Relevant…Quite Relevant
Tag Archives: homophobia
No
that moment when I am walking
no, floating, no…that moment
when I am flowing down
no, up, no…along the river
no, stream, no…torrent of
life and you decide
that you can just touch me
without permission or permission
no, consent, no…yes permission
and I stiffen in horror, in fear
no, terror, no…in anger because
you make me into nothing with your touch
but i mask it with my smile
no, grin, no…with my grimace
that you miss, you absolute oaf
because you think I am an otter
sleek and preening when I am
actually a hedgehog all quilly
no, thistly, no…all covered with razors
and shattered glass and broken promises
and splintered insults and shredded judgements
no, no—no—no, no
The Rustling of Those Wings
I always thought vultures
slept at night, devil-red heads
bulbous on scrawny leather necks
tucked under fetid wing and pinion.
I was wrong.
They never sleep
but circle
endlessly
always
gliding around the dying
the rotten and discarded
waiting for that last quick breath
and then they land nearby
and hop like feather frogs
to their last supper never ending
I stick my head
out in the night
and cannot see them
but I know they are there
by the way
the rustling of those wings
echoes in my heart
Posting A Very Sobering Reflection
All…this is a post from a tumblr blog I follow, not my own writing, but her concluding question echoes many things I have written about, namely that all the “Remember the Dead Trans-girls” rallies change absolutely nothing.
We don’t want to be remembered.
We want to live…be fruitful and share life.
I don’t want you to say my name when I am killed…I want to say my own name in the zest of life! Without fear of attack, policing, othering or rejection simply for being born.
I echo Jen’s question: since last weekend’s events, what has changed?
PS: Language alert! If you are offended or defiled by scatalogical language, proceed with caution! F-bombs and other such things are in evidence!
Maybe if…Maybe….maybe if every man who has ever hired a trans escort, if every boy who has ever beat off to trans porn, if all the guys I and thousands of others have hooked up with via Craig’s List, if the millions who fetishize our bodies, who enjoy us on our knees in bathrooms, who press us against hotel windows, who lay with us in our beds, if the men who adore me and my sisters, but only behind closed doors, would STAND THE FUCK UP AND SPEAK OUT…maybe 21 year old women just enjoying an evening out with friends wouldn’t be beat to death.
Maybe if all of you who read this, our allies and friends and colleagues and family, would call out when others make jokes at our expense, even when we’re not around, if you’d tell advertisers and producers and journalists and writers and comics that you’re not okay with them making trans women nothing but the punchline of jokes or tragic tossaways, that you know us, that we’re not disposable….maybe groups of people would stop feeling so free to harass me and my sisters, maybe crowds wouldn’t just laugh when a man spits at me, or just watch when two young men chase me down the street yelling “shemale”…maybe if you ALL stood up and said enough, maybe a young woman just being herself wouldn’t be beat to death in the streets of the supposedly best place on earth to just be yourself.
Maybe if all the gay men who act as if equality means marriage, if all the white feminists who only serve those that look like them, if all the queers who drop “TWOC” like a shibboleth but don’t know or talk to or walk beside any actual trans women of color…maybe if all of you saw what was happening here and how your actions allow it, how every moment of silence, of waiting for people of color to start the conversation about race …maybe this child could have enjoyed a few more years of being beautiful among us.A 21 year old was beat to death in our streets. It happened because she is a woman, and of color, and transgender. It happened because our men won’t admit they love us, because our friends aren’t speaking out against the thousand little dehumanizing actions of others, because our own “LGBT” community isn’t comfortable talking about race and class.
This has to change. Now.
I wrote this two years ago.
What’s changed?
oh america
oh america, alas for me
once blind but now, alas!
I see…what I could not see before
safely ensconced behind my placid door
of hallels, proverbs, judgements
assumed and (not) asked and answered
while Perry Mason spoke for me
Paul Drake got me off
Della Street hid me safe.
oh america, you hid from me
your bloody dungeons, grisly gore
your carrion teeth hungry for more
I weep in agony, I never saw that side
of you, rapacious, avarice-infected, ravenous
alas for you
alas for me
oh america, alas for me
once deaf but now, alas!
I hear…not pop songs, jingles
and bubble gum ditties
but klaxxons and outrage
and death-dirges arising in cities
writhing in flaming hatred and strife
sirens screaming and bullconner bullhorns
in the tramping of jackboots and protests for freedom
I hear the desperate pleading for life and liberty
their chains rattle like thunder
but america, you hear only dice
rolling on your green table
of gambling and greed and
just be oh so nice
I wish I could just rip myself
straight outta me, tear that
born and bred into ease
from my arteries, and my
narcissistic “I’m so vain”
from my veins and be fresh
be free…oh america…alas for you and me
as I watch our best, our brightest
still chained in our simpering
lobs of “be nice, calm down, be polite”
lobotomized and safe in facebook internments
prisoners in consumer kraals
and poetic deftness flees me
abandons me in this hour of my need
oh grace deliver me from selfish greed!
oh Mama let me run to truth so clean with godspeed
I lose mastery in the horror of this hour
alas, oh america, I lament for me
alas…I lament for thee
and do not know if you will find the courage
to face yourself in the mirror of your victims
the ones you killed and ate and burped
and called it good.
oh america, oh america
God have mercy on thee
and trip you up and toss you down
and take from you that gory crown
of racism, racism racism racism
from sea to shining sea and in between
may God remove that hood that blinds
you to brotherhood, to good, to kind
give you eyes to see (oh god let me see)
give you ears to hear (oh god let me hear)
give you a heart at last and courage
to look at what you’ve done and left undone
oh america
oh america
oh america
oh america
oh america
“I am torn in two but
I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride…I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces…”
I will conquer myself.
I will dig up the pride…I will take a crowbar
and pry out the broken
pieces…”
| — | Anne Sexton – from The Civil War |
We Are Come At Last
Marshal your forces, you protectors of the crown,
send your dogs running, your dogs of dreams,
your dogs howling, full noses of my fur, my pelt!
Bring on your hunt, your horses in full gallop
and chase for all you’re worth, your lust and fear
of free blood running red, and full, liberty’s blood!
Your coats, scarlet! Your smirks, affixed with tax,
and become terrible twisted rictus in your sweaty efforts
to hunt this free fox leaping, yipping, dancing on the dawn!
They shall come to me, your dogs, and wriggle ‘neath my touch!
They shall hear my dog-whistle words, too high for your dull ears
but so keenly attuned and pitched to their own straining hearts!
And they shall call to their comrades, your horses, who will alert and thrill
and leap into the air to gallop freely there…and you unhorsed…you laying there
upon the blood-stained grass of yesteryear…
Your time is up, for we are come to hunt you down
and tear that red coat straight away right off your back
and tossed into the sky, our banner free unfurled and our war cry…
No Longer! Not Anymore!
Feather and Fur
It’s puzzling…
the sheer effrontery
of those raucous rooks,
those rapacious ravens…
they flock around
(why? I couldn’t say)
and act all furry and red
and soft and they think
their beady close set eyes
are so foxy…
I act bored and disinterested
but I watch them carefully
with slitted eyes
and coiled muscles
ready to jump away from
blood-thirsty beaks
and harsh cries
that tear the air apart
and leave feather and fur
in their wake.
40 questions for Christians who oppose marriage equality (GUEST COMMENTARY) – Corner of Church and State
A VERY interesting and thought provoking article and series of questions…Reader, this is posted more for you than anyone else. See if you can hold your need to “binary-ize” things into your “either-or” world view…just for a second or two.
I am less interested in answering the question of right and wrong at this point, and more interested in asking what kind of heart are you showing, advocating, and modeling by your current approaches to relationship with LGTBQ people?
I mean…33 plus years of relationship was over in the flick of a heartswitch and the drop of an envelope in a mail-slot…
Boom.
My life has gone on. No…more accurately, my life has finally begun and I have been blooming and growing spiritually and emotionally and growing more healthy physically. The loss of relationship has in my case been a very healthy pruning in that so many new people have come into my life bringing messages to me like I have rarely experienced in my past years done in the dungeons of christendom.
But I do think about you, Reader…and the life you live of inspection and constant lifting of yourself and others into scales that are not even accurate…
…and I encourage you to read these questions and ponder them…
because to answer them and be challenged by them will require you to change your lifestyle, spend your time differently, and draw your boundaries very different!
You never know…you just may find that the river you say I have crossed that you won’t be crossing is the River of Life and that what matters is the water, and not the bank you stand on…as if that matters…as if you could really make that claim, that your bank is “the bank”…as if that pleases God who left heaven and took on the form of a bondslave…
…and as if that River of Life doesn’t have twists and turns to the human eye that could end up with us actually still “on the same side” (cus that’s a thing in this divisive binary world, being on the same side is far more important than belonging to Jesus *SARCASM*) and you not even realize it.
Just let go.
The list is getting sooo long, and the burden is getting sooo ponderous, all the things you must inspect and check and ascertain…how bout just letting all that go, and simply doing this: Loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and loving your neighbor as yourself with something more than a letter that slashed and burned and then preened like Little Jack Horner…
Extremely Powerful Thinking: On Femininity and the Patriarchy
Constance…please read thru the sections I am sharing below. Read it slow and let it sink in.
This is my life. I am living these sentences (word chosen to echo and double back on itself, those with eyes let them see).
Consider the way that my sentences being served also impact you…and the way that yours can set me free, if you will but begin to speak them.
Just read up on the Bell Hooks-Laverne Cox talk, thought it was really uncool (and unfemininist) of Hooks to chide Cox for her presentation.
I mean yeah, I get that for (feminist) cis women, femininity can start to feel constricting after a while, but trans women have a very different relationship with it. Patriarchy wants AFAB (Assigned Female At Birth) people to be feminine, it does not want AMAB (Assigned Male At Birth) people to be feminine.
For a person that was assigned male at birth, it absolutely can be revolutionary to embrace femininity. It is anathema to patriarchy for AMAB people to embrace femininity, why else do you think trans women get any and all femininity beaten out of them for the first part of their lives?
Besides, cis women had all their lives to try it out and grow tired of it. How many cis women haven’t smeared their mum’s lipstick all over their face as a little girl? At least have a heart and give us some time to experiment with femininity, you were given that time while you were growing up and I don’t see you high-n-mighty feminists going after teenage cis girls for it.
