gitta, the mikveh lady, told my beit din while i was under water that i was “good at this” – that i was good at dunking. such a funny thing to report on, but it made my heart swell, too. those waters were so warm, so calm. i loved the mikveh.

i haven’t been at a pulpit since 2000 or 2001. that’s when i preached my going away sermon in seattle, washington, in the united methodist church.  it was full of grief and pain, and also of conviction and clarity. i knew i was not going to be able to say the things about jesus i ultimately was going to have to. i also knew that the umc was never going to affirm me. it is better to take oneself out of damaging situations than to continue to beg for affirmation from people who can’t see you, can’t see your dignity and worth.

and here i am, ten years later. who knew i would be at this place. when i walked to the bima for my affirmation of belief, i was trembling, my voice was shaking as i read it, as i started the sh’ma after. and when i came back up to it later, for my drash, a deep breath and i was in it. the microphone and music stand familiar positioning for me, looking out on my friends and my congregation in front of me and i felt, again, at home. everything is so moving, and everything is so new. but everything is also so familiar, the movements of being up in front of a congregation, coming back to me like stretching muscles. who knew that i would ever get to do this again? who knows where i will go from here.

everything has changed. and nothing has changed. but really, and truly, everything has changed.

also, i am sick. i went away to the national havurah committee’s summer institute last week, which gave my burnt-out body enough time away to get sick (remember college? remember getting sick during spring break? exactly). so i showed up here on day 3 of evil cold and am now on day 4, the hacking shit up day. this is what burnout looks like. your body slowly rebells against you – this is the 3rd or 4th time this year i’ve had this same cold. you stop being able to logically process information. my head is hazy even on the best days right now. i have a hard time distinguishing important tasks from less-important tasks. there is a very serious divide between what i am doing with my days and what i want to be doing with my days. and even on my best days at work, i wish to be *anywhere* else.

my job is, largely, a dream job. what trans person doesn’t want a job where they get to work within their own community? but the reality is, it’s a really hard job. there are not a lot of resources. a lot of the resources do exist are leadership-building and organizing resources, not direct services. so you can join movement-building teams to respond to transphobia at HRA, but it’s still monumentally difficult to get anything from HRA. people need housing, food, jobs, health care that covers their actual medical needs. i can give them listening, talk them through strategies for dealing with the bullshit, a sounding board, a buffer. it’s not enough, and i’m left dealing with the psychic fallout from failing to bridge the chasm between what is needed and what i can offer.

this is exactly what burnout camp is for: to give us a space to deal with all the energy we take in while we’re doing work transformative work. because really, i have to go back to my job on monday. and the monday after that, and the monday after that. how do we keep on keeping on when this world is not set up to support us in it? how do we keep our visions for justice and liberation when our hearts are so broken by the struggle itself? i don’t know. but hopefully the space of this weekend away will give a little more mending, and a little more breathing space, and a few more ideas about how to do my work without tearing my heart wide open.

When we call political issues social issues we water them down; we make our calls for justice and liberation palatable to the institutions, powers, and popular mindsets we are railing against. We appease the power we fight against by making our inequality and injustice demure, domesticated “issues.” I don’t know about you, but when I feel dirty for being a class-passing working class person, when I get leered at for walking down the street in my leggings, when I got asked “how can you mutilate your body?” while preparing for top surgery and “do you regret being on hormones, having surgery?” now that I look like a girl again, these are not issues. This is the mundane violence of the capitalist world we live in, with its varied claims upon our bodies and lives.

So no, I am not for social justice. I want justice and righteousness to sweep through this world and get us ever so much closer to olam haba. It will not be clean and easy; it will not be domesticated. It will not be about social order. It will be about political and economic orders, about the very fabric of our collective, interdependant being. It will be about undoing all the violence we have wrought on this world and on each other. I don’t want social justice in this world and all its systems. I want us to change the world, to make it safe and whole for all of us.

when i was a child, i imagined myself as an adult: single, self-sufficient, a parent of one, interesting, cultured, living in a city, romantic liaisons with whomever i wanted (but no specific, committed, stable partner. 

i am an adult now. and until this year, my vision of myself has been the same. but suddenly. things have changed. my desire has changed. i want things i have never wanted before. backyards, for example. maybe a car. more importantly, and more inexplicably: a partner. someone to grow with, to fight with, to learn to love in ever expansive ways with.

i am always a person who thinks through entirely before doing. always. i need to understand the minutiae, the intricacies.

