Category: Transformation

Encounter and Conviction-- Bishop Shaw on Michelle Kosilek

2/22/2013

About a month ago, Bishop Tom Shaw of the Episcopal Diocese of Masachusetts wrote a blog post about a recent encounter at the gym. I just came across it this evening, and was moved to post it here. The post reflects on the case of Michelle Kosilek, a transgender woman who was convicted of murder in the 1990s and has recently been in the news because of a judge's decision that the state should cover the cost of her medical transition. As I remarked in the comment I added to Bishop Shaw's post, seeing the steady stream of stories in the paper about Kosilek, and the predictable backlash against her was pretty demoralizing.  A December Boston Globe op ed put it this way:

“For the judicial system, the case [for MA paying for Kosilek’s surgery] is a no brainer. For just about everyone else the case can be confusing at a minimum, and downright infuriating at its worst. And some of those most disturbed by the case are often those who, like Kosilek, identify as transgender.” I have heard people in the community wonder how someone who committed murder could potentially have her medical transition paid for while most law abiding trans people have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket--if they can manage to save up and/or get a loan.

Kosilek may be far from sympathetic, but at the end of the day, I agree with Judge Wolf’s decision.  It is an issue of fairness, of respecting her human dignity-- even if she did not respect that of the wife she murdered years ago. For the state to make an exception in its commitment to medical coverage for those in its prison system would be, as Jennifer Levi put it, “transgender exceptionalism.”

Bishop Shaw agreed. But what particularly moves me about his piece is its prayerful reflection on encounter-- how we do and do not engage one another, and how God continually calls us into this process.

- CP

Back at the gym. This time the conversation was about a transgender person. My trainer asked me what I thought about the recent controversy over the ruling of the federal court judge who ordered the Massachusetts Department of Correction to pay for the reassignment surgery of a prisoner, Michelle Kosilek. (The ruling has since been put on hold pending an appeal.) I said that it was my understanding that the prisoner had a gender identity disorder and that it seemed appropriate, as she is a ward of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that the Department of Correction should provide the remedy of surgery. I personally agreed with the judge.

This is a small gym, so everyone hears every conversation. Before my trainer could respond, another trainer offered his opinion, which was very different from mine. My trainer didn’t agree with me either. Back and forth we went. It got pretty heated and, of course, no one’s mind was changed. These are not unkind men.  I couldn’t just dismiss them. They are my friends and I’ve known them for years.

The conversation stayed with me for days. It even became part of my prayer. Mostly I was mad at myself. I wished I had been more articulate. You probably know how it is after a conversation like that. I kept saying to myself: “If only I had said this, then they would understand… .” The more I went over it, though, I got the clear sense that God was shifting my focus from this unconvincing conversation to the deeper place of my own conviction. God was asking me how I had come to the place where I could be open to securing the rights of a transgender person.

I knew immediately. It was several years ago in a workshop on transgender issues. I didn’t really want to be there but a friend had asked me to go. Intellectually I think I understood why someone should have the right to change their sex, but I was pretty uncomfortable with the whole idea. Then a transgender woman stood up and told her story. She was a minister and she spoke of how she had suffered in making her decision and how she had sacrificed her career, friendships and family relationships. She told of how alone and helpless she often felt because of the discrimination she experienced, and of how hard it was for her to fulfill her vocation.

“Wow,” I thought to myself as I listened to her poignant story, “all she wants is to practice her call from God.  She isn’t any different from me, from anyone who takes their call seriously.” Something shifted inside of me, and the Spirit opened me to her dignity as a human being. It’s almost always different when it’s a personal encounter like that, or when it’s someone you know. Somehow their dignity is right there in front of you and it speaks to your dignity as a human being.

So ever since then it comes to me at odd times in my prayer: Who else don’t I know? Who are all the other people I’ve kept at a distance or let circumstances keep at a distance from me? Who is God trying to put in front of me and open me to?

M. Thomas Shaw, SSJE

0 Comments

Into the Cloud: Transfiguration Liberation

2/12/2013

0 Comments

Episcopal/Anglican Fellowship, Harvard Divinity School
Readings for Transfiguration Sunday, Year C
Monday, February 11, 2013

Transfiguration greetings from inside the cloud. I say this not simply because of the fog that envelopes us here in Cambridge as rain melts our record snowfall, not only because of the in-between place this diocese has entered in the wake of our bishop’s retirement announcement, or even in honor of the strange possibility that, as this article explains, "a new Archbishop of Canterbury and a new Pope may be enthroned in the same month." I say this inspired by Luke’s unique observation that all of those present on the transfiguration mount were not only “overshadowed” by a cloud but actually, terrifyingly, “entered into it” (Lk 9:34). In some way, Luke seems to do more with the Transfiguration, to link the very paschal mystery to it, and to make that mystery accessible to his readers—to all of us. In the hands of Luke, all of us are delivered into the mysterious liberation that is transfiguration.

This cloud-envelopment is not the only unique gift brought to us by the Year C in our liturgical/lectionary rotation. Only Luke, among the synoptic witnesses, gives us a window onto the summit conversation between Jesus, Moses and Elijah. All three accounts tell us that Peter, John and James see these towering figures of the Law and the Prophets. But Luke alone explains that “they appeared in glory” and, most importantly, that “they were speaking of [Jesus’] departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”  The term for departure is ἔξοδον, a word that evokes the Exodus of the Israelites from their Egyptian captivity. Already the gospel story draws upon Moses’ shining encounter, as our first reading reminds us. But Luke’s window onto Jesus’ mountaintop discourse gives us more on which to chew. Jesus was about to embody Exodus. Think about what that might mean. Think of what we know about the journey that lay before him: the downward slope into Jerusalem, the crucifixion, the resurrection and ascension. The shorthand Luke uses for this, the frame through which he wants us to read it, is ἔξοδον. It is liberation from oppression. It is the transformation of an individual body—suffering and death followed by resurrection life—as the transformation of a collective body. Does this relationship of collective to individual embodiment not shift how you might read Jesus’ words of agency? Do you not hear the notion of “accomplishing” this paschal mystery in a different way? It is not simply a matter of deciding to suffer and to die (which, of course, is not simple in and of itself). This “accomplishment” is about the exodus of a people, or as Paul puts it in our reading from 2 Corinthians, freedom, which flows out from “the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Cor 3:18).

Both in written reflection and in iconic depiction, the Christian East has long honored the Metamorphosis (as it is often called, after the term with which Matthew and Mark describe Jesus’ transformation), and has seen in it a deep connection to the mystery of Easter itself. Transfiguration is not only something that happened to Jesus on Mount Tabor, as our unnamed peak is often called. It is also the effect of resurrection power in our lives here and now, as well as at the end of all things, when that power will lift us up from the grave.  Transfiguration is the transformation “from glory into glory” to which Paul speaks in this breathtaking vision: “all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). This is not an effect reserved for the end. It is with us now. It is why, “we do not lose heart” as we carry forward in our ministries (2 Cor 4:1). The present, pervasive reality of transfiguration allows us to discern the holy in this cloud in which we stand.

The idea that to be transfigured is to be changed, to be transformed, to be metamorphosed first drew me to the theology of transfiguration-- as someone who has transitioned, this spoke powerfully to me. The complexity of my gender identity also gave me a particular appreciation for its liminal placement in the liturgical year. But surely I am not alone in my love of the uniquely clear way in which the Transfiguration (and more specifically Transfiguration Sunday, placed here, at the threshold of Epiphany and Lent) makes the heart of the gospel-- the good news of God’s transforming, healing, reconciling work -- available to us, a prism through which to see our own lives as in some way part of this larger collection, these stories of salvation history. This combination of liminality and transformation should prompt us to see not only the obviously-set-apart places, the mountaintop locales, but also the more mundane interstices, the in-between spaces of our lives, as places of transfiguration.

These thresholds can be temporal, spatial or both. Perhaps we might look afresh at the context of divinity school and of the university more broadly. This context is a crucible—as you surely don’t need me to tell you—a space of intensive formation, and which carries to some degree the anxiety of next-steps, both for students and for faculty and staff. And so I want to invite us all to consider here and now, in this peculiar perch: What is the ἔξοδον you are about to accomplish, or rather, that God is about to accomplish in you?  How are you being called to embody the paschal mystery in all its incorporation of death and new life?  Stand on this verge today and know that by virtue of your membership in the body of Christ, you too are being transfigured. You, dear friends, are caught up in the mystery of metamorphosis. You are poised to leap up from the sacramental waters of your baptism. In the least likely spaces of your life, you are being “changed from glory into glory,” invited to grow like the engrafted olive shoot you are into the very heart of the living God. The death Christ died and the resurrection life through which creation itself was recast—these fundamental tenets of our faith our not mental exercises, but spiritual realities with deeply concrete implications. As we move toward the dust-filled return of Ash Wednesday and the wilderness territory of Lent, think on this mystery.