I would like to expand on this, and say that the patriarchy derides and punishes femininity in general. That’s why men who like female-coded activities are mocked. that’s why “girly-girls” are derided as shallow or high-maintenance.
But with trans women, expressing femininity is particularly revolutionary because it isn’t just about social conditioning–it’s a complete rejection of masculinity as the “valuable option.”
Many women–trans and cis–find value in femininity, but when cis women embrace it, everyone assumes it’s because it is expected and because that’s how they were trained. It isn’t considered unusual, because society insists that’s the punishment you get for being a woman, and if you’re very good you’ll reject that and try to act more like your “betters.”
But trans women are offered masculinity on a platter–it’s assumed to be our birthright–and we reject it. More accurately, like most people we reject parts of it. We’re proof that masculinity isn’t inherently valuable or precious–it’s just another thing.
And of course, patriarchal ideals double down on us for that. Our punishment for embracing the feminine and not being “rightly” ashamed of it is to be chained by it, and punished for any infraction. Male-coded interests are “proof” that we’re faking it.
Not appearing feminine enough is grounds for firing or banning us from homes (or from the lives of our own relatives). Expressing anger or standing up for ourselves is interpreted–even by self-proclaimed feminists–as our being aggressive and “really” men.
And revealing anything about our genitals is literally grounds for execution.
People hunt down the tiniest nuances–our shoulders, our voices, or hobbies, or age–and use the smallest infraction against gender norms to completely invalidate our statement that masculinity isn’t precious at all. This despite the fact that trans women, like everyone, aren’t inherantly “pure women” or “pure men” any more than any cis person–we’re mixes of social messages and biological impulses, some accepted some rejected, that go into forming a complex human being.
Trans women highlight that there’s no superior gender or gendered form of expression, and that pisses people off.
Murder by Bully
Constance, here is the deadly reality I live with. This pit-bull is in my room, all the time, straining at its flimsy leash…wanting to snap it and chew me to death.
I am pretty delivered from suicidal ideation, and have been so blessed to be surfing on top of waves of dysphoria rather than swamped by them…
…but bullying, harassment, and other forms of othering and policing…well, they just really destroy your soul in small pieces.
The “best ones” are the ones christians do to you cus “they love you so much”… those are the worst, because the spirit they operate in is the spirit of the dementor, and not of Jesus.
I want you each one to read this…and let it sink in…if you had to go thru this, just for breathing.
And then? If you ever see this going on? Make sure that you raise a ruckus right straight into the bullies’ faces. They are cowards at heart. That is why they attack those without power and privilege and seek to steal even the minute agency we have.
I had a recent experience when someone stood up for me…and I will never EVER forget how I felt when she just stood there fiercely and told someone that what they said was NOT OKAY, and that it was HIGHLY INAPPROPRIATE!
I felt very special, and something else, I felt as if I mattered.
I bet you a million dollars that there are people in her circle who didn’t like what was happening to her, but just never said anything…
…and I bet that they feel like their hands will never not have her blood on them now.
Because this was more than a suicide…this was murder by bully.
Only A Smidge Lower…
Constance…I am here today to admit. OMG there is sooo much I would change about my body if I could. The more salient question is what would I not change? So this really hit me…hit me hard.
What am I supposed to do, stuck in this skin of some biological male creature that so many seem to have attached to, and now hate me because that creature has been revealed as who it was all along…and that revelation happening to me at the same time?
Do you have any idea how it feels to be othered so hard that certain people now act like I am dead? And when I am blessed enough to have communication it is of the harshest, cruelest and most dehumanizing form possible, stripping me of personhood, of being, and reducing me to a verb, or a mask, or a nothing?
I can never remember a time when I did not feel this way…never. Reading about these children, wow.
So I post this…for your thought. Likely there is not much we can do now about our own body image issues…but we darn sure can be kind to others now. We darn sure can touch our children with gentle words…and no matter what we can speak to other human beings cognizent always that they are stamped with Mama’s image, they are riddled with God’s Image, and are thus just a smidge lower than God and are as gods themselves.
In case you weren’t convinced that hating yourself is a learned behavior
Physical shame comes from parents, teachers, media, and peers. It’s not something you’re born with. You were born naked, wonderful, and gorgeous, and no one should make another being feel as if that wasn’t, and isn’t true.
“Who Are We To Judge…”
Constance, I likely will not post an awful lot about the Jenner Transition Announcement until she gets further underway.
I totally, utterly get where she is at right now. She is thinking things about how she is not that worried about pronouns, and how she is willing to overlook the othering and policing that is going on right now, yadda yadda yadda…she feels a responsibility to other transgender people to effect a graceful transition with dignity.
But deep down inside…all those things are hurting her, affecting her, wounding her. She doesn’t need me adding to the cacophony of noise surrounding her (and all of that exacerbated because of the family dynamics she married into). Eventually, she will begin to find her bearings and her voice, or if she already has, she will begin to express it in her own unique ways.
But I will be commenting on things that orbit her transition, things that are revealed and illuminated as a result of her decision, and here is one of them:
On my Facebook page, a friend linked to an article about her transition. That article is here:
Bruce Jenner’s declaration creates an opportunity
What was telling was in the comments on the Facebook post, all generally very supportive, but one stood out to me. It simply said “Who are we to judge…”
“Who are we to judge…”
Constance, do you see why that comment jumped out at me? Yes? Jot down your thoughts about it…or No? No you do not see anything odd about that comment in relation to gender identity?
Well, Cis-Constance, imagine yourself being introduced to someone, and them very kindly and sagely assessing you and then saying to you and everyone “Who are we to judge…” and then shrugging as if to say “to each their own”…
as if your gender identity is something that is up for judgement in the first place!
as if your gender identity is an article of clothing that you simply decided to wear that day.
as if your gender identity was a moral choice you made or make.
Gender orientation is put into the same classification as sexual orientation and then judged as a moral choice, and this is simply incorrect and unfair.
There is orientation that is a given…and then there are behaviors that descend from choices that we make as creatures who are moral creatures and subject to moral constraints as determined by God and current cultural climate (and those are rarely congruent, btw)…the behaviors themselves are what I choose to do…but the orientation is who I was born to be.
Orientation is not moral behavior. It is simply the given baseline.
You as a cis-gender person are never subjected to the statement “Oh…you say you are a (fill in your biological chromosomal state). I see. Well, who am I to judge?”
And that, Constance, is the very epitome of cis-gender privilege!
Don’t get me wrong…I love the compassion that is at root behind the commenter’s post…but gender orientation is not a matter subject to judgement any more than race is, or that there is a brain in a skull, or that there are arms and legs on a human.
The deep underlying ignorance that is being exposed in the light of gender-education right now is the notion that gender-variance is a moral issue! The deep presupposition fostered in our binary is that any person who is cross-gendered is by definition subject to moral assessment should they decide to authentically live out who they are in spite of the external casing they are housed in!!
Do you see this?
The commenter is correct: we are not the judge of one another and should not judge one another. But the issue that she applied this moral principle speaks volumes of how far we have to go yet as a culture, and why we transgender people are subject to such tremendous othering.
Even the way we are supported is often times OTHERING!
I have the same internal response when people say to me “Hey, whatever makes you happy makes me happy”…and they are sincerely “for” me in terms of their willingness to accept me.
But they have no idea just how deeply they sentenced me to more time in the gender penitentiary.
“Mr. & Mrs. Cis-Gender Constance: Tear down this wall!!“
Yes…Men as a whole are privileged and need a reality check!
Constance, I post about men, their sense of privilege and entitlement, the mutilation of their soul they are forced to ritually endure as payment for that privilege, and the twisted and scary ways that sense of entitlement and the actual rape of their souls replicates itself in their actions…
…and I often get messages back that are variations on the “not all men” theme…cus these individuals have not taken the actual physical actions that I post about…even though they disregard their own violent and presumptuous writing style that is arrogant, presumptive, and ultimately such a perfect manifestation of the very thing I write about…
Well I am posting this below as illustration of a general thing by virtue of highlighting a specific.
And remember, men: I grew up in your midst! I was there, me Charissa Grace…watching, listening, horrified and traumatized when I was naive and new…and then tired and tearful when I was older and on verse 3, 214 of the same tired-ass old song that you each and everyone think is one you wrote…YOU wrote, and thus your every word is so important, so heavy with weight…and if only people listened to YOUR way of explaining it they would finally understand…
um no. What is listed below? It is the unvarnished, unsophisticated version of what the vast vast VAST majority of you do over and over and over again…such as the nice guy I read yesterday who was mansplaining all about how women would not be effective leaders when they were on their periods because their hormones would make them irrational, or less rational…
which omfg ignores sooo many things, assumes sooo many things…and one major thing is that rationality is any better compass for providing leadership than other things like say intuition, or heart, or feeling, or compassion, or…or…or…or…and then assumes that women ARE more irrational than men…what the actual F**K?
Rational? Like the poor person below…
um, no.
PS: all comments below are from the original post, not me
genuinely the scariest person i’ve ever come across!!!! the first message was one from where he messaged me yesterday
the last message exchange was from another girl who posted her interaction with him, and after her message back to him after he VIDEO CALLED HER MULTIPLE TIMES IN A ROW he proceeded to tell her to “shut the fuck up, whore” when she explained how weird it wasi’m now blocked from his fb and i’m just sharing this in case any girl ever gets a friend request from him!! i have no idea what state he’s from and i can’t access his page anymore so please be careful ily!!!
OH MY GOD
Okay somebody please report that shit to the police he genuinely sounds like the kind of guy whod shoot women in a university. Like srsly people living in the us do something about it
EVERYONE, CONTACT HIS PARENTS, CONTACT THE POLICE, CONTACT FACEBOOK SUPPORT!!! Don’t let this asshole get away with it!!!
“This Has To Stop”: Okay, whatchya gonna do about it?
Her Name Was Taylor, by Lori Duron
Constance, I often run across the statement “This has to stop” in connection with accounts of the bullying and suicide epidemics that transgender people face. And that is good, that people are beginning to get it, the monstrous othering and policing that we face every single G Dam day of our lives simply because we were “guilty” of being born into this life with the knowledge that our gender orientation and our assigned birth biology are at odds.
