Tag Archives: sacredness

Of Sacredness, Intimacy, and Lentil Soup

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A Reflection by Sarah

I’ll never forget the first time it happened. It was a chilly day in late autumn, and I had just returned home with a mountain of papers to grade after a long commute on a crowded subway train. Anxiety and eagerness welled up inside me as I unlocked the door to my apartment, walked in, and plopped my teacher bag into its usual spot on top of my desk. Offering my cats a few gentle strokes was my attempt at preparing for that which I dreaded. I knew it was inevitable. It was going to happen eventually anyway, and that set me into a panic. Our friendship had only begun a few months prior; was I ready to let my guard down, to become so exposed? How could I know when, if ever, would be the right time to open this door of intimacy? By the time my phone rang, I had procrastinated as long as I was able. “Hello, Lindsey,” were the only two words I remember saying specifically. And before I could put all the pieces together, it was happening. It was one of the most intense, fear-provoking moments I had ever experienced. But it was also sacred. There was pain, consolation, prayer traveling from the Midwest to the East Coast and back…and a batch of lentil soup. It was the first time Lindsey and I shared dinner together.

For most of you, eating with a special person in your life probably doesn’t sound like a very big deal unless you’re profoundly challenged in the culinary department. But for me, the evening of lentil soup shared across four states was deeply meaningful and challenging to my previous assumptions about food and intimacy. I developed bulimia at age 12 and began my recovery journey more than a decade later. With lots of hard work, this condition has stabilized over the past few years. However, I still struggle from time to time, and though I thrive on frequent socialization, I often find situations requiring shared meals to be exceptionally draining. But experiencing the intimacy of sharing food with the most important people in my life, especially Lindsey, has begun to change this reality for me.

In the time we have known each other, and even more since taking up residence in the same apartment, Lindsey and I have attempted to cultivate a meaningful shared life in a number of ways. Some of the approaches we try tend to stick around longer than others. One that has managed to find a permanent place in our daily life is a commitment to eating dinner together every night. Unless some unusual circumstance (i.e. business trip with an odd schedule) has kept one or both of us from being available, we have shared every dinner since the evening of lentil soup. We have eaten together over Skype and on the phone during different seasons of our relationship, but now this sacred hour almost always takes place in our dining room, where we can relish in a few moments of quiet after even the most hectic of days.

On a typical evening, I arrive home late, exhausted from a long day of teaching, writing, and working with tutoring clients. As I am on my way, Lindsey prepares our usual simple meal of swai fillets, green vegetables, and fresh fruit and tries to time it so that everything will be ready when I get home. Cleanup will be my responsibility. (Anyone who has ever visited a monastery with me knows I make a much more useful contribution to the community’s daily work when I’m assigned to the dishes instead of the cooking.) As I walk through the door and put away my work things, aromas of curry, or oranges, or ginger greet me. We sit at our dining room table–a table that a Catholic priest once used to say Mass. Portraits of family members and icons of Christ, His Holy Mother, and the saints face toward us, joining in the nightly ritual as Lindsey says the blessing over our meal. Our two curious tabby cats that have been with me since my first year of graduate school join us as well, climbing into an empty chair, peeking over the table’s edge, and sometimes sneaking up onto the tabletop. We eat from our set of green, ceramic plates–the first item we bought together after signing the lease on our apartment.

A simple “How was your day?” begins a conversation that can unfold in infinite directions. We discuss how my lecture went that morning, new recipes we want to try, the problem of evil, the water bill, and the Christmas card we received from my pistol-packing, Appalachian grandmother. We reflect on moments during the day when God’s presence was unmistakable, and times when we’ve felt abandoned to wander in desert places. Sometimes we just sit in silence as Lindsey holds my hand. Other times, members of our chosen and proximate families join us at the table for an evening, and after we’ve eaten, we’ll indulge in a jigsaw puzzle or a round of our friend Matt’s homemade Harry Potter board game.

Dinner time in our household is a constant reminder of so many important truths I am prone to forget or downplay. The meals I share with Lindsey challenge me to recall that as humans, we are dependent upon God and each other; that God calls us into meaningful relationships that help us to nurture and sustain our vocations. I find myself reflecting on Jesus’ radical hospitality and the invitation God extends each of us at every Eucharist. I am challenged to consider how sharing meals with our loved ones compels us to extend grace and welcome to strangers. I am convicted by Jesus’ words in Luke 14:3, “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind.” Our nightly dinner routine, which began with Lindsey extending grace and hospitality to me in my moment of weakness, leads me to ponder how we, individually and together, can be a blessing to others who have endured illness, suffering, and rejection. I pray that our home might become a refuge and our dining room a place of intimate welcome for those who need it most–one bowl of lentil soup at a time.

