A Prayer For TDOV

A Prayer for Trans Day of Visibility

Transgender Day of Visibility (TDOV), every year, seems increasingly important to celebrate. We live in a world that increasingly sees and names trans-ness as a threat, something that should be hidden or denied. Here in the state of Missouri, and around the USA, there are countless bills that are going through the house and senate that aims to make the life of trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming folks more challenging. It can be easy to get caught up in the despair, heartache, and exhaustion.

So, I am grateful for a day like TDOV, that recenters me on the joy, celebration, and the beauty it is to both be trans and know and love other trans people. TDOV brings me back to the sacred truth that trans life is holy, radiant, creative, and oh so joyful.

On this Trans Day of Visibility, I want to honor and uplift the people in my life whose becoming made it possible for me to live more fully and authentically. I am held by trans elders who made ways out of no way, who dared to bloom in conditions that were never meant for their thriving; whose blooming made me realize that I was allowed to bloom too.

Today, I am especially holding onto the truth that joy and play are not a distraction from struggle, but that joy and play are key to resistance. Joy and play are survival. Joy and play are divine. I am reminded that trans delight is intentional.

My prayer for this Trans Day of Visibility is wrap every trans person, known and unknown, in a warm and loving embrace. I pray we find time to play, create, and dance. I pray we imagine new worlds and get glimpses of the world as it is meant to be. I pray for rest and nourishment to wash over our bodies. I pray for delight to find us, in small and in big ways. I pray for our own becoming(s) to feel more and more possibile as each day passes. I pray for all of us to be reminded the more wholly we our ourselves, the closer we are to God.

And I pray that we remember, deep in our bones, that we can trust our hearts. That we are grounded in the truth that there is nothing accidental about our existence. I pray we call can shout with confidence and love that trans-ness is sacred, holy, and beautiful. I pray for a day that everyone can see, know, affirm that truth.

With love to each of you,
Pastor Eli

Reverberations of Love in Community

I have to say, I am a sucker for the heart-shaped items that are prolific in the days leading up to Valentine's Day. This week, when visiting someone in the Heart Hospital, I delighted in the heart-shaped balloons that adorned the hallway while nurses sported hearts on their scrubs. While it's fun to think about St. Valentine and the revolutionary weddings he performed that led us to a weekend we celebrate romantic love, I was moved this way in celebration of the love of community. 

This week, at the Maplewood City Council Meeting, nearly 10 people spoke in support of an overnight prayer vigil that has taken place at Maplewood UMC during the coldest nights this winter. Maplewood, a city within St. Louis County, is a quirky municipality known for wholesome festivals, good restaurants, and a supportive community. So, it might stand out that there is a restriction that prevents an emergency shelter from being set up in the City of Maplewood. 

Maplewood UMC went into action. Knowing they couldn’t have a shelter, they set up an overnight prayer vigil for peace and justice to bring together anyone in the community who wanted to pray for their neighbors and pray for each other throughout the night. 

In the downstairs fellowship hall, adorned with twinkle lights and round tables, the room buzzed with sweet energy of communion when I came for my first shift at 4am. In our tradition, we celebrate communion as a sacred meal Jesus shared with his friends and disciples, a time to reflect, to mourn, to pray, and to prepare for the work of community away from the table. Communion does not need wine or bread, though. Communion is about sharing hope, delight, and space to be vulnerable. When I joined the table at 4am, I couldn’t tell who was a pastor and who a congregant; who a member of MUMC and who from the community. Surely some came to escape the physical cold, looking for warmth in the middle of the night. Others came to escape the chill of the heart reverberating in our news cycles, our fears, and our nightmares. At the table, we shared everything from very personal situations to national headlines. Prayer and communion were shared in the middle of the night, a time when most of us have to face our insecurities alone. Maplewood UMC made a way for us to share them on a night when vulnerability was felt even more acutely, when the thermometer read far below zero. 

Throughout the section for public comment, person after person (including our own Maplewood resident Deborah Sheperis) came forward offering loving support for such prayer vigils and told stories of love incarnate experienced in sharing a table, stories, and perhaps a nap in the middle of the night. 

As we celebrate the gift of love in our community, I am heartened by the city of Maplewood, whose residents and council members are finding a way to work within the system to support vulnerable people now while also trying to change the system for more substantive support later. 

