Author Archives: Sarah and Lindsey

Celebrating Christmas when the world doesn’t feel right

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A reflection by Lindsey

This year I have found myself thinking a lot about why we observe Christmas. So much in the world feels terribly wrong, and it’s hard to see God at work in any of it. I marked much of Advent hoping to see what would happen to Sarah’s vertigo after Sarah had ear surgery. I’d be hard-pressed to think of a location where one could feel more helpless than waiting for a loved one to come out of surgery. I found myself constantly reflecting that Sarah’s surgeon is an expert in the field who knows exactly what to expect and what to do as different things arise. Trying to distract myself wasn’t the most effective, and I found myself keeping a prayerful vigil throughout the procedure.

A lot was wrong on that particular Advent day. Sarah was in surgery. A friend’s Christian parents had given him a week’s notice that he was no longer welcome in their home. These parents had reasoned that it was inappropriate for Christians to shelter a person who “identified” as gay. Ferguson protesters decried police brutality while simultaneously seeking some recourse for the family of Michael Brown. I found myself dealing with all sorts of crazy emotions while looking at the sea of humanity gathered in that hospital waiting room. Many times, I couldn’t help but think, “Stop the world! I’d like to get off!”

Enter Christmas.

I think there’s a big temptation to look at Christmas as the day everything changed. Christmas is supposed to be the day where the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not overcome it. Christmas is supposed to be the day where we experience Christ as Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, and Prince of Peace. But, still Christmas remains amid some rather incredible darkness. Christ was born, yet Herod still ordered the slaughter of the innocents. Christ was born, yet Joseph still lead his family into hiding.

In the microcosm of my own world, Christmas arrived this year with Sarah enduring more vertigo attacks, the two of us beginning the difficult process of seeking a new local church home, and a friend getting a call to report immediately to a hospital for further medical testing. I have watched as others have lost jobs, homes, and loved ones. I continue to be more aware than ever that the American justice system needs serious reform. There are structural levels of injustice in society that manifest in all sorts of -isms such as racism, ableism, and classism. The world is broken.

Isn’t it supposed to be Christmas?

As a Christian, I find myself hoping and longing for the day when everything is truly set right again. I want to see that day when tears, death, crying, pain, and illness pass away. After all, has it not been proclaimed that we should “behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away”? I can’t help but notice that I’m longing for the Second Coming of Christ even as I remember his first coming.

Until the Second Coming, I note that the only thing I can do is opt into remaining present. Being present can be exceptionally mundane. I didn’t expect to have a Christmas Day full of doing laundry while waiting for Sarah’s vertigo to subside. I don’t think anyone expects spending the Christmas season by keeping vigil over a dying loved one or visiting gravesides. I can’t imagine experiencing the Christmas season huddling with my friends and family in a war zone. There are many ministries of presence.

Christmas challenges us to value presence. As a baby lying in a manger, Christ could do very little to “fix” the world. He had made deliberate choices to empty himself of divine power. He became one of us to proclaim, “God is with us.” As an engineer, I find that admitting there’s very little I can do to “fix” the world is hard for me. I’d love to make Sarah’s vertigo disappear, but I know that’s not within my skill set. My skills look even more paltry against the larger problems plaguing people around the world. Yet, this Christmas I’m seeing that maybe there’s a kind of power present in just saying, “I am with 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

A Change of Season: When It’s Time to Seek a New Church Home

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Christmas is a time that brings truly epic surprises. Who could have guessed that the God of the Universe would be turned away from lodgings? Who would have thought that the first people to encounter Christ would be shepherds? Who would have known that myrrh — the funeral spice — would be a perfect gift for a newborn? Christmas is a time where God changes the story in ways that are both predictable and completely mind-blowing at exactly the same time.