But I am restive with the ease with which in this internet age we can flourish our fingers over a keyboard and then move on from post with the feeling that we have actually “done something”, when all we have actually done is in effect restate the problem without attempting resolution. It is sorta like having a math test and re-writing the problem
6 + 11 = x as
x = 11 + 6 (and we be sure to draw attention to our use of different colored font and italics).
Compassion is a bicameral quality. It has two lobes. It has the feeling, heart lobe…that throbbing, dripping, bleeding tender outpouring of sympathetic alignment if we have not experienced something for ourselves (and just so you know: if you are not transgender, it is impossible for you to empathize with a dysphoric person, just as if you are white you cannot empathize with a person of color…you can sympathize, but don’t deceive yourself into thinking you empathize)…
…but for it to be true compassion, it must have the action side as well. What will you do with your sympathy?
Lori Duron has again posted a truly moving recounting of a tragic tale of bullying and othering and policing that ended in another transgender life lost…and I will recite yet again the litany of 2015: a lost transgender life approximately every 30 hours since 2015 began!
As if it is not enough of a burden to face: the nearly overwhelming unendurable constant achy angst of dysphoria. Oh no…to that is added the onslaught of ignorance, fear, and hatred as expressed in the evil of bullying which drives so many to self-destructive action in addition to having to bear gender dysphoria!
But Lori goes one better: She posts people you can email, places you can step up and actually take action that extends beyond the hypothetical feel good phrase “This has to stop” and manifests in real, measurable action…and takes baby steps as a compassionate act.
And then I myself will go you one better: there are marches coming up in major cities…in June. They have various names, monikers…but at heart they are the same, in that they are opportunities for you to express–directly–your support with your body side by side with other bodies, facing gawkers and haters, the curious and disinterested, and others who have walked in solitary confinement in their skins…
Transgender Pride Marches.
Yes, there will be people there who look different than you…who walk or talk different than you…and who want/feel/think/need/deserve exactly the same things you do as human beings! Your presence there as an ally will mean more to them than any of them can say…in addition to the emails you write or the lawmakers you contact, or the PTA meetings you attend to make your cis-gender privileged voice heard that it is not going to be tolerated, this epidemic of transgender suicide and murder…and your other actions that you are thinking of and planning to take.
You are thinking of them? Actions to take? Plans to do something? Someone you can maybe even smile at? Befriend?
In the Portland Area, I believe Transgender Pride March Day is June 13th. I hope to be there and intend to be, God willing. I intend to walk, with a sense of presence and dignity (a word I use very reluctantly right now as it has been wielded against me like a sharp phallic sword to rape my heart and spirit, but I use it none the less to mean a sense of presence that contains worth and significance simply because I am a human being)…I intend to hold my head high and not angled down, and my eyes moving from face to face and eye to eye rather than always staring at the space in between…
I hope to see you there, beside me…cis, trans. But if I don’t? It would mean the world to see you standing at the curb, a smile on your face and a nod in your eyes.
This has to stop…this expression of emotion that lacks the manifestation of action.
If you don’t support in word and deed, then you don’t support.
(3) Tumblr
anonymous asked:
How do you feel about Redmayne playing a trans woman?
1) I don’t know that we really need any more opinions, but since you asked..
2) Straight men hurt trans women because they’re afraid other men will think they’re gay for liking them. They think they’ll look gay because society, largely thanks to media, portrays trans women as men, and gay as less masculine and valuable. Having cis men play trans women contributes to this and puts trans women at risk. Plain and simple.
3) This is happening and nothing is going to stop it from happening, so my hope is that the producers will recognize the issue and do everything they can to mitigate the damage they’ll inevitably cause. I have friends that know Redmayne and assure me that he’s taking all these issues seriously. Obviously it would have been best if he had refused the part, but he’s no Jared Leto either.
Tangentially related, and perhaps selfishly, I’m less concerned with cis actors playing trans roles as I am with the near total lack of trans writers. I believe we’ll have a far greater impact when we are telling our own stories.
via (3) Tumblr.
A Disjointed Incomplete Meditation…
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…
The Sickness in our Souls…
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.
Ask for Password…It’s Not All Glitter and Rainbows: 6 Harmful Myths About Coming Out — Everyday Feminism
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.
How Misogyny Shows Up in the Queer Community — Everyday Feminism
How Misogyny Shows Up in the Queer Community — Everday Feminism.
Good fodder for thought…and applies to the cis-norm community in spades. I think we all have something to learn from this one.
3 Reasons Why Saying ‘Real Men Don’t Rape’ Reinforces Rape Culture — Everyday Feminism
3 Reasons Why Saying ‘Real Men Don’t Rape’ Reinforces Rape Culture — Everyday Feminism.
This is must reading. It gets to a very dangerous assumption: that only monsters or freaks commit rape.
Sadly, rape is committed by loving fathers, normal husbands, common brothers…in short, by ordinary non-monster men who think it is their right to take what they want sexually from these other-gendered objects created merely for a man’s use and pleasure.
This message underlies major sections of some theological beliefs and it is based on a complete misunderstanding of the true nature and essence of who woman is…
…this attitude is inculcated at every turn in our culture today, and sadly women internalize much of this within themselves and end up being vulnerable in ways they would not otherwise wish to be.
I like how the author lays out the issue…head over and check it out, yeah?
Dear Susan: Am I Not Loving Gays When I Tell Them the “Truth” About Their Sin?
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.
Barry Williams Makes Insensitive Comments About Bruce Jenner And ‘Going Transgender’
Barry Williams Makes Insensitive Comments About Bruce Jenner And ‘Going Transgender’.
Constance…
You will notice that I have not as of yet commented on Bruce Jenner and the news that he is grappling with gender identity issues. There are a lot of reasons why, beginning with the unfortunate context of his life in the “celebrity limelight” and running the gamut all the way down to the fact that Bruce has not made a comment yet on the record regarding the whole complex topic.
Therefore: we do not yet know what is transpiring and thus should just wait. Why wouldn’t we? Why is it so important for everyone to know?
Ahh…that brings me to the real reason I haven’t commented: I am hoping that by now you who regularly read here would be spotting the tropes, cliches and inaccuracies in the story. Such as these:
One doesn’t ever change “gender”…we are born to the gender we identify as, and pretty much nothing can change that. Based on the bell shaped curve that nearly every phenomenon of this world falls on, most people’s gender orientation and biological sex match up…but there are literally millions of people alive today, and sprinkled throughout the ages and epochs of history whose gender orientation and biological sex do not match.
Thus, to say that Bruce is “becoming a woman” is a deadly ignorant inaccuracy. If Bruce is for real, and not simply exploiting a “hot topic” in service of the celebrity status that plagues that family, then Bruce has always been a woman, and is just now becoming congruent with the fact that Bruce’s biological body and gender orientation have been at odds in a lifelong conflict…and at long last is taking the steps necessary to invoke that congruency.
Other repulsive things are being said and done, but one of the most repulsive is when people accuse Bruce of “going transgender”…such a story is behind the link that I put at the top of this post. An aging ex-celebrity made this comment in the form of a bad joke and showed several things in it:
First of all, he showed the permanence and insistence of gender orientation! Yes, the fact that he was outraged by it enough to joke about it shows the thing that I have written of many times before: the outrage of so many cis-gender people when contemplating a “gender change”. Since gender orientation doesn’t really change, the concept of body and orientation being juxtaposed is simply not acceptable as a state of being…welcome to our world!
If this idiot really did seek to transition his body, he would be buying a ticket on the train into gender dysphoria-ville, not out of it!
I say to this person: go ahead. Do it! I dare you…start dressing female, start grappling with the rejection, the ridicule, the open stares of disgust, and the troglodyte attempts at humor that testosterone-fueled people make repeatedly…and thrive.
Wait, what? You would hate that? You would find the price not worth it because instead of gaining anything you lose everything? Well, goodness gracious…isn’t that a shocker!! You just discovered that you aren’t really transgender, and you proved the permanence of gender orientation! Because truly dysphoric people do indeed walk the transition road I described above, endure the horrors I enumerated, and end up more whole as people, more at peace, and more fruitful as human beings inspite of all those bad things!
The peace and “fit” of gender orientation inside an incongruent body is such a deep and important factor in a healthy human organism that almost all of the terrible things we go thru seem as nothing compared to what we gain…if we are of stern enough mental mettle to endure the fiery trials that the cis-gender world rains down on us…driven as they are by their own horror at imagining living as the other gender with their own unchanging and unchangeable gender orientation!
But this first point, the location and persistence of gender orientation, is as nothing compared to the deeper and far more subtle inference that is on display: that being a woman is a horrible thing and a human being should be ridiculed for openly embracing one’s being if they are doing so from within a biologically male body.
I mean, think about it: since when did women have such a road in life that all they have to do is announce to a magazine that they are a woman and they immediately get a career, fame, fortune, attention, and ego gratification?
Since when did being a woman not mean making around .75 for every $1.00 a man makes in the same job? Since when did being a woman not mean that merely walking down the street alone puts her at risk of sexual assault and possibly being murdered? Since when did being a woman not mean dealing with being treated as an object of no value save what sexual pleasure she could provide and what reproductive opportunities she could grant? Since when did being a woman in our world mean any kind of advantage at all???
Clearly, the man is an insensitive and unaware buffoon, and I wouldn’t even give him the time of day normally…but he provided such a good mirror opportunity for those who are thoughtfully educating themselves about gender orientation, those who are taking their courage in hand to realize that there is no inherent morality in how we are oriented, but rather in how we live that orientation out.
What other things do you see hidden in this man’s stupidity?
Now…back to Bruce. I encourage you to read of this journey, from the most reputable sources you can find, and really listen. Listen. Listen to what Bruce says, if anything at all. Listen to the way things are reported. Listen to the spin that reporters put on things.
Pay attention to the patriarchal paradigm assumption that are foisted on this. Notice them, and draw inferences from that. Watch for the things that happen at the level of what is assumed, such as one’s status and worth as a female and one’s status and worth as a male.
Be aware of the gossip and talk surrounding you in your daily life when this topic comes up and the flaming ignorance that will abound and be celebrated…watch how that will be mostly male humans who act that way.
And then…I have no right to ask this of you, I realize, as I am transgender and thus of an inferior human caste, so I am humbly beseeching you, Cis-gender Constance…then consider maybe speaking up in the midst of this ridicule and flaming ignorance, and bringing some correction and truth and light into the situation.