Luke’s vision of the Transfiguration frames our entry into Lent and Easter like no other gospel. To be sure, the placement of this day at the end of the season of Epiphany, as the bookend to Jesus’ baptism (another iconic favorite in Eastern Christianity) works similarly in all three years of our lectionary. Transfiguration stands as the mandorla, the holy hinge on which the cycles of Incarnation and Pascha swing into one another. But Luke’s version alone gives us a prism through which to read the Paschal Mystery itself. Luke alone truly uses Transfiguration as the key for interpreting the cross and the empty tomb. Luke alone refracts our very body/ies through the lens of Exodus (for an Easter preview, see Luke 24:1-12).  And so again I ask you, what is the ἔξοδον that God is seeking to accomplish in you? How are you being called to embody the liberation that is the Paschal Mystery?

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

0 Comments

True Voice of Witness: Louise Brooks

9/2/2012

0 Comments

Today the world lost a remarkable woman named Louise Brooks. I knew her through The Episcopal Church’s LGBT advocacy organization IntegrityUSA, for which Louise was the communications director over the last several years. She brought to that role a long career as a documentary film-maker, journalist, activist and media-consultant. Together with her wife, Integrity’s most recent president emerita the Reverend Canon Susan Russell, Louise brought impressive media sophistication to the organization’s communications.

I first met Louise in the summer of 2007 when I joined a number of LGBT and allied Episcopalians at a New York City roundtable as part of the Anglican Communion Listening Process on sexuality. As I pulled up a chair to this proverbial table, Louise was among a cadre of formidable folks who welcomed me warmly. I saw Louise the following summer at the “Fringe Festival” of the Lambeth Conference (the decennial gathering of bishops from around the Anglican Communion), and then a year later at the 2009 General Convention of The Episcopal Church. It was there that we began talking more, and that the seeds were sown for what turned out to be – as far as I know – her last film project: Voices of Witness Out of the Box.

For the first time in 2009, Integrity and TransEpiscopal had brought several volunteers to the Convention to do advocacy and education on trans equality. As part of that effort, Dante Tavolaro (Deputy from the Diocese of Rhode Island in both 2009 and 2012) and I led a “Trans 101” for the combined Integrity/TransEpiscopal team (you can catch bits of it in the video posted below). About thirty or so people, including Louise, gathered in Integrity’s meeting room as Dante sketched out a simple grid or set of rules that went like this: in the West or Global North we’re assigned a sex at birth, either male or female; males are expected to grow up to be men, to “act like men”, and to date women. Those born female are expected to become women, to “act like women”, and to date men. There are many ways to violate these rules. To not act “like a man” or “like a woman” in your given context, to date people of your same sex, or to transition are just a few.  Gender theorists call this set of rules “heteronormativity.” Christian theologians call it “complementarity.” Louise called it “the box.”

As she put it in this May 15th preview, Louise left the 2009 General Convention committed to bringing this conversation, trans voices, and “the box” idea itself to the wider church.

About six months after GenCon 2009, Louise called me up to explore the idea for the documentary. Could Integrity and TransEpiscopal work together on a film that showed not only how transgender people are “out of the box” but also — at least implicitly – how many other, nontrans people are out of it as well? This film could convey both difference and connection—that trans people have different challenges than nontrans people do and at the same time that what can make life difficult for us also impacts everyone else. We all live with the pervasive influence of that box which, crucially, intersects and assembles anew in conjunction with race, class, ability, and national origin. We are connected in our struggle, even as we struggle in distinct ways.

As Louise ultimately described the project, "Gender identity and gender expression are issues that can easily be misunderstood and cannot be wrapped up in a neat little box. So the goal of Out of the Box was to answer some of the most frequently asked questions.” The simplicity of “the box” pointed to, opened – but did not seek to plumb – the complexity underlying it.

We talked and emailed about the film at several points between 2010 and last winter. When I learned that Louise was ill, I suspected the film would need to go on hold, perhaps indefinitely. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, Out of the Box roared to life. In early February I flew out to Los Angeles for a day of filming.  Louise seemed totally in her element. She was fatigued but connected and absolutely focused. In between the interviews we talked about the upcoming General Convention and about Macky Allston’s powerful film Love Free Or Die that had just been released. I was honored and grateful to be part of this work, curious and excited about its potential impact.

