The Edges of Us
Chapter Ten of Cosmic Heart, a spiritual memoir
Cosmic Heart is a spiritual memoir. You can learn more and read the previous chapters here. Thank you for subscribing and reading.
The Eastens’ house was immaculate. I’d never been anywhere so clean with everything in its place. The house was cool and silent except for the ticking of the clock on the kitchen wall. They were older than my parents, closer to my grandparents’ age, I thought. They had a teenage daughter who was in high school or college and a son who was an adult and married.
We knew the Eastens from the Methodist church, so it must have been the summer I was six or seven, when their granddaughter, my age, came to stay with them, and Mrs. Easten invited me to come over and play.
Amy was gregarious and friendly and creative. I liked her immediately.
After a quick tour of the house, including the location of the bathroom (it was at the end of the hallway), Amy and I were directed downstairs. The basement was mostly unfinished, but in one corner, there was an area rug, a sofa, a floor lamp, a television, and two TV trays. This was the area where Amy and I would come to spend most of our time together, watching reruns of the Carol Burnett Show, then acting out the skits. Amy was particularly good at playing Tim Conway’s old man character.
Mrs. Easten brought lunch down to us, which we ate from the TV trays, sandwiches with the crusts cut off, Jello pudding, and brightly colored aluminum cups filled with Tang orange drink. It was important, I understood, that Amy and I ate our lunch downstairs while her grandfather came home from work and had his lunch at the kitchen table. He needed his lunchtime to be quiet and child-free.
Once or twice, Amy and I pushed a doll stroller around her grandparents’ neighborhood and sat beneath a tree. We felt the freedom of being unsupervised, but it was a hot, humid day, and we soon returned to the cool air of the basement.
One afternoon, the Eastens’ daughter was at home and invited me and Amy to her bedroom. I’d been in teenage girls’ bedrooms before. My neighbor, who showed me how she was making a rug with folded chewing gum wrappers, and my cousin, who had an autograph book and a paperback biography of Flip Wilson on her dressing table. This bedroom was completely different from those.
It was painted pale blue, the bed made up with patchwork quilts and lace. On the walls hung framed images of Jesus: Jesus and his disciples. Jesus working miracles. Jesus speaking to a crowd. Over the bed, Jesus’ face. White skinned, light-haired, kind yet stern, blue-eyed Jesus…watching.
There were other religious items scattered around on the bedside table and the dresser. Youth group nametags, church bulletins, revival fans. Religious imagery was on display throughout the Eastens’ home, but this bedroom was like a museum of religious artifacts. I’d never seen anything like it. In my world, religious imagery stayed at church; there was none in my home. I sat on the bed and wondered what it would feel like to sleep and dream in such a room. Did the Eastens’ daughter feel she was constantly protected or constantly judged? Did she ever long for alone time? Time away from Jesus?
Even though we went to church together, I understood that the Eastens were practicing a different version of Christianity than the version my family was participating in. I understood that Christianity existed in a variety of iterations.
That early moment planted a seed of awareness within me that belief isn’t a single shape, even within the same tradition. I’ve carried that awareness, along with a curiosity about the many ways people relate to the divine, to spirit, and meaning, my whole life. As I’ve evolved and grown in my understanding, I’ve also bumped up against the limits of how far I can, or want to, stretch in the name of connection.
I’d been back, attending the Episcopal church in my neighborhood for about two years, when I was reminded how complex it can be to hold space for difference while also honoring what I believe to be true. I saw an ad online for a women's gym. They were running a special: come in and take a class or work out for free.
It wasn't too far from my house, and I wondered if it could be a good thing for me. I wanted to feel better in my body, and I was struggling with my weight. I knew from experience that I didn’t enjoy going to gyms, but this ad sparked my interest. I looked around on the website and noticed some religious language in the mission statement. It had long been my reflexive practice to avoid faith-based businesses. It seemed to me that business owners proclaiming Christianity was a red flag that signaled fundamentalism, in other words, not a good fit for me. But I was going to church now, fully and deeply engaged in the life of my church, where I had learned to navigate relationships with people unlike myself, so I thought maybe I had been close-minded. Maybe I'd been making unfair judgments about people. Maybe I should give this place a chance.
The gym was located in a shopping center. It was a small, bright space. I sat in the front window with the owner, Katie, and filled out my intake forms. She was kind and easy to talk to, and she assured me that although her mission was faith-based, this was not a Christian gym. To my surprise, most of the women working out on the equipment were Muslim, wearing a hijab.
As I sat there with the clipboard and paperwork, I asked myself, Would a trans woman be welcome here in this women-only gym? In my heart, of course, I knew the answer, but shamefully, I didn’t ask the question, and I pushed my instincts down. When I look back on this moment, I see the potential for the person I could have been. I could have politely declined membership and walked out, but I didn’t.
I started going to the gym, and as a person who loves ritual, I initially enjoyed the routine. I liked getting up early in the morning and filling my water bottle, and driving to the shopping center. I liked it especially when it was still a little foggy or misty out and there wasn't much traffic. I liked arriving at the gym, saying hello to the other women.
They played morning talk shows on a wall-mounted television, shows I never watched at home. I liked getting on the treadmill and watching silly conversations. I liked the Zumba classes, and I liked the racial diversity. It got under my skin when the yoga teacher sprinkled Bible verses between the asanas, but I told myself to work on being more accepting.
