I was in a situation recently in which people chastised a group of us for making a decision we had not, in fact, made. Some were soft-spoken and thoughtful. Others were angry and accusatory. Most had already reached a conclusion not supported by all of the facts. Decisions were made on partial information, taken out of context.

When partial information is taken out of context, you can assume almost anything. If I told you I was freezing as I write this, you might accurately assume I am not actually freezing, I’m just cold. That would be correct. You might also assume it must be a very cold day. That is not correct. It’s a relatively warm late winter day, but when I got dressed this morning I somehow thought it was much warmer than it is, and I’ve not yet gone to get a sweater. I am cold, but not cold enough to go get the sweater. As I write this, it occurs to me that I am, in fact, cold enough to get that sweater. Hang on a minute.

Okay, now I’m back and much warmer. The sweater is crew neck, blue and white horizontal stripes. I got it at PacSun when I was in Soho with my granddaughters last winter. Now where was I? Oh yeah.

In my counseling practice, I often recommend the little book, The Four Agreements. One of the agreements is, Do Not Make Assumptions. The human mind is inclined to make assumptions, particularly in a left-brain oriented world. For eons, our species received information in the right brain, sent it to the left brain for analysis, and then returned it to the right brain to place the information in context. That works quite well. Unfortunately, since the modern age arrived about 500 years ago, we have been fixated with the left brain. From Descartes to John Locke to the present day, the left hemisphere of the brain has been valued over the more wholistic right brain.

The problem is that purely left brain thinking leads to premature conclusions not placed in context. The right hemisphere is able to hold competing ideas without jumping to premature conclusions. The left is not.

All of this gets worse when there is no arbiter of truth trusted by the majority of people. As an analogy in a recent article in The Atlantic states, once we no longer trust metallurgists or jewelers or any other group of experts that can tell us if that ring on our finger is truly made of gold, we begin to question whether or not real gold even exists. Is everything fake gold? Is the social media influencer who writes about gold the person I want to trust on the matter, even if he is a college dropout who has never read a book on metallurgy?

You see the problem. I do not know where the folks in the meeting got their information, but I have a hunch it was not by contacting those who actually had the information necessary to draw a fact-based conclusion. As one who was in a position to have that information, I find it interesting that no one bothered to come to me before drawing their conclusions.

It is easy to point fingers, but I have been guilty of the same behavior. I recently had a delightful conversation with a person with whom I disagree about many things. It was interesting how subtly my perspective changed when I moved from viewing him as a right wing “other” to a person with whom I have a lot in common.

Maybe it’s a good time to remind myself of the Four Agreements. First, use impeccable words. Second, do not take it personally. Third, do not make assumptions. Fourth, do your best.

I always say the truth will set you free, but it will make you miserable first. Maybe I should add another sentence to that. The truth will set you free, but you have to do the work to discern it first. The truth matters, and it always will.

And so it goes.

Last month I wrote about Yascha Mounk’s book, The Identity Trap. He writes about the origins and problem of standpoint theory, cultural appropriation, limits on free speech, progressive separatism and identity sensitive public policy.

Given the current political environment, with anti-woke attacks from the right and cancel culture from the left, Mounk was pretty brave to tiptoe into these controversial waters. As a professor at Johns Hopkins and a Contributing Editor at The Atlantic, Mounk comes from a supportive environment. Nevertheless, I have no doubt he will be attacked from both the right and the left.

My longtime friend David and I have a phrase we have been using for years – The Radical Middle. Mounk speaks from the radical middle. The radical middle is radical because it is a hard position to hold. Humans have a tendency to think in binary categories. You are either with me or against me. And if you are in the middle, well then, you are against me.

I have been receiving attacks from the far right for a decade. There are over 13,000 comments on my first TED Talk. I’ve never looked at any of them. I’m told it’s not a pretty sight. Over the last year, for the first time, I have been attacked from the left. All of it has come from one stance I have taken.

If from a very early age a child has consistently and persistently claimed to be the gender not on their birth certificate, I believe it is all right to consider medical intervention for that child as soon as they reach puberty. These adolescents are transgender, and every indication is that they will always identify as such.

On the other hand, studies done in Europe and elsewhere are consistently showing that adolescents who first identify as transgender or nonbinary during their teen years are often no longer identifying that way when they are older. The majority of these individuals were identified female at birth. According to the 2022 US Transgender Survey, those identified female at birth are almost four times as likely to identify as nonbinary as those identified male at birth. All of these studies lead me to the same conclusion.

The World Professional Association of Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care previously said no medical treatment should begin before age 16. Their new standards have removed any specific age, but state that no medical treatment should be started before natal puberty has begun, and in all cases, comprehensive multidisciplinary evaluation must be completed before treatment begins. I believe that evaluation should be informed by the latest peer reviewed studies regarding the medical treatment of transgender adolescents.

I have always been cautious in what I do and do not say on this subject, not only because it is controversial, but because not enough research has been done to draw ironclad conclusions. However, I have not been cautious enough.

I will no longer publicly comment on the issue. I am accustomed to being attacked from the right. I am not accustomed to being attacked from the left. Being attacked from either direction for sharing legitimate concerns is troubling.

Cancel culture says if you are not with us in every jot and tittle, you are not with us at all. I am a transgender woman, but if I do not agree with the currently popular positions regarding transgender medical treatment in every way, then I must be cancelled, no opportunity for rebuttal or continuing discourse. That is similar to what I have experienced from the far right, where attacks do not come with an opportunity for response or rebuttal. Whether from the right or the left, these attacks accumulate, and I no longer have the energy to fight back. I am weary.

