Topic: Religion

Call for Papers:
Transgender Spirituality ~ Personal Journeys

Please forward this ?Call for Papers? to anyone you think may be interested in participating.

Deadline for submissions is March 21, 2005

A new anthology about our Spirituality is soon to be published. We are looking for submissions from people who identify as either Transgender, Transsexual, Intersex, Gender Queer, FTM, MTF, Butch, Femme, Cross-Dressers, Drag Kings, Drag Queens, Androgynous or beyond the traditional identifications as listed.

1. Name you wish to use in book ________________________

This information will be kept confidential:
Legal Name ______________________________________
Street Address ______________________________________
City, State, Zip ______________________________________
Phone ____________________________________________
Email ____________________________________________

2. Include a short biography (no more than 200 words) that lets us know how you identify in the Transgender Community.

3. For purposes of this book, we are also including some astrological information for each section that will not be linked to your essay.
Birth Date ____________
Birth Time ____________ AM or PM (circle one)
City, State, Country _____________________________

4. The submission regards your spirituality and not so much your birth religion or the church you may currently attend. Feel free to respond in any way you would like to be heard on this topic.
Your essay or poem can be any length that gets your point across clearly about your spirituality.

Some questions to help you think about how you may wish to formulate your essay or poem include:
Define your spiritual nature, experiences and practices.
Do you connect with your God/Goddess/Supreme Being/Spirit regularly?
Have the mainstream churches provided you with the spiritual connection you need or seek?


Editors: Bellezza Squillace, MsW, Ordained Minister, Feminist Astrologer

Marisa Folse, member of The Lost Boys Drag King troupe; MsW, Ordained Minister (May 2005)


For more information, contact the editors: housekeeper@the12thhouse.com
818.487.8747

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #104, Winter 2004.
by Tucker Lieberman

It?s not surprising that almost every culture has a form of sun worship. What does it mean ?to worship,? really, but to humbly adore an awesome beauty in recognition of our dependence on it? The sun is a natural object for adoration. It causes crops to grow and provides light by which to see. Beyond human reach, it reminds us of our dependence and ignorance. It symbolizes egalitarianism as it shines equally and without hesitation on people of all colors, shapes, sexes, and characters; paradoxically, it can also symbolize judgment, as if it were a fierce, all-seeing eye. Its heat can yield pleasure, or a slow death. And its daily death in the west and resurrection in the east symbolizes eternal life.

I'm a Christian who happens to be transgendered. It's taken a long time to get the description in the right order.

It isn't a divinity degree or special schooling that makes me write to you about issues of faith. By training, I'm a scientist, by profession an engineer, by upbringing a lukewarm Protestant, hardly the makings of an evangelist.

What, then, have I have to say? First, let me relate what my pastor tells me in counseling, a man who does hold a Ph.D. in divinity, taught theology, leads an 800 member church, a forthright type many would consider a fundamentalist Christian.

YOU AREN'T GOING TO HELL FOR WHAT YOU WEAR, OR HOW YOU APPEAR.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #097, Spring 2002.
by Pat Conover

The United Church of Christ created a bit of transgender and Christian history when it sponsored and paid for a consultation of transgendered members, November 15-18, 2001, to give guidance to the denomination on relating to its transgendered members and clergy and to the importance of supporting human and civil rights for all transgendered people. Eleven people were chosen for this consultation, representing the wide diversity of transgendered people: man-to-woman and woman-to-man, transsexual and other varieties of transgendered people, laity and clergy, and a diversity of race, class, urban and rural, and region of the United States. Vanessa Sheridan and Pat Conover, both of whom have previously written for Transgender Tapestry, were among the participants. Pat served as liaison to the religious community for the IFGE Board of Directors for 5 years in the 1990?s.

Originally appeared in Transgender Tapestry #097, Spring 2002.

by Shirley Boughton

What makes us transgendered? Why are we transgendered? Is it a blessing or a curse? These are questions I have struggled with for a lifetime. The answers seem somehow critical to my very survival as well as my ability to accept myself as a transgendered person. My personality drives me to dig deeply into who I am and why.

The question for many of us who are transgendered is whether our transgender nature is a result of a mistake of nature (akin to a club foot) which should be fixed, or whether we have been deliberately designed by the divine creator for a special spiritual purpose. Do we need to seek medical assistance to conform our bodies to match our brain patterns so we can better fit into a two-gender society, or do we represent a third gender with a specific role to play? Do we shape our bodies and our forms of dress to fit gender stereotypes, or do we do these things to achieve harmony with our soul? I have now come to believe my transgenderism was hard-wired before I was born, and that the divine architect intended this for a reason.