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1 week after the Gay Christian Network 2014 Conference

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While we won’t be making a habit of releasing new posts on Sundays, we decided to make an exception today because it is exactly 1 week after the closing session of the Gay Christian Network 2014 Conference held in Chicago.

We both have a deep love and appreciation for the work of the Gay Christian Network (GCN). Our story as a couple began through our interactions on GCN. For the last two years, we have been blessed to attend the GCN conference together. We value the GCN community because we have found it to be a place where all people, in every situation, from any Christian tradition, can ask meaningful questions about enabling LGBT Christians to live as faithful disciples of Christ. GCN is a community that values the questions and honors the fact that different people arrive at remarkably diverse conclusions.

Sarah started the conference a bit earlier than Lindsey by participating in the women’s retreat. The retreat was a fantastic time of fellowship, song, and prayer, which featured three inspiring testimonies. The testimonies touched on topics ranging from losing a church family to painful lack of family acceptance to healing from the effects of ex-gay ministry to finding one’s partner. Every story that was shared blessed and challenged Sarah in its own way. Rev. Audrey Connor (Disciples of Christ) delivered the keynote and focused on the importance of truly listening to what is being said by the Spirit and by other people. Listening is about being present and honoring the image of God. This shared time of fellowship with over 100 women enabled lesbian, bisexual, transgender, straight, and other woman-identified people to connect with one another before the conference. Sarah was particularly encouraged by the number of mothers of LGBT children who joined in the retreat.

As the main conference began, we started to shift gears in order to meet newcomers to the conference and provide an extra dose hospitality for more liturgical Christians. Conference can be overwhelming as (1) a lot of the attendees have already connected with other people and (2) the structure of the main sessions closely mirrors Evangelical services where a praise team opens with music before a speaker. On Thursday night, Rev. Dr. Christine Wiley (Covenant Baptist United Church of Christ in Washington, DC) had both of us laughing to the point of tears as she shared that she has spent years “trying to make Christians out of church folk,” and “It’s hard work!”

Sometimes, the biggest blessings at conference come where you least expect them. On Friday morning, we (and everyone else in the room) had tears streaming down our faces as Linda and Rob Robertson shared their story of losing their gay son. When their son Ryan first came out, the Roberstons walked the path advocated by many conservative Christian organizations and encouraged Ryan to ask God to change his sexual orientation. Ryan stayed with that course for five years until he literally couldn’t take it anymore. The Robertsons walked us through their experience as parents watching their oldest son develop a severe drug addiction as he tried to deal with his pain of feeling rejected by God and his family. The Robertsons’ grief was palpable because their son Ryan’s 25th birthday was the following Tuesday, a birthday Ryan would be celebrating in heaven. We both cried and cried and cried through the whole story because it was so easy for us to connect with what the Robertsons were saying.

By Friday afternoon, we found ourselves completely over-extended. We make a point of hosting morning and evening prayer times in our hotel room that are recognizable to people from diverse liturgical traditions. Pulling together these prayer times is a lot of fun, but can be a bit draining. Additionally, we presented a workshop entitled “Celibacy Involves Family” that drew nearly 40 attendees during the first workshop session. We had a blast preparing our workshop together, and we’ll likely share some of the content we presented at that workshop in future posts. Yet, all this running around left us feeling a bit depleted. Lindsey felt especially zapped: conferences can be an introvert’s worse nightmare.

We wanted so desperately to serve the community that we had forgotten how important it was to receive care, love, and support from others. On Friday night, we clued in to our mutual exhaustion. We decided that the best thing to do would be to go down to the lobby, find someone interested in eating dinner at the hotel, and have real human conversation about what was going on in everyone’s lives. We met up with Rebecca and James Farlow, two friends we had met at a previous conference who have graciously served by leading the times of musical worship two years running. They gave us the opportunity to share vulnerably about everything we had been experiencing lately: our car accident on the way to conference, Lindsey’s recent job loss, Sarah’s chronic health problems, and our general frustrations with the universe. The Farlows graciously shared with us what was going on in their life together. It was a sacred time of mutuality, respect, and prayer that refreshed us. We decided it would be best to continue refreshing (and unfortunately, had to miss the concert by Bobby Jo Valentine and Derek Webb). Later, another couple spent some time with us as we celebrated the different ways God has blessed all four of us in the year between GCN conferences.

On Saturday, we prepared for the event everyone was talking about: Rachel Held Evans’ keynote! Her kind, gentle, yet thought-provoking speaking style reminded us a great deal of the challenging content she regularly posts on her blog. We found it particularly meaningful that she contrasted the experience of an ally having a shared enemy with the experience of a sister having a shared identity.