It is not easy being transgender and Christian. It is even harder when you are prepared for a frontal attack, and receive one from the flank.

And so it goes.

Carl Jung said the foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.

Jungian analyst James Hollis writes about what he calls existential guilt. He says, “The ironic consciousness can see the flawed choices, can understand their consequences, but this knowledge is neither redemptive nor avoidable. Such a person is always left with a troubled consciousness, but at least, as Jung pointed out, he or she is thereby less like to contribute to the burdens of society.”

What he calls existential guilt, I call abiding shadows, those parts of ourselves that got us in trouble at 18, again at 38 and 58, and will probably still be getting us in trouble at 88. Try as we might, we just can’t rid ourselves of these tendencies. They are often the shadows sides of our strengths. One of mine is a tendency to speak when it would have been better to keep my mouth shut. I have a plaque that reads, “It’s all right to have an unexpressed thought.” I keep it in a prominent place because I need to keep it in a prominent place.

Hollis writes, “Perhaps this existential guilt is the most difficult to bear. To know oneself responsible, not only for the things done, but the many undone, may broaden one’s humanity but it also deepens the pain.”

His words remind me of a stanza I have committed to memory from William Butler Yeats’ poem, Vacillation:

Though summer sunlight gild cloudy leafage of the sky

Or wintry moonlight sink the field in storm-scattered intricacy

I cannot look thereon, responsibility so weighs me down

Things said or done long years ago or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do weigh me down

And not a day but something is recalled

My conscience or my vanity appalled

In the previous stanza he talked about the great sense of wonder experienced after he turned 50, that he was blessed and could bless. He kept both parts of himself in close proximity in the poem, I suppose because they are in close proximity in real life.

In her book, Own Your Self, Dr. Kelly Brogan writes about how modern medicine rushes to treat people struggling through depression by prescribing SSRIs and other medications. Anti-depressants have been very helpful to me over the years. In my opinion, the problem is not their use. It is that we rush to use them, and even more problematic, we use them to avoid doing the work to which depression calls us.

Most of my clients who experience depression are working through legitimate existential issues that are depressing. Ultimately, a good bit of life is working through such issues. Brogan writes supportively of the work of Carl Jung and depth psychotherapists who focus on working through problems, not medicating them into submission.

A couple of years ago, for about six months, I went through a period of great struggle. There were decisions I had made born of my own abiding shadows. As I worked through my issues, friends and family were concerned. “You’re not okay,” they said. I did not disagree. I was not okay.

I preached about it more than I should have, but that period of struggle was absolutely necessary for my personal growth. I remember saying to Cathy, “I must be fundamentally different as Paula than I was as Paul. I never had to deal with these kinds of personal issues before.” She said, “Actually, you’ve always been this way. As a man, you just got a free pass, that’s all. Now people are calling you on your shit.” That was a sobering revelation. Powerful white men get a free pass. Women do not.

Did I like going through that period? Of course not, it was awful. I lost 15 pounds and wore out my welcome with my closest friends. Was it necessary? Absolutely. Well, if I want to keep growing it was necessary.

Too often people are delivered by fate, or the gods, or their prayers into the desert, but retreat as soon as they arrive. I see people do this in therapy all the time. The second we get close to the real issues, they bolt for the door, occasionally literally.

The only way through the desert is through the desert, and the wisdom gained in that dry land is essential for the accumulation of wisdom. Great successes make you a little wiser. Great failures are the birthplace of greater wisdom, but only if you abide in those failure, until your ego is broken and your soul can rise. Those experiences do not destroy your sense of self. They hone your sense of self.

None of us can go through the dark night without honest, steadfast companions and spiritual guides. Those folks  have been there and know that while religion is for those afraid of hell, spirituality is for those who have already been there.

My doctorate is in pastor care, a variation of pastoral counseling. We have the same training as LPCs, MSWs, or psychologists. In our case, woven through our education is a spiritual perspective, often appearing as a crimson thread through the tapestry of the therapy experience.

We are inherently spiritual creatures. Our spirituality is driven by the right hemisphere of the brain, the part of the brain that is more holistic and focused on experiences, not facts, the left brain’s focus. Since the beginning of the modern age, religion sought respectability by making itself a left brain endeavor full of facts, rules, and regulations. It failed miserably. Religion should have stayed in the right brain, where it finds is greatest expression.

The right brain came online in the species long before the left. It comes online in infants earlier than the left. Pastoral counselors tend to focus on the right brain because, well, as a therapist, that’s where the money is. Most unresolved issues that result in suffering are born of unintegrated experiences.

The Buddha said life is suffering. The only path to true wisdom, the kind that leaves the world a better place than you found it, is through suffering. If we choose to suffer well, not only will we find a more redemptive life, we will be living our lives for the greater good.

Sunday, January 28, is the date on which my father would have turned 100. He was 96 when he passed away in May of 2020. Dad died during the early days of Covid. My last visit was two months before the pandemic.  Being with him at the time of his death was not possible. We were also unable to have a memorial service. My brother and his family live a couple of hours away, and were able to be at the graveside where they had a small ceremony.

There was no real closure for me. A memorial service would have been packed. Dad ministered in Grayson, Kentucky for 22 years. He was loved in that town, as well as in Lexington, where my parents lived in retirement for 31 years.

A few years before he passed, Dad told me how his sister, Virginia, would tell everyone, “My kid brother is going to be a preacher.” The decision had been made for him early in life. Fortunately, he was amenable to it. He was a natural pastor, the kind that comes out of central casting.

