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Andy Farley, our Jones lecturer for this Midwinters. Yesterday, Doctor Farley helped us expand our canon of Christian spirituality. By attending to the beautiful variety of women who have contributed their lives, their texts and

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practices to our tradition who have bequeathed to us ways of knowing and acting that keep us deeply rooted in divine eros despite the powers that fray and violate and erase. Doctor Farley brought to this space and place

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European mystics sojourner truth other African American witnesses as well as trans and non-Christian practitioners you expanded our canon of God desiring contemplative practitioners to them and to you we say greetings and thanks. Friends, if you happen

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to have an email exchange with Doctor Farley, I'm not encouraging that, just mentioning that I have, you will see that her signature line includes a quote by Doctor Edward Farley, distinguished scholar, prolific writer

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on constructive systematic theology, visionary for theological education who taught at Vanderbilt Divinity School for nearly 3 decades before his death. 10 years ago, 2014, just that anniversary memory eternal. These words in Wendy's signature

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line written by her father Edward Farley are these. The world is so varied and beautiful. Seek wisdom wherever it is to be found. For those words from him through you we give greetings and thanks.

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Doctor Wendy Farley, speak to us now of trans trans beyond constructive monolithic powers that would name trans only to bind and condemn. Speak to us now of the varied and beautiful wisdom that you find and name

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transitive delight. Thank you. It's a, a delight and honor to be here and see you and be vaguely aware of all of you, uh, online in various ways, um. I'm very humbled

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by the good work you all do, by the good hearts, the good communities, and hardly feel like I can untie the laces of your sandals, but, uh, here I am. Um I

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wrote a paper for you because I'm a theologian and that's what I do, or one of the things I do. And this morning I thought, I don't want to give that paper. Um, I'm

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going to read a a piece of it. But I'm gonna do something that in my experience Presbyterians really hate and um and I partly apologize for it because uh it may make some of you uncomfortable and I

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partly don't apologize for it because. In the work we're doing, we not only recover names and art and music maybe that we weren't familiar with, but we have to learn other ways of knowing. And

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listening to a theology lecture, however, brilliant and fascinating, is uh, a limited way of knowing . So I'm going to read a little bit of my paper and then I'm gonna lead us in a

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guided meditation. Um, And in both of these , I. I'm not as tall as many people . But like uh Madeline, I'm tall on the inside. Um. I think of these as ways

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of guarding the heart. To learn to love. Beyond the limits of our knowing or experience and also to find practices that nourish us. So these are ways in this time and place which we are all

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finding excruciatingly difficult to guard our hearts. So my paper picks up after a really brilliant and um. Inspiring discussion of trans theology. And I want to talk for just a moment about trans, trans people

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as icons of the divine. And I want to remind us that we are in a tradition. Where , um, an unwed teenage refugee is the mother of God. And Divinity, the beloved is born

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at the very outskirts of all all society, not , not just pushed out of human dwelling altogether. In the home of a beast shed, that is where we look. That is where our scripture teaches

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us to look for where God is. When I think of trans as icons of the divine and reminding us of this pearl of great prize, where do we look for the divine? We can look for

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it in nature we can look for it in the good all around us and we look in it, look for the beloved in those that are not experienced as beloved. I want to uh note that trans

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is not a, a fixed identity, like this is what trans people are like. Uh, the variations of trans identity are as various as the individual lives. The daughter of an early 20th century Scottish

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laird transitions to male identity, inherits his land and title in the midst of his staunchly Calvinistic community that seems unfazed by his changes. An impoverished 18th century English girl reappears as a medical student and passes as

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a doctor in Her Majesty's Navy for decades. A jazz pianist married several times is discovered to be female upon his death. I don't know how to pronounce crow, but Beobatiish, woman chief, is a

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warrior and a leader of the crow who maintained 4 wives. We learn of any number of female husbands in the 18th and 19th century who were accepted into their communities as workers and even church elders. We

