When Sacred Words Get Passed Hand to Hand

Every now and then, I encounter a book so wonderful, by a beloved colleague so brilliant, I have to tell you about it.

Sometimes, that results in an interview, such as I did with Jenn Shattuck about her tremendous book The Tending Years. Sometimes, that looks like inviting the author to talk about their book as a guest here at Hold My Chalice - in this case a book not yet finished but with incredible promise.

I’ve invited Sean Neil-Barron, a queer UU minister in Fort Collins, CO, and whose piece on community organizing I featured here in September, to share about something he’s been quietly building—a collection of blessings by and for the queer and trans community.

I’ve been offering Glitter Blessings at Pride for years now. Biodegradable glitter, a few words about belonging, people crying in parking lots. Standard queer minister stuff.

But here’s what kept happening: after I’d anoint someone and tell them they’re made of stardust, that they belong here, they’d ask—”Do you have this written down somewhere?”

And I didn’t. None of us did.

Because here’s the thing about sacred language for queer and trans people—Our sacred texts got burned. Our blessings got erased. What survived got passed hand to hand, whispered in club bathrooms, scribbled on cocktail napkins, taught by drag mothers to their children at 2 AM. We’ve been building our theology in the margins, in the spaces between what they said was holy.

Which means most of our most sacred language never got written down at all. Let alone speaking into a new age.

Not for the trans kid taking testosterone for the first time who needs ritual around their medicine. Not for the person coming out at 47 wondering what took them so long. Not for the breaking points when legislative violence makes breathing feel revolutionary.

So I started collecting. Reached out to queer and trans writers, ministers, poets, witches. Asked them: “What blessing do you wish existed?”

What came back was stunning. Silen Wellington wrote about bodies as holy places of change. Rev. Lane-Mairead Campbell crafted blessings for new gender transitions. Sam Ames reminded us we live past hope, because that’s what our ancestors taught us.

We built something together. Sixty plus pages of blessings organized by the moments that call for them—morning grounding, breaking points, celebrations, quiet tenderness, the fight ahead, the future we’re building.

We launched a Kickstarter campaign a few weeks ago to allow us to pay to make it into a real book. Making it tangible. Saying these words deserve pages, binding, shelf space. That our sacred language deserves to be treated as sacred.

Good news: we funded the Kickstarter. The book is happening. Now we’re trying to figure out how many copies to bring into the world. Every backing, every share, every person who tells us “yes, we need this” helps us know how big to dream.

I’m so proud of what we have put together and it’s hard to wait to share it with all of you.

So I’m not going to, which maybe isn’t a good idea, because it could hurt the campaign, but I actually believe that people don’t just want to freeload on community. They want to invest in it, so it can thrive. And if you find value in this, you will want to support it.

So here it is. Right now. A free draft copy of what we are working with right now. No purchase required. No sign up. (Please forgive the formatting, this is still a draft!)

And if when you read it, you want a physical copy for your friend, or bedside table, or church library. Or if you want to support the work that we are doing. The Kickstarter campaign is ongoing for the next week and we’d love your support.

Get A Copy of GlitterBlessed on Kickstarter

I am so excited by this project, not just because I too am queer, but because it’s filling a need that we just don’t have liturgies for yet. In a class I’m taking on liturgical responses to trauma, many of my classmates have uttered the sentiment “I am longing for rituals that people desperately need but which don’t exist yet” and yes, we’re writing them. Sean’s collection will fill another huge gap and provide more of what we so desperately need - rituals that remind us of our personhood, our strengths, and our spirits.

Thank you, Sean.