today i celebrate my trans friends who bring beauty, authenticity, and resilience into life. i see you, i love you, i stand with you, and will continue to welcome your sacred embodiment.
i hear some are upset that this important day also falls on Easter. this is a coincidence, not a conspiracy, friends. Easter is always on a Sunday and is based on the Gregorian calendar and the date moves from year to year. Trans Day of Visibility was set as March 31st which changes day of the week from year to year. The date was set in 2010…so this isn’t a new thing or an attack on Christianity. the two days won’t always align.
that being said, it is more than possible to hold both things. i for one am happy and grateful the days have aligned. Jesus’ view of love and embodiment of love often challenged the people and the powers that be during his time. and yet, his love had the capacity to hold and include all. today each of us in many diverse ways are challenged to open our hearts as well, to all. practicing including and loving all people and life is a beautiful way of honoring Jesus and celebrating Easter.
so be challenged to include all into your love with gratitude! you and the world will benefit from it.
i think we tend to lose the forest for the trees when it comes to Easter, in my view.
we commodify and make things transactional. we seem to have a prevalence for making things transactional. but i think this says more about us, than it reveals anything about God. we seem to be the ones always needing sacrifice, blood, payment of some sort. oh that our hearts would awaken to Love!
Love isn’t transactional.
Love isn’t conditional.
Love is the foundation of all and where from all existence arises.
Love is the ultimate truth, that still is present and reveals itself in this relative space.
the larger message of Easter, the wider view, is that Love is the answer. Love is incarnational, Love is available as a path and as embodiment. Love will ask us to give everything, our very life, and then give it back renewed and more vast than we could have imagined.
the larger message of Easter, the wider view, is that Love carries the day, into night, and on into the dawn which always arrives. this is the pattern, imprinted in nature, and known in the deepest place of our heart consciousness where we are always in union. Love holds both life and death, yet transcends both as the ultimate truth and reality.
Jesus was willing to see this, to embody this. Jesus invited us to do the same. how? open our hearts and be generous. love our neighbor. welcome the stranger and outcast. heal the sick. tend to the imprisoned. feed the hungry. lift up the poor. turn the other cheek. forgive all.
what good news indeed. and the icing on the cake? we don’t have to wait until death to find out. we can live Love now.
Happy Easter to all who observe and celebrate! and may we all choose to live a life of embodied love.
on this Holy Saturday, the bridge between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, i want to share this video.
i invite and encourage Christians and non-Christians alike to contemplate and meditate on this, as i am doing as well.
it’s incumbent upon all of us in whatever variation of tradition or religion, who may appreciate and attempt to follow the teachings of Jesus, to push back against the movement of “Christian” Nationalism and theocracy, which are counter to Jesus’ teachings of a path of radical love and inclusivity, nonviolence and speaking truth to power, of healing, compassion and reconciliation.
Holy Saturday is an opportunity to reflect on the cost of such radical love and the call to align with all who are suffering (which Good Friday places directly in front of us in no uncertain terms), a love so profound and inclusive that it upsets the status quo and power structures that depend on separation (or dis-union), oppression, and violence that can be both obvious and subtle. it can be an opportunity to reflect on who we may exclude from our love, who we may see as separate and “other”, for whom we may allow for violence, aggression, and oppression, and a call to tear down such walls of ignorance and fear within our own hearts and minds, and society.
Holy Saturday is also a call to reflect on the hope of Easter Sunday, which reveals that love has the last word. that love doesn’t only transcend death, but holds both life and death within it, and the wisdom that in love new life is born, that the ultimate truth is one of union, not separation.
love is a path available for us to live and practice, a path of radical inclusivity, fierce compassion, non-harming, and of healing and restoration.
our job is to keep our heart open, our mind steady, and through our words and actions, plant seeds of lovingkindness, of compassion, of joy in the happiness of others, and equanimity for the benefit of a world that suffers.
we have no idea if, when, or where these seeds will bear fruit, but we plant them nonetheless.
theatre has been such a gift in my life. some of the best memories & friendships. wish i had more pics digitized from the 1990s when i was in my 20s doing theatre, but i think that was before digital cameras & those pics are packed away somewhere 😂
combining some pics of productions i’ve been in multiple times or shows back to back, but also trying to keep in chronological order. Instagram only allows 10 pics 😑
so much growing up through so many stages of my life.
long live the theatre & storytelling!! 🤗💛🙏🏼
pic 1
Lend Me a Tenor – Orange Glen High School 1992 (or ’93?)
Comedy of Errors – Palomar College 1999
pic 2
Berzerkergang – Sledgehammer Theatre 2003
[sic] – Sledgehammer Theatre 2003
NU – Sledgehammer Theatre 2003
pic 3
Deporting the Divas – Diversionary Theatre 2003
The Miser – La Jolla Playhouse 2005
pic 4
A Man of His Word – Playwright’s Project at The Old Globe 2006
pic 5
A Christmas Carol – Cygnet Theatre 2008
pic 6
Journey To The Lost Temple – Legoland California 2008-2012
Mail Order Monsters – Legoland California 2011-2015
pic 7 & 8
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) – w/ Palomar College 2000, 2006
w/ Luminary Arts 2012, 2016
pic 9
A Slip From Reality – Scripps Ranch Theatre 2017
pic 10
West Side Story – Moonlight Stage Productions 2007 & 2019
it was a call to nonaggression, non-harshness, to simply (though not so simple) shine our light of love and lead by example.
and while the spirit of this still resonates with me, and i still think aggression is destructive and embodying love in the long term is most beneficial, i’ve grown in my perspective around this.
sometimes love does embody as a bullhorn, because we need to wake up. we can’t see the light if our eyes are closed and we’re asleep.
a bullhorn can wake us up to the harm and suffering around us, to the work we need to do within ourselves and in the world.
so…now i’d say:
“Be a lighthouse, and when needed, be a bullhorn as well.”
The Metta Garden 