“For three things I thank God every day of my life: thanks that he has vouchsafed me knowledge of his works; deep thanks that he has set in my darkness the lamp of faith; deep, deepest thanks that I have another life to look forward to—a life joyous with light and flowers and heavenly song.”
— Helen Keller
| — | Emily Giffin, Heart of the Matter |
Ya know how people say that before you can really be loved you have to love yourself?
Um, yeah no. No. I think this is one of those things that sorta sounds right, but is insidiously, horribly imprisoning. Loving yourself is hard, freaking hard. And I am not talking about selfishness or narcissism, both of which are symptoms of self-loathing. I mean genuine unconditional positive regard for self.
I will confess here: I don’t love myself. That is the truth. I am taking steps in the right direction to walk in unconditional positive regard for myself. But mostly no. I am told I am worthy of love and respect, and I find within myself the desire to be loved, but far too often I find no sense in this notion that I am worthy of anything.
And then, my heart hearkens, back back…back to these words in 1 John: “we love, because He first Loved”…it is an axiom, found in the Bible and it gives an axiomatic accounting for love, where it came from and why we all want it, and do it too.
I do know that They love me. They have shown this to me in many specific individual ways, as well as the universal ways we all are shown love (such as beautiful sunsets, the smell of baby’s breath, the sound of the wind in fir trees, the taste of exquisite food, the sweet sorrow of parting with a well-loved friend that you will see again)…and I am working on loving myself…learning how to abandon those who are abandoners.
But I ain’t there yet…and that’s okay
To put it another way, I don’t think we’re called to imitate Jesus, but I do think we’re called to follow Jesus. There’s a subtle difference. Following Jesus implies an ongoing relationship, not merely imitating a really good guy who lived and died 2,000 years ago. Following Jesus implies that we might end up somewhere new doing things that are new—things that aren’t reflected in scripture because we inhabit a very different world than Jesus did. Even if we believe that Jesus was fully God, that doesn’t mean that Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection tell us all there is to know about God. God is still working, God exists beyond the limits of history (even Jesus’s history as a man), and God promises to do a new thing within us.
Following Jesus implies forward movement, striving for a destination, which we might call “the kingdom,” as Jesus did. And as you know if you’ve ever taken a leisurely Sunday road trip or cross-country adventure or European rail journey, there is far more than one way to travel to get to the same destination.
via Why “What Would Jesus Do?” Isn’t Exactly the Right Question.
All is not well
here in Destruction
on twisting trash-strewn roads
traversing heart topography
of hurt, humiliation and
yes, hate…
roads the arteries and veins
pumping mammon’s blood in vain
and kicking at every knee…
all is not well
here, in me.
Storm clouds gather
around hard eyes,
flat, blank beneath,
seething inside
and then the sun
shines on those eyes
and I can see
behind those eyes,
lined with poverty like mascara
while calling it silver, but…
no redemption there,
nope, not, no
silver lining
there.
Lurking,
poised to pounce
from eyes straight into mouths,
unthinking, uncaring, unfeeling
unaware and empty,
lurking light (incarnate words)
so black and blank (incarnate worlds),
darkened worlds of night,
down pitch-black alleys
reeking of menace
like a bad undertaker’s
over-liberal use of cheap cologne
to mask the smell of rot.
Then they speak at me
and words spark
from their lips like live coals,
like glowing tips of cigarettes
and sharp threatening glares
of drug pipes drawn deep
and harsh like sudden flares
and for split seconds
their illumined faces show to me
in that black light in that moment
I can truly see, past the blank indifference
and peer thru active hate
and around their lurking fear
and I can spot the person
that once lived shining,
feeling there.
It is late
and I am sick,
and drowsy,
I am sick,
and comfortable,
I am sick
and freaking out
in a world jarred
wide awake,
in a life,
a death,
a meal shared,
in this daily, physical reality
unchanged
But I hear
the whisper of a spider spinning
her web of promise,
and I catch
the sound of subterranean streams
and I remember
all is not quite what it seems.
See, I’m having these recurring dreams
that all was good from the beginning,
but then something went wrong,
oh so wrong and things
ain’t like they ought to be,
not for them and not for me…
and we dwell here,
drugged and deceived,
thinking that not-thinking is
the true sweaty work of unthinking!
Oh for the courage to unthink!
Unthinking the inevitability of sin,
unthinking the inevitability of violence,
unthinking the inevitability of exile,
unthinking the divisions,
unthinking the deceptions…
Oh to dwell in
Unthinking
Destruction
houses of grey blank walls decked out in smooth rich wood
panels and pictures of picnics and parties…
banal bacchanalia, all splattered in Blood.
Beds of spikes, hidden neath down comforters,
and wool knitted afghans of colorful,
threatening sinister pattern.
Houses in neighborhoods bereft of neighbors,
each one is serving themselves and alone
in community of this alienation…and all is
destroyed by their own bloody hands…
the work of rough hands…even rougher grave throats.
Our eyes are still bloodshot from staring at visions
of genocide done that we didn’t see coming
but now we continue to watch, in foreboding
but hoping in vain that the cute lil houses
are what’s really real and not all the horror,
lurking beneath in destruction and gore.
we are really in fear and wondering…
what happens when a killer comes home,
or (gulp) even worse
if that killer had never left home?
what then?
what happens when victims
*widows orphans*
and murderers
look each other in the eyes again?
what then, and who blinks first and looks away in shame?
What are these wounds on your chest?
The wounds I received in the house of my friends.
What is greater: the pain of being violated
or the bitter agony of forgiving?
a valley of dry bones cannot be forgotten
even in the face of forgiveness so costly.
This impossible for me to try to describe
or even conceive of apart from the cross of Christ.
Because forgiveness is also
it’s own rare and exquisite
form of great suffering.
And so now we get down to it:
there is no exit, no escape from the agony,
no pitstop from pain…
all we can do is exchange suffering’s form and it’s face,
from our own for the pain of another…
and us become willing to be bashed and broken
by those very ones we so desperately want
to reach out to and reconcile and leave pain behind.
This is the agony of a tortured soul wrestling
and a wrecked body there…offered in prayer
on the altar of sorrow…for the forgiveness
of torturers’ torments in this dank dark world
of violence and victims, laboring heavy
beneath weights unspeakable and even greater,
the weight of the cross.
And Him? The Reproached?
The Betrayed, Who was Broken?
Him The Despised and King of All Criminals,
King of All Victims, King of All Shame?
Perhaps He knows of the path thru this valley
of broken dry bones full of dust, full of death.
Perhaps He can see those small signs of life
that are hidden from eyes filled with blood, hate and rage
and only seen by the eyes washed clean with tears
of repentance and wonder to look for our Spring
and the signs there so gentle
of a coming glad day of Resurrection…
This is a good piece to digest as well…I am reblogging this primarily directed at my Religious Readers who know they are right and are so proud of that while being so patient and understanding of the rest of us who mill about blindly at the foot of their great mtn of revelation…*Charissa does slow burn*
Instead of promoting Christ, Christians often promote …
their theology
their culture
their values
their creeds
their traditions
their spiritual practices
their specific type of baptism
their required form of communion
their style of sermon
their church
their denomination
their definition of salvation
their philosophy of evangelism
their form of ministry
their brand of worship
their interpretation of Revelation
their interpretation of the Bible
their favorite leadership model
their social customs
their laws, rules, and regulations
their political beliefs
their moral values
Imagine if Christians introduced people to their God instead of their religion.
Unfortunately, we often evangelize our own specific type of Christianity to other Christians rather than sharing the Gospel with unbelievers — preferring to convert, criticize, and attack our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ because we feel their version of Christianity isn’t as good as ours.
In a pluralistic society obsessed with consumerism, marketing…
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there is a movie where the main character
lives Groundhog Day over and over
and over and over
and he can do what he wants
while everyone else
does the same old thing.
I think it’s safe to call that experience
dysphoria, because I live
the same old day, the same old over
and I remember the day before
and the day before that one
while everyone thinks it’s just that day only.
Knowing something that no one else knows
and carrying that–what–what would that be called,
burden, responsibility, honor, freedom,
carrying that sentence in my bones and marrow
those bones of lead and marrow of molten lava
and my superheated flesh constantly evaporating.
But what if we are all living Groundhog Day?
