Towards Wholeness

I need your help. A long time community advocate for LGBT Rights in general and my transgender family in particular, I have given everything I am and everything I have to the movement. Countless hours, savings, and elbow grease all to make a little space for us in Texas. Through all of this I have also tried to raise funding for my own gender confirmation surgery. As of right now I am $1000 towards a $16500 goal, and I could really use your help this holiday season. My birthday is November 5th, it is my hope that you will consider a nominal donation towards helping me achieve the goal of a surgery that will make me feel more complete in myself. Thanks for reading, have a truly blessed day!

Anger Flowers

     Is Anger the flower of fear? Or, are there forms of anger whose roots are other than fear? I really intellectually distaste overgeneralizations such as this. However, in this case I think that looking at where my anger comes from is a useful activity for personal growth. I also think looking at its implications are developmental.

Implication 1: Do I misread my own annoyance or irritation at something done as anger? Or, do I manufacture anger from my own annoyance or irritation? I think both are true. Are these quantities also rooted in fear? Maybe 75-90% of the time, but I doubt they always are.

Implication 2: Part of my abandonement issues are bound to another's anger. If a loved one or someone close to me becomes angry at me, there is a little child inside and she is saying "they don't love us anymore". This may be a complex mess of childhood roots in divorce and an emotionally abusive stepfather...but it is also a childhood response to the difficulty of change, of the trauma and dramas of broken stability, and an adult need to cuddle that child and find my own sacred space....the secret solitude within me. In addition, there is an assumption here that I am overusing...that the anger in a loved one has anything really to do with me. It may have to do with their interpretation of me, or what they observe. However, their anger is their emotion still based on their own fears or other feelings and the assumptions and life path that has brought them to that point. I need to remember that as I soothe that inner child.

Implication 3: ACTIVISM CONTENT. Activism or even advocacy based purely on anger is self-defeating. I own that it is normal, that it may be young activism in development, and acknowledge its usefulness. However, if the root of the anger is fear in how another may act or regard us, it is unsustainable because we cannot control other people. We/I have to find a different root to graft our social justice passion onto. I suggest not the sympathy for ourselves or others, but the empathy to not only improve the lives of our own family, but to offer insight into other ideas for others who may themselves be rooted in fear against us.

I don't know the answer to this original question. I invite input.
Mother of Heaven, Compassionate One, Creator of all things, please coach and teach me to:

1. Develop that safe internal space
2. Learn to honor other's journeys
3. Question my own anger

So may I live into this promise.


Katy

A feminist query: Trans Identity and Essentialist Manhood or Womanhood

First Wave feminism  (19th and early 20th centuries) set up a concept of of female essentialism - female as a "class" have certain set characteristics and oppressions.
Second Wave Feminism (early 1960s) began to challenge this assertion and others with diverse perspectives and began the project of deconstruction of this ideal calling forth intersectionality and the different perspectives of women around the world working in different ways on different forms of oppression.
Third Wave Feminism introduced more identity politics and the rise in struggling with gender as a shared social concept that is enforced and privileged across society.

The question: As we begin to really talk turkey about trans realities, are we again essentializing what a "woman is" or "what a man is" that has roots more based in cis-privilege than fairness to the wealth and breadth of either "class" or the great amount of cross over between the sex classes?

In plain language .....does anyone see us a society making up the following groups "women" "trans women" "trans men" "men" because the trans parts may not have been raised with the social conditioning of either other category and may experience some degree of complicated "maleness" "femaleness" attribute crossover.....all the while negating the unique experiences of trans folk which not only ostracize them from the other two classes but go as unrecognized.

Example for illustration:
Cis-women may grow up with the overhwhelming statistic that 1 in 4 women will be raped before attending college. Trans women may/may not, but the overwhelming statistics of homicide, the experiences of being sidelined once transitioning, ex too often do not get factored into the trans women are women calculus.


Or, more basic...transwomen may not have grow up with the biological components and cycles that cis-sisters do, but does this really make them "non women" somehow? 

Thoughts on Spirituality: Of Mystic Predisposition

First and foremost, happy Easter to my Jesus-centered friends and family. Tidings also to my pagan friends and family, celebratory joy to you as well.

Check out (yeah, I know it is an article from The Guardian), please forgive me as I realize there is rudeness at the end of the article.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2010/apr/03/easter-pagan-symbolism

Recently Robin asked if I consider myself Christian, if I believe in Jesus. The answer to that, like many things in my life, is complex...it is more of a journey along a story path rather than a direct yes/no answer.

