Author Archives: sarahandlindsey

Saturday Symposium: Struggles and Self-Care

Posted on by

Good morning, readers. We hope your weekend is off to a great start.

We want to thank you for another great week of interactions here at A Queer Calling. We truly appreciate the kind and respectful dialogue this space is able to foster because of the grace and compassion you show us in the comments section and on Twitter. We have received a lot of email this week, so it might take us a few days to get back to you if you have written to us, and we thank you in advance for your understanding. Now, we would like to share with you our new “Saturday Symposium” question.

How this works: It’s very simple. We ask a multi-part question related to a topic we’ve blogged about during the past week or are considering blogging about in the near future, and you, our readers, share your responses in the comments section. Feel free to be open, reflective, and vulnerable…and to challenge us. But as always, be mindful of the comment policy that ends each of our posts. Usually, we respond fairly quickly to each comment, but in order to give you time to think, come back, add more later if you want, and discuss with other readers, we will wait until after Monday to respond to comments on Saturday Symposium questions.

This week’s Saturday Symposium question: This week, some of our posts have touched on the themes of struggle and self-care. In When Legal Recognition MATTERS, we shared our concerns about navigating aspects of life together that necessitate our having some form of legal relationship to each other, and how determining the best way to meet our needs in this realm has been a struggle. In Providing Spiritual Direction, we spoke to the struggles LGBT people can face when seeking spiritual direction and the difficulties spiritual directors might have in trying to support LGBT directees. In Sometimes, I just need a date night… Lindsey reflected on how the practice of date night as an individual or a couple can be a good self-care strategy. And in Dealing with Loneliness, we addressed the assumption that loneliness is the greatest struggle for celibate LGBT people. This Saturday, we are interested in knowing: what do you perceive to be the greatest struggle that LGBT people face in the Church or in the world? What do you see as the greatest struggle for celibate LGBT people? If you are a celibate LGBT person, what self-care strategies do you use when life gets overwhelming? Which ones work best for you?

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.

Choosing Celibacy: Why I’m Glad I Waited

Posted on by

A reflection by Sarah

There’s a story that celibate gay people are supposed to tell with regard to how and why we became celibate. It’s little more than a variation on the ex-gay narrative that dominated the discussion about LGBT people in the Church until recent years. It goes something like: “I lived the gay lifestyle, was a slave to promiscuity, did a lot of drinking and drugging, and then years later, realized something was missing from my life: Jesus. I repented, began seeing a Christian counselor, and ultimately God helped me to stop having sex.” That’s not the story you’re about to read. That story, excepting the substance abuse bit (a topic I might address in the future), is not mine.

Lately, I’ve been seeing a certain type of popular article emerging on the Internet: different riffs on the theme, “Reasons I’m Glad I Married Young.” I have a number of friends who married immediately after high school graduation (some during high school) and many more who tied the knot during college or within a year of graduating. My younger sister met her future husband in college and married last June, just three weeks shy of her 23rd birthday. My parents were high school sweethearts and married two months after my father’s college graduation. I have no opposition to people embracing the vocation of marriage at early ages if they feel so inclined. I’m happy for my friends who have felt called to this pathway, and I wish them many joyous years of life with their spouses and children. But reading articles like this one and this one tends to evoke a consistent reaction in me: “I’m glad I waited until my late twenties to choose celibacy, and to begin a celibate partnership of the forever kind. I’m glad that I did not commit to this vocation at an earlier age.”

At this point, you might be perplexed. To many, celibacy seems like a default condition in life. It’s the temporary state that traditional Christianity teaches a person is supposed to maintain until marriage. It only becomes permanent once a person reaches his/her marriageable expiration date and becomes a bachelor or old maid, or less often, once a person embraces a call to religious life. Many view it as the state of life for those who are too young to have sex, those of age who are simply waiting for Mr. or Ms. Right, and those who don’t have a prayer of ever experiencing sexual activity in their lifetimes. And if you’re young, society tells you that you’re supposed to avoid the last category at all costs. If you’ve been reading any of our other posts, you’re probably well aware that Lindsey and I don’t see celibacy this way. We believe that celibacy is as much a commitment to a way of life as is marriage, and that in order to make such a commitment, either as a single or with a partner, one needs to be prepared.

