I'm really new around here, but I wanted to share a short blessing that's become very dear to me. I reflect on it a lot when I think about trans people and the spiritual challenges that transition poses to those who struggle over the idea of changing how God made them:
In my childhood, my family bounced around a bit between Catholic and Anglican churches, and I, who was always very invested in the peace and happiness of animals, encountered different views on the place of animals in the reckoning of the Church. I distinctly remember an old priest trying to be very diplomatic about telling a class of eight-year-olds that though they might love their cats and dogs and guinea pigs, animals weren't quite good enough to go to Heaven when they died— that animals, even more imperfect than we flawed humans, weren't entirely welcome in the eyes of the God who had created them.
For a little animal-lover, that was an awful thing to hear at the time, but truth be told, I hadn't thought about it much in the intervening years until very recently. A few months ago, though, I was attending a St Francis' Day blessing of the animals at a nearby cathedral, and the bishop closed the service with the following prayer:
"Live without fear; your Creator loves you, made you holy, and has always protected you. Go now to follow the good road in peace, and may the blessing of God be with you always."
This is the blessing of St Clare of Assisi—among the first of St Francis' followers—and is commonly used in the blessing of the animals, to whom Francis is the patron saint. I'm not entirely sure what I believe any more in terms of God or Heaven, Church or prayerful intervention; but even just the first few words of this particular prayer are enough to bring tears to my eye:
"Live without fear; your Creator loves you."
It is love and blessing and protection over the animals who, according to that old priest over a decade ago, were not quite worthy enough of grace; and to me, it is love and blessing and protection for all of us just as we are. We are not flying in the face of an angry Creator who will cut us down for 'going against nature' or 'changing the way God made us'; rather, we are taking steps on that road of peace in the protection of a benevolent Creator who stands by us through the sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible process of change. We were all made for exactly what we're doing; and though some people may see us as unworthy of our or of their Creator, so too do some people see the animals as unworthy; and the animals are a blessed part of our universe in spite of all that doubt. So are we.
At least, that's how I like to think of it.