I seem to remember some admonition that true religion involves defending the powerless and the alien, the widow and the orphan and the stranger…here is the perfect chance!
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly,
Charissa Grace
Pastor Looks Up In Tears. “I Had No Idea.”
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
…”and a little child shall lead them…”
Constance, I ran across this account from a blog aggregate site. I am going to post it here without much comment, other than to say yes, I am aware of the scatalogical vocabulary, and urge you to overlook it in order to access the deeper truth.
It is towering to me that there is more of the gospel expressed in the lives of hearts that are simply oriented to love, regardless of dogma, orthodoxy or persuasion.
I wonder what would happen if we all practiced this sort of love, and left the judging and convicting and convincing to the One Person in the Entire Universe Whose job it is to do those things (Mama)?
Hmmmm…
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Fuck i’m crying now
So my mother was up to her usual shit; calling me useless and entitled. Saying that I’m no longer allowed in the bathroom with a shower and I need to clean the other one by noon tomorrow morning or else keep in mind it hasn’t worked in 3 years.
I was hiding in my bedroom while my parents argued over who’s fault I was when my sister came in. She walked up to me and opened up her fist revealing a rainbow popsicle ‘best friends’ necklace. She thrust it into my hand and whispered that she wanted me to have it.
“because it’s a popsicle?” I asked
“no silly because it’s a rainbow. I know- I mean- I thought you’d like it.”
She then winked and told me that I no longer needed to worry about cleaning the bathroom because she had spent the past hour doing it for me.
This seems so petty and small until you realize that for the past two years my parents have been doing their darnest to get rid of me. My sister will admit that I’ve always been the scapegoat but since I came out it seems their attacks are more pointed.
My sister is 11. She has grown up in a homophobic home and listened to my parents bitch about “those damn gays” her entire life. A couple months ago I came out to her and told her the reason our parents have been threatening to kick me out or send me away. I explained that sometimes gay girls and gay boys are even beaten up by people, just because of who they love.
I cannot express how much her support means to me; perhaps I am not the one who’s wrong. If an 11 year old who has been taught nothing but hate, perhaps there is hope for the future.
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Then the King will say to those on His right hand, ‘Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger and you took Me in; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison and you came to Me.’
“Then the righteous will answer Him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or naked and clothe You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and come to You?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.’
Transgender kids show consistent gender identity across measures
Transgender kids show consistent gender identity across measures.
Good Morning Constance!
I am posting this link for a couple of reasons:
First, because it is educational and will help you in your continuing learning curve regarding gender orientation…it may even inform you some about your own gender orientation, and why you hold it so strongly!
I have long theorized that the intense resistance to gender variant people is at root the projection of the power-holder’s own deeply held gender orientation! Because gender is so hardwired and awareness of it so deeply entrenched, it is impossible to imagine anyone who appears one way on the exterior who is so vastly different on the inside.
In an odd sort of way, the very intensity of the resistance is the affirmation of the phenomenon! All humans are intensely and deeply oriented gender-wise! But what is becoming more and more known is that not all humans have a body whose biological assignment matches that interior orientation.
It’s actually pretty simple.
There is one other thing, though, that this article infers: just because I never said anything to you about my gender dysphoria doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist. Just because I hid it…out of fear of rejection, ostracization, accusation, and ultimately alienation as “the other”…doesn’t mean that it wasn’t there.
By the way…those fears were well founded! All of those things happened to me…sometimes it was by people who didn’t know any better. Sometimes it was by people who do. Regardless…it still happened.
Reader…no one “owes” you a justification for their orientation. You are not on the Judgement Seat, you are not the one who passes muster on this topic about anyone…or, really, on any other topic. It is not your place to make those calls.
It is your place to love God, and love your neighbor with pure religion which is caring for widows and orphans and outcasts. Oh, and if you really want to know someone? Get close enough to sample their life…taste the fruit that is there. This is the one action that Jesus sanctioned as okay per His own words.
Oh wait: I heard the objection to that one, when I was told that it was possible for me to manifest good fruit in my life (such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness faithfulness, and self control, all things against which there is no law) and still be possessed by a demon!
Seriously, that was communicated to me. The fruits of the Holy Spirit were present in my life by the power of the “transgender demon” that had possessed me! That is sort of like saying that an oak tree was bearing the fruits of an apple tree or a pear tree!
Yes…it was indeed astonishing in its twisting of logic and reason, and yes it was indeed painful that the person who said this went on to say that unless I “got delivered” from this spirit and stopped the dangerous foolishness that is in actuality my transition, the person who said this would no longer associate with me or have anything to do with me or be my friend.
After over 3 decades.
A person who was born and raised in the church and steeped in scripture, who knows full-well Jesus’ words, is showing me the ugly face of modern christendom as expressed to LGTBQ people.
Well…I recall the old old chorus “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus” which contains the verses that say “though none go with me, still I will follow” and “the cross before me, the world behind me”. I am more deeply committed to these words than any other time in my life…and I am finding joy inexpressible and peace like a river in God.
Constance, those of you who read here and are not christian are most likely shaking your heads and muttering that this is why you are not a christian! Sadly, I cannot disagree with you. This is not what it is to be a christian, abandoning people, shunning people…that is what it means to be a religious nut who loves themself more than God.
But please: do not judge God by the insanity of some of Their followers…they know not what they are doing. God is not like they are. Not one bit.
And now we are at full circle, and the true rootedness of gender orientation is on display.
Christian Constance…non-christian Constance…all valued and received and loved by me Charissa…I exhort you to do what you know in your heart is the inarguable truth in relating to human beings in your life: treat them the way you in your heart want to be treated by others, and do so as the proactive person in that transaction!
Don’t sit back and wait until someone does this for you!
Do it now…first! Do it extravagantly, passionately! Do it with undeniable vigor and gusto! Do it, dripping with passion and love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and gentleness and faithfulness and goodness and self control!
And if you fall short? M’eh! Who doesn’t fall short? Since when did the failing to achieve something obviate the goal? Willie Mayes struck out a lot. Michael Jordan missed a lot of game winning shots. John Elway led his team to a couple of bitter Super Bowl defeats. And all three athletes went on to lead their teams to glory and go down in the annals of sports history as among the greats of all-time.
Missing the mark is the best qualifier for your return to the range for more practice!
So practice the golden rule…love one another…and look for ways to affirm everyone you meet in every way you can!
Including gender orientation.
Do Justice. Love Mercy. Walk Humbly.
Charissa Grace
The Complicated Pain of Hiding Your True Colors
Why Reverse Oppression Simply Cannot Exist (No Matter What Merriam-Webster Says) — Everyday Feminism
Why Reverse Oppression Simply Cannot Exist (No Matter What Merriam-Webster Says) — Everyday Feminism.
What a great article, one that plays directly into the post I just made about Side-B and the ex-gay movement.
The point here? When you are in power it is by definition impossible to be oppressed…and what most people who have privilege do not realize??
Being treated mean does NOT equal being oppressed.
Period…period. Oppression is a systematic squelching of all hope, light and life…and yeah, it is indeed mean…but meanness is not oppression in and of itself.
Thoughtfully consider the points here…and then go out, and give up some power!
“When Side B is the New Ex-Gay”
“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
7 Reasons the Church Should Be Afraid NOT to Affirm LGBTQ
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
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
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
Suicide Strikes Again
Constance…this appeared on my Facebook feed…I am distraught.
***********************************************************************************
Leelah was a 17yo #trans girl who just committed suicide. Rejected by her Christian parents. Put through reparative therapy. Her suicide note is below.
(Yes, it’s a verified real story. This post is from the City Councilman. Leelah is misgendered in news reports and images say “beloved son.” Love your kids, no matter who they are.)
Some very sad news to share.
Yesterday, a 17-year old committed suicide by jumping in front of a semi on I-71 near the South Lebanon exit.
It has come to light that this person likely committed suicide because she was transgender.
While Cincinnati led the country this past year as the first city in the mid-west to include transgender inclusive health benefits and we have included gender identity or expression as a protected class for many years….the truth is….it is still extremely difficult to be a transgender young person in this country.
We have to do better.
By reading her letter, Leelah makes it clear she wants her death to, in some way, help “trans civil rights movements.”
Please join me in making a donation (investment in our trans kids) right now to TransOhio.
Invest by clicking here: http://www.transohio.org
SUICIDE NOTE
If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.
Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in… because I’m transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally “boyish” things to try to fit in.
When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.
My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.
When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.
I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.
So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.
At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week.
After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.
That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please.
Goodbye,
(Leelah) Josh Alcorn
A 9-year-old girl gave this heartfelt letter to her teacher after he came out as gay · PinkNews
A 9-year-old girl gave this heartfelt letter to her teacher after he came out as gay · PinkNews.
Okay, that was fast, God!!
11 Ways 2014 Was the Biggest Year in Transgender History | Rolling Stone
11 Ways 2014 Was the Biggest Year in Transgender History | Rolling Stone.
Good Morning Constance…
I ran across this article this morning, and of course was interested to read of this historical recounting of an amazing year of awareness growing…
…and yet, somehow, I found it strangely disconnected from my own life. In the midst of these events, I swam in my own seas of trial, toil, sorrow and joy.
My own year:
In early January, I went to my therapist dressed as myself…outside in public. It terrified me and I thought I would die of fear. When I walked into her office, she cried in joy. Her tears are jewels in my memory.
In late January I had my ears pierced, and though it hurt like crazy, I was ecstatic. A week later, I was derisively interrogated by subordinates at work “what the F**k had I done with my ears?”. That particular brand of self-loathing, shame, fear and anger gave me its first sip…it is not intoxicating. It is hell.
In February, I began HRT…and the horror fires banked so long in forges that rival Mordor in despair began to diminish, and then extinguish, and streams of mercy clear and relief substantial coursed through my veins…and who I am began to blossom and bloom…I was well named at birth, if it is considered what that sort of thing is destined to do…
In April, I had more experiences at work that were distressing. I also joined my poetry group, and that cadre of people who have only ever known me as myself are such salt of the earth wonders, who simply know me as Charissa, the odd poetess. One beautiful woman in particular has taken me under her wing…and on that first fearful night, she looked at me with open face and clear eyes.
In Spring and summer, I sold my truck and used the proceeds to fund my transition…of this I can only refer you to those months.