What I hadn’t realized was just how steeped in transformation this film was from the start. Shortly after its release on May 31st, I saw a HufPo blog post by Louise’s wife (and major Out of the Box supporter) Susan Russell. Susan explained, “what we found in Anaheim in 2009 was that the presence of members of TransEpiscopal testifying in committee hearings, participating in round-table discussions, speaking their truth, and sharing their lives created a profoundly teachable moment that quite literally changed lives.”  But what really struck me was the next sentence: “And one of those was my wife.” “Now,” Susan continued, “I have a hard-and-fast rule to never blog about my wife, but this blog is going to be the exception that proves the rule. A long-time activist, journalist, documentarian, and media consultant, Louise was convinced that gay, lesbian, and bisexual equality was a hard enough row to hoe without adding the ‘T’ into the mix. ‘Let's fight one battle at a time’ pretty much summed up her position -- that is, until the 2009 General Convention and the powerful witness of the transgender folk who so courageously shared their stories, their experience, their journeys, and their reality with her. She left Anaheim committed to finding a way to get their voices out beyond the relatively small audience of an Episcopal General Convention team -- and the idea for the documentary film project Voices of Witness: Out of the Box was born.”

I read that and was speechless. It’s one thing to talk about transformation – I hear the word all the time, and I preach it, too – but seeing it, hearing an authentic story of it, experiencing it just takes my breath away. I had not understood what a profound impact we had had on Louise.

But in retrospect, as I contemplated Susan’s words, it made sense. Or at least, it explained more fully the deep sense of connection, the passion with which Louise pursued this project. It very clearly mattered to her at a deep level. When she said she was making the film as a gift to the church, you could tell she really meant it. And it truly was.

I was concerned to learn that Louise was too ill to attend General Convention this past July, but I was far from surprised that she was present all the same. She was on the phone with the communications team every day. She was making things happen. We were all pulling for her, and she was most certainly pulling for us.

You hear a lot of people described as “fighter.” “He/she was a fighter.” I am not someone who knew Louise from Adam, but it seems clear to me that she was indeed a fighter. She fought for me and so many others.  But there was a heck of a lot more to Louise than that, and I don’t know even a quarter of it. What I do know, though, is that Louise was a woman of profound compassion, open to being transformed, and passionate about opening that process to others.

I will always be grateful for her support and solidarity, and my heart is with Susan Russell, with All Saints Pasadena, and IntegrityUSA in this time of loss. May light perpetual shine on Louise.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

0 Comments

Rev. Susan Russell on "Putting the T in Equality"

6/29/2012

0 Comments

Former IntegrityUSA President, Canon Susan Russell of All Saints Pasadena just wrote this heartfelt piece on Huffington Post. In it she shares not only the work we are about to embark upon at the General Convention of The Episcopal Church but also the journey of her wife, Louise Brooks on Trans Equality. I am proud to have been a part of this journey with fellow trans Episcopalians who were present at GC 2009, and very much look forward to continuing the journey in just a few days.

CP

Episcopalians Work to Put the 'T' in Equality
Rev. Susan Russell
Episcopal priest and activist from Pasadena, Calif.

When the Episcopal Church gathers in Indianapolis next week for its every-three-year General Convention, transgender inclusion will be on our "to-do" list. The last time we met, in Anaheim in 2009, we adopted some important resolutions supporting trans-inclusive federal ENDA and hate-crimes bills, adding gender identity and expression to nondiscrimination canons for lay employees and calling for church data forms to provide for inclusive self-identification. Not a bad start!

What we failed to accomplish was adding gender identity and expression to our nondiscrimination canons for ordained ministry -- and that's the work we'll be about in Indianapolis from July 5-12. But it won't just be the work of passing legislation. It will be the hard and important work of giving voice to the witness of transgender Episcopalians in sharing stories, touching hearts, and changing minds, because what we found in Anaheim in 2009 was that the presence of members of TransEpiscopal testifying in committee hearings, participating in round-table discussions, speaking their truth, and sharing their lives created a profoundly teachable moment that quite literally changed lives.

And one of those was my wife. Now, I have a hard-and-fast rule to never blog about my wife, but this blog is going to be the exception that proves the rule. A long-time activist, journalist, documentarian, and media consultant, Louise was convinced that gay, lesbian, and bisexual equality was a hard enough row to hoe without adding the "T" into the mix. "Let's fight one battle at a time" pretty much summed up her position -- that is, until the 2009 General Convention and the powerful witness of the transgender folk who so courageously shared their stories, their experience, their journeys, and their reality with her. She left Anaheim committed to finding a way to get their voices out beyond the relatively small audience of an Episcopal General Convention team -- and the idea for the documentary film project Voices of Witness: Out of the Box was born.

