TRUUsT

UU Lent 2019 – Day 10 – Partnership

CZ

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington

“None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.” – Mother Teresa

Partnership is more than friendship. It is not just being there for someone. Being a partner means working alongside them. Being a partner means holding each other accountable.

Transgender Religious Professional UUs Together (known as TRUUsT) has created a Call to Action because “In the wake of recent events and the Trump administration’s continued assault on trans lives, TRUUsT calls on Unitarian Universalists everywhere to take immediate action to live out the above truths and directly support trans UUs. Unitarian Universalism’s commitment to trans lives is all too often aspirational rather than true today. According to a recent survey, only 28% of trans UUs feel that their congregation is fully inclusive of them as trans people. We need this to change, because trans lives are at stake.”

As Unitarian Universalists, we are called to be better partners. As Rev. Theresa I. Soto states “All of us Need all of us to Make It.” This responsive reading co-written by Rev. Megan Foley highlights this.

We can do better. We should do better.

CZ

Earlier this week, UU World published a problematic, hurtful, and harmful article. Instead of writing my own response, I am passing the mic. In their article on Medium, CB Beal “Centering the Marginalized: symphony and triptych” describes why the UU World article was so upsetting and how we can do better in the future.

“When we want to do justice, and I believe that UU’s do, we have always to ask ourselves “Who is this about, and where is their story?”” – CB Beal

Alex Kapitan also made a public response on Facebook. 

And here is the Response from TRUUsT : “Putting the “T” First: Public Statement on This Week’s UU World Article” written by the TRUUsT Steering Committee.

Please read them and share them widely.

 

Image Credit to Su’ad Abdul Khabeer from their twitter account @DrSuad.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

CZ

It is Transgender Day of Remembrance. Here are some thoughts: from Rev. Sean Dennison

Today is a sacred day,
a day to remember and mourn,
a day to count the cost of so much hatred.
But don’t think that saying the names
of my 368 siblings–
(a number that rises so fast that by the time
we are done with our rituals, it may be more,
and more again)
almost all of them my sisters,
black and brown sisters–
don’t think saying their names
is enough.
It will never be enough.
Each year I am asked to absorb
the losses of hundreds
of my people, my family.
To use the word “tragedy,”
instead of genocide.
To express grief
instead of rage.

I am tired.
For decades now, I have mourned.
For decades now, I have politely
listened to lists of names, mispronounced
and loved too late, honored only
posthumously.

I want to know.
Can you love me while I live?
Can you love my siblings?
My black and brown sisters?
Can you love them no matter
the choices they made to survive?
Can you love them politically?
Can you love them personally,
allowing them to come into your church?
your home?
your heart?

I am tired.
Because these hundreds of names
are not even all.
These are only the ones who died
at the hands of someone else’s hatred.
That number does not count the ones
I have lost to self-hatred, to despair,
to hunger and cold.
It does not count the ones who are dying inside
because seeing all this,
they don’t dare to live.

So today, when you ask me to perform
my grief and sorrow on your stage,
Do not be surprised if it comes with
rage. If it comes with weeping so fierce
that I cannot speak, cannot breathe.
If it comes with wailing so loud
that (if only, if only) it could wake the dead.

And tomorrow, when the world moves on,
and I am left alone again,
with all of this,
all my beloveds dead
all my people endangered,
all the pieces of my broken heart
still piercing and bleeding,
still enraged
still heavy with grief,
Will you still remember?
And more importantly,
What will you do?

 

TRUUsT calls on Unitarian Universalists everywhere to take immediate action to live out the above truths and directly support trans UUs. #TDOR #WontBeErased

This evening there is a vigil for Transgender Day of Remembrance this evening in Morgantown at the Morgantown Church of the Brethren-Mennonite at 6pm.