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encounter Iranian trans activists Maryam Khatoon Malkara and the trans heroines of Stonewall. When one begins to wander around the stories of trans folks in many periods and cultures , it is a special joy to discover how many

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people carved out long and mostly happy lives within communities that cared for them. For perhaps obvious reasons, many trans-Americans flee religion as fast as they can. And returning to trans black feminist Marquis Bay, who

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evokes a non-religious spirituality of survival in a context laced with death. Noting that by one analysis, a black trans woman's life expectancy is a little more than 35 years. She they insist on a life that

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not only staves off death but imbues life with a kind of joy, a kind of pervasive, refusitive exuberance, a kind of fugitive hope. I want you to hang on to those words here now in

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our regime of death and hatred. Remember, imbue life with joy, a kind of pervasive, refusitive exuberance, a kind of fugitive hope. Riffing on Jake Cameron Carter, this refusal is, as she

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describes it, far from trapped in social death is a mystical and stateless condition that does not and cannot die. For others, their trans identity draws them more deeply into their religion. Layah, an immigrant

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from an unnamed Muslim country, she remains anonymous in her riding for obvious reasons, notes that Allah has 99 names. That expand language and moves beyond what language can express. Alkhair, the one with most

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perfect power who does not make mistakes. Al Shahid , the all observing witness, all hack, the embodiment of truth. And gender is nowhere within these concepts that define the divine. God is neither man

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nor woman nor masculine nor feminine nor not masculine nor not feminine. This God who teaches us that we can be both and neither and all and beyond and capable of multiplicities and expansiveness, nonbinary gender queer,

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they, this god. That is the God, my God, my Allah. Who created the world and created language and created the first person, Adam , this person. Who is man and woman and

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neither and both and not a mistake and never a mistake. Like me, she says, I'm sorry . Joy laden, a Jewish transwoman and scholar, notes that being trans makes one a stranger even to

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those who love you. And yet can bring God closer. God never mistook me for the body others saw. God knew who I truly was and understood how alone I felt because God like me has no

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body to make God visible, no face human beings can see. Other Iron Age deities were identified with specific domains such as thunder, fertility, or war . The God portrayed in the Torah rejects all these

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forms of identity. God is invisible and formless, and God appears in so many different ways that it is impossible to. Identify God with any of them . Because God constantly evades our categories and concepts and

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acts in strange and incomprehensible ways, God will always remain a beloved stranger in our midst. Each of us is made in the image of a god who does not fit human categories or roles. All of

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us like God dwell among and love those who cannot fully know or understand us. We all have a soul of the stranger, but is this very strangeness , this inability to identify with a fixed name or

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concept. That brings us together from this perspective, the commandment to know the soul of a stranger is more than a summon to social justice. It is part of the spiritual discipline required for a community to

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make a place for God who dwells invisibly and incomprehensibly among us. To show us that God belongs with us and that we belong to God and we must build our lives and communities around knowing the soul of

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a stranger. Perhaps it is jarring that Laden and Lamya H find a particularly powerful witness to God in their transexperiences. But is it stranger for these lovers of God to find in their own experience than that

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the Iron Age Israelites found God in their experiences of warriors and kings, or that slaves sang of God as a rock in the weary land or Martin Luther extolled God as a mighty fortress? Many names and

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images draw the ineffable divine mystery closer to us, and the divine image is revealed to us in countlessly diverse faces and forms. How wonderful it is to recognize in our beloved trans friends oh. Or our

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trans selves a particular kind of witness to the divine goodness and beauty. They allow us to adore in a new way this divinity whoever evades capture in words but bodies forth in endlessly wild, dangerous, intoxicating

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multiplicity. I read this morning new legislation about trans folks, and it, it cuts me to my heart. Thinking, and I had no idea because I'd never ever cry. I've cried all the tears

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I was ever going to cry long ago. Yet here I am standing in front of you weeping like a baby. I apologize. So I'm going to lead us in a guided meditation now. This is

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a different way to know. It's a compassion meditation . So I'm going to lead you in a compassion meditation, and I'm also going to lead you in a watching the mind meditation. I want you to

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begin. By just focusing on your breath, spirit rides breath. Let the breath. Begin at the soles of your feet. That the spirit rise from the souls of your 3 to your through your whole

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body to the crown of your head as you inhale . And as you exhale. That the spirit ride your breath through your whole body. To the soles of your feet. Take several breaths this way.