My father attended Kentucky Christian College, my alma mater. He met my mother there and they were married shortly after graduation. Dad’s first ministry was in Advance, Indiana, where he served while he worked on a master’s degree at Butler School of Religion. He moved to Huntington, West Virginia and served a church there for seven years. That is where I was born.

We moved to Akron, Ohio in the fall of 1955, and for the next twelve years my father pastored at the West Akron Church of Christ, a healthy, growing congregation. During his ministry the church built a new building, and grew to an attendance of about 350. During those years he joined the board of Kentucky Christian College, served on the Continuation Committee of the North American Christian Convention, and served as the dean of senior high camp at Round Lake Christian Assembly.

In January of 1967, my father accepted a new ministry at my mother’s home church, First Church of Christ in Grayson, Kentucky. He served there for 22 years, until he retired on his 65th birthday in 1989.

Outside of Grayson, Dad was not well-known. He was not a great preacher, but he was a wonderful pastor. He loved everyone. When people showed up in his life, whether it be a Sunday worship service or a chance encounter at Rupert’s Department Store, Dad always looked like he had been expecting them. He warmly greeted everyone and had a great interest in their lives, whether they were highway construction workers, or the superintendent of schools.

A lot of the confidence I have gained began in my childhood home, where my father delighted in me. Whether it was a band concert in the 9th grade, or the first time I preached at the North American Christian Convention, Dad was in the audience, beaming. When I became a disc jockey at the radio station in town, Dad listened all the time, and came to the station often to watch me spin vinyl and read the news straight off the AP wire.

When I was doing play-by-play or color at basketball games, Dad listened to the broadcast from beginning to end, and when I got home, encouraged me. As far as he was concerned, I was a sure successor to the legendary University of Kentucky broadcaster, Cawood Ledford.

Long after I’d graduated from college and moved away, Dad became the announcer for the local high school’s basketball games. They gave him a jacket with “Voice of the Raiders” embroidered on the front chest pocket. He proudly wore that jacket for the rest of his life.

When I became the editor-at-large of the weekly magazine of our denomination, the Christian Standard, Dad reminded me that it had been published since 1866, and that there had been only a handful of editors. There was a part of me that took that part-time job because I knew it would please my father.

I write about the actions of his life and the places in which he served because I never knew much about the interior life of my father. He was very private. He did not share his deepest self with anyone. You had to read between the lines to determine the state of his soul. In that regard we were polar opposites. I used to have a plaque in my bedroom that said, “It’s all right to have an unexpressed thought.” Dad did not need that plaque.

Dad was always open to conversations about politics or theology. I’d have delightful conversations with him, as long as the topic was something “out there.” When he did open up more intimately and transparently, it was usually with me. I considered that quite an honor. I never knew when he would grace me with words from his soul. It might be on a plane to the North American Christian Convention, or driving to the grocery store on Long Island, or visiting me at the radio station. I treasured those moments and began to think of them as having won the intimacy lottery, and wonder what I might  do that would hasten the return of those times of deep conversation.

My dad was always on the move. He walked miles, intuitively embodying solvitur ambulando, “It is solved by walking.” I do understand that propensity. I run at least six days a week for at least 45 minutes. Most weeks I run seven days. I edit and memorize sermons or keynote speeches while running. Walking and running get your brain firing neurons across both hemispheres, which is a good thing.

A lot of memories have been surfacing lately as I think about Dad’s one-hundredth birthday. Wrestling on the floor after we’d had popcorn, which we did every Thursday evening. Riding in the car with him anywhere, because that was when he was most inclined to talk. Thoroughly enjoying his homemade donuts, delicious for exactly six hours until magically turning into door stops in hour seven. Still, I happily emptied the pan in which those hard as a rock donuts were stored. Telling stories at bedtime about cowboys Jim and Jiggles. Every story ended with Jiggles singing Home on the Range. Dad had a beautiful voice, but Jiggles did not. I loved the way he sang that song.

When Dad was with me he was rarely distracted. For me, he was present. What that did for my self-esteem was profoundly important. He loved my singing, my preaching, my broadcast work, my writing skills, and my leaderships. Dad loved me and I always knew it. Not many people receive that kind of adoration from their father. I shall be eternally grateful for his steadfast love.

My first TED Talk tells the story of the first time I visited with my parents after I had transitioned. I tell the story all the time. I cannot tell it without crying, because it was a moment of profound love, the kind that makes the world go round. I am glad millions of people have heard it.

I miss my father. The world is a better place because he was in it. His legacy was one of warmth. He warmed hearts with lasting effect. Mention his name and all who knew him will smile. Often they will say what I always knew to be true. “Ah yes, Dave Williams, the epitome of a gentleman.”

And so it goes.

Back in the 80s I read Ernest Becker’s masterful 1973 book, The Denial of Death. In fact, I was reading the book while the New York Mets were winning Game Six of the 1986 World Series, one of the most astonishing comebacks in the history of Major League Baseball. Most agree that the book stands the test of time, as does the game.

