Do you see God's love within the lives of transgender people?

Written text by Davíd E. Patiño, Ezra Fairy-Collins, Jude Johnson, Greyson Kentopp, Erica Saunders and Cole Williams in 2018/2019 for the Seminarian Cohort transgender and published on The Open and Affirming Coalition of the United Church of Christ (United States). Freely translated by the volunteers of the Gionata project.

As trans people, we know the love of God. We feel it in our bones, in the skin that covers our bodies, in our own essence.

God is that voice within us who guides us towards authenticity, towards love for ourselves and towards the community. The Holy Spirit works within us and through us.

The Holy Spirit is what can transform our deepest anger, sadness and loneliness into something new.

We recognize it when the impossible happens, when within us, despite despair, a small light, a minimum sign of hope, lights up, that thin energy that seems to arise from our own being.

The Holy Spirit is what rapid us from the inner death that we experience because of the trauma. It is the darkness that surrounds us and protects us. The Holy Spirit resurrects us and allows us to see our own sacredness.

Rejected by our families, our churches and society, our struggle for existence and freedom is our ministry in the world.

Our understanding of the genre can remedy the wounds of this oppressive system, in which each person, of any kind, is punished if he does not comply with the imposed rules.

We are the chosen ones of God - Proprio like Moses, who should not be born, who should not have existed, yet it was.

We are here to create a new humanity that gives value to every life: to the life of each person in a caravan of migrants, to the life of every child torn from the parents on the border, to the life of every trans woman, in particular of the trans women of color who fight to survive, to the life of every trans person.

Isa Noyola, deputy director of the Transgender Law Center, once said: "Transgender people are medicine, spirit and leadership." And that's right! God chose each of us. God has chosen to talk to us, to indicate the path to authenticity, to show others the value of life and the destructiveness of the rigid gender rules.

This new humanity is guided by us, those who have been considered non -existent for too long. We are different, and this does not mean that we have no value. Our diversity is what makes us precious, wonderful and divine. Divini, because it is the gift that God has made us.

In these difficult times, sisters and trans brothers, resist. Cling to hope, love, yourself. Even if you have to hide, stop your transition, you can't get out or have to live in stealth - it was fine. You are loved, you are precious, you are children of God. We pray for you. You are part of us. We are a community. Look for safe spaces. Find Trans Organizations, Trans Friends, Trans profiles to follow on social networks. Every fragment of love that exits there, God has guided you to find him. Fill yourself with that love, fill yourself with affirmation and love for yourself.

Trans people have never been non -existent. We have been deleted from history. We must commit ourselves to rediscover our stories, our cosmologies, our myths and our narratives. We have to write the history of our trans ancestor and the trans visions of a trans past.

Our way of knowing God is through the body, movement, being in the community with each other. In an oppressive world that tries to fragment us, to make us insufficient and insignificant, to make us become "non-Data", we must not forget our sources of knowledge. There is sacredness and divinity in the profound awareness of our being.

Our transitions are spiritual paths, pilgrimages-a search and a discovery of different parts of ourselves through surgical interventions, accessories or gender-hall clothes, new gender expressions, new body sensations through hormonal therapy and new ways of understanding us in relation to the others.

We must share our pain, our love, our history, our memories, our dreams, our hopes, our myths and our visions.

Following the guidance of the Holy Spirit within us, we can embrace a divine community made of creativity and love, which pushes us in the struggle for justice, free from hatred and violence - to the others, between us and towards ourselves. Write, paint, photographed, sung, dance, pray, celebrate, love, meet, protest and tell your truth.

Know that you are loved by God. Be blessed. And be safe! You are loved.

*The Seminarian Cohort transgender is a program born in the United States in 2013 thanks to the National LGBTQ Task Force, at the Freedom Center for Social Justice in Charlotte (North Carolina) and the Center for LGBTQ and Gender Studies in Religion at the Pacific School of Religion which offers support and training to transgender seminarians, helping them to navigate in religious and theological contexts, often hostile to trans people. The Cohort promotes the spiritual and professional growth of those who want to enter the religious ministry by maintaining their authenticity of gender.

Original text: "We Know The Love of God: A reflection on the trans day of Remembrance " (Pdf file)