I wasn’t born prepared for celibacy any more than my sister was born prepared for marriage. In fact, if someone had told me as a teenager that I would eventually end up living a celibate lifestyle, I would have thought that person was a few apples short of a bushel. Even by age 19 when I had begun to consider the possibility of a monastic vocation, celibacy was still more of a faraway possibility than a realistic pathway for working out my salvation. During my time as an undergraduate and, to a lesser extent, as a master’s degree student, I visited several monasteries and attended a number of retreats aimed at vocational discernment. There was something about the way nuns loved and gave selflessly to the world that captivated me. The witness of several sisters I had known personally spoke to my heart in a way nothing ever had before. But I never could conceive of myself actually becoming a nun.

In many ways, I desired what the sisters had, but every time I visited a community and started to head home afterward I thought, “This way of life isn’t for me. There’s something about it that just doesn’t fit.” I attempted to discuss this with friends, spiritual directors, and other people I trusted. Everyone seemed to have the same set of questions: “Is it the celibacy thing? The fact that nuns can’t have sex? You can’t see yourself living a life without sex, can you?” Though I knew all along that it wasn’t the “not having sex” part that was bothering me, I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the problem was. The way the sisters cared for each other and the people they served, the spiritual life they shared in community, the generosity that was so apparent in every moment of every day at the monasteries…though I’d had a couple of less-than-pleasant monastery visits, in general I could think only of the positives. Still, it was all too easy to reach the premature conclusion that if I didn’t feel called to join a religious community, God wasn’t calling me to a celibate vocation after all.

In the midst of all my monastery adventures, I was also engaged in another type of exploration. Though I can now remember being attracted to other females from as early as age 8 or 9, the idea that I might be “one of those girls who likes other girls” hit me hard for the first time around age 17 when I was a senior in high school and was dating a boy. It took me a few years more to realize that “lesbian” was the most fitting term for describing my sexual orientation, and slowly I began dating other women. My first sexual experience with another woman came during my senior year of college. The relationship I had with this person was significant on many levels, and I’ll always value the ways in which our emotional intimacy helped me to learn about loving and being loved. Throughout most of my twenties, I pursued a number of romantic relationships, many of them having a sexual element. Some were more serious than others, and some included aspects that I am not proud of, but I can say with confidence that each of these women had something to teach me with regard to becoming more fully human and coming to understand Christ’s love with greater intensity. I struggled a great deal with the conflict between my positive experiences of love shared with other women and my perception of the celibacy mandate I heard constantly from clergy and lay members of the Church. While I am now grateful for the celibate vocation I eventually committed to cultivating in partnership with Lindsey, I am also thankful for many aspects of the intimate relationships I experienced before making this commitment. Those two feelings are not mutually exclusive.

All things considered, why am I glad that I waited to choose celibacy? The answer is simple: because when I did choose this way of life, I was ready to embrace it fully—its beauty, its mystery, and its challenges. Taking the time I needed to mature and prepare for this vocation was absolutely necessary–even though during the process, I wasn’t always aware of that for which I was preparing.

When Lindsey and I first decided to become partners, all the missing pieces from my active vocational discernment period began falling into place. The notion that celibacy might be the way God was calling me to live reemerged, and this time it made sense in a way it never had before. It no longer felt like a distant possibility or an order handed down from a tyrant. The very first hour we began to envision what life together might look like, I remembered wise words I had heard from a nun during a monastery visit eight years prior. I had asked Sister Elizabeth, “When did you know for sure that God was calling you to this vocation, and in this specific monastic community?” I’ve never forgotten her reply: “I knew when I visited the monastery and felt an unmistakable sense of joy.” From day one of my partnership with Lindsey, there has been no expression more fitting than “joy” for what we experience together—whether we are taking an exciting road trip, praying Compline, visiting our favorite cupcakery, wringing out laundry due to the washing machine’s malfunctioning mid-cycle, or arguing because of a misunderstanding. But even as powerfully as I feel that joy now, I am equally convinced that if I had attempted forcing myself into celibacy within the wrong context for me or at a time when I was not prepared, profound depression and emptiness would have been the most likely result.

