The New Progressive Christian Transgender Woman

In this particular article I focus on language within the context of the Community of faith in God, an interfaith experience. While other forms of communication are readily available and used this particular article focuses on words and their resourcefulness in a global spiritual renewal and reawakening.

As an advocate for the Community of faith in God, an interfaith experience it is beneficial for the holistic healing and global renewal and reawakening to embrace a new conceptualization of language.  This reconceptualization is necessary because of the capitalist oriented language that has divided humanity into groups, categories, economic and political parties thus yielding a broken and spiritually depleted humanity.

Questions about the source of language, the purpose of language and the intent of language should be addressed.  As the language is addressed in the context of the Community of faith in God, an interfaith experience it should be developed with an overt understanding and purposeful goal of global healing first in self and then in the outer-self.

Language and even more specifically words in concert with the goal of a global spiritual renewal and reawakening are significant as the individual acknowledges and embraces their part in the re-creation of a just and free society while embracing a societal and cultural civil union empowered from a holistic perspective.

Each word in the Community of faith in God, an interfaith experience must be seen and chosen in the contextual metaphor of a container and as such be recognized as holding a myriad of emotions, thoughts, longings, and other matters of the heart whether good or bad.

Words testify and witness to our life and the life of the human community and must be revisualized as containers that have the resources needed to realize a global spiritual renewal and reawakening.  Words should be about giving, healing, and embracing with the undergirding theological basis of radical inclusivity and engaged love.

The aforementioned article is primarily a starting point for a global spiritual renewal and reawakening within the context of the Community of faith in God, an interfaith experience.

If the challenges of mother earth and her offspring (the human species) are going to be overcome the human species must shift beyond the small, fixed god of any particular political, military, economic, religious or ethnic alignment or background.  In the aforementioned environments we see a god that is called to advocate for the elite of religion, culture and society and to reflect the elitist interpretational characterization and ideals, even as the poor and destitute pray to that very same god.  To address the above issues and challenges I propose a new Community, one that would reflect the transcendent God and the interfaith experience.  It reveals God at a cosmological level beyond divisions, personalities and the commonly accepted attitudes, processes and practices.

I submit that the Community of the Transcendent the Faith in God, an interfaith experience is called to see God in cosmological dimensions and proportions, while redefining the divinity of humanity in evolutionary growth process concepts and terms.  While this seems basic to those of us involved in spiritual interfaith dialogues the challenges of mother earth and her offspring cannot be overcome through self-righteous, and scholarly mind-think. The interfaith dialogue must go beyond that dialogue to an interfaith movement of healing in action to combat the ills and challenges of our species.

The core of the interfaith community rests on the two theological concepts of radical inclusivity and engaged love. These theological concepts are communicated through its mission of local, national, international and global community holistic healing.  Institutional and denominational religious concepts and theological thought based on archaic and outmoded concepts of faith and identity must gradually be eradicated through a process of spiritual revolutionary and evolutionary education whose core is radical inclusivity and engaged love espoused by the divine teachers.

The spiritual revolutionary and evolutionary education process is realized through radical inclusivity and engaged love seeking in partnership with the divine a new revelation within our species of spiritual and mental maturity. I propose that the ills, challenges and problems of our species can be resolved within the context and understanding of the Community of the Transcendent Faith in God, an interfaith experience.

The aforementioned thoughts give rise to a proposed re-engineering of language beginning with the words evil and darkness.  I have become increasingly reluctant to refer to evil in a global or general reference to the challenges and problems of our species due to the study of previous historical civilizations that, through their ignorance, fear and self righteousness labeled anything that they didn’t understand as evil i.e. Wicca, pagan, tribal healing processes, voodoo and other belief systems that identify with mother earth. The aforementioned enslaved concepts ignorance, fear and self righteousness are thoughts that engender a broken social, economic and political system and reveal a species in need of healing on a massive scale.

