Celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

No matter how you feel about the Trans community, I hope you will pause for a moment to open your mind and read this moodling. 

As the mom of wonderful queer kids of whom I am very proud, one of whom is trans, I invite you to try to understand something that perhaps you've never encountered, or that you've already judged in your mind one way or the other. After all, we only learn through openness to one another. 

I don't often write about my kids because I want to protect them and myself from people who can't see that human beings are not static creatures. Why can't we evolve beyond the two check-boxes of male and female found in the book of Genesis? 

As a Catholic woman, I've had a long hard struggle to reconcile my faith with my kids' lived experience. But slowly, over the past ten years, I've come to understand that God thinks and moves and creates and loves outside the boxes that human beings have assigned to God's creativity through centuries of mistaken theological wrangling. 

I've realized that, basically, God doesn't judge us the way we (or our churches) judge each other! God creates and loves every last one of us, whether we fit into human-designed check-boxes or not.

The problem with boxes is that they have walls, and they are often given labels that, too often, divide us from each other. They allow us to pretend that people who are different from us are WRONG. And what has that given us over the millennia? If you really want to know, look up Persecution on Wikipedia and read the sidebar under Discrimination. The long list is enough to turn the stomach.

But the antidote to discrimination and persecution is education. My children have certainly educated me. My youngest child is my greatest teacher. As I watched them struggle with fitting into a gender that didn't feel right to them, my heart hurt. Many times I wished they could be so-called "ordinary" gender-wise, because being non-binary is not something most human cultures understand. (Some do.)

I'll admit that there are a lot of things I wish I had said and done differently when I learned that my child needed to take a different direction than my status quo expectations. It's taken a few years to forgive myself for my past inability to understand. I questioned my kid's sense of self, cast doubt on their decisions, and grieved the loss of the future I had envisioned for them in ways that weren't helpful. Definitely not my proudest moments -- it was more about me than about them. Damned ego.

But when I was able to talk to them, to really understand how they were feeling about themself, I came to see that they were doing what was necessary for them to thrive in this world, even if it meant leaving me behind for a time. It was a challenging road, but they have moved on to become who God made them to be. Which, of course, is as it should be. As I said earlier, I am proud of them.

Clearly, our world falls short when it comes to understanding and accepting those who are different. It expects everyone to live into the same so-called "norms" -- even if those norms aren't really "normal" and often arise out of the fear of difference that creates xenophobia, racism, sexism, misogyny, homo- and transphobia, and any other ism or -phobia that divides us. Fear (of those fears, mostly) sometimes keeps me up at night, when I worry about the safety of my kids at the hands of fearful people.

It all boils down to the fact that too many people forget how Jesus spent his time with the very people his community pushed to the margins. And too many people choose to ignore how a spiritual leader named Paul once laid it out for us: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ." (Galatians 3:28) For those who aren't Christian, there's an anti-discrimination rule that applies to pretty well every world faith, too: treat others as you want to be treated. 

It's all just basic respect.

We don't hear a lot about the International Transgender Day of Visibility here in Canada -- yet. In fact, I didn't even know the day existed until this morning. I do know about the Trans Day of Remembrance that falls on November 20th each year, a day generally spent naming trans people who have been murdered for refusing to identify themselves according to the sex they were assigned at birth. A very sad day.

But a Transgender Day of Visibility is an opportunity to celebrate! It's time to celebrate their ability to be visible in a world that denied or denigrated their existence for too long. We need to acknowledge that there are those among us who live their experience of gender differently than many of us do, who are less hung up on those M or F check-boxes, and who, because of that freedom, bridge the human-made boundaries between male and female in beautiful, gracious, and sometimes unusual ways. I know trans folks who are incredibly gifted and loving, and who deserve to be seen and celebrated in their own right on this day. They are some of my favourite people. Three cheers for them!

I've collected a couple of links to articles written by trans people speaking from their own experience. They deserve to be heard. The first is a parent who writes about their trans child way better than I do, the second is a two-spirit Metis elder who has come a long way to a self-acceptance that allows them to mentor others. And if you want to look further, here is a link to a Trans Day of Visibility and Trans History in Canada webpage. 

There are many other ways to learn about trans folk and the visibility that's been too long in coming. I offer these links today in the hope that they will help us all to realize that trans people deserve love, respect, acceptance, and friendship every bit as much as we do. 

After all, friendship, acceptance, respect and love are the beautiful gifts God gives to us so that we can give them to each other. Let's celebrate by doing just that!

(Thanks for reading. And if you want to engage in one-on-one dialogue on this topic, you can always email me through the link in my profile to the right.)

Simple Pleasures: Cloud watching

My favourite cloud of 2021

With the return of Spring, we're back to that time of year when the sky moves into focus -- or maybe my perspective does. Probably the latter, because as the seasons change, I find myself spending more time outside when the air is warmer, the light is brighter, the winds are softer, and the skies are bluer.

I don't know about you, but my eyes are drawn more often to clouds in warmer seasons. In days of deep-freeze, I'm so huddled into my furry-fringed hooded jacket that it's hard to really look around. But on warm blue-sky days, clouds steal the show.

I have always loved the fluffy masses of mist that float across the sky, and trying to see things in them. Being born and raised on the prairies, I somehow feel sky in my bones, if that makes any sense, probably because it was the biggest thing around when my family lived in a very flat place during my childhood. 

Sky is still the biggest thing around, but when our focus is this earth-bound dimension in which we live, sometimes we forget to look up to see those white cotton puffs, undulating grey waves edged with pink/purple/silver/gold, or towering dark cumulonimbus monsters with tongues of lightning. And really, that's a pity. There's so much to see!

My cousin Charlotte is a cloud watcher. Every so often she posts her own images of clouds that take my breath away, with the tag #cloudsarefrequentlyawesome (you won't find that on twitter, because it's a special Charlotte thing). How I love her posts and appreciate her tendency to notice the extraordinary beauty in ordinary things that, too often, we take for granted. Especially a sky full of clouds.

Clouds are poems just waiting to be noticed, as the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society expresses so well in this video below. Having our heads in the clouds now and then is good for the soul, for sure. 

Enjoy the clouds today, and if you can't get outdoors, check out the ones highlighted in this lovely eleven minute video. Some of them are quite amusing!

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

A gentleman cabbie Samaritan

Today at ICPM, Pastor Quinn told us the story of the Prodigal Son so beautifully that the tears rolled down my cheeks. How blessed are we to have a God who loves us so unconditionally?!

But when I was passing out lunches after the service, it was another of the characters from Christ's parables who actually showed up... or so it seemed...

It began when I handed a lunch to a woman who told me her sister wasn't feeling well. "She's having a hard time breathing." She pointed to where her sister stood swaying on the sidewalk with eyes closed and a chalk white face. My heart hurt to look at her.

Photo by Adrien Ledoux on Unsplash

"Should I call an ambulance?"

"Could you call a cab instead? And can we use the washroom?"

"Yes to both questions. Can someone give me a cab company phone number off the top of their head?" 

A fellow piped up with a number, and I placed the call as I shooed the women into the building and toward the washroom. Pastor Quinn grabbed them some clean clothes, and the dispatcher told me the cab would arrive within ten minutes.

Four minutes later, a cab pulled up across the street, and my phone rang. I assured the driver that his passengers would be just a few minutes, and left my post at the sandwich table to knock on the washroom door and tell the women their cab was already waiting.

Ten minutes later, the cabbie called again, so I walked across the street to his car to explain the situation, saying, "They are just changing clothes so they will be clean in your car."

"Oh no no no no no," he said. English was likely one of several alternate languages for him, so I tried to explain again using different words.

"My work is hard," he said. "These people have troubles, yes. But I need to make living. I can't have dirty people. I can't have people who not pay. They not pay me. I have struggles from them. My work is hard."

"I am sure it is," I said, my heart hurting for him, too. "I know you are doing your best. These ladies need your help. If I had money in my pocket, I would pay you," I told him. "But my pockets are empty, and they need a ride to the hospital."

He softened a bit. "You not pay," he said. "You not ride."

But as the two passengers came to the cab, it seemed that changing clothing in such a hurry meant that one was falling out of her newly supplied sweatpants.

"No no no no no," the driver pleaded with me. "I cannot have her in my car." To her, he said, "You not dressed right. You not covered enough. And who pay me?"

"I will," she said. "We're not feeling well. Please, we need a doctor."