I am glad I waited to choose celibacy because I believe it is a gift—or at least it can be. Waiting allowed me the opportunity to listen as God gradually, in His own time, invited me to discover it and begin unwrapping the layers. Waiting also gave me several years to reflect and reach the conclusion that celibacy is not simply the default state for the unmarried—that it is a way of life one must actively choose, and defining it as “the absence of sex” limits the meaning of all celibate vocations. All too often, Christians encourage celibate LGBT people to forget the experiences of their non-celibate pasts, viewing these as times of sin to be regretted and pushed aside. I believe this approach is unhealthy and detrimental to the development of a mature spirituality. Because I waited to choose celibacy, I am able to look fondly upon all previous stages of my emotional, spiritual, and sexual development and know that each period of my life thus far has brought with it new wisdom, insight, and lessons taught by others far wiser than me.

The decision to embrace any vocation is just that—a decision, and one that requires careful thought and formation within the context of a supportive community. Sometimes, I wonder what might happen if the Church were to take as much responsibility for guiding and directing those God calls to celibacy as it does for those God calls to marriage. But perhaps that’s a question for another time.

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.

Dealing with Loneliness

Posted on by

Since we have started this blog, we’ve noted different people on the Internet and in real life creating questions to help them make sense of the choices we have made. Some of the questions have included: Are these two terribly oppressed by religion?, Do they have non-existent sex drives?, How long could they possibly last as a ‘celibate’ couple?, and What kind of boundaries do they have?. Recently, Mark Yarhouse authored a blog post where he encouraged people to avoid rushing to judgment about how we have chosen to live our lives as LGBT Christians. In this post, he writes, “I suspect that for them it feels like the ‘risks’ (if you will) associated with a partnership of this kind outweigh the potential for loneliness or isolation many people report in remaining single.” Here, Yarhouse seems to be suggesting that we embarked on our partnership together with an expressed intention of avoiding loneliness. Indeed, loneliness is often perceived as the issue for LGBT people adopting a celibate way of life. Wesley Hill’s book Washed and Waiting devotes nearly 30 pages in an attempt to give celibate LGBT people hope that loneliness can end. However, we think it is all too easy to view loneliness as a celibate person’s most significant struggle, and also to assume that two people have decided to live in a celibate partnership because it is the best alternative to lifelong loneliness.

First a disclaimer: We have both benefited from being embedded in many different kinds of communities before we ever met each other. Being in academia (as we both are) connects an individual to communities where people regularly share ideas, have reasonably flexible schedules, and organize periodic social events. We’ve lived with roommates, housemates, and alone. We currently live together, and we suspect that celibate people who live their lives in community with others experience loneliness differently than people who live alone.

Now for a more direct answer to the implicit question raised.

To be completely honest, loneliness was the farthest thing from our minds when we began our relationship. We had spent several months getting to know each other as friends. Sharing life together came naturally for us. We have common interests, life goals, and spiritual commitments. Our lives intersected in an organic way, and we fell into a rhythm of doing life together.

We’ve seen plenty of people from across the entire sexual orientation spectrum enter into romantic relationships with the intention of overcoming loneliness. From where we sit, these relationships are ripe for partners to manipulate each other. In this sort of relationship, a person becomes a means to an end rather than being seen and appreciated as an individual. We’d also contend that people in relationships driven primarily by a desire to overcome loneliness will likely struggle to live out a celibate vocation together. The pull of overcoming loneliness can cause the pair involved to look inwardly towards each other rather than outwardly towards a radical hospitality.

