Everything In Between
Or, how my faith teaches me there are as many genders as there are stars in the sky
In the beginning, God created binaries. Light and Dark. Day and Night. Land and Sea.
But we know that God didn’t just create binaries. God also created everything in-between.
In the beginning, God created light and dark.
But we know that light is more than blinding brilliance, and dark is more than obfuscation.
No, God also created everything in-between: light both visible and imperceptible, shadows and fog, gauzy, soft, and luminous.
In the beginning, God created day and night.
But we know that day is more than high noon and night is more than the darkest hour.
No, God also created everything in-between. Sunrise: the dark paling sky, scattered light breaking in. Sunset: the quiet and hazy darkening, the final explosion of radiance, the vivid glow to quiet darkness descending.
In the beginning, God created land and sea.
But we know that land is more than vast, empty desert and sea is more than deepest ocean.
No, God also created everything in-between: wetlands, marshes, beaches, estuaries, swamps, ponds, mudflats, billabongs and lagoons, bogs and lakes.
In the beginning, according to my tradition, God created binaries. Which is to say, God also created everything in-between.
The ancestral poet who wrote that first chapter of Genesis trusted us, descendants of this tradition, to know that none of those binaries were literal. They trusted their inheritors to understand rhetorical shorthand.
So why do our theological imaginations short-circuit when we get to that final binary in this ancient creation story: “God created them male and female”?
God creates this final binary, as it says in my tradition, in God’s own image. Which is to say: in God’s boundary-shattering and binary-breaking image, God created trans and nonbinary folks.
Trans folks are kind of like the dazzling, dancing refractions of light you might find on the sequined dress of a drag queen, light and darkness dancing together in new and unexpected ways, unveiling something of God in the process.
Trans folks are kind of like the scattered light of the sunset, full of vivid shades of wavelengths that are always there but you cannot see in the day or night, unveiling something of God in the process.
Trans folks are kind of like beaches and marshes and estuaries, a balanced haven that refuses categorization yet somehow becomes home for all those it loves, unveiling something of God in the process.
A faith that refuses the divinity of trans and non-binary folks is a faith without sunrises and sunsets. It is a faith without beaches and marshes and estuaries. It is a faith without dawn and dusk. It is a faith without nuance, without joy, without wonder. And it’s not only boring; it’s unbiblical.
My tradition teaches that there are as many genders as there are stars in the sky. My sacred Scripture teaches there are as many genders as there are outrageously extravagant shades of the rising and setting sun. My God teaches there are as many genders as there are moments between low and high tide.
God created us for beauty, and we are queerly beautiful. They created us for love, and we are queerly beloved. They created us in the sacred imagine of the divine, queerly trans-gressing supposedly fixed boundaries.
Some of us get to be day. Some of us get to be night. And some of us get to be sunsets.
Thank God for that.
Thank you! Here’s to sunsets!