bit to lead, except that we won’t let them. You saw the same debate I saw. That was an old man who was lost on that stage. I think he is the finest president in a generation, but at 81, it is time for him to step aside.

In the church world I inhabited, CEOs and lead pastors usually left somewhere between 60 and 65 years of age. I stepped down as CEO at 60 and left the company at 62. Thirty-five years was enough.  I intended to stick around as non-executive chair for about 8 more years but my transition abruptly terminated that plan.

I am terribly concerned about the future of democracy in our nation. This election is one of the most important in our 248 year history. If Trump is elected again, I am terribly afraid of the kind of nation my granddaughters will inhabit. My own wellbeing is at stake as well.

I have an acquaintance who is vacationing in the Middle East this summer. I mentioned to her this week that I could not visit that nation. I could be arrested and imprisoned. While I still think it is unlikely, with the current makeup of our Supreme Court, I am afraid if Trump is elected there could be parts of the United States where I could not travel. I’m already terribly uncomfortable in Texas, a state I must pass through frequently. It is telling that I felt much safer in Scotland this spring than I do in the southern United States. Our children and grandchildren deserve a better nation than the one we are leaving them.

I would prefer to see an open Democratic convention, with a limited number of presidential candidates suggested by Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and Hakeem Jeffries. I figure the chances of that are pretty slim.

I don’t write about politics much, because outside of my work as Mayor Pro Tem, I am hardly all that knowledgeable. But I have written to my congressman, both of my senators, and the president himself to ask that Biden withdraw from the race. It feels like a civic duty to have done so.

And so it goes.

I was watching the television show Godless with a friend. In the second episode a character is introduced as a colonel and the de facto mayor of the town says, “Colonel of what?” I turned to my friend and said, “I’m a colonel.” She laughed. I said, “Seriously, I am a colonel. I am an official Kentucky Colonel, you know, like Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame. I also met Colonel Sanders once. I wrote about it in my first book.”

When you’ve been alive a certain number of years you have a lot of stories to tell. Some escape being retold, something for which your children are grateful. I’ve not talked about my life as a Kentucky Colonel in a very long time

I’ve always loved fried chicken. My grandmother’s chicken was the best, my mother’s a close second, followed by Aunt Ruth and Aunt Lela. Way, way, way down the line was the chicken from Colonel Sanders.

We went to a restaurant after church almost every Sunday when I was growing up in Akron, Ohio. One Sunday a brand new sit-down restaurant had opened in a shopping center in Fairlawn. There were tables and waiters and whatnot. As we sat eating chicken, a white Cadillac pulled up and Colonel Sanders stepped out and came into the restaurant. He went from table to table asking people how they liked the chicken. He asked my mother and she lied and said, “It’s delicious.” I knew it was a lie because I knew it was not delicious. It was just okay. In fact, in my book of stories, Laughter, Tears, and In-Between – Soulful Stories for the Journey, I titled that particular story, “Just Okay Chicken.”

We didn’t know anything about Colonel Sanders at the time, other than that his picture was on the sign in front of the restaurant. We didn’t know he was from Indiana, not Kentucky, that he had a history of numerous business failures before hitting it big with KFC. We didn’t know he was made a Kentucky Colonel in the year more colonels were named than any other in history. We just knew he got out of a white Cadillac and wore a white suit with a black western bow tie. He didn’t speak to me, nor I to him, children being expected to be silent and all.

As for my own declaration as an Honorable Kentucky Colonel, it happened sometime around the early to mid-90s. I had a friend who was the Assistant Secretary of State of Kentucky and he nominated me. The official declaration arrived shortly thereafter, signed by the governor and the secretary of state. I have it in a box somewhere in the basement. It’d be kinda fun to get it out and put it on the wall in my office. You know, as a conversation starter.

“Just Okay Chicken” was a lot of reader’s favorite story in my first book. I have a few copies of the book left. I’m saving them for my granddaughters. You can find the book on Amazon. I know because I just looked it up. Since it was published 23 years ago it’s out of print, but you can buy a used copy for eight bucks if you find yourself oddly driven to read 48 short stories from my previous life.

Do I eat Kentucky Fried Chicken anymore? Nope. I’d prefer my arteries not stand on end, hardened like Kentucky limestone. Occasionally I do dream about my grandmother’s fried chicken. She’d pick out a chicken from the pen by the barn; my grandfather would cut its head off on a tree stump and the chicken would take off running around the yard, headless. I remember one chicken that went clear around the side of the house, across the driveway, and into Grandma’s garden before she finally gave up the ghost. My brother always hid when the chicken’s heads were cut off. I watched with delight, much as I enjoyed the poems of Edgar Allen Poe later in my childhood. I guess there was a sadistic streak that has since gone underground.

