Karen is a priest and a nayaswami. She is also an intersex person. In this video, she shares her personal struggles in this often-misunderstood identity and how she focuses on her spirituality to remain centered and grounded while living and dealing with ignorance and constant fear.
In this inspiring installment of Take Heart Now, Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels offers a heartfelt blend of music, wisdom, and spiritual reflection. Opening with “The Dance,” a song he co-wrote that speaks to the sacred rhythm of life and human connection, Rabbi Neil sets a tone of hope and healing. He then draws from the book Everything is God, weaving powerful quotes into his message about presence, compassion, and the divine that lives within each moment.
With his signature warmth and insight, Rabbi Neil invites us to lean into the sacred and remember that even in difficulty, we are never alone.
Last week, I stood in the pulpit of Wesley Chapel in London—the very sanctuary built by John Wesley, founder of Methodism. The chapel grounds include his longtime home and gravesite, a place of deep spiritual and historical significance.
As someone ordained in the United Methodist Church in the 1980s, this moment was more than a visit. It was a homecoming. A tender reminder of the roots of a faith that calls us to justice, compassion, and relentless hope.
What moved me most wasn’t just the history, but the echo of Wesley’s final words, spoken shortly after writing to a pastor fighting to end slavery:
“The best of all, God is with us.”
In these times, when peaceful protests are misrepresented for political ends, when ICE targets communities like the one I grew up in, when fear is used as a weapon, we must reclaim this truth:
God is with us.
And because God is with us, we are called to see the sacred in one another and to work for peace and justice for all people, regardless of race, language, or origin.
This Saturday, June 14, parades and peaceful gatherings across the country call us toward that shared sacredness. These are the movements we support—because they affirm the divine in each of us.
John Wesley never stopped working for freedom. Neither can we.
“The best of all, God is with us.”
#PeaceProtestsParades #TheBestOfAll #GodIsWithUs #FaithAndJustice #WesleyChapel #UnitedMethodist #SacredActivism #GuibordCenter
The Rev. Leon Sampson is a priest in the Missionary Diocese of the Episcopal Church in Navajoland, and currently serves as a Vicar in the Arizona and New Mexico region of the Navajo Nation reservation.
Raised with the teachings of understanding the Episcopal Anglican tradition, as well as the songs, prayers, and theology of the Navajo culture, Leon feels blessed to have both traditions of meditations to practice while discerning his call to serve in the Holy Order of priesthood. Today, he feels that these prayers and meditations are the core healing practices that will allow our Navajo people to return to wholeness.
Speaker: Take Heart Now Series
Karen MacQueen is an Episcopal Priest (retired) and Nayaswami Karuna of the Nayaswami Order founded by Swami Kriananda.
Karen was born and raised in the Niagara region of Southern Ontario, Canada. She was born with an intersex condition meaning that, in her case, she had no male sex organs and her female genitalia was imperfect. Even though she had no male secondary sexual characteristics and experienced herself as female, her mother made the decision to raise her as male. This experience of being forced against her will to live as a male until her early adulthood has given her a painful commonality of experience and deep empathy with those in the trans world.
Imagine the terror of looking and feeling like a pretty little girl while being forced to undress with a group of boys and to use their showers and toilets along with them!
No group has been more targeted and terrorized throughout the world than transgender people and those who fall outside of the gender binary and yet, we know very little about who our “trans” brothers and sisters are and what their lives are like.
Karen MacQueen as a priest, a Nayaswami and a profoundly compassionate person can help us begin to learn about this misunderstood and scapegoated community by sharing her personal struggle in centering and retaining her spirituality as an intersex person.
Karen received a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy and a Master’s Degree in Religious Studies from Canisius University in Buffalo, New York. She did Anglican Studies at Bloy House, Claremont School of Theology. In addition, she completed a postgraduate diploma in Nonviolence Studies at the University of Waterloo, Canada and a certificate in Vedic Counseling from the Ayurvedic Healing Institute.
She was ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles in June, 2005. To her knowledge, Karen was the first openly intersex female to be ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. Subsequently, she served as the associate rector at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Pomona, California for ten years and as a hospice chaplain for Vitas Hospice.
Karen is also a registered nurse and served in that capacity for thirty years with Kaiser Permanente hospitals.
Her life was changed by reading two books, “Vedanta for the Western World,” and “Autobiography of a Yogi.” Nayaswami Karuna, as she then became known as, was deeply drawn to Paramhansa Yogananda as her spiritual teacher. She has studied and practiced in the Kriya Yoga lineage with Ananda Sangha. The founder of Ananda, Swami Kriyananda, a direct disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, gave her the spiritual name of “Karuna”. Subsequently, she took Nayaswami vows in the Nayaswami Order, founded by Swami Kriyananda.
Currently, Nayaswami Karuna practices and teaches in a form that brings together mystical Christianity and Raja Yoga and offers group and individual spiritual direction to persons exploring the deeper dimensions of their faith or their spiritual lives. Her counselling is based in the experience of the divine, and in how that experience liberates us and helps us to flourish as full human beings while coping effectively in a world that regularly goes “off the rails.”
Karen MacQueen is a recipient of the Mahatma Gandhi Award from the Hindu American Foundation for excellence in inter-religious leadership. She was a life-long, deeply valued colleague and friend of the late Rev. Dr. Gwynne Guibord. Together they created and presided at the Hindu Rite Christian Mass at St. John’s Cathedral with the blessing of Bishop J. Jon Bruno.
Karen MacQueen is a key presenter in The Guibord Center’s Program entitled: “Dual Belonging” which examines the rich insights both Christianity and Hinduism offer to one another. View Highlights here: