Category Archives: Church

Waiting for the Other Shoe to Drop

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

I’m sorry it’s taking a bit for Sarah and me to get back in the writing saddle. I’ve been working on some major projects that demand a lot of my attention. I’m not exceptionally good at writing for public consumption, but I try.

I feel an overwhelming sense of relief that Sarah’s health has stabilized considerably after this summer’s surgeries, and I’ve been trying to reclaim space for my own self-care. In some ways, this season feels like a strategic initiative to get my life back. When I started feeling the strain of increasing caregiving demands, it was easy for me to put my professional projects and personal health on the back burner. Over the past three weeks, I’ve connected with some old friends from high school online trying to develop some healthy eating and exercise habits. Because of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I experienced friendship and community in high school.

In some ways, my experience isn’t that unique. I was an awkward nerd who was always willing to help out in the science lab and would help other students with their math. But also I was terrified of being known by other people. I struggled to feel like I fit anywhere. I always felt like I was trying to fit into an existing set of expectations. Years ago when I took the Myers-Briggs inventory with fellow summer camp staff, I felt obligated to answer the questions such that I appeared to be well-suited to working at summer camp. Questions like “Do you like being at the center of attention in a party?” felt loaded where the only right answer was “Yes.” It didn’t matter where I was. I knew that other people had an opinion about who I should be, and I did my best to check all of the right boxes. This approach worked out okay when I was playing my part, but it actively got in the way of building friendships. After all, I was constantly swapping out masks. I didn’t know how to be myself.

I started to fear friendships. I thought that revealing anything about my true self would spell certain death. My throat would tighten before any big reveal. I constantly wondered, “How much longer will this friend put up with me? Is this going to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back?” I met my best friend in high school working at camp together. We’ve been friends for nearly 20 years. We have had hundreds of conversations where I was honestly prepared to hear, “I think it would be best if you didn’t contact me again.” About 5 years ago, I clued into the fact that my friend was always going to be my friend. But it took 15 years of consistently good outcomes when I took the risk of opening up about my life to come to a place of being able to trust her. Incidentally, once I finally crossed the threshold of being able to trust my friend in my heart, it became so much easier to risk friendships with other people.

Friendships are the stuff that intimacy is made of. You can’t have intimacy if it’s not safe to share yourself vulnerably. Letting yourself be known as you are right now is a risky endeavor. I never quite expected middle school students to be able to get it right. After all, everyone in middle school is actively trying to figure themselves out. However, the Church ought to be the place that models friendship, intimacy, risk, care, community, and relationships. After all, the Church exists because Christ Himself has come to dwell in our midst. He took on our flesh, He lived a human life, and He subjected Himself willingly to every limitation associated with being human. Christ’s willingness to identify Himself with our humanity makes Christianity possible.

But, instead, I find myself wondering how many people attend churches where they’re constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t take much as a Christian who is somewhere along the LGBTQ spectrum to feel like you’re inches away from being excluded. I’ve spent the better part of 3 years almost afraid to breathe in the Orthodox Church lest the expansion of my chest cause me to go outside of the boundaries of what is permissible. The lumps rise in my throat, and I have no idea who I can actually talk to about what’s going on for me. Counsel of “You shouldn’t let it get to you” only gets one so far. Incidentally, it also suggests that my anxieties are exclusively my problem.

This summer, I kept vigil beside Sarah’s ICU bed for 13 days. I was working two jobs to try to keep everything together financially. We’re still getting notices from our insurance company as they process the claims. I don’t know the exact tally right now, but Sarah told me that it’s summed up to over a million dollars of medical care. It’s still climbing. The only reason why I can breathe at all is that I know we have fantastic health insurance… simply because my now-former employer was generous with extending benefits to domestic partners of employees. If I remember the dates rightly, I had picked Sarah up from the hospital on July 31. I went to pick up our dog from boarding on August 1. I successfully fought to be able to resume my PhD dissertation on August 21. I took the risk of releasing air from my lungs and began to dream again about what God would call Sarah and me to do together given an exceptionally positive surgical outcome.

And, then on August 27 or 28, I honestly don’t remember which, I read the words “the Orthodox Church cannot and will not condone or bless ‘same-sex unions’ of any degree.” That last phrase if huge: of any degree. And no matter how much others have tried to tell me that the statement in question is not talking about people in my situation, I can’t believe that. The other shoe finally dropped, and I couldn’t see a way to continue communing in good conscience. The conscience is a tricky thing. It belongs to us, and only we know what will give us comfort.

As I read those words, my head started reeling back to every single conversation I’ve ever had with an Orthodox Christian about trying to find my way in the church as an LGBTQ person. I felt the crashing feeling that I’ve been trying to sort so many of these questions alone. A person’s spiritual father can be a great resource, but I didn’t start following Jesus because I wanted only one friend to walk alongside of me as I did so. The services of the church are great, but I believe that prayer lives in the hearts of people who commit their lives to following Christ. I have never doubted the need for patient discernment during different and challenging circumstances. But the engineer in me says, “Let’s join forces and come up with a solution.” And really, I started following Jesus in large part because I believe that if we’re going to have any hope of stemming widespread injustice in our world, we’re going to need to carry the light of Christ courageously into every darkness.

The only thing I could see bringing comfort and consolation was a community of people who could affirm God’s love for me, see Christ’s work in my life, and step up to the plate to try to clear a pathway forward. I realized that I personally had a way of seeing the tradition through Christ-centered glasses, and maybe that approach to Orthodoxy wasn’t nearly as common as I had thought, believed, and hoped it could be. I love the Orthodox Church, but I reached a point of questioning if I could really thrive in a place where I felt the only way forward involved silently imploring priests and bishops to simply overlook my way of life. I need to be able to breathe without fear while risking connections in community. I’m a person who finds community by actively trying to do things together; it doesn’t make sense to try to go to war with my own temperament.

The simple truth of the matter is that I want, and I need, the joy that comes by pursuing Jesus in the company of friends. I want, and I need, to devote myself wholly to living out my vocation to see if God will allow bits of His kingdom to be manifest on earth. I want, and I need, to know that God says, “I know you, and I have formed you. There is no need for you to wear a mask when you are around me.” I want, and I need, to be a part of the Body of Christ that hears the cries of people suffering injustices and responds. I had so desperately wanted to see the Orthodox Church living out the fullness of evangelical zeal. I think there are some Orthodox parishes that manage to do this well, but I also think that it’s extremely unlikely that Orthodox bishops will consider it a priority to advocate for justice on issues that disproportionally affect LGBTQ people. It’s also not simply about me and issues that impact my life directly. It’s easier to have hope when those around you are trying to be a force for good. It’s easier to have faith when communities stir up each other on towards love and good works. And I believe that it’s often easier to love when you’re not first concerned with verifying that those gathered with you first pass an ideological purity test.

I took a lot of time discerning how to enter the Orthodox Church. I certainly know what would need to transpire to separate myself absolutely from the broader communion, and I do know how to walk back through the door should I decide that’s necessary. But I want, and I need, to be in a place where I’m not afraid to be known by Christ and the people gathered in community. I want, and I need, to be somewhere that I don’t feel like I’m absolutely on the edge of falling off into the abyss. I want, and I need, to be surrounded with people who will help me discern how to bloom where I’m planted. And so, I’m out. I’m out on an adventure, trusting that Christ has His ways of finding me. I’m out exploring while not knowing exactly where I’ll wind up again.  I’m out searching in the highways and byways because sometimes we best find Christ when we look on the margins. I’m out seeking Christ 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year… or at least that’s what I want to try. As I see it, the other shoe has dropped where the only way to appease my conscience is to put my shoes on and start walking.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

The Hardest Question

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

We’ve been at this blog for a while, and a lot of people send us questions. I’m a person who freezes when faced with an uncomfortable question as much as I want to be a person who lives out a vocation categorized by radical hospitality and vulnerability. I believe that every person is invited into a vocation of manifesting God’s kingdom in the world. As an Orthodox Christian, I rejoice to be a part of a church where I can see people from seemingly every tribe, tongue, and nation coming together during weekly liturgies. I am amazed during services like Agape Vespers and Pentecost when people proclaim the Gospel in their native languages. I love how the Orthodox Church maintains that there is only one liturgy where sometimes I’ve seen four generations of people approaching the chalice together. There is something inspiring and amazing about watching an infant carried to the cup in the arms of his or her great-grandparent. In the Orthodox Church, I’ve seen arguably the clearest picture of what it means to be united into one faith. I love the Orthodox tradition, and I’ve come to rejoice in being a child of the Church. However, even standing in full appreciation of everything I’ve learned as an Orthodox Christian, one question that we get frequently as we blog stops me in my tracks.

How has your Christian tradition supported and encouraged you as you live out your vocation?

I’ve avoided answering this question for quite some time because, when I answer it honestly, the answer is “We haven’t received much support when it comes to living out our vocation.”

