How We See Others Is How We Treat Them

      How we see others is how we are going to treat them. If we see them as objects, we're going to treat them as objects. If we see them as worthless, as property, or as a means to an end, then we will treat them accordingly. If we see them as a person guilty of a crime, then that is how we will act around them. If we see them as a condemned sinner then we will act accordingly. If we see them as an enemy, we will treat them as such. If we see them as a friend, we will treat them as a friend. If we see them as family, then we will treat them as family. If we see them as a creation of God, a genuine child of God, a vessel carrying the Spirit of Christ, a walking shrine housing the Living God, then we will respond to them in that way. We may not even be fully conscious of how we are seeing the other person, but this holds true regardless that we will treat them how we view them.

     How do you love someone as yourself? How do you treat them like you treat yourself? You see them as yourself. You put yourself in their shoes. You attempt to feel what they feel, and understand how they arrived at where they are at. You become them, and they you in that moment. If you see the other person as "other" then you will treat them as "other." If you see the other person as yourself, you will treat them like you treat yourself.

     How can I love the person I don't even like? See Jesus in them. Imagine, not this person that you don't like standing next to you, but Jesus Himself in every person around you. Imagine, that just as God is omnipresent, so He is also experiencing what you are experiencing through you, and He is experiencing what that other person is experiencing through them. And so when you are kind to this person you may or may not like, you are being kind to God. When you are hurting or being violent towards this other person, you are hurting or being violent towards God. Mother Teresa when asked why she helped the poor, the dying, and the outcasts in India replied, "Because I see Jesus' face when I look at them." In many ways, this is the simplest and most basic of Christian practices towards discipleship and learning to love God, our neighbor, our enemies, and one another. Jesus taught, "Just as you have done to the least of these My brothers, you have done it to Me." Understanding this in a more literal sense is a useful and profoundly effective exercise for the disciple of the Way.

     Doing away with the mentality of the "other" separating "I" from "you" and "us" from "Him" is the only real, practical way to fulfill the two great commandments to Love God with all of your heart, all of your soul, all of your strength, and all of your mind, and to love your neighbor as yourself.

Reflections On Phoenix, My Intersex Son

    I've only really written on this subject before in passing, but I don't think I've ever really written on it directly. The truth is my views on these matters have changed significantly over the years, especially as they have more recently struck much closer to home. Now, I have received permission to talk about this more publically in the hopes that it might help others as well.

     Intersex is a condition where a person is born, to varying degrees, with both male and female anatomy or characteristics. The type of intersex most people are probably familiar with is hermaphroditism, where the anatomy is more or less fully formed and functional for both, but there are other less well known forms such as testicular femininity, where a person's testes never descended and they have a vagina but no ovaries. Other forms are things like XX male where the person is chromosomally female but anatomically male. There's a range of possibilities for variance where the development of the genitalia and physical sex is concerned.

     I first learned about hermaphroditism when I was a kid. To be honest, I thought it was weird but kind of cool and even made the person just a bit special. I didn't really know the extent of what was possible until a documentary I watched about not only the condition of intersex and ambiguous genitalia, but also what used to be the response of the hospital delivering the baby once it was discovered, that is, that they would almost always automatically assign the baby as a girl and perform "gender corrective" surgery almost on the spot, often almost forcing parents to agree to it. My understanding is that this practice has become less prevalent as it was discovered that just performing a surgery and raising the child as a girl doesn't always result in them staying a girl by their choice. Many who now choose to be young men were "gender corrected" at birth and forced to be raised as girls because of their ambiguous genitalia. Besides the documentary and other media I've engaged with about this issue, we also went over it in my psychology coursework in college. Fortunately, this practice of forced assignment has become less and less over the years since those documentaries were filmed. In some ways, knowing this however has informed my understanding and beliefs about transgender people as well. How do you know this did not happen with someone who was raised one gender and believes themselves to be another? There are few if any real publicly available records about how many of these surgeries were done on children shortly after birth.

     I have three children, all of them grown adults now. My daughter Tressa, my son Aidan, and Phoenix, born Kalissa. A few years ago, after some pretty intense personality and identity issues which I once wrote about on Phoenix's behalf, Kalissa began identifying as male, absolutely convinced that "she" was actually a "he" and was born that way. Heidi and I had changed Kalissa's diapers when "she" was little, and while Heidi noticed something a little bit different, nothing really struck her as completely off. We raised Kalissa as a girl, and really most people who first met her and Tressa thought they were twins even though they were a year and a half apart. But after the intense identity crisis, even involving multiple "personalities," Kalissa's identity settled as male, not female, and he took the name "Phoenix" to reflect this.