In summer a relationship that is very significant to me began to be built, the first one, in fact, as me Charissa. It is a very simple one in its arc and scope…it is very complex in that it is unfolding from the end to the beginning, and someday we shall arrive where we are meant to begin. It is encumbered with obstacles, none insurmountable but all onerous…distance, time, and prejudice rooted in ignorance and fed by distrust are outside forces that have so far driven us on with sails full before those winds, and we have sailed to many wondrous shores…may there ever be another, DDH…ever be another until the Last.
And in the autumn, I took my own journey down The Green Mile that most of my sisters walk…I was murdered professionally, guilty of the crime of becoming myself and throwing off the chains of privilege and white male power and position.
This is the ultimate crime in our patriarchy.
A human being, born biologically as an XY chromosome-assigned being, and granted all the accompanying privileges, rights and riches, power and position, initiated into the ways of “men” and present in their spaces…this human considers all that as utter futility compared to the all surpassing richness of being myself and authentic…and I am unabashedly thrilled to be myself…I openly declare being a woman to be the better destiny and life.
For those crimes I had to die. I have been put in my place, and my tale of woe would be recognized by any woman anywhere who sought to be herself in places she was not permitted to be.
Since that moment life is full of unbecoming…unwrapping, unraveling…the chrysalis is split and the butterfly within is terrified as its house and covering is torn asunder…only the future will inform her she can fly while she writhes in the clutches of the threatening lonely present.
Abandoned by friends, neglected by loved ones, showered by Mama, constantly encouraged by one…the heart of my heart and constant support and nearly my life itself…
…that is the year in review for me. A year of portent. Perhaps the overall macro view contrasted with the small view of this flea will give you some perspective in the issues we face that cis-gender people take for granted.
May 2015 contain triumph to match the certain tears…may there be joy enough to overcome my fears…and may I find somehow the grace to continue on, in the midst of lonely silence and neglect and need, laying aside my own selfish point of view and greed to feed and care for myself…may I be a vessel poured out over and over again, trusting Mama to fill me full and looking never to others.
Blessings to you Constance…and deepest heart gratitude that you are reading here this day. Your support has been so precious and invaluable.
Charissa Grace…a butterfly emerging and persistent.
California Department of Education Lies, Does Not Investigate LGBTQ Bullying
I cannot even begin to speak of how I feel after reading this. Thank yous to Lori for finding her voice to write about what I felt frozen by.
If you read this, and then go on business as usual, you need to realize: there may be someone in your circle of influence who is either bullying or bullied.
Your involvement could make all the difference.
We feel the tragic nature of these sorts of things because someone unique, utterly precious and beyond priceless has been snuffed out. But the same principle holds the other way: you…you yourself are unique, and have a power and a voice that impacts the universe.
But only if you use it. If you don’t, well we all know the black tide that seeks to erode everything and pull it into itself and its seething mass of hurt and horror.
Ronin Shimizu
Like my son, Ronin Shimizu was a young boy living in California. He was a cheerleader, like my son hopes to be one day. Ronin is described as positive and happy, like my son is often described. He endured bullying because he liked something that some people is “only for girls.” Sadly, my son knows exactly how that feels.
Last week, 12-year-old Ronin decided to end the bullying by ending his life.
I worry every day that my son will have this too in common with Ronin. Because the group of kids like Ronin and my son have the highest rate of suicide attempts in the world.
The articles about Ronin’s death report that in the years leading up to his suicide, Ronin’s parents made multiple complaints to his school about the homophobic and gender-based bullying their son was experiencing. The school’s response was inadequate and the bullying…
View original post 637 more words
Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson
Just Because He Breathes: Learning to Truly Love Our Gay Son | Linda Robertson.
Crying so hard that it took this sacrifice: this child sacrifice in order for
these pitiable people to realize something about God…
He does not ever require us to sacrifice our children to Him, because He has already given Jesus to us who chose to be our sacrifice of love.
Listen…make it really easy: you are not God. Thus, your one and only job here in the earth is to Love Them, Love your neighbor, and be kind. Believe it or not, God really can get thru to people…way better than you can.
And pray that it doesn’t take something like this for you to see clearly.
And the world didn’t end…
Oh Constance…here is the faith of a father who is walking into a short term future informed by a long term past expressed in his love-filled present.
And the world didn’t end. Thank God.
For all too often, parents so wrong-heartedly put forth a defense of what they sincerely believe is God’s total and current heart towards people like this man’s son, and people like this man…and that is when the world does end! For the one who has been gut punched, heart-hammered by smashes and blows rendered by them that have been given and appointed to love the ones in their life no matter what is or isn’t…too often the world does indeed end, tragically, as they bereft of love and hope take their own life…
…and that is the end of the world. At least for them…not to mention the trauma to every single soul connected to them.
Listen: Trust Lady Grace (the Holy Spirit). She is mighty, and persuasive and good at Her job. If She could draw to Herself the rascals She has, She can rescue anyone. In due time, all things come round.
And as you trust Her, you just might be surprised! Perhaps it is you who is changed. Perhaps it is you whose heart is transformed, and made large like the Grinch on Christmas Eve. And perhaps there is someone in your life that your kindness and gentle loving acceptance has granted the courage and strength to go on.
In my own ways, I am wrestling with issues as a person and a parent too. I was so struck by the feelings the man had as he tried to share his loving heart and felt so clumsy and awkward, and how he felt a bit rebuffed and yet stayed the course…and love won out. I was encouraged.
So…in the mean time. Just. Love. Let the Holy Spirit comment, if comment is needed. It is going to be a lot more effective than anything any of us could say anyway!
Love, Charissa.
***** ***** *****
Reddit user HeMeYou was left “overwhelmed” by advice from online strangers after accidentally discovering his son might be gay.
The 38-year-old father posed the question to Reddit after finding Google searches on his son’s iPad suggesting he wanted to come out.
He said: “I found out my 13 y/o son is gay… He hasn’t told me, but I want to support him. What can I do?”
I’m 38, and a single dad to my 13 year old son, 14 in four months. The other day I asked my son if I could borrow his iPad and he gave it to me.
After my first attempt at Google searching something I noticed that he forgot to delete his history as a lot of the search terms were along the lines of “I’m gay what now?” etc…
I love him regardless of which gender he loves, in fact when I was slightly older than him I had a few flings with guys, which he doesn’t know about, so I am 100% supportive.
He has seemed slightly down recently, as in, he isn’t as cheerful as he once was, and I desperately want to tell him that I love him regardless of which sexuality he is.
What are my options? Should I wait for him to tell me? Or should I make a few hints at it?
I’m worried that if I don’t hint at it, that he will be worried about something that he really doesn’t have to be worried about… if that makes sense.
Thanks.Shortly after, he received a flood of supportive messages, with many users offering advice based on their own experiences.
One user posted: “Google ‘how to tell my son I will love and support him no matter what’ and leave it in his search history.”
Another said: “Let him come out on his own terms, just make sure he knows that you’ll support him and you don’t have a problem with it.”
The father, who wished to remain anonymous, told Buzzfeed the response to his post was “overwhelmingly helpful and kind.”
A few days later, HeMeYou posted an update on what he ended up doing:
I started off with talking about general media with him, for instance I mentioned how awesome it was that Tim Cook (CEO of Apple) came out as being gay and I asked him what he thought about it and I was completely expecting him to give a typical teenager response like “yeah.. its good” or something like that but he actually gave me a detailed response which I absolutely loved because for the first time in a good while I’ve actually held a conversation with my son that felt really… rewarding.
I also wanted to talk to him about how I’ve noticed that he’s not been acting as cheerful as he usually has and I sort of gave the cliche spiel of “I love you no matter what and I just want to see you be happy” but I didn’t get much of a response that time apart from “yeah I know..”
The next day as I picked him up from school I thought I’d ask him about any crushes he has, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t say a gender when I asked him, so instead of ‘he’ or ‘she’ I used ‘they’ etc.. Here is that conversation as I remember it…
Me: So, do you have a crush on anyone?
Son: Uhm… no..m..maybe..
Me: Ohhh so who is the lucky person?
At this point he sort of looked at me slightly confused, I’m not 100% sure why, but I’m assuming it is because I said “lucky person” rather than “lucky girl”.
Son: Just someone from my french class…
Me: Oh yeah… so what do you like about them?
Son: Just.. stuff..
Me: Okay.. but.. like what?
Son: I donno they’re just kinda funny I guess…At this point I dropped the conversation but just before I did I told him “Well, whoever it is, they should be so lucky to have you as a boyfriend..” and while I didn’t see it, I certainly felt as though he was rolling his eyes at my cheesy comments.
At the dinner table the same day, while we were eating we had a couple minutes of silence, not much was heard apart from the cutlery and my son finally said “I actually wanted to tell you something in the car, but I was afraid you’d get in an accident..”
I looked up from my plate and looked at him straight in the eyes… I could see he was thinking about something and all I could think of was “OMG this is it…”
He said “Dad..” with a couple seconds of silence “..I’m gay”.
I looked at him and couldn’t help myself from smiling, and I told him “____, you know I love you so much… right?” and I got up and gave him a huge hug.
He even started to cry on my shoulder and because of that I couldn’t help myself but shed a couple tears.
Concluding his post, he said: “After dinner and after he finished his homework we both lay in our pyjamas on the sofa, while I was watching the Cooking Channel and he was playing on his iPad.
“I had my arm around him and he was leaning his head on my chest, and all I could think of was that I’m the happiest father on earth right now.”
-cries-
BEST F**KING FATHER
Under the Surface
I never scuba dive.
I’m afraid of those sharks,
great white sharks
(I could never figure out what was so great about them).
I think what they mean
is big white sharks.
and they aren’t even really white!
(why do we call things white that aren’t even?).
Their teeth are white though,
white razors running
from snout to throat and down
(I think they chew their way thru the water).
Besides, I am in enough danger (on land)
from things called great (that aren’t)
from things called white (that are just pale fish belly dead)
from things with teeth (that are hungry for blood).
Worthless…on Transgender Remembrance Day
Constance, here is the sad truth: if I was murdered for being trans, I would be blamed, othered, misgendered in my death, and then forgotten as a sad cautionary tale of someone who went cray-cray…and once again the epidemic of hateful absolutely vile demonic murder would continue unchecked by my death any more than the tsunamis are checked by lil old seawalls along the oceanfront.
It is not a joke. It is not just me being shrill.
