U-Turn: a UU transman ponders sex, spirituality, and the power of stories

This is the season for looking back, right? It has been an interesting year, to say the least... truthfully, the best year of my adult life. On March 2nd, 2014, I stood up in front of my entire UU congregation and outed myself as being Trans, via the following reflection. Rereading it has made me cry. I've come quite a distance since that moment. At that time, it was all very raw, very full of questions without answers. But being willing to start from there, openly - from a place of no assumptions or expectations - is what has made me able to move forward as honestly as I have. Looking back, I can see how far I've come in such a short time, toward knowing myself. So today, again, I share this with you. I've changed only one thing, the name - I used my "mundane" name on that day. I'm still choosing for now to not include that information in this blog, though I suspect I eventually will. Some of you were there. Some of you are "hearing" this fo...

Ah, another Christmas approacheth! And I’m remembering the Christmas maybe ten years back when I came out to my mom as gay. I had always wondered why, in heaven’s name, so many people seemed to choose Christmas or some other big family holiday as their moment for coming out. (It’s even become a standard warning, included in just about every list of what to do and what not to do when coming out: whatever you do, DON’T do it at Christmas!) I can’t think of a worse time, except possibly at a funeral - and I admit, I’ve done that, too, sort of. Go figure. What I finally realized is that there are simply certain times of the year, certain types of events, that automatically create, well, definitely not a good environment for coming OUT, but quite assuredly a horrible environment for being IN. People end up throwing wide their closet doors at Christmas because that’s when it suddenly feels the most stifling to be locked inside. At other times, closets merely feel small and cramped; but a...

Sometimes these things are hard to write. And not always for the same reasons. Sometimes, it’s because there’s too much deep emotion involved, serious personal stuff that has to be wrestled with. Other times, it’s because I’m trying to tackle a subject that just isn’t finished cooking yet, and I finally have to put it aside and try another. And then there are times like this past week, when the difficulty is simply that I enjoy the act of writing too much - the delving for bits of truth, the complex interconnection of ideas and questions, and ideas that breed new questions, and questions that breed new ideas... Realizing that I was behind schedule posting (not surprising during this month full of holiday-busy-crazy), I started to toss off something simple and straightforward about my pleasure in being part of my church’s abridged “readers’ version” production of “A Christmas Carol” - the satisfaction in finally getting to test my theatrical “chops” (for various complicated reas...

So today I am looking at a complicated question head-on. It’s one I’ve meant to tackle for a while now: explaining, or at least trying to explain, exactly why it is that I’m choosing to make an actual, medical, physical transition from female to male. Not all Transfolk do. And when I first came out as being Trans, I wasn’t even remotely thinking about this issue; I knew it was a question that would come up sooner or later, but hey, later felt just fine to me! I was still busy wrestling with far simpler questions: Whether I wanted to ask my community to make a change-of-pronoun for me (a hard thing to ask, since pronouns are so ingrained). Whether I was comfortable continuing to use the gender-neutral short form of my given name. Whether, for God’s sake, I owned a single piece of clothing that I could comfortably wear, now that I had stopped pointedly ignoring this acute internal/external clash. Arrghhh! There was still a lot of static on my radio station, so to speak. So I put th...

As a kid growing up in the post-Vatican-II Catholic Church, I was lucky enough to be exposed to the music of singer/songwriter Ray Repp. I learned it from recordings and from sheet music, sang and played it in church (I was a guitarist in our Sunday-service Youth Folk Group), and went to live concerts to hear Ray himself play and sing it. Like every prolific composer, Ray had his hits and his flops. But the best of his music still resounds in my soul, calling me to remember what’s most important in this world. Where there is hatred and pain Where there is sorrow and shame And everyone we know agrees there’s nothing more to gain Where there is anger and fear And where the darkness is near There let me bring in my love Ray was really big on the idea of making positive change in the world, and seeing ourselves as the vehicles of that change. While so many religious composers praised the wonders of that Heavenly City that supposedly awaits us, Ray seemed to be more of the opini...

So this past week I rediscovered an old love - juggling. To be more precise: it’s not the juggling that I’ve rediscovered... it’s the love. I’ve tried to reclaim it multiple times over the last ten years or so, knowing that I badly needed more exercise. I’ve picked up my old toys maybe once a year to try and see if I could find the magic again. Last time I made a particularly hard effort to get my ass in gear and get into the habit of it, for my health. But the joy just wasn’t there for me; it felt like a chore that I was too tired to do. Dammit, it used to be such fun throwing things around (and around, and around)! But those feelings seemed locked behind a wall somewhere; the spark just wouldn’t catch. This time, it did. I’m not sure why, but this past week when I picked up my old heavy balls - a pound apiece, solid in the hands, made for juggling as an upper body exercise - suddenly the spark was there. The joy of feeling my body once more as being strong and sure and quick and ...

Singing is much on my mind today. And singing, for me, has always been tied in with issues of gender and the experience of outsider-ness, because, as an extremely low-voiced biological female, I have always sung in a nonstandard vocal range. Unless you yourself are a singer with a similar problem, the above statement probably has little meaning or impact for you. But it kept me from doing any kind of vocal ensemble singing - which is one of the great loves of my life - for nearly half of my life. If you have ever sung in a choir or other vocal ensemble, you probably know that there are four standard “voice parts” or ranges: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, and Bass.  Soprano and Alto are female voice ranges; Tenor and Bass are male voice ranges. This fourfold system of voice division is so common that sheet music written for a full choir is often simply labeled “SATB.” Like most aspects of music, this is much more about tradition than it is about reason. At the deepest roots of music, c...