“Ministry on the Gender Margins” was originally published by Jeannine Gramick on Jun. 14, 2018 in Global Sisters Report. Sr. Luisa Derouen is a pioneer in the “T” of LGBT ministry. A few women religious are ministering among transgender people today, but Sister Luisa was the first to do so, as early as 1999, when most Catholics were just coming to […]
Christmas, Alone
By happenstance, I’m alone today and tomorrow, Christmas Eve and Day. Last time this happened was half my lifetime ago, when I was just 24 and enduring a rough patch. That holiday was spent in unwelcome solitude, in a Minnesota winter with its usual awful cold. But it was not, in the end, an awful […]
Interfaith Transgender Spiritual Retreat A Success!
Neither snow nor cold kept transgender adults of several faiths-Jewish, Catholic, Methodist, Nazarene, Evangelical-from gathering in a warm cabin with good food, rich conversation and deep reflection over this past weekend on our Transgender Spiritual Retreat. Our goals were to simple: to take time away from busy lives to reconnect with the God of our individual […]
Living in the Image of God: Transgender People in Spiritual Direction (Part 3)
Part 3 of 3 Author’s Note: This article is reprinted with my new edits, and with permission by Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, December, 2013, v. 19, n. 4, pages 52-59, by Laura Thor. “Coming out” to God happens before the womb, but the world is another matter “Coming out” as a transgender person […]
Living in the Image of God: Transgender People in Spiritual Direction (Part 2)
Part 2 of 3 Author’s Note: This article is reprinted with edits with permission by Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction, December, 2013, v. 19, n. 4, pages 52-59, by Laura Thor. “Made in God’s Image” and “Male and Female He Made Them” What spiritual foundation allows these two directees to trust their own unfolding? […]