Love & Work

I have been listening to Alison Weir’s biography of Queen Elizabeth I.

Marriage.  It’s all about marriage.  Well, marriage and intrigues and figuring out who was lying about what.  For example, were “The Casket Letters” real?

Weir wanted to do a book about the private life of Elizabeth, but found that there was really no clear separation of her public and personal life, of politics and love.  Elizabeth wants to be romanced, and she wants to use romance to make political ends happen, and that has a cost for courtiers and country.

My sister showed up for dinner on Sunday and again last night.  You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the discussion was all about her work and the bounces she has been though, retelling old stories.  For her there is no separation of public and personal, of politics and love.  As a single woman she loves and love & work are inseparable.

We have to love.  Oprah loves her doggies with that twist of thought that wants to believe that loving them like babies will turn them into children, without all the messy challenge of real human personalities that reflect our own hidden places.

I watch all this and know how different my experience has been than women born female.   I was never one of the girls, thinking like the group, so the loss of that connection is trapped in fantasy.  And when I tried to lead with love, maternal feelings flowing into a whole life, it was met with suspicion and fear.  I could never make it work, for lack of venue and lack of force.

My mother once told me that my problem was that I am not good enough at compartmentalization.  T my knowledge, she’s never said that to my sister, even as my sister wants co-workers to be both staff and friends.

Trump has been about flogging his new book, in which he is clear that if you don’t love what you do, stop and do something that you do love.

I know what I love.  I have the pain and problem of having been born to be a cleric.  I remember when I was first told this, after taking an occupational aptitude test as a freshman in college, and thinking it must be wrong.  But looking at my life choices up until then and the choice since then, well, it’s clear.  I have the tools of the guru, painful as that is.

And I have been clear that my transgender expression is about work, that it is about work clothes and work role.  For me, the power is there, risen up and standing strong, and that is one reason I am willing to be buried under beard shag and Mao suit, because power may well connect us to our God, but it can easily separate us from people.

I am human and have human needs, even as I am touched by the divine and have vision.

Love and work.