What if everyday we wake up, it’s just the same
day done again, but we only believe it is different,
because well it is, and all our thoughts and opinions
are just so much shadow that chases the groundhog
back underground to hide from eternal winter?
Eventually the man runs the gamut of options
and is reduced to meaningless repetition over and over
until he actually considers oeuvre, and oeuvre
and then things change, because he himself is changed…
and that is what makes the difference, releases us
from Groundhog Day Forever.
What it means to “hold space” for people, plus eight tips on how to do it well – Heather Plett.
I am sharing this beautiful article here, for your own edification.
I am also proposing that this concept could be a very powerful and effective tool in assisting your friends and/or family who suffer from dysphoria…as you substitute that existential state in for the transition from life in this body into that which comes next, you can see how it could be very effective in helping create a space for them to discover how to be after an entire life of non-being and all of the emotional bad habits or destructive behaviors learned along the way simply just to survive.
I hope it is as meaningful to you as it was to me.
Come close, up here, on the porch and draw near where I sit,
hunkered down, clinging close, pressed with all I am
against this barrier thin, austere, and yet impermeable
thru which I see, and speak, and yearn but over cannot cross.
I get naked, bare and slick and covered in Her Oil
and hurl myself hard, fearless, face first pounding in wild flails
until the fists of my heart break and bloody grow within this cage
and sorrow rises right alongside all my heartsick rage
at being born here in this place so richly furnished wrong
at hearing music so distinct but dissonant from my song
Maybe we together can make a crack in this stark mass
and relieve my long days spent here, on the wrong side of the glass.
it’s tough work
dragging that pollen
all sticky and clingy
from place to place
where pride is unsheathed
and starves on itself!
if it weren’t for me
those poor lil bloomings
so pretty but hungry
would wither and die
alone with themselves
the few chosen few…
well, I unmark them quick!
those marked for death
as I buzz and I murmer
all covered in sticky stuff
lugging around
the seed of all life
anyone got any sugar water?
trade ya some honey
and I won’t even sting!
I learned yesterday that when you see a bee on the ground that isn’t moving, it’s not necessarily dead, it’s probably just dead tired from carrying lots of pollen and needs re-energising.
So if you mix a tiny bit of water with some sugar and let it drink it will give it the boost it needs to continue on its way. Bizarrely, this exact thing happened today! I found a knackered bee, mixed up some sugar water, gave it a drink and watched it guzzle and guzzle then suddenly come back to life.
It was amazing! Thank you patrick, it was an excellent tip that i’ll never forget and will continue to pass on to others!
…be merciful to those of us who don’t.
Either you are really strong and awesome, possessing all the skills of Siegfried and Roy combined with the Crocodile Hunter mixed together with Dr. Doolittle…
…or our feelings are Godzilla to your Gollum, and untameable. And the fact that we are surviving speaks of unspeakable courage and persistence and never say die stubbornness…
either way, if you can master your feelings, take it easy on the rest of us mere mortals
Jesus Blog: God’s Expectations Of You Are Not What You Think.
Read what Jesus might say to you today…
Constance…most of you who are public followers of Grace Notes are cis-gender humans. Some of you are trans (thanks for the support, family!! 🙂 ), and as transgender humans you are intimately acquainted with the entity that dysphoria is, and you know that thoughts of suicide or talk of it is often our most noble and courageous act of the day, because we are speaking about it rather than…
But I want to talk to you Constance (and you lurkers, too…yes, you are there), you cis-gender humans, so blessed to be non-itchy in your skin and of limber-lung to draw in draughts of refreshing air…you live in a homogenous world…a world that sniks together and is of a piece. And where it doesn’t, it doesn’t in the same places as other humans and so you find an identity and community in that.
You don’t understand how alienation from yourself puts you at a distance from everyone else and everything else…always.
Because dysphoria is like missing pieces in a mosaic of being.
You say to yourself that you are shattered too, and you are…but your pieces are present, and as you glue them back together they form a sort of whole once again…whereas the dysphoric person diligently and urgently works daily to reassemble the shattered image into a whole, only to discover that the crucial core is absent…and the middle is void.
We are separated from you always…as if you are on the shore of the sea and we across on the opposite shore and lacking the voices of whales to sing to you across the leagues and the deep.
So there is that.
This morning I am mindful of dysphoria and the gulf that it is around me, alas, and the challenge that it presents me in my quest to be a yielded vessel yielding blessing…I am mindful that there is also, somewhere packed in all of this, an opportunity to know and understand Their perspective and methods as Gulf-Breechers and Core-Restorers…perhaps this is my destiny, to be a restorer of the breach and a crosser of the gulf.
But in this mindful place, I have been remembering the words that a man spoke to me last summer, upon being let into my secret world of confusion and horror, that world of the transgender person caught between body and brain. He is a man who has in the past been very open in expressing admiration for me, as a child of God, as a communicator of Grace, and as a caretaker of my children. He has said toweringly complimentary things to me, things that I felt were far too idealized and simply did not adequately assess how flawed I am, what a failure I am…
…but he had said them, spoken of my impact on himself and those around me.
On that soft and lazy August Saturday, by the waters of a small man-made lake (which seems appropriate), we spoke, and I shared with him the struggle of dysphoria and how suicide is as constant companion as the sensation of choking is to the asthmatic.
He burst out in a fit of passion “Don’t you dare off yourself! It would falsify everything you taught me, and all you stand for!” And he went on to talk about how negatively it would affect him, and how he would lose heart and likely not have belief anymore that what I taught meant anything worth trusting.
That is what I am thinking about this morning…how easily and how often my situation is somehow twisted around and becomes all about the other person. It was like another situation where I had been accosted by a long standing acquaintance (whom I would have called a friend, but now realize that was me putting my view of what a friend is on someone who sees it vastly different) who demanded an explanation for “why you have been seen around town dressed as a woman!!” (quelle horreur!!)…and since he had that place in my heart of “friend”, I gave the full account, but only half-way. He cut me off because “he was overwhelmed and couldn’t take anymore of this”. And then he looked at me in sheer misery and said “What am I going to tell my children??!!”
See? All about him. His place, and his burden…as if that question needed any other answer than tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and begin to study these things together to help out a people in chains.
Well…that is a very similar response this other man by the lake had, regarding discovering my daily battle with dark thoughts. His burden placed on me was that if I were to ever choose to not be here any longer then I would be the cause of his faith being weakened and diminished and his life harmed.
Since that time, I have spoken to this man two times, once a day or two after a big crisis that was brewing, and then again at the end of October 2014.
Twice.
And since then, nothing…and I get that there are complicating reasons for that, not the least of which is my transition and he is a man. Very few men have been “man enough” to handle my transition with anything other than rejection at best, and murderous, venomous looks at worst (and those looks threaten far worse is coming).
Constance…is this not something close to suicide? Friendshipicide? Is not this towering silence some sort of death? Does it not underline and highlight the gulf between us, because really all that changed was his understanding that he was interacting with a woman?
And those words ring in my heart, part of the voices that circle me like wolves and nip and slash and bleed me out…
“…it would falsify everything you taught me…”
Well, I don’t know if it would or wouldn’t. Things are true and worthy of living regardless of the source one receives them from. But I know that this staggering abandonment does indeed make me mindful of how those words are true from my perspective. Apparently, I am no longer those “three C’s” to him…Child, Communicator, Caretaker. Now, I am simply “It which must be avoided, lest whatever ails it somehow infect me”.
As to the other man…that was the last time we spoke, in September, with a terse letter being the final salvo and manifesto of that declaration of war religion has filed on me…and sadly, I have reason to know the sense of duty fulfilled and integrity maintained, and sweet sadness at doing the “hard but right thing” which follows the writing and delivering of such a letter…
…it is such an awful feedback loop of legalism and lies and lack of life (death).
It is difficult being the friend or relative of a transgender person. You get caught up in the punishments they are meted for their gender-crimes. You get branded with the Scarlet TL to match their Scarlet T (“tranny-lover” and “tranny”)…
…and you get confronted again and again and again with that gulf uncrossable, that breech unbridgeable, and the dysphoric human’s many-sided and alienated existence when you yourself live in a world where such concepts as sides and incongruency are understood in the brain alone and denied in the bones, those non-dysphoric congruent bones.
