Lenten Reflection: Of Stardust & Sacred Questions.

Rob Gendler-nebula-dying star flower ring

There is this word that I’ve always been afraid of, but which now feels like a gift to my faith:

Evolve.

It’s taking its place in a landscape of new language I’m developing for this season of my faith: Wholehearted. Sacred. Wilderness. Scarcity. Abundance. Justice. Grief. Change.

This word came to me a few nights ago while I was watching Cosmos on Netflix. I can’t fully explain the episode* because I’m terrible at science, but it was about stardust and ghosts and the space-time continuum and the edges of the universe.

From dust you came and to dust you shall return,” never felt more true or made more sense, and the fact that this marked the beginning of the Lenten season for me made it all the more sacred.

In Christian Wiman’s My Bright Abyss, he writes,

“Faith is not some hard, unchanging thing you cling to through the vicissitudes of life … Just as any sense of divinity that we have comes from the natural order of things – is in some sense *within* the natural order of things – so too faith is folded into change, is the mutable and messy process of our lives rather than any fixed mental product.”

This is the mutable, messy process of my evolving faith: searching for God in that fold between natural order and unexpected change, tucked away in a space I’ve never looked before. It might be found in the pages of a faith memoir, or in a Netflix binge-watch, or in the pages of my own journal, or a walk in the woods.

The truth is that I think more than I feel my faith at this point in my life.

The deep affection I have felt for God and the Church, once demonstrated through singing hymns and reading scripture and sitting in pews, is demonstrated through solitude and sacred questions right now.

Maybe you have experienced this too: that our love and our questions aren’t separate, but deeply connected. There are seasons when our questions are the fruit of our deep affection for God and the Church. Because we love, our questions matter. Asking these questions is an act of tending the soil – the sacred ground – of our faith. Some things that once marked our growth have ripened and fallen to the soil, fertilizing it for other seeds to take root and grow in the seasons to come.

” … it seemed as if the tiniest seed of belief had finally flowered in me, or, more accurately, as if I had happened upon some rare flower deep in the desert and had known, though I was just then discovering it, that it had been blooming impossibly year after parched year in me, surviving all the seasons of my unbelief.” – Wiman, My Bright Abyss

Maybe we are made of stardust. Maybe we look at the sky and see the ghosts of centuries past, lighting the darkness for us. Maybe we see the stars and unknowingly see the spirit of our mothers, gathering the universe unto themselves like they have since our birth. Maybe Mother Earth is that ineffable God-love I feel when I tend another sacred question.

Whatever, I still believe:

She makes everything beautiful in its time.

*Cosmos Episode 4: “A Sky Full of Ghosts,” for my curious readers.

[Post image source.]

Three Years.

Mom-Grief-Three-Years

This morning I looked through a stack of photos. It’s a ritual of remembering I set aside for this day every year, to honor you. I pause and let myself feel fully the weight of your absence. I come to grips with the reality, searching through this stack of photos, that I’ll never find what I’m searching for: you, present tense. You, with me as I am now. A picture of you, age 53, and me, age 27, arms around each other, smiling. The stack of photos in my hand feels so finite. I’m holding a window of time, a fixed frame, a chapter in a book.

I miss you, mom. I always will.

Leelah Alcorn and What It Means to be Pro-Life

So a weird thing happened on Tuesday. I posted a tweet that went viral.

ProLife-Means-Loving-Your-LGBTQ-Children-Twitter

On Twitter I’m usually more of a listener, follower and retweeter than a thought leader, so I was a little caught off guard to see my tweet explode this way. (I mean, really. WHAT IS MY LIFE that I, of all people, posted a tweet about transphobia that went viral????? I’ve barely tweeted in months, and then KAHBLAM, I get 6,000+ retweets and 150,000+ notes on Tumblr. Somebody please come clean me up off the floor because I just cannot comprehend.) Please pardon my incredulity.

But more seriously, I want to acknowledge the fact that I am not even remotely the first person to say what I said, even on Twitter. LGBTQ people have been talking about this for pretty much forever but very few are listening to them. I’m blown away by the response and grateful for those that shared it, but I would be sorely remiss if I didn’t acknowledge my privilege as a straight white girl whose tweet about this topic went viral.

So, given the overwhelming attention my tweet received, I thought I’d take a minute to expand on my thought behind the tweet and then offer some resources to those that have questions about it, especially Christians. My post here is not nearly as comprehensive and important as the people I’m linking to, so please don’t skip the part where you actually educate yourself with direct resources.

About Leelah Alcorn.

Leelah was a transgender teenage girl from Kings Mill, Ohio, who committed suicide on December 28. Before taking her life, she posted a suicide note to her Tumblr account, explaining her story. (Update: Her suicide note has since been taken down, so here is a google cache version of her post.) Most notably, Leelah expresses grief that her Christian parents refused to accept her transgender identity and isolated her from her community for attempting to come out. Leelah draws a clear, unquestionable connection between her parents’ bigotry and their conservative Christian beliefs. This part is especially heartbreaking:

“…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.”

And this:

“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.”