This transition from Advent into the Christmas season has brought some uncharted terrain for us. After doing our best to be church with one particular community for nearly two years, we find ourselves experiencing clear confirmation that it’s time to move on. To clarify, we’re not moving from one Christian tradition to another, but to a different parish. We value our Christian tradition, and we intend on continuing to seek Christ within it until we draw our last breaths. Nevertheless, sometimes one needs to make some changes for one’s spiritual welfare. We’ve had seasons where it has become essential to seek different confessors and attend events at multiple parishes in search of some spiritual balance. Coming to these decisions is difficult for any person. Because we are aware that some of our readers are also struggling to find church homes, we decided to reflect a bit on what we’ve noticed about and in ourselves as God has directed us toward seeking a different parish.

At times, emotions, can be an important indicator that one would benefit from discerning the possibility that God is calling him or her elsewhere. In our case, we had started to notice that sadness set in just about every time we had the opportunity to go to church. We love our Christian tradition and all of the ways it invites us to shape our entire lives around Christ. Yet, we noticed that when we went to services at our parish, we couldn’t move past the sadness and it was becoming overwhelming. We had been regular attendees at our parish for over a year, but the atmosphere was full of (mostly) unspoken awkwardness. The feelings that inspired us to write 10 Things We Wish Our Church Family Knew lingered, and several months later we wrote In Which We Decide to Go to Church. We had experienced occasional hints that the atmosphere could have been changing, but only to see that those breaks in the ice were disappointingly fleeting. As this continued, our sadness shifted towards frustration. We noticed that we were constantly examining and re-examining ourselves to discern what we were doing wrong. Every time we queried ourselves, we arrived at the conclusion that all we wanted was to come to church and pray, and our expectations were entirely reasonable. We wanted to pray, go to coffee hour, and be part of a local church family during good times and bad. But the good almost never came. Our emotional experiences of church moved from sadness to frustration and eventually to anger. We reached a point at which we couldn’t imagine a Sunday with anything but awkwardness.

Especially as Sarah’s health has been steadily declining over the past four months, we’ve found ourselves asking, “Why are we trying so hard to get to church anyway?” Under normal circumstances, we enjoy going to church. We love praying with a community focused on encountering Christ, and we do our best to prepare ourselves to participate fully in the services. However, we started to notice that our Sunday preparations required steeling ourselves emotionally. We never knew what people were going to say or do around us, so we had to be prepared for almost anything. Preparing ourselves for Sunday began drifting more and more into the week, often resulting in high levels of anxiety. Once we started noticing feelings of dread intruding regularly into our Wednesdays and Thursdays, we had to ask “Are we going to church to encounter Christ, or are we enduring an emotional survival course to fulfill our Christian obligation?”

We started to take inventory regarding our spiritual growth, individually and as a couple. When one finds oneself in survival mode, it’s hard to thrive. Lindsey found it difficult to anchor solidly within our Christian tradition, branching out more broadly to other Christian spiritual practices that have been constant in Lindsey’s life. Sarah was able to engage in spiritual practices from within our tradition, but felt alienated from others in our parish community in terms of prayer life. In some ways, it felt as though any spiritual progress we were making was coming from sources apart from attending our regular parish. Chance conversations with friends developed into times for shared prayer. Visiting a different parish on occasion offered an opportunity to relax in an environment where we found ourselves able to pray. Once we began considering all of this with rigorous honesty, it became clear that our experience of spiritual life at the local parish level did not match with our spiritual experiences the other six days of the week.

Eventually, other people from our parish started to approach us to discuss how we were experiencing parish life. Especially within the past couple of months, some have dropped by to see how we are. Sometimes, great conversations happen over casseroles. We’ve been blessed to have two or three families in our lives who are willing to go the extra mile to walk with us. Over the last several months, some of the friends we’ve made at church have been confirming that we did not invent or imagine the concerns we’ve expressed about how we fit into our parish. They have recognized and affirmed that we’ve been trying different things to alleviate the awkwardness, and that it hasn’t been improving.