To answer the question, I have to acknowledge that first and foremost, fundamentalism in my recent activist life has done much to encourage me on paths away from the "Christianity" most of them profess and towards secluded wooded paths more inclined to a spirtuality I have had since childhood.

Since young, you see, I have had more of a proclivity towards questioning... towards looking for the divine in the secretive places... to observing it in the flight of a butterfly's wings, or the breeze on a nice day. One might argue that I have the predisposition towards mysticism in all its shadowed glory. A more accurate representation might be that I am one of the wanderers.

I don't know where God or the Goddess (or however the Divine wishes to define itself) is.
Here is what my life experience has told me though.

1. I have spoken with the Divine Embodiment of Love and Creation. I did so before I transitioned about transition itself. The answer in simple straightforward and loving tones was "You are my child, however you are...you are part of me"
2. The divine lives in each and every one of us. Simultaneously, great darkness lives inside each and every one of us.
3. When I die, I hope that others say of me "8 out of 10 times" she listened and followed the whisper of the Goddess. Sometimes, sometimes, the reason I do things are for one of two reasons.
1. I possess some amount of knowing or instinct that is 12 steps ahead and tells me, "this is the way this is done"
2. I have been instructed by the act of love, or the whisper of the divine, that this is the action to take.
4.   I have doubts, I have questions...and that is ok. That is part of how my wandering spirituality works. I will not find all the answers this life. I don't need to.......remember that the journey itself is part of the win.

I don't know if Jesus was the Son of God, the Song of the Divine, or a really smart, compassionate, activist rabbi of the masses. I honestly don't think it matters. I don't believe that my absolution, resurrection, or salvation in the next life depends on it.
I don't believe in a divinity that arbitrary, the one I wish to seek for is compassion and love itself and accepts, heals, and resurrects all.
I also take a hard look at the metaphysics of the supposition.

If Jesus died for the sins of mankind, then all are forgiven. No strings attached (despite what some denominations may preach). The metaphysical act of sacrifice negated the metaphysical act of disobedience that created the concept of sin. This, at once, freed the world of its burden.

Most of what we call "sins" are really guidelines for how we should treat each other in love and community, how to structure a respectful society. From this perspective, to hold one's eternal soul hostage over them is contrary and not in keeping with a divinity that embodies love and second chances.

Hence, if you believe in the resurrection, if you believe in the risen Christ, then redemption itself says to the throw the concept of sin out the window and work on living together.

As I said though.....I have the predisposition of a mystic.....or moreso the wanderer......what the heck do I know, .....we are the wise fools of the spiritual realms.

Have a day of harmony, joy, and peace....and live into that as you try to make it "stick" in your family and community.

Today's Sermon: Deconstructing America's "Land of Plenty"

There is something in our collective American character that leads us to overcompensation because of a real lack of substance.
We claim that we have the best healthcare system in the world, even though we are like 33rd in ranking with other countries.
In Texas this flaw is particularly pronounced, a state where we claim we are the best at everything and "Everything is bigger in Texas"

The fact is that if we owned the reality and addressed the commonality we share with even the "poorest of countries" and acted from a sense of humility, the more we would live into "who we think we are"

This morning this was underscored for me in the concept of America being "the land of plenty"
A nation with epidemic obesity, and yet we are the land of "abundance".
Something is not right there, something does not add up.....
Something relating to our overabundant rationing of high fructose corn syrup instead of high quality nutrition.

Until the day that grocery stores are not throwing out food because it will rot on the shelves, we really have not fulfilled out obligations to our own (immigrants included).
Until anyone can walk off the street, and without any money, fill up a grocery cart full of fruits, vegetables, and good meat, we cannot say we truly are food wealthy.

Wealth comes not from stockpiling...we have to replace that idea.
Wealth comes with bountiful giving.
We need to retrain our perspective to that of cultures in which the "big man" is the one who gives away the most.

There is a way to do this and care for everyone.
Until the day that those living in our borders no longer have to live an undernourished economy:

Where the next meal does not have to come from scavenging refuse.
Where decisions between "having a roof over our heads" vies with quality nutrition.
Where we have to decide between filling our much needed meds verses going to bed hungry.

We are not a "country of plenty"