I am watching “Romeo and Juliet” right now, the 1954 version directed by Renato Castellani (huge giggles here, ddh)…this play has long been my very favorite Shakespearean play (followed closely by Henry the 5th). It is tragically striking, how I am in one being a Montague and Capulet, and both Romeo and Juliet…it is in a sense a tableau of dysphoria and the solution is inferred in the tragic ending…only loving acceptance and dogged commitment can validate a life and overcome abandonment.
And there is a timeless line (distinct from the rest of that genius’s timeless lines):
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
I am still whatever Rose I was…and still stink of whatever stench emanated from me under the old costume I sported. I still live in the dysphoric House of Mirrors, and sides all around me with everyone else there and me here…I am still “Fortune’s Fool”.
…and as to men? “Friends”…well, there is this, from the mouth of Juliet’s Nurse:
She runs in the canyons
there beneath the smiles,
hidden in the miles.
Around her she throws gleams,
glints, she strews her favors in winter
like flowers cast by gathered throngs
lining her way, ostensibly cheering her on
but really just hungry for blossoms and blessings
and she looks with stark eye, assessing cost
beneath gleams, glints, under
dazzle-cast clouds hiding
and she’s striding, loping
like the lean wolf taught her
in those early years of lashing
words and cutting looks
and her fire unbreakable
burning in that flood that drowned…
it’s canyons for her
when it’s time to tap out.
They are really just the same
as the mountains that she runs
and talks about and paints pictures of
with words and heart brushes
except that no one else knows this,
or sees any difference.
But she
knows, loves
those dry,
clean walls
close and
carved of
living stone
and loving
survival long
wrenched from
the desert’s
clutches.
She’s a true hermit, like those of old,
untouchable in this land and yet such
a product of its austere and strict demands
and she knows she’s a canyon herself,
majestic not in what remains but what is gone.
Sweat runs freely here, and carries toxins back
to their source in the sidewinders and scorpions
and stinging nettles so she doesn’t even bother
for pretty or cute and she has long ago arrived
in beautiful and assessed even that place for what it isn’t,
content with knowing what it is…
she runs in canyons, while I sit,
staring thru rain-streaked windows,
hunkered down in this Oregon deluge
so grey and green and clammy,
so ham-handed and drizzly
imitating the stony walls she runs between
and I absorb this water and channel it,
stream it, spray it against that unrelenting blue sky
that tears the rainbows right outta the water
and waves them like banners in the wind
so she can see where the pit stop is, pause, drink,
squint, wipe the sweat away
(gawd, that impossibly feminine gesture so implacably tough)
She is grit, she has sand…she runs canyons.
*****
Much love to you this day,
from your true friend
and heart sister
Charissa
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
I fear
being able
to soundly navigate
through noisy choruses.
I fear
the blind spots
that I have—
and nurture.
The will of God
involves giving our lives
for the sake of others
on this downward path
this downward path of Jesus
that I follow
or try to.
She tears
my clenched fingers
from my own throat
She says
put others
before me
(interests, preferences, desires)
and this putting
endures beyond
stronger than death.
is there a resurrection
from this desperate
self-preservation?
is there a life raised
here/now
where I can matter
to someone
and result in
a shared existence
renewed,
restored
hopeful?
She says
I will only find out
when I seek not to save
but to lose my life
as I have said before
it is the season
of dust and ashes
Sadly, Constance, “Animal Cruelty” is merely human beings being what they are…directed at animals.
It is what we have become…because when Animal Cruelty is directed at me, it is gender cruelty, and when it is directed at someone of a different race it is racial cruelty…
…who are we kidding? We are sick, and we need a cure.
What I know is what I don’t know.
What I don’t know is what I know.
I am looking for an exit.
| — | Susan Sontag, As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh, Journals & Notebooks |
Constance, this may be so? But I will tell you what is not “natural” to me…it is not natural to not speak. It is not natural to open the heart and tell of its deepest places, and then shut it again and starve someone. It is not natural to draw someone into a place of intimacy and then stone them. It is not natural to tell someone how towering their significance is in one’s life, and then allow an event of life to tower so greatly that they never talk to the other person of “significance” ever again.
It is not natural to take the secrets of someone’s openness and then harbor them if they are your own and then not respond in kind and thus hold that person in your debt.
It is not natural to make a person feel like they are a burden for breathing, a weight for wanting, a dead body for desiring.
There are people I miss so badly, that I guess it is not natural to be separated from the ones you love.
I wish this wasn’t so. I wish that I wasn’t some chore to check off a list. I wish I wasn’t some shade to whisper of around campfires. I wish I wasn’t judged dead because an understanding of who and what I am was in error and must die and be reborn in a truer way.
I wish I was treasured more than memory.
I wish someone wanted to talk to me everyday instead of toss some Alpo in the dish and disappear until my ribs show thru.
I wish…I wish.
I wish I could forget the words a man told me of undying friendship and what I meant to him and how he is changed forever because of me…because his actions tell the truth that his words lied.
I wish I could forget the words a woman said to me that are undermined by her actions like the ocean undermines a glacier until it falls into the sea and is melted and gone…
I wish I wasn’t me…but who then would I be? Who should I be?
Well…I will be the person I wish these others were, and strive to not be the person who is like them.
I will try to be there, always. I will try to speak, and then do and do with all I have.
I will try to make a life that is full and not hollow, present and not absent, flexible and changing as time births new understandings of history.
I will try to forgive and remember, but remember in redemption and grace.
Oh Mama help me…I am so hollow.
But we shouldn’t be pressuring people to come out. Instead, we should be challenging the expectation that others are entitled to our identities.
No one should be demanding that people take on the risks of coming out. No one except you can make that decision. Your identity is yours, and no one else owns it.
You don’t owe anyone anything – especially not people who are ignoring your personal autonomy and safety by demanding that you come out.
via It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism.
Constance…I face a lot of challenges in life that are in addition to the ones faced by all people simply as a condition of being in this world. If you have read here for awhile, you are acquainted with the gamut of these, and if you are new, well have a gander at the other posts ;-)…giggle.
My point is that it is the additional ones that kill. They are like the difference between running a marathon, and running one chased by dogs, and running one when you aren’t fast enough to keep from getting nipped numerous times on the run. And it is the nips that bleed, get infected, and drain…of vitality, of energy, and eventually of hope.
Right now the hardest of these challenges for me is that of making myself known to other people that are of utmost importance to me. They are mourning what they perceive as the loss of the person they knew, rather than perceiving it as the loss of the explanatory narrative that stitched together our common history.
For a whole host of reasons, some of them spiritual, some of them developmental, and most of them cultural/paradigm related, the onus and burden falls squarely on me in this process…to be the bigger person…to walk the second mile, or the third or the fourth, or however many miles must be walked…to turn the other cheek again and again and again…
My own identity is in need of justification, of proving, of validating, and the ways I respond either contribute to or detract from my right to be.
Judgement is passed on the narrative that I have, as it compares to the narrative that was.
Again…I get it. Fairness is not the operative determinant. But I want it to be understood: this is a costly gift, and gift I do think it is. It is not something that I owe…to anyone except myself whom I owe the debt of authenticity inner and outward. I think that my perspective on things is equally valid, is equally valuable and to be treasured. The “things I have lost” or the sense that “what I thought I had never existed” is just as real, as vibrant and legitimate for me as it is for anyone else who feels like they are being robbed.
Let me state it baldly: anything they are “robbed of” wasn’t real in the first place.
How about this: instead of the point of view that “a father I thought I had is now dead and replaced by you”, how about this: “I have a father who just happens to be a woman, and the idea I held that my father was also a male was an incorrect one. I am fortunate to be able to have this inaccurate understanding corrected while there is still time and life remaining to know this person that I valued and treasured as a father!”
Because this is my story…my history. I fathered four people…as a woman who inhabits a body that is biologically male. And as far as I am aware, my children always felt that I was a good dad to them, valuable in the love, acceptance and counsel that I offered them. And I am still here! The same person with the same ideas and same truths (and some newly understood ones too).
Perhaps instead of me saying over and over again I am sorry I am sorry…I am sorry for being…I am sorry for wanting to be, needing to be…maybe it could be thought about that a different sorry could be said…I am sorry that I held onto my own belief and insistence that a father has to be spiritually and biologically male and only that…I am sorry that I invalidated the lives and efforts of the millions of women who “fathered” young boys into men because there was no one else there.