In his book Becker devoted many pages to the work of Otto Rank, a protege of Sigmund Freud. Rank’s work doesn’t have quite the hold it did fifty years ago, but one of his books, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, is still quite helpful. Rank collected over 70 examples of hero myths and identified five common elements:

1. An infant is born to noble or divine parents or is the child of a deity and an earthly maiden. His or her origin is preceded by difficulties in the parents or within their community.
2. The extraordinary signs attending the birth of the infant arouses anxiety in the ruling king or the infant’s father, who set out to kill or banish him.
3. The infant is exposed to die, or surrendered to the sea in a basket, or is sent away or escapes because of the intervention of benevolent forces.
4. The infant is rescued, sometimes by animals or a humble woman or a fisherman, and is brought up in another land.
5. The hero, now a young man, returns to either overthrow the father or renew the community through his leadership.

In the Denial of Death, Becker wrote about the universal call toward heroism that is contained in these myths, a call that is innate to our species. Joseph Campbell popularized these elements in his definition of the Hero’s Journey.

As Campbell described the Hero’s Journey, an ordinary citizen is called onto an extraordinary journey onto the road of trials. Initially she rejects the call because hey, it’s a road of trials! But now she’s miserable because she knows she has been called and has rejected the call. I’ve been there more than once in my life. You’d think one would learn, right?

In the midst of misery because of a lack of courage to answer the call onto the Hero’s Journey, a spiritual advisor comes into her life and gives her the courage to answer the call. It is always a Yoda type figure, someone with great wisdom gained through adversity. The wisdom figure gives the hero the courage to answer the call onto the road of trials and sure enough, it’s a road of trials. No surprise there. But now it gets worse. She finds herself in a deep, dark cave, totally lost.

It is Dante at the beginning of the Divine Comedy. “In the middle of the road of my life I awoke in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.” It is Shakespeare’s MacBeth. “Life is but a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” It is John of the Cross’s Dark Night of the Soul.

You are completely and utterly lost, but that is when you realize it is all right, because lost is a place too. My favorite television show of all time was the show Lost. The characters, marooned and time-traveling on a mysterious island somewhere in the Pacific, spent six seasons coming to grips with and accepting their lot as one of those among the many who are lost.

As the seasons progressed they came to peace with their time in the place called lost, and that is when they begin to discern a path forward. The final season brought redemption to each of the characters, with the protagonist (Jack, if you are a Lost fan) being the last to find his way.

The show was rather spiritual, and in the final analysis, Christian. Carlton Kuse, one of the two show runners (Damon Lindelof was the other) is a Catholic. The final season gave an interesting spin to the notion of purgatory. If you’ve read my memoir, you know the show played a significant part in my decision to transition genders.

Spending time in the place called lost is an important part of the Hero’s Journey. After you learn the lessons that can only be learned in that difficult place, you finally see the light at the end of the tunnel, and this time it is not an oncoming train. You are back on the ordinary road of trials, which feels like nothing given what you’ve gone through.

This is when you realize your destination has never been the Holy Grail. It has always been to bring back the Holy Grail, once found, and gift it to those from whom you have departed. The Hero’s Journey is at the same time all about you, and not all about you.

After returning with the offering there may or may not be another journey to which the hero is called. For Odysseus, after his journey across the sea his final call took him inland, so far from the sea that no one knew what an oar was. Only after he returned from that journey was he free to move into “sleek old age.”

It does not feel like I am free to move into sleek old age. I am still in the midst of this present journey. I’ve lost track of how many I’ve been on since I woke up to the fact that a life that does not bring you alive is too small for you.

I am yet again in the place called lost, which is all right, because, well, it has to be. There is no use fighting against it. I must live into it, and the lessons it is trying to bestow on my ever resistant soul.

The current themes of my days are meaning, wisdom, love, and on off days, ennui and acedia. You know, the little stuff. At this age there are no throw away experiences. Everything counts. You have no idea the number of your days, and you best approach each with great seriousness of purpose.

Some significant existential realities occupy my time. The closing of the church is having a bigger emotional impact, now that the acute phase is complete. The church has proven to be the single biggest area in which my transition has put me at a disadvantage. A lot of obstacles were placed on the path that seem to have been related to nothing other than lack of appreciation of my knowledge about what it takes to create a growing church.

In sixty years as a male, I never faced such obstacles. For all thirty-five of the years I directed a church planting ministry, that ministry had a steady upward trajectory, uninterrupted. Who knew changing genders would render one untrustworthy, because you used to be a man and therefore all of your initiatives must have been stained by the patriarchy? I am aware of the mistakes I made, and they were many. I have also learned that when you do not have the authority of the CEO, it is amazing what a handful of contrarians can do to stop momentum. The whole experience was a lesson in navigating through relative powerlessness.

Those with whom I worked might have different perspectives. You can ask them if you like. For me, I am sure grace will inform a healthier perspective over time.

I was watching a movie last night in which the protagonist was lamenting the pain that accompanies the loss of community and one’s legacy. Just the previous night I had turned to the pages of the magazine I used to serve as editor-at-large. I look at it occasionally to see what is happening and who has passed on. For sixty years it was my world. It does not look to me like the denomination is doing very well, especially its educational institutions. I was surprised how saddened I was. This is the denomination that discarded me faster than the hope one harbors every spring for the hapless New York Mets, yet I still care about the denomination’s health. Whether one’s Christian denomination or baseball, loyalty runs deep through these bones. With a few exceptions, it has not been reciprocated.

The biggest problem of that is the loss of community and legacy. It is hard to feel good about the work I did over those 35 years, because today most of those churches would never allow me through their doors. And now the one I helped to start is gone. There must be a lesson there somewhere.

But it’s -11 degrees outside and snowing, and I complain too much.

