Author: Michael Tino

“Just as there is a spectrum of gender which can be experienced, so is there a spectrum of experience for transitioning. We stand with you today as you make the choices that are best for you. We trust you to be the best authority of what is right for you, understanding this includes the right to change your mind at anytime. We promise not to impose any timelines or expectations of outcomes upon your transition. We support you in living a life with integrity and honesty by offering you the space among us to explore what that means for you.”
-From Transgender Rite of Passage, by Del Mulhern

How can your community support you in living the life that is best for you?

“I always admired and loved my mother for her integrity, her many caring ways, her strong sense of duty as a public health nurse helping the poorest of the poor, her love of nature, her unbound generosity and sense of gratitude, and her love of the Mystery which she used to call Giver of All Gifts, and Beauty Always Ancient and Always New. Oh, how I do miss her. What I miss the most, however, is the tender look in her eyes and her sweet voice reciting to me her special litany of endearments.” -Rev. Lilia Cuervo

Who is someone with integrity whom you miss?

“Thirty pieces of silver. That’s all it took for Judas to betray the one who had washed his feet, whom he’d witnessed heal, feed and tend the neediest of people, and heard teach about loving enemies and forgiving seventy times seven. Thirty pieces of silver in exchange for Jesus. My grandfather used to say, ‘People will sell their soul for a quarter.’ Or their integrity for a kickback, bribe, or better position. Why do we so readily hand over what’s priceless for a meager sum of money—or a major sum, for that matter?” -from Lent in Plain Sight, by Jill Duffield

How have greed and capitalism tested your personal integrity?

“I am what I am
And what I am needs no excuses
I deal my own deck
Sometimes the aces sometimes the deuces
It’s one life and there’s no return and no deposit
One life so it’s time to open up your closet”
-from “I Am What I Am,” by Jerry Herman

What are the closets you’ve had to open in your life?

 

The flame in our chalice, “is our promise that in our smallness and our short time on this Earth, that we live intently and deeply, with love for one another, with honesty and integrity…..” -Shawn Trapp

What does the flame in our chalice signify to you?