It is pure unadulterated evil. Killing someone because they do not conform to societal norms.
The post below is my contribution to Transgender Remembrance Day…the blunt and brutal fact that I am worth about as much to towns, communities and society as the dog crap in the street that needs to be cleaned up and disposed of with laws discussed to control the dogs.
Keep on fiddling, Nero…keep on fiddling. You are sawing your own neck in two.
Excerpted from a larger article:
Remembering Us When We’re Gone, Ignoring Us While We’re Here: Trans Women Deserve More
Posted by Morgan Collado on November 18, 2014 at 7:00am PSTThere’s an interesting phenomenon that I’ve witnessed over the past few years. The names of trans women of color will be in the mouths of the queer community after they’ve been murdered, but support for us while we are still alive is sporadic at best. Trans women are pushed out of queer spaces by cis people, dfab genderqueers, and trans men, just to name a few. Women’s spaces are frequently hostile to us because we aren’t “real women” but trans men almost always get a free pass. And I’ve seen more than one cis queer say that trans women are “appropriating” the gay rights movement, totally ignorant of the fact that we started the damn thing. I have seen more than one cis queer say that we have nothing in common with them, that our issues are completely unrelated. We have a hard time finding dates, finding support, finding community. And when we dare to call people out for their transmisogyny, we are labeled crazy, hysterical, divisive. I have been called Austin “queer scene’s” number one enemy. All for daring to share my thoughts on the world around me.
Trans Day of Remembrance is filled to the brim with the names of murdered Black and brown trans women, but is a single evening of remembering enough? And what does it mean that TDoR doesn’t explicitly talk about race and is often dominated by white people? Here in Austin there’s this tradition of calling the names of the dead and then having an audience member sit in a chair that represents where the dead trans woman would sit. The seats are always filled with white people and non-trans women. What do our deaths mean when our bodies, our lives, the physical space we take up, is appropriated by white folks? How can I mourn for my sisters when the space set up for that mourning is so thoroughly colonized? And how can I even see hope of living a full life when I don’t see myself reflected in what is supposed to be my community?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to honor those women who came before us, those women murdered by colonial patriarchy. But it seems like more often than not, the queer community at large is content with just remembering. We only hear about trans women after their deaths. And even our deaths are not our own. A week doesn’t go by without a white queer citing the deaths of trans women of color as the evidence of how oppressed they are. These stats are often used in service of their own assimilation; meanwhile, they’re happy to leave us out in the cold. We don’t even have dignity in death, nor the ability to decide what it will mean for us.
Support for trans women dwindles when we are still alive. Nowhere is this clearer than in fundraisers run by and for trans women. There have been some success stories, but they always seem to be few and far between. More often than not, a trans woman’s fundraiser will get a few signal boosts, maybe a couple of dollars and then languish. Meanwhile, trans men’s fundraisers for transition related care often get fully funded. This funding disparity is also clear institutionally, where organizations that focus on the concerns and issues of trans women of color get a miniscule amount of all the money from LGBTQ foundations. This is especially true in the South, where LGBT organizations only get 3-4% of domestic LGBT funding. Again, cis, white, rich institutions are quick to use our murders in their statistics then turn around and spend their money on organizations that look like them: cis, white, and rich. Organizations that push for assimilation.
Obviously financial support isn’t the be all end all action to support trans women of color, but it certainly doesn’t hurt. And the fact that it’s a struggle for trans women to acquire financial assistance is symptomatic of our society’s priorities. It points to who is valuable and who is disposable. At the bottom of this article is a list of fundraisers and organizations for trans women that I would strongly encourage you to support. If you’re not a trans woman and you’re reading this, think long and hard about the ways that you’re supporting trans women in your community. Do you see trans women in public community spaces? How are your actions pushing them out? Don’t think that just giving money nullifies your collusion in transmisogyny. Financial support is important but it is not the only step. As we honor the memory of those girls who have been murdered, ask how you’re helping the living.
Bleeding Light and Memory: On Transgender Remembrance Day
Here is my first poem written regarding this thing called Transgender Remembrance Day. I wrote it last year on this day. It is located here:
Bleeding Light and Memory (Without Images for Structure)
I present it to you again today…and it has grown, shrunk, matured and gained its presence a bit.
In other words I edited it.
Please…read it and let the reality of it hit your heart with the tattoo needle and not the jester’s feather. Please be changed…how can we live if you won’t unbend, unfold and become? I am right there with you Constance, wings straining for every weft of breeze, sails hoisted and praying for that puff divine and transformative…
Love, Charissa
***** ***** ***** ***** *****
Bleeding Light and Memory (2014 version)
When light struck my soul I blazed fierce and exultant!
Into awareness, I bled joy so radiant just like the horizon
bleeds sunlight at dawn. I gazed in the gawky glass of exultation
(and I in my youth seeing darkly thru that glass)
I knew myself and was gaudiloquent and I was so glad and full,
I was so wonder-full.
Til it rained, titters fell tinkling down on heart-tin, then rebukes raging,
lashing at my roof and thrumming and drumming til I saw no more thru that
bright young glass darkly, but dull thru a lonely storm dimly and starkly
and everything eerie and glowing in green, and radioactive remarks so redactive
and careless cerulean comment, alas! I came to know what I was
and was not and I melted misshapen and crippled.
Then came the days long and same and repetitive,
passing by people of 2 kinds that easily pass, they belong
but they never see beyond, they never see inside the rose.
So I plucked throbbing buds, thorn blood price cheap and held them out
from my side of that dark glass wet with stormy tears, washy with rivers
of arrogant vain assumed presence attributing value and worth.
Life ground me down as it moved without mercy, a glacier inexorable
grinding in glances so cold and so frozen, that flow moving over
the dark silent boulders of being…I saw bones strewn round me
like gruesome pick-up sticks, cast-offs from careless hands,
players who tired of children’s games, children’s cruel nicknames,
grown weary they tore out their hearts with bare hands mad with grief
but the world grinding by didn’t care.
Until at last long from those dizzy heights brilliant awareness burst over me,
bleeding in fullness and in terror tinklings, thrumming and cold and that
startling certain blue clarity…I finally remembered who I am, and know
finally what I am, that I am, and my long lament “alas” nevermore uttered!
For I am become me…at last, me…a lass.
That’s me in a nutshell, my story and journey transgender…but what about you?
Will you take time to think and remember? Will you find mercy today?
Will you find the care? Will you go gently with us into our long night,
will you rage, rage with us gentle and bless now the living of the light
that’s straining to dawn bright and final in blazing clear beauty?
You too are dual natured, corrupt and dying and incorrupt rising!
We share one grim struggle, together the dead and together alive
in one deadly bold dual to live. You….are US. and we are you…
but you without arms, without eyes, without mouths
we scream loud and cry for release! We cry out
for the midwives of mercy to meet us and make us
so beautiful for situation at last and delivered of our awful charge.
OPEN YOUR EYES AND EARS FOR US.
See us…and hear us…don’t fear us, don’t fear to see yourself,
come stare down your own stormy floods, sit and listen!
Don’t be afraid to hear us, we’re the voice of the echoes you hear
in your own fearful nightmares of being, oh Daughters of Pharaoh!
Reach down and lift us up out of the reeds and mud! Because of you
a whole nation was freed, and we too are Eve’s sons and the daughters of Adam,
but trapped and acutely aware we are helpless! Too often we’ve fallen
to dread hands and dead eyes of no grace and no mercy
and no compassionate symmetry!
Today…here…
Light strikes in blacksmith blows,
soul sparks chip off and away on this day…
I intention…remember
my own radiant flood
bleeding light and day’s promise,
remember the resonant thunder,
remember the frowning floods
the gushing gouts
and the othering stares
and the brutal don’t cares
of long years I walked
in the country of lost men
and longing despair…
I remember the pangs and the waves and the lurching
of labor as I, pregnant with my own measureless mystery
and full of such knowing began to emerge and break forth
deep-touched forever warded by Grace, and kept safe
from that pit which has tripped far too many and eaten them,
chewed them like Goya’s devourer,
Zeus eating every last child in his madness and horror…
incarnate in this patriarchy that rounds us up
into its abattoir death camps like cattle
and herds us into chutes and charnal house horrors
of slaughter and blood-spattered baptism.
(let their fate haunt you
and give you holy hush
and give you sacred silence).
Dare. Look. Feel.
I will too, and somewhere
we will fight off those demons
compelling and fell
that haunt us and cause us
to rave and destroy…
Then we shall be set free to fly again
all together in one flock of birds
of all feathers and all calls
become One Glad Song!
We will dare to fly off
to the sun and beyond
where our song will bleed joy
and rain down on the earth
to bring healing and hope
home in Love…
forever…
together…
we’ll
Bleed
Radiant
Light.
Remembering What Never Was (Transgender Remembrance Day 2014)
Constance…I got fed up this year…well meaning cis-gendered people who yesterday and today started talking about remembering “all the poor dead transgendered people”…not because I do not think we should! God no! But I got fed up, because since my first one, last year, it seems to me that things have gotten worse and not better in terms of violent assaults, rapes and murders of transgender people.
This poem is my blunt confrontation of that fact, attitude, bent of being. It is me speaking in the voice of the dead.
*** *** *** *** ***
my face was bashed in,
smooth creamy skin
(lasered free of wiry black blunt hair)
only to be turned
purple ugly and pug,
battered blue
and then torn,
just a rug
yanked out from
under my life
and I
falling
desperately
flailing, then
dying there
on the dark brown
hardwood oak floor.
But that’s not good enough
(actually, not bad enough),
right?
There are penalties
for assuming the right to be,
for breathing while transgender…
so you grabbed that
red rusty fire extinguisher
from the dull chrome bracket
over my old pale green and white
deluxe Glenwood gas stove
(the one I used when
I made your favorite
red gravy and mushrooms
over pasta with cheese
and you smiled and said
I was a good woman,
but that was before
you ate your fill
and got bored).
and then you broke
my face against it,
pulped my nose and
broke my dead jaws
as you jammed the blunt end
down my slack throat
and I already
dead and already
flown away
but that’s not good enough
(actually, not bad enough),
right?