I am still able to observe life and make observations that seem to be helpful to others. I mean, you are reading this post, right? And I still get to rub shoulders with really smart people and receive a constant stream of new, fascinating information. And if I can wait a couple of days until it is 50 degrees again and go running in the ever-present Colorado sunshine, all manner of things shall once again be well.

And so it goes.

This April I will finish my first term as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Town of Lyons, Colorado. I entered office not sure of the difference between an ordinance and a resolution. I knew Lyons was a statutory town, but I did not know there were four other types of municipalities in the state. About 2,250 people live in the 1.2 square miles of Lyons. Our town was incorporated in 1891.

I’ve learned much during  my first two years of government service. I have a great respect for our town administrator and employees, as well as the elected officials with whom I serve. I find it an honor to serve with our mayor, Hollie Rogan. She has led with efficiency, thoughtfulness, and a keen eye for what really matters. I hope I am able to serve with her for another two years.

Most of the time, our six trustee members have been on the same page as the mayor. We are focused on affordable housing, wildfire mitigation, and finding sources of revenue that do not unduly tax the members of our community. People value the quality of life they experience in Lyons, and love the supportive community that has been born of adversity, whether the devastating thousand-year flood in 2013, or wildfires north and south of town in 2020.

I have spent most of my life working in the religious non-profit world. For 35 years I was CEO and chair of a large and growing New York based non-profit.  I also taught as adjunct faculty or as a visiting instructor at seven colleges and seminaries. I have worked in the broadcasting world as an announcer at two radio stations and one television network. I coach with TEDxMileHigh and volunteer with TED. I’ve had the honor of speaking for both. I served as an editor-at-large for a publishing company, and published books with that company and two others. I have worked in the corporate world, and have served on the boards of more non-profits than I can count. But until two years ago, I had never worked in government.

I read everything I can about  finding good work and creative meaning as you progress through the decades of life. Now I focus my attention on what many call an “encore life.” An encore life is when the world considers you as retired from your “career” and embarking on a new journey. I chose to run for public office two years ago because I wanted to serve my community, and work in an area in which I had not worked before.

In the non-profit world, I was accustomed to board meetings that lasted less than two hours. Much of the time I was chairing those meetings. That is not the case with town board meetings. Between workshops before the meetings and the board meetings themselves, it is not unusual to be at town hall for four hours or longer on a Monday evening. All of it starts at 5:30 pm, after our board members have already finished their regular work day.

In a town the size of Lyons, we do not spend our time flying at 30,000 feet. We fly at 300 feet, debating the merits of issues as minute as whether or not to use bollards to separate traffic from pedestrians on Railroad Avenue after turning it into a one-way street, or the width of a pedestrian path behind a major highway. I have enjoyed my service on the town board more than I anticipated. It’s a lot of work, but you know you are making a difference at a local level.

There has been virtually no pushback about  being a transgender person. In fact, when I mentioned that I was planning to run again and wondered whether or not my gender identity would be an issue, our mayor and the two board members I was talking with said, “Oh that’s right, we always forget you’re trans.” None of us expect my gender  to be an issue this election either. If I am not reelected, it will likely be because folks do not like how I voted, not because of my gender.

I love living in Lyons, and take seriously my responsibility to help make our town an even better place in which to live. Now that I have learned the ropes of the job, I hope to be even more effective over the next two years.

An ancillary benefit of my service is the chance to add government service to the long list of ways in which I have served over the past fifty plus years. When it is all said and done, I’m probably most comfortable in the non-profit world. That is where I’ve spent most of my time. I spent 35 years with one non-profit, 25 as chair and CEO. After 35 years of service, I was gone seven days after coming out as transgender. Nothing about that seems strange if you live within the bubble of evangelicalism. If you are from outside of that insular bubble, you simply cannot believe something like that can still happen in the 21st century. It still does, and regularly, as a matter of fact.

If I’m not elected to the Board of Trustees, will I be disappointed? Sure. I’ve worked hard over the last two years to serve well. But after losing all of my jobs within a week just ten short years ago, not being elected to office would be far down the list of life’s disappointments.

And so it goes.

I preach occasionally at The Village Church, a wonderful post-evangelical congregation in Atlanta. My friend Ray Waters is the pastor. Ray and I have similar interests and backgrounds. We both worked as radio station announcers back in the day, and we sang and maintain a love for Southern Gospel music. Get us into a conversation about The Stamps, the Oak Ridge Boys during their Southern Gospel days, or any iteration of the Imperials, and we will talk until the cows come home.

I spoke at The Village Church earlier this month. When I got into town Ray said, “Ernie Haase and Signature Sound are in Gainesville tomorrow night, doing their Christmas show at a Baptist Church. Interested?”

When it comes to traditional Southern Gospel, they are one of my favorite groups. Since it was their Christmas show, I knew they’d be singing What Child Is This, so I figured, “I’m in.” Then it occurred to me, I’d be at a Southern Baptist Church in Gainesville, Georgia, not exactly the most welcoming environment for a transgender woman.

Unless people know of my circumstances before we meet, around 99.9 percent of the time I am identified by others as female. I am very rarely misgendered. But about nine million people have seen one of my TED Talks. I’ve been on Good Morning America, NBC, CBS and a host of other media likely viewed by Southern Baptists. I thought, “What if I am recognized?“

Ray was good with whatever I decided. He understood the problem. I decided to go. We got to the church just as the concert was beginning and sat safely toward the back. I had to use the restroom as soon as I got there, which was a little surreal – using a women’s restroom at a Southern Baptist church in Georgia. Not something I do every day.

