Let me put you in the picture, let me show you what I mean
Lent is a penitential season for the Church. It's supposed to be a time for prayers acknowledging one's failings, accepting one's own responsibility in how shit is heading in the wrong direction, and turning actively toward God to try to fix it.
Well, I'm a little judgey and finger point-y as y'all might have noticed, so rather than preach, I think I'll do my godblogging in prayer form for the next 40ish days. Including and focused on me as a part of the "us" that is fucking shit up. Here's today's installment:
Dear God,
I'm so sorry that we misprounoun you all the frickin' time. To others, and to your face. It must really get on your nerves.
God, you are trans in one of the classic senses of the word -- you are more than a gender. I've done a bit of reading, and far as I can see you have taken pains to avoid being gendered, even to avoid being named, referring to yourself as "we/our" and the Hebrew equivalents of ze/hir/im. You introduced yourself to Moses as the great "I am". It's as if you understand our human tendency to want to name things as a way of controlling them, and boxing them in, and wanted to avoid that. It's as if you know how we operate. :)
And yet in the process of bringing your relationship with Israel out to the rest of the world, you got Greekified, and consequentially gendered.
I know, I know, Greek had its limitations, it required that human referents use either male or female pronouns, it didn't have a neuter -- at least not for sentients. But what must really rankle, is that out of the binary options available, your early Christian followers picked the wrong one.
And I don't know this because of any vision I've seen of you with long flowing hair and boobs, in a dress. I know it because of the way Jesus taught us to see you.
Between the options of the socially privileged and empowered sex known for waging war, and the servant sex, known for its power to love, it doesn't take a biblical scholar to see which one is more like you.
I sometimes wonder why Jesus wasn't sent down to us in female form. I mean, we heard you say, "this is my son in whom I am well pleased" but there's nothing in that to contradict the sending of daughters.
Then I think, maybe you did send a woman, and we never listened to her.
And then there's the uncomfortable idea that you have already done it many many times and she got stoned to death, and burned with acid, and shut up in her own home for telling the truth about who you are. That you're still sending her.
*shudder*
But even thinking this, and knowing how you abjure pronouns, I am still misprounouning you. I am perpetuating this wrong. And for that I am sorry.
I have been using male pronouns to refer to you. Not so much when I write, or when I pray to you, but when I talk with conservative right-wingers -- trying to persuade them of the Jesus I know. When I talk with Children, trying to share my vision of how great you are. When I sing the words of hymn standards without bothering to rework the text. I rarely refer to you with female pronouns, and almost never with trans pronouns.
I'm sorry. I think I've been doing it for pretty terrible reasons. I told myself it was because I didn't want it to be a conversation stopper. I didn't want your message to get missed in the semantics over pronoun usage and I didn't want ears to shut out the good news because it sounds like its coming with a side order of radical leftist feminist agenda.
Truly, I think I hadn't understood that this is part of the message. This is the agenda. It's on your to do list. In order to enact the just and peaceful reality you want us to inhabit, we have to take off the artificial limits we impose on you. To name them as fabrications, and get to know who you are without those trappings.
But there's this too: I have been specifically avoiding trans-associated pronouns to refer to you, I think because of baggage I have about the trans dialectic. Like somehow the words that transgendered humans use to describe the intergendered or dual-gendered, or non-gendered, or transgendered state are somehow not good enough for God. Which means I really didn't get the message. So for that I am doubly sorry. To you, and to the trans community as a whole.
I'm going to try to fix my behavior. First by posting this publicly to encourage people to think and talk about it. And secondly, by talking about you with more inclusive language. To not give in to social pressure to smooth things over with an easy-to-hear male pronoun when referring to you in conversations, and to use trans pronouns more frequently.
I feel this is the right thing to do, because it will mean that a new generation of your people comes to understand more fully who you are while at the same time coming to value and respect this divine aspect of the human condition displayed in trans identity.
Give me strength to stick with it.
Amen.
Well, I'm a little judgey and finger point-y as y'all might have noticed, so rather than preach, I think I'll do my godblogging in prayer form for the next 40ish days. Including and focused on me as a part of the "us" that is fucking shit up. Here's today's installment:
Dear God,
I'm so sorry that we misprounoun you all the frickin' time. To others, and to your face. It must really get on your nerves.
God, you are trans in one of the classic senses of the word -- you are more than a gender. I've done a bit of reading, and far as I can see you have taken pains to avoid being gendered, even to avoid being named, referring to yourself as "we/our" and the Hebrew equivalents of ze/hir/im. You introduced yourself to Moses as the great "I am". It's as if you understand our human tendency to want to name things as a way of controlling them, and boxing them in, and wanted to avoid that. It's as if you know how we operate. :)
And yet in the process of bringing your relationship with Israel out to the rest of the world, you got Greekified, and consequentially gendered.
I know, I know, Greek had its limitations, it required that human referents use either male or female pronouns, it didn't have a neuter -- at least not for sentients. But what must really rankle, is that out of the binary options available, your early Christian followers picked the wrong one.
And I don't know this because of any vision I've seen of you with long flowing hair and boobs, in a dress. I know it because of the way Jesus taught us to see you.
Between the options of the socially privileged and empowered sex known for waging war, and the servant sex, known for its power to love, it doesn't take a biblical scholar to see which one is more like you.
I sometimes wonder why Jesus wasn't sent down to us in female form. I mean, we heard you say, "this is my son in whom I am well pleased" but there's nothing in that to contradict the sending of daughters.
Then I think, maybe you did send a woman, and we never listened to her.
And then there's the uncomfortable idea that you have already done it many many times and she got stoned to death, and burned with acid, and shut up in her own home for telling the truth about who you are. That you're still sending her.
*shudder*
But even thinking this, and knowing how you abjure pronouns, I am still misprounouning you. I am perpetuating this wrong. And for that I am sorry.
I have been using male pronouns to refer to you. Not so much when I write, or when I pray to you, but when I talk with conservative right-wingers -- trying to persuade them of the Jesus I know. When I talk with Children, trying to share my vision of how great you are. When I sing the words of hymn standards without bothering to rework the text. I rarely refer to you with female pronouns, and almost never with trans pronouns.
I'm sorry. I think I've been doing it for pretty terrible reasons. I told myself it was because I didn't want it to be a conversation stopper. I didn't want your message to get missed in the semantics over pronoun usage and I didn't want ears to shut out the good news because it sounds like its coming with a side order of radical leftist feminist agenda.
Truly, I think I hadn't understood that this is part of the message. This is the agenda. It's on your to do list. In order to enact the just and peaceful reality you want us to inhabit, we have to take off the artificial limits we impose on you. To name them as fabrications, and get to know who you are without those trappings.
But there's this too: I have been specifically avoiding trans-associated pronouns to refer to you, I think because of baggage I have about the trans dialectic. Like somehow the words that transgendered humans use to describe the intergendered or dual-gendered, or non-gendered, or transgendered state are somehow not good enough for God. Which means I really didn't get the message. So for that I am doubly sorry. To you, and to the trans community as a whole.
I'm going to try to fix my behavior. First by posting this publicly to encourage people to think and talk about it. And secondly, by talking about you with more inclusive language. To not give in to social pressure to smooth things over with an easy-to-hear male pronoun when referring to you in conversations, and to use trans pronouns more frequently.
I feel this is the right thing to do, because it will mean that a new generation of your people comes to understand more fully who you are while at the same time coming to value and respect this divine aspect of the human condition displayed in trans identity.
Give me strength to stick with it.
Amen.