A Grateful Heart

There is not enough gratitude in the world to describe how I feel about my ordination day. Thank you to everyone who made it so special. It was a day filled with so much love, joy, celebration, and queer resilience. I am beyond blessed to be a pastor in this church and in a time such as the one we are currently living in.

We are a time where hate seems to be the largest voice in the news, on our social media pages, and in all the advertisements that bombard our world. Hate gets a lot of attention and can make us believe that there is more of it than there actually is. I am here to say that the hate is absolutely not the predominate voice in the world, even when it seems to be the loudest one.

Everywhere I look, I see love. I see people showing up for one another again and again. Here in Saint Louis, in both faith-based and secular organizations, I see people carrying a God-sized amount of love for this community. I am continuously in awe of the ways we learn together, grow together, and care for one another. We know that we are better together.

Love is powerful. Love builds communities, sustains movements, heals wounds, and calls us toward justice over and over again. There are far more people committed to love, inclusion, and liberation than we are often led to believe.

I whole heartedly believe that love can be the loudest voice in the room if we choose it. If we remember that it is about what we do that matters! If we remember where to look. If we remember that love is often found in each other. Love will certainly outlast hate. So let us believe in a kind of heaven of earth where love is abundant, because I know it can be true. We can build it together, piece by piece with courage, compassion, and hope. We have always been the ones that we've been waiting for.

With love and solidarity,
Pastor Eli

Below is a poem written in response to the current administrations dangerous conflation of transgender identity, advocacy, and community-building with extremism, violence or terrorism.

radically pro transgender

I want to hear trans people laugh and

Celebrate. I want to call someone

By their new name and see their face

Fill with delight. I want to bring

A trans person to the thrift store

And help them find the clothes

That they only ever dared to

Wear behind clothes doors.

I want to call someone by the

Pronouns that their soul

Has been longing to hear.

I want trans people in my churches,

In my classrooms, in my grocery stores.

I want trans people in nature.

I want trans people in my life.

I want to shout in the streets

How much I love trans people

how much each trans person

I’ve known has taught me something

About love and beauty and becoming

How each trans person taught me

Something I didn’t even know

That I didn’t know.

How each trans person gave me language

To step into a new shape of myself

I love trans people

I love how I can look into the eyes

Of someone who is trans

And understand there is a different

kind of knowing

A different kind of belonging

A way of being seen and loved

That is beyond words.

I love trans people

And I will never be quiet about it.