Grandma never let me watch the de-feathering and whatnot. I didn’t see the chicken again until it was frying up in a larded pan. If allowed, I ate four pieces, a leg, both wings, and a thigh. Come to think of it, when I was around she probably had to fry more than one chicken. The chicken dinner would be followed by blackberry cobbler or maybe a butterscotch pie. Grandma Stone seemed to believe her calling was to satisfy the gustatory cravings of a four-year-old.

Later in life I read that Colonel Sanders was really into astrology. The sale of the company to John Y. Brown, who later became the governor of Kentucky, was helped along by Brown’s knowledge of Colonel Sander’s fixation with the stars, his offer being made when the stars were aligned just so. That was clever.

When introduced to speak at religious gatherings, I’m usually referred to as Reverend Doctor Paula Stone Williams. I never request that introduction, but it comes with the territory. What if I asked to be introduced as Reverend Doctor Colonel Paula Stone Williams? Too ostentatious? Yeah, there’d probably be somebody in the back who would say, “Colonel of what?”

And so it goes.

I speak frequently about the call onto the Hero’s Journey, common to every age, language, ethnicity, and people group. An ordinary citizen is called onto an extraordinary journey onto the road of trials. Initially they reject the call because, hey, it’s the road of trials. But now you are miserable because you know you’ve been called and you’ve rejected the call. A spiritual guide comes into your life and gives you the courage to answer the call onto the Hero’s Journey, and sure enough, you’re on the road of trials. Then things get worse and you find yourself completely lost in a deep, dark cave.

This is when you can be quite sure it is in fact your call, because as David Whyte says in Consolations, “A true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden core nature of the work in the first place.”

It was a given from an early age that I would go into ministry, the family business. I would attend the college at which my uncle was the president and my father was on the board of directors. Then I would serve a church of my denomination, as my father had done. I had other ideas. I was a radio announcer and had dreams of being a television anchor, but those dreams did not stir deeply enough within to change my course heading. The compass heading was hard-wired, generational. My father’s mother, gone before I was born, was a severe woman with a superego of stone, capable of setting a compass, even from the grave.

I did rebel in my own way, I suppose. Though I proved to be a pretty capable preacher, I refused to preach and sang instead, forming my own bands that made five albums before throwing in the towel to the demands of fatherhood and financial stability. Still, I never pastored a local church until 2018. I directed a large religious non-profit, chaired the board of a television network, served as the editor-at-large of a religious magazine, served on the preaching team of a couple of megachurches, but I resisted being a local church pastor.

Nevertheless, I did discover rather quickly that ministry, broadly defined, was in my genes. By my junior year of college I was asking the kinds of theological questions that annoyed the conservative professors and invited private meetings with the younger ones. Encouraging my inquisitive spiritually-curious mind, they pointed me in the direction of a mentor who taught philosophy at an eastern university. My family doctor introduced me to my other mentor, a retired Roman Catholic seminary rector with a couple of PhDs and the bright eyes of wisdom.

Over a quarter of a century they both guided my journey, passing on just a couple of years apart, leaving me the mentor who brought inquisitive young minds into my office to recommend books not suggested at evangelical seminaries.

Even as a child I questioned the traditional notion of heaven. In my twenties I read Evidence that Demands a Verdict and found it did not demand a verdict. I read Hans Küng’s, Does God Exist? and found that on the final page the question mark remained. I found insight in Francis Schaeffer’s, He Is There and He Is Not Silent, but the older I became, the more I suspected he is awfully silent.

Ministry, broadly defined, broke my heart. Once I became a local pastor I found that ministry narrowly defined also broke my heart. The local church is a messy affair, sure to bring you to your knees and make you wish you had decided to deliver the US mail instead of become a pastor. And yet there was Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the carved bodies of Rapa Nui, and all the other evidence that shows we have always preferred working out the meaning of life in community, and is it really such a bad thing to dedicate one’s working life to such an endeavor?

Today I am still pulled to my calling and the complex, mysterious, and ever expanding nature of its hold on me, not unlike the Big Bang, growing larger, closer and paradoxically more distant and miraculous with the passing of time.

Do I still consider myself a Christian? Yes, I do. I continue to be endlessly fascinated with the teachings of Jesus, though the notion of his bodily resurrection is of little fascination to me.

As Whyte writes, I have come to find that I did have what I needed from the beginning, an intelligent curiosity, an openness to mystery, and a confident conviction of the divine nature of Love, which does win, you know.

With that knowledge, my calling continues, wiser, softer, more encompassing, whether staring at the Fairy Pools of Skye or the Old Man of Storr, I see the water and rocks cry out at the wonder of it all and I know this calling was mine all along. I came to it kicking and screaming as a young person. Nowadays I rest in it, humble and curious as ever.

And so it goes.