The unrighteousness and injustice of our species can be seen in voter suppression, the cost of health care insurance and for that matter the expense of healthy foods as if to say that being healthy is a choice verses a right, and the suicidal tendencies of our species through the global military industrial complex.  We always seemingly have a gun pointed at our head at a species level and also seek to justify it.  The realities of injustice and unrighteousness must be engaged through a new language that reflects a radical holistic approach based on theological concepts that communicate the divinity of God and the evolutionary divinity of our species.

Language in these matters should reflect the ongoing evolution of the species from an enlightened post 20^th century and colonial perspective. The unrighteousness and injustice of our species can be either diminished or eradicated through enlightenment within the context of the Community of the Transcendent Faith in God, an interfaith experience. It is my belief that a holistic approach founded on the basis of radical inclusivity and engaged love can go a long way in solving, diminishing and even eradicating the ills and challenges mother earth and her offspring encounter.

In closing I submit that the Community of the Transcendent Faith in God, an interfaith experience can be a vehicle for global spiritual renewal. Until this community is acknowledged and realized in the hearts of our species beyond the divisions of religion and an archaic closed mindedness the challenges will continue to jeopardize and minimize our species maturity and impact for the greater good on mother earth.

God, Communion, humanity and the presentation of the Christ.  The aforementioned words are powerful and reside at the core of the Christian faith.  They call those who hear these words to live a new life of liberty, through a spiritual rebirth.

Traditional interpretation of Christian scripture seeks to call humanity to recognize its faults, shortcomings and sufferings, its sinful nature.  The interpretation calls each one of us to recognize that humanity (you and I) have fallen short, and are somehow in need of a divine sacrifice to make amends with the creator.  John 3:16 Jesus states

Yes, God so loved the world as to give the Only Begotten One, that whoever believes may not die, but have eternal life. (The Inclusive Bible, the Egalitarian Translation)

A second scripture states Romans 3:23

Everyone has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, yet has been undeservedly justified by the gift of God, through redemption wrought in Christ Jesus.  (The Inclusive Bible, the Egalitarian Translation)

Of course there can be many discussions about the writer or writers and the influence of social location or context but the psychology behind the words seemingly deny the divinity of humanity in the midst of sorrows, suffering and a God in the midst of a titanic struggle within the soul and self of that God.

I submit that humanity and God are one and the same.  While this may cause some to consider me heretical it is my sincere belief that not only is humanity imbued with God but we are God and therefore humanity was never lost and has never been lost.  Can God be lost?  John 3:16 and the presentation of Christ does not call you and I to a place of physical, mental, emotional, psychological or even sociological salvation or even a place where we will not perish.  John 3:16 and the presentation of Christ is God’s call for you and I to re-establish and to re-acknowledge our oneness in and with God thereby effecting a byproduct of physical, mental emotional, psychological and sociological salvation through the divinely holistic voice of the cross.  Humanity is God and God is humanity.

It is in this context that I submit that in the midst and presence of the Cross God sought to re-establish and re-acknowledge, to re-engage the divine within God’s self through communion with God, and for God.

I also submit that you and I had and have communion with God the moment we are spiritually conceived, the moment of God’s cosmic epiphany, the moment you and I were thought of in the mind of God we were God and as a byproduct simultaneously in communion with God.  The Cross, the Passover meal or the last supper represent the communication of God with God’s soul and self.  Jesus Christ did not come to safe humanity but to cause humanity to experience itself as the God it truly is.  To rethink its own self as God and therefore redefine itself in terms of that Godness instead of the circumstantial evidence that would seek to deny its Godness.