When I lamented that I hadn’t lost any weight despite my efforts, Katie suggested I work with a personal trainer. Against my better judgment, I agreed and started coming in to meet with Rachel and work through a customized program of exercises. The sessions began with Rachel taking my weight and measurements and then leading me through a series of lunges and weight lifting repetitions. While I was doing my reps, Rachel talked. She was chatty and fast-moving and strong, even though tiny in stature.
When she asked me what church I went to, and I told her, she said she'd never heard of the Episcopal Church, and she had a lot of questions.
“Where is this church?” she wanted to know.
"Did you grow up this way?”
She asked me about what I believed and why; I would have preferred to talk about anything else, or not to talk at all. I attempted to answer her as succinctly and with as much kindness as possible, while revealing as little as possible. As Rachel’s questions probed more and more deeply into my religious and political opinions, my internal alarm bells started to ring nonstop. This talk might have seemed congenial on the surface, but I could feel the rolling undercurrent of judgment.
I knew the owner of the gym was also displeased with this conversation. Rachel herself told me under her breath, “Katie doesn’t want me to talk about this.” All around us, Muslim women went about their workouts, listening to every word that came out of Rachel’s mouth, often hateful words disguised as love.
Katie stood behind the front counter, her brow furrowed in concern, but every day, Rachel persisted, engaging me in debates about school prayer and infant Baptism and anything else she sensed we disagreed about.
“Don’t you think the world would be a better place,” she said, “if every classroom had the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall?”
“No,” I answered.
She appeared genuinely surprised. “Why not?”
And I tried to explain, keeping my voice emotionless, as I pushed the stack of weights with my feet.
My training sessions began to feel increasingly like receiving a visit from a missionary, and this discord intensified as the upcoming presidential election dominated the news. Anti-Muslim rhetoric took center stage and appeared on the ticker tape of headlines running across the bottom of the television screen. Repeatedly, I told Rachel I did not want to talk about politics, but she seemingly couldn’t help herself.
The Muslim women, who were truly the heart of the place, started to stay home. “I don’t know why Hafsa hasn’t been in this week,” Rachel would say, “I wonder where Faiza is,” but Katie knew why they weren’t coming in. She talked to me about it, how she wanted the gym to be a safe space, how she didn’t want anyone to be offended or feel unwanted. I also know there was the issue of her bottom line. Without the support of the Muslim community, the gym would go out of business.
There were only one or two other women at the gym the day Rachel took my measurements and saw that once again, I had not lost weight. I told her that yes, I was eating in a calorie deficit.
“This has never happened before,” she said. “I’ve never seen this.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t all that surprised. I’d seen it plenty of times.
We walked over to the machines.
“I just wonder,” Rachel said. “Have you been doing something you shouldn’t be doing?”
What did she mean? Hiding in the closet, eating cake? I wouldn’t put it past me, but I hadn’t been.
“When you mess around with stuff you shouldn’t mess around in, you leave the door open to all sorts of things. Maybe you’ve let the devil in. Maybe this is Satan working against you…”
I felt a surge of anger in my veins. This suggestion erased my experience, stole my agency, and framed my stalled weight loss as a moral failure. Another person might have laughed it off or even considered her question, but I was not that person. I stopped her from saying anything more, and I could see on her face, she knew she’d crossed a line with me.
I did not want to be in conflict with Rachel. I liked her. I had hoped I could approach my relationship with her in good faith, with curiosity and compassion. I had hoped I could let go of the armor I’d worn for so long around my heart and show up in this space as my full self while making room for others to do the same.
My unexpected return to church had softened something in me and helped me become more open, more accepting. That growth gave me the courage to try to be a part of the gym, to believe in the possibility of connection. But in the moment Rachel suggested I was in league with the devil, my resolve slipped away.
While I felt deeply rooted in my beliefs, I was even more certain about what I didn’t believe. I confess that I respected the diversity of thought and spiritual experience that existed in the world, but not necessarily the thoughts themselves. I didn’t expect everyone to agree with me about anything, and I wanted to hold space for others’ beliefs, but I also understood that I had a responsibility to protect my energy, and I could only do that in spaces where there was mutual respect. This place was not a good fit for me; I was not a good fit for it.
I decided to leave, but when the election happened, the gym lost its Muslim members overnight and had to close, so I never had to have a difficult conversation with Katie or Rachel. The gym went away, like instant karma.
The day after the election, I was walking to church to go to my dream work class and ran into a friend who was on her way to Bible study. Our rector was also walking toward the church, and he stopped to wait for us when he saw us coming. He asked us how we were, and we shook our heads. We were dazed, in shock. Yes, he agreed. So was he.
“You don’t have to go in there,” he said. He knew just as we did that there were people in our respective classes who had voted for this. He knew how heated some of our pre-election conversations had become.
“Oh, I’m going in,” my friend said defiantly, meaning she would not stay quiet. The church belonged to her and to those of us who opposed the current political powers just as much as it belonged to anyone else.
He nodded, and three of us made our way toward the stone building where we would pray and hope and fight if need be; where we would try to live what we believed; where we would attempt to discern what it means to love one another.
Notes:
The election referenced in this chapter is the 2016 presidential election.
You can read previous chapters of Cosmic Heart here.