queer trans spirituality

Hello, reader. How’s your soul? My last blog post about my gender these days as well as disability, do you remember it? There was a part where I was talking about how my queer trans spirituality keeps me safe and keeps me going.

This post is addressing the friend I went on that life changing road trip with, last month. It started as a crying voice memo I texted them to say thank you.

White atheists fucked me up by requiring that I leave my spirituality at the door. These days I’m trying to put myself back together after so many years of fragmentation. I needed to try intellectual, ivory tower academic life for my survival, different from home. But I needed spirituality for my survival too. I’m trying to make a life where all of me can show up.

faith

Queer trans spirituality is something that we both hold in our own ways, but partly together. We’ve done ritual together and share some insight about power, liberation, truth, energy– all of reality.

My faith helps me contribute to the world. I have a sense of purpose, and I have a reason to live. I badly need that. Knowing why I’m on earth is important to my survival. The regular paths don’t work for me, so I need to create meaning.

When we were on our trip and there were those obnoxious people at that cafe where we stopped to eat, it was horrible to endure their conversation. They were talking about Palestine, othering violence, and hating on religion. They hurt me. You didn’t know I was having a hard time listening to them, and I didn’t know you were having a hard time too.

money

But it was worth it for the conversation we had afterward. As you drove us back to the ranch, we talked about how those people were spiteful against religion, when they have a religion too. But their religion is money. So they’re harshly judgmental of people who have religions that center God, truth, human needs and animal needs, survival, interdependence, and love. Their religion of capitalism and money is trying to keep them safe in these ways that destroy Parent Earth.

When you said something about the whiteness of those people and how they’re worshiping money, saying it so directly, do you remember?  No one in my life had ever validated my faith the way you did that day.

Money doesn’t bring us together like love. It separates us and makes us form armies and stockpile guns to defend our fortune. It doesn’t invite others in– it keeps others out at threat of death.

I don’t know if you’ve heard me when I told you that your love helps me feel strong to do what I need to do. Your validation of my trans queer spirituality is a good example. Your deep intelligence about spirituality and community love helps me feel like I can continue.  Thank you for that. I feel grateful to you for lots of things, but no one in my life has ever validated me like that.

school

I’ve been to school and grad school and valued ideas there. The professors, not all of them, but the men especially were white atheists who think knowledge is more important than the soul. They think spirituality is quaint: religious equals Christian, equals stupid.

That has been bothering me for a long time. People I loved and needed as a way out of my abusive home family life, as I entered adulthood, invalidated my spirituality and my inner life. They harmed me by teaching me that I need to abandon my spirituality in order to be free. Those parts of me got separated as I hid them to get other things I needed. I became more fragmented.

This brilliant, kind, understanding person who is you, telling me that you understand spiritual life as real and important– that changed something inside me. Part of me healed. Thank you, that my queer trans spirituality is welcome in your presence and means something to you.

If that was the only thing you’ve ever done for me, you would be amazing. But you have done a hundred things like that. What a friend you are.

why I was crying

I didn’t understand why I was crying so much when I left you the voice memo about my gratitude. Now I understand it wasn’t right that I was forced to give up spiritual parts of me in order to get adult needs met.

You are around the age I was when I made that sacrifice. I want you to know you hold a great deal of authority for me. Those professors who taught me to hide my queer trans spirituality were older than me, and I looked up to them as people who understood the world. You are powerful enough to dislodge their error.

Thank you for supporting all of me. I’m excited to move toward wholeness.