We’re incredibly blessed to live in an area where we do have other options. Searching for a parish is challenging. We notice different things when we visit a new parish. Our individual spiritualities are quite distinct, and we never know what features will combine to allow a place to feel like a spiritual home. We are aware that a perfect church exists nowhere, and we are not seeking perfection. We’re not looking for a Christian utopia where no one ever experiences hurt, disappointment, sadness, or anger. We do not desire a parish where we can avoid being challenged and never have to face our sins. We just want to be part of a growing, vibrant spiritual community within our Christian tradition that challenges us to grow closer to Christ.

This Christmas season, we’ll be praying for all who are without a church home regardless of circumstances, and especially for those making the difficult step of exploring new Christian communities. We would be grateful for your prayers as well. Blessed Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord to all of 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.

“Forced or freely chosen celibacy: how can I tell the difference?”

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Last week this question came in from a reader. It relates to a broader issue that we discuss regularly: how people involved in discussions about LGBT issues in the Church use the descriptors “forced” and “freely chosen” when talking about celibacy. A reader who identifies herself as Mariya expresses uncertainty about how she sees non-celibate LGBT people and straight allies commenting on the lives of celibates:

“Congratulations on making the Washington Post! I’ve been reading responses to the article and I keep coming back to comments like this one: ‘If these people choose celibacy for themselves this isn’t a real story. It’s a story because the ex-gay movement is dead now and these people are its replacement. They’re brainwashed into celibacy and they want to brainwash the rest of us too. It would be different if they didn’t want to make us all deny our sexuality.’

I see those comments but then I see other liberal blogs like New Ways Ministry writing about having respect for people like Eve Tushnet because she doesn’t insist that everyone embrace celibacy. As a heterosexual woman who cares about the gay people at my church, I wish someone would tell me how to tell the difference between someone who is forced into celibacy and someone who chooses it because they want to be celibate. I also want to know about the difference between celibate people forcing others to be celibate or just believing in and practicing what the Bible says without shaming anybody else for not doing that.

Some people see it as the same thing, but is it? Can someone like Eve for example be both forced and not forced, forcing others but not forcing others all at the same time? It’s not just Eve. I see people saying the same things about you two. Can you help me understand?

This is a heavy topic. We’ll begin by saying that most of the time we are also confused by what other people on the internet say about “forced” and “freely chosen” celibacy. We think a great deal of the confusion stems from disagreement about the basic meanings of these two descriptors. Some people would begin a discussion on this topic by asserting that in a truly free society, no one can be forced into doing anything. One might engage in or avoid a particular behavior because of legal, social, or other types of consequences, but the existence of these consequences does not mean that the person is being forced to behave in a certain way. Example: if you are an adult who lives in a free society and is not required to belong to any religious group, pressure to remain celibate within a conservative Christian tradition does not mean that anyone is taking your freedom away or forcing you to to anything. However, others would argue that the presence of any kind of pressure concerning what to do or not to do means that the person making the decision cannot make it freely. Example: if you are part of a religious tradition and that tradition is clear in its teaching that celibacy and heterosexual marriage are the only two vocations, gay people who want to be faithful do not actually have free choices when it comes to vocation.

Both perspectives have a strong presence in the LGBT Christian conversation, and both are represented by very loud advocates. We’ll use a fairly benign example to illustrate our own perspective: in almost every society where vehicles are used, there is some kind of regulation on speed of travel. In the United States, nearly every driver we know has some gripe about speed limits. No one likes them, and most experienced drivers have been pulled over for speeding at one time or another. It is an expectation that drivers obey speed limits, even if most of us know that it’s unlikely to be pulled over for speeding unless one is driving 10+ miles per hour over the speed limit. We know that we have the option of disobeying, and that regardless of reason this decision may result in consequences such as fines, driving sanctions, car insurance rate increases, and traffic accidents. Yet two of us have never met a driver who would claim to be forced into obeying posted speed limits. If you think speed limits are ridiculous, unnecessary, or oppressive, you can break them even when faced with consequence after consequence. You also have the option of giving up on driving entirely: you can choose not to drive or even have a driver’s license. If you are unhappy with traffic laws in this country to the point that it makes your life miserable, you can move to another country where maximum speeds are higher or almost nonexistent. You could also continue living here and attempt to debate the matter with the powers that be. Oppositely, if you are intent on obeying the speed limit exactly as posted and find yourself frustrated with all the speeders along your commute who expect you to give into their pressure, you can stay in the slow lane as everyone else honks and blows past.

