Dear Ones-

Yesterday at our worship service, as we celebrated Trans Day of Remembrance, we commemorated the trans members of our communities whose lives were violently taken this past year. Little could we have known that more innocent lives of our LGBTQ+ community were being senselessly taken at a nightclub in Colorado Springs that very day.

In response to this horrific event, Rev. Ashley Horan, Side With Love Organizing Strategy Director, offered this soulful message…

To our beloved trans and queer family,

If your heart is broken, we weep with you.
May you sense how fiercely you are held in love.
If your fists are frozen in rage, we scream our fury alongside you.
May you be warmed by the white-hot heat of our righteous solidarity.
If your stomach drops with terror, we tremble with you.
May you feel the strength of the safety we wrap around one another.
If your bones are weary, we sink down next to you.
May deep rest be the companion of your grief.

And, beloveds, remember:

All of us–
the high femmes, the faeries, the twinks, the gender transgressors, the panromantics, the dykes, the bears, the studs, the butches, the homos, the androgynes, the aces, the demibois, the zaddies, the graysexuals, the baby queers – all the delicious, unexpected, gorgeously beloved incarnations of us –
we are made from stardust and and leather and honey and Love.

Even on the todays,
the mornings when mourning our dead and fearing for our lives
is the metallic aftertaste on our tongues:

We still dance because the surging electric life force
that loved us into being and that pulses through our veins
is too powerful to stay inert and unmoving.
How could we be still?

We still sing because the defiant hymns
of our ancestors reverberate
in the tiniest interstices between our cells.
How can we keep from singing?

We still congregate
because like root systems and constellations and watersheds,
the molecules of our being only make sense when we are intertwined
and inseparable and powerfully free in our interdependence.
How could we do other than to claim and choose each other, every day?

We dance our resistance.
We sing our belovedness.
We gather each other up
and we do not let go.

As is our vow, today and all days:
we will mourn the dead and fight like hell for the living.

And all the while, we will repeat this truth
‘Til it is lodged in our bones and
And undisputed anywhere:
We were meant for life, for abundance, for freedom.
We were made for joy.