A Little Church History

Hello My Dear One,

Religion has always played an enormous role in my life, as have spiritual and faith exploration.  In reflecting on why this is, and why I have chosen, or been chosen, to this particular realm of the human experience, I have to give some of the credit to my mother.  This is not because of a deep or profound faith that I learned from her, she does have one, but rather it has to do with vocation itself.  Her job may or may not be a true calling, but I can't say if it is or isn't, since I do not know the reasons and rationales of G-d.  Regardless, one of my mother's careers shaped me in deep and profound ways, ones that are still sealed within memory chains I haven't yet accessed.

My mother is a musician and teacher, and like most in the performing arts has required multiple jobs to be financially stable.  Because of this, she had until her recent retirement, been a lifelong church organist and choir director, largely theologically affiliated with whichever denomination she happened to be working for. Consequently, this meant that I/we had to accept (or at least appear to accept) whatever the dogma was of each particular church.  My father, an intellectual, raised in the same Methodist-Episcopal church that my mother was, had largely rejected religious belief for scientific theory by the time I came along. So, in order to get one on one dad time I often spent Sunday mornings at home with dad. We cooked and baked, watched woodworking shows on PBS, and played with Silly Putty and the Sunday comics.

But I also went with her on just as many, if not more, Sunday mornings because I was drawn to the mysteries of religion and faith.  I have memories of almost every church my mom has worked for, including but not limited to: Methodist, Episcopal, Congregational, United Church of Christ (UCC), Methodist-UCC, American Baptist, and Presbyterian. And each denomination reflects at least 2 separate churches that I attended with her. Thanks to the bohemian area I grew up in I also learned from Catholics, agnostics, atheists, buddhists, and new age weirdos from the 1970's and 1980's.  It was a religious whirlwind, and in looking back on it I can see this as a large reason for my theological and seminary studies.

As a result of these jobs, I did not have a specific set of Christian practices as a child until I was 8 years old.  It was a UCC church, one town over from mine, where my mother gained employment and stayed for almost nine years.  This was, I believe at the time, a record for her, and I suppose that it was a lucky break for me.  It was where I was exposed to an open and loving G-d.  A G-d that had more to do with social justice and helping others, instead of judging and blaming those who were different.  It was a safe space for me, and I was able to find my inner self without fearing that what I found would be wrong.  It was the place I met my future wife when we were both eleven years old.  I made many friends, and was taken in by several of the families and given life experiences in homes that were completely unlike mine. I was blessed during those years, even when it didn't feel that way.

The truth was that sometimes, no, almost every time, I wanted more.  I wanted to go to youth group.  I wanted to go through confirmation classes.  I wanted to hang out with my friends from church.  I wanted to be a fully participatory member of the group.  But I never was.  At the end of the day, it was still a job for my mother, and no matter how invested I was in aspects of the community, I had to miss out on one thing or another because she needed to go home.  The work day was over. And since the "fun" stuff often happened on Sunday nights, driving 30 minutes roundtrip, messing up family routines, and getting ready for the coming week created a solid barrier to those activities.

All that said, I believe this was the foundation for my desire to learn more.  I could never experience all that I needed or wanted in those situations. And I must note, that during those nine years I was ministered to by a pastor, who to this day continues to be an influence and mentor in my own faith. He is one of the main reasons I still believe that a religious career is possible.  

But when those nine years ended, shortly before my senior year of high school began, there was a more rapid change between congregations. There was a UCC we'd been at before, then Baptist, then UCC, then Baptist, then a combined Methodist-UCC. Consequently, I always knew that one day or another I would be told that she had found a new church position and we were moving on. I have little recollection of how I dealt emotionally with these changes, except that I continued my own prayer life, studied Biblical texts, read theological articles and books, and attempted to teach myself Greek. I never have had success with that though.

I can also see this cyclical shifting as a metaphor for my childhood and young adult relationship with my mother in general.  Her life was certain to change course often, and with it, so did mine until I was able to set my own. 

Perhaps our overall familial undercurrent of instability, career choices being only a piece of the puzzle, was in fact a blessing in itself.  I have created rituals, traditions, and schedules for myself to ensure that the emotional ground will not crumble beneath me. I have taken from all of the faith traditions and practices that I absorbed throughout those years and cobbled together a greater glimpse of the Divine in this world. 

But what does all of this mean to me in the here and now?

Are these the roots of my ecclesiastical hopes and fears?


And, of course, how in the world do I combine this with my inherent Judaism into something that bears the fruits of justice and good works, not cataclysmic devastation through doctrinal incoherence?

Or more simply put, how can I serve G-d while being a religious mutt?