     To be honest, this hasn't been the easiest of transitions for the rest of us, and in some ways I think we thought at first that it might just be a phase she was going through. But as the weeks turned into months, and the months into years, he struggled with it. On the one hand, he didn't want to upset us, but on the other hand his largely female appearance felt like a lie and sent him into many depressive states. He asked us to use the male pronouns with him, and to refer to him as male, and we have really tried to honor this request, but it was hard being asked to completely change how you refer to someone you've known for over two decades. The brain doesn't make that switch easily. And so we would slip up and he would correct, but it hurt him every time. And besides, as far as we knew, he was anatomically female. Then he told us he found his "boy parts." We didn't know what to think, and we weren't going to ask to see them. Again, at least a year went by like this.

      Finally, maybe to prove to himself he wasn't crazy, he took a picture of his genitalia and showed it to his mother. Heidi was shocked, and even describing it to me (I was spared the photo) became incredibly emotional as she described it. Phoenix had both kinds of anatomy. Neither appearing fully formed per se, but they were there, and as he describes it, his male genitalia is at least partly functional. His genitalia at this stage of his life can only be described as "ambiguous." Phoenix wasn't crazy, and we should have listened more deeply sooner. Phoenix is intersex, and as intersex has chosen to identify as male.

     The truth is, it was probably a blessing that this wasn't caught when he was born. Given who we were and how we thought in 2000, we might have opted for the surgery and done far more damage to him even as we would have thought we were helping. How did it happen? We actually have a theory that can only be verified through some intensive genetic testing. Phoenix has a second set of teeth under his adult teeth in addition to his double set of genitalia. He's also remarked that one hand doesn't quite match the other. We wonder if he wasn't originally conceived as two fertilized eggs and then one was absorbed into the other as a chimera. It's speculation, but it's something for us to look into.

      Why am I making this public? First, because Phoenix wants people to understand that he is not transgender as we first originally thought. As far as he is concerned, he was born male but with female attributes as well. He wishes to be seen as a straight male instead of a transgender male or a "queer" female. At this juncture, it's a reasonable request to honor given what we now know. It's not my place, or anyone else's place to tell him who or what he is. Second, because I want people to understand that Phoenix and other intersex people are not aberrations or "mistakes" that need to be corrected. This assumes that somehow God made a mistake when He made Phoenix or any other intersex person. I assume most people can understand the inherent flaw in that logic. There is male, there is female, and yes, there is that small portion of the human population that is somewhere in between, and they are not mistakes. They are a beautiful testament of God's design meant to teach us both compassion, and respect for the the maleness and femaleness in all of us.

      I imagine like many parents in my position, I still have trouble calling Phoenix my son and Tressa and Aidan's brother, but I'll get over it. If I love and respect him as who God made him to be, I will do so. Knowing what I know now, and from where I started, I will defend his choice to be who he is because it's the choice which God gave him regardless of what anyone else demands he be or not be. I believe that the love which is commanded and required of those who call themselves disciples of Jesus demands no less.

The Force Has Chosen You, But You Must Choose The Force

 "The Force has chosen you, but you must choose the Force." - Midnight Horizon, Daniel Jose Older

