Paula Stone Williams's Blog, page 3

This is Life, Sometimes It Is Hard

A close friend died suddenly this past week. We had been friends since 1984. We worked in church planting together, served our denomination in leadership capacities, and supported each other’s lives in more ways than I can count. For years he would fax me his sermons on Friday morning. I’d watch each page print, gather them, and read.

When we met at national meetings, there were many late night conversations. We shared a lot about our personal lives. He was a man of integrity and character. My first trip to Colorado happened at his invitation.

I knew this friend well. He was the Inspirational Pattern on the DiSC Classic (I/D.) The Enneagram wasn’t all that popular back then, but I’d be pretty sure he was a three with a strong two wing, or vice versa. He loved empowering others, but he also was pretty single minded, with his eyes fixed on the goal. For that and many other reasons, he was quite successful.

My friend wasn’t perfect. He tended to be a little self-referential, as most I/D folks are, but not in an off putting way. He was just very excited about whatever project he happened to be working on. I’ve known few who championed others more than he did. He was always more theologically conservative than I, but that didn’t much affect our friendship.

We talked a good bit when it was time for him to retire. I met with his leaders a time or two about how they might honor him. I was at his retirement dinner, quite a delightful affair. It was obvious he was very loved. As with most of us who led a large ministry for a long time, I knew he would not sit still in his “retirement.” I was not surprised when I heard he was working encouraging pastors all over the nation.

He was one of the very few I told about my gender dysphoria a very short time before I came out. It was the last time we ever spoke. I understood his decision to no longer be in contact with me. For him it was theological. Just because I understood that did not make it any easier.

No one told me he died. Cathy’s sister told her. I have a few friends who I imagine would have told me, but they probably assumed, understandably, that someone local would have reached out, though no one did.

I will miss my friend. I’ve already missed him for eleven years.

This is life. Sometimes it is hard.

Battening Down in the Borderlands

Many of you are asking how I’m doing nowadays.  Thank you for asking. These are not good times to be transgender in America.

I did renew my passport before the election. Unless the government goes to extraordinary lengths to identify whose passport has ever had a gender marker change, something that would be incredibly expensive and time consuming to do, I should be good for another ten years. After that, who knows?

I expect my Medicare coverage for estrogen will end sometime this year, which will increase that cost one hundred times over, from five dollars every 90 days to $500 every 90 days. It is difficult to see a new item in the news almost every day unveiling new limits on transgender life.

Fortunately, I am able to travel in the world without prejudicial treatment, except for the occasions in which people are aware of my TED Talks, books, or television appearances. Additionally, as I was saying to our mayor just this morning, my white male entitlement  serves me well. I just assume people are going to be accepting of me, and forge ahead accordingly. Usually it works out fine. On the rare occasions in which it does not, I am always taken aback. It is possible those times will be on the increase.

I spoke to the Metro Mayors Caucus retreat a couple of weeks ago and in the Q&A one person asked why I don’t just withhold the information that I am transgender. In most situations I do withhold that information. At a restaurant, airport, hotel, store, or just about any other setting, I do not announce myself as transgender and no one knows that I am. But again, in settings in which I speak or lead, it is generally known that I am transgender.

The bottom line is that I am not as much concerned about how I will be treated by the public as I am about all trans kids and the transgender adults who clearly do not pass in their new gender. They are in for a very tough time.

I am concerned about my legal rights being chipped away, right by right. The flurry of executive actions being taken is dizzyingly disarming. I know it is a plan to flood the zone with so many orders that we can’t keep up. But we must. Every one of these orders impacts people all over the globe. And not just people. Programs protecting elephants in Africa, virgin jungles in South America, and coral reefs in Asia are already being affected by the dismantling of USAID.

I believe certain priorities must be at the forefront of our opposition. First, anyone who has a basic understanding of American history knows that all the framers of the Constitution felt Congress, particularly the House of Representatives, should have the power of the purse. This is the first time in the history of our nation that a toothless House of Representatives has abandoned that power. Our democracy will not survive that abandonment, and I’m not sure we can wait two years until Democrats can flip the House. Former Treasury Secretery Robert Reich just published a frightening post on just this subject. https://robertreich.substack.com/p/this-is-what-dictatorship-looks-like?r=45vjat&fbclid=IwY2xjawISNl9leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWoF-xZBj6OnbY6-PGTKUrAdPEe9XfzZEVQgIQnBAq-nZo0YxR5r9BCQFg_aem_vfpZLpp3_tt-rrg7PhmTGA&triedRedirect=true

Even the small town in which I serve as mayor pro tem has 4.5 million dollars at risk if last week’s executive actions are reinstated. That is why I believe stopping the power grab over funding must be the leading edge of our opposition. We lose our democracy without it, and all other issues become moot.