How are you noticing the reverberations of love in your life? 

Blessings,
Pastor Lauren

For Such A Time As This

This past Tuesday, I traveled to Jefferson City to testify against the removal of the sunset on bills that could permanently ban gender-affirming medical care for trans youth in Missouri and permanently bar trans youth from participating in sports alongside their peers.

What happens in Missouri matters. Many states look to Missouri to see what is possible legislatively, so what gets passed here — and what does not — carries weight far beyond our borders.

As I’ve been reflecting on this week, I keep returning to our theme: By a Different Light. On Sunday, we will talk about day — about how daylight exposes what has been hidden, how it calls things out into the open. And that truth feels especially present right now.

There is a growing number of trans adults, parents of trans kids, and even medical professionals who are afraid to testify publicly against these bills. They are afraid of retaliation, professional consequences, harassment, and real harm. To speak in the light right now comes with real risk.

I am deeply grateful, and humbled, to serve in a role where I can speak not only as a faith leader, but as a trans faith leader, calling our representatives toward a deeper practice of justice, mercy, and compassion. To invite them into holy curiosity about the lives that are most impacted by these decisions. To ask them to truly listen to those who are being harmed.

On Wednesday morning, I also joined dozens of organizations from across the state at a rally in the Capitol rotunda. We linked arms and stood shoulder to shoulder, singing and chanting, reminding one another that we show up for one another. We show up for Black lives. For immigrant lives. For trans lives. For queer lives. For workers’ lives. Because together, our voices carry a deeply moving power.

That rally was deeply needed after the heartbreaking and exhausting hearing on Tuesday. Missourians have been fighting these anti-trans bills for years now, and at times it feels as though those in power have not heard a word, as though harm is dismissed in the pursuit of an agenda at any cost.

And yet, I remain honored to be one voice among many who continue to speak love into the hearing rooms. Love for trans youth who desperately need to know they are not alone. Love for parents doing everything they can to protect their children. Love for trans adults who are not only advocating for today’s youth, but also for the younger versions of themselves, the children who always knew who they were.

For such a time as this, my friends, it is urgent that we keep showing up. Each in the ways we can. Whether that looks like someone who knits blankets for trans folks who testify, wrapping them in warmth and protection. Whether it means traveling to Jefferson City, attending a rally, having hard conversations with loved ones, or choosing to hope even when hope feels fragile and distant and perhaps beyond our reach.

This work is not easy. But it is sacred. And it matters deeply. When we share our light and our love, when we refuse to turn away from one another, we participate in bending the moral arc of the universe toward justice, peace, freedom, and love for all. May we keep showing up. May we keep loving boldly. And may we continue to believe that what we do, as we link arm in arm, truly matters.

In Solidarity,
Pastor Eli

Blessing in a Time of Violence

Today, my bones ached when waking. Perhaps yours did too, seeing the date September 11 on your calendar; thinking about the violence and terror of that day; thinking about the violence and terror in the days, in the years after. For me that feeling only worsened reading more about the assassination of Charlie Kirk yesterday, learning more about yet another school shooting on the same afternoon. In our society that is saturated with violent speech, violent action, and where retaliation seems such a tightly held value, the air feels thick with worry, sorrow, and fear. 

As a community of faith, we are people who uphold the values of inclusion, community, spiritual transformation, and justice. We believe that all people should be able to flourish, and not at the expense of others. This week we are reminded of the urgency of these values. This week when the Supreme Court gave legal authority to use racial profiling during immigration sweeps and raids. This week that is marked by political, social, and school violence. So, let us stand firm in our values that are centered on love, not hate. As Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., he himself also a victim of political assassination, said, “Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.” Even though Charlie Kirk’s words have been used against the LGBTQ community, even though his words incited violence, it is only compassion, it is only love that will ultimately win; the killing of Kirk is wrong. Children having access to weapons is wrong. Racial profiling is wrong.

This week, we are starting a new series: Our Core Calling: A Series on Our Core Values. This series seems timely as we will be invited to consider what it means to live into the heart of who we are and what we believe at MCCGSL. This series will allow us to dive deeper into what it means to be a community rooted in radical inclusion, nourished in queer community, transformed by God’s liberating love, and to be a people embodied in justice. In this season of worship (and always) we will celebrate a faith and a God where everyone belongs at the table, where love resists exclusion, where lives are renewed by Love’s deep and warming presence, and where worship overflows into action both within and beyond our church walls. 

