Transgender Day of Visibility

Chalice Lighting —

“TDOV Blessing”
by Rev. Mr. Barb Greve

Blessed are the trailblazers,
who brought us this far,
and are still trailblazing…
still celebrating.
Blessed are the drag queens and kings,
who remind us to not take life too seriously.
Blessed are the gender benders, non-binary, gender fluid, and third-gender folk, those who challenge us to reframe our gender paradigm.
Blessed are the young ones,
who present fearlessly from the start.
Blessed are their parents,
who make space for freedom,
and love their children fiercely.
Blessed are the siblings and relatives,
who educate, support, and love us as we are.
Blessed are the gender queer youth,
who are struggling and persist.
Blessed are the 90-year olds just coming out,
and those who have been out decades.
Blessed are those whose lives were cut too short,
may their stories live on through us.
Blessed are the survivors,
may they keep on living.
Blessed are the allies,
learning to be accomplices.
Blessed are those gathered here today,
witnessing,
learning,
celebrating.
May we all commit to continue showing up,
fighting for justice,
celebrating all the genders in life.

Amin.

Reading —

In a world that so boringly,
so violently,
so stubbornly insists
on its stale and narrow gender rules and regulations,
God Themselves is a state of constant transition.
Though many try to tame Their wild,
make Them into the image of power,
and fix Them permanently to one static being,
They are change in a world that loves control.
They take our attempts at definitions and confuse them.
They trouble our most basic assumptions –
about ourselves, the earth, each other.
God, unwilling to stick to a single form for our comfortable comprehension.
Incapable of making Themselves so flat.
Their names are always changing.
They are a multitude of incarnations.
Our Deliverer from the status quo.
Our Liberator from ordinary logics of power.
Our Invitation to live into the abundance of possibilities within and around us.
What a blessing,
every trans child birthed unto us.
Precious glimpses.
Holy encounters.
Glorious invitations
to recognize the image of God –
the gifts of being and becoming so much more than what’s placed upon us,
the possibilities for living without losing a part of ourselves,
the desire to know and be known,
vulnerably, truthfully, entirely –
alive in all of us.

— Rev. M Barclay, enfleshed
facebook.com/enfleshedword 

Benediction —
[reprise of “the box”, copied from Daily Pause, 3/14/22]