And what about the transgender population? When it comes to sports, that ship has already sailed, and I do not think there is enough support, even on the left, to fight that battle. Transgender people in the military? That is going to be a tough battle too, since it is a relatively recent protection. Transgender women being housed in male prisons? That is a death sentence, and should qualify under cruel and unusual punishment, though with today’s Supreme Court, who knows? They seem to want to fiddle while Rome burns.

Losing trans specific medical care through Medicaid, Medicare, and other health insurance? That will be devastating to many, and costly to the rest of us. But make no mistake, it is coming. And after they have wiped away all transgender rights, they will start with the LGB population, and then people of color. I see the trajectory. At this stage in the process, the willpower to stop them does not exist. Project 2025 is becoming a reality, and white evangelical Christians will wield their power with impunity. They have already abandoned the teachings of Jesus. Why stop there?

I was asked in November to write a letter to an English court stating that a transgender American citizen, sentenced to deportation because of actions against an employer, would be in danger if she was sent back to the United States. I declined to write the letter because I did not believe the person would be in danger. But that was then.

For me, the biggest problems are internal. I already consider myself to be a person who comes from the borderlands and lives in the liminal space between genders. I do not claim a cisgender experience. I claim a transgender experience. While there seem to be some indicators, I do not have a clue why I am transgender. I just know my former wife, best friend, and therapist believe I would have ended my life if I had not transitioned. I do know it became more and more impossible to sustain my life as Paul.

Someone asked me a while ago what would likely happen if I detransitioned. I told him that the numbers are not very encouraging. Well-known trans people who detransitioned have had a very clear trajectory. We know that trajectory because of the very definition of those people – they are well-known. As far as I can discern, 100 percent of nationally and internationally well-known transgender people who detransitioned have ended their lives.

And it appears to me that the majority of Americans do not care. As long as they feel safe, they do not care what happens to me. I am full of doubts about my identity. If you are honest with yourself, you are too. We all are. Every one of us feels there is something wrong with us that at our core makes us unworthy of deep human connection. Add to that self-doubt the fact that a majority of the nation is attacking your very identity? Well, it does not take long before that self-doubt turns to shame, and that shame turns to despair.

I am embarrassed by all the decades in which I did not understand that, while my own brown-skinned daughter was living it every day. It is not just me. A lot of us are running scared, and we have every reason to be.

I See Some Light There

I arrived at the Brighton, Colorado conference center at 7:45 on a snowy January morning. Given the condition of the roads, I was surprised to see the parking lot was full. Inside were a few dozen mayors from the Denver Metro Mayors Caucus, all ready for a full day retreat, despite the Colorado weather.

I serve as mayor pro tem of Lyons, Colorado. I am a member of the Board of Trustees of our town and was chosen as mayor pro tem by the mayor and members of the board. If the mayor is out of town, I chair meetings, sign checks and whatnot. Under normal circumstances I would not have been invited to the retreat. However, I had been invited to give the keynote address to kick off the morning of the retreat.

It was quite an honor to speak to the mayors representing pretty much the entire Front Range of Colorado. Sixty percent of the state’s sales tax revenue comes from those cities. You might expect these mayors to be ambitious folks with a lot of ego need and not much ego strength, kind of what we see in national politics nowadays. If you thought that, you would be wrong.

Only the mayors of Denver and Aurora (you know the city “taken over” by Venezuelan gangs) have full time jobs. The rest have a day job, and for most of them, a pretty demanding day job. From my observation these mayors had the kind of strengths Henri Nouwen talked about as being common in great leaders – equal parts confidence and humility. They were not particularly enamored with themselves, but they did take their task seriously.

These folks certainly do not serve for the pay. Our mayor in Lyons earns $8,000 a year. Most of the folks there earn $20,000 or less. And though it is not full time, serving as mayor is pretty consuming. In most locations the job is nonpartisan. With a couple of exceptions, I had no idea about the party affiliation of those at Saturday’s retreat. In a late morning session all of them gathered around tables to set priorities about ways in which they can work together for the betterment of their citizens. It was fun watching them brainstorm priorities among subjects that might put the rest of us to sleep, like infrastructure, construction defects, and zoning.

They also talked about the character traits most important to them in their coworkers. Highest on the list were trust, honesty, and follow-through, traits I saw in the mayors themselves.

I was able to stay through mid-afternoon, through the presentations by the kinds of organizations known by their acronyms, CML, DRCOG, RTD, and such. These organizations serve the needs of the cities. The general public might not know they exist, but the mayors do.