Like Sarah, I’m a convert to Orthodoxy. My journey to Orthodoxy started in 2007. By that point, I had already discerned that I am not called to biological parenting so I was eagerly exploring celibate ways of life. Additionally, I also knew that I was somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum regarding how I experienced my sexuality and gender identity. Somewhat ironically, my first serious invitation to explore the Orthodox tradition came from a person I met through the Gay Christian Network. I wasn’t a stranger to the challenges associated with being a LGBTQ Christian, and I investigated how the Orthodox tradition approached walking with LGBTQ folks. The resources were incredibly scant. One could argue that the most thorough discussion on the topic is the late Fr. Thomas Hopko’s book Christian Faith and Same-Sex Attraction: Eastern Orthodox Reflections. All along the way, I received assurance that the Orthodox Church approached these matters pastorally.

Pastorally can be a tricky word in the Orthodox tradition. In its ideal form, pastoral matters are worked out by talking with a priest you consider your spiritual father who knows you and your situation intimately well. Additionally, it is hard to experience pastoral care before one is received fully into the tradition because receiving pastoral care is connected to participating in the sacraments. In the Orthodox Church as found in the United States, it is common to discuss pastoral matters of spiritual direction in the context of sacramental confession. While the structure has definite perks, it also comes with a serious drawback that one’s priest is already thinking in terms of sin and repentance when approached with questions about vocation. One can’t assume that one’s local parish priest will be able to serve as a good confessor, even for rather routine discussions of sin and repentance. Many Orthodox Christians have shared with me about their challenges of finding a good confessor. It’s not terribly uncommon to drive an hour or more to meet with one’s confessor. Furthermore, a parish priest might not be the best person to talk with about the particulars of one’s vocation. Through a series of fits and starts, many priests started to recommend that I talk with monastics about how to live a celibate life.

I love meeting monastics. It can be amazing to witness the diversity of monastic life. I’ve had the privilege of meeting monastics living in three countries–the United States, the United Kingdom, and Romania. I’ve met monastics living in small communities of five to twelve monastics, in large communities of as many as 500 monastics, in sketes where two monastics live together, and living alone while attached to a parish. Over the years, my heart has done backflips of joy as I’ve seen yet another celibate way of living out faith. I’ve devoured works like Letters to a Beginner by Abbess Thaisia, Encounter by Metropolitian Anthony Bloom, and collected essays by Mother Maria of Paris. I have been inspired by monastics, living and reposed. I want to see celibate ways of life flourish as I believe the Church needs both married and celibate vocations to thrive.

The challenge is finding support to live out a celibate vocation in an American context dedicated to defending marriage. I’d go so far to say that marriage is not the problem but that homophobia and concerns about keeping up appearances are. The dominant reaction I have experienced in trying to explore what celibacy looks like in my life has been cautioning about sin. I’ve been consistently discouraged from using LGBTQ language even in the context of private conversations with people I trust. I have been encouraged to avoid cultivating close relationships lest I cause scandal. In a word, these reactions are confusing. I’m not talking about skete monasticism in an effort to excuse sin. I’m not reading monastic writers because I want to avoid repentance. I am looking at models of living a celibate life because I know I am called to a celibate vocation. I will gladly sit down with anyone who wants to read through an Orthodox marriage service. I can explain why it’s absolutely beautiful while at the same time articulating why I know it does not describe a kind of life that I’m called to. Chances are excellent I’d feel the same way about reading an ordination service. I would imagine that the ordination service is an incredible articulation of what it means to be a priest which contains many pointers as to why I, personally, would make a terrible priest. Defending ordination and marriage does little to help me discern what God would have me to in order to live my life faithfully.

I would love to see serious conversation in the Orthodox tradition, and in other Christian traditions, about what celibate vocations can and do look like. I would love to have retreats and books dedicated to meaningful celibacy. I cannot begin to tell you what it would mean for me, personally, to be able to commit to my celibate vocation in the context of witnesses gathered in a parish community. At the same time, I sit at the uneasy intersection of knowing that time has not come yet. It is the time of the pastoral. I long for the day when recognizing that situations need to be treated pastorally comes with widespread awareness of the need for both humility and compassion.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Show Me the Church

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

This post is long overdue, and for more than one reason. Much has happened since Lindsey wrote our last post while sitting beside my hospital bed two months ago. I cannot begin to express my gratitude for all the support our readers have extended to Lindsey and me throughout my illness. You folks and our local friends have done so much to keep our hope alive at times when we’ve barely been hanging onto it.