Friends, wherever you are in your sorrow, your rage, your questions, know you are held in community and you are not alone. In these violent times, let us not turn toward violence ourselves, but increase our capacity for compassion, kindness, and love. Perhaps the sign at a neighboring church sums our charge up best: “Do small things with great love.” 

Blessing in a Time of Violence
by Jan Richardson

Which is to say
this blessing
is always.
Which is to say
there is no place
this blessing
does not long
to cry out
in lament,
to weep its words
in sorrow,
to scream its lines
in sacred rage.

Which is to say
there is no day
this blessing ceases
to whisper
into the ear
of the dying,
the despairing,
the terrified.
Which is to say
there is no moment
this blessing refuses
to sing itself
into the heart
of the hated
and the hateful,
the victim
and the victimizer,
with every last
ounce of hope
it has.

Which is to say
there is none
that can stop it,
none that can
halt its course,
none that will
still its cadence,
none that will
delay its rising,
none that can keep it
from springing forth
from the mouths of us
who hope,
from the hands of us
who act,
from the hearts of us
who love,
from the feet of us
who will not cease
our stubborn, aching
marching, marching

until this blessing
has spoken
its final word,
until this blessing
has breathed
its benediction
In every place,
in every tongue:

Peace.
Peace.
Peace.

May our hearts burn with love, 
Pastors Lauren & Eli 

Meditation During Eastertide

Every Thursday we have a ritual of receiving the eBlast. Perhaps, you open it in the morning and peruse it over coffee. Or perhaps, you take a peek later in the day for inspiration and to be reminded of upcoming events. I request that within your ritual eBlast engagement you slow down a wee bit more to meditate on the following Eastertide statements. If you are willing, I challenge you to set a timer for 59 seconds of meditation for each statement.

Statement 1

On Sunday, Pastor Lauren shared, “In the middle of our grief, we need to be reminded of what we know.”[1] Grief ebbs and flows. Hope lives through our cyclical or unexpected or resistant grief. In whatever state of grief you currently occupy, what do you still hope for? Invite God to that space.

Statement 2

Pastor Lauren opened her sermon with the poignant reminder that “You are beautiful. You are the people that God chose to live in, that Jesus is resurrected through.”[2] Hm, Jesus resurrecting through me, you, us. How do you feel Jesus resurrecting through you? Invite God to that space.

Statement 3

Pastor Lauren stated that “Jesus inspires us to love even in the gloomiest circumstances."[3] But what she didn’t say is that love compromises our existence or requires us to ignore or forego our and others’ very real needs. Love tends to all of our very real needs. Where do you need love to show up for you? For a loved one? For a stranger? Invite God to that space.

Statement 4

For our last meditation, we turn to Pastor Lauren’s urging to “Look in the direction of hope." We are the beauty that Jesus resurrects through. What an awe-some connection to wonder and beauty. Even if for a moment, we can venture to the mountaintop of hope to imagine life’s beauty that could be if only we “believe.” I invite you with God to venture to your hopeful mountaintop; pause to witness the beauty you can imagine; and pray “For What You Find on the Mountaintop” by Cole Arthur Riley.

God above,

We thank you for allowing us to journey up. That we would be able to see a place not just from within it but from a distance is a gift we do not readily comprehend. Here, as we look out at what seems as if it can fit in the palm of our hand, remind us of beauty’s vastness. In this moment may we be both large and small…Grow in us wonder that is willing to bow to the beauty of the natural world, [which includes our healthy imagination], that it would be a path to humility and not ego. That we would understand it does not exist for us, but it is our divine fortune that we would be moved by it. And we are moved, God. May this view form us and keep us, as we allow our souls to remain stirred when we return to the ground we’ve known. May it be so.[4]

[1] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship,” livestream, Grief & Hope (St. Louis, Mo: Metropolitan Community Church Greater St. Louis, April 20, 2025), http://www.mccgsl.org/live.

[2] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship.”

[3] “Everything [in] Between: Sunday Morning Worship.”

[4] Cole Arthur Riley, “For What You Find on the Mountaintop,” in Black Liturgies: Prayers, Poems, and Meditations for Staying Human (New York: Convergent Books, 2024), 35.