I was greatly encouraged by the retreat. This is where most of the real work gets done in America – at the local level, and these people refuse to be deterred by national politics. Of course they have concerns, and when the new president arbitrarily halts all federal funding, they know their citizens will be the ones who are hurt, regardless of how they voted. But these local leaders press on, because nobody else is going to repair that box culvert, secure those water rights, or increase services to senior citizens.

I thought of our own town board meetings, starting at 5:30 pm and often lasting over four hours. There are some really late nights, with most people getting up early the next morning to go to their day jobs.

In these days in which all the ego-needy national pundits desperately grasp for power, it was good to be reminded that the people who actually keep this nation running are meeting together on a nonpartisan basis, keeping our democracy functioning and stable.

I’m reminded of the phrase commonly attributed to former Speaker of the House, Tip O’Neill – “All politics is local.” I hope it is true, because if it is, I see some light at the end of the tunnel.

And so it goes.

And Now This

The week after the election I took a break from thinking about what action I can take related to the future of our nation. What happened at and after the inauguration brought me out of my stupor.

Four years ago today I was speaking at President Biden’s Inaugural Prayer Service. It was quite an honor. Today, at the same hour four years later, I was reading Trump’s executive order stating that gender dysphoria is not real. I renewed my passport a couple of months ago – because I knew I needed to renew it before new orders went into effect. Same with my TSA Pre-check and Global Entry renewal. I’ve also been stockpiling estrogen, because Medicare coverage for that will go next. In the midst of this madness, what can I do? What can any of us do?

Initially I will put my head down and continue my work as Mayor Pro Tem of Lyons, thankfully a non-partisan body. If all politics is ultimately local, then this must be the place to begin. I consider it an honor to serve my town, and I greatly appreciate how my town receives me – warmly and fully accepting. But that is here, in Lyons, Colorado.

What can I do about national affairs and the state of our democracy? Over the past couple of months, as I have ruminated on the election loss, I attended to a number of facts, not always easy to come by in today’s Internet informed world. Donald Trump won 49.9 percent of the vote, compared to Kamala Harris at 48.4 percent. This was not a landslide. Yes, for the first time Donald Trump would have won an election with the popular vote, something that would not have happened in 2016, but not by much. Also, for the second straight election, he did not win half of the American vote.

Still, he won. I believe one of the reasons he won is because of the lack of serious engagement with public issues. Most people do not bother checking their news sources for accuracy. I am often shocked that people watch the opinion shows of Fox News as if they were fact. The inability to separate fact from fiction has always been with us in America, since the days of competing newspapers in the late 18th century. But the Internet takes it to a whole new level.

Second, I have concluded that most Americans are not much interested in doing the work necessary to get to the truth of things. Belonging has always been more important than the truth. Look at any family system that backs an abuser, even when they know the truth of the abuse.

Third, I believe the American education system, focused as it is on the left brain subjects of higher mathematics, science, engineering and the like, has left right brain subjects like literature, history, and social studies behind, no longer requiring a balanced education in the humanities. Without an understanding of world history, there can be no understanding of how democracy can slip from a nation’s grasp.

Fourth, the left did not help themselves. As Yascha Mounk so ably has written in The Identity Trap, the left’s obsession with standpoint theory, essentialism, cultural appropriation, identity sensitive public policy, progressive separatism, and limits on free speech all created a backlash, not just from the right but from the center. These excesses of the left have also effectively killed the very important work of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI.) Universities have played a huge part in these excesses, but an argument could be made that the Democratic establishment and the mainline Protestant world also contributed to these excesses.

Fifth, I want to be clear that the single most significant factor in the election was white evangelical Christians, 85 percent of whom voted for Trump. Without their vote, Harris would have won 59 percent to 41 percent. As I explained in a sermon I preached recently, the evangelical world wants a left-brain Christianity, where the Bible is seen as a book of literal meaning, scientific explanation, and certainty. It is not. The Bible, like the teaching of Jesus, is metaphor, not literal meaning, awe for the creation, not scientific explanation, and mystery, not certainty. Evangelical Christianity long ago sold its soul to the modern age, which fascinatingly has more power in evangelical Christianity today than it does in the culture at large. The culture at large has moved on to postmodernism.

In my quarter century as a non-profit CEO, I always said to our employees and board, “Do not tell me about a problem if you are not ready to suggest or work on a solution.” How do you combat the spread of misinformation, or counter society’s loss of interest in intellectual pursuit? These are massive problems with no easy solutions.

This much I do know. I still believe that proximity and narrative can solve a host of our problems. If we can get close to one another, in the same room, we will see each other’s humanity and hear one another’s stories. I find that people’s understanding of what it means to be transgender shifts significantly when they have spent time with me. Unfortunately most of those on the right refuse to spend time with me. Social isolation is a disease that cannot be cured by anything other than ending the isolation.