The earth realm as it pertains to God, Communion, humanity and the presentation of Christ is a mere taste of what happens in the heavenly and spiritual realms. Even in the presence of events and challenges that would seek to deny humanities Godness it is this divine dialogical dichotomy of immense yet intimate relational proportions that God’s soul and self are preserved in Godness.  An example of God and God’s soul and self and the submission that humanity (you and I) are God can been seen in Hebrews 1:8, 9 which state:

But to the Only Begotten, God says, “your throne, O God, will last forever and ever, and justice is the scepter of your reign.  You love justice as much as you hate wickedness; therefore God your God, has set you above your companions and anointed you with oil of gladness.  (The Inclusive Bible, the Egalitarian Translation)

I therefore submit that if humanity chooses to see beyond the convicting circumstantial evidence and chooses to see its own Godness then it will experience a divine holistic healing presence within its own Godness.

My beloved, what is love? How do we love? Do you and I need to understand or grasp the individual or situation to love? Do I need to agree with your interpretation of life or vision of the world to love you? Are there any requirements at all before I can love? I would submit that there aren’t any requirements or prerequisites to love except love.

I dare say that love has to be one of the most misunderstood interpretations of God’s creation there is. This is one reason why I don’t define love. Day after day people say I love you.  In a fair amount of relationships the words “I love you” are generated from a heart that feels a lack of wholeness or incompleteness.  The words "I love you" are about them, and not about the other person.  It’s not about what they can do for you but what you can be for them.  Sadly it is my view that our species loves from a very selfish and perceived lack of wholeness point of view.  I submit that the love we refer to is not love at all but rather a hyper preoccupation with trying to be whole or complete.  We seemingly crave for someone to complete us, our experiences, and our life and to be about us.  Whether or not that is wrong, right or indifferent is for each one of us to decide.

In the context of the Christian faith it is my opinion beloved, that true love, the love that Paul discussed in 1 Corinthians 13:1-13 emanates from a place where we recognize that we are whole in Jesus Christ which, in essence is love.

Even if I can speak in all the tongues of earth-and those of angels too-but do not have love, I am just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy such that I can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, or if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything I own to feed those poorer than I, then hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.   Love is patient, love is kind.  Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, and is not snobbish.  It is not rude or self-seeking, it is not prone to anger, nor does it brood over injuries.  Love doesn't rejoice in what is wrong, but rejoices in the truth.  There is no limit to loves forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure.  Love never fails.  Prophecies, they will cease; tongues,  will be silent; knowledge will pass away.  Our knowledge is imperfect and our prophesying is imperfect.  When the perfect comes the imperfect will pass away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child.  But when I became an adult I put childish ways aside.  Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we will see face to face.  My knowledge is imperfect now, then I will know even as I am known.  There are, in the end, three things that last:  faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love. (The Inclusive Bible, Egalitarian Translation)

Beloved, you and I must begin to recognize that we are whole and that we don’t need to seek anyone to be whole.  This is a fundamental problem of humanity and her political, social and economic structures and one of the origins of human conflict.  Buddha , Jesus, Rumi, Mohammed, just to name a few divine teachers, all attest to our wholeness in and through love.  Love is the greatest gift of the divine.

The problems in our world and with our species stem from the misconception that you and I are incomplete, lack wholeness and somehow we are lacking in our humanity.  Because of this misconception and massive misinterpretation of life and even earth herself we have a tendency to see each other as material, emotional, financial, psychological and sociological resources as opposed to reservoirs of the divine.  Hence the challenges of recognizing our wholeness in love.

Love is selfless and struggles in partnership with each one of us in the midst of the light, the dark and the gray matters of life.  Love is in the acknowledgment and the embrace of those of us who are transgendered, it is in the birth of a newborn child, it is in our prayers and meditations, it is in the process and revelation of death, it is in the war zone of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is in the cancer clinic, the HIV/Aids clinic.  It is in every facet of life, weaving its way into and through our hearts.  The true love of the divine makes you and me whole.

Love does not need any understanding, comprehension, tolerance or acceptance.  Love just is.  Love rests on love itself.  It is its own integrity, its own character.  It is the essence and reality on which all life functions throughout divine existence.  Love is transcendent and it informs and transforms each one of us into the recognition of our love.  In the final analysis, love will always triumph over the ills and challenges of our species.