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And allow the spirit. To enliven and awaken you . To pacify your agitations. To release your anxieties . Let your mind drop into your heart. Your heart is the organ of spiritual awareness. That your

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cognitive discursive mind relax. And that the intellect. Of your heart. Awaken. And in this heart space. I want you to visualize a light. Like a star Like a flame. And in this

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cave-like heart space, see this light glowing in you . See this light which is always present in you . This light that was born in eternity and will never fade. Be aware that this light is an

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image of the love of God for you. Let that light fill your body. Let it move on your blood. In your nervous system. That move into the crannies of your brain that say you are

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not lovable. Let this light fill your whole body . Put aside your doubts and let. Your heart know how precious and adored and beloved you are, not in the future, but right now, this

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very second. Dwell for a moment. In this belovedness. Yeah. And from this place of belovedness , this place where you are holy, holy. This place of so much joy and delight in your

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existence. Imagine loving someone. That you care for a friend, a, a dear one. And imagine that love, that preciousness moving in them. Notice what it feels like. To share this love

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, this preciousness with someone you love. That you and your beloved are Beloved and precious. Visualize for a moment a trans person. Yourself or another person , a trans person held in this precious. Delight

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Adored Created. Precious Undefied Undefiable. Precious and sweet to the beloved. Notice what it feels like. When in your heart. You feel and recognize and share this sense of preciousness with a trans person.

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Notice if you feel any resistance to any of this . If something in your heart resists knowing yourself as precious or knowing a trans person as precious. Honor that resistance. You are precious, even in your

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resistance. Visualize now an architect. Of transphobia in your church. In our political world, visualize. This person causing so much harm and pain. Visualize this person as precious. As beloved Notice what it

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feels like. To imagine such a person. Like you, like your beloveds, like trans and queer folk, is also beloved. And precious To the beloved Notice your resistance to this. Notice that this

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resistance. Is the seed of the logic of domination . The construction of others. As unworthy of the divine love. Not human. Is the seed of domination. And as much as we despise the logic

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of domination. We recognize it is present in us as well. Notice The compassion and tenderness with which our divine beloved holds us. In our resistance. Holds us. In our inability. To love others

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. To recognize them as bearing sacred worth. Not the tender mercy and kindness and sweetness of the divine love for us in our limitations. Our errors, our imperfections. And return for a moment to your

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heart space and allow yourself. For a few more breaths. To feel viscerally. And without interruption, how precious you are, how tenderly you are held by the divine beloved. Julian of Norwich was pierced

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by a vision so astounding it took her 20 years to accept it. She heard that even in the midst of Black Death, 100 Years' War, the rise of the Inquisition, the cruel repression of the

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peasant's rebellion, the grief of keening mothers, that there was no wrath, only a mysterious love that would make all things well. And we all, everyone will see it. If only you saw this

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, she says. Your suffering would not be so terrible. This unbearable love will simultaneously break. And heal your heart. And so we make love and bake biscuits and grade our papers and write our sermons

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and we make 100 mistakes. We mend the tiny corner of the world given to us. But hearing from the textured stories of a non-binary, non-binary Muslim , an executed medieval theologian, a resilient trans scholar

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. We may learn something about the limitless bounty of divine love. We may learn something of the fugitive joy Marquis Bay celebrates in the teeth of annihilation. In this patchwork quilt of countless lives we glimpse the