To bring those who don’t know up to speed, after more than a year of being seriously ill with Ménière’s disease I underwent a vestibular neurectomy in July. This turned quickly into three separate surgeries after the initial procedure failed due to my neuroanatomy having some unusual features. I needed a second procedure to repair a leak after cerebrospinal fluid started gushing out of my nose and head, and a third procedure requiring a different entry point to my skull finally brought a successful result. It goes without saying that July was a stressful month for us. I spent three times as many days in ICU as what we had anticipated. These days I’m feeling much better, thank God. I wouldn’t wish what I went through this summer upon anyone, but my days in the hospital were transformative for Lindsey and me in ways we are still sorting out and probably will be for some time. I’ve been trying to find the right words to describe the experience for the past two months, but I can’t. I’m still thinking on it, and I’m sure I’ll be writing more on this in the future.

One thing I can say for certain is that I was reminded of how important it is to recognize within myself the image and likeness of God, and to see the same in others even though none of us ever live fully into being icons as we were created to be. If I’m going to make any attempt at living into this calling, I have to be authentically me regardless of where I am spiritually. I can’t hide behind fear of what others will think of me once they see how imperfect a Christian I am. That’s why today, it’s time for another “coming out” of sorts.

When Lindsey and I began writing here at AQC, we intended to make our writings as accessible as possible to readers across a variety of Christian traditions and theological viewpoints. That remains a goal of ours, but it’s time to be more authentic. Lindsey and I are members of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. We never had any illusions that our readers would fail to see this in our posts. We’re probably more aware than anyone of how painfully obvious it is and has been since the beginning of our writing project. By this point, we’ve received hundreds of requests from readers that we state the name of our tradition publicly. The time for that is long overdue, and I’m ashamed to admit how much of our hesitation to do so has come from fear of excommunication, of creating a difficult situation for our priest and parish, and of Orthodox internet trolls who are priests more often than not. Today, I’m throwing caution to the wind because someone has to have the courage to speak out. I feel that I’ve waited long enough for a priest or someone with authority to begin this conversation, and that doesn’t seem to be happening.

The state of affairs in American Orthodoxy, especially since the Supreme Court’s decision on gay marriage, is troubling. It’s beyond troubling, and I would go so far as to call it scandalous.

When I converted to Orthodoxy, I thought I was signing on for a spiritually challenging journey in the ancient faith, where every person would be treated with care and respect because we are all made in God’s image. I thought I was joining a tradition that pushes each person to be asking always, “What is the cost of following Christ? Am I willing to pay that cost? How can I submit myself more fully to God so that I become increasingly willing to follow Christ wherever he leads?” I thought I was becoming part of a Church where I would find what I saw as lacking in my previous Christian tradition (Catholicism). I saw evidence of all these things during my period as an inquirer and catechumen, but soon after my conversion I began to notice that when rubber meets the road, Orthodox Christians are not treated as though we all have the same level of dignity.

I have found myself within a tradition where people are so obsessed with marriage that they cannot offer guidance to LGBTQ people beyond, “Don’t have sex. Don’t get married. We don’t perform gay marriages. Oh, and by the way, don’t use words like ‘gay’ because 99% of people who use that label are sexually active outside of marriage.” I receive these messages and start to wonder what planet their giver has been living on for the past two decades or more, because that last statement is blatantly false and the other statements are just plain unhelpful to someone making an honest effort at living fully into the Orthodox tradition. I grow weary of attempting to explain that many people see sexual orientation as something mysterious that involves significantly more than desiring sex. I grow weary of receiving generic answers to questions about sexual orientation, or answers that sound more like lines from a 1970s psychology text than legitimate spiritual direction. I grow weariest of hearing from LGBTQ Orthodox friends who are trying their very best to do what is asked of them only to be told that they are not fit for any vocation, ought to live as a hermit on the outskirts of a monastery to avoid interaction with either men or women, and should stop talking to the faithful who attend Divine Liturgy.

As Lindsey and I have stated before, the aftermath of Obergefell vs. Hodges has been particularly difficult for us. Had it not been for Lindsey’s ability to add me to employer-sponsored health insurance as a domestic partner, my health problems would be bankrupting us. This would be the case even if I had health insurance through an exchange, and it would certainly be the case for me as an individual if the two of us were doing life separately. Now that Lindsey no longer has this job and it is unclear whether other places of employment will offer domestic partner benefits, we face a new challenge. We’re terrified of the possibility that one of us might not be able to care for the other at a time when it’s needed most, and few people (liberal or conservative) seem to care very much about this issue. To be clear, neither of us is advocating for the Orthodox Church to change its teachings on marriage and sexuality. Neither of us wants to be married to the other. Even if we were Episcopalian (which is apparently the worst of insults according to many American Orthodox), we would never consider our relationship a marriage. Aside from describing it as an odd combination of skete monasticism and partners living life in service to others in the world, I’m not sure if any word in English is fitting for our arrangement.

