Some crazy happy ramble I wanted to share. -- Sorry if it's in the wrong section. It's about gender, religion, sexual orientation at the same time. And I'm not actually asking for advice. -- I've found some supportive sites about spirituality while searching things like: "christian and trans", "christian and lgbt" and - even if I found many teological theories regarding some biblical passages just crazy and a bit of a stretch - I found some relief, and now I feel like a whole person. I don't know what exactly I believe in: I started as a child as christian, ended up as sincerely-I-don't-know-there-must-be-some-deity. I don't know yet for sure what my gender is. But now I know that whichever the answer will be, I'm not wrong before God/Goddess/[?]. I struggled all my life to connect the expectations of organized religion with my individual relationship with God. I used to joke that I was "spiritually queer" LOL, even before accepting fully that I was not hetero and not cis. Faith and sexual orientation+gender identity used to pause each other. Following my faith used to mean that I "knew I was X but didn't act like X because God surely didn't mean to create me with X". Aknowledging X and making it grow and mature used to mean trying not to think about God, faith and all that stuff. OR pursuing faith on a strongly individual path, giving up forever a spiritual union with a group of people. And that nagging voice: "God wants you to be female". Not now anymore. Also, analyzing my past I found with surprise that individual spirituality was the first place where I began to free myself from my assigned gender and gender role, mostly unconsciously. Metaphorically, to me genders* look like an amazonic forest; being female means developing horizontally like lianes that connect to each other, tree crowns that catch sunlight, hosting the richness of animal life, constantly transforming oneself through life which turns into death which turns into life again; being male means being vertical: the trunk of a tree that connects deeply to the ground through the roots, the firm ground or tree on which anything can lean on.** Where did I find that firmness that nobody can take away? Initially, as a child spirituality was the main source of any confidence, hope and courage in everyday life; growing up, I had a storage of spiritual experience which I felt I could use in order to be a spiritual guide, if only someone needed to, acting like a kind of father figure. This transfered itself on the other aspects of life. Due to spirituality, the main receiving end of my commitments became collectivity over relatives and romantic partners, public life over private life. I strongly refused to consider marriage and child nurturing as an important part of spiritual growth and destiny, and that was actually the first raw refusal of a female gender role. It was before God that for the first time I wondered why he didn't "create" me male so I could fulfill the spiritual role I yearned for without the Church preventing it because «women shall not teach». If God gave me the mental predisposition to act, love, believe like a man, why weren't I born a man? Why did He give me that spiritual knowledge to cherish without the permission to use it, because «women shall not teach»? Or did He just want to frustrate me? There had to be a reason… that I couldn't find. (Then I accepted I was bi and questioned my gender, etc.) The first things I finally managed to sing as a tenor were some religious gregorian chorals.***And a choral that says: "Angelus Domini descendit de caelo et dixit mulieribus: quem queritis? Surrexit, sicut dixit. Alleluja." "The angel of God descended from the sky and told the women: who are you looking for? He has risen from the dead as he had once said. Hallelujah."**** My choirmaster once said "when you sing, celebrate yourselves". And I did, singing with my soul for the first time. (Within the choir I sing as a soprano, at home I secretly learn the tenor part xD) Also, voice dysphoria went a little down because I thought: "Well, He gave me this body. It's a kinda shell, a caterpillar, something created in order to be transformed lately, but let's honour this shell. Let's honour the temporary voice I have. It's not me, it's an external musical instrument, but let's use it c'mon". So, the next time someone in church will tell me: "Wear a skirt, because God created you a woman and you must present yourself in church as you really are", I'll just… laugh internally and enter with trousers and without covering my head. Do they find it offensive? May they kick me out of the church if they want to, I don't care. I'm not offending God. I may scandalize the believers, but if God had a thumb, this tumb would surely be raised up. -- Wow, I spilled my soul onto this post, really. It costed a lot of energy. -- [*For the sake of simplicity, I considered only the two binary genders. I know that it's not that simple, but I can relate only to femaleness and maleness (or lack of) because I'm some kinda androgyne, and the metaphor was meant to be useful to my questioning at first.] [**Some months after creating this metaphor, I looked on the internet at brain scans of males and females. The first ones showed mainly connections within the same emisphere and between the two in one area (I don't remember its name) in the back side of the brain. The second ones showed mainly connections between the two hemispheres and mainly in the frontal side of the brain. How curious.] [***Yay gregorian music! \o/] [****This is not a sophisticated translation from Latin, sorry Lol] If someone wants to share their issues with religion and being lgbt, I'd be happy ^.^