For those of us who profess an authentically transformed and transcendent faith through our actions, the question becomes how do we engage a seemingly godless world? It is this question that beckons us to vision. What or whose vision do we live in or do we develop our own vision as we engage this dynamic world? I submit that there are two opposing visions that are the catalyst behind the actions and inactions that humanity takes as it struggles with its own evolutionary yearnings. The two competing visions are represented through a host of global micro visions and macro visions that impact human relationships at multiple levels.

The first vision is the catalyst of engaged love. I propose that the vision of engaged love embraces a radically inclusive cosmological continuum beyond the narrow, exclusive and elitist hegemonic theology of institutional religion. Engaged love calls those who care about their fellow human beings to engage them through love. To truly live this vision and to engage beyond religion and academics it takes (1) love of self in the context of self care, (2) thinking beyond self, (3) caring about the other human being (4) the realization that whatever they might have done – they are yet worthy of love and (5) the courage to have a non-circumstantial and non-situational love. As a trans woman, these five foundational elements of engaged love have moved me beyond my own trans-needs to a place of spiritual, psychological and emotional healing.

The radical inclusiveness of engaged love is a theological concept that must emanate from the core of the dynamic heart of each person, yet it is also a cosmological continuum that moves through the teachings of Jesus, Buddha, Dalai Lama, Thomas Merton, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Rumi, Mother Teresa and others. I submit that each one of these divine teachers operated from the core of love communicated through radical inclusiveness. The fact that the teachings were hijacked by a few heretics bent on hegemonic domination does not negate the core teachings of engaged love. The vision of engaged love feeds humanity and leads to health, wholeness and healing and embraces our dynamic humanity in the midst of our evolutionary yearnings.

There is an opposing vision that in contrast feeds off of that dynamic humanity as it constantly seeks to corrupt the core of humanity through spiritual, psychological, emotional and physical identity, raping and denying the hope and healing of that dynamic humanity. This opposing vision is engaged detachment from self through a hyper enmity resulting in self as well as hatred of others.

The vision of engaged detachment communicates that vision through the violence of poverty, oppression, hegemony, misogyny, racism, and classism to ensure an exclusive, elitist philosophical environment that maintains a pseudo theological power dynamic which invariably maintains the power of a few and the suffering of the many. Engaged detachment enables the few elitists to feed off of the many like an evil parasite sucking the blood of hope out of its host. Engaged detachment is anti community, anti human and can be detrimental to the human evolutionary journey. The Gaza Strip, Soweto, South Africa, Darfur, South Central Los Angeles, and Appalachia Mountain region just to name a few are overt and explicit examples of this vision of engaged detachment. Engaged detachment communicates itself as a global system of dynamic mental and physical enslavement to maintain a fading grip on the core of humanity. Even in the midst of the tools of engaged detachment such as the media, corporate, intelligence and military power that seek to make a mindless, incoherent humanity, love will win out.

Knowing this, how do I as a trans-person combat this vision? I acknowledge that I live within two competing visions for psychological, emotional and spiritual domination. The two function at the same time. One feeds my soul and the other feeds off my soul. One constantly seeks to lift me up and the other constantly seeks to bring me down. I am seemingly caught in the middle.

I remember when I was beginning my transition I really experienced the competing visions in a very overt way. To address these two visions I asked myself the following questions: What vision will I choose to buy into? How do I live that vision out? Where will that vision lead me? For me, these were crucial questions that revealed my true allegiance to life. These are necessary questions that I would encourage any and all people and especially trans people to ask themselves as they go through those seemingly hard days of transition and beyond.

In the final analysis I submit that love will triumph as it always has. Love is the continuous thread of life that weaves its way through the shortcomings and joys of humanity. As a trans woman I pray that we would not lose sight of a love that keeps humanity in the midst of its own struggles to become a mature species.