"She's wearing clean clothes," I assured him, and turned to adjust her waistband so it sat properly. "There, that's better, right?" 

The cabbie sighed, put on his mask, and got out of his vehicle. 

"Please," he said to the women, "Put things in my trunk." They complied, and as they helped each other into the car, I hurried back to the sandwich line. I hope everything worked out for the best.

At the end of the morning, on my way home, I found myself praying:

Creator,

be with those two sisters

as they receive the help they need

at the hospital.

Bless the hospital staff 

with patience and compassion

to help them feel better.

And please, 

please

bless the hesitant gentleman cabbie who, 

in the end,

was a Good Samaritan

of sorts.

Bless all cab drivers who,

out of compassion, 

take on fares 

and end up without pay

when faced 

with people

who so badly need help.

Thank you 

for being 

our prodigal God,

loving us no matter what.

Help us all to love like you,

and to be Good Samaritans

whenever we can --

without counting the cost.

Amen.

Simple Pleasures: Green growing things (a.k.a. houseplants)

Meet Rex. Rex has been with me in one form or another for four or five years. My husband and kids call Rex "the ugly plant," but I think she is incredibly gorgeous, especially when the sun strikes her in certain ways.

I have my friend Jocelyne to thank for introducing me to her a few years ago. I had never seen anything like her, but she was sitting in Jocelyne's window with sunlight shimmering on her fuzzy leaves, and I was drawn to her shapes and colours as though she was a magnet. Pictures just don't do her justice. 

I asked Jocelyne if she would give me a cutting, and she promised me that when the time was right, she would share some of her plant's progeny. And here we are, maybe five years later.

What's funny is that I didn't know Rex's official name until yesterday. When people (who are not my family members and have no biases against Rex) visited and commented on her beauty, I would inevitably ask them if they could identify my plant. No one could.

So yesterday, I finally solved the mystery. I web-searched "houseplants with purple veins." No go. I tried "purple-veined houseplants with long stemmed leaves." That got me a little closer. I tried "plants with red markings." I don't remember what finally worked, but eventually I found a picture of a plant similar to mine, and that led me to a whole page about Rex Begonias, which vary in colour and size. 

My mom grows beautiful flowering begonias every summer -- you'd think I might have recognized the shape of Rex's leaves as similar to Mom's plants! But Rex has never bloomed, though apparently she can put out small flowers if conditions are right. However, according to the webpage, those small flowers can't compete with the beauty of the plant's leaves.

If you haven't yet guessed, houseplants are one of the simple pleasures in my life. A friend of mine recently discovered the joy of green growing things in her home, and she's suddenly the proud mom of over 100 of them because Canadian Tire had a sale! 

I have a quarter that many, accumulated one at a time, many of them gifts, and most are surviving quite nicely, though they are often somewhat neglected during outdoor gardening season. We recently had an annoying fungus gnat infestation, but even that didn't diminish my joy much. (As much as I abhor pesticides, Lee picked up some Dr. Doom pyrethrin powder made from some sort of chrysanthemum compound, and the tiny fly-up-your-nose flies are down to a dull roar once again).

In places where winter is long and dark, houseplants are a simple pleasure that can enliven any room with a spot of colour and better air quality due to plant-filtered oxygen. I used to keep my plants all in one area, afraid I would forget to water somebody, but now they're spread around the house, and I haven't lost anyone yet. Lee has appreciated the plant companions in his work-from-home office during the pandemic, too. He says the air quality is better. 

Not all of my plants have names, but I have named a few that came to me because of special people:

Mary-John (from Lee's Polish grandparents)

Ruthie (from a cutting snitched
from the hospice where her
final journey took place five years ago)

Gaby (my dear Belgian host-dad)

Jay (our youngest)

Lidia (my Italian kaffee-klatsch friend)

and Louis (my father-in-law).

Just so you don't think I'm totally off my rocker, the rest of my plants are nameless, and the ones mentioned above have their names mostly in my head because of the loved ones connected with them. By all rights, Rex's true name is Jocelyne, because I think of her whenever her plant catches my attention. But I am delighted by the name Rex, too, because I've often thought a plant like her may have been around long enough to witness the tyrannosaur's era. She has that look about her, somehow.