"Gender identity and gender expression are issues that can easily be misunderstood and cannot be wrapped up in a neat little box," said Louise. "So the goal of Out of the Box was to answer some of the most frequently asked questions. We have been blessed by a truly amazing cloud of witnesses who shared their stories and their lives with us. It has been a privilege to work with them to take this project from a dream to a reality as we offer their voices of witness to the church and to the world."

And so nearly three years later, the 27-minute documentary she produced and Douglas Hunter directed for IntegrityUSA has had over 5,000 views on YouTube and been mailed by DVD to every bishop and deputy in the Episcopal Church.

Response to the project has been overwhelmingly affirming, and I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that it is doing exactly what Louise hoped it would do: answering questions, touching hearts, and changing minds. One of the most recent comments by a viewer was simply, "Thank you for lifting my veil of ignorance. This is a profound gift from people with profound personal courage and integrity."

0 Comments

Other Sheep

5/1/2012

0 Comments

Walker Center, Newton, Massachusetts
Good Shepherd Sunday, April 29, 2012

I want to thank you for the privilege of being with you this weekend, of sharing some of my thoughts on the full incorporation of transgender people into the life of the church—on the implications of that incorporation not only for trans people but also for the church as a whole. I’ve shared several stories that have taken place at the borders of the church, some even at the borders of retreat circles much like the one in which we’ve been gathered this weekend. These moments have pointed toward a certain paradox that being a trans person in the life of the church has caused me to notice. On the one hand, the margins of church and world can be tenuous, sometimes dangerous spaces. On the other hand, in some ways these borders can be strangely holy, spaces in which God’s transforming presence can be palpable. This paradox prompts me to think about a broader question: how can the church rediscover its vocation at the margins, to not simply “do charity” there but to reclaim its mission there—to combat pernicious patterns of “othering” wherever it may happen while claiming a certain “other” orientation as a feature of its own life?

In our gospel passage, Jesus speaks of the existence of “other sheep,” sheep that as of yet “do not belong to this fold.” The Good Shepherd declares, “I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice” (John 10:16). In a number of ways, we have explored how trans people have been in a sense “other sheep”-- other to or “other-ed” by church and by world. We have pondered and prayed about how trans “others” might be drawn more freely and fully into the life of the church, how the gifts of trans people might be honored for all that they can and already do contribute. Along the way we celebrated the breaking good news of TransLutherans, an affinity group within Lutherans Concerned/North America, formed “to broaden our advocacy for more widespread and effective transgender welcome and inclusion in the Church, as well as for advancing the work of seeking justice for all transgender people." These conversations opened up further dimensions of becoming “one flock.”

In fact, our churches have been on this journey of discovery for some time now. One particularly powerful voice in this process from my own denomination is the late Reverend Paul Washington (whose obituary can be found here), rector of Philadelphia’s Church of the Advocate from 1962-1987. He spoke of his ministry as one of outreach to and uplift of “other sheep”– indeed, his 1994 autobiography is entitled Other Sheep I Have. As an exhibit on the Episcopal Church Archives website puts it, Washington’s “church became a beacon of liberation for those [he] referred to as the ‘other sheep’: blacks, the poor, the dispossessed, the oppressed, women, and gays.” In 1964 Washington’s parish hosted the first National Black Power Convention; in 1970 it hosted the National Convention of the Black Panthers Party; and in 1974 it hosted the ordination of the “the Philadelphia Eleven,” the first women to become priests in The Episcopal Church. Washington was also the mentor of Barbara Clementine Harris who in 1989 became a Suffragan (or assistant) Bishop in my diocese, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, becoming in the process the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion, and very much an advocate of “other sheep” in her own right.

The ministries of Rev. Washington and Bishop Harris, of groups like LCNA and IntegrityUSA, TransLutherans and TransEpiscopal, point to the various, unfolding ways in which our churches engage this process. They also suggest that there will not come a day– not in this life – when the incorporation of the “other” into the “one flock” will be over and done with, a day in which we can all sigh with relief and sit back in our chairs, knowing that we -- a “we” of the “one flock”-- have checked off every box. I further do not believe there is any way to circumvent or transcend this process— we cannot jump to “all” language without grappling with specific instances of “othering” along the way. It is an ongoing, sometimes disruptive process, the kind of realized-eschatological birth to which Rev. Washington referred when he introduced the opening hymn of the Philadelphia ordinations, “Come, Labor On”: “what is one to do when the democratic process, the political dynamics, and the legal guidelines are out of step with the Divine Imperative which says ‘Now is the time?’” (quoted in Carter Heyward’s A Priest Forever, 86; summarized in Alla Bozarth Campbell’s Womanpriest, 129-130)

