A Butterfly Kiss in a Hurricane

We pray for times we can rest up for whatever is going to happen next. Maybe it will be the death of a loved one, or the end of a long marriage, or the loss of a career. We do not know what it will be, but sooner or later every human knows great pain.

I remember the day my father drove home after returning from his own father’s empty deathbed. He was coming to collect us for the funeral. I greeted him at the door and he did not say a word, though he gave me a hug like no other. I was not quite 10 years old, old enough to feel his pain. For months I made cemetery roadways from marbles and drove my pretend hearse through the quiet resting place of those who had moved on.

When my mother first saw me after the death of her father, she dissolved in tears in a way that alarmed me greatly. I still remember my fear as I stood in that dark staircase, my mother’s tears falling from above. My aunt pulled my 10-year-old body close and assured me everything would be all right. I wasn’t so sure.

I remember seeing the email that said, “The executive committee wants to see you this coming Wednesday night. Clear your calendar.” I had no idea a meeting was in the offing, and the sight of the coldly clinical words felt like something vetted by attorneys. Those words were so terrible I felt them with my whole body. Things got worse before they got better.

Jacob lay beside the river Jabbok and anticipated the end of his days. He deserved to die at the hands of his brother. A life of self-serving manipulation had caught up with him. An angel appeared and before he knew it Jacob was in a wrestling match that was still playing out at the light of dawn. It appeared Jacob could have won, since the angel did not seem inclined to continue the fight. But Jacob knew better than to win a wrestling match with God, and with the rising sun he asked God for a blessing.

In this time of resting up for whatever is going to happen next, I have come to know that even in the most tumultuous of days there comes a brief moment in which you realize, “I’ve faced the worst this day could offer and I am still here, all right and fully human, with an intact soul.” It is a moment of blessing, when you realize you were not alone as you wrestled through the pain.

Sometimes this blessing is as light as a butterfly kiss in a hurricane. Yet in spite of the howling winds and stinging rain, the power of that brief kiss is enough to keep the earth spinning, fueled by nothing more or less than a certain kind of love.

It is confirmation this is not a random planet in a boiling cauldron of mindless energy transactions. It is a realm into which life has been breathed, warm and sweet. And no matter the dark words that have invaded your space, in that brief moment of blessing, when the flutter of a silver maple disturbs a darkening sky, you apprehend the truth that this life is precious and holy and deeply good. And that is enough. For all of your days, that is enough.

 

Ten Lessons

Last week I wrote about my first full year as Paula. This week I write about a few of the most salient lessons of the past 12 months:

1. Coming out faster is preferable to coming out more slowly. There were over 6,500 page views on the day I announced my transition. The hate mail was mean-spirited, but before long the firestorm settled down. People are busy. They move on.

2. You cannot discern which friends will stick around and which friends will leave, but you can be sure a lot more will leave than will stick around. I also realized a number of people would see me once, and never again. If they wanted to maintain a relationship with me, everyone had little choice but to transition with me. For many it was too much to handle. It’s all right. I just have to let them go.

3. No one is going to understand how much you suffered before you transitioned, or understand how staggering your losses have been since, so don’t try to explain it. Just say with Dag Hammarskjold, “For all that has been, thanks. For all that shall be, yes.”

4. Being Paula has been the easiest part of the past year. Living as a female has been very natural, every minute of every single day, without exception. It has been quite a confirmation of the reality I am transgender.

5. This journey has both broadened and deepened my faith. My strongest and most ardent supporters have been very wise and knowledgeable Christians. Their bold discipleship and passion for justice have stoked the fires of faith within my own heart and soul. I owe them a debt of gratitude.

6. I will always be a third sex. In spite of my height, I am usually able to make my way in the world without people realizing I was ever a male. That has allowed me to enter the world of women in ways I never would have imagined. It also makes me realize the many ways in which I will never know what it feels like to be a natal female. That is something I grieve.

7. It is hard to know when to tell people you are trans. Who deserves to know? Who does not? I’m pretty sure the agent at the American Airlines counter does not need to know. But what about my dentist, or the leaders at my church? It’s harder to figure out than you might imagine.

8. Sometimes I have doubted myself. Time is a great healer and I forget how much I struggled before my transition. Yet I live in the midst of great existential losses. One of my therapists said, “Your doubts are understandable. I have been a therapist a long time and I have never had a client go through the unjust losses you have experienced. This was hard before so many people made it unnecessarily harder.”

9. You never get over how much this affects your family. I knew my transition would be difficult for them, but I underestimated how hard it would be. They have shown incredible mercy, unending grace and great love. They still suffer, and I am aware of their suffering every single day. I never get used to it and it is never okay.

10. I have learned Rilke is right when he says, “Winning does not tempt that man. This is how he grows, by being defeated decisively, by constantly greater beings.” The defeats have been humbling, but necessary. Living well means living with ever-increasing consciousness, learning to say yes to what is. I was called to say yes to my true self. When you answer a call, you pay a price. Every sage, prophet and poet knows that. It is the cost of living authentically. And, I believe, it is the only decent way to live.

And so it goes…

It’s Been One Year

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

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

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

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

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

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

I Let The Money Decide

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it goes.

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

 

One Crazy, Holy, Evening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Because He Could

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Saying Yes To What Is

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

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

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

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

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

I’m not there yet.

It Begins in the Dark

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Crossing the Threshold

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And so it goes.