A friend asked me recently for my thoughts on Leeland’s song “Carried to the Table.”  (Click for lyrics, or listen by clicking on the video below.)

This is how I responded to her:

Over the last several years the communion liturgy has really increased in significance to me, to the point that today I cannot receive communion without weeping.  I’m worshiping now in a church where each individual leaves his or her seat and approaches the altar to receive (unlike my Baptist tradition, where the norm is to have it delivered to you in your seat), and where we celebrate communion at every worship service (the norm in my tradition being monthly or quarterly).  I’ve found there is something so powerful in walking toward that sacred place each Sunday as a whole person, hiding nothing, unafraid and unashamed, knowing that I will truly be received “just as I am.”  Thinking about it as I write makes me realize that I imagine God there, smiling at me, ushering me forward and into a supernatural intimacy with him that is beyond my words to describe.  The experience nourishes something important in me, such that I can’t imagine going back to a less regular observance of the sacrament.

My understanding of what separates me (or what once separated me) from God has also changed in profound ways.  Before I came to terms with my trans-ness, I imagined that I could draw significantly closer to him if I would just overcome my desire to be a woman.  Now, having realized that my femininity never was a barrier between us, I’ve also learned that there was never really any action I could have undertaken that would have drawn me closer to him in any significant way.  Only God is able to make up the distance between God and humanity, and he has made it up, “once for all,” in Christ. 

All this has made me feel closer to God than I ever thought possible.  In fact, it has completely altered my paradigm of proximity to the divine.  Finally I think I understand–and really believe–what Paul meant when he said, “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38-39).

I need a sign to let me know you’re here
‘Cause my TV set just keeps it all from being clear
I want a reason for the way things have to be
I need a hand to help build up some kind of hope inside of me

I love my dad.

My dad has always been an incredible person to me, a person of deep integrity, pure motives, and kind humor. As a child I worshiped him, as an adolescent I idolized him, and as a young adult I sought to emulate him in every way I could. Over the years, our relationship matured and mellowed into a deep friendship that I valued above almost any other. Even though we were separated by thousands of miles for most of a decade, we spoke several times a week and emailed almost daily. I’ve never known any father and son who were closer than we were.

I didn’t get to come out to my dad the way I wanted to. Events moved in such a way that I had to do it by email, from a distance, and with the help of my sister and step-mother. After my dad found out that I was transgendered, we didn’t speak for almost a month.

As the days passed, I was surprised at how much I wasn’t hurting over it. I’d feel around in my heart and find no real pain or anger or anything. “He’s just getting used to the whole thing,” I said to myself. “It’s hard when your only son says he’s going to become a woman and asks for your acceptance as a daughter. He’ll come around. It will be like it used to be again.”

Then one day (as I was driving to see my therapist, coincidentally) I this song came on the radio. “I need a sign to let me know you’re here.” And I thought of my dad, and I missed him so profoundly that I could barely stand the hurt of it. I wept so hard I had to pull off the road.

We did talk again, the first thing he said was, “I want you to know that I love you as much today as I did the day you were born. I don’t understand, but I want you to know that I love you.” I got the sign I was looking for.

Today things are better, though we still have a long way to go. Maybe things will never be the same again. But I choose to hope–I choose to hope that someday, they’ll be even better.

Lesson learned: Sometimes the words we don’t say can shake someone’s world as much as those we do.

“Calling All Angels” by Train, on My Private Nation, 2003 (Lyrics)

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time.
It’s easy.
All you need is love.

In 1967, the BBC was preparing for a program called Our World, the first ever live global television link. They asked the Beatles to come up with a song that would serve as the U.K.’s contribution to the program, one that had a simple and straightforward message that could be grasped by the diverse global audience. John Lennon, with help from Paul McCartney, wrote this song. A few years later, when asked if his songs were “propaganda,” John pointed to “Love” specifically and said, “Sure…I’m a revolutionary artist. My art is dedicated to change.”

As a theologian and ethicist, I’m very sympathetic toward a Niebuhrian view of our situation. In a fallen world, love, that is, the true love we see exemplified in Christ, is a practical impossibility. There are too many variables and too much subjectivity to bring it about. The best we can do is justice, which approximates love and approaches it progressively but asymptotically. There is, in other words, always more to be done.

But it’s that example of real love that drives us, and I believe draws us toward itself. When we lose sight of love and merely seek justice for its own sake, we cross the line from Christian activism into plain old human egoism. And this is where I part company with Dr. Neibuhr. We must strive for love, for if love is our goal, justice will come about naturally, even as we fail to achieve our ultimate objective.

“All You Need Is Love” by the Beatles, on Magical Mystery Tour, 1967 (Lyrics)

Some people say a lie’s a lie’s a lie
But I say why
Why deny the obvious child?

My mom bought me Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints album for Christmas in 1991. I had been a huge fan of Graceland, which she sent me while I was living in Brazil, and I thought it an odd sort of coincidence that the new album was as profoundly influenced by Brazilian beats as Graceland had been by African sounds. I really loved Rhythm, and I listened to it over and over again that cold January at West Point.

