Transfigured Quotes

“Our God is gender-full.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“The scriptures were written by men in eras when the idea of masculinity and power went hand in hand. When reading the Bible, it’s easy to conclude that God is a man. But how can the force that brought all things into being be constrained by gender? Legalistic Christians demand that biological sex and gender are one and the same. But God doesn’t have a body. He created biology, but doesn’t inhabit it as we do. So how can God be a man?”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Fathers and doctors of the church like Origen and Augustine recognized that language is too limited to adequately describe God. There are no words which can capture the being which loved so much that it exploded into energy and matter. But humans are designed to seek understanding, and language creates form for incomprehensible concepts, and so we apply human ideas to a God who is not human.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“We are all prisoners but some of us are in cells with windows and some without. Kahlil Gibran”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. (Matthew 5:3-4, 6, 11 NIV)”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“If my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up. (Psalm 27:10 NRSV)”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“I live my life knowing that God loves me. I know this because I completely put my fate in His hands, and for doing that I have seen the ultimate result of His unconditional love. In the end, it only matters what He thinks of me, because I know if He loves me then others will, too. This is God’s redemption for me. Rachel Clark”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Jesus does not disdain you for the things religious experts say you shouldn’t do, be, or feel. Jesus doesn’t want you to stay away from him out of some idea that you would sully Christianity by your presence. Jesus wants you to break through the crowd and grab hold of any part of him you can reach. And when you do, he will claim you as his beloved child.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Do not wish to be anything but what you are, and try to be that perfectly. Francis de Sales”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“What’s happening outside church walls is happening inside church walls. It is all part of the human experience. Ignorance and lack of education about sex, sexual orientation, gender identities, and human sexuality in general have led to harmful assumptions and poor pastoral counsel. Kathy Baldock”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Novelty comes about by the self-organizing dynamism inherent in creatures themselves. Evolution over deep time is so creative because the material of the world itself has the God-given inner ability to become ever more. Elizabeth A. Johnson”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“You can have your king-god. You can have your warrior-god. You can have your father-god. Today, I’m opting for the Mother-Hen-God. The God who welcomes all her children under her wings, no matter how they behave, or how they look, or what annoying and inappropriate things they do. The God who opens her heart of healing. The God who feels what I feel, who validates me as a mother, who assures me that when I have made mistakes, when I have wandered from the right path, and when I have been overwhelmed by the foxes, those holy wings are still spread over me, protecting me, sheltering me, keeping me safe, loving me. Leah D. Shade”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“The only-begotten Son, the Wisdom of God, created the entire universe. Scripture says: You have made all things by your wisdom, and the earth is full of your creatures. Yet simply to be was not enough: God also wanted his creatures to be good. That is why he was pleased that his own wisdom should descend to their level and impress upon each of them singly and upon all of them together a certain resemblance to their Model. It would then be manifest that God’s creatures shared in his wisdom and that all his works were worthy of him. St. Athanasius”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Orthodox theology says all human beings are made in the image of God, that God does not have a gender. He encompasses gender – he is both male and female and beyond male and female. So when we only speak of God in the male form, that’s actually giving us a deficient understanding of who God is. ​​Rev Jody Stowell”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Can a woman [mother] forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.” (Isaiah 49:15–16 ESV)”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Why isn’t God female? As my teacher said, “He is.” Rich Robinson”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“When we allow the Holy Spirit to breathe meaning through today’s scripture we make a magnificent discovery: Gender fluid people are actually more God-like than those who identify with a gender binary.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“Jesus is the one in whom you can place your trust, no matter how you identify. Jesus, our non-binary God. Jesus, whose pronouns might be he/him/his, but who we know to be more.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“The author reminds us today that Jesus was fully human and like us in all ways. This is a profound thought, and not to be brushed away without examination. If Jesus is like us in all ways, it means he is like us in all our gender and sexual diversity. He is heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, asexual, male, female, transgender, agender, and intersex. He is every variation imaginable, and then some. Fully like us.”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people

“The majority of the adult population grew up with traditional concepts of femininity and masculinity, and aligned gender with external sex characteristics. Many schools of Christian thought believe we carry a binary gender when we leave our bodies. But when we are no longer equipped with genitalia, Adam’s apples, or bone structure, what will our gender resemble? Will our presences in the mystical state known as heaven be intensified versions of binary genders, or will our spirits broaden to be even more like God? More fully both, just as God is both?”
― Suzanne DeWitt Hall, Transfigured: A 40-day journey through scripture for gender-queer and transgender people