Can one keep their faith during transition?
FAITH IN ACTION
Marriage has been the topic of conversation in GLBT circles of late. Presidential candidates have recognized the importance of sincerely engaging our community’s issues. Some candidates support marriage equality without elaboration or parsing of words. Those who do not tend to want to shy away from the issue and respond to questions with questions, for example: “Why are we talking so much about marriage anyway?”
I call that obfuscation, a specious rhetorical strategy that is neither a valid question nor answer.
We talk about it for good reason. Marriage is important because it is a socially contracted marker of a significant shift in one’s life. Rituals like marriage function as necessary shorthand for the chapters in our lives. Without graduations, weddings, funerals, baby showers, house warming parties, and farewell dinners, we would feel constantly in transition.
Without communal confirmation of having shifted from here to there, we might remain in a restless state of revision and examination. Something I will return to later, however, is that perhaps the communal confirmation is more important than finding a place of rest.
Faith can have its own rituals; sacraments like baptism, confirmation, first communion, or bar and bat mitzvahs, and others including marriage, depending on the religion. Many of these experiences in a faith system occur in a specific chronology, keeping people of the same age on the same path. These shifts are experienced communally because mutual social recognition gives weight to ceremony. Tradition makes ceremony into ritual.
In discussing sacraments within the GLBT community, I am particularly interested in the experience of ritual among transgender people. I have observed some deep experiences of transition on several spectra, including gender identity, sexual orientation, and physical changes. For many, playing along a spectrum without seeking closure or static placement is a joy. For others, it is frustrating to never achieve closure along the way for lack of some ceremony or language to acknowledge these stages within their community.
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