The vast majority of the people were very white and very old. Come to think of it, I am very white and very old. It’s been ten years and three months since I was in an evangelical church. The last one was a megachurch and I was preaching.

It felt unsettling to be in a place in which, had they known who I was, I most certainly would have been asked to leave. It felt especially ironic to know that all of that would likely happen even though I am still a Christian and still a pastor.

As it turned out, no one knew who I was, and all was well. As I expected, the concert was excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and yes, they did sing What Child Is This. I waited around afterwards as people quickly filed out. Not many CDs were being sold. Turns out even old people download their music nowadays.

Ray knows Ernie Haase, so I waited until they had a chance to talk. I took a picture of Ray, his wife and mother-in-law standing with Ernie. He wanted me to join them, but that didn’t feel right. We went to Cracker Barrel afterwards, because, well, we had just attended a Southern Gospel concert, and that’s where you go to eat after a Southern Gospel concert.

Evangelicalism is very removed from my current existence. It has been a long time since I’ve been in a big traditional Southern Baptist church building with very Southern Baptist people. I grew up on Southern Gospel music. I started my own group when I was 17. I joined another at 18, and started yet another at 21. We made five albums and managed to earn a living singing for the better part of a decade.

I do not read music well, but I do hear parts. I did vocal arrangements for all of the bands of which I was a part. I could have sung pretty much every part at the concert that night, though the tenor and bass lines might have been a stretch every now and again. I would love to sing that kind of music again, but since pretty much everyone singing it is a fundamentalist Christian, I’m thinking my chances are pretty slim.

When I transitioned I lost a lot. At the concert I was reminded I have lost the ability to feel comfortable in a church building where I once would have been very much at home. I would not be allowed through the door of any of the churches I attended as a child, or those I served before my transition.

Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing about this stuff. Maybe I’m gonna be working through these losses until the cows come home.

And there it is. I managed to work in the line, “until the cows come home” twice in a single post. I mean, I spent a good bit of my growing up years in the rural south. Those metaphors stay with you.

And so it goes.

About a year ago we changed the name of the church I served from Left Hand Church to Envision Community Church. A few members drove the change, with the support of the majority of our leadership. I did not oppose the name change. My thoughts were not sufficiently formed at the time. But since then I have carefully studied the subject, and now that the church is closed, I do have some thoughts about whether or not changing the name was necessary.

We changed the church’s name because of concerns about cultural appropriation. Why did we name it Left Hand Church in the first place? Left Hand is a canyon and creek between Boulder and Lyons in Boulder County. The creek runs through Longmont and eventually makes its way to the South Platte River. Left Hand is a name people identify with the entire county, not just one city within the county. As a church for the entire region, we wanted a name that reflected that reality. Left Hand felt like the right choice. We were not alone. There are 34 entities using the Left Hand name, including a well-known brewing company.

Left Hand Canyon and Creek are named for Chief Niwot, a chief of the Southern Arapaho people who was tragically assassinated in the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. (A massacre led by a US colonel who was also a Methodist pastor, I might add. Oh, the things we do in the name of religion.)

Niwot was translated Left Hand in English. Apparently, Chief Niwot was among the ten percent of humans who are left-handed. He was also a generous soul who wanted to welcome European settlers, which makes his assassination even more heinous. It was with respect that his name was chosen for the creek and canyon and church.

What does this have to do with cultural appropriation, you might ask? Cultural appropriation is one of five markers of what Yasha Mounk in his book, The Identity Trap calls the identity synthesis, markers he believes do more to separate us than bring us together. It is the notion that we should be identified primarily by the smallest common denominator of our identity. That identity is ours and only ours to experience and know. For anyone else to borrow elements of that identity is an unacceptable appropriation.

But what if I do not want to be known by my lowest common denominator? What if I do not want to be seen primarily as a white transgender woman? I prefer to focus on my commonality with other humans, not what separates me from them. I believe this new form of extreme segregation in the name of one’s unique identity is more divisive than unitive.

I do not want to be misunderstood. I do know that European settlers destroyed Native Americans and their culture as they marched across the country with their destructive  notion of Manifest Destiny. The arrogance is astonishing. I know majority cultures have been destroying minority cultures since the beginning of the species. But is the only way to rectify that sin to separate even further, to draw lines between us that destroy any hope of the traditional liberal humanism that emphasizes our commonalities, not our differences? I cannot see where today’s extreme identity synthesis has any hope of bringing about true reconciliation. I see it only dividing us further.

There is not a culture on earth that is purely itself, uncontaminated by other cultures. All are an amalgamation of many cultures. The group with the least cohesive identity in the unfolding of the United States was the Scots-Irish. Originally clans from Scotland, they had been forced to move to Ireland in the 1600s to stop the Spanish from bringing Roman Catholicism to the Emerald Isle. The Scots-Irish never wanted to be in Ireland and came in droves to the Colonies between 1715 and 1760, heading to the western frontier, where they intermarried with pretty much any group they found, creating an entirely new identity in the process.

The result was Appalachian culture, which birthed bluegrass and country music, among many other rich cultural traditions. It created American evangelicalism, turning the Great Revival into a national phenomenon. Elements of the culture are Irish, Scottish, Native American, English, and a plethora of other cultures and nationalities. What is their lowest common denominator? No one knows.

I am talking about my own roots. I am English, Scottish, Irish, and Welsh. Each its own distinct culture, but in the Ohio Valley where I was raised, we were identified as Scots-Irish. The Scots-Irish have died in disproportionate numbers in every war ever fought by our nation. We were not respected in the northlands, where they referred to us as hillbillies. Our identity was honed in the heart of Appalachia. (That middle “a” is a short one in case you don’t know how to pronounce it.)

