04/26/2026
God is Transgender, and So Can You!
Lux Nissila
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Today, I'd like to tell you about the God I worship.
But in order to tell you who He is, i need to tell you where I found Him.
When I was at UC Berkeley, one of my favorite books we studied was Gloria Anzaldua's "Borderlands / La Frontera."
It's a poetic autobiography of Anzaldua herself, a chicana le***an who grew up on the border between Texas and Mexico, but it is also necessarily the story of the border itself.
What many see as simply a line on a map, Anzaldua describes as an open wound, where the third world chafes against the first world and bleeds.
This wound is created and sustained through horrific violence, and this violence is felt by all who come into contact with it.
But its mark is felt most intensely by those with the least power.
And yet, in a world defined by immense violence and seemingly absolute division, she also sees immense beauty in her culture, chicano culture, a culture that draws from those around it to create something entirely new and unique.
This culture is defined simultaneously by the trauma of the borderlands and the resilience of those who persist in spite of it.
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Like Anzaldua, I grew up on the border.
But unlike her, I'm a gr**go who never even actually crossed the border despite 25 years of living within sight of it.
For me, the borderlands were always all around me.
For Gloria and millions of other chicanos, the border and its violence cross their bodies as much as they cross the land.
What ended up making this book so impactful to me was the idea of the borderlands as more than just a place.
You see, the borderlands are not just the space around a line on a map.
They are the entire conceptual space where we, in our arrogance, attempt to draw a firm line between this and that, and instead, something new and unique is created in between.
Much like many people see the US/Mexico border as merely a line on the map separating two different countries, many people see gender as a binary of male and female with a hard line betwixt.
Many live their whole lives in the gender equivalent of (no offense) Salem, Oregon, where that line is far away and rarely worth our concern.
Life in the borderlands of gender, however, is very different.
That line is a present reality, and it is a site of unimaginable violence.
This violence is felt by anyone who comes near, but its burden falls most harshly on those who dare to cross it.
And this borderland is where I've made my home.
Every day, I look around at my transgender siblings, and I see the scars caused by a world determined to punish anyone who would transgress their simple notions of here versus there.
I see siblings waiting on the other side of the fence, living in purgatory as they wait for permission from some authority to cross.
I see those of us who have made it through subjected to discrimination and violence for our perceived un-belonging.
And I mourn those who risked everything to cross, but didn't survive the journey.
This misery is the story most allies focus on when discussing transgender lives.
And while all that pain deserves our attention so that we can do something to stop it, it is not the whole of our stories.
Among all this misery, I also see so, so much beauty.
I see it in the resiliency of a community that always persists, no matter what gets thrown at us.
I see it in the exuberant joy of events like pride where we come together to feel safe and whole as we remind ourselves that we are not alone.
And I see it in the unique culture we create as we move through the world in ways that are simultaneously brand new, and older than any authority that would try to deny us a place in the world.
And it is in the beauty of this borderland that I began to find God.
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One of my favorite places in the world is just north of where I grew up.
It's a place where heaven and earth meet, and it's also more than 200 feet below sea level.
There, over a century of agricultural runoff has flowed north across a desert basin to form the Salton Sea, a highly saline body of water polluted with everything from plain old trash to pesticides and raw sewage.
It was once the site of a lot of very hopeful commercial development in an attempt to create an inland beach resort near Palm Springs, but the pollution and the stench of dead fish left it nearly abandoned.
Now, it's basically a very large, but slowly shrinking, puddle, that smells like rot, and whose shore is littered with fish skeletons and the crumbling ruins of beach houses that sit on the cheapest waterfront property in the state of California.
But really, all that is a very surface-level assessment of Salton Sea.
There are still communities there. Bombay Beach and The Slabs are full of people who have shunned the comforts of "proper" civilization for a quiet life in the desert.
The Slabs have an entire public library that i used to drive out to with my Dad when he donated his old books.
There's lots of art projects out there, many of which are built from salvaged bits of abandoned homes.
Even here, at the end of the world, beauty exists for those willing to open their eyes to it.
And for me, personally, the voice of God has never been louder than when the wind carries it over the Salton Sea.
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You see, my God does not relax in comfort in all the beautiful temples and sanctuaries mankind has built for him.
He does not sit at the polished desks of powerful politicians, or stand in the decorated pulpits of the churches.
My God is the God of In-Betweens.
Genesis tells us that our entire world was created where God divided the waters from the waters.
In the parted waters of the Red Sea, his chosen people are freed from lives of tribulation and enslavement.
And in the breaking of His body, Jesus creates a new covenant with all who sit at His table.
Look to where our world is broken and divided, for there, you will find my God, creating something new, and saying that it is good.
Amen?