The Connection between “Pro-life” and Transphobia.

So why did I tweet about “pro-life” Christians being transphobic, and what does it have to do with Leelah Alcorn’s suicide? Full disclosure: I cannot speak for the Alcorns and their stance on abortion, but I can speak to the kind of conservative, right-wing Christianity that claims to be adamantly pro-life when it comes to opposing abortion, and yet does not hold the same regard for the lives of LGTBQ people (or black people, or undocumented immigrants, or a whole host of other marginalized people in this world, for that matter.) “Every life is precious” in utero, but what if that life grows up to be gender nonconforming like Leelah’s? Too often I’ve seen this “unconditional” love go out the window for the LGBTQ children of conservative Christians. “Tough love” takes over, leaving LGBTQ children completely alienated from their families and communities.

There is a huge, gaping hole of disconnection between “pro-life” sentiments and the rejection of LGBTQ people, and it is not only heartbreaking, but life-threatening. According to the CDC,

“LGBTQ youth are at increased risk for suicidal thoughts and behaviors, suicide attempts, and suicide. A nationally representative study of adolescents in grades 7–12 found that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide as their heterosexual peers.”

The suicide risk is even higher for transgender teens. This information alone should make it clear that LGBTQ youth feel unloved and unsafe in their homes. This is tragic. The fact that death feels like the better option to them should break our hearts enough to affect real change, in our selves and our communities, but so often it doesn’t, and that’s my point. The isolation, disregard, or flat-out rejection of LGBTQ people by Christians is in direct opposition to Jesus’ commandment to love one another, full stop.

Christians, we need to do better. If you claim to be “pro-life,” then be consistent. Care enough to change these statistics. Care about offering LGBTQ people hope through compassion, grace and unconditional love. Stop wielding your faith as a weapon against the LGBTQ community. Stop blaming Jesus for your bigotry. And please, for the love, if you cannot embrace the LGBTQ people in your midst, then stop claiming to be “pro-life” and start calling yourselves what you really are: “anti-abortion.” If compassion and unconditional grace are not a part of your “pro-life” ethic, then you are not pro-life. 

“But Not All Christians…”

Many many people responded to my tweet with “not all Christians are like that” or “why are you singling out Christians.”

The reason I was specific about Christians perpetuating LGBTQ-phobia is because Leelah Alcorn draws an inextricable connection between her depression and her parents’ faith. Her parents used their Christian identity as an excuse to reject Leelah’s transgender identity, and shamed her for not being Christian enough to conform to a straight identity. I am not being assumptive or jumping to conclusions about Leelah’s story when I address the systemic LGBTQ-phobia that is prevalent in conservative Christian culture; Leelah confronts this herself in her post. To not address this, to not critique the conservative evangelical Church for its systemic LGBTQ-phobia, is to erase Leelah’s experience as a transgender girl who was rejected by her parents based on their religion.

When I addressed Christians in my tweet, I was addressing those that identify as staunchly “pro-life” and also oppose the LGBTQ “lifestyle.” This is a very specific group of Christians, mainly conservative, right-wing evangelicals. I know that Not All Christians are homophobic or transphobic, because I found the ones that aren’t and they changed my perspective! This seems like it would be glaringly obvious given my tweet, but I’ve had a surprising number of people bombard my mentions with this nonsense.

So here’s the thing: if you are a Christian and you do not agree with the Alcorn’s choice to reject their child, then do not waste time trying to pretend like hatred of LGBTQ people isn’t a problem in the Christian church, because that in itself is a rejection of them and their lived experiences. Pretending that oppression doesn’t exist is not any more moral than actively waging oppression; it IS oppression. If you really want to love someone, start by believing them when they say they’ve experienced oppression and persecution. Stop centering the conversation around yourself by whining that you and your religious community have been unfairly generalized.

For further reading on this point, I highly recommend this post from Eliel Cruz, “On #NotAllChristians,” especially this bit:

It’s time we started being less defensive and more reflective. If the statement that was made doesn’t apply to you, there shouldn’t be any reason for you to feel defensive. But perhaps you feel defensive because it hits too close to home. If that’s the case, then it is the perfect opportunity for you to be reflective — and we shouldn’t feel ashamed about that.

 

Resources for Educating Yourself about LGBTQ Experiences.

Here’s a comprehensive explanation of what being transgender means, for those of you trying to understand Leelah’s experience.

Also, let me just acknowledge again that my tweet was not anything that hasn’t already been said before. Consider this section of this post my sources cited for my tweet. I did not always hold an LGBTQ-affirming perspective; in fact my change of heart has been fairly recent. The last 5 years have been a slow 180-turn for me, and you can read more about my journey in a guest post I wrote, A Love Letter for the LGBTQ Community. I’m deeply indebted to some smart, wise, kind individuals that are working hard to educate others on how to love LGBTQ people well. Here are a few to start you off:

– “If Your Kid Comes Out to You” , plus a boatload of LGBTQ resources by Benjamin Moberg

– “And Though I Find Here No Permanent Dwelling” by Sarah Moon

– Dianna Anderson’s entire series on Queer Theology (and basically her whole blog)

– “The False Gospel of Gender Binaries” by Rachel Held Evans

Why the “love the sinner, hate the sin” trope isn’t loving at all, by Micah Murray

– “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be ‘Allies’” by Abi Bechtel

– If you’re on twitter, I would highly recommend following these folks who share their lived experiences as LGBTQ people on the daily: Eliel Cruz, Broderick Greer, AW Hooker, Dianna Anderson, Sarah Moon, Ben Moberg, Saeed Jones. And some trustworthy allies that are also educating me well: Suzannah Paul, Abi Bechtel, Luke Harms, Micah Murray.

