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.
Read Karens full bio
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: