Attending a service at a local Unitarian Universalist church recently, I heard a lecture by a transgender person who called themself (to use current terminology) a "nonbinary masculine leaning female."  Quite a mouthful.  Toward the beginning of their talk, they said that, "You are the judge of your gender identity."

    In a pluralistic society, this makes perfect sense: we're all expressions of our own individuations.  Outside the pluralistic West, however, people might have more trouble reconciling themselves to this.  Are there not certain standards for what constitutes gender identity?

     Maybe so.  But who sets them?  We tread on thin water when we insist that everyone should think in exactly the same way, about themselves or anyone else.  Though I do not claim to speak for God, I will say that God is a very big God and that we are very small human beings, highly rational as well as deeply emotional.  And we'll never juxtapose these precisely in ourselves or anyone else.

     Where do this leave us?  With a God whose ways are known, but a God whose ways are, equally speaking, unknown.  If we all are made in God's image, how can we bring these together to define who we are?

     It's always worth thinking about.