To let a transgirl
have a face
in her transgressive act
of saying I Am, well,
as the Dude says
(regal in all his privileged glory)
“This aggression will not stand, man!”
cus me, well
I am aggressive,
I am transgressive,
I dared to live,
I dared to cry
I dared to feel and
I dared to fly
I dared…
and died.
my face…bashed
my body…slashed
torn, stabbed and then
raped to make sure
I never rise from the grave,
my flesh thrown in the dumpster
with the rest of the trash
dead or alive,
and then set on fire.
Hey,
I don’t want you to worry though!
Because everything is AOK,
because Remembrance Day…
because remembrance day,
but how do you re-member me
after I am chopped to pieces
for the heresy of seeking
integration?
My name,
recited solemnly,
a legerdemain of modern time and place
masquerading as elegy and tribute to
trans-trouble, torches smoking,
choking and dead.
This mummery murmers
name by name
to appease the lurking beast inside
(such civilized animals)
and I see sage cis-heads
nod slow and I think
of bobble-heads bought
with gender currency and guilt,
bought with blood money
from gory grisly gruesome chests
passed down father to son
since Cain.
Tomorrow,
you’ll breathe deep,
sigh and toss salt
over your left shoulder
while forking off the evil eye
with your left hand
stabbing like a striking snake
against trans-mystery and tragedy.
And then you will fix your gaze
high on horizons, not even
glancing in gutters where we lay,
still and bleeding in our becoming
and desperate to re-member,
every day, especially those
days where you just
want to forget.
A Note To My Kid: Do Unto Others: An Open Letter from Violet About Her Gender Nonconforming Child
A Note To My Kid: Do Unto Others: An Open Letter from Violet About Her Gender Nonconforming Child.
Best Quote Ever: “My love is stronger than your hate.”
Corollary: Mama’s Love is stronger than death.
To The PTA Moms at My Son’s School
Constance, you have heard me speak of Lori Duron before, seen my reblogs of a few of her posts…well, I am back reblogging (again)! I just had to!
Why? Because she basically wrote the model post for how to refute your haters/detractors/opponents/ignorant people very free with feedback/etc. Written with intensity and self control, scintillating and uncompromising without resulting to the tactics of fear or manipulation or ad hominem attack, she shows us all how to defend without defaming. I was honored as I read it.
Let’s all learn from Lori, and then take our courage in hand and refuse to let haters and ignorance-imbibers rule the day.
Charissa
Last week I published a blog post about things said during a PTA meeting I attended at my youngest son’s school. I wanted to shine a light on the homophobic, transphobic, insensitive, hateful and hurtful things that some moms said during the meeting and show that as far as we have come in LGBTQ acceptance and equality, there is still much work to be done. And sometimes that work needs to be done in heavy doses at places much closer to home than we’d like.
Almost immediately, PTA moms from our school started commenting, messaging and reacting viscerally on social media.
As they did, I stared at the PTA tagline: Every child, One voice. I’m not convinced that our PTA as a whole cares about every child and some of the voices I heard that night are not voices I want speaking on behalf of my child. That being said…
View original post 1,491 more words
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian
When Did Girls Start Wearing Pink? | Arts & Culture | Smithsonian.
Constance, I just had to press this for you…a smart and informative article on the “genderfication” of the clothes. Do yourself a favor and read this…and then make the obvious leap of insight…realizing “hey…so if clothes color has been dictated by fashion, tradition, and social norm, what other aspects of gender have been dictated as well?”
Here is my current conclusion:
The awareness of gender, and who someone is seems to me to be inherent with how someone is formed in utero. Everyone has a gender awareness and identity, even if it is uncertainty. That much is there pretty much from the start.
But the expression of gender…now that is almost purely a function of societal and cultural dictates and is not at all inherent or written in stone.
Wow, that really helps us…I mean, think about how much energy it takes to be all up in everyone’s business all the time, policing them and making sure that they are conforming to your interpretation of things. If it is all just a function of your epoc, why then there is no ultimate defense you need to make to fend of the certain doom of Ragnarok the instant that you choose to simply take logs out of your own eye and leave the sawdust in other people’s eyes alone.
The Courageous Debi Jackson
Constance, I am posting here a speech given by Debi Jackson…it speaks for itself very well. Debi is a woman who loves God, loves people, and has a transgender daughter whom she is championing in a way that I am totally certain makes Mama proud.
Please check it out and let your heart be encouraged that hate can never ever conquer.
Debi…from me my deepest thank you’s and admirations for making a way for your child.
If only…if only…
Love, Charissa
10 Things You’re Actually Saying When You Ignore Someone’s Gender Pronouns — Everyday Feminism
10 Things You’re Actually Saying When You Ignore Someone’s Gender Pronouns — Everyday Feminism.
Constance…immediately pass this on to every stubborn person who is important to you. It is that good, and it does give the basic and true message communicated by those who refuse to use proper pronouns.
I know in my life? So unfortunate, but the people that I love, was willing to sacrifice for and even die a bit for, well, they did not feel the same way about me and they engaged in terrible acts of betrayal.
So, weirdly, it set me free.
Now? Well, thanks to them, and my wonderful horrible very own haters who come as dementors, I have toughened up…and here is the truth:
When you gender-shame me with improper pronouns and hate filled speech, you identify yourself as a hater, and make the whole thing easy for me. I can save my love and effort for those who are engaged and loving.
“But wait!!” I can hear the haters right now. “Wait! You have to love your enemies and be kind to those who persecute you!” Well hater…I will after you do. You stop showing up here spewing your crap, and show me how to love…and in my case, I am not even your enemy and have never done a thing to you, have never even met you! So you have the easy down hill…you simply be nice and love me…and then I will think about it.
“But what can I do to love you??” asks the hater…
Use the proper pronouns. We’ll start there.
Charissa
Fear. Pain. Doubt. Shaking Hands. Voice Trembling…STARTING!
“Start now. Start where you are. Start with fear. Start with pain. Start with doubt. Start with hands shaking. Start with voice trembling but start. Start and don’t stop. Start where you are, with what you have. Just … start.”
| — | Ijeoma Umebinyuo |
Coming Out – Yes, it still does matter – LGBTQ Nation
Coming Out – Yes, it still does matter – LGBTQ Nation.
Constance…how ironic that it is “Coming Out Day” today…I post a really great article about it and while it deals with the topic of sexual orientation and being public about that, it translates perfectly over to gender orientation as well.
Salient words for me here (I substituted transgender for gay):
“Truthfully, most people believe that just saying the words “I’m transgender” means you’ve come out. In a sense it does, however, the real coming out, in my opinion, is when you look at that reflection you see in the mirror and say “I’m Transgender” and you don’t look away in shame – that’s when you’ve come out.
When you can accept yourself and love who you are and understand that the world can be cold and lonely and ignorant and intolerant – and you can still smile at your own reflection – you’ve come out.”
I have a long road ahead of me, God willing…one that I have just begun to scratch the surface of the joys and sorrows waiting.
But something is different: joys and sorrows are old acquaintences, especially the sorrows, and I walked with them in hollowness and null, void. Oh yes, They were there, are there…but:
What is different is me. Me. I am here now, and perhaps that will tip the balance in my favor at last.
“I’m skert Mama!!”
“I got this too, Baby…I got this too.”
Six Months Later
OMG…Constance, I am hunting back thru the archives at Gracenotes, and I just found something I wrote back in May that would have been PERFECT for last Friday when I had that 4 hour ordeal…I am excerpting it here for you…
Hi Constance…
…a quick note this morning to comment on some thing on my heart.
I know a lot of people over the years who are very drawn to me because I am open about the relationship Father, Jesus and Lady Grace have forged with me. They get all the credit, for this is true: there is none righteous, not one who has even sought after God! That means that if you are in relationship with Them, it is Their doing, and none of your own, save the assent of your will.
And in the openness of our relationship, these individuals find a self-affirmation of their own faith, relationship, etc.
But here is the kicker: I am also open about my struggles, my failures and flaws. I put on no religious airs, and when They expose any that have crept in quietly when pride was crooning its deadly lullaby, I renounce those pretentions as quick as I can. I try to boast in my weakness, and not in my strength, as Father promises that the Strength of Jesus is made perfect in my weakness.
So…it is just a matter of time before the people who are drawn to me are repelled by my lack of performance, my lack of keeping up the appearance and doing the things that signal that I am “orthodox”, saying the things that signal I am “safe”, and practicing the things that signal I am “one of us”. Soon, there are judgements, accusations, demands that I toe the line and not use my freedom to “make them stumble”.
Huh? I thought Paul was talking about someone who was weak in conscience and in their relationship, who might fall away completely from the life of someone strong in the faith, so the strong one should bear with the weak one patiently. These people twist that word, are strong in their conscience and faith, and boast that nothing could pull them away.
No…they are simply using faith words to try to keep me in the christian gulag that they run. And, as I know in my deepest knower that my Hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ Blood and Righteousness, and that all other ground is sinking sand, I regretfully, but purposefully ignore them, and thus end up branded a heretic.
You know the old maxim: if you don’t tick like I tick, you’re a heretic!
So…that wouldn’t be so bad in itself…in many ways we are known by our enemies as much as our friends.
…
Dearest Christendom dweller…you who sits back and reflexively filters every word thru your fruit detector lenses and doctrinal code breakers, and then marks red lines in your mind all over everything that doesn’t match up with your current understanding of the magisterial magnificent word of God…you will not like me when I tell you that you are in greater deception than the ones you judge!
You are in greater judgement than the ones you have consigned to your “love” (the affectations of behaviour that you manifest towards those you dislike or disapprove of or judge but know that they “need to know Jesus” so you will essentially brown-nose them into the kingdom)!!
Oh, oh how my heart longs for the day when we would take our eyes off each other, quit inspecting each other’s fruit as if we are Jesus, and simply open our hearts in joy and allow Perfect Love to fill us…to overflowing…and eventually to flooding the lives of those around us.
Constance…it is so simple and pure, really…just be kind…just do justice…just love mercy…just show compassion always…just let the abundant exceedingly great and abounding Grace make a “Grace-mess” everywhere.
…
Sorry Constance…that has been brewing in me for a good while. Some email comments, and some other things I had to write out of my heart so they wouldn’t fester.
Your regularly scheduled mewlings will commence after She feeds me this morning! 🙂
Love always, with the Magnificent Love of Father shown in Jesus and revealed by Lady Grace…
Charissa Grace, the glad, golden and grateful (and sometimes defiant) daughter of Them
Whooaa…can you believe that I am sometimes defiant?? Moi??? giggles
well…it is not uncommon for me to be ahead of myself a half a year or more!!