We find this comparison helpful for breaking down the false dichotomy between “forced” and “freely chosen” celibacy because most of time when people claim to be forced into something, there’s actually more to the story. Not long ago, the two of us were talking about a speeding ticket that Sarah had received on the way to work. Sarah’s first reaction to getting the ticket was, “I had to break the speed limit. Otherwise I would’ve been late for work. My students would have left the classroom by the time of my arrival, the class would have gotten behind, and it would have ruined my plan to spend two whole weeks on the next unit.” All of that is true, except for one sentence: the first. Sarah had the option to obey the speed limit but chose not to because in the balance of things, the possible consequences of being late for work seemed to outweigh the possible consequences of speeding. Being behind normal commute schedule and needing to make a difficult decision is not the same as being forced and having no options. In the same way, belonging to a Christian tradition with conservative teachings on sexual ethics is not the same as being forced into celibacy as an LGBT Christian. You can stay within the tradition and disobey its teachings, you can leave the tradition for a different one, you can take your disagreement up with a pastor, priest, or bishop, or you can be like the person in the slow lane on the freeway who obeys the law even when all other drivers are blaring their horns and giving you the finger. The last option is not the one most people choose, but it is an option nonetheless.

Now for the other part of our reader’s question: from where we stand, it doesn’t make sense to say that a person voicing a desire to live into a traditional sexual ethic is necessarily attempting to force beliefs or practices anyone else. That goes for major voices in the discussion as well as the average Joe or Mary in your parish.

Some celibate LGBT people do engage with non-celibates primarily through aggressive proselytization for celibacy. We’ve run into celibate people who are ready to condemn and make non-celibate people’s sex lives their business. We do not support this approach to discussing celibacy. But there are also celibate LGBT folks who do their best to obey the teachings of their Christian traditions while speaking publicly about their experiences for the benefit of anyone interested…and that’s all: no intention of insisting that every person make that same decision. These people understand that obedience cannot be forced because it is, by definition, a gift freely given. Most likely if asked, they will tell you about their convictions in a way that is neither self-righteous nor condemning.

These two approaches have almost nothing in common except that both are talking about celibacy. Conflating the two is no different from conflating the perspective a gay person who is openly involved with hookup culture and that of a gay person who is waiting until marriage to have sex with his/her partner. Both believe same-sex sexual activity is morally acceptable, but no one on the more liberal side of this discussion would ever argue that these two people are the same in ideology and approach. It would be equally ridiculous to argue that every celibate LGBT voice is part of some broader agenda to oppress everyone else in the LGBT community.

It’s important to discuss the very real problem of churches issuing celibacy mandates and having no further discussions about what it means to live celibacy as a vocation. We hope that conversation will happen within all Christian traditions. However, dwelling on descriptors like “forced celibacy” and “freely chosen celibacy” does more to hold back productive dialogue than help people who are sorting out sexual ethics questions in real life. We would encourage everyone involved in these discussions to stop fixating on “forced” or “chosen” and instead ask, “What can I do to support people in my parish who may be discerning a celibate vocation? If I am one of those discerning, how can I invite my faith community into this journey so they can support me?”

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.

Saturday Symposium: LGBT Celibates and the Media

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Over past couple of weeks, more than one of our celibate LGBT friends has been represented in questionable ways by journalists. At the same time, we were featured in a Washington Post article about LGBT celibates that we were reasonably happy with save a claim that celibate LGBT Christians “find it easier than before to be out of the closet in their traditional churches because they are celibate.” For a while now, we have been thinking that it might be helpful to tell our readers more about our approaches to interactions with journalists. It’s easy for stories to be used as weapons, either against other groups of people (e.g. a celibate’s story being used to bully non-celibate LGBT folks) or against the interviewee (e.g. a celibate’s story being used to argue that there’s actually no such person as a “celibate LGBT Christian”).