There are no pure cultures. In my own family we have Indian, West Indian, German, and Scots-Irish identities. Jubi, whio is Indian, fixes amazing fried chicken. Cathy does too. She’s German. So does Jael, also Indian, and Jana, German and Scots-Irish. I’m pretty sure fried chicken is not a staple of any of those specific cultures. Is it wrong for Cathy, Jubi, Jael, and Jana to fry a chicken in the manner of my Grandma Stone? Should Jubi only be allowed to fix Indian food, and Cathy German food? I do not believe Cathy, Jubi, Jael, or Jana are appropriating Appalachian culture. They are frying chicken, something for which I am extremely grateful. (I doubt the chickens share my sentiment.)

In my opinion, using the name “Left Hand” was not culturally inappropriate. We are a part of the stew pot that is America. America never was a melting pot. Cultures do not disappear, they take on flavors of other cultures over long periods of time. That is a universal truth of our species.

Should we be appalled by prejudice and oppression? Absolutely. Should do everything we can to bring about equality and equity? Yes. Should we preserve our cultures? Of course. But I do not think any of that precludes celebrating our common humanity more than we celebrate our specific uniqueness. We are all on this fragile planet together.

I believe it was all right to honor Chief Left Hand and his people by using his name for our church. I believe the identity synthesis now sweeping our nation is not helpful. Many of you will disagree. That’s okay. And by the way, disagreements are usually not microaggressions. Most of the time, they are just discourse.

This is an important subject that needs to be discussed. Unfortunately, in today’s world everyone cowers in the shadows for fear of offending someone unknowingly. We’re frightened of being identified as culturally insensitive or guilty of microagressions. What this extreme perspective has wrought is not dialog, but fear. If we only focus on that which separates us, and not on that which we share in common, I am afraid today’s cultural divide only gets worse.

So, let’s start talking. I believe the health of all cultures hangs in the balance.

For six years I preached at Left Hand Church, which changed its name to Envision Community Church in its last days. Kristie Vernon and I were the co-pastors who remained when the church closed its doors on November 12. Our decision was agonizingly difficult, but we knew it was time. We both preached for the last service. I chose to speak from the same passage as my first sermon at Left Hand – Matthew 22.

I refer to the final story of that chapter as the Last Press Conference because it was the last time Jesus met with the crowds at large. After that day he retreated to work with his disciples. Until the time of his arrest, this was the last time religious authorities had access to him. In this final press conference, three questions were asked. Jesus’s answer to the final question was the culmination of one era and the beginning of another.

The first question was about paying taxes to Caesar. One religious group thought it appropriate. a competing group thought not. Jesus asked for a coin and noted that Caesar’s image was on the coin. If the people were using his monetary system, were they not gaining benefits of the Roman Empire? “Pay Caesar’s what’s Caesar’s and God what’s God’s.”

With the first question quickly dispatched, a Sadducee asked about multiple marriages and the resurrection. “Say a guy marries and dies before his wife has kids. The brother marries the wife and then he dies before they have kids. Then the next brother dies, and so on until they’ve run out of brothers.” He was referring to the Leverite Law, which was focused on nation building and encouraged exactly what the man was suggesting. But that had nothing to do with why he was asking the question. The reason for the question was to challenge the notion of a heavenly afterlife. The Sadducee asked, “After all the dead husbands, she dies. So Jesus, which guy is she married to in heaven?”

I see Jesus rolling his eyes, knowing that answering that question is like trying to explain the meaning of life to a snow crab. No matter what he says, this guy ain’t gonna get it. Jesus dismisses the question with a quick, “There is no marriage in heaven.” To which half of the audience was upset and the other half was thinking, “Hmmm, there is an end to this. Okay then…”

Then came the final question of the last press conference, asked by an honest guy looking for answers. This student of the law asked, “Which of the 613 laws is the greatest?” Jesus did not hesitate. He said the greatest were to love God with all of your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as you love your own self.

There was no real surprise in his answer. They began all of their religious services quoting those laws. It was what he said next that threw the whole crowd into a frenzy. Jesus said “On these are all the law and prophets based.” Matthew tells us there was dead silence. This is a press conference, with enough questioners and questions to last a week, and there was dead silence. Matthew goes on, “From that day on, no one dared to ask him any more questions.” So, it really was that simple. Good religion was not 613 laws; it was three things – to love God, neighbor, and self. Profoundly simple, but never easy.

At Left Hand Church I always talked about these three things with exactly the same language. Regarding God, I said, “We are to love the God who burst on the scene 14 billion years ago in all of God’s mystery, complexity, and ever expansiveness, rooted in relationship, and grounded in love.”

The first part of that explanation of God is the Big Bang, which took place around 14 billion years ago, with the universe ever expanding since that moment, mysterious and complex. Rooted in relationship is a nod to the discoveries of Quantum Physics, which determined that the ultimate building blocks of the universe are not made of matter, but of a pattern of relationships between non-material entities. The core building blocks of the universe are therefore relationships. If the core building blocks of the universe are relationships, then it is not much of a stretch to say love, the greatest of relationships, is the most powerful force in the universe.

Regarding neighbor, I said, “To love your neighbor is to love anyone with whom you come in contact. The best way to bridge the divide between humans is always through proximity and narrative – to come in contact with one another and hear each other’s stories.”

