PUBLIC SPEAKING – CURIOUS LISTENING

I am available to engage with groups in large or small settings, co-curating learning circles around a range of topics central to my studied interest and expertise as a gender theorist, theological thinker-activist, and all around seeker of ways that we—together—might change our world through relational engagement, community-building, and brave, bold, imagination.

COMMUNITY CONVERSATIONS – COURAGEOUS LEARNING

I offer a wide range of seminars/workshops on the following topics, as well as new topics that might emerge in collaborative imagination and discussion. Contact me to begin imagining together.

“Trans-Forming Proclamation” – Reading Scripture and World Across Trans-Queer Experience 
Drawing on trans-formed and informed experiences, que(e)rying a range of theological perspectives, scholarship, and disciplines, and embracing wisdom-seeking through multiple ways of knowing, I invite encounter with ways of reading scripture, and our world, that encourage wider, radically imaginative, and love-filled paths toward transforming how we think about Biblical texts (and perhaps God) that can enliven our shared humanality and relationality. These discussions are interactive, focused on co-creating shared learning communities, and are open to seekers of all identities, religious traditions, experiences, and cultures who, like me, keep searching for evidence, all around us, that the world is indeed built on hesed and we can all learn to be living expressions of kindheartedness, co-conspiring together to repair the world. 

“Reflections on the Big Things” – Considering Things That Matter 
In a somewhat experimental book I wrote a few years ago, Trans-Forming Proclamation: A Transgender Theology of Daring Existence, I proposed that each and every person (as well as all life, everywhere) matters because every human person is matter—the Divine-particle-consisting matter of creation, of the cosmos, of all that is, was, or ever will be. 
Reflecting on the big things in learning circle, I invite participants into an exploration of the questions this perspective invites: What does it mean to be a human being? What is sex, gender, and sexuality … and what do these embodiments have to do with being a person? What is identity … how are identities manipulated to marginalize, disenfranchise, and often oppress individuals and groups of peoples? How is religion manipulated to justify exclusion? What is justice? How might we begin to learn from others, particularly those who are difference from ourselves, ways to live compassionately together and, perhaps, learn to love one another in ways that celebrate and value our differences? Knowing we won’t answer these questions fully in one conversation, I am interested in naming and wrestling with erroneous and harmful mythologies we’ve been taught, exploring interesting science, and considering core scriptures to propose guiding perspectives on paths of collective, communal and collaborative imagining. 

Other Topics: 
“Love: A Radical Ethic” – a values-based consideration of love as a verb and an action-based ethical practice.

“Bringing Home the Exile” – exploring the principles of acceptance, affirmation, and accommodation as practical means for meaningful and measurable social and cultural change-making.

“Tikun Olam: What If the World to Come is Here?” – considering the tasks of repairing, or perfecting, the world; correcting misconceptions from Christendom, while considering Jewish teachings regarding justice, holiness, and ethics for applied practice in our own time and conditions.

“Why – and How – Should We Read ‘The Bible?'” – with other fearless seekers among us, I strive to make space for deep and curious conversations about how we have been conditioned and “trained” to read texts held as sacred, offer some historical basics of how the Abrahamic texts came to us, and offer models for liberating these texts and ourselves into other ways of reading, thinking about, and applying the literature of our ancestors. 

Choose Your Own: the sages observed long ago that we teach best what we most need to learn. I want very much to participate with others in creating communities of shared learning. As such, I welcome proposals for topics to engage in community together. If you have a topic or question you would like to co-create learning around, make a suggestion.  

To schedule an event with me, and for information regarding fees/honorariums, contact me using this form.