Fortunately, we have two spiritual fathers who are willing to journey with us through figuring out what it means to live an unusual vocation. However, it’s troubling that almost every bit of support we receive from within our tradition is private. American Orthodox are so concerned with keeping up appearances and not rocking the boat that we end up forcing anyone with a seemingly unusual problem to stuff all the real human emotions that he or she experiences relative to said problem. “Don’t tell anyone besides your spiritual father. I know you’re doing your best to be faithful, but no one really needs to know that much about you. Your needs are too great. Bear your cross in silence.” These admonishments have been the story of my life since becoming Orthodox. Then when trying to explain that I don’t see my sexual orientation as a cross and I rarely experience sexual desire in the first place…well…I’ll not even go there. Material for another post. Anonymous friends of friends (some of whom are priests) who have encouraged Lindsey and me to get married civilly and either hide it or lie about it so the bishops will never have to think about how to handle our situation…yeah…that’s another blog post as well. If you’re reading this as an Orthodox person and don’t find any of it disconcerting, maybe it’s time to rethink some of your assumptions about people who are different from you.

Lest any of our readers think I am suggesting that LGBTQ people are the only groups of Orthodox Christians who receive these sorts of damaging messages, I have to say that my experience in Orthodoxy has made me aware of all kinds of situations where people who don’t fit the box are dismissed as problems who aren’t the Church’s responsibility. It grieves my heart when an Orthodox friend with a severe disability tells me that his priest will not help him solve a problem because he’s supposedly mooching off the parish’s working members whose taxes pay for his disability check. It grieves me equally when a friend who was born and raised in the Orthodox faith is advised to ignore a mental health diagnosis and “suck it up” in order to avoid the passion of despondency. It adds to my own depression when I observe Orthodox Christians ranting about how stewardship of the earth is nothing more than liberalism akin to support for gay marriage.

Somehow, we in the American context have become okay with dismissing real world problems that don’t impact us personally, and by extension making it taboo to talk about those topics at all. I’ve known Orthodox priests who have told me that racism doesn’t exist when I’ve raised issues of concern for my friends who are black or Hispanic. I have been told by priests that there is nothing good about deafness, and I should not view my hearing loss as linked to any sort of positive cultural identity…so Russians can identify with Russian expressions of faith, Romanians can identify with Romanian expressions of faith, but apparently there’s no way a legitimate expression of faith could emerge from the Deaf community. I once knew a priest who refused to wear an FM system to help me hear on the grounds that it would give me an unfair advantage over everyone else who can’t hear what is being said in the altar.

What troubles me most is that I’ve never seen any purveyors of these messages being challenged to reconsider their beliefs. I’m constantly being asked to reconsider mine simply because I’m a celibate person who uses LGBTQ language. As a Church (at least in America), we allow certain heresies to slide because they aren’t as bad as others. We excuse a person who holds heretical views relative to care for God’s creation and care for the least of these, but we can’t even throw a bone to a person who serves unwillingly as the parish’s symbolic reminder that society at large accepts gay marriage.

I refuse to believe that Lindsey and I are the only two Orthodox Christians who see these problems as the Church’s failure to be Christ to others. Again for clarity, I wrote this post not to complain about a mean, man-made religion that can do nothing but oppress and abuse people. I wrote this because I would like to believe that all of us can do better. The way American Orthodox Christians have been behaving since the Supreme Court decision is but one example of how desire to serve as Tradition Keeper can harm our witness. I want to believe again in an Orthodox Church where every person is treated with the same care and regard we give our icons every Sunday. It was not my intention to join the church of the white, wealthy, able-bodied, educated, straight, cisgender republican, and I’m not any more interested in the church of the [insert appropriate adjectives here] democrat. I’m interested in being part of the Church with the whole messy bunch of us as we journey together toward theosis. Sometimes I ask myself, “Where did it go? I thought it was here somewhere.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking back to my first communion as a Catholic. I was so excited to encounter Christ in the Eucharist that I nearly ran up to the altar, and I probably would have if I hadn’t been slowed down by a nun. I wonder, where is the Christ I sprinted toward as a young Catholic? He’s certainly not the person whose message I see being preached in a number of American Orthodox parishes. We can do better. I can do better. I’m sure I’ve written at least one piece of accidental heresy at some point, so I’m no more above reproach than those with the attitudes I’m calling out today. Brothers and sisters, please show me the Church again and I’ll try to do the same for you again. Otherwise, I just don’t know how long I’ll last.

(I expect this post will get lots of comments, and at least some of those will be from people who are eager to tell me how wrong I am about everything I’ve said here and elsewhere on the blog. I’ll engage in honest intellectual dialogue with any reader who is seeking such whether he or she considers me a heretic or not. Here’s your reminder to read our comment policy. We will not allow our comments section to become just another vitriolic place on the Orthodox internet. If the only thing you feel inclined to tell me is that people like me are attempting to destroy the Church, it is probably better for your salvation and mine if you refrain from commenting.)

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Love Has Yet to Win

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

I don’t like to write depressing entries for our blog. I’d much rather get back to writing meaningful reflections on living celibacy as a layperson in the world. But that’s not where my mind is right now, and I can’t force it to be there. I suppose one benefit to blogging is knowing that I never have to be isolated. No matter how often Lindsey is away at work, no matter how infrequently I can get out of the apartment to meet up with friends and get my freakishly high extrovert needs met, the blog is here and I’m not alone. Thank you all for reading and bearing with me today.

I’m feeling pretty weary this weekend. Maybe it’s because of my upcoming surgery. Maybe it’s because spending a lot of time at home in bed means more opportunity to see the ugliness of the internet in the aftermath of nationwide marriage equality. But I think mostly, it’s anger at Christianity. Anger is exhausting. Last week, Lindsey and I were sitting in our living room and discussing the processes by which each of us learned that it’s normal to experience anger at God. That got me thinking about how I’ve never come to terms with experiencing anger at the Church.

It feels safer to be angry at God than it does to be angry at the Church. If I pull out my prayer rope and begin praying each knot while feeling absolutely fed up with a particular lesson God seems to be teaching me, the result is not going to be an offended deity making my life more difficult just for spite. If I curl up in a ball on my bed and cry for hours from rage about a difficult life circumstance and yell in anger, “Why, God? Why?!” I’m not going to be shamed for my emotions. But with the Church, it’s a different matter. In the opinions of many people I know, being angry at the Church (whether you mean “Body of Christ” or “official teachings”), is not okay. Expressing anger at the Church often results in assertions that I don’t actually desire faithfulness, that I’m being a whiner and need to toughen up because “following Christ isn’t supposed to be easy,” or that my pain is caused by my own sin and my own lack of willingness to let the tradition teach and transform me. Christ will not dismiss or berate me regardless of where I am spiritually in a given season of life, but plenty of his followers will.

Over the past week, Lindsey and I have written our respective reflections on how we are feeling after Obergefell vs Hodges. We had little energy to comment on much more than our fears about losing access to domestic partner benefits, but there is so much more to be said, and not just about gay marriage. I’m going to state the obvious: the internet is a dark, cruel place where people created in the image of God treat other people created in the image of God as though they haven’t even the dignity of bacteria on the bottom of my shoe. No reasonable person ever expects to find utopia on the internet. Nevertheless, I always hope that the people who make up the Church will surprise me during intense news cycles; yes, I’m more than a little idealistic.

This weekend, I’m angry because the Body of Christ needs to be engaging in repentance and reconciliation after the ways we have treated people who are different from us. I’m angry because we have allowed issues of difference, whether ideological or otherwise, to divide us. Within the same week, I see one friend stating publicly, “Any church that lets queers in needs to have its whole congregation stoned to death,” and another friend proclaiming, “If you think for any reason that gay sex is a sin, you’re a hateful bigot!” Both are members of my Christian tradition. Both claim to love Christ and do their best to follow him in their daily lives. What have we come to when one member of the Church would have another stoned to death? When theological disagreement even after prayerful reflection and discernment means that the person who disagrees is hateful?

I’m angry because white Christian America has been sitting back, content to wave either a rainbow flag or a Confederate flag as black churches have burned to the ground and black Christians have been murdered while worshipping. White LGBTQ Christians previously engaged in meaningful discussions about racial reconciliation abandoned those conversations in favor or gloating over marriage equality. Some will not pick up that discussion topic again until there’s a lull in the LGBTQ news cycle. Folks who do not consider themselves allies to the black community but were still engaged in conversations about Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston have ceased participation in order to mourn because “the gays are destroying America.” How quickly we’ve forgotten about the nine human beings who lost their lives while attending church not even three weeks ago, or at least pushed their deaths to the back of our minds in favor of spouting off bad theology about sex. What happened in the United States on June 26, 2015? Why will future generations remember that date? Certainly not because of the Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral. And I’m ashamed of myself as a white person for forgetting his first name and needing to Google it before adding it to this post.

I’m angry because able-bodied Christian America is clueless about how to be loving to people with disabilities. After the Supreme Court ruling, more than one article about disability and marriage was published. People with disabilities in America who receive SSI benefits risk losing resources if they marry. Some people with disabilities were married or living with a partner before becoming disabled and cannot qualify for help because of the spouse/partner’s income. These are real problems that the Church could be addressing, yet most of what I’ve seen from Christians on these issues is, “Just go with other programs that aren’t income-based” (never mind that you have to be out of work and likely broke anyway before qualifying) or, “Stop whining. It’s not the government’s job to take care of you. You could work if you really wanted and had more motivation.” How many members of the Body of Christ actually care about how broken our social programs for people with disabilities are?

Speaking of ableism, I’m angry about an entirely different issue I’ve been dealing with for several weeks. I’m angry about the nonsense that passes as d/Deaf and hard of hearing ministry or “deaf inclusive ministry” in Christian churches. I’m angry that hearing people at Christian publishing houses profit by selling ministry resources that co-opt American Sign Language and Deaf culture, throwing random ASL signs into spoken songs and calling that inclusion. I’m angry that when I try to educate on how wrong this is and why it is not actually welcoming to the Deaf community, hearing people engaged in ministry become defensive and argue with me about how hearing children in Sunday School need something to do with their hands and doing a few signs seems like a good idea. And I’m angry that on the few occasions when hearing people do listen to me about this, they’re almost always more willing to accept my perspective as a person with hearing loss who grew up hearing than they are to acknowledge arguments from my friends who have grown up in Deaf culture.

Perhaps more than anything else, I’m angry that there are Christians who are more concerned with policing identity than with building relationships. If you’re a straight, white, hearing person, it’s easy to judge a gay person, a black person, or a deaf person, “Your cultural identity isn’t important. It’s not who you are. Who you are is in your relationship with Christ.” We need to stop saying that all people are equal and should be treated with respect if we are going to pretend that some aspects of identity do not exist. If I tell one of my black friends, “Skin color doesn’t matter. Everyone is the same to me,” I have just erased a huge part of that person’s life experience. The same thing happens when Christians tell me, “You’re not really a lesbian. You just struggle with liking women, and we all struggle with sin,” or “Just accept your deafness as a limitation. There’s nothing positive about it. You’re going to be healed in the eschaton anyway.”

When we erase people’s experiences, we drive them away. It doesn’t matter if you think race isn’t important. It is in American society, and white people are the ones who have made it so. It doesn’t matter if you don’t understand why a person would want to identify as gay. For many people, it’s an important term, and straight Christians ought to be willing to engage in conversation and consider why. It doesn’t matter if you believe that deafness and other disabilities will be eliminated in the hereafter. No one person knows more about the eschaton than any other person does, and it would behoove members of the Church to reflect more deeply on how social stigma has created what we consider to be “disability.” And let’s not forget that progressive, social justice-y Christians are also good at erasing the experiences of conservatives and traditionalists.

Cultural identities may or may not matter at all in the next life. As Christians, we are not called to ignore the here and now or excuse ourselves from treating others well and working for justice on the grounds that someday none of our differences will have meaning. When I look at the Church this week, I have seen it seething, oozing, and pulsing  with the emotional illnesses that make it hard for us to do life together. And it’s challenging because part of me wants to shove everything and everyone aside, screaming, “Eeeeeewww! Ick!” But then I’m left looking at the same festering assumptions and judgments within my own heart. There’s relief that comes when we look in the mirror at our human failings and own them. That’s what I’m experiencing now. I’m much less angry. But where do we go now as we journey towards reconciliation?

EDIT: Thanks to a reader for pointing out a typo where I had misgendered Reverend Clementa Pinckney. I assure you that it was an honest typing error and not my thinking that this person was a woman. I blame this one on vertigo. Apologies to all who read the first version!

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.

Making Sense of Life as a Celibate, Partnered Lesbian After Marriage Equality

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

It’s June 29, 2015. I just got back from the vet with our dog, Gemma. She has a bacterial infection on her two front elbows, which should clear up with antibiotics in a week or so. I’ll spend the afternoon lying down to regain some energy before going out this evening for some ASL practice. I’ll spend the next two weeks counting down the days to a surgical procedure that could either give me some quality of life back or make my balance problem worse. It’s a pretty typical Monday for me…except for the fact that now, I could marry Lindsey legally in any state in the U.S. if that was what we wanted.

