soul transformation
Like resistance to healing and hope, it is strange that some people of faith should be resistant to the very idea of human beings transitioning into new life. For the heart of all healthy religious and spiritual life is sharing in divine transformation. As leading spiritual writers like Richard Rohr remind us, only a spirituality of transformation can heal and save us. This is powerfully expressed in the Christian doctrines of resurrection and the body. For, Christian orthodoxy affirms, all of us are on a journey of transfiguration when we share in the grace of God. We are all in a state of becoming. So, in more than one sense, transitioning people are perhaps simply a singular sign of what applies to us all. Moreover the resurrected body, as St Paul attest, is a mystery beyond anything we can imagine at present. So whilst our human particularities are important here and now, in the bigger picture none of us should worry too much about male and female, being married or otherwise. What matters is how we live that out. As John O'Donohue, the late great Celtic Christian spiritual writer, was fond of saying, the body really lives inside the soul, rather than the other way around. Changing our bodies, as we do our minds, is thus part of growing more closely into the true soul-selves we are created and called to be, It is about incarnating, not escaping (except from unnecessary confinement). It is about becoming more fully a temple of the Holy Spirit not a battleground ruin.
see further, for example, my reflection on exploring the trans in transfiguration
Like resistance to healing and hope, it is strange that some people of faith should be resistant to the very idea of human beings transitioning into new life. For the heart of all healthy religious and spiritual life is sharing in divine transformation. As leading spiritual writers like Richard Rohr remind us, only a spirituality of transformation can heal and save us. This is powerfully expressed in the Christian doctrines of resurrection and the body. For, Christian orthodoxy affirms, all of us are on a journey of transfiguration when we share in the grace of God. We are all in a state of becoming. So, in more than one sense, transitioning people are perhaps simply a singular sign of what applies to us all. Moreover the resurrected body, as St Paul attest, is a mystery beyond anything we can imagine at present. So whilst our human particularities are important here and now, in the bigger picture none of us should worry too much about male and female, being married or otherwise. What matters is how we live that out. As John O'Donohue, the late great Celtic Christian spiritual writer, was fond of saying, the body really lives inside the soul, rather than the other way around. Changing our bodies, as we do our minds, is thus part of growing more closely into the true soul-selves we are created and called to be, It is about incarnating, not escaping (except from unnecessary confinement). It is about becoming more fully a temple of the Holy Spirit not a battleground ruin.
see further, for example, my reflection on exploring the trans in transfiguration