I am in conversation with people who could provide a large platform in which to come face to face with those opposed to transgender people. It would not be easy, but I believe it would be good. I’ll let you know what happens.

In the meantime, please know that I will be fine. It is the transgender kids and those who have only recently transitioned that I worry about. Pray for them and pray for America.

Yeah, But How Do You Feel?

I have always struggled to identify my feelings. My therapist used to say, “I did not ask what you thought, I asked how you feel.” Having been raised in a fundamentalist home with hardened categories, I was taught that all decisions should be rational and feelings get in the way of good decisions. I had no practice feeling.

The core emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust all live on their own in the ether. They have no place to lay their heads save the space they demand in your being. And they do demand space. They show up at the door with their bags and inform you they are staying until you deal with them. This is especially true of the substantive trio of anger, fear, and sadness. Fundamentalists lock them in the basement, but everyone knows they are there, beneath the tidied surface.

I have since come to understand you have to allow these emotions entry when they arrive. They have an easement to come and go as they like. They do with all humans. You cannot stop them. You can decide to address them in the living room instead of putting them in the basement. And you can demand their departure when they have overstayed their welcome. But I get ahead of myself. I did not know any of this way back then.

By “then” I mean most of my married life. I, like a lot of husbands, relied on my wife to tell me how I felt. For Cathy, that was exhausting. Not only did she have to deal with her own feelings, she had to feel mine, in an exaggerated way, like you do as a therapist – “Your mother did WHAT!?” People don’t know how abnormal some actions are until you tell them. Wives routinely do this for their husbands because apart from anger, most husbands have no idea what they are feeling. Our culture allows men anger, but none of the other core emotions.

Post transition I did it again, with a friend, and then with another close friend. I finally came to see I was wearing souls out and I needed to feel my own emotions, unaided by another benevolent female. That is when I started memorizing poetry.

Poetry is the right brain finding its expression in language, not straightforward left brain language, but language used slant, as Emily Dickinson might say. I memorize poems that speak to me. I do not ask why they speak to me. They just do, and when they do, I memorize them. Then I pay attention to when they arise unbidden in the course of a day. The right brain is charged with bringing into consciousness what is unconscious.

The lyrics of songs also arrive unbidden, which is interesting, because I almost never know all the lyrics to a song. For me, songs are about the tune, especially the harmonies, not the words. So when the words arrive without invitation, I take notice.

I cannot tell you how often, as a child, I started belting out the African-American spiritual, “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.” I sang it with all my heart. No one in my family took notice. That is the fruit of fundamentalism.

Lately I keep having the entire David Whyte poem, The Soul Lives Contented running through the course of my days. It is not a poem about contentment. It is a poem about restlessness. The soul lives beneath the ego. The ego wants power and safety. It is a tyrant. The soul is here for the ride. Trembling, it reaches out for your hand, to get your attention, to invite you to the thin places where the ego is bedded down and the soul can speak directly to the gods.

See, not the language of the rational, reasonable, explicit, abstracted, compartmentalized, fragmented, left brain, but the singing, praising, feeling of the right brain. In Jung’s language this is where the self resides. In Christian language, it is the realm of the soul.

The soul is what answers the front door and allows the core emotions entry and takes them to the guest room. It knows what has to be dealt with. It might even help them unpack their bags. It is the soul that brings poems to mind, helping tease out what is going on in the realm of feeling that I learned to suppress so well. It is also what tells those emotions when it is time to go.

Though I am not certain, it seems to me that estrogen and anti-androgens make it easier for the soul to slip forth like a “tremor of pure sunlight before exhaustion” as Mary Oliver said in Maybe. Testosterone is the fuel of anger. Its absence I experience as pure blessing, one of the indicators that I am, in fact, transgender.

I always say I come from the borderlands between genders, a holy liminal space. I once had dinner at a house built by William Roebling, the man who built the Brooklyn Bridge. He put thick girders, left over from the construction of the bridge, in the walls of his house. The door jambs were thick, almost like passageways. That is the kind of liminal space in which I live, neither this room nor that, but a place in between not quite once before a time, but also not quite once upon a time.

Anyway, that is why I still look to my close female friends to tell me what I am feeling, like a man. It is also why I find myself having very strong emotions that demand expression. It feels like that is the estrogen at work, like a woman. As I said, I come from the land between the genders. Sometimes it is the land of the lost, but as I say so very often, it’s okay, because lost is a place too.

I am not sure where this post is going. I want it to circle around and reach a conclusion chock full of insight. Seems like that’s not gonna happen.

