Thread by @beloved_june, So @emlott and I were on a pastoral staff together for a [...]

So @emlott and I were on a pastoral staff together for a couple of years. Something like 2010 to 2013 or so, I think. We had been seminary classmates before, from 2003 to 2007. Working with her was pretty wonderful, and the experience turned us into very good friends...

I did most of the preaching when we worked together, and she filled in every now and then.

She's a good preacher. She's thoughtful. She has a big heart. She cares about saying things with sincerity and beauty...

Our time as coworkers ended sometime in late 2013, when she moved away to become the Senior Pastor of an historic congregation in New Orleans. It was exciting & fitting & bittersweet.

I flew to visit her for her induction the week before I visited Canada for the first time...

So I guess the last time I saw her preach was in 2013. And then I didn't see her in the pulpit again until 2019, at the commencement ceremony of our now defunct seminary.

She was extraordinary....

She stood in the pulpit of 1st Baptist Richmond (I've been there a few times; it can be intimidating) and shared a timely, heartfelt, and stirring word with us all.

At some point, she used the word "transition," and shot me a knowing glance. She knew before almost anyone else...

I remember being so delighted listening to her. Not so much because she'd become a better preacher - although she had. It was because she was so obviously at home up in that pulpit. She embodied that space in ways I hadn't really noticed when she was a once-in-a-while preacher...

That's how preaching works. That's how a lot of things work. You don't so much increase your skill with time as you figure out how to embody the space and the practice as fully and as intuitively as you possibly can.

Nothing really does that except repetition...

If you're a preacher, something happens to you when you submit yourself to the rhythm of weekly sermon preparation for years at a time. When you agree to step into the pulpit every seventh day and say a word even when you don't feel like you have anything to say...

I have been thinking about that story this week, and that phenomenon. I talked about it with my therapist a couple days ago.

Understanding the process of embodiment as I do, as it relates to other practices, I figure there must be some connection to gender transition...

I'm marking second anniversaries at this point. Two years ago today, I was feeling OK about being myself out in the world, the way a novice preacher feels OK about delivering 8 sermons a year.

A couple of months ago, the story changed...

I don't know how long it'd going to take to feel like I've embodied myself, to feel like I'm just June. To get to the point where it doesn't feel strange to be called "ma'am" in person or on the phone. To feel comfortable in my skin...to have an ID with my actual name on it...

I don't know when to expect that shift to occur, but I have seen something like it happen before. And I know it's a joyous, wondrous, gorgeous thing to see.

...which is to say, I have no clue what I'm doing, what I'm going to do next, or where I'm headed.

Somebody asked me today "what would you tell your 10 year-old self?"

"You're going to transition," I said. "So try to come up with some ideas for what to do afterward. Please."

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