The Invisible Rejection: People of Agender & Non-Binary Gender Identities after the Primates Decision

                My Facebook & Twitter pages have been full of news lately discussing the decisions reached during the Primates' meeting.  Not being an expert in Anglican polity I’m not going to even attempt to wade into the mess of who has authority over whom, and what these decisions mean. I’ll even freely admit I lack a historical context for what is going on, though you better believe Anglican history will be high on my to-do list when I get to seminary.

                Rather than delving into a quagmire I am unqualified to explain, I’d like to speak about a troubling linguistic trend that has taken root among those renouncing the primates decision. I feel like a broken record, a conscript for the language police, for going back to this. Yet apparently it still needs to be said. If you’re posting about your support for “our LGBT brothers and sisters” you are actively participating in the erasure of our siblings with many genders and no gender.

                Indeed, I find these responses, in all orders of ministry, to be far more painful than sanctions from a distant body. It is hurts because I am overwhelmed by the expectation that we are done working for equality. As “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” floods my feed, and I find myself shaking my head at the complacency which surrounds those posts.  

Do the people rushing in to proclaim their welcome consider how unwelcoming it is to see terminology that silences your experience?  Your existence? Are they aware that in our 1979 Book of Common Prayer there is a Eucharistic prayer that specifically excludes everyone who is not a son or daughter from the “everlasting heritage of God”? Have they considered how painful it is to be caught up in the movements of the Easter vigil, hungry for a sign of grace, only to hear that you are not a part of the celebration because of your (a)gender? Do they know how tiring it is to repeat for the umpteenth time ‘my pronouns are they/them’, and receive a grammar lecture in response to your invitation?

                In this rush of people running in to proclaim their support for gay marriage in the Episcopal Church, I instead find myself inundated by reminders that I’m not supposed to exist. With every Episcopalian who declares how open we are to our “LGBT brothers and sisters”, I’m told that the pain of discrimination I’m experiencing within the Episcopal Church is irrelevant. All of this leaves me feeling like a pawn in a larger game, a token of equality who is supposed to blend into the rainbow crowds hissing at the primate’s decision.

                But I don’t blend in. I long to participate in a catholic church where my welcome is based not on geography or my skills as an educator/activist, but on Christ’s presence in every human being. I also cannot passively accept the Episcopal Church’s characterization of ourselves as a bastion of inclusion while we remain reluctant to engage with the cissexism, heteronormativity, racism, classism and ableism that abound within our institutional church.

Indeed, as I watch this ecclesiastical drama unfold, I find myself pulling away, in pain and confusion. For even the language of these debates contributes to the erasure, the enforced invisibility, of my people. Yet, much as I long to, I cannot remove myself completely. For it was in the Episcopal Church that I first heard the gospel, the place where  I was first told that my existence was not a sin, that community in which I learned that God could and does love me for who I am, who I’ve been and who I will become.

 So rather than retreat completely, I offer to my church this meager cry of pain. I give you this mess of words that hold a seed of the longing within me. I offer you these reflections, as I offer to God this prayer, remembering that in all things, in all times, and in all places, we are called to abide with one another in love.  Love for ourselves and our neighbor, for those we agree with, and those we cannot understand, love for those who are hurting and for those who rejoice. 

Creator God, I pray for your church. For the heirs of your dominion who hear from the right and the left that they are deformed, unworthy, invisible. We ask you to be with all who doubt their strength to endure another round of rejection, that your Word may enfold and shield them from the countless mortal words of ignorance and fear. We pray for those who struggle to find your constancy in a tumultuous world. For all of us who have inherited a legacy of oppression from all sides, and stare at a quagmire that defies peaceful resolution by our own strength. May all of us come to know your truth in our lives. Open our ears when it is time to listen, and guide our tongues when it is time to speak. Above all gracious God, be with us in our times of division, that we may never fail to see how you are making us one.   

Do You Love Yourself?

                This is the question that leapt into my mind this morning as I laid aside my reading. It startled me, though it was simple enough to see where it had stemmed from. I had just finished reading From Sin to Amazing Grace (Cheng, 2012) and the chapter I had skimmed the fastest was “The Self-Loving Christ”. It was a difficult to read about how Christ’s self-love provided a way to persist in his ministry, even in the face of adversity at a time when my own reserves of self-affection feel depleted after my work at General Convention.

                I woke up this morning to a nightmare. I was running frantically though the Salt Palace convention center, trying to figure out if “255C” was up or down stairs, terrified that I would miss my chance to speak. I don’t usually place a lot of weight on dreams, but the connection between that nightmare, the challenges I’ve faced in the early stages of healing, and the resounding question of this morning made me feel this was worth exploring.