And so it goes.

At the Beginning of a New Year, a Word of Thanks

I have a few thousand readers who regularly peruse my blog. Many have it sent to their inbox. I am grateful for all of you.

I am thankful for those from my past life who read this column regularly and occasionally reach out via email or text to thank me for a post. You have no idea how much it warms my heart when you write. My life is lived with discontinuity between what was and what is, so whenever there is some small gesture that comes over the continental divide of my life to thank me for a post, it boosts my spirit far more than you know.

I know some of what I write is painful to those who remain in evangelicalism, and that you disagree about more than a little of what I write. I appreciate your graciousness in taking the posts at face value and that you do not take them personally. Many of you have remained within our denomination and I completely understand. I would have remained if I had been allowed. Sadly, both my transition and my theology no longer allow it.

I also have a lot of transgender people who follow me, both those who have transitioned and those who have not. I am not particularly active within the trans community. I rarely speak on transgender issues. Most of my public speaking is on the subject of my first TED Talk – gender equity. Even with my lack of involvement in the trans community, I am touched that you take the time to follow my journey and let me know the parts that resonate with your own.

Some of my trans readers reach  out to have a conversation. Sadly I receive far too many requests to be able to schedule those conversations. I am so sorry that is the case. Thank you for sticking with me and reading my memoir. I am appreciative.

A lot of my readers are folks who have stumbled upon one of my TED Talks and have signed up after searching my name. I heard from one of you this morning. I hear from folks pretty much every week, and I always try to answer your emails as quickly as possible. Taking the time to write me is a precious thing, and not something I ever take for granted.

I’m pretty sure my kids rarely if ever read my blog, unless I specifically ask them to read one. My girlfriend doesn’t either, or my therapist. Cathy, my former wife, usually reads them and I take comfort in that. Same with my best friend, who reads every week, and three of my five former copastors, who let me know when they like a post.

Some read every week. One person writes me an email after almost every post. She has been such a loyal follower. Others wait and read eight or ten in a single sitting. Some friends pick up the phone and call me after a particular post, wanting to talk further. I cherish those calls.

For all of you, I am grateful for your faithfulness and for the respect you show just by reading my words.

A lot of what I write is stream of consciousness, whatever I happen to be working through on the particular day I start writing. Sometimes I have no idea what I am going to write until I type the first sentence. The subject unfolds as I type. I love those days. Sometimes the ideas come so fast my fingers can’t move quickly enough to record the cascade of thoughts. Occasionally I stare at a blank screen and type a sentence or two before waiting for another day.

I will keep writing as long as you keep reading. As this, my twelfth year as Paula unfolds, and I approach the completion of 600 columns (columns – language from bygone days with the Christian Standard) I pray that my thoughts may lessen the suffering in the world just a bit, that my words may bring a little insight into people’s minds, and that my heart comes through to show my respect for each and every one of you who treat one another with dignity. I am grateful for your particular journey on this green earth.

And so it goes.

Waiting With Their Light

Light is paradoxically both a particle and a wave. Come to think of it, most of life is paradox. Our time on earth is both wonderful and disagreeable.  As this holiday season unfolds, I am feeling peace and anger, determination and resignation, hope and acedia. Let me explain.

According to an article in the New York Times, Donald Trump won the white evangelical vote by 65 points (85 percent for Trump and 15 percent for Harris) and lost the rest of the American vote by 18 points (59 percent for Harris and 41 percent for Trump.) To put it simply, white evangelical Christians elected Donald Trump.

They elected a man found liable for sexual abuse into the highest office in the land. I suppose I should not be surprised. This is the same group that fired me after 35 years of good work with nary a single negative evaluation, the group that took away my pension, all because I came out as transgender, something never mentioned in the Bible.

I regret working so hard to establish new evangelical churches all over the nation, most of which would not allow me through their doors today, let alone into their pulpits. There are a handful of churches and people who are exceptions, and I do want to acknowledge them. Those churches and leaders have also paid a price, most of them booted from the denomination that birthed them.

Interestingly, the one time I have been publicly cancelled by the left, it was a church that cancelled me for daring to question the appropriateness of giving adolescents irreversible medical treatment for their gender dysphoria. That particular church disavowed me without even informing me there was a problem. But let me be clear, only one mainline congregation has treated me unfairly. The entire evangelical world has rejected me.

What conclusions are my grandchildren to draw about the church and Christianity? I know the conclusions my non-spiritually-affiliated friends have drawn. They are not theologians, but they know enough to see that the church has abandoned the teachings of Jesus, because it has.