being single has always made sense because i knew that i would be able to love myself and my child wholly. i was, have been, am still so terrified that i will never be able to give the people closest to me all the love they need. the idea of having a partner AND a child terrified me, terrifies me, because i cannot, will not, have one of them feel that i am not giving them all the love, care, and devotion that they need and deserve. and i cannot, will not, feel that i am not giving myself the love, care, and devotion that i need and deserve. but something has shifted, and i feel capable. not scarce. capable. of doing all that. maybe it’s possible, and i can be all of those things that i never had from a parent growing up. and maybe i will fail, but the trying hard will matter. and maybe a million maybes.

all i know is that i’m not trying to protect myself or my theoretical child or theoretical partner anymore; i’m just feeling the desire. and in that desire, there is space, and hope, and joy.

thanks for the memories

This is important. Therapy was so early yesterday morning and I am still hearing the reverberations of that phrase. It makes me pay more attention to the things around me. To the things I am doing. To the things other people are doing. To myself as I talk about my rabbinical path. To the four year old who is over there, dancing. To my friend who is so close to adopting a teenager. To the quality of feeling I get from lying in my bed in the sun from my abundant windows. To not so subtle marks of resistance when resistance seems futile, like the goodbye message Mars Bar has painted on its facade. To the older woman at the klezmer night at the Ukrainian National House, who touched my shoulder, said: I love your tattoo (a giant sprawling jellyfish). To the decision I made during morning prayers yesterday, to be fun and playful at work. These mundane things are important, are so important.

What is the quality of feeling of the importance? Where does it sit in your body? What does it feel like to hear, “this is important” about something you are doing. Not to have it shouted at you. Not to have it drilled in to you. But to hear it said it calmly, carefully, to you: this is important. What you are doing is important. Your place in the world is important. You are important.

I have no skills around this. This is the bulk of my healing work, and I spent most of the day with a rose quartz on my heart, hoping that it will help me make some space there for this work. But I think also this is the healing work of this world I live in, which seems so hell bent on making everyone believe all time that we are unimportant, insignificant automatons of capitalism. I just want us each, and all, to be able to say to each other, and to hear for ourselves: this is important. The things your are doing are important. You are important.

i feel like burt right now, in this moment. i can’t really tell when i’m hissing or growling or what, but there is a constant back-and-forth of grounding down, then moving out, confronting something unexpected and perhaps unwanted, hissing and growling at it, hoping it will go away, and running back into my quiet place. unlike burt, who will have to just adapt to her new reality with l, i hope that i don’t have to just open myself fully to the things that i’m encountering. because really, i don’t want them.

i was told last week that if having good trans politics was my bar for whether or not people were ok, i am setting myself up, since it will never happen. it made me so angry, and so sad. what? am i supposed to just suck myself up to the bullshit people put out there? no. and maybe there are parts that i do need to do better. like, maybe have more space for people to have errors and come back. but i’m not even looking for people to be perfect. i’m looking for people to try, to respect me, to not exploit trans experiences and trans bodies.

my home now, the one i live in, it is quiet. i live in the backest corner of the house, and the house is full of feminist queer gender variant people, and a lot of working class experience. it is nice to feel basic and seen and to have a moment of pause in here, outside of the world we all live in. i need to have some place to rest within a world that causes a lot of hissing and spitting.

but maybe, through it all, my heart will grow, too.

My gramma listened to the soft rock and power ballads station. My musical life at her house was the Beatles, Elton John, Boston, and Whitney, to name some. We would sit at the dining room table, me doing homework or coloring or reading and always singing under my breath, her needlepointing Renoir replicas* or reading. We would talk intermittently, stop for meal preparation, sometimes I’d get bored and go to my grampa who was inevitably at his computer with the local jazz station playing.

This morning, maybe there was something about the light in the train that reminded me of her home in Spokane. Or maybe I caught the right phrase at the right time, but there was a lyric, a breath, a pause, and then my heart broke again.

My gramma died on April 19, 2004. I miss her madly all the time, but more in these weeks leading up to her yarzheit than ever. I mark her yartzheit not on the lunar calendar, because she was not Jewish. But it is right to honor the dead. With lights and prayers and memories and heartbreak years after the fact, reminding me that mourning is never really done. It just becomes part of me, healing over as a scar, becoming part of my skin and bones and daily life.

So singing along to Whitney this morning, this song is for you, Shirley. May your memory be a blessing.

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* Really, my gramma did this. She also made needlepoint replicas of blue and white china patterns and British tapestries. Because she’s British, and apparently this is what my people do.