Immediately after the keynote, we embarked on quite the mission: trekking over to a friend’s house to use an oven so we could bake bread. You see, we are a part of a closed communion tradition (and do not partake of communion outside of our Christian tradition) and simultaneously value that GCN offers communion during the Sunday morning service. We recognize that for many people in the GCN community who have endured painful rejection by members of their Christian traditions, the GCN conference is the only time they feel welcome to partake of communion. But we also believe that in having an open table at GCN Conference where people can make a choice to commune, it is equally important to honor the choice to abstain regardless of a person’s reasons. Toward that end, we decided that we would offer to bake a loaf that would remain unconsecrated and be available for all people at the GCN conference as Bread of Fellowship (rather than elements of communion). So across Chicago we went with our ingredients, measuring cups, and mixing bowl to our friend’s kitchen. We enjoyed talking with our friend’s partner as we waited for the various stages of bread making (never, ever try to bake bread in a hurry) and then returned to the conference in time for another round of workshops and more fellowship. Later, on Sunday morning, we would pray for every person registered for the conference by name as we cut the Bread of Fellowship into distributable pieces.

If there is one area in which the GCN conference really excels, it is providing opportunities for fellowship. The conference schedule includes significant time to gather with others, and attendees tend to milk every minute for more time together. Saturday night is reserved for an open mike time where people can share their experience of God at the conference. This sacred time always contains so many awe-inspiring stories of God’s faithfulness, and we consider it a distinct privilege to participate. Moreover, no one seems to want Saturday night to end, so impromptu gatherings tend to spring up all over the hotel lobby. We came prepared with several games, and the ever-extroverted Sarah spent hours playing 10 Days in the USA and Catch Phrase with folks. Spending time with close friends playing board games until all hours of the night makes GCN Conference feel less like a conference and more like a family reunion. It’s also a great way to bond more closely with old friends and extend one’s family of choice to include some really awesome new people.

The last general session of conference featured incredible singing from a choir comprised of conference attendees, a talk delivered by Justin Lee that tried to sum up the events of the weekend and encouraged people to continue letting God transform their lives, and a final circle. It’s a tradition that at the last minute of conference, Justin and Trey (GCN’s Conference Director) announce the conference city for next year. We hope to see you in Portland, Oregon 8-11 January 2015.

Overall, the GCN conference provided a rich time for us to be ourselves in community with other people we have come to adore. As a celibate couple, we are able to receive encouragement in our specific vocation from the diverse people gathered. So many people have found space at GCN conference to be themselves, and we hope that you will consider joining us in Portland. We’d love to meet you!

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.

Vulnerability opens the door to intimacy

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We consider our life together to be, first and foremost, about partnership. We value the simplicity of trying to do life together. Life is constantly throwing curveballs that are more fun when you have someone else playing the game with you. There’s nothing particularly special about cross-country road trips, eating dinner, petting a cat, or wringing out laundry by hand when the washing machine decides to be possessed; but, there is something mysteriously profound about doing these things with a person whom you consider to be your partner.

It is rather perplexing to us that so many people assume that because we do not share sex together, we cannot be doing life together. Yet, reflecting on our experience together, the first word that comes to mind today is vulnerability. We have managed to share life together and cultivate a rich, deep, meaningful experience of intimacy by being vulnerable with each other. There’s no rocket science required to make the observation that vulnerability is hard.

Vulnerability is like the opposite of the social expectations surrounding dating. It seems to us that when two people date, they are expected to spend lots and lots and lots of energy putting their best foot forward. Choose the best outfit, select the best restaurant, make sure the car is clean, etc etc etc. Dating can be one big show in which you constantly wear the mask of the person you most want to be.

Vulnerability requires an incredible degree of transparency. It means letting Sarah look over my shoulder to make sure I’m not making grammatical errors as I type and allowing Sarah to make fun of my natural (and I must admit, very creative) spellings of words. It means appreciating that a good hug makes tough conversations a lot easier. It means knowing that there is nothing one of us can disclose that can change the love we share as a couple. And in that regard, vulnerability is pretty cool.

Vulnerability fosters spiritual and emotional depth. When we are vulnerable, we sit within our various weaknesses. When we share the big scary problems, we recognize that all humans everywhere have God-sized concerns that require a miracle. When we are vulnerable, we learn to communicate with an open heart and an open spirit. It is our vulnerability that allows us to share our lives with Christ… and with each other.

We see the most profound expression of vulnerability and partnership at Christmas when Christ joined Himself to our humanity as an infant. He fully relied on His family for everything. That’s amazing. It is Christ’s vulnerability that allowed Him to partner with us fully as human beings. Vulnerability permitted Christ to “speak” the language most intimately associated with being human. As He voluntarily took on our frailty, the Human united with the Divine.

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.