Jesus taught in metaphor. Evangelicalism wants literal meaning. Jesus taught awe. Evangelicalism wants scientific explanation. Jesus taught mystery. Evangelicalism wants certainty. Evangelicalism has abandoned Jesus in favor of bibliolatry, governed by the interpretation of its supremely confident but poorly educated leaders. They have abandoned the teachings of Jesus in favor of a return to a federated understanding of the old and new covenants, placing us back under the teachings of the law, or at least the specific ones they have decided serve their purposes, like the Ten Commandments. Evangelicals prefer the didactic teaching of Paul over the narrative teaching of Jesus.

All of this is an abandonment of the primary half of the brain, the right hemisphere, in favor of its emissary, the supremely confident but non-contextualized left hemisphere. It is a church more connected to Rene Descartes than it is to Jesus of Nazareth.

I sound angry, you say? I am. But I also understand that sin in the Bible is a not locked up inside the skin of an individual. It is a cosmic collective malevolent force. It is what we do when we come under the influence of a group that behaves in ways the individuals within that group would never behave on their own. My problem is not with individual evangelicals. It is with what they have done as a group. They have behaved in ways the sociobiologist EO Wilson said we’d better get ahold of before we lose the species and the planet as we know it. They have created enemies that do not exist.

The church will pay a price for its arrogant grasp for power. It has abandoned its root cause – to love God, neighbor, and self. What is left is nothing but the collective ego’s need for safety and power. Their narcissism has been made known and it will be justly rewarded.

I know most of my readers are not Christians, so I shall answer your anticipated question. Why am I still a Christian? It is because I do believe in the Jesus who taught in metaphor, not literal meaning, the Jesus who encouraged awe instead of offering scientific explanation, the Jesus who gave us blessed mystery instead of sophomoric certainty. I still believe the teaching of Jesus to love God, neighbor, and self.

I still love many people who have left me behind. I would welcome a visit from them. I would not allow myself to be badgered or belittled by them, but I would welcome the chance to rest in the beauty of our shared, flawed and vulnerable humanity. We would walk down to the river and watch its ageless flow as it twists and turns on its way to the sea. The words of Wendell Berry come to mind, from The Peace of Wild Things:

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be  

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water

And the great heron feeds  

I come into the peace of wild things

Who do not tax their life with forethought

Of grief, I come into the presence of still water

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Thoughts from San Jose

I spoke Sunday at a delightful Presbyterian church in San Jose, California. I preached and then spoke for an hour about how America has gotten where it is regarding transgender people.

I spoke of E. O. Wilson, the sociobiologist, who said we are the only one of nine tribal species that has come to believe an enemy is necessary for the tribe to survive, and where no natural enemy exists, we create one.

I talked of the three moral standards, and the fact that while secular America works from the standard that says there is no greater moral good than to protect the freedom of the individual, the fundamentalist forms of the desert religions work from the second moral standard, that there is no greater good than to obey the teachings of the gods, as determined by their religious leaders. And in the Middle East, many work from the first moral standard, that there is no greater moral good than to protect the integrity of the tribe.

I then spoke for the first time at any length about study I have been doing recently on the work of Iain McGilchrist, the Scottish psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and philosopher who taught at Oxford. McGilchrist’s groundbreaking work on the hemispheres of the brain has fascinated me since I first read about it in Donald Kalsched’s Trauma and the Soul.

I noted how the last five hundred years have been a time of left-brain domination in the western world which has a created a narrow focus on analysis and categorization, the realm of the left hemisphere of the brain, and very little focus on placing that information in the greater context of life, a right hemisphere function.

In the world we have created, instead of metaphor, we want literal meaning. Instead of awe, we want scientific explanation. Instead of mystery we want certainty. All are left-brain. I explained how fundamentalist and evangelical Christianity have sold their soul to left brain thinking, which is tragic, because Jesus did not teach to the left brain. All of his instruction was to the right brain. He taught in metaphor, not literal meaning. He spoke in awe, not scientific explanation. He spoke of mystery, not certainty.

As a result, conservative Christianity has come to ignore the teachings of Jesus while it turns the Bible into a left brain textbook, to be interpreted literally, as a book of scientific explanation, and through the doctrine of inerrancy, certainty. Additionally, they pay more attention to the writings of Paul, more a left brain writer, than they do to the teachings of Jesus.

That shift is how you arrive at 87 percent of evangelicals believing gender is immutably determined at birth, 67 percent believing we already give too many civil rights to transgender people, and yet only 34 percent knowing someone who is out as a transgender person. Instead of following the teaching of Jesus to love God, neighbor, and self, they have created left brain rules and regulations to reject an issue that is nowhere mentioned in scripture.