I've reflected on these words more than once since I read them a couple of years ago. Within Christianity, we often refer to God calling someone either to discipleship or to a specific role. In the Gospels, Jesus calls or invites several people to follow Him and be his disciples. Not everyone does. After the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6, many who had followed Him left when they didn't understand what He was saying and thought He had lost His mind. Jesus had called each one of them. Jesus had chosen each one of them, but each one of them had to choose Him as well.
     Discipleship is a two-way street. It's an agreement between master and disciple and requires the commitment of time, patience, energy, and practice of both parties. It isn't enough that the master has chosen you, you must commit yourself to his instruction.
     The Force has chosen you, but you must choose the Force. I once wrote a Ramble called "Yoda Pancakes." It focused on Yoda's duel with Count Dooku in Attack of the Clones, especially where Dooku attempts to bury Yoda with heavy stones and rocks ripped from the ceiling of the cave they're in. At that moment, Yoda had to choose the Force rather than his own devices. Otherwise, he would have been a little green smudge on the ground. A Yoda pancake.
     Similarly, Christ has chosen you, but you must choose Christ. Christ has called you, but you must choose to submit to the guidance, direction, and control of the Spirit of Christ instead of your own malfunctioning flesh. Every charism, every "spiritual gift" is dependent on you ceding control to the Spirit of Christ, and choosing not to act on your fear, anger, or bodily cravings. Every fruit of the Spirit is absolutely dependent on you choosing the Spirit of Christ, and not your own flesh's ravings.
     You cannot be a disciple of Jesus Christ without committing to being a disciple of Jesus Christ. You cannot be a disciple without choosing to live as He taught and walk as He walked. You cannot display the fruit of the Spirit of Christ, or use its gifts, without choosing to submit to and cooperate with the Spirit of Christ, because they are born from the Spirit and not your own devices, your own flesh, or your own emotions or passions.
      Christ has chosen you, but you must choose Christ.

A Ramble About Woowoo

      Not long ago, I was answering a friend's question about what I would say to the parents of a child who was dying of cancer. Having done volunteer spiritual care at UCI Irvine, I didn't have to imagine too hard what I would say. I don't remember being in that specific situation, but I was called to several potentially terminal situations and asked to comfort patients and their families. Among other things which I said in response to my friend I told her I would try to keep their spirits up, and I explained that the worst thing you could do in that situation was to make it more stressful. My friend's response was that keeping a positive attitude won't do anything to heal them in that situation, and that what I was suggesting was "woo" or "woowoo." My friend's response has been in the back of my mind ever since.

     According to Merriam-Webster's dictionary, "woowoo" means "dubiously or outlandishly mystical, supernatural, or unscientific." It's an interesting choice of words which my friend used. It's been documented and demonstrated that the more a person with an illness believes that they're going to get better, the more they "fight," the better their odds. It's a medical fact that when a person is stressed, their immune system is lowered as they go into fight or flight. The idea of trying to lower the stress level of the patient as a person sent to comfort them in order to bolster healing and improve their odds is based on hard science. And yet my friend believed I was telling them "woo."

     Over the last couple of years, I've been dong a lot of reading about the research done on subjects my friend would no doubt consider woowoo as well. Things like past lives, near death experiences, and most recently, UFOs. I would have considered them woowoo at one time too. But the research and writing which I've been reading was done by people with M.D.s and a few other letters after their names who used the scientific method over and over to observe and record their case studies, sometimes for years, and there are a lot of case studies with mountains of documentation and evidence. The one I've read most recently was written by the former head of the Pentagon's team researching and documenting UAP encounters with military service members. He only went public when the Pentagon itself stonewalled him. At first glance, I'd be skeptical too, except what can be corroborated from what he says is easily corroborated with a few Google searches, and the fact that three of the people he writes about went before Congress last year and testified as whistleblowers about the reality of UAP, and the Pentagon's long history with obfuscating, stigmatizing, and burying anything and everything about it. They did so because they, as pilots, had personal encounters with UAP, as had large numbers of their peers, and they saw these things as a threat which the Pentagon was totally ignoring and potentially risking the lives of our service men and women in the process. Congress acted on their nearly unimpeachable word.

      So, what's been rattling around in my mind is the question, "When does it stop being woo?" When is there enough evidence presented, gathered using scientific methods, to where a person would acknowledge or accept the reality being presented which may or may not contradict their own worldview? When is it enough to say "Yes, this may actually be happening, and I will have to shift my worldview." Maybe this point is different for each person, but I believe it to be a relevant question, not just to the topics I've mentioned, but for many other topics as well. From my own experience observing and listening to other people, many will go to great lengths to ignore or suppress whatever data or evidence exists that contradicts their worldview. A little gray alien with big black eyes could show up, ring the doorbell, and say "Hi!" and they still would not accept it as anything other than "woowoo."

     If experts in their fields who have spent years researching and observing these phenomena, or any phenomena, are telling you "yes, this is real," and you refuse to believe them, what would you believe? When the evidence for the "woowoo" starts slapping you in the face, will it then be enough? Having been slapped a few times myself, I've learned to keep a more than open mind the hard way. I've learned that it serves no one to deny what reality keeps leaving on our doorstep.