Thus one question our conversations this weekend have circled around is how to imagine, how to conceive theologically of our growth into “one flock,” how to see our undoing of “othering” as integral to that growth. Neither Episcopalians nor Lutherans tend to think of ourselves as the “one true church.” It isn’t simply that our denominations are in full communion with one another (which we have been since 2001 see this article). It is that our growth within the body of Christ is accomplished by God, not by us. If I may presume to “speak Lutheran,” grace finally does the job, not “works.” But, if I may presume to “speak Anglican,” we also participate in that divine process. And, to crib Paul, that process is eschatological—we are “changed from glory into glory” (to quote Wesley, speaking Paul!) in a way that lodges us in the already and the not yet. In other words, we Christians are called to strive toward holy connection – with God and with one another-- even as we trust that God will bring this work to completion. Crucial to our striving, here and now, is identifying, naming those of us who have been and are being “othered” in the life of the church and of the world. We are called to help make audible the voice of the Good Shepherd both to the “othered” and the “othering,” that the power of alienation might be undermined.

And if there is any doubt how important this undoing work is, we need only point to a horrific event that took place across the country during our retreat: a transgender woman, a woman of color, named Brandy Martell, was murdered in Oakland, California on Saturday night in a crime that community members suspect was motivated by hate.

As we strive to help undo such devastating dehumanization, as we seek to amplify the voice of the Good Shepherd, we would do well to take up afresh Jesus’ own marginal ministry. And in so doing we might also remember the marginality of the church, it own “otherness” in its earliest days. One of the oldest images we have of the crucifixion is the so-called “Alexemenos graffito.” Etched into a wall near the Palatine Hill in Rome, a human figure with a donkey head on a cross, flanked by an apparently worshipping figure, is inscribed “Alexander worships his God.” The notion that a people could worship as God one who was degraded by death on a cross was ridiculous in a Roman imperial context in which an effective Messiah would, after all, come along and with great might overturn the powers that be.

This ancient insight takes us to the very heart of the power of the cross. This image conveys how good news can be a skandalon, a stumbling block, foolishness (1 Cor 1:23)—sheer madness to one who expects a straight-forward story of overturning one sort of power with a yet greater form of it. But we preach Christ crucified and risen, the power of One who poured himself into our midst, became in a sense an emblem of stigma, became other in order to transform otherness into belonging, to draw us into this pattern of metamorphosis and make us its agents. As we take up that agency, we must remember from whence we came, must remember our otherness – ancient and contemporary – and in so remembering rediscover our border location as Christians. For we are a people living in the already and the not yet, a people in the world and yet not wholly of it, a people with an ancient propensity for turning the world upside down.

This is a journey that does not end in this life. It ends at the feet of the God who made us, the one around whom we sing and dance together in eternity. But between now and then—in this space-time of already and not yet-- we remember and live into this ancient identity, indeed this baptismal mission. We remember the process of our incorporation into the wider flock, we remember that we are “Other Sheep,” a people oriented to the margin, inviting “other others” into this holy terrain, this sacred journey.

This is the peculiar challenge and privilege of our ministry.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

The above is an expanded version of the sermon I gave at the end of the “Welcome One Another Fellowship Retreat”," annually offered by the Team on LGBT Inclusion of the New England Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of North America.

0 Comments

In Massachusetts, An Unfolding Dream

11/15/2011

0 Comments

It's been a tense, exciting day in the Boston area as the legislation known as the "Transgender Equal Rights Bill" makes its way out of the Judiciary Committee for the first time in six years.  The bill is heading to the legislature with a vote expected tonight or tomorrow as the winter recess approaches.

Yesterday the Boston Globe and Boston Herald reported on the impending vote, and this morning both papers reported on dueling press conferences in which the bill's opponents called the vote a "distraction" from economic issues.  When one such representative argued, "The goals of the advocates is to have this litigated in the courts,” he was confronted by Ken and Marcia Garber.  The Garbers' transgender son was, as the Globe explained,"bullied and discriminated against before he lost his life to a drug overdoes at the age of 20." When the representative "said he did not have time to answer their question because he was late to a meeting," the Garbers, faithful members of Dignity Boston, "challenged Lombardo’s contention that the transgender bill is a distraction from bills that would protect the state’s economic future, [saying] 'Some of these people will never have a future if they don’t do something' to pass the legislation."

