Get Her Words Out

Made it, part 2.

I made it across country without any major problems.  For the last few years I have flown home, and there has never been any snow when I got here.  The year I drive, of course, it snows the whole day that I arrive on.

But it turned out to be no big deal, I-70 was clear all day, and I really didn't get slowed down at all.

I stopped at my sister's house in Denver before heading to Greeley.  We had a nice visit.

I think when I go back that I'll try to do the trip in two days rather than three, I had plenty of time and energy to go father than I did each day on this trip and I only ended up driving for about 5 hours on the last day.  I should be able to do two and a half extra hours each of the first two days.

My mother is trying very hard, maybe even too hard, to be okay with my trans-ness, I had gotten used to being around people for whom it has become routine and as normal as it can be, so it is kind of rough to deal with someone making a big deal out of it.   But she is doing pretty well.

My brother is doing his best to just ignore it.  I don't know how I feel about that.

Made it

I put the last thing I had to do for the semester into campus mail this morning, so I am free.

I've been packing things up all morning trying to get ready to leave for Colorado this afternoon to spend Christmas with my family.  It's amazing how nervous I am.

First, this will be the first time I have seen my family since I came out.  I'm sure they will be good about everything, but I'm still a little tense.

Second, I'm nervous about leaving a place where it has been safe for me to dress as myself.  Atlanta, inside the Perimeter especially, is metropolitan enough that I don't worry much about being a little out there in my dressing.  And the people on our campus have been great about it.  But I don't know how it's going to be somewhere else.  I'm going to try to be a little extra butch on the drive, be careful with the way I pull my hair back (do the more masculine low pony tail not the more feminine high one) and not where too much pink, or nail polish.  But when I am home, I would like to not have to do that.  We'll see.

Updates will be patchy for the next couple of weeks, as I will be limited to accessing the 'net at libraries while I'm away.

Jesus' Miraculous Diapers?

Update:  It's been a year since I started blogging, and with the beginning of Advent I thought it was time to revisit one of the greatest Christmas stories of all time:

I took two CE classes this fall, Intro and "Teaching Bible through Liberative Pedagogy."  In both classes we talked about children's sermons, or what ever you want to call the time children come forward during worship.

In both classes we talked about how to do them well and how they are sometimes done badly.

I saw an example of the second type this morning.

The minister who told the story started by talking about things that stay green during the fall and winter.  I thought to myself that she was going to talk about Christmas Trees and the evergreen being a symbol for eternal life.

Nope.  She wanted to talk about Jesus' diapers and the rosemary bush.

I assume that she didn't just make this story up, but I had never heard it.

The story takes place during the flight to Egypt.  I don't know why she thought the children needed to hear a flight to Egypt story on the third Sunday of Advent, especially when the text for the day was the Annunciation, but that's where she went.

Anyway, somewhere on the way to Egypt the family stopped for the night, and Jesus was out of diapers, so Mary (just Mary, because this is woman's work, you know.  grrr) went down to the stream (one of the many streams running through the Sinai) and washed a bunch of diapers.  Then she laid the clean diapers over these bushes by the stream that had no leaves on them.

In the morning, the diapers were all nice and dry and when they lifted them off of the bushes, they were rosemary bushes in full leaf, or in bloom or whatever it is that rosemary does.  The touch of Jesus' diapers had transformed them.  And that's why, to this day, rosemary stays green in the winter.

Um, what? 

What makes this a bad children's story?

A) It's just strange.
B) It had nothing at all to do with anything else in the service.
C) It's going to teach all those concrete thinking five-year-olds rosemary comes from diapers. Eww.
D) All of the above.

Liberate
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Gerri
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CE professor and accordion virtuoso!

About the title

The title "Get Her Words Out" comes from the "Karma Chameleon" episode of Wonderfalls, a series that I loved.

I chose it, though, because it is expressive of what I want to do here.  As I am coming out and transitioning, I am moving from Jim to Meghan.  I am showing the world a new me and I am learning who that new me wil be.

Meghan needs a voice, I need to "get her words out" so I can hear what they are and so the world can, too.

My lifelong experience of being a closeted trans-person has been one of hiding.  There was a time in my life when it would not be unusual for me to go home from work on Friday and not speak to another human being until I went back to work on Monday.  I don't want to live that way anymore.  I want to be connected to the world and to the people in it.

Donne said, "no man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were. Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind;"  I want to be involved with mankind, I want to be a part of the continent.

I hope that in learning how to talk to you, my imagined audience, I will in some way be learning how to talk connect in ways that I haven't before.  I have never really had a voice of my own, I tend to communicate better through quotes than I do with my own words.

Maybe I can find that voice here, while I am "getting her words out."

Beginnings

I guess I've got to start somewhere.

40. Transgender.  Presbyterian.  Working on an M.Div.

I'm going to try this, I don't know how well I'll do, but what could go wrong?

I'm supposed to graduate in May of 2006 and I have no idea where I will be going, what I will be doing, or who I'll be with, or even if there is anyone for me.

I'm going to try writing about faith, vocation, call, transitions of all kinds and about trying to find someone to connect with.  But I won't be limited to those just those things.

I have a lot of questions and a lot of anxieties.  I'm sure they will all be coming out in the course of doing this.