I believe the only way to counteract this course of events is through right brain influence, primarily achieved through proximity and narrative. If we are bodily in the presence of another, unless we have a right brain deficiency, we stand a better chance of seeing that person in the context of our shared humanity rather than analyzing and categorizing them as “other.” If we hear one another’s stories, we stay in the right brain, the realm of narrative, subtlety, nuance, mystery and awe. While proximity demands bodily connection, narrative can be done on a mass scale.

Comedic television brought America around on marriage equality, progressively moving through All in the Family, where gay issues were first introduced, to the scripted Ellen show, where a gay character was the protagonist, to Will and Grace, in which gay characters interacting with straight characters was the focus of the show, to Modern Family, in which one of three major storylines was about a gay couple, to today, when people in sitcoms are incidentally gay.

Humans do change our minds, but not unless information comes to us in a non-threatening way. What could be less threatening than comedic narrative coming into our living rooms? That is one of the reasons I signed a life rights deal with a Hollywood production company to do a three season story of my life. In today’s environment, getting that funded will be next to impossible, but if they can get it funded, maybe it can help change the narrative.

When I was speaking in San Jose, as is always the case, I opened the talk up to Q&A. It did not take long for the biggest question to come forth, “What about teens receiving non-reversible medical care.” This was not a conservative group, unlike the group to which I had spoken a few weeks ago in which an attendee asked about trans people grooming children. When a question like that comes up I go straight to the facts. There is no incidence, ever, not once, of a trans person grooming children. It is a complete and utter myth. I challenged the questioner to give me a single example. He said nothing because, of course, there are no examples.

In San Jose the vast majority of the congregants were very supportive of trans people. The question about medical care was genuine. I gave an honest and researched answer. When I have given that answer before, I have satisfied neither the right nor the left. I have been attacked from both sides. Until we stop listening to conspiracy theories on the right and engaging in cancel culture, standpoint theory, and essentiality on the left, we will never be able to follow the science. I am committed to following the science.

Today, the studies extant do not support irreversible medical treatment for the majority of transgender adolescents. There is one group that is an exception, but instead of getting the care they need, that small group is caught in the crossfire between the two extremes.

The audience was warmly supportive, with many thoughtful questions  and comments after the session was over. I left grateful for the Builders and Baby Boomers who have been fighting the good fight for equal rights since the 1960s.

I eagerly accept invitations to speak at thoughtful and open churches. I do not request the fees I receive from corporations, conferences, or universities. I am just happy to get the word out that transgender people have a right to basic civil rights. I am quite sure the facts matter, and our stories must be told.

And so it goes

Expectant and Anxious

Many times in my life I have experienced a sustained longing for something more. Some television show, movie, or speech calls to my soul and says it is time to reach for the stars.

As Jungian analyst James Hollis says, the ego is a tyrant that desires only power and safety, which is tragic because both will eventually fail us. In The Heart Aroused, David Whyte says the ultimate safest place is a cemetery. Power and safety have their limits.

While the ego is interested in power and safety, the soul is interested in the ride. The soul is most connected to the right hemisphere of the brain, the primary hemisphere, the one that places everything in context and communicates with us in longings that struggle for words. These longings show up in well-told stories, paintings, photographs, and songs. They create awe, a decidedly right brain experience.

It is instructive to me to reflect on the specific elements that conspire to create this longing in me. The writing of Aaron Sorkin does it, whether in the West Wing or Newsroom. The novels of Wendell Berry (his essays being left-brain in their focus.) David Lean films, the film work of Roger Deakins, or television shows created by Carlton Cuse (Lost) can bring it forth. Musically it might be a great performance in a Broadway show, music of the vocal group Voctave, or 19th century hymns.

We grow complacent and allow the ego to have its way, lying on the couch, numbing itself on MSNBC, nothing but a viewer powerless to bring about change. Smart phones have not been good for the species. They invite endless scrolling, mindless time with the irrelevant. Too often the same is true with social media, feigning human connection when we are in reality incarnate beings with the need to physically connect, not via an electronic screen. Social media avoids genuine human contact, with its body language, subtle shifts in intonation, eyes telling their own stories, and a plethora of other subtle clues inaccessible on a screen.

I am not a Luddite, I just wish those who created these tools had thought about whether or not they were good for the souls of those for whom they were created. We live in a left-brain-centric, right-brain-deficient civilization, where the important questions are rarely asked. That is why we are lonelier than ever.

When I am jolted out of my acedia by one of these gifts of creative magic I realize I have been settling, and it is again time to unsettle and look to the stars. As David Whyte says in Sweet Darkness, the night has a horizon further than you can see. The possibilities are endless, a constantly expanding universe.