The trans community had strong victories late last Spring with Connecticut and Nevada added to the ranks of the now fifteen states and 132 counties and cities  with nondiscrimination and hate crimes protections.

This drama happens to be unfolding during Massachusetts' "Transgender Awareness Week," in which a number of colleges, universities and other community spaces are holding trans-themed events.  The culmination of the week is the twelfth annual observance of the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR).  Though international in scope, the TDOR movement was sparked by a death here in Allston, about a mile away from where I write. Rita Hester was murdered on November 28, 1998 almost three years to the day after the loss of Chanelle Pickett on November 20, 1995. A growing number of Episcopal (and other) congregations have been hosting TDOR events in solidarity with trans communities, even as the observances themselves usually avoid the languages, music or imagery of specific (or at least any one) religious traditions.  Indeed, in his TDOR welcome at a packed Cathedral Church of St. Paul last November, Bishop M. Thomas Shaw offered an apology to the gathered community for the ways in which Christian communities in particular have failed to welcome trans people and have, as he put it, "misrepresented God" to us.  I posted a piece about that TDOR here.

This Sunday the Boston TDOR will take place once again at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul.

Today Bishop Shaw reiterated his support, that of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts (as of its 2008 Convention), and that of The Episcopal Church (as of the 2009 General Convention) for the legislation. His statement reads,

"Hopeful that after six years the transgender equal rights bill will come to the Massachusetts Legislature for a vote this week, I continue to urge lawmakers to support it. Now is the time to carry civil liberty for all people another step forward by safeguarding the equality and honoring the human dignity of transgender people. Passing the bill this week will serve as a powerful sign of hope, particularly as Transgender Day of Remembrance is being observed at our Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston this Sunday. I pray that Massachusetts will open this new door this week so that we might step through it together toward social justice for all."

As it so happens, Sunday is also one of the major examples of what I call "hinge days" in the liturgical year, those days in the Christian calendar that form us with peculiar intensity as we move from one liturgical season to the next. November 20th marks the last Sunday after Pentecost, otherwise known as the Feast of Christ the King or the Reign (or, as Verna Dozier might put it, the Dream) of Christ. Sunday's gospel text from Matthew 25 issues the ultimate challenge of justice from the Son of Humanity, enthroned in eschatalogical splendor: will we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, visit the imprisoned?  As we "do it unto the least of these," we "do it unto" Christ, we are reminded with unsettling specificity.

As the battle over this legislation heats up, I find myself seeking to be present to it as a holy time and space, as an invitation to be, as Bishop Shaw often puts it, opened. It strikes me that this openness is not simply a static state of welcome and inclusion, but an ongoing process of being opened, transformed by God, ushered into new ways of being in the world, into a new time and space that Christians name as the reign or dream of God. That notion of openness is unsettling and challenging indeed, but hopeful and promising beyond our wildest imaginings. May it be—may it become – so.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

0 Comments

A November to Remember for LGBT Episcopalians in the Diocese of Massachusetts

11/30/2009

0 Comments

candles ready for Boston's 2009 Trans Day of Remembrance. St. Luke's and St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, Allston.

November in the Episcopal Diocese of Massachsusetts has been quite the month on the LGBT front with big ticket items during our Diocesan Convention, to Transweek and Transgender Day of Remembrance, to this weekend’s announcement about the role of clergy in same sex marriage.

At our Diocesan Convention during the first weekend of November, a resolution was overwhelmingly passed expressing our hope that Bishop M. Thomas Shaw III would give clergy permission to legally solemnize same sex marriages. +Tom has long been a supporter of LGBT people in general – and speaking as a trans priest whom he ordained, I mean it when I include the T – and equal marriage in particular, stepping out in support of equal civil marriage during this state’s protracted battle over it.

But once gay couples were legally allowed to wed, Episcopal clergy were still limited to blessing said couples. And while I realize just being allowed to do blessings would be a coup in some dioceses, here being limited to blessings felt like a pastoral nightmare. I can’t tell you how many clergy have had repeated conversations with couples about how they could solemnize some marriages but not others. Some clergy have refused to solemnize any marriages in the in-between time of the past five years. And so, while the conversation about whether we should even “be in the marriage business” as legal representatives of the state goes on, that is a conversation that I suspect will take this Church a long time to sort out. It’s a lot more difficult to disentangle than I think people on all sides of the debate realize. In the meantime, to me it has made no sense to refuse to let same sex couples in the solemnization door while we figure out whether we want to restrict our involvement in all marriages to blessings.

