This story makes me beam …
At the start of this New year, the Reverend Lawrence Richardson officially became the lead pastor at Linden Hills United Church of Christ in Minneapolis.
Nice, but he also became the first black transgender cleric in the state's history, and it was a long road for Richardson who struggled with poverty, homelessness and divorced parents battling addiction:
“In high school, I knew that I wasn't gay or straight, but I didn't have a word for it, [but] it was directly in opposition to the religious system that I inherited from my grandmother, so she was not as pleased with that identity. To be queer, to be black, to be trans, and to be homeless, there's not a lot of opportunities for people like that."
This year, after 26 years, the Reverend Eliot Howard stepped down, and after watching Richardson shine for the last five years, Howard decided Richardson was the man to lead the congregation.
You know, there are times when you feel the world is against you, that you have a hard road to walk, and then you hear these kinds of stories and, you just beam.
It does, and can, get better.
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