I am posting this link, because it gets to a lot of the reasons why there is so much gravity behind the other narrative, the one that requires me to justify my right to exist, my right to pursue congruency, my right to be free from suicidal ideation, my right to feel okay about the truth that I did the best I could and while not a perfect parent did a pretty adequate job even compared to a cis-male…and as a transgender woman serving in the role of father and not knowing, well maybe I did an admirable job.
and maybe I suck. but I suck based on what I did and didn’t do, not based on whether I identfy as male or female…others who are insisting with actions that the actual measure of my being is in that identification are the ones who must grapple with the suckitude they frolic in!
Read the article…acquaint yourself with the myths…and then divest yourself of them for some clearer, more objective standards that we will all, together, be held accountable to…how we love one another, how we forgive one another, whether we divorce and separate ourselves or remain connected…those are things that will endure long after gender identification falls away as not needed.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
looking through them,
at me here inside
rattling my tin cup
back and forth
clitter-clatter-clikity-clak-clak
shouting, raising a ruckus
and raving about the lost key
buried somewhere out there with you
in the snow and sheep dip and shed wool…
and yet you stand, stare, and bleat
about bearing crosses and binary rules
uncrossable rivers and unforgivable sins…
even in frozen air
the smell of sheep
is pervading everything
Ye possess a beauty innate
far surpassing my deepest efforts
and most twisted machinations,
for I have being in living flesh sensate,
I dwell in alchemical dirt miracle
While you, though made of stone
find shape and form that fits you fair
and curve that matches moons and stars
and softness that my soul sings of in air,
and sadness choked and stifled by me, dirt and stone.
you are carved, a statue, stuck and still
and yet are one, while I am severed in this chill,
never knowing unified connection
with myself and peace within the nill.
alas and not a lass, that’s me
and you? mere shackles hold you
that one day you can break or be delivered from
by some grave Odysseus or Hercules,
someone with the boldness to forgive you
i would trade plights with you in a millisecond
I have never ever found that God will make life easier.
Whatever it is I face, it never gets easier.
But I have also found that there is always an offer of greater strength…but not strength like humans see strength, it is Their strength that is offered…and that strength is made perfect in the crucible of our weakness.
In effect, you have to glory in weakness in order to become strong.
There is another name for the strength They give: Grace.
Never made easier, but greater strength They will give, in grace upon grace.
We start this life with such bright expectation,
each sunrise morn of discovery and
each eventide of hope, our lifetime passes
and time flows like tides constantly in waves
that wash in over us, the same and ceaseless
yet we, in ever-new anticipation
that this new day is diff’rent, something yet
to be discovered in the shell-pink dawn,
we lift our hearts up cheery with bright song.
But there are ashes from the desperate fires
that we assemble in the long sloe nights
so cold upon those yawning yearning shores,
when stars hide behind black clouds of unknowing
and oceans hide in mists of dank despair,
and we are forced to burn all our Hosannas,
those palms fronds of our hopes so optimistic
waved innocent and arrogant and prideful
because we hadn’t seen the moon’s dark side.
We built frail fires from those brittle branches
and clutched at weak warmth, bathed in dim wan light
and marked ourselves with those imposéd ashes
and mourned those days we sang triumphantly
unknowing of the coming loss of all
our innocence in suffering…
and sorrowing…
and death and…
Ashes…ashes…
we all fall down…
and we are mindful of our common crown,
our destiny of dust wreathed round our foreheads,
that destiny of dust around our hearts,
that destiny of dust from which we came
and thus departed
that destiny of dust and our return…
to dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
from dust departed, dust returned,
dust returned…
And it is only at this place, in ashes
after our hopes and dreams have burned to ash
and we have lost our hope and optimism
that we can finally see that stony path
and squinting, see the bloody foot-print outlines
left by the One who goes before our hearts,
the One who walks the Via Dolorosa
the One who, living, there lays down His Life,
the One who shows the way of self-denial
the way of sacrifice, relinquishment
entirely unnatural, the opposite
of every longing of our liquid hearts
that wants to feast upon self-preservation
and turn from bitter cups of self-denial…
And we must choose the place that we will walk:
the ceaseless shores of our naked ambition
and never finding ending place, or home?
Or…walk the path of ashes with this Shepherd
and lose our lives completely to His care
and thus spring from the ashes like a phoenix
leaps from the golden flames to live anew!
See, ashes are the opposite of owning
the mirror image of self-preservation,
the sign-post of the way of life He offers,
the insignia of the lifestyle that He models,
the mark He makes forever on His own
writ large in His own blood mixed with the ashes
of hopes consumed and dreams become dry dust!
This is the downward journey to the highest place victorious,
the deeps of Sabbath Rest and Victory Won.
Regardless of the gods you say you follow,
we all share in a common destiny:
“From dust you’ve come, to dust you shall return”.
Like Him, we too shall die, Life’s pressing question
becomes…how shall we live? How shall our lives
this day respond to death’s reality,
and answer to Life’s strident invitation
to leave all of our privilege and status,
and turn from lives marked for success and promise,
and turn from some potential undefined,
and turn from false things that we think are true,
and let go of wealth, power and consumption,
and deny that false god: accomplishment
and dare to love our enemies with candor
and dare embrace the heady risk of peace
without one stray thought of self-preservation,
take courage to live for the sake of others
and for the sake of Him who shows this way,
the way thru death, the way of blood and ashes,
will we walk in valiant hope in dust and ashes?
We can sing our songs
of life in dust and ashes
and thus return to God
our dust redeemed.
Constance, let’s face facts.
This woman is never going to be seen by the eyes of this paradigm. It ain’t gonna happen. Too many layers of judgment, too much weight of assumption, and not enough understanding of the nature of gender orientation and where it resides in a human being.
I am never going to be “pretty” in the sense of how human eyes grown in the world in which I live perceive beauty. My only possibilities for beauty lie within my soul…in my heart…in my spirit…in that inner life that my spirituality and theology teach me is the truest reality anyway and the only one that extends eternally.
Mama, please give me a hunger for true things that outweighs the longings that plague me, that cry out from each and every chromosome that finds itself at odds with the spiritual DNA that flows from (what, my brain? My soul? My heart?) me…
I close with this quote I ran across, and make it my goal…kindness, good humored, smart, and strong of heart.
“We get so worried about being pretty. Let’s be pretty kind. Pretty funny. Pretty smart. Pretty strong.” 
…thank God for the director at the center where I volunteer! She knows what the right thing to do and say is!
So…there was this “specimen” who came to the center today. I know him, and he “knew” me…and did not even come close to recognizing who I was. I was dressed in a very nice American Eagle plaid shirt, soft pink, flannel, and a tie-die spink broomstick skirt, with a black t-shirt top and pink jewelry.
I looked nice.
But as I walked by, I felt his eyes, I felt his derision. I was in his vicinity less than 5 seconds, and yet for some reason he was compelled to refer to me to my director as “a dude in a dress”…
…as in “what’s with the dude in the dress”…
My director simply said “She wanted to wear a dress today”. When he sought to contradict that and reiterate his insult, she stopped him, and repeated herself…and then a third time!
I was soo blessed by that, what she did. She did not try to go into any explanation, she did not differentiate me in any way whatsoever. She simply cut him off, and told him that I wanted to wear that pretty dress today.
I don’t know which was stronger…the resignation and sadness over another insult by another privileged boy, or the gladness and genuine admiration for this strong and steady soul who sees something worthy in me and lays it out straight to anyone who comes around.
I think I will go with the latter…
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Messy houses filled with secret staircases
leading neither up nor down and built of starved excuses
stellar and extending to the past and to the future
as a hedge to make secure our souls against their cold inflation.
Idols stand resplendent in their regal good deed rags
atop secure safe mantels stolid, still
in false security within these homes of disarray
and all the forlorn deeds of our own self-besotted hands.
No corner is untouched or deemed untouchable,
no conclusion inescapable, for we did soon discover,
no–we were shown–these messes low and broken,
jangly jagged in the pieces of our ruined hostile hovels.
This is that tableau displayed of our lost searéd conscience,
disembodied, floating room to room and deeply mourning
what’s been lost, and worse, abandoned
in the losing of idealism’s living throbbing shine.
And our hearts, once lifted up and strong
are finally unadorned and brought down low,
so broken, so contrite and finally open to this Living Invitation
to be drawn at last into a bigger Story…
to be remade and molded, gripped and filled, to be enfolded
in the new creation by a Mercy Stark and so unyielding,
by a Love Severe and so unwieldy in our messy rooms
and serial sin-stained walls and monstrous ways of utter horror.
It takes a broken body and it takes a different stain,
one indelible and permanent, scarlet red and bloody glowing
in the darkness of our tragedy’s pretentious phony triumph…
see the Hand that rips our masks away to make us whole again!
Eat and drink, remember! Then forget the past and rest within those ruins
at last cleansed and emptied of their wreck, delivered of the dreck
and durm und strang of fallen souls, set free of weights unbearable,
interminable, mighty, proud and fell and flawed and haughty.
And then, look…out there, thru yon window broken, there!
Behind that dingy jagged pane of brittle separation,
see the Cross so Stark, transcendent, final ever resting place
of all our sin and wrong, and also Final ever new beginning
of this race, we human butterflies set free from chrysalises left behind,
discarded casually forever…yet never left for death to feed upon or to devour,
for they will someday be raised again
to catch up with us and to be made one again…
to be made whole…
again…at last…again…
amen, again…
amen.
Constance, I stumbled over a singer of deep soul. The other day, when I wrote about dysphoria and wanted a version of “On the Willows”…I had just youtubed for On the Willows, and that one intrigued me. It is now the one that is my go to version.
In his youtube video playlist there are several fabulous covers…this one is of By My Side, from Godspell.
I invite any and all who would have the courage, and count the cost, to join me…
…by my side.
Underneath the make-up, powders, paints, colors bright
there beneath the pretty words and funny sayings light
the blood pools red, the bruises throb beneath my cheery grin
and ruin overflows, and spreads its pain and hurt within
Mama heals, but often heals with pain’s sweet overthrow
She will let the woundings come to deepen healing’s glow
Still, it really breaks my heart to walk alone so long
I must dig still deeper, be brave, and just sing my song.
i get lonely sometimes…
In this Lent, Spring
threatens with her breakthru
of new life amidst showers,
but in these moments
I am mindful
of a different
turning…a journey.
a journey with Jesus
into the wilderness,
a place not unfamiliar
and yet each time I venture there
I am surprised by places that seem
so known to me and yet are not familiar
wilderness spaces never seen
despite my sojourns long and weary
oh, I know the dry topography
the landmarks’ names
(suffering, disappointment, doubt, sin)
caress my heart like tattoos
darted into my soul with ink invisible.
I want to rush thru the wilderness
to get to the other side and done
but am compelled to burrow deeper…
into deaths and deprivations
like the Shepherd did when He took nothing with Him
in that desiccated place.
in this wilderness of unmet needs,
what shall I do?
Where will I turn?
I dig deep for water but tap only the dust.
I seek to meet my howling needs in my own time and place
but all my clever methods only blow up in my face
and once again this journey ends
beneath that shadow long, that mark,
beneath the cross that stands so tall, so stark,
so still…
it can’t be circumvented or avoided,
it cannot be escaped, or null and voided
it’s the entrance and the exit all at once.
and once again anew I realize
that the suffering of the wilderness
transforms us, shapes, delivers us
into the resurrection
and the naming of our soul.
…that this coming to terms is not a one time, one way journey that once arrived in destination full is done and there to be on vacation forever…
…it is a daily choice, a moment by moment meeting with sanity, with choosing life and not death…
it takes courage to continue when the feelings fail to follow through and you are left alone with nothing but your own resolve to live and not die, especially when all around you is declaring that you either are dead already or should have the good graces to lay down and stop moving.
people in my life get discouraged and frustrated with me because the next day is sometimes worse than the day before after 3 days of steadily increasing life and hope…
…i don’t think they really get it that my brain/body disconnect is a really big deal existentially and that it isolates me terribly, a stranger in a strange land…
“how shall we sing, sing the Lord’s song, in a foreign land?”
that is from the psalms, and it is also a lyric from Godspell…the first time I heard this song I cried for days. Literally.
I am crying now.
Oh Mama…how long!!????!!!!
Faith: the substance of things hoped for
(not wished for, God Forbid!)
the evidence of things not seen.
Those were words that controlled us,
an electric fence to wandering minds
and to our quaking bodies.
The pastor oft repeated them
because he was afraid of loss
and overthrow of his control.
But we were young and sang
“We will not fathom a defeat;
we will not even think about a death of any kind.”
a theology that’s bold enough
to voice a serious objection
to the status quo of fear
and to the slavery it breeds.
We took our crowbars optimistic
to that verse, we treated it
as if it pertained just to us,
jarred loose so juicy from its story
and community in history.
Once loose, we used it as a tool
to pry history from its flesh,
from its life pained, pulsing in time.
We used that verse
like a two dollar whore,
distorted it, individualized it
into half truth to keep ourselves
from considering anything less,
or contemplating anything more.
Our God,
more slot machine than Sovereign,
each prayer a greedy pull
upon Their Heart but for our lust
and we there, fake, beatific as if
answers were dependent on our shining phony faces
smiling dutifully in Canaan but saddened by the selfishness
that haunted in our hollows.
we needed a miracle
that would erase life
as it had become,
misshapen and ungainly
grovelling neath
our gaudy costume faces
we needed a death
that would restore us
a healing to deliver us
and language that was steady
not the dodgy bob and weaving
of a fickle weak theology
of self and self fulfilment
it was the language of lament that cut us open swift and true,
gave us honest prayers and angry prayers
grief stricken, low and lowly and we, finally laid low by loss
at last found the road Beautiful,
the road bloody and difficult,
the way of just the Cross.
Our confidently spoken truths
were just too good by half
and thus just mere half truths
that couldn’t go one pace beyond
into the place of fiery testing.
Thank God we got delivered
by gradual and sudden
loss that transforms everything
and quickly sobers up the dreamers
drunk upon communion wine.
We got our invitation and
we broke past that temptation
just to tarry in the safe and feast
on fat and easy answers…
we pressed straight thru to honesty
and wrestling with the mystery
of our Christ Crucified and big enough for everyone,
finally became big enough to die to self
and small enough to live here now
in stark repudiation
of our youthful indiscretions
so full and yet so empty.
We dwell now midst the paradox
of Living, Reigning Savior
in this woeful place of dying
we set our dark face like flint to walk
in living faith straight into ever after…
Living faith.
Amen
Disruption
confusion and disorder
(or merely interruption)
come fatal and so final.
Belief is baffled, battered
by numbing contradictions,
and competing experiences
storm our sunny smooth white walls
with scary scrabbling quick movements
and alternatives quite shocking
come compelling in assault.
Disrupted
we encounter mirror faces
and radical indifference
we’ve never known before
never anticipated,
afraid there, we are frayed
and fractured and
disrupted.
our brittle self-sufficiency
illusory, confused,
our “self-control” confounded
our trust and self-reliance
confabulates with darkness
in that Gethsemane
of dread disruption beating…
and all our treasure hauled away
dispatched midst scattered plans
and strewn cross ruined hopes.
And we at last are laid to rest
beside the ancient stony press
our sweat run red like blood upon
our faces taut, abandoned, wrenched…
and finally alone with God…
the Disrupter
of our plans
of ideas
entire lives
turned topsy turvy
in the current of the common
and expected day of life
come in the chaos of the moment of
disruption.
They alter every altar
They smash down every idol
that sits so still and solid
but quiet in the night,
and far more so than silence
that roars without a word.
Unnerving and unsettling
toppling the familiar
overthrowing order
to bring a lasting Kingdom
run on Unexpected Love
peaking round the corners
into every heart,
and contradicting all
we blithely take for granted
as absolute in history
and real enough to trust
midst diamonds and rust.
But then They get quite cheeky
and mayhap downright rude!
They talk as if the dead shall rise,
returned again to life, what does that mean
about realities and rules for our lives
we take for granted as the order
and the way of everything?
Well, some think that disruption
plays teeter totter games
with resurrection on the other end
and our soft hearts their fulcrum
and God the Gravity so constant
prevailing over all!
But me?
Well, what do I know
in the tidal changes constant
and the ebb and flow
of people never here but never gone?
It’s a landscape of adventure
navigated by a compass
marked by faith and pointing true
at the lodestone thick with grace
and crystal clear in brilliant love,
crystal clear in brilliant Blue?
No…that is not quite accurate,
not “what I know”, but Who…
the Disruptors of my tragedy
the Resurrectors Kind who Love me
and in this I find that this disruption
is a start of something permanent
and lasting so much longer
than my ebullient grin.
Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?.
Constance, I hope this morning finds you well. I also hope you will read Susan’s article in response to a letter she received on her blog.
I am posting it here because of the relevance of the attitudes of the correctors…not necessarily as a comment on the issue itself.
You see, I too have been victimized by people who say things like those referred to in this article: I have had it hurled into my face by those who tell me with a straight face that it is their obligation to out me to others and comment on my transition to them (before I even have the chance myself to say a word to people who are unaware of my choice and the journey to that choice)…and then comes the coup de gras: “If I don’t take this stand then your blood is on my head!”
Did you catch that? I am deprived of my own chance to speak for myself in the name of being “loved”, and then told that the one “loving” me with such betrayal is doing so to avoid having my “guilt” attributed to them!!
So love is involved…but it is not love of me…it is also not love of the person they are gossipping about me to (yes, it is gossip)…the “love” that is in operation here is the love of self, which is idolatry.
Christians who violate other people in the name of love are simply practicing the sin of idolatry.
Susan comments very well on this subject…take a look.
And then consider a novel thought: allowing God to be God and the One and Only True Knower of the Hearts of Human kind, and taking your place on level ground the moral equal of ones that you have judged and judge wrongly.
Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Bad news swirls stark,
cold leaves on carny winds
and in this rising tide
I fear the ship is sinking.
I am choking on those
gall-soaked fingers of despair
jammed down my raw wracked throat
while I wretch and wrench
and heave to summon optimism,
that phantom failed-familiar. 
I do all I can to bail the rising water,
even as I wrestle against fear and anxiety.
It’s in these times that sadness overwhelms me
in a blurry growing storm of weary longing,
a tragic tide of lonely isolation
sweeping deep over me, drowning me!
I have befriended long lament
and I take comfort in loud cries
and blasting mourning echoes throughout time
and history in crying, captured true in poems, songs
and statements of lament, a dolor
that submerges hope and quenches dreams.
I groan in deepest cries of agony, of anger and confusion,
of disorientation, of sorrow, grief, and protest
that linger as mere echoes of a long ago lamenter of every human loss:
“Harvest is past, summer is ended, and we are not saved.
For the brokenness of the daughter of my people
I am broken; I mourn, dismay has taken hold of me.
Is there no balm in Gilead?
Is there no physician there?
Why then has not the health of the daughter of my people been restored?” 
But now I face realities that feel completely overwhelming:
illness, death and loss and being ever on the losing end of things
and that through no fault of my own but always in last place or left behind.
My cry of pain is this:
my deepest acknowledgment I am still not home,
here divided from my body and my own deepest desires
found in my dearest relationships.
I am separated and long for utter restoration
in this overwhelming sorrow…
I find myself within this crucible of transformation
and discover that the waters of despair that seek to drown
and overwhelm can become waters of
glad cleansing and repair.
lament may yet have
its own way of transformation.
“For if the Lord causes grief, then They will have compassion according to Their abundant lovingkindness.”
crucifixion singing in the center
giving voice to what is broken
in this dark and dying world
and Shining
one song inextinguishable
paradoxical, inexplicable,
surging somehow inside life and death
and Shining
it galvanizes all things, transforms everything,
it plays, this lone hymn hanging
of the Hangman Finally Hung
and Shining
in dissonance, resolve,
tension and release
inexplicable black tragic tenor notes
unexplainable red suffering,
scrawling over bass drone
deep and purple-bruised
by perplexing dark despair
and I stare…I stare…I stare…
in mute horror mixed with wonder
and the jarring jangly notes
swirl and slash, they cut and caper
around that Body Broken
and Shining
the dissonant nightmare score
is writ there on His face
is writ there on His back
is writ there on His head
is writ there on His hands and feet
is writ there in grace notes
is writ there bloody, permanent.
is writ there permanent
and shining.
Here, at this late and early shore
in clammy mist and silent roar
shriven and stripped, scoured to my core
and needy midst this weather-war.
I wait for you with my torn heart
Clutched in cruel claws and pulled apart
by lonely memories sweet and tart
in loss I’m given this fresh start.
Remembering fire in this rain
Remembering sweet in suffering
Remembering roots thrust deep in pain
and incense smoke removes my stain.
Old wood, dead wood and debris
and underbrush, flammable me
has fed the flames’ raw hungry plea
Consumed, renewed and set me free.
Sky and sea and wind and time
wash me clean of my past’s thought crime
And scrub away my grief and grime
I’m born again in Love sublime
Pastor Looks Up In Tears. “I Had No Idea.”.
Constance…let these words sink deeply into your heart…an imagined conversation between a pastor and Jesus on the day they meet. Powerful, poignant, and painful.
Reader…go to this link. Read. And then I beg you to stop throwing around your theology like a boomerang, one that always returns to you with blood on it. When you catch that boomerang well the blood is on your hands. Simplify your complex need to judge and categorize and rend your heart and not your garment. Repent of your passive aggressive ways, and stop speaking death in the name of speaking the truth in love.
Just love. In truth. And leave the speaking to Mama.
Do justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
Be careful to peer around the crooked corners
and slide around the slippery slopes
(not down them…it’s bananas at the bottom!)
because life lurks there, around corners
and is easily missed.
But you must not look straight at it
or it will simply fade and leave
that grin hanging in mid air.
No…look askance, in glimpses…
watch the work-worn wrinkled hands
of old women scraping turnips,
or the quick certain pittipats and flour puffs
of the baker and her turnovers and pop-ups…
if you can stand it, and not blink
you will see God take the stage
in the need of our hearts
for stories…stories!
Once upon a times
and happily ever afters!
Oh, this life is not for everyone!
Those puffed up Pillsbury dough boys
all full of wealth and self-importance
and those Mr. Cleans engorged
with religion and selfish knowledge,
well they are dancing around idols
of such gross magnitude
they cannot be disturbed
by such trivia as butterfly kisses!
They cannot bear to gaze
upon the ordinary, or wade
in the shallows of Overlook Creek.
It has too much weight for them,
the weight of ordinary life.
And so they do not see that Garment Grasped
they do not hear that Bartimaeus cry
they do not know that life on the fringe
is the center of the universe.
If you are a skeptic be careful
when you stroll by the sea.
So much in this world
hints at so much more to be,
We are intricately bound
to this world of woven wonder
and its all-encompassing gain
bled thru the all-encompassing loss.
I am caught there,
snagged on the loom
of poetry, and poems of mourning,
poems of profound lament.
They chronicle abrupt realities
and tales of exile in this realm
under the sun, and never new
and they go silent, choked on vanity.
You see, I am skeptical of happiness and yet
I am also skeptical of sorrow, that mere
A to Z acrostic of grief and loss expressed,
because it has its built in default limit.
These our exiled lives in disarray,
spirits torn out of our homes
and singing songs of misery
much deeper than we can endure?
These our exiled lives of aching mystery?
This pert uncertainty?
This frank finality?
This haunting history?
It ends with bleeding blossoming,
our longing for that shining home
that waits across the water
and that notion, bright as noontime.
and that foggy haunting certainty,
that aching homely homesickness
that sings a deeper song unceasing…
All that tells us home is there
and waiting our return.
So my baby just told me “Baby, there are times when you are so a teen-age girl!” Wait, whaaa??? Giggles…she is right, of course.
I saw this thing I am posting below, and sooo relate to it, from a gender perspective. The act of solidarity and love is profound and lasting…the phase will likely pass as an aspect of growing.
Constance…be sure your actions strengthen what remains rather than what is transitory.
Wow…Constance, this is the way that we all ought to treat one another. I have been treated this way by some people…and I go home, and shed tears of joy and happiness. It feels so good to be accepted for me…just lil me.
You can all imagine the opposite…because you have all experienced it.
Ever wonder why that is? Why is it that we have all been othered, policed, and ostracized over something? Even the so-called “cool kids” who are usually the worst open graves of horror inside their own hearts…
Let’s follow this wonderful child, this avatar of our God’s Goodness and Love.
The horse we ride through this dark night
of velvet shadows, points of light shine
swimming high above us there,
those flying hooves running on air
to lift us up into that Where
and When and Why, and flowy-free
we ride the back of Mystery…
“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”.
Oh Constance…what a poignant and well written post awaits you behind the above link! Please head over and read it, and while you do, keep in mind something:
As John Pavlovitz says, it is no longer possible for you to bury your head in the sand of platitudes and assumptions about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender and be in love with God all at once.
Let me be clear with you all: my gender journey is not like the one that gay and lesbian christians are on, in that my journey is not about who I feel sexual attraction to, but rather it is an adventure that involves living out my female being in this body that is biologically male…okay? It is important you know that.
I also want to again reiterate and confess something: much to my great sorrow, before I was personally confronted by Mama about my gender identity, in inescapable ways, before that incredible and sacred day? Well, I really didn’t do a whole lot more than mouth platitudes myself. I didn’t really think about it much. Oh, I have talked with many gay men who have sought me out to confide in me…but while I was kind and loving to them? I really had nothing to offer other than the same old junk that I had been taught myself.
I was not capable of walking in their shoes! I had no true empathy with their plight and path. And thus I had no true motivation to really discover what their life is!
We made friends with a lesbian couple who have become very dear friends…in fact, they were the first people I came out to…but even in that friendship, I still didn’t know.
Well, I do now.
I do…cus I get it now, I get the same discrimination. I get the same hatred. I get the same rejection. I get judged the same way with virtually the same judgments. I pay some of the same prices, and I pay additional different ones.
But besides that? What I got was a huge dose of Humble Pie from Them…because it was so absolutely clear to me that I had not been truly like Jesus when I thought I was being like Him. I was so blinded by my own arrogant preening righteousness. I was so certain that the people that I talked to were just trying “to justify their sin”…as if every single other f***king christian in history hasn’t done the same g*dd*m thing!!
Every. Single. One.
Friend…you who “prays for me, that I will be delivered from this deception”, you should rend your own hearts and pray for yourself, that God would send you to Damascus and perhaps knock you off your ass and the scales from your eyes.
You just don’t know. You think you do…but you don’t.
People deal with all matters of interaction with God in all manner of ways…and you aren’t qualified to pass muster on them. But you are qualified to lay down your weapons, lay down your platitudes and easy caricature-arguments, and simply love…lift…and laugh.
Point to Jesus, not at sin. Point to the Cross and not to anything else. And then actually spend some time with people. Go to the Gay Christian Network Conference…Go to a Reconciling in Christ Meeting…Go to a welcoming of LGTBQ church…talk to the clergy…talk to the congregants…listen…listen.
And when done listening…well, listen some more.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
In this morning mist and cold,
wet sand twixt my toes and me
and gritty ‘neath my knobby knees
I remember beginnings
of this moment long ago
and culminating in this now.
I woke then, to find my heart
had been torn open, then ripped from
my heaving chest in one harsh yank
and there were towels and pads all round
me there beneath those storm cloud words
still ringing
“Clean yourself up and go outside and play!”
Those long years ago I learned
to cry silent and hide my tears…
on the insides of my cheeks
where they would run back down to pool
inside that empty place my heart
used to be. It used to be.
I wandered and I found places
that I could pour me out…I don’t know
what hurt more: the emptiness
just pouring out or all those tears…
running down and drowning me.
So I lay me amidst the flowers
in lush grass meadows green and there
learned to abide, endure, persist…
and yearn. Oh how I learned to yearn.
But that was then, and here, now…these
long years later and miles travelled
down time’s trail…I stirred myself up
from underneath my soft blankets
and threw on my big boots and coat.
But I left my cane behind…
limps are irrelevant when we
are down on our knees, Yes? They are.
I walked the old beach access road
but my achy and empty core
walked contrary, backwards in time
to take on shape, substance and form,
becoming in the memories
the who I should have been back then
instead of this hollow and shipwrecked
me here, kneeling in this moment…
and I dreamed of what never was,
and sang of all that should have been.
Then I arrived at ocean’s edge
and just in time…because the wedge
of memory, the urge to jump
had become great. And so I stood
and let my tears run down the outside
of my cheeks while waiting for
the sun to walk its path to stand
on the far edge of the horizon
and then to jump into the sky
and make its run once more across the void,
once more across the void.
The sun, the sand, the sea
…and me…
stood there where they met.
My eyes roved o’er the curved and graceful
backs of waves swimming in droves
while songs abound until they found
that old wreck stubborn run aground
on rocks, foolhardy in its heedless
balderdashy thrust against
the foghorn blast and lighthouse beacon.
Still there, rusty, sodden, and yet
not much worse for wear…not much.
Its familiar hollow hull
echoed my own empty hollow
chest…my locked up knees began
to tire, then give way at last…and
that is how I got here,
in the sand,
on my knees…
and waiting.
and in that place my heart should burn
inside at last I felt the rising
of a voice or was it something else?
the rising of a tide?
A fountain? No, a mountain? Mmm…
A spring
welling up in supplication
all my yearns found wing and from
my lips they flew into the heavens,
beyond that marching willful sun
to land at last safe
there in Mama’s lap.
And now…now.
Kneeled here…I listen.
I listen for the Word come down
to take up residence within
my empty chest, to become…yes
a presence Present, to have become
substantial substance and I think
maybe I can become a host
to the Host.
Regardless…kneeled here,
I cast it all away to Her
and let myself diminish, grow less
and become more.
And I am grateful for Her answer
in the graceful break of waves
and the ever rushing sound
of Her forever Kiss
Shuffling back and forth between…
night and day
week and week
(weak and weak,
strain and struggle)
sighs and sorrows
…the pain of this passage
of time and tears
is present always,
palpable still,
pulsing in my yearning heart
gone nova with the memory.
I lay awake midst pain and memory,
I neither sleep nor slumber
but instead ache and remember…
I re-member, piece by peace,
arrivals and departures.
We wear memories and longings
like stained t-shirts and chinos
and shod in our torn sneakers
we shuffle down the path,
so pebble-strewn and painful,
so rough hewn, uneven
and inevitable.
As soon as we arrive,
our hearts know we have to leave.
As soon as we leave we burn,
knowing that we must return!
Each journey punctuated
by our songs sung in the night…
songs of lament and longing
songs of suffering and sorrow
songs of remembrance and redemption
songs of deliverance and the coming day
…alas…memory is a river terrible
that must be crossed.
The crossing…the crossing!
That’s the common factor present,
primary and consistent,
pervasive and persistent
and it moves,
from background
to foreground and
back again
while it waits its turn to step up and partake
of the Communion Feast, its Sacred Supper,
the Holy Sacrament of our Sojourning Hearts.
I’m decided, I am settled.
I’m on the right side of pain!
I’ll not let anyone or anything keep me captive,
stranded on the wrong side of memory
and out of phase with time!
I intend to feel the pain of others,
bind their broken hearts,
be marked by suffering…
…no, wait: be marked
with suffering by my Mama!
In this looming collision between
uncomfortable mystery and unyielding mercy
and that suffering, ahh…
I can neither sleep nor slumber
because She who inhabits Eternity
neither sleeps nor slumbers but Is
Awake with those who suffer
and There with those who faint, who fall
and falter in the crossing…
She is there (I’ll be there too)
in Her house held up by beams
from that battered rough-hewn Cross,
shining fair with great doors open
thrown wide open to receive
all Her suffering children broken
in the crossing…in the crossing
and Her invitation spoken
Come and rest here at Her table,
there’s a place for every person
in the ending of between
and arrival of the Present
Oh, the greatest Gift of all, the Present!
When the crossing’s done …
I neither sleep
nor slumber, waiting…
pregnant in this moment
and present in
the crossing.
Good Morning Constance! 🙂
Lately I have been waking and finding myself more rested…spiritually, emotionally, and physically. There are a lot of ways that dysphoria burdened me…a lot of ways. For years I didn’t know what dysphoria was and thus attributed so much of the trauma I lived as just being a function of being me.
It was the primary thing that drove me…straight past religion and into the arms of the God behind the curtain of religion that humans have erected. If it were not for Them, Their love, acceptance, and encouragement, I would have long ago despaired and taken my own life.