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delight of the beloved in their handiwork. And then we find we are contributing to this astonishing work of art. I'm in. I'm early. Just like Jesus. Uh, friends and siblings, uh,

00:27:45.490 - 00:27:56.950

Doctor Farley, thank you immensely both for your theology and for your tears this morning. We appreciate and infinitely need both. Thank you immensely. Um. Uh, of course time is uh available for Q&A

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, so by all means, uh, you can pull out your smart devices and submit those questions at this time. We got one from Janice, uh , who asks, now that we have an executive

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order to regard only two genders as legitimate in the nation, how do we respond to those who say God created only these gender distinctions? How do we respond to those that want to push us back into

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a binary thinking in terms of gender? We, we respond to them the way by esteemed. Colleague Reggie described responding to racism. And I will say more. We respond by doing what we can to

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resist regimes of hatred. For all of you that will be different. You may do it in your congregation, you may do it because you're a political activist, you may do it in your family,

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you may do it by writing poetry. You may do it as a hospice chaplain. I don't know , but you will do what you know to do in the context in which you live. In which

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you will do what you can. To resist any regime that would make someone less than anyone else. And you will remember that people who do cruel and horrific things that you especially have to guard your heart

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at those moments against the temptation to hatred. Hatred is a toxin. And it will not help you . Thank you. There's another question, why do you think mainline traditions don't encourage regular contemplative services?

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I Have thought about that a lot. I have 2 reasons, and I'm sure there are many others . One is. The Christian tradition decided long ago that it wants to organize itself around uh the authority

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of the clergy. An authoritative body tells you what to believe and do. Clerics in charge, I won't say all clerics, you guys are clerics, um. Have in our tradition been suspicious of contemplatives

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because contemplatives do things they don't control, and they have access to a divine love that is not mediated to them through the merit box of the church. And so our contemplative tradition is an underground tradition,

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unlike other religious traditions. Who really celebrate that and integrate it into their understanding of reality. Spirituality, religion, our contemplative tradition is an outlaw tradition, quite literally. That's one reason. 2 In the

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modern period when the Reformation happened, We moved into an era, an epistemology. That eviscerated. The human being from itself. And described humans. As discursive reasoning. Humans, of course, we know

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what that means. Humans are defined as rational. Men Who And this and reason is narrowed down even more to be the discursive reasoning that can be governed by science. Religion took over that anthropology. The

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reform tradition took over that anthropology. Religion is believing words. With our mind And acting in the world with our bodies. There's no room in that anthropology for parts of ourselves. That aren't governed by the

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logic of the scientific epistemology. The intellect of the heart is not governed. By scientific reasoning. Even our reform traditions. Or reformation traditions with the exception of things like the Quakers, the Moravians. have

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bought into that epistemology and are very suspicious of things that are not logocentric. Those are my two reasons . Yes ma'am, um, if we can stay on the contemplative practices for a moment there we've been

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inundated with questions around this, so I wanna see if I can combine them for a second. Uh , let's see, so, um, let me read them out loud and combine them for you.

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So how can we better cultivate a contemplative heart presence and step out of our heads more often? Can you speak to how we can start some contemplative practices in our church and what are the Christian traditions that

00:33:19.640 - 00:33:29.620

you would recommend to lean into in order to cultivate a contemplative heart? So. Uh, how can we practice this more individually? Are there specific Christian traditions that can help us in that journey and any

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recommendations that you can give where we can start to practice contemplative practices in our churches? You know, contemplative, uh, practice and community is like. I uh, I'm not myself, uh, I

00:33:40.730 - 00:33:53.260

don't indulge in uh illegal drugs, but um. And so if I decided I wanted to go smoke some pot I'm not sure I would know how to go about it like I would have to find someone

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in that community but uh once I had done so I would go wow there's a whole bunch of folks who do this so um. So. So contemplative practices like that, um, centering prayer is a