While it seems like we are speaking from a privileged position of being in a relationship, we would like to point out that in certain circumstances, being in a relationship can actually cause people to experience profound loneliness. Sarah has had previous experiences in committed relationships, some involving sexual intimacy, that lacked the emotional and spiritual depth required to be vulnerable, to feel safe, to be heard, and to feel validated. When committed relationships of any kind carry with them a vacuum of love and support, a person can experience the most profound sense of loneliness associated with being rejected by the person with whom he or she is trying to share life. There’s at least some truth in the adage that you must first learn to enjoy being in a relationship with yourself before you have much to offer another in a committed partnership, celibate or otherwise.

It also strikes us as sort of bonkers that two people would forge a lasting partnership from the ordering of “I’m lonely, you’re lonely, let’s be lonely together!” Lonely is an individual emotion in which every person has to sort his or her preferred strategies for coping. When Lindsey feels lonely, Lindsey distinctly prefers to take a walk in solitude somewhere reasonably connected with nature or to enjoy a special treat like a cupcake. When Sarah feels lonely, Sarah seeks a change of venue and looks for opportunities to be around a lot of people in the city, having random conversations with people hanging out in different places. We’d contend that loneliness is an emotion that can clue us in that something’s not quite right. It’s a valid emotion to look out for. When loneliness is not addressed, it can lead to unhealthy forms of isolation; but the two states do not need to go hand-in-hand.

We do not mean to trivialize how other people experience loneliness. In some ways, we think it makes sense to speak of the experience of a celibate, LGBT person as alienating. A celibate, LGBT person can experience a double-whammy of social exclusion in a world that normalizes the experience of married, cisgender, heterosexual people. It can be difficult for any unmarried individual to feel especially at home among peers who are establishing families. It is much harder when unmarried people feels as though they need to be vigilant less they let their LGBT statuses “slip” in unsafe contexts. We are grateful that more LGBT Christians have come out of the closet even in very conservative Christian traditions. It’s harder to feel alienated when you know other people like yourself.

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.

Sometimes, I just need a date night…

Posted on by

A reflection by Lindsey

I call after Sarah, “Please don’t change into your being-at-home clothes quite yet!” After raising one eyebrow, “Well, why not?” she makes eye contact before I say, “Because I want to take you out on a date.”

A couple of weeks ago, I found myself at my wit’s end. I have been on the job market for about a month. Unexpected job loss can take quite a toll on a person… and on a family team. My temperament has been off, fluctuating through the range of distressed to desperate to oddly hopeful to plain annoyed to…. you get the idea. The Big Financial Squeeze has its way of zapping energy out of me. Earlier in that day, I had a job interview. I drove the long-ish drive to the office building, had a reasonable-length interview, and was home before lunch. I made sure to drive all the way home because the cheapest food is food you already have. As I sat in the quiet eating my pasta, I couldn’t help but hear the voices that said, “HA! You just had a ‘day’s work’ and you were home by lunch!” and “Do you realize you spent more time traveling to the interview than you spent time interviewing? You’re a loser!”

These accusations are par for the course when navigating something like chronic depression. You know they aren’t true, you know they aren’t even coming from your own thoughts, and you know there is precious little you can do under your own power to make them shut up and give you a moment’s peace. I have gained some practice in overcoming the inertia of my own tapes. I started by looking at any objective evidence that the tapes might be uttering truths. Taking stock forward from that week, I realized I had secured some freelance work, likely had some additional temporary work on the way, and just finished an interview for a full-time position. Not surprisingly, the tapes were complete and utter hogwash, and I could consider an alternative. There was cause for cutting myself a break, for finding some space to be myself, and for celebrating. There was space for date night.

I began the practice of “Date Night” many years ago by taking myself out on dates whenever I felt so inclined. Panera, a walkable neighborhood, Noodles and Co., the local park, neighborhood coffee shops, and Pizza Hut offered me sanctuary at key moments when I needed to show myself an extra special dose of kindness. Although I was a cheap date (and very much relish in the skills associated with practicing Date Night on a budget), I began learning how to extend radical hospitality to others by first offering it to myself. I learned how to check in with myself and ask, “Lindsey, what do you really want to do right now?” I came to see myself as a worthwhile person and practiced simply being alone. The video below has some great pointers if you’re looking for a way to start.

