Happy Christmas!

I'd like to say a word about incarnation, being a Christian and all. This (besides resurrection), is one of the neatest bits about Christianity to me. God became a human, was born out of a woman, was a baby, grew up, died - just like I will.

The God who knows me is no stranger. Ze incarnated into this world, and by becoming human, enabled me to become a God's daughter.

This is, now, of particular importance because I'm going through my past, hopefully finally expunging some demons of old. It's painful, and difficult to do it, but somehow it comforts me to know I'm not doing it alone. My suffering is God's suffering - Ze shares in it, and likely my suffering is part of Jesus' suffering on the cross. We're taking the sins of humans (and make no mistake, forcibly sexing and gendering other people is a sin) on our flesh and suffering because of them. It doesn't make us any better people - suffering doesn't make you better, it just hurts, maims and kills.

I know the preceding might not sound very happy to many people, but please give it some thought: I'm at my happiest when I'm present in this world, and suffering and pain are present here, now. There's a forceful happiness in knowing what you are and what's happening to you, even if it's painful and makes you suffer. See, the other option, for me, is not not suffering, but numbness. Not feeling anything, not being connected to anyone - not living, in fact. I prefer life very much to living death.

That God can, and does share in my life is a very happy occasion, and Christmas is the yearly happy reminder of that.  Happy Christmas!

And, gasp, it's the C of E that delivers, plus some thoughts on why I'm so angry

Really. I'm a bit envious, TBH - the Church of England folks actually invite trans people in their steering groups (or some such thing). I'd never had believed it but yeah, it really seems to be true.

The less-perplexed-by-teh-trans people at the conference have asked me a few really good questions, too - they're not that hard to answer, but asking them does bring home, to me, a few points.

Firstly, we're a wee bit doomy and gloomy, us trans women. And angry as hornets. Why is that, they wonder? It's kind of obvious to me, but for the record, here it goes: I'm angry as hell 'cos I've been forcibly masculinised throughout my childhood. I've a very hard time trusting anyone, let alone trusting their good intentions. Every time I've trusted in the past, I've been let down - because I've trusted other people understand I'm a girl even though I did look a bit like a boy on the outside. I admit that my trust was misplaced, but the problem is that when those things happened, I was a minor. There was no way on this earth I could've understood my problem, or rather, the problem other people were having with me. I couldn't grasp the idea that a) I was not a boy, but a girl, contrary to everything everyone said to me, and b) I'd really better communicate this to other people ASAP and get them round to treating me like the girl I was.

The upshot was this: I was forced to be a boy, on pain of physical violence. I sucked at it big time, but as I was unable to see an alternative, try I did. It left scars. I couldn't trust anyone. I couldn't trust anyone do right by me for decades. Please think about that for a minute. I'm all new (well, less than a quarter of my life) to this trusting business, and with a huge emotional baggage to boot. Is it such a wonder if I'm a bit leery of trusting other people; if I'm a bit apprehensive of others? Or that I'm a bit angry at what's been done to me?

The local church: procrastinators'r'us

Our local branch of the church militant has been in titters about homosexuality. This is no big news, it's common knowledge Christianity's track record as regards homosexuality is patchy at best, and downright horrible at worst. I'm not writing this because my church has problems with homosexuality.

However, what I find interesting is that the church which I'm a member of cannot decide what to do about it. The background is that we've had civil partnerships, a.k.a. gay marriage for seven years now. It isn't going anywhere. Some gay couples occasionally ask for church's blessing. Some priests bless. No big deal. However, our dear bishops do make it a big deal. They instated this big honking working group to decide what to do about blessing them homos. It's been working for all those years. Their work ends now. And the result is... wait for it... no result!!! None whatsoever! More working groups. More talk is needed. We cannot decide.

I'm sorry folks, but if you can't decide relatively simple stuff like this in, what, seven friggin' years, you've basically proved yourselves to be hopeless losers at leadership & decision-making. This is not such a complicated mess they make this to be. Some priests bless. Some don't. Some of the gainsayers are pretty vehement about it. The Bible doesn't say squat (sorry folks, the "classical proof-texts" on gay stuff just aren't very relevant by the same process that texts proscribing pork (OT), or greed (NT), aren't, and they don't apply to our society anyway. So there you go, nyah nyah), the tradition is rabidly homophobic but we, the body of Christ, aren't quite as boneheaded - so could you guys please make a decision? Any decision? Yeah, thought not. You'd rather pander to the prejudiced folks by not condoning anything and you really wouldn't like to be seen as bigots. Yet bishops, in practice, do allow priests to bless same-sex couples, but refuse to admit it as an admittance of same-sex blessings.

Hello, you can't have it both ways! You look like the ridiculous, indecisive wussies you are!