News

Dear friends,

This Monday (March 31st) is Transgender Day of Visibility, a day to recognize and honor our transgender, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming family, friends, and neighbors.

This weekend we put out new lawn signs which say “God is non-binary: They transcend gender.”

This aligns with our theology as Unitarian Universalist Christians – we personally experience God through many incarnations and expressions (anthropomorphic or not), but we don’t tell other people what to believe.

I was raised Unitarian Universalist in a fairly humanist congregation. In worship, we sang to the “Spirit of Life” as we began our time of prayer, and I learned about God when we studied world religions and the Bible. My mother took a class at church about the feminine divine, and in middle school I explored earth-centered spirituality and the Triple Goddess. By the time I graduated from high school, my God had been female, male, incorporeal, and everything in between and beyond. My call to ministry and subsequent experiences in seminary only served to broaden my understanding of God.

The older I get, the less I “know” about God. My brain tries to fit the world into neat categories, but life doesn’t work that way, least of all when it comes to God. The God I know is not an old man on a cloud, or a young man on a cross, or a woman dancing. The God I know is all of those things, and so much more – God transcends gender, race, species, or any other boundary produced by my limited human understanding.

First Parish is a Welcoming Congregation, but much of the LGBTQ+ community only knows the institution of the Christian church as hateful and abusive. Transgender Day of Visibilityis an opportunity to celebrate gender diversity, and our lawn signs are an important statement to say that we love and welcome everyone. We are ALL made in the image of God: a spark of the Divine let loose on the world, always seeking the path back home, where we are all united in love.

See you at church,

– Sarah