I always finished with these words, “And you cannot love God or neighbor if you cannot love yourself. As my friend Mara says, we are neurobiologically wired for deep human connection. Yet our core wound is that there is something about us that makes us unworthy of deep human connection. That is the wound we all spend a lifetime trying to heal.”

Our epic journey, or quest, is to travel from the place of supposed unworthiness, through the land of the lost to the land of peace, where we find we are loved by God and worthy of deep human connection just as we are – no questions asked – no changes demanded. Only then can we love our neighbors, and the God who crafted us all.

I have always loved preaching the simplicity of that story, a simplicity on the far side of complexity. A simplicity fought for and profound, as if Jesus was saying in answer to that final question, “Everything that came before comes down to this, and everything that springs forth is born of this.” These words are the rising of a new day, the green flash of light as the sun first appears over the water’s horizon. Following Jesus means loving God, neighbor, and self.

I loved telling that story time and again. I wanted it seared on the consciousness of the folks who called Left Hand home. If we can keep our focus on those three truths, then there is hope for our species and the planet we inhabit.

I just finished Yascha Mounk’s new book, The Identity Trap, A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time. It’s the best book on current culture I’ve read since The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt.

Mounk writes about the unfortunate contributions the left is making to our current cultural divide and what might be done about it. He includes a short section on the debate over transgender issues. For the most part, I have no problem with what he writes.

As a transgender speaker, I have not had much pushback from the anti-trans community, With my TEDTalk views approaching 10 million, I find that intriguing. To be sure, I receive  hate mail, mostly from the evangelical community, but not as much as others. I also have had conferences and corporations pass on me as a speaker because of my gender identity, but again, not as often as you might think.

The difference might be in the way in which I approach my gender identity. In my first TEDTalk I said, “People ask me if I feel 100 percent like a woman. I feel 100 percent like a transgender woman. There are things a cisgender woman knows that I will never know.” Those three sentences set a tone throughout the talk that says I’m not trying to claim to be something I am not.

I come from the borderlands between genders, a certain kind of liminal space. I have no doubt I am supposed to be living as Paula. The world receives me as a woman and that feels appropriate. I never felt as comfortable as Paul as I do as Paula. But I am not a cisgender woman. I am a transgender woman.

I do not understand it. You do not have to understand it either. I have read everything there is to be read on the causes of gender dysphoria, and as it relates to me, a lot of them seem plausible, even probable. Do I need to know if it was some hiccup in the second trimester of gestation or a genetic marker that caused me to be transgender? I’m curious, but I don’t need to know. I know testosterone was wrong and estrogen is right. Not many men would be happy losing their testosterone and having it replaced with estrogen, nor women losing their estrogen and having it replaced with testosterone. That alone is enough to assure me I am transgender.

There is a certain segment of the left that leans toward a strange form of isolationism. They say, “No one who is not transgender can understand what my life is like, so don’t even try.” It is a form of what Mounk calls Identity Synthesis, in which we are identified only by that which separates us from everyone else. From that perspective the only appropriate way to interact with a transgender person is to acquiesce to whatever we say, because we are the minority. Question our perspective and you become a part of the majority culture oppressing us. Since transgender people are about one half of one percent of the population, by the logic of Identity Synthesis, 199 out of 200 people can never understand us.

Uh, okay. The truth is I don’t even understand me. I’ve had the same therapist for 30 years and we’re still trying to figure it out. It is okay, you don’t know why you do half the stuff you do, either. We are all complex and mysterious and difficult to understand.

Like Mounk, I am a fan of classic liberalism. I prefer the kind of language you heard from Barack Obama, Martin Luther King, Junior, and come to think of it, Jesus. As members of this species, we all have more in common than we have that separates us. We will never bridge a divide by increasing the divide. We will bridge it by coming together in the areas we hold in common.

Are transgender people oppressed? Yes. Do I experience oppression? Again, yes. But I brought a lot of White male entitlement with me when I transitioned, and that also plays a part in how I experience life. Oppression is bad all the time, wherever and whenever it is experienced. But I don’t think we end oppression by increasing the divide.

I get paid a lot of money to speak at universities. As long as they do not censor me, I speak at Christian universities pro bono. I haven’t upset anybody yet with what I have said from the platform, though my sheer existence has threatened a lot of people who want to say gender dysphoria is not legitimate.

Why do I go to these institutions pro bono? Because if we do not get in close proximity to one another and discover that our commonality exceeds our differences, we will never close the divide. We need to close the divide. We need to stop arguing about who can use which restroom and focus on the real problems that could destroy our planet.

Climate change is rapidly hitting the point of no return. Probably not the time to buy that beachfront property you’ve been dreaming of. There are two wholly unnecessary wars raging in Europe and the Middle East, and countless other rumors of war.  Artificial Intelligence is becoming increasingly more complex as headlines blare the news that computers could one day overpower and even exterminate our species. One expert says the chances of that happening are somewhere between two percent and fifty percent. Truly frightening. What do you say we battle those problems instead of widening the great cultural divide.

Classic liberalism believes all humans are created equal, with certain inalienable rights, including life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Those words are just as important today as they were 250 years ago. I want to embrace and extend that message.

I am first a human, Paula Stone Williams. After that I am everything else – tall, white, curly headed, transgender, American, Christian, pastoral counselor, speaker’s coach, TED speaker, member of the Lyons Board of Trustees, and longsuffering New York Mets fan. But for all of those particularities, what I hold in common with you far exceeds that which separates us. That is the truth I want to champion. That is the way we close the divide.

And so it goes.