Next Steps for Honoring Leelah Alcorn & Supporting the LGBTQ Community.

Donate to the National Center for Transgender Equality in Leelah’s name

– Read about the hashtag #RealLiveTransAdult to understand their lived experience. Reverend Lawrence T. Richardson’s post for The Salt Collective, “Transgender and Christian… and Crying for Leelah Alcorn” is a good place to start.

The Marin Foundation is full of wonderful resources for reconciling the Christian faith and affirming LGBTQ people. Educate yourself.

– Shut up and listen.

#FaithFeminisms : Bearing the Fruit

Screen-shot-2014-07-22-at-10.32.11-PMToday I’m over at #FaithFeminisms, sharing part of my story of coming to feminism after growing up in white evangelicalism.

I am on a journey. It is a journey of faith, it is a journey of feminism, it is a journey into the Kingdom of God. Like every journey, it is both a walk away from something, and a walk toward something. It bears the tension between the now and the not yet. (Read more here.)

I’m so excited and honored to be included in this series. When we started dreaming and scheming this over a week ago, led by the fearless and badass Mihee Kim-KortJes Kast-Keat, and Suzannah Paul, we could not have predicted just how positively people would engage it. I hope you’ll take the time to read and process the stories being shared there this week.

Prodigal : “Facing Grief and Finding Faith”

This article was originally published on ProdigalMagazine.com.
I stepped quietly into the room where my mother lay sleeping and walked to her bedside. I took her hand, thin and bony, and held it to my face. Struggling not to cry, I leaned down and kissed her forehead.“Mom,” I whispered, “The nurses are going to put a tube through your nose and into your stomach to drain it. It will help you not feel nauseous anymore, okay? So don’t panic. They’re here to help you and as long as you hold still, it won’t hurt.”

At first she didn’t respond. I didn’t think she could hear me, but then she opened her eyes and turned to me and smiled. “I just saw Jesus,” she said. “He told me…”

Whatever insight Jesus had made my mother privy to, it was lost in a garble of sleepy syllables, but her thin hands arched above her as she tried to explain. She laughed quietly and smiled at me, happier than I’d seen her in days.Then, for reasons I still cannot articulate, I felt moved to sing to her our favorite hymn, “Great is Thy Faithfulness.”

“Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
there is no shadow of turning with thee…”

I made it through the first line before tears choked my voice, but she, who had barely talked in days, smiled at the sound, and proceeded to sing the rest of the verse and the first chorus back to me. Her voice was clear and unhindered, the way it used to be when she sang solos at church. She was even mostly on key.

And this thought popped into my head, “I’m closer than you think.”

And along with those words an image : Jesus, gently and patiently and lovingly coaxing my mother away from this world and into the next. In that moment, a peace and a joy descended on me, something that I had not felt in more than a year.

She died five days later.

After 14 years of fighting against breast cancer, her body had had enough. I watched her vomit several times a day for months before that, watched her abdomen distend not with fat but with fluid, while the rest of her body withered until she was Auschwitz thin.

Forgive my graphic description. There’s something about terminal illness that strips us of our preferred pretenses, the things we wish we didn’t know.

And there is something about watching the people we love die that kind of death that shifts our perspectives on life, on the eternal. It’s an experience akin to staring, nose-to-paper at a stereogram until suddenly, Bugs Bunny’s giant face emerges three-dimensional from empty, chaotic design.

I had always had faith. I had always believed in Christ and proclaimed Him as my Savior. I had always believed in Heaven as a real place, a place I would go to someday. But I believed in Heaven the way that I believe in the quadratic formula; it exists somehow, but I just didn’t get the logistics. I believed in Heaven the way that I believe in six figure incomes; some people have arrived, others are on their way, some are working their asses off to make it, some claim they’re ambivalent, and others just don’t have what it takes.

How foolish I was, how flat and empty and selective was my concept of God’s grace.

In the days before and the days immediately following my mother’s death, life took on a distinct and urgent spirituality. The gap between where I placed God and Heaven and the spiritual world and where I lived my every day life, down here on this tiny planet earth, grew smaller and smaller as I listened to that still, small voice, “I’m closer than you think.”

It didn’t ease the grief of our goodbye. However, my hatred for life, my distrust of God, my self-perpetuated isolation from His Spirit was not something I clung to anymore.

I wasn’t ready to be motherless, but I was finally ready and able to pray that impossible prayer, God, Please take her Home.