I woke up this Monday morning from a dream that a member of our former parish had broken into our apartment, taken photos of our living quarters, and sent them to our bishop. Of course this didn’t really happen. All that happened is last night, Lindsey received a personal email from an anonymous troll in our Christian tradition, threatening to report us to our bishop simply for being gay. I can’t decide which is worse — this, or the mixed bag of messages we’ve gotten over the past four days from other members of the LGBTQ community and allies.

I don’t know what to feel today. I am truly happy for my friends who no longer have to worry about whether marriage to their partners will afford them equal legal rights across the country. I understand the stresses associated with wanting to care for someone you love and living with worry that you will not be permitted to do so when it matters most. I’m worried about the behavior I’ve seen from members of my Christian tradition on the internet and how their vitriol will impact LGBTQ people of faith. I’m grateful that Lindsey and I are now part of a parish where we can blend in without worry, and even make friends and be an active part of the community with no one gossiping about what sins they imagine we are committing. I’m also grateful that so many people in our lives truly support us and respect our commitment to celibacy whether they understand and agree with it or not. I spent the weekend exhausted, but today I’m mostly weepy.

Being a celibate, partnered lesbian after marriage equality means being pressured to marry my partner legally even though we do not consider our relationship a marriage and are committed to obeying what our faith tradition has asked of us. It means that I have to explain over and over again, “Yes, I believe that civil and sacramental marriage are two different institutions. But my bishop sees it differently, and we are not going to disobey him.” It means being prepared upon saying that to be dismissed by the other person because he or she sees me as suffering from Stockholm syndrome, being brainwashed, contributing to the oppression of the LGBTQ community, caring more about “man-made religion” than I do about Lindsey, and being closed-minded or just plain obstinate. About 90% of the time, it means watching the other person laugh in my face or roll eyes when I say that obedience is a gift freely given — it can never be forced.

Being a celibate, partnered lesbian after marriage equality means knowing that the majority of the LGBTQ community would not lose a moment of sleep if Lindsey’s workplace were to decide to stop offering domestic partner benefits. It means working harder than ever to make sure that the two of us are protected, having awkward conversations with the powers that be at Lindsey’s places of employment, and running to the Department of Health as swiftly as possible to get an official certificate of domestic partnership before such things inevitably go the way of the dodo. It means living every day with even more uncertainty than we faced before, since no one seems to have any idea at this point what marriage equality will mean for those of us to will not be marrying for whatever reason. It means going into a major surgery in two weeks wondering whether I’ll have access to health insurance at this time next year. It means coming to terms with the fact that if I lose access to Lindsey’s health insurance, we’ll end up in dire straits financially because even the best of plans on the exchange will not cover enough of my medical expenses for us to make it financially.

Being a celibate, partnered lesbian after marriage equality means avoiding people in my faith tradition unless they are close friends or part of my wonderful parish family. It means living in fear of someone accusing Lindsey and me of scandal and doing everything possible to force our priest into not communing us. It means being Church with people whose hearts are filled with hatred for people like me, and with people who want to love me but have no idea how to do that. It means doing my best to accept what comes my way as a cross that can unite me to the suffering of Christ. It means I have been given a backhanded gift in the form of an opportunity to learn more about living the two great commandments. It also means being hypervigilant: you may think I am speaking from a place of paranoia, but I have already lost count of how many times within the past four days I have seen on Facebook that people like me are abominations, lustful perverts, and child molesters who are unworthy to darken the doorstep of any church.

Being a celibate, partnered lesbian after marriage equality means accepting my current reality as a test of faith. It means focusing on my relationship with God and trusting that no matter what happens, he will provide for Lindsey and me. It means staying strong in my knowledge that we are doing what he is calling us to do, and that by living our vocation we are responding to his invitation to unite ourselves more fully to him. It means being just as vulnerable as ever with my spiritual father and encouraging Lindsey to do the same. But most of all, it means that when I am weary I will take off my hearing aids and sit in silence with the one who gave his life for me — the one with whom I am passionately in love, the one whose presence in my life has begun a radical transformation.

Comment Policy: Please remember that we, and all others commenting on this blog, are people. Practice kindness. Practice generosity. Practice asking questions. Practice showing love. Practice being human. If your comment is rude, it will be deleted. If you are constantly negative, argumentative, or bullish, you will not be able to comment anymore. We are the sole moderators of the combox.