All God’s Children | November 16, 2025 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton

I got shoes, you got shoes,

All of God's children got shoes!

When I get to Heaven gonna put on my shoes;

I'm gonna walk all over God's Heaven,

Heaven, Heaven.

Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there,

Heaven, Heaven;

Gonna walk all over God's Heaven!

I got a robe, you got a robe,

All of God's children got a robe!

When I get to Heaven gonna put on my robe;

I'm gonna shout all over God's Heaven,

Heaven, Heaven.

Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there,

Heaven, Heaven;

Gonna shout all over God's Heaven!

I got wings, you got wings,

All of God's children got wings!

When I get to Heaven gonna put on my wings;

I'm gonna fly all over God's Heaven!

Heaven, Heaven.

Everybody talkin' 'bout Heaven ain't goin' there,

Heaven, Heaven;

Gonna fly all over God's Heaven!

The opening words from the African American spiritual were incidentally also the title to my doctoral dissertation. They reflect the truth that we are one…that we are all part of creation…not only all human but also all part of the Earth…the universe. This is a truth that we often speak, but do we actually believe it? Are we truly on the search…the search for common ground that Thurman spoke of? Thurman said…

There is a spirit in the human being and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste.

I want this to be true, don’t you? But I sometimes wonder when I look around. So many of us do work against the thing that destroys, so many of us are on the search, yet we still have a need for Transgender Remembrance Day…we still have a list of 354 deaths worldwide in the past year. Clearly, so many were not able to experience the spirit working against that that lays waste. Clearly, they were not able to experience the sense of common ground…the sense of belonging to each other that Thurman wrote about. They were not the beneficiaries of Thurman’s wisdom…that…

Always one must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; one must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that one may not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. One will know that for all people to be alike is the death of life in the human being, and yet perceive the harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance.

This harmony in which diversity finds its richness and significance is what each of us is on the scent of…if we are truthful and able to be our authentic selves. Thurman was indeed an amazing person of deep compassion for all life. He understood at a deep level the necessity of this search…for community and, at the same time for the sound of the genuine…

There is something in every one of you that waits, listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself and if you cannot hear it, you will never find whatever it is for which you are searching and if you hear it and then do not follow it, it was better that you had never been born…

It is this deep listening that Thurman called us to…so deep that it transcended all categories…all definitions. He continued:

You are the only you that has ever lived; your idiom is the only idiom of its kind in all of existence and if you cannot hear the sound of the genuine in you, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls…

Last year Dr. Blake wrote of this search…this listening for the genuine this way…

That is the huge challenge for each of us every day, to release the strings of others defining who we are, telling us what to do or not to do, stealing our souls to fit into compromised binaries that reject the creativity of our nonbinary creator.

This is indeed our daily challenge…to live into our authentic selves and to support others to do the same…our way of working against the thing that destroys. The creativity of our nonbinary creator! This is what we are holding in our hearts today…the creativity of our creator…the one in whom all of us live and breathe and have our being. Dr. Blake’s challenge, then, is for us to stand up for our diverse kinfolk…the ones we are remembering today. As we remember the transgender individuals who died as a result of violence against them, including their own suicide, we have an opportunity to face this challenge of releasing the strings of others defining who they are and who we are…and to highlight the destruction and cruelty perpetrated against individuals in this population. The following report that names 354 trans individuals who have died violent deaths during the last year was sent to me by our board chair, Mr. Bryan Caston.

https://tdor.translivesmatter.info/reports

The report affected Bryan deeply as it then affected me. I found myself sobbing after reading just a handful of stories…so many of them of suicides. Last year was the first year, according to Dr. Blake that we did not have a trans speaker for this occasion. He then found it important to include authentic voices from that community that he found on a website entitled, Enfleshed. In looking at that website, I found this description of a resource entitled Sacred Incantations. It is a collection of wisdom gleaned from the experience of the nonbinary, transgender population. Centered on the profound strengths of this tradition…its longings…its aliveness, we are challenged by the sound of the genuine contained in this resource.

Incantations are words spoken with hope for transformation.

When repeated they connect us with deeper

currents of power, possibility, lineage,

and futures yet becoming.

As policies and prejudices bear down,

incantations return us to the truths that center

our stories, our longings, our aliveness.

They are a source of comfort and challenge;

they delight and entice.

Sacred incantations, like:

We are not an error to be fixed.

We are hot on our own terms.

We do not have to earn the right to be respected.

Sharp and soft, we protect each other.

We, gender transgressors of the non-cis variety,

do not make our way alone.

We have a rich history of finding each other.

We come from those before us, and we are here for those yet to come.

sacred incantations is one small repository of the wisdom

we give and receive across generations, cultures, and contexts, adapting as we go.

We claim as sacred the rituals

of trans wisdom that enable our survival, and flourishing.

Together, we honor our grief,

revel in our beauty,

and grow our joy.

May we formulate our own incantations, filled with the sacred wisdom of our kinfolk, living, dead and those spirits yet to come. And may we each revel in the beauty of all creation, honor our grief and grow our joy.