“Obvious Child” is the first track on the album, and for some reason I always thought of my mom when I listened to it. What I really thought about was my mom, thinking about me:

We had a lot of fun
We had a lot of money
We had a little son and we thought we’d call him Sonny
Sonny gets married and moves away
Sonny has a baby and bills to pay
But Sonny gets sunnier
Day by day

I’d smile. That’s just the way my mom has always loved me–like I got a little bit more lovable every day. And then Paul would get to the bridge, and the samba drums would fade into the background, and I’d feel myself being carried away into a future, looking down on myself at 40 or 50:

Sonny sits by his window and thinks to himself
How it’s strange that some rooms are like cages
Sonny’s yearbook from high school
Is down from the shelf
And he idly thumbs through the pages
Some have died
Some have fled from themselves
Or struggled from here to get there
Sonny wanders beyond his interior walls
Runs his hand through his thinning brown hair

For a long time, I’d just turn my heart off when the bridge came on. I never stopped to wonder why, but somewhere down deep inside I knew. One of my deepest fears was down there under Paul’s bridge–regret. Of all the things I didn’t want to become, the one I feared and hated the most was Sonny, flipping through the pages of an old high school yearbook in a room like a cage, wondering what might have been.

Fifteen years later, my mom was the second person I came out to. When I told her that I was transgendered, she said to me, “Honey, I wondered if you were ever going to get around to dealing with this, or if you were just going to go on living like it wasn’t there.”

Why deny the obvious, child?

“The Obvious Child” by Paul Simon, from The Rhythm of the Saints, 1991 (Lyrics)

We’ll be fighting in the streets
With our children at our feet
And the morals that they worship will be gone…

How did I become an activist? Good question. I’m not even sure how it happened myself. For so long, I was a part of the problem, a cog in the Machine, taking orders and drinking the Kool Aid with a smile on my face. Then somewhere, the fierce independence gene I got from my parents, sixties kids who still had stars in their eyes, got activated by the words of the ancient prophets about justice and the peaceable kingdom, and somehow I just knew I had to take it to the streets.

This song is one of my activist songs. It’s a song about a revolution gone wrong, about how the oppressed, once liberated, can so quickly devolve into oppressors. It reminds me that there’s a fine line between activism and egoism, and that the revolution isn’t over until everyone is free.

“Won’t Get Fooled Again” by The Who, from Who’s Next, 1971 (Lyrics)

I discovered this video on the Family Equality Council blog this morning, though apparently it’s been around for a while. It’s a clip from a children’s TV program from the Netherlands, and the little star singing a song called “Two Fathers.” It made me cry–I think because truth can sound so beautiful coming from the lips of a child.

When all you’ve got to keep is strong
Move along, move along like I know you do.
And even when your hope is gone
Move along, move along just to make it through…

My eldest son loves Bionicles. (What? You don’t know what Bionicles are?) They’re a line of Lego kits with an extensive backstory, told in three films and a constantly updated online archive. The stories are pretty standard mythological fare–the hero’s quest always figures strongly–set in a science-fantasy world heavily influenced by Polynesian mythology. The whole thing is great, geeky fun.

Each year, when Lego releases the new Bionicle storyline, they put together a music video. My son especially loves these, and watches them over and over until he knows every word of the song. That’s how I met the All American Rejects, and how I first heard “Move Along.”

It resonated strongly with one of the simplest but most powerful lessons I learned as I transitioned: sometimes you just have to grit your teeth and push through, no matter how much it hurts. People are counting on you to be strong, so that they can be strong, too.

“Move Along” by All American Rejects, from Move Along, 2005 (Lyrics)

Slowly rebuilding
I feel it in me
Growing in numbers
Growing in peace

Being trans can be a real downer sometimes. That much is probably obvious. Check out any trans blog, read any trans memoir, talk to any trans person, and you’ll find it. If it’s not in the text, it’s in the subtext.

But you know what? I love it. I love being transgendered. Is that crazy or what?

When God made me, when he knit me together in the womb (I just love the image of God knitting), he put stars in every stitch. God made me beautifully, and God made me beautiful. And when he finished, he thought to himself, “Wow. This is really cool. Am I great or what?” That’s the way God works, and that’s what he thinks about every person he’s made.

I love being me. I love all the things that make me me. I hope you do, too. You should. You’re made of stars.

“We Are All Made of Stars” by Moby, from 18, 2002 (Lyrics)

I am magnet for all kinds of deeper wonderment, I am a wunderkind.

My wife and I have always been “credits people”–you know, the ones who stay in the theater after the film is over to watch the credits? When we saw The Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in January, 2006, we quietly chatted about the movie as the credits rolled until the song “Wunderkind” began to play. It was so haunting, so poignant, so evocative that we fell silent and listened. By the time it ended, I had tears running down my cheeks. I still cry every time I hear it…in fact, I’m fighting back tears right now.

At some point along this pilgrimage of mine, I moved from simply accepting my trans-ness to valuing it, loving it. Maybe it happened when I realized that was how God felt about it. For years, when I’ve put my children to bed at night, I’ve told them, “Do you know how much God loves you? Did you know that every time God thinks about you, he smiles? Do you know how happy God is that he made you?” This song reminds me that God feels the same way about me.

The video was put together from film clips by QueenLucyThe2nd, and I think she did a fabulous job. Oh, and do read the lyrics; as with anything Alanis writes, they are beautiful and profound.

“Wunderkind” by Alanis Morissette, from The Chronicles of Narnia–The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe Soundtrack, 2005 (Lyrics)

“Well it’s a bittersweet symphony this life…”

A month or two after I’d accepted my trans-ness, but before I’d come out to anyone, I drummed up the courage to “dress up” and go to a drag show for charity an hour or so from my home. I basked in the freedom that night, but at the same time I felt so alone. As I drove home, the mash-up of conflicting emotions gelled and became anger–at the world, at God, at myself. Then this song came on the radio. I turned it up as loud as it would go, yelled the words at my windshield, and cried until the sobs were coming so hard I had to pull off the interstate.

The video is such a metaphor for what life felt like then.

“Bittersweet Symphony” by The Verve, from Urban Hymns, 1997 (Lyrics)