Songs for a Time of Transition

A few hours ago, I listened to Pastor Megan Rohrer sing "Till We Meet Again" with lyrics she created to support transgender people (go here to listen).  Not for the first time, I reflected upon what an amazing age we live in.  I wonder what historians will make of it, hundreds of years from now.

Will historians see this time period as one where we finally started to understand what makes a person transgendered?  Will they see our time period as a transitional time, a shift from a time of discrimination to one of understanding?  Or are we on a different path, one that I can't see from my limited viewpoint?

Will historians wonder why we tore ourselves into pieces over issues of gender (as expressed in body parts) and didn't pay attention to what was truly important?  If so, what would those important issues be?  Climate change?  The retreat of democracy?  Rising seas?  The need to restrict our work with altering genes?  The need to control artificial intelligence?  The increasing toll of gun violence?

I am happy to be part of a church that explores what it means to be truly open and welcoming, even as I realize that not all members of the larger Church are willing to take this journey.  But I also wonder what the larger Church is neglecting.  What other transitions should we be celebrating?  Who needs our support?

These days, I am thinking about the spirituality of midlife.  I am thinking about midlife (which I am defining as age 45-50+) as a time of profound transition, but often in ways that we don't see or understand.

I see a lot of work on midlife that celebrates this time as one where people finally feel free to be the self they've always wanted to be.  But I wonder if this work sets many of us up to feel like failures.

We can't always take the steps to be our true self, at least not right away.  Many of us at midlife still have children who need us to be the self they've depended on.  Many of us at midlife have made commitments (to other adults or to mortgages or to workplaces or to family members) which mean that we face some constraints.

Maybe the spirituality of midlife that encourages us to become our true selves is more about a mindset than a career change or another type of life change.  But a mindset change can send us down the path of a major life change.  What does our theology say about that?