Unfortunately, it’s possible for factors beyond the interviewee’s control to yield harmful results. We are not blaming any of our friends for how they have been portrayed recently, and we are not going to name or link the specific articles because in the the interest of fairness we would need to contact their authors for comment, and we aren’t about to open conversation with writers who are only interested in publishing polemics about celibate LGBT Christians. That said, we would like to open today’s Saturday Symposium conversation a bit differently than usual. We’ll offer some of our own thoughts on how we have managed and continue to manage media interactions, and we would like to hear our readers’ thoughts on the questions we ask at the end.

When considering giving an interview to a journalist, we believe it is important to consider this question first: “How could the author’s proposed project further the discussion about celibate LGBT people in the Church?” Every author has an audience. We’re curious how sharing our story with a specific author’s audience might contribute something positive to the broader conversation.

Though journalists with questionable senses of ethics are a dime a dozen and therefore not always possible to identify, we think it’s a good idea to have a response plan in place in the event that the published article, book, or video resource uses our story dishonestly. Having an idea of how one might respond in the immediate and farther down the road when criticisms arise is an essential part of participating in any controversial discussion. We can’t promise that we’ll always do it perfectly, but our general response to any discrepancy between what we said and how it was reported in a given situation is to publish our own statement as quickly as possible afterward. As of now, our own statements of clarification and challenge have been directed toward other bloggers (and one journalist) who have used quotes from our blog out of context and without citation or linking. We have not yet experienced anything similar resulting from an actual interview, but if this were to happen our response would be much the same as the ones we have already needed to publish. It’s very important to us that our story not be used to abuse or bully.

That said, we’ve had many fruitful interactions with journalists in the past as well. There are several writers who have a genuine interest in exploring issues raised by LGBT celibates and introducing their own fan bases to LGBT stories that don’t fit the mold. We believe that the media does play an important role in continuing and broadening conversations that we have been participating in for years on a smaller scale. Beginning and maintaining positive relationships with journalists can be beneficial for all involved: in our experience, writers who have interviewed us in the past often continue interacting with us and raising questions that challenge us in ways that we need to be challenged.

Now, onto our usual set of weekend questions…

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: Where have you seen articles, books, videos, etc. that have contributed positively to existing conversations about LGBT people in the Church? What kinds of media contributions would you like to see on LGBT Christian topics in the future? In your opinion, which topics move conversation along, hold back needed conversation, or even set back a conversation that has already advanced? What roles do journalists, bloggers, church members, and others have in advancing the discussion?

We look forward to reading your responses. If you’re concerned about having your comment publicly associated with your name, please consider using the Contact Us page to submit your comment. We can post it under a pseudonym (i.e. John says, “your comment”) or summarize your comment in our own words (i.e. One person observed…). Participating in this kind of public dialogue can be risky, and we want to do what we can to protect you even if that means we preserve your anonymity. Have a wonderful weekend!

Blessings,

Sarah and Lindsey

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.

On Celibacy, Ménière’s Disease, and Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans

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A reflection by Sarah

Yesterday, a friend sent me an audiology journal article. It was a review of studies on positive experiences of hearing loss, tinnitus, and Ménière’s disease. He thought I would be interested because of the article’s inquiring about the positives of what most people see as negative life experiences, and he was absolutely right. I spent hours nerding out over all the citations. Then, I began thinking about celibacy and some responses I’ve seen to the recent Washington Post article on celibate gay Christians.

