Welcome!

Welcome to my blog!

I have created this as a space for exploration of thoughts. Because they are important to me, these thoughts often include God, family and life experiences. This is a space to ask questions, not necessarily to state answers. It’s a space for dialogue and interaction, not judgment. There is an About Me  post that explains some things about me and my life, but here I’d like to come at things from a slightly different perspective.

I am hesitant to say that I am a Christian, because that word is associated with so much controversy, judgment and hate. I don’t have a readily-available well-known alternative, so I will say I am a follower of The Way. I believe that Spirit is present with and speaks through many different religious expressions. I believe God loves every single person with an unending, unreserved love.

I am a parent of a transgender person. I support my son in his pursuit of expressing his true self. He has brought me to realize at some small fraction of my consciousness the enormity of the stigma, judgment, condemnation and hate that the LGBTQ+ community experiences. He has led me to understand God and God’s relationship to humans in new ways. Years ago I read the Bible with all of its references to “he” and “him” and knew that I was supposed to just realize the linguistic failing of the English language and see that despite the language, I as a feminine person was still included. More recently, I began to actually hear and acknowledge the stories of women who couldn’t see past the language and couldn’t see themselves in biblical stories or language. As I strive to change my own language and vision of God, I can only just begin to imagine the work LGBTQ people must put in to see themselves in Scripture, and as part of God’s loved and lovable world. All this is to introduce this: I will use language to describe God that may be unfamiliar to you. I envision the triune God as a family. Yes, I know that any earthly-based picture of God is not technically correct, but we’ve been doing it all along anyway: Father, Son, and that thing we can’t figure out what to call so we call it a Ghost. I can’t really identify with any of those images. And yet, the Bible tells me that I am made in the image of God. I find it helpful to picture Father, Son and Mother. So, what you may have called the Holy Ghost and referred to as “He” will be here named Mother and referred to as “She.” To address the lack of the English language to provide us with a singular, neutral pronoun, I give you “they.” Many people (I was one of them) express a dislike for the use of this pronoun for singular entities. Many think it has something to do with the “political” agenda of those in the LGBTQ community and so repudiate its use. I encourage you to explore the history of this word. Until as recently as 100 years ago, “they” was in regular use as a singular pronoun! Yes! English is not devoid of this useful tool! In my efforts to resurrect a perfectly useful sense of this word, I will often refer to God as “They” rather than “He.” As more and more people choose to be referred to as “they/them” rather than “he/him” or “she/her” I think this can help more people to see themselves as the image of God.

I don’t have answers. I won’t say I have moved beyond dual thinking, but I am on the path. I am OK with mystery. I am OK with uncertainty. Frederick Buechner’s books Wishful Thinking and Whistling in the Dark helped me to see that I don’t have to answers to write about something. I just need to think. Many times as I was reading, I would think that I was about to come across an answer to a question I had had for a long time, only to discover that he, too, had no answer, just ideas. But the ideas! Oh, how the ideas have given me sustenance!

I hope you stay long enough to read some of my thoughts, and perhaps even feel free enough to comment with your own. Welcome!

Photo: Rainbow After the Storm in Cuba – Heather Holtslander