To what am I being called? I’m not sure. Discerning a call is rarely easy. The easy ones turn out to be somebody else’s call, not ours. True calls combine fear with excitement, the paradoxical alchemy of being inexorably pulled upward and ahead, into the unknown, expectant and frightened.

I currently serve as Mayor Pro Tem, an interesting position. I’ll leave it at that. Am I being called to another position in politics? Heaven knows the political world needs those who answer to soul, not ego, those with nothing left to prove. Or maybe it is to find that new TED Talk that can expand my speaking platform. My agent already has my next book proposal, so I’m just waiting to see what publisher picks it up. But I think it may be something that has not risen to the surface just yet, some way in which I need to stretch myself within my gifts.

I was asked to audition for the lead role in a feature film that began shooting in Toronto last month. I gave it a thought for a minute, but I knew it wasn’t for me. Speaking of acting, there is a character in a Sorkin television show that resonates with me. I’m still puzzling through the reason. Interestingly, the actor is also represented by my speaker’s agency. I’d like to meet sometime, or better yet, speak on the same platform.

Mary Oliver’s The Journey begins, “One day you knew what you had to do and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice…” I do not yet know what I have to do. I am waiting for it to come. This is life, discerning the next call onto what Joseph Campbell called the Hero’s Journey. Discerning and answering the call gets no easier with the passing of time. That much I know. Most calls require you to let go of something to which your ego is clinging before you can take hold of something new.

The older you get the less comfortable you are letting go and reaching out. The resistance is about time and its passing. You wonder if you are too old. But if you succumb to that temptation, you already have one foot in the vicinity of the grave. It’s a shame to die of sheer boredom.

I’ll let you know once I have a little more clarity about my current restlessness. Until then I’ll listen for the still small voice that arrives in the thin places.

And so it goes.

I Will Be the Greater Fool

Okay, I lost it the other day when the Speaker of the House declared that women’s restrooms would be off limits to Sarah McBride, Delaware’s newly elected member of Congress. Sarah has been Sarah as long as I have been Paula. I imagine when she’s out in public her experience is pretty much the same as mine – everyone treats her as a woman. Most of her hate mail probably comes via the Internet or texts and voicemails, as does mine. Being prohibited from using a women’s restroom, or even being stared at in a women’s restroom, is not a part of my experience, and probably not a part of hers either. She has responded with intelligence and grace to this ridiculous affront. Inside, she has to be bitterly disappointed.

My entitlement and self-confidence know no bounds. It rarely occurs to me that a worst-case scenario could come true. Only this week did I realize it is a distinct possibility that a national bathroom bill will be passed and signed into law. Even then I know I need not worry when I fly through ORD, LAX, LGA, or even CLT. But I fly through DFW a lot and it is already a surly and unwelcoming airport for everyone. For me, flying through Texas could get a lot worse.

But here’s the thing. What good does it do me to get caught up in the net of attention-seeking transphobia. Since the election the trolls have come out in force, again. I have been attacked from within the fundamentalist Christian world and from without. It is going to be an ugly four years.

But having had a few days to let this truth settle in, I am beginning to put it in perspective. I realize just how tiny my concerns are compared to what my daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, and three of my five granddaughters face on an ongoing basis.

I’m not up against what Palestinians are facing in Gaza, or even what Jewish students are facing on elite university campuses where anti-Jewish sentiment is frighteningly real. None of my grandparents were exterminated in concentration camps. I have a friend whose grandmother was the only member of her family to survive Nazi Germany. My friend is planning to move back Spain and has every reason to do so. Generational trauma is real.

As for me, I will ignore the haters because I can. I’ve been busy unfriending folks from social media and removing my phone number from all of my online sites, again. As an elected official I can have law enforcement come by my home at the beginning of every shift, though I don’t feel that is necessary, at least not for now. And I can ignore the bathroom laws, as I have been doing where they have existed.

I will not play into their hand. I will live with dignity, treat my enemies with compassion, and play the role of the greater fool. In economic theory, the lesser fool is the person who optimistically buys a stock at a high price believing it can be sold to a greater fool at an even higher price.

I believe most people might believe the price of attaining civility, equity, and tolerance are too high right now, not worth buying into. The downside is too great.  There is too much to lose.

But I believe civility, equity, and decency can become the currency of our nation, the currency that found expression in the farewell address of George Washington, the Gettysburg address of Abraham Lincoln, the inaugural speech of John F. Kennedy, and the traditional liberalism that says there is more that unites us as than separates us.

I will continue to believe the ultimate building blocks of the universe are predicated on love, and that against all appearances, love is what makes the world go round. If that makes me the greater fool, it is a role I shall be honored to play.

And so it goes.