Some days we can glimpse why we were put on this earth.  Yesterday was one such moving moment for me, as I led a short rite for a soul friend preparing for gender affirmation surgery.  We made no extra special great fuss about this.  Nor should we have to, for such signs of grace for LGBTI+ people are really very natural, if our world would but allow itself to  know it.  Yet it was profoundly significant in the journeys we are making at this time.  For today's sea-change of understanding gender and sexuality not only brings healing and hope to specific individuals.  It also offers vital hope and healing to tired aspects of our society, not least to religious groups and their members.   In a profound sense it is thus sacramental: helping to reveal what has been hidden, opening up and helping to sustain fresh pathways of life and transformation.  Our short rite yesterday was like that.  It publicly honoured deep movements of life and spiritual wrestling which have not only been unacknowledged and unsupported, but often tragically dismissed and disastrously resisted.  It also proclaimed that new life for all of us is to be found in the tender solidarity of us all, in the mystery of God's extraordinary and abundant grace and diversity.    Our 'transgender' rite was just a small part of our usual Milton Anglicans Sunday parish eucharist.  As such however, it was no 'hole in the wall' secret ceremony,  but a truly grounded and open affirmation both of a remarkable sacred particular person and of our growing sense of what it means to re-create community and 'church' today.  It felt like a renewing movement of spirit for our community, certainly for my own sense of priesthood, and a re-presentation of what it means to be differently ordered bodies together in the body of Christ.  It also made us wonder why such things are not expected in the life of all spiritual communities...

Today's transgender visibility has not come out of the blue.  It is not a modern fad but achieved through profound struggle. For gender diverse people have of course been found throughout history, but, throughout so much of Western 'civilisation', we have been forced underground.  It is such a delight therefore to see the publication of a new book which tells the story of Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows. For it seeks to provide us with a comprehensive account of the landmark events which shaped the British transgender community  over the last five decades, told through a series of essays by leading transgender people who have lived through this tumultuous time.  It places our own struggles today in context, giving our individual lives a fuller, social, narrative.  Crucially, it provides us with stories which allows us to appreciate and honour the extraordinary lives and efforts of those who have gone before us, upon whose giants' shoulders we stand.  In doing so, it provides a more grounded encouragement and hope for the future...