                I think the root of that dream is a fear of not being heard. I went to General Convention with the realization that my ministry would likely be centered on demonstrating that people like me exist. It was work I thought I’d prepared for, but it turns out no amount of preparation can make you ready to feel as though your very existence is a lot of work, or at the very least an inconvenience. Most conversations about transgender people, and nearly all of the ones that cover non-binary gender identities often start with a disclaimer “we know this is hard, but it’s worth it”, or more often “this is too hard you need to accept that we can’t get it”. Even simple things like correcting people’s misuse of my pronouns often leads to me being told that “there’s not need to be nasty” or “short”*.

                This sense of existence as imposition is compounded by the lack of restful places to escape being gendered or hearing that people like me aren’t real. I picked up three books at Convention, one (“Salvation on the Small Screen”) was meant to be a silly way to decompress, another (“Where God Hides Holiness”) was a favorite that kept me in the church even as I initiated a Title IV process for discrimination based on my gender, and the third was From “Sin to Amazing Grace”. On Monday, I turned to this trove and found binary language within the first chapter of each of them. Setting each of them aside, and growing more and more hurt I began to wonder if I had lost reading as a way to relax.

                 I’ve often felt that each new thing I develop language around to describe myself often pushes me further and further into exile. As soon as I reach a place where I can articulate where I am, I am challenged to explore a new part of my experience. With each new injustice I discover, the less able I am to participate in the restful activities I once loved as I grow keenly aware of how in them I am told not to be.

                This transition of places of life becoming places of fear and burden cannot be better demonstrated by the manner in which I once approached the Eucharist, and the preparation I now must undergo. In the podcast the Collect Call I spoke of my initial experiences realizing the limitations of binary language in the liturgy. After more than a week of attending daily worship at General Convention, and hearing people like me aren’t a part of the church in every single service, that sense of alienation has been accentuated. I left convention with a sense that I must first prove my realness before I can partake and truly enter into the body.  Yet even when I do take action to draw attention to the gaps in our liturgy, there are always things I miss.

                Take this past Sunday for instance. Exhausted from convention, worn thin by repeated explanations and spiritually ready to hide from the world for an extended period, I chose to push myself to still attend the service mostly due to the face that I had volunteered to set up for coffee hour. Concerned about the language of the service as I knew we would have a supply priest, when I went over on Saturday night to prepare the treats, I also glanced over the bulletin. Seeing the words “Eucharistic Prayer B” I immediately went into damage control mode, debating options, gauging my emotional spoons, and trying to decide which course of action was simultaneously both Christian and healthy.

                This apparent conflict between my baptismal duty to “continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers” and my obligation to love this life I’ve been given, and to honor God’s work in creating me as I am has continued to escalate as I encounter more and more spaces in the Episcopal church that ask me to choose one over the other. That Sunday I decided to arrive early and to speak with the priest about my concerns. He listened attentively and said he would try to remember. During the Eucharist he did use “the everlasting heritage of your descendants” as I’d requested. This was a change that I almost missed because I’d forgotten that we’d be using the preface for baptism and “received us as your sons and daughters” was still echoing through me. The added burden of coming early, starting a nerve-wrecking conversation, and explaining its importance led to one change, providing hope, but the service still left me feeling hollow due to what I’d missed.

                Do you love yourself? On the surface it seems like a simple question with an obvious “right” answer (yes). But as it tumbles through me I couldn’t help but ask a question in return, how? How can I love myself when everything around me tells me I’m a burden, an oddity, an exception or simply not there? How can I find this “inner core” that people tell me to rely on when I have yet to find a space where I’m not expected to defend as real those parts of myself I haven’t yet come to accept, let alone love.

                Sitting with this question I finally found an answer I can live with. I can’t say “yes” or “no” for at this moment both would be untruthful. What I can say is this, I commit myself to the work of self-love. I can acknowledge that I have been corrupted by the sin of a world that doesn’t want me alive and by the grace of God I can and I will resist that message. I give myself permission to read what I can, when I can without judgment for the knowledge I can’t obtain in my infirmity. I promise to celebrate the victories I’ve already achieved in simply living to see this day. Above all, whether in church or outside it, I offer myself to Love, not only love for my neighbor but also for the God who made this body, this spirit so determined to keep going long past the point it made rational sense.