Then I began to face my gender issues, get educated on what they were (and weren’t), and the relationship between me and Them blossomed and flourished even more…depths and heights I had no idea of…and the sense of destiny and mission and purpose began to take shape and form! No longer was I here merely to serve out a life sentence in the penitentiary of this flesh, just slogging thru until release. No. I had been formed and fashioned in just such a precise and intricate way so as to be in this place at this time to help set other captives free, to break down walls of oppression and to be part of that rolling river of justice, that mighty stream of righteousness to all peoples.
So that was cool.
But these mornings…finding this new place of peace, liberty…I think it is a deeper connection to God that is derived from congruence and alignment of brain and body due to the HRT that I have been doing…there are fewer filters and a wider open field to run in. And for the last few years, the Person of God I have been encountering most is the Blessed Holy Spirit, the One I affectionately call Mama.
*Oh, and to you, prisoner of patriarchy, who rebuked me for “feminizing God and reducing His Divinity”? To you I say don’t go away mad, just go away…you who “masculinize God, and reduce Their Divinity” The Bible teaches that God created man in Their Image, male and female, and it is very broad in how this is worded, indicating that not only are there some humans assigned to biologically female bodies, and some humans assigned to biologically male bodies, but also that each human being made is both male and female in their creation…because each one is in the Image of God. This would by inference prove that God Themselves transcend gender, as the origin and agency of the creation of human beings! So again…just go away. I don’t receive your judgment and your fear. Perhaps if you just stop, exhale yourself out of yourself so you are at last empty, you may find a humble path to repentance for doing the very things you judge me guilty of. Then inhale the God…who made you…and me…and owns us both.*
Mama…I have written poems about Her, and I urge you to search the blog for the word Mama, and check them out. I rather like them. Mama is so incredible and, well, I am not gonna try to describe Her.
The reason for this post is because a lot of you have been in contact with me and have indicated you would actually show interest in and desire to be in relationship with a God like Mama…but that She is different than the god they were taught of as children when they attended church. That god they want nothing to do with! And who could blame them?
Well, I want to invite you to try out something: I would like to invite you to talk to Her. She was telling me in my heart that She will talk to anyone who approaches Her with an open heart and humble spirit (that means a spirit that knows that it doesn’t know but would love to be taught). And She said to suggest this to you:
If you would like to know Mama…then talk to Her and simply say “Mama, the One that Charissa talks about…I would like to start a dialogue with You. I will show up everyday at the time and place that is established, and I will literally talk with You just as I would my bestie when we go out to coffee.”
If you do this…She will not disappoint, though She will indeed surprise and confound, often times will bring things to you that may make you uncomfortable or downright angry! I know this for a fact from experience. But hang in there, stay present, and above all, be honest. If you get mad, tell Her. Speak from your innermost core…hey, She is God and already knows what is there anyway, so you might as well. I have said literally the worst things I have ever said to anyone to my Mama in those moments…but I didn’t stop there, for She talks back, yeah? She will bring thoughts, new understandings, revelations…
…and awakenings. Spiritual awakenings.
Spiritual awakenings are such a crucial component of being in this life, and they are common to nearly every religious experience and cultural expression. They share a lot of common factors in spite of the various trails that people walk to arrive in them. Here are some components of them:
☾Increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen
☾Feelings of being connected to others and nature
☾Overwhelming episodes of appreciation
☾A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience
☾A loss of the ability to worry
☾A loss of interest in conflict
☾A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others
☾A loss of interest in judging others
☾A loss of interest in judging self
☾Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return
☾To be so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind.
I saw that list this morning, and I wanted to share it with you, but with the Charissa-twist that comes with my connection to Mama:
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have an increased tendency to let things happen rather than making them happen.
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have feelings of being connected to others and creation
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I experience overwhelming episodes of appreciation
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears of past experience
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of the ability to worry
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in conflict
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging others
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I have a loss of interest in judging self
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in return
☾When I am in relationship with Mama, I am so strong that nothing disturbs your peace of mind
(I was trying to make a rainbow, by the way lol!!)
My point is this: Spiritual Awakening is not an experience…it is a state of being that can be entered into through relationship with a Person…through Mama.
Oh no…you don’t have to enter into connection with Her…there are many beings out there to connect to and not all of them good…but I am in relationship with Her, and I can testify of Her goodness, Her faithfulness, Her steadfast unending love and acceptance, Her humor and fierce sense of Justice, Her unending Tender Mercies…
Mama.
I Love You, Mama
Your girl, Charissa Grace
7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ.
Okay, so this post is startling in its implications. The author relates a Q she was asked by a friend, who was fearful for her. Her friend asked the author “What if you’re wrong affirming LGTBQ people as loved of God and worthy of being received as part of Christ’s Body”…
She turns that Q on its head in her post, and asks “What if you are wrong in fearing and rejecting LGTBQ human beings?” And then she goes on to list 7 potential consequences of that wrongness.
Her plea? Just love. Since you really aren’t the Holy Spirit, you are off the hook in correcting anyone and you are free to just love and trust that God is big enough to get the message across.
I mean…hey, They got it across to you, didn’t They? If They are powerful enough to get it across to you, well then They can get it across to anyone! Right?
Right!
To a Church That Dehumanizes Gays.
This letter.
Read.
Constance…pure and simple, the church simply must search its heart and come up with a better response than it currently has towards LGTBQ people.
I fear that it may never but for the same reason that so many cis-gender people may never grapple with the discrimination and hatred that is exuded towards transgender people: if it doesn’t affect you, you generally fail to really let it impinge upon your comfort.
When you are impacted by either of these issues, or really any issue, then it changes your heart and opens your eyes.
Blessed are those who would humble themselves and ask for a heart like Jesus and eyes like Mama.
Loving LGBT People Well, 12 Suggestions for Traditional Churches | A Queer Calling.
Good Morning Constance! 🙂 Once again I want to thank you for being here, on Charissa’s Grace Notes with me, and journeying in your own ways from works and death to Grace and Life…your presence here, your comments, your shared humanity brings me hope and adds ammunition for those lonely times in the night when all are sleeping, all is still, and I watch…awake on the walls. ❤ Thank you ❤
So the link above is from an interesting blog that is worth perusing. It lists several suggestions for Christian people to love and serve in ways consistent with the gospel, and likely far more congruent with the heart of Jesus Himself, the Great Friend of Sinners.
We have all heard the old saw “love the sinner and hate the sin”…heck, prolly a whole lot of people who read here have even said that. I have before…much to my great regret…I have indeed. When I did, I didn’t really realize what that said and implied about the person I was speaking to…and even worse what it said and implied about my own heart and self evaluation.
Alas…what I and others were usually saying is we think the loving thing to do is make sure the person knows they are a sinner. And quite simply, this is just not the way that Jesus did things…oh wait! There were times that He outright called people out on their sins! I forgot about those!
Yeah…it was to the Pharisees! Ya know those folks of that day who were the ones who loved to point out how everyone else was a sinner! He ripped them a new one over and over and over again because who they were in their own eyes was more important than who their neighbor is in God’s eyes…and that is fatal.
Of course I am not advocating “loving sin” by opposing the use of that phrase! Don’t be ridiculous! What I am saying is you ought to major in people, and minor in sin management. After all, your skills at sin management must suck, or Jesus would not have felt the need to descend from His state in Heaven, take on human flesh, and then suffer and die for you (ya know, a sinner). Right? If you were capable of managing sin, well then He would have just encouraged and taught you until you got it right!
Jesus never said “love the sinner but hate the sin”, and no one believes that meant that Jesus was compromising, prevaricating, or condoning anything evil. No…Jesus understands one crucial thing:
Saying Yes to Love is far more effective and powerful than saying No to sin.
The true YES renders the no moot.
And that brings me to why I link to this article, because if we are going to discard futile harmful platitudes, then how to we pick up effective and edifying alternatives?
They list a dozen, and they are “process oriented” and not items that you can check off on your daily righteousness list.
They demand that you see the people in your life as your moral equals.
They demand that you give the people in your life the same standing as worthy of God’s love as you have.
They demand that you understand that your perspective is extremely limited and insufficient by definition, as you are a very finite, very imperfect, and very limited being.
As you go, take with you my lil motto that I have pulled from Micah 6. It is a superb guide for keeping it simple and loving. And it has an order of listing for a reason.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Love, Charissa
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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