One little goal setting meeting can lead to big changes.  We shall see.  At this time we know one thing is changing-how some of us see our mostly (but not all) white group.   I and others are looking in the mirror wondering if we have been blind to our white privilege and if there is more we can do to have meaningful multiracial participation in our Metanoia Peace Community.  It wasn't racial integration that I had proposed-but it seems right on to see diversity in all its' colors and stripes.       We at Metanoia get together each year to propose new goals for our community of Metanoians.  More recent years included making personal health goals and declaring steps each will take towards them, backing effort to grow more of our own organic veggies, and tending to our end of life decisions and paperwork.  Seems like we are always trying to get our own "house" in order.  This year I went into the goals' meeting thinking I was going to get "supporting and welcoming more gender diversity" onto the list.      I am not the newest kid on the block at Metanoia-but only being here these last 6 years I haven't seen the earlier days of various changes in group composition.  I am curious though and would love to hear more about it here on the blog.       Lesbian and gay members of the Metanoia community are not a new phenomenon,   Something has been driving me to see if we can be of more support to others including transgendered who need a place to call their church community, but feel walled off.  I think this is happening in my own professional practice as well-aiming to bring healthy relationship science to LGBTQ couples and couples in recovery.  Why me?  Why now?  I think it is the ole being part of the solution instead of the problem idea.  And more pointedly-that church and therapy has done and keeps on doing enough damage to anyone with a queer identity.  We haven't yet convinced our United Methodist denomination to stop with the heterosexism, but we sure can do so on a local church level and in our professional work.      A gay man told me back in 2000 when I worked at the UCLA CARE clinic (for AIDS clinical trials) briefly covering for an absence in their social service department-that making it clear-throwing the doors wide open for sexually diverse identities to be welcome in my private practice was necessary.  It wouldn't do to just be welcoming-I needed to plaster it on my materials as well.  Queer folks have been taking enough crud from others long enough to know they do NOT wish to waste time and heart with anyone who is going to continue shame and rejection.    Metanoia Peace Community is taking this on-not just sexual identity, but cultural and racial identity-as a new topic to explore.  If you would like to come and be part of the conversation (we need your voice) -come be my guest (Shannon sent ya) on Sunday evening at 415pm.  We meet in the living room, round the fireplace-at the Peace House (see "How To Find Us" link above, right) to sing, to check in on our lives, to pass the peace (hug or handshake), to lift up our concerns, to hear a message from John or special guests, to put in our 2 cents, to have communion where all are welcome, to make announcements about social justice and other special events, and then to the kitchen and dining room for dinner made by Metanoians to share with you!  Childcare for young children also available.  See you soon.