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very simple incredibly simple method for Christian meditation. um , there's places on the YouTube where you can learn centering prayer there's. Thousands of centering prayer communities online probably right here in lovely Austin, Texas, uh

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, you can be part of any of those communities . You can agree with your uh congregation. Let's have a centering prayer group. We'll meet once a week for 20 minutes. Uh, You can go

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online and you can um. Listen to any of thousands of talks. You can listen to James Finley , one of my favorites, or Cynthia Borgeau. Um, you can start chanting, chanting the Psalms

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is the most ancient of the Christian contemplative practices. Um, you can find one other person and you say, let's read some of this stuff together, and we'll just sit in silence for 5 minutes after

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we've read this together. Thank you, immensely. Uh, we've got a couple more questions. Uh , Mark asks, the trans person as an icon of the divine is a powerful image. Could you

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speak a little more about the icons of the divine and the mystical tradition? Well, the Presbyterians are famously iconoclastic. And actually one of the largest cultural destructions in human history was when the uh Puritans annihilated

00:36:07.490 - 00:36:28.260

all images or something that might even seem like it might be a little imagistic in the Catholic churches of England. Icon means something that. Is something real , but through it shines the divine light. So

00:36:28.420 - 00:36:45.360

, uh, in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, um , Icons are meditation devices. They're not paintings. Their meditation, their prayer devices where you meditate with this icon and meditating on the icon takes you through

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the image into the. Abyss of divine reality that has no image. So, um. That's how iconography works in other traditions. I say other Christian traditions. Um, Trans as an icon, what

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I'm saying is, I'm saying Matthew 25. I'm saying. This is a this is the face of the divine. And this, you know, I've always loved that passage. And I've thought I don't

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experience the world that way. I don't I don't look At, uh, an emaciated AIDS person and say, oh, I think that's Jesus. And I started to train myself to do that. So

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I started to train myself, everybody I look at , I'm gonna say you're Jesus, I can see Jesus in you. I don't mean I'm good at it, that's why they call it practice. Um

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, but it's a way to practice. Ah, I recognize you. I know who you are. Paul says, put on the mind of Christ. That's what the mind of Christ is. Put on

00:38:04.580 - 00:38:19.510

the mind of Christ. Look through your eyes. Let Jesus look through your eyes. Oh, I see who you are. You're the beloved. Thank you. Another question, um, While we are

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inviting voices that have been left out of our canon , what do we do with the violent patriarchal warrior scriptures that is our underpinning? The violent scriptures and violent patriarchal warrior scriptures that is our underpinning in the

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West in the United States in particular. There's different ways you can do that and depending on who you are, you will find a path. One is to say, I don't believe that, that's garbage

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. Um. We have effectively done that with all of the passages in the Hebrew Bible and Christian's pictures which say slavery is a good idea. Uh, we just say that's not true in fact it's evil

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. Or we could go the ancient Christian ways that Augustine says when you find something offensive in Scripture. Just think, oh, I'm reading this in the wrong level. This is actually a metaphor for the

00:39:17.210 - 00:39:37.700

warfare in my heart. Until everything was science in one dimensional and discursive, scripture was a book of encounter with the divine. Just like our, we have a soul, a spirit. The spirit of

00:39:37.700 - 00:39:54.080

scripture is the encounter with God. And so you . You don't think of it literally, you think . What is the poetry here? What is the poetry here doing? When Origin read Leviticus, which

00:39:54.080 - 00:40:07.880

is not Levi, numbers, which is mostly, and then God got mad at them and smote 20,000 men and their wives and their children and all of their livestock. And I was kind of amazed that

00:40:07.880 - 00:40:22.060

there was any left at the end of of numbers to move on, but, um, origin says , oh. He's talking about the levels of the soul and how you move from camp to camp and

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and destroy the obstacles to your love of God at each level. Doctor Farley, thank you so very