As Sarah and I have gotten to know each other, I’ve brought my “Date Night” practice with me. It is something that we look forward to doing together. We never know when the other one will pull on the cord that opens the Date Night parachute, so we do our best always to have a few possibilities. We love cupcakes, Restaurant.com certificates, walks to various free things to do, outings to some of our favorite places if the day and time permits, and getting dinner together. We keep options open for every Date Night budget. I do my best to watch for when Sarah needs the time in addition to monitoring how I am feeling. We figure out what we are going to do, always knowing that a “plan” amounts to little more than figuring out travel directions. I think the only “rule” we have is that we must definitely get out of the house when enjoying a date.

A couple of weeks ago, we decided it was high time to use a Restaurant.com certificate that we had been sitting on for several months. It felt like a day where it was best to break completely from the routine. We tend to purchase certificates in bulk on different promotional days, and we bantered back and forth before deciding on a German restaurant. Truth be told, I don’t know much about German food, but I was feeling up for a culinary experience. We found ourselves in a small restaurant we wouldn’t have even known existed. As we looked over the menu, we listened to a live pianist and breathed a bit. We laughed as we realized that we could meet our certificate’s minimum spending guideline just choosing the two entrees and desserts we wanted to try. I always try to pick my meal so that it has components Sarah and I can share. Culinary adventures are more fun with multiple people; and, I thought the bread dumplings sounded interesting as I looked to pick the side dishes that would go with my dinner. Time seemed to stand still as we sat together, broke bread, shared a meal in a delightful venue, refreshed our spirits, and enjoyed one another’s company. We left the restaurant revitalized, and promised to return again and continue sampling from the dessert menu.

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.

Providing Spiritual Direction

Posted on by

We do our best to maintain an active Twitter feed where we socialize with people reading our blog in real time. We regularly ask people what questions they have or what topics they would like us to address on the blog. One of our Twitter friends raised the following questions: How do you view spiritual direction? How would you counsel spiritual directors of LGBT people?

We’ll start with a brief, but hopefully helpful, definition of spiritual direction. We believe that spiritual direction is a process forged in a mutually respectful relationship where a spiritual director comes alongside a person to help that person discern how God may be calling him or her to grow ever-increasingly towards Christ-likeness. Every human being finds himself or herself negotiating complex realities where it’s not immediately clear how God might be working in and through the specific circumstances. We think spiritual directors would do well to remind themselves constantly that spiritual direction is a fearsome task that must be fully bathed in prayer. Good spiritual directors spend the vast majority of time in spiritual direction listening, both to the person seeking spiritual direction and to God.

Relative to providing spiritual direction to LGBT members of a parish community, we think it worth mentioning that LGBT people are first and foremost people. An LGBT person will bring very similar concerns to spiritual direction as a cisgender, heterosexual person. Many times, LGBT people will be talking with spiritual directors about all sorts of human issues before discussing their LGBT status. However, as soon as a person discloses his or her LGBT status, many spiritual directors truncate their usual practices and immediately start talking. For some spiritual directors, learning that a person is gay can cue an auto-tape where suddenly, the spiritual director is the font of all wisdom and the gay person cannot get a word in edgewise. If you find yourself as a spiritual director with this habit, stop that. So many LGBT people have encountered such a great number of auto-tapes that they have adopted a habit of listening politely once, and then never darkening the church’s doorstep again.

One reason spiritual directors start talking and stop listening is they make assumptions about what a person means when disclosing his or her LGBT status. The sentence “I’m gay” can conjure up all sorts of associations. As a strategy for cutting through the script, spiritual directors can ask questions like “What does being gay mean to you?” to offer reassurances that they are still listening and care about providing direction to a person. It’s also great to ask questions like “Have you discussed this with anyone else? What were their reactions?” Sentences like, “I’m glad you thought you could broach this subject with me,” can be reassuring to some people. We think it’s impossible to go wrong in telling LGBT people that they are welcome in your faith community, they are beloved by God, and you know that they bring a tremendous blessing to your community. You might be the first spiritual director from within your tradition ever to tell that LGBT person he or she is welcome in the parish.