I don't know. And right now I'm not so sure that I want, or really need to know.

On this journey I'm not at a destination point, I'm on the road. And thankfully, I have traditional prayers, ancient practices, new theologies, and a heart that is still open to hearing the words of G-d.

And I am grateful for that. And it is enough.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

-Ari

Unfixable But Not Unchangeable

Hello My Dear One,

It's been a long time.

Sometimes in life, things get broken. Sometimes these are little things, sometimes they are an incomprehensible size. Sometimes they can be fixed. And sometimes they cannot. Yet, even if these things, be they physical objects, emotional relationships, or metaphysical concepts and constructs, are shattered into thousands of disparate parts, they can be changed. Even an outcome can have more than one meaning. And where there is hope, then whatever is broken can be used again. Perhaps it will not be for it's original purpose, but useful in a new and more meaningful way, if love is allowed in. 

It may be unfixable, but it is not unchangeable.

I used to have a theology of brokenness. And it was the core of my religious understanding for more than a decade. After a soul-crushing experience in seminary as I transitioned gender from female to male, I was spiritually broken. I no longer believed in the trustworthiness of those ordained in the Christian church, or its traditions. I lost all confidence that those individuals saw me as a beloved child of G-d, not as I had been, or in spite of what I had become, but exactly as I was now.

Clergy, once my lifelong goal, were now the enemy.

I was beaten down to a point where I gave up on finishing what I had started, a ninety credit Master of Divinity degree leading to ordination in the United Church of Christ. I was four classes short of the degree, lacking Pastoral Care, Introduction to Worship, Field Placement, and one rotation of Clinical Pastoral Education. I needed only twelve credits, but I stopped at the seventy nine I had acquired.

These four classes represent the distance between me and ordination. But, since I no longer had faith in anyone who was ordained, I'm unsurprised that these are the classes I didn't take. My advisor had never believed that I should go into the pastorate in the first place. A 70 plus year old Catholic nun who couldn't stomach the idea of a twenty-seven year old out lesbian having pastoral rights, responsibilities, and authority, that she ultimately could never have herself. It was a brutal exorcism of my faith that led to a fear, hatred, and ultimate loathing of many of the religious traditions of which I had been raised in.

When I came out as transgender a few years later and pursued my change from one external presentation to another the vitriol increased one hundred fold. It culminated in closed door meetings where I was told that my hormone imbalances, my mental health, my personal problems were at the heart of my transition, not my true gender identity. More brutally, I was told that I had been "fearfully and wonderfully made" [Psalm 139:14] and was therefore going against G-d's will. And all I could so was to sit there and take it. 

I was breaking apart from the inside out and the outside in. I was dying. And although my physical death did occur multiple times during a rare and frightening case of Legionnaires Disease, it was my spiritual death that had a far greater impact on the threadbare state of my soul.

And in this way, I had lost. I had lost the support of others. I had lost the hope that I needed to survive. I had lost the battle against my own inner demons. And I had lost what was left of myself in the darkness and depression of it all.

And every year afterward, I have found myself yearning to fulfill the dream of serving in a pastoral role, one with the ability to perform the duties that come with it. And every year I do serve in one form or another. I have been a church camp dean, a Sunday School teacher, a religious education committee chair, an assistant for youth groups, and a guest preacher.

Of course, my time spent in public school special education is its own form of pastoral calling as well, but the verbal omission of G-d limits my own sense of wholeness.

And my presentations, lectures, and speaking engagements are all opportunities to share how being a transgender man, and a transgender man of faith have shaped my worldview and how I choose to live in the world. But, these talks are not sermons, nor should they be. 

Still, I want to speak the words of G-d to offer other ways of seeing the sacred and holy within ourselves and within each other.

Changed

Recently, I received wisdom from a younger than I clergy member about who I am today. As someone who had never known me prior to transition, nor seen me struggle through it, she was easily able to say that I was not the person today that I was ten years ago when I ended my seminary career. Neither am I the person who entered seminary fourteen years ago, not in body, mind, or spirit. 

Even though I've known this on an intellectual level, I couldn't hold it as truth within my heart. I was still seeing myself as a man built on a broken theology, rather than on a remade base formed out of the rubble. Like the keystone that locks all the other loose stones together, I was cut apart that way, was sought out, and was broken from the other pieces to be better than before. And to be an object of strength and unity, instead of just a pile of rocks that collapsed under their own weight.

So, for now, I still have a theology of brokenness. And, I have a belief system that tells me that even though the original may be broken, the new creation is stronger than the last. And, for now, that is enough.

Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.

- Ari