*Both of these phrases were used when I gave blood yesterday. The technician who was handing me off to her supervisor said “he…umm she” and then got very upset when I stepped in and said “they”. I was told by them that I should feel guilty for not just “going along” with the needed questions, which are actually needlessly invasive as I was only changing my name and not my gender marker on my Red Cross records. 

**This post is also shared on the Episcopal Peace Fellowships Young Adult Delegation blog as it wraps up some of the lessons I've carried home from General Convention. If you'd like to see more about what it was like to do this work while there I'd recommend checking them out.

Asking Why: Doubt & The Episcopal Church (Acts 8 BLOGFORCE)

                When I was little I hated being asked “why” as much as I loved asking it. I delighted in exploring a new world every day, constantly trying to figure out why things came together as they did. I was certain there was a reason for everything…despite the fact I was singularly incapable of answering that question.

                As I’ve played with this question, this why, for the past few weeks I’m realizing I haven’t changed as much as I thought. I first came to an Episcopal Church to test out my New Year’s resolution to see if I could “tolerate” Christians.  After nearly seven years as an anti-Christian pagan the question I brought to the red doors was “what are you going to do with me, a misfit, a mistake, who doesn’t belong anywhere.” 

                The immediate answer was one of welcome and invitation. Yet these simple actions went beyond answering my initial question, they pulled me into the deepest question I’d discarded. A child I’d wondered “why the universe”. This was a question that I’d lost during my hasty flight from a religion that repeatedly torn me to shreds.  “Why” was the question that the Episcopal Church both asked…and answered. 

                In the Episcopal Church I was confronted for the first time with a faith that is as complex as my journey. I found a church that both accepted me as I was and then challenged me to grow in ways I’m still trying to figure out. The Episcopal Church introduced me to mysteries that defy all reason, yet when shared call forth an answer from within my soul.

                So I stayed. Beyond staying I joined the Episcopal Service Corps for a year, then the Lawrence House Service Corps. For two years in a row I moved across the country to join other young adults in a service oriented faith community. I didn’t stop to ask why. I simply had a sense of this being what needed to happen, and I went. 

                Arriving in South Hadley a few weeks ago I realized how uprooted I’d become. With all of my family and friends well beyond a reasonable journey away, a vague sense of what I’m supposed to doing for work and overwhelmed with the day to day discussions that building a community with five strangers entails I finally stopped to ask “why”. 

                The answer, a vague mix of God, faith, and it seemed like the right thing, triggered a massive internal argument. On the one had giving oneself over to a life of faith, an active ongoing discernment of where one’s gifts are most useful is considered a virtue, something to strive for. There was a part of me that longed to internally celebrate my new-found ability to hold onto God in the total uncertainty that my life has become. The other part, equally loud, reminded me I had no concrete reason to believe God is real. After all I’ve heard repeatedly that mental illness is just as likely explanation for the mystical experiences I’ve undergone. 

                So I was torn. On the one hand I find it impossible to believe that the fullness I experience at the Eucharist, the quiet voice that whispers I am loved, and the healing found in forgiveness is rooted in a delusion. On the other it seems completely fool-hardy to base my entire life on a God that is so irrational when compared with the reason I grew up with. 

                In the midst of this confusion, this internal struggle, I’ve clung to a ritual I grew into through St. Hilda’s House last year, the daily office. Days passed without connecting to the prayers, yet I made myself continue reciting them. Until one morning, prayerbook open, I found myself I drifting into thought, “why” bouncing around and around unanswered in my mind. 

                During that prayer I didn’t reach a resolution about the existence of God, or whether wandering from placement to placement based on faith is a good idea. What I heard was a gentle reminder that I wasn’t the only one praying the office that morning. A subtle nudge that even if I didn’t, couldn’t, believe the words I was praying, someone in this world at that exact moment had enough faith to share.  I had a sense that it’s ok to be where I am, because even if I can only pray with my hands and mouth at this moment, someone else’s heart and soul is full of the belief that currently eludes me. 

                This is why we need the Episcopal Church. We need to be shown, time and time again, to the Why of the universe. We all need to be reminded that while much of Christianity feels foolish to our modern consumeristic world there is a deeper wisdom. We need to be surrounded by people who fully live into the complexities of faith and reality. 

                Why the Episcopal Church? I’m here because this community dared me to live into the question of Why in ways that I will spend a lifetime trying to comprehend. Our dedication to both tradition and creativity, integrity and growth, lives the Gospel in a way that reaches out in a form that no other tradition can. The Episcopal Church is a unique space where both ancient and modern voices join the conversation, each valued for what they are. This is certainly worth preserving.