Another way I have personally faced this issue is in doing trans marriages. We who are trans also face limitations in our ability to wed. Much depends not only on whether our partnerships are gay, bi, or heterosexual – just like everyone else -- but also on whether our legal documentation (e.g. drivers licenses) accurately reflects our gender. And when I say accurate, I mean whether it reflects our identities, not the meanings that others might write on our bodies. In some states changing appropriate identification is easier than in others (for instance, Ohio is notoriously difficult). So when a couple with a trans member has approached me to do their wedding (and I have now done several), one of the things I have had to ask at some point is what the gender markers on their drivers licenses say. In some cases I have been able to bless only and in others I have been able to bless and solemnize. Each time I have been aware that I am part of the ongoing transformation of marriage in this time and place. Because, as I see it, marriage is not now and has never been static. Its meaning and form has long been changing. What was the miracle that Jesus undertook at Cana? The transformation of water into wine. Our relationships are to be sacred vessels in which we walk together through the changes and chances of this life.

But I have to say—and I say this as someone who obviously cares a lot about the marriage debates -- all the energy we pour into marriage can get pretty irritating to the trans community. Because even though we are impacted by the rules regarding marriage as well, marriage is not the most important thing to the trans community (insofar as we can say there is a single trans community—there are indeed numerous communities). Protecting our most basic human rights are. Keeping members of our community safe from violence – as our sisters of color most often experience – and free from often blatant discrimination on the job, in schools, housing, credit, and medical care, is what we are most concerned about. And so we are pleased that the Matthew Shephard Hate Crimes Act is finally now law, but we wait eagerly for the passage of a fully inclusive Employment Nondiscrimination Act and the passage of local and state laws that safeguard us in our various communities.

November is a month that the trans community around the globe is increasingly claiming as its own. The main impetus for this is Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) which takes place every year on November 20th. Fourteen years ago, an African American Bostonian named Chanelle Pickett was murdered here in Boston on that date. I remember it well because I was a first year MDiv student interning at the Victim Recovery Program at the Fenway Community Health Center at the time, and it was also my birthday. Three years later, on November 28th, 1998 another African American woman named Rita Hester died in Brighton, MA, three blocks from the congregation I now serve, St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s. This murder sparked a vigil on Brighton Avenue across from the place she was last seen. One year later, the trans community in San Francisco marked that anniversary with the first ever Transgender Day of Remembrance. And so the TDOR tradition, which is now international, was born.

Last year for the first time, Boston’s TDOR was held at St. Luke’s and St. Margaret’s in a secular event that packed the small church. This year, once again, we were asked to host this event (read about it here in the Allston/Brighton TAB; photos by Marilyn Humphries are here). It was a particular honor to be able to share with the gathered community that at its General Convention this past summer The Episcopal Church went on record in support of our full civil rights. And in another important demonstration of support and encouragement, the Crossing, the emergent church style congregation at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, held a special service in honor of TDOR on Thursday evening, November 19th, also hosting Transcriptions, the local trans/queer themed open mic. More and more Episcopal congregations are opening their arms to trans people.

And then yesterday lay and ordained leaders in Diomass received a beautifully clear letter from our bishop declaring that as of Advent I clergy in this diocese are indeed authorized to solemnize the marriages of same sex couples (read about it in the Boston Globe or Bay Windows). No more do gender markers on licenses matter. As I talked about it on the phone with a friend and fellow trans priest, I said, “what a relief!” He replied, “I know—now I wanna run out and find a gay couple to marry!”

And so life here in Massachusetts continues to move forward with blessings amid all our complexities. But to me the greatest gift of all this November is my son who was born in mid-October. Today, literally as I wrote this piece, he smiled at me for the first time. God is so good.

- The Rev'd Dr. Cameron Partridge

This piece was originally written for the Walking with Integrity blog.

Boston's 2009 TDOR packed St. Luke's & St. Margaret's Episcopal Church, a few blocks from Rita Hester's home.

0 Comments

Encounter and Conviction-- Bishop Shaw on Michelle Kosilek

Into the Cloud: Transfiguration Liberation

True Voice of Witness: Louise Brooks

Rev. Susan Russell on "Putting the T in Equality"

Other Sheep

In Massachusetts, An Unfolding Dream

A November to Remember for LGBT Episcopalians in the Diocese of Massachusetts

Archives

Categories