“Sometimes, one must look into the ashes to find a solitary spark.” Dov Ber of Mazeritch “Torah is not education, it is transformation.” Rebbitzen Dena Weinberg So, you may have gathered from the title of this piece that what I … Continue reading
I’m drawn to pondering Jesus’ use of the word we translate as salvation—a word, since, oddly associated with this far-off, yet-to-come intervention on which we wait; a word concerned, long now, with the state of our eternal souls rather than the state of our world. The Hebrew word for salvation, yeshuah, comes from the root, yasha, which means to be or to make wide. Danger and evil are narrow spaces—places where circumstances are closing-in; where enemies are surrounding; where things are tight. Continue reading
It’s that time of year when we are called to be still enough to reflect and express gratitude for all we have—even amid all that is troubling and not what we want, or perhaps, need it to be. These times … Continue reading
When I was growing up in the 1960s, it was a particularly difficult time to be a child discerning a gender-identity different from one’s gender assigned at birth. In a time where everything our culture saw as normal and “just … Continue reading
(Or…the Soothing Sound of Katydids) It is evening here, in North Carolina, where House Bill 2 (the first of the “bathroom” bills) once loomed heavily, casting a storm of attention over our lives and giving the shelter of darkness to … Continue reading
At this time of year, we remember Mary, mother of Jesus. How, in circumstances that would shame one less trusting, in what must have felt as much like some kind of daily dreaminess as faith, she in her living love … Continue reading
As our people have for far too long, we gather here as trans persons, with family, friends and allies, in a spirit of remembrance—a communal collecting of sacred moments in which we name, remember, honor and grieve those members of … Continue reading
Lately, I find myself wrestling the urge to withdraw—quietly slip out to the wood shop and, if nothing else, just get lost randomly cutting and sanding. It as if I’m compelled to embody some deeper need to smooth off the … Continue reading
An ancient wisdom asserts that the whole universe is in the Torah, we just have to keep turning it to see it more fully. I believe this to be true—even as a transgender person of faith, even in light of the many ways our sacred texts have been used to exclude trans and LGBQ people. Perhaps, it is precisely because of the hurt arising from the misuse of scripture that I have come to hear refrains of our diverse human conditions sounding forth from Biblical narratives. Continue reading
There is an old Celtic wisdom which asserts that it is in the shelter of one another that the people live. This is a layered truth—not merely that we exist within and are surrounded by the community of others, but … Continue reading