Do justice
Love mercy
Walk humbly
Charissa
Never Again
Constance, I want to write here my commitment to myself and to you, and also state ahead of time that I recognize the result of this commitment will be quite a bit of ostracization from many people who call themselves Christians, but want to use that name to police me and my life decisions.
First of all, let me state that I am not removing myself from the scope and majesty of the wonderful word of God. When read and understood properly, it is a document of collected writings that show a God of love and advocate a relational ethic, not a legal ethic or a behavioral ethic. Right standing with God is found in right relationship! Not right deeds or right thinking (though each will likely result when you focus on maintaining a whole relationship first).
Given the pre-eminence of my commitment to this relational ethic, I am fair game for being called into account for anything that violates this ethic…things like committing adultery, committing murder, stealing, cheating, assaulting another physically or verbally, harboring hatred in my heart, and other things such as that. See the thing in common? All of them involve a relational breech with either myself, my neighbor, or God.
But:
BUT:
I am no longer going to subject myself to the inquisitions that I previously felt I owed anyone who wanted to “correct me” or “express their concerns” to me about who and what I am. For the record: there is nothing in the Bible that is prescriptive on the subject of being transgender, and there is less than that on the subject of whether or not a transgender person should pursue transition.
Therefore, anything beyond genuine questions seeking to ascertain what I face in order to stand with me and help my life to glorify God is off limits. I am not going there again.
Here is why:
In my recent encounter with a man that I have known for about 25 years, I spent 4 hours of my life in the attempt to reach this individual’s heart. Truth is? I never had a chance. He listened to me about an hour and a half, with a few questions, and then began to interject with a list of “concerns” which he had written before he even heard my story! He began by saying that he might (might!) modify what he had written if he had heard my story first…but since he was soo upset, he felt justified in going ahead.
He then proceeded to list for me several concerns that ranged from things that simply were not true factually about what being transgender is, all the way to accusations that I was under the influence of a demonic spirit!
He thinks that transgender people are victims of the fall (we all are victims of the fall…whether or not being transgender is a direct result of the fall or not is moot, as the Bible simply is silent on the topic). He also thinks that transgender people are bound by the words of Jesus that we “take up our cross and follow Him”…meaning that verse prohibits us from pursuing technological help and remedy which is readily available and so swiftly brings about such immediate change emotionally and spiritually, and is documented in so many places and in so many ways.
(Constance, I am very capable of nuking this proof-texting rape of these words, if you are interested, please let’s pursue that in the comments or via email, but trust me, it is not about transition specifically!).
Clearly, this man had seized upon this verse and wrenched it to fit his preconceived judgement that transition should not be undertaken…an opinion of his, not a biblically given command. He did not think it was wrong for someone born with a hole in their heart to seek surgical repair, or someone born with a cleft palate to seek surgical repair, or any other number of examples…just transition! he was intractable in this opinion, and I was considered by him to be indulging the flesh.
Next, he told me that I was under the influence of a spirit of deception that he called “the impostor”, and that this spirit opposed my becoming who God wanted me to be (which was code for him saying I was not becoming who he wants me to be). When I asked him if he thought I was bearing more fruit in my life in the last year than he had seen before, he affirmed that this was noticeably so, and so I then pointed out that it seemed to me the impostor was doing a pretty counter-productive job, as I was becoming more, and not less like Jesus…reminded me of the Pharisees who accused Jesus of casting out demons by demonic power!!
Then he told me that I was going to lose out on the blessing of being a patriarch of my family (nope, didn’t touch this…it would have been like telling a fish that it is in the water).
Next I was informed that he had never been so devastated since he was divorced from his first wife and that marriage totally fell apart…that he was just barely more devastated by that than he was by my decision to transition! When I asked him how many times we have had dinner together in 25 years, he answered none. When I asked him if we had ever done anything…anything socially together, he said no, never. When I asked him if he had ever come to my house, reached out to me when my father died, or when my children experienced growing pains, when I was injured and couldn’t do chores, he said no. When I asked if he agreed that we had not truly been a part of each others’ lives with the exception of the occasional church activity and our seeing each other at work where we casually interacted, he said yes, he agreed…
…so when I pointed out that this seemed to indicate a judgement of me made from the outside with no real knowledge of me what so ever, and thus would point to his devastation being far more his own issue rather than my “violation”, he denied it! He said that the Holy Spirit was laying it on his heart! That my claims that Mama had been gently leading me, confirmed by my wife, by my therapist whom I have opened my entire life to, by my naturopath who knew I was transgender at least a year before I did, and by a few close friends who lived everyday with me…that all of that was purely subjective and his own subjective “feeling of conviction” had just as much weight and legitimacy!
I kid you not.
When I asked him to show the biblical passages upon which he rested his “concerns”, he confessed this: “the bible is silent on this subject so I can’t actually say this is sin“. Shocked by his terminology, I asked him “Do you want to be able to say this is sin?” He got offended with me, and said that I was being harsh to him (!!! Yes, he went there). I said “no, not at all. I am so struck by your word choices. They reveal so much to me, for I would have phrased it something like this ‘Since the bible is silent, I would never say that someone was sinning in their pursuit of transition, absent knowledge of the relational parameters between the person and God, and friends and family.'”
He sought many times to other me and police me, and I gently and firmly rebuffed every attempt.
And then at the conclusion, he said that I had shocked him, because he thought I would blow up at him (“blow a gasket” is what he said)…Constance, when I was dissociated from myself experiences like this were very threatening to me, and I did tend to react very strongly and vehemently when accused unfairly. But I was calm, peaceful, and sorrowful far more for him than for myself…this bothered him, because it didn’t jibe with the picture of a demonized deceived person who was in rebellion to God.
But it wasn’t enough…he told me that he (and this is a quote) “had to obey his conscience above all else, and that when people asked him about me it was his duty to tell them his opinion and concerns regarding me”.
Yes, Constance…he has elevated his own conscience even above God, for when I inquired what he would do if God told him to remain silent, he said that God would never ask him to deny his conscience! I think you can see the problem with this…essentially there is a conflation of his conscience with what God wants! If he feels something strong enough, and labels it his conscience, then it is the same as God talking!
I did not have the heart to point out to him that even a cursory examination of biblical teaching regarding the conscience commands us to put the conscience and behaviour of our brothers/sisters as preeminent to our own…besides, it would not do any good. He considered it his right to out me, to anyone, in the name of conscience.
(Charissa before she decided to refuse to let others savage her)
(Now here is a little secret, Constance…part of the reason I agreed to meet with this person is that I suspected this might be the endpoint of things…and the truth is that I am ready to come out…I want to move on, get it over with and get on with an effective and fruitful life lived free and without a mask. So I sort of planned to use him as a stalking horse. If I wasn’t ready, I would have not met with him. Nevertheless, it was staggering to me…the arrogance that he so blindly bathed in, wallowed in…oh, and by the way, he has no “official ecclesiastical authority” in any denomination, or for that matter in my own life! He is simply a fellow follower of Jesus…and make no mistake, he does indeed love God and love people…just within the boundaries he has chosen to call legitimate.)
He specifically said his conscience demanded it of him. I didn’t even bother to ask him what he thought would be the consequence if he decided to not speak, to be silent and urge people to come to me if they had questions…I already knew his reply would be this: if I am not true to my conscience, then your blood is on my head…a phrase that indicates he considers me blood guilty of something or other, and also believes he is both qualified and called to be the bringer of correction to me, never mind by what credential or authority…there is an old testament comment in Proverbs that uses this phraseology…people who have adopted this as a moral code use it to justify all kinds of things including bombing abortion clinics and other heinous acts like that. The people at that crazy church who are so virulently anti-gay use this idea to justify their own evil deeds.
So his conscience is more important to him than I am, than the lives of the people who he talks to that may have been open to actually getting to know for themselves where I am at and what I am going thru but after he gets done will almost certainly avoid me…and the lives of the people who may have been touched by newly open-hearted lovers of God who would reach out to transgender people in love because of knowing me, and who I am, and my being transgender makes it not as weird as they thought it was…
And lastly, he said he would never ever call me “Sister”, or a woman…that this would be him empowering my lie and participating in it by proxy! What does one do with that…besides just shake off the dust and move on?
Constance: I had no chance of persuading him that this was a good thing, a fruitful thing, a blessing. None.
Everything I said to counter him was evidence of my deception and was a regurgitation of the evil that the deceptive spirit had spoken to me…and everything I was silent to I was silent to because I was incapable of refuting his great convicting words (he is wrong…I was silent because I didn’t want to destroy him by stripping him of every vestige of intelligent discourse and exposing his xenophobic foundations…when someone says they read about transgender issues for a few minutes the night before, and really don’t need to do any more research because God is speaking to them…well, there is nothing to be said there, is there?).
So here is my resolution: I will never again submit to such so called “expression of concern”. I will seek to find out ahead of time why someone wants to discuss my transition, and if it is for right reasons I will go ahead after giving the caveat that if they begin to “correct me” I will shut them down and leave the situation.
This is not evidence of my not being correctable…it is evidence that I am finally going to not be a dormat and put myself in harms way…which I have always done before (ask my wife, she can tell you of years and years…)
This man right this moment thinks me in error…nothing I said made a difference…and the others who will be coming, and many far worse than he, for he is at least merely passive aggressive, so his demeanor and voice are calm and pleasant…well, they will be even less persuadable!
They will do this (and it is a fact…ask any of your church friends, they can tell you): they will conclude that I am deeply deceived and in sin…because I won’t let them befoul me with accusations…so why should I even try to persuade them?
My therapist said something very powerful…she asked me what would be the result of my refusing to allow them to savage me so…and I said if I don’t, they will think me a heretic and not a true christian…and she then asked me “and what will happen then? Will you become a heretic? Do you care what those people think right now? Does their thinking anything change you or effect you in any real way?”
and I laffed!! Cus the answer is “no”.
This I resolve:
To do justly
to love mercy
to walk humbly…and love Them with all my heart
to be kind and gentle and full of Grace…upon Grace.
Love, love always,
Charissa Grace, beloved of her Mama the Holy Spirit, joint heir with Jesus the first fruits of the resurrection, and a daughter of the Father of lights, from Whom comes every good and perfect gift.
Charissa's Grace Notes 
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