Holy Week 2013 -- Busy This Year For Me

[VickySGV]

Today during a special Liturgy Of The Palms and a reading of St. Luke's Gospel account of the passion of Christ, I had to portray a male character in the story. Two other cis women were also reading the parts of other males, so I was not really de-transitioning even for a good cause. The character was a Roman Centurion who is reported to have been the first public, non-Jewish believer in Jesus innocence and relationship to God. The centurion has only one line, but he is almost a special focal point for the entire part of the Gospel that was read as a "readers theater" piece with different people taking the part of Jesus, Pilate, Peter, and some other people too. It is a pre-Easter tradition that I have always loved to take part in. "Certainly, this man was innocent!"

Next Saturday evening, when Easter Sunday begins at sunset for our tradition, I will also be bringing back one of my male skills as part of that liturgy. I will be lighting a "New Fire" to light the Paschal candle that will have been extinguished on Thursday evening at the end of Holy Thursday communion. Lighting the fire is done with flint and steel. Flint is a rock, and when struck on the steel (a child of rock) ignites dead plant life (tinder) and a fire, which symbolizes re-born life is lit. From that fire the candle is lit and carried into a totally darkened church, where other candles will be lit as meditative scriptures are read. I will also be reading one of those scriptures myself to the congregation.

These are things I have done before and which were highlights of my spiritual year, but this year, I have a new life to add to this myself. I have no going back to being what I and others thought was my male self, but yet I am carrying spiritual gifts into my future that were given to me in the past. I need to remember and honor those gifts because they are part of my full and complete life that began last January.

My feelings right now, are deeply contemplative about myself, and how I have gotten to the place I am and what they will mean in the next few years. Several people have told me that I too have been reborn in ways they cannot believe or understand, and I feel it too as never before. I believe I too have a cross to carry, and one to lift up for my fellow Christians who demand that I too be crucified for what I am as much as Jesus was crucified for what He was. Lets see what happens.

A truly blessed Holy Week to all. Centurions wanted, apply within!!

[Guest JazzySmurf]

Vicky, good for you for finding such wonder in your religious experiences :-) Go you!!

[Guest RachelAnn]

Hey, Vickie!

You've a sister of the faith here, too. I still present as male at our church, though my pastor and a number of friends there know. We decided - and I had a voice in the decision - that it was best to remain this way and shield some more sensitive souls from the truth. I'm also married (30+ years) and have five sons. (Which was also a related consideration, since all our boys went to public schools.)

So, like you, we had the Palm Sunday reading by parts, and, like you, I got a male role. I played Peter, which is coincidentally my legal name. And I was the table leader at our New Testament Seder last night. (Doing the ceremony of the Seder to show how it pointed to and has been fulfilled in Christ.)

My pastor gave me the best council on the discomfort I feel having to lie to my Christian friends. He'd explained - rightly, I am convinced - that knowledge of who I really was came with a price; many - if not most - weren't ready for the burden of that knowledge, and may never be. I did not want to be a stumbling block for them. Others are ready, and they've been told, with mixed reactions. (As I'm sure you know.)

But the thing I should focus on is not the accidental condition of my body but rather the intentional condition of my soul. The Lord has allowed this transgenderism to be one of my burdens, but he CHOSE me to be his child. I am, first and always, a beloved child of God. Certainly, take care of myself in a God-pleasing way, according the appropriate resources available to me. But it is the whole condition of my soul, made so by Jesus' blood, that is the real me.

TTFN!

Rachel (which is Hebrew for: "female lamb of God")

[VickySGV]

It is fair and accurate to say that you and I are at different points on the Christian continuum which is often overlooked by people inside and out of Christianity. Neither point is more or less Christian, but they do point out the wide range of what can be believed and worked on. In my case, my priest who is female, and I quickly agreed that my honesty about my self was either going to require that I come out, or move to a new parish. My coming out, which I have described here was gradual and with some warning and chance on both sides to ask questions and dialogue. I had been a member of the parish for 20 years, and in that time had been one of the people on the fringe of the parish life, and who had stood in the shadow of two of my children who were tons more involved than I had been. My priest actually saw some very real elements of what both living in "shadow lands" and the path of the cross that we take in our transtitons could do to help other people grow in their faith, and grow again as a church familty. I went full time in my parish, ten months before the national church convention last summer where there was a 78% vote of all houses of the convention in favor of including Transgendered people at ALL levels of the church, both clergy and laiety.

As we learn this week, Jesus himself was a bonafied trouble maker that did not leave his childhood church in peace and stodginess. I know full well that I have been kicked in the spiritual backside on my lack of progress over the years by guess who. We have a type of cross hanging in one place in our church called a Christus Rex (Christ the King) and I have sometimes felt there was a twinkle in eye of the kingly appearing Jesus who is actually in front of the cross at the times I have felt a definite shove to get out of my comfort zone and maybe into others discomfort zones with full approval from the Highest Source. I know Paul and one of the other Apostles advocates not being a stumbling block and one who would keep a person from faith, but this is the reason for a continuum of spiritual experience within Christianity, and only a belief that teaches hurt to other Christians should be avoided. Listen carefully on your spiritual journeying and like the GD itself, you will reach what and where you are needed and called to go. I have found a deep personal connection on things I have been called to do in general and things in my gender isssues seeming to come together.

A happy and Blessed Eastertide to you and your household, both home and church.