If you’ve been involved in conversations about LGBT people and the Church for even a few weeks, you’ve probably heard at least one person suggesting that celibacy is fine for those who experience it in positive ways, but damaging for those who experience it in negative ways. There’s some truth to this. I embrace my celibate vocation joyously and have never felt as though celibacy was being thrust upon me against my will. It’s probably accurate to say that this plays a role in my positive experience of celibacy, and there is probably a strong correlation between negative experiences of celibacy and perceptions of celibacy as “damaging.” But I wonder…what does it mean to have a “positive” experience of celibacy as opposed to a “negative” experience? What counts as positive, and what counts as negative? If celibacy is thrust upon a person against his or her will (which, again, I do not advocate), does that necessarily mean he or she will have no positive experiences of celibacy?

Unlike celibacy, Ménière’s disease is a reality that was thrust upon me. Though by the time of my diagnosis I already had friends in the Deaf community and was interested in learning ASL, I did not choose to experience rapidly progressive hearing loss, constant tinnitus, and unpredictable vertigo. Quitting my doctoral program due to the severity of these symptoms after reaching ABD status and writing three dissertation chapters was not what I had planned or wanted for my life. If someone had asked me in years prior to my diagnosis, “How would you feel if you found out that you were losing your hearing?” I’m sure I would have responded with one word: “Devastated.”

Ménière’s disease is a condition that most people would consider a negative-only life experience, yet in every study referenced in the article I read yesterday, significant numbers of participants were reporting multiple kinds of positive experiences. Some of these I would not consider positive even though other people do (e.g. being undisturbed by the sounds of other people). My own experience of this condition has included many aspects that I consider positive even though others might not. I’ve noticed that my visual experience of the world is changing in some fascinating ways. Before I draw or paint, my mental images of what I’m about to put on paper or canvas are more vibrant now than they have been in the past. My color-grapheme synesthesia is stronger. I’m experiencing my relationship with God, His Mother, and the saints in new and helpful ways. I’m growing in compassion for others with disabilities, and my sense of how God is calling me to love is changing for the better. I’m finding friendship and community with late-deafened adults and people who have grown up culturally Deaf. Each of these items is a kind of positive experience that I wouldn’t have imagined possible in my life before Ménière’s disease. Everything on this list is a reason to rejoice. It’s true that often, I find myself exhausted and frustrated after putting every ounce of energy into making the best out of days when the spinning just doesn’t stop, but acknowledging this does not negate all other aspects of my experience.

In conversations about celibacy, Christianity, and the LGBT community, there is a tendency to see everything in black and white. Some people will not dialogue at all unless you’re interested in debating whether or not gay sex is a sin, or whether or not churches should bless same-sex marriages. Others cannot see celibacy outside of, “It’s fine for people who experience it positively, but not for people who experience it negatively.” In real life, few kinds of human experience are wholly positive or wholly negative. Most are mixed bags — or to use a Harry Potter analogy, boxes of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans. There’s plenty of cinnamon and peppermint, but somewhere in the box there’s also vomit and troll bogey. Sometimes I think I’m about to begin chewing on a toffee and it turns out to be earwax instead. This is just as likely to be true whether I’m referencing celibacy, hearing loss, my relationship with Lindsey, or almost any other reality of my life at present. Why pretend that celibacy or any other life experience must be either a chocolate frog or an acid pop? Why does it have to be one or the other?

Insisting that a person’s decision to live celibacy inevitably leads either to joy or despair and that the latter is far more common ignores the lived experiences of almost every celibate person I know. I’m interested in hearing from people who have felt thrust into celibacy in a similar way as I’ve felt thrust into Ménière’s disease: have you experienced anything positive as a result? I’m also interested in learning about other opinions on what kinds of experiences count as “positive” and “negative.” For example, does, “I don’t have to worry about STDs” or “I am at peace because I know I’m being faithful to my Christian tradition” count as a positive experience? Or must a positive experience of celibacy be more along the lines of, “I feel happy and fulfilled most days”? Can we determine objectively what constitutes a positive or negative experience of celibacy? Is it ever appropriate to suggest that another person’s “positive” experience is actually a “negative” experience and that he/she is wrong but may not realize it yet? Rather than sharing my current opinions on these questions, I welcome our readers to share theirs in the comments.

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.