Are there plants in your life that bring you joy? It's a question worth thinking about. If you like, send me pictures and I'll share them... The more we can be aware of our Simple Pleasures, the more gratitude floods our lives and reminds us of the good that surrounds us even in these challenging times, and I don't know anyone who can't use more goodness and gratitude. 

Thanks, Jocelyne, for sharing some simple pleasure with me through your Rex Begonia!  Even though I will never convince my family of her beauty, I love this plant, especially when I remember who gave her to me...

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Rico's headstand

A couple of Sundays back, Rico came to pick up a bag lunch at Inner City Pastoral Ministry -- just in time, too, as we were giving away the last few. Rico is a kibbitzer -- he likes to chat and laugh and tease until he gets a smile. I hadn't seen him for a while, and I always enjoy his visits.

After the last lunch and cup of coffee were taken from the serving table and I started folding it up, Rico jumped to help me. "Allow me, Madame," he said, and hefted the table to carry it into the building. "Follow me; I want to show you something."

I was a bit surprised, but as he was already through the door, what could I do? He set the table down against the counter, removed his coat and spread it on the floor, and proceeded to do a perfectly controlled yoga headstand.

"Rico is 65 years old," he told me after he slowly lowered himself to the ground again. "Pretty good for a senior citizen, agreed?" 

I told him I was sorry I hadn't taken a picture of his perfect yoga pose, and asked if he could do it again. So he tried, but wasn't able to straighten his legs the second time. He held this pose until I snapped a few pictures, saying "I always have better strength the first time."

Pretty good for a senior citizen indeed! I figure that Rico's efforts deserve a bit of recognition, so I'm sharing them here, and looking forward to his next visit. You never know when he'll appear to chat and laugh and tease until he gets a smile.

Simple pleasures: sheets dried in the sun

Happy St. Patrick's Day, dear readers!

The birds are singing "it's almost spring!" and there's some good, solid warmth from the sun today. There's still a good 2 feet (60 cm) of snow, but with temps getting up to 9 degrees C (48 degrees F) this afternoon, I decided to wash and hang our bedsheets on the line. There's nothing like crawling into a fresh air-ed bed at the end of a long day!

With war constantly in the news, and local political shenanigans/divisions, I haven't felt particularly inspired to moodle lately, but today I signed up for Monday Night Write Night with a favourite local author through our public library, and I've decided it might be fun to do a little series of moodlings on life's simple pleasures. So if you have any favourites that you'd like to see here, let me know. Otherwise, you'll simply be subjected to mine.

Appreciating simple pleasures improves our happiness quotient!

Fresh sheets seem to be a great place to start, and I suspect St. Paddy would agree. Enjoy your day, wherever you may be!

A little nature fix

Stumbled across this today, and realized it's a wonderful thing to have a nature fix, even if only online. Kudos to Robert Bush Sr. in Pennsylvania for sharing five minutes of footage of his local animal friends with us, without adding a goofy songtrack. I love the sound of flowing water. And there are so many different creatures who enjoy this log for lots of reasons. Enjoy!

A video worth sharing

 How I love this One. One by Birdtalker... Enjoy!

Where there's life...

There's hope.

In spite of the darkness and worry of what's happening across the world, we cling to hope, to prayer, to signs of new life, to colour, to small bits of joy and courage wherever we can find them.

There are hundreds, if not thousands of images and sayings and stories and songs to encourage us, but for me, the emergence of a trinity of tiny pepper plants from black soil speaks volumes about the tenacity of life... and hope.

Really, all we can do is stick together and support each other, and send our heartfelt concern and encouragement to those who need it most in whatever tangible ways we can. Click here to see Global Citizen's list of 22 ways to to help Ukraine on the ground where the trouble is, with everything from monetary donations, to calling on large corporations and politicians to do the right things, to following journalists on social media and learning more about what's actually happening.

From almost 8,000 km away, it's hard to know exactly what to do, but keeping the situation in our hearts is a good start... and if you're willing and able to join in Taize prayer from Edmonton on Sunday at 7 pm MST, that can't hurt, either.

https://www.facebook.com/events/736064777374788

We'll start with a gorgeous Ukrainian chant from the community of Taize, fill our hearts and souls with Christ's peace in the songs, silence and scripture of the hour, and send our peace where it's most needed... 

Please join us if you're able, and invite your friends if they're so inclined.