We think there are two main ways certain auto-tapes can negatively impact members of the LGBT community. One, some spiritual directors can default into assigning someone a vocation. A reasonably common assigned vocation is, “Well, if you’re gay, then you have to be celibate.” For many LGBT people, this assignment comes like an unfunded mandate at best and a death sentence at worst. Another commonly assigned vocation is, “Well, just pray and God will enable you to live fully into a heterosexual marriage.” This latter assigned vocation can lead to false hopes and produce destroyed lives should the LGBT person feel obligated to enter a mixed-orientation marriage. Two, other spiritual directors try to emphasize guiding people towards normative gender expectations. Spiritual directors will typically start these auto-tapes with sentences like, “Your identity should be in Christ. You are a powerful, strong, and talented MAN of God!” When spiritual directors using this approach begin to pray for people, they emphasize pronouns: “God, thank you for SUSAN. Guide HER into all truth, showing HER your plans for HER life. Help HER to see HERSELF as you see HER.” They start encouraging “the guys” to join in on various athletic teams organized by the church while connecting “the girls” with opportunities to serve in the children’s ministry. For transgender and genderqueer individuals, this kind of pastoral treatment can leave them feeling invisible and discarded. For gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals, all of a sudden gender norms have become the sole marker of their “gifts” to their community.

While some LGBT people may feel comfortable with educating their spiritual directors on matters related to sexual orientation and gender identity, many (even most) likely will not. Do not automatically expect an LGBT person to educate you. If you as a spiritual director do not have any experience offering spiritual direction to LGBT individuals, then default towards treating them like your other parishioners. Trust God to give you wisdom about how to respond to specific individuals (because everyone is different) and know that each LGBT person is likely figuring out his or her own queer calling. If you’d like us to try to track down resources that might be useful for your specific context, feel free to use the comments box or our Contact Us form. One good starting resource is a documentary called Through My Eyes that can give you some idea what it might be like to sit across the table from a young adult trying to sort questions of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Relative to your own education as a spiritual director, think about what you know about marriage and celibacy as vocations. It can be helpful for you to review what your own Christian tradition says about marriage and celibacy from a theological standpoint. Too many spiritual directors look for resources about what their tradition teaches about homosexuality. In traditions that regard homosexuality as a sin full stop, the official teaching can be focused so much on exhortations to avoid homosexual sin that it backs LGBT people into a corner. For example, it’s commonplace that spiritual directors will recommend that men do not cultivate close, intimate friendships with women unless the man intends to marry a woman. When you apply this counsel to LGBT people, it can sound like “We don’t want you to have close, intimate friendships with people of your same sex because you will be constantly facing temptation, but you still can’t have close, intimate friendships with people of the opposite sex because we don’t let heterosexual people do that unless they are planning on marrying each other.” An LGBT person trying to follow such direction can very easily find himself or herself cut off from all relationships; and, these efforts can wreak havoc on the person’s sense of well-being and acceptance. If you as a spiritual director focus on finding resources about marriage and celibacy, then you’ll have a much greater appreciation of the struggles LGBT people have applying the existing teaching to their lives… and you’ll be in a better place to help them locate information within the context of your specific Christian tradition.

Because Christian culture broadly understood is readily perceived as telling LGBT people NO!, we’d like to stress that good spiritual directors want to cut through the noise in order to find all of the yeses associated with an abundant life in Christ. Many Christian LGBT people can be so aware of what they cannot do that they lack any assurances that there are things they can do. Remember that good spiritual direction is borne out of a mutually respectful relationship that encourages a person to cultivate greater Christ-likeness. As a spiritual director, it’s important to meet people where they are so you can journey towards Christ together. Keep your focus on Christ, cultivate humility by practicing empathy, and be quick to ask for forgiveness when you make mistakes. May the light of Christ illumine the way.

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.