Category Archives: Commitment

“You have my prayers and support…unless you’re a sinner.”

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A reflection by Lindsey

We have received some difficult news about how quickly Sarah’s Meniere’s disease is progressing. In the last 48 hours, both of us have had to deal with countless insensitive remarks that leave us feeling drained, isolated, and alone. I’m fluctuating between emotions of being absolutely irate, feeling overwhelmed, and sad. I find the Psalms of lament ringing deeply true, especially if I stop after the Psalmist has laid out the case for why life presently sucks. It’s hard to push forward to the end of the Psalm where we get the goods of being able to trust in God’s awesome majesty.

In seasons like this one, I find myself listening to a lot of Christian radio. It may be simply that I’m in my car a fair bit, driving from Point A to Point B. But when life is hard, I can’t help but notice the lyrics and periodically hear what the DJs have to say. I hear the announcements of “We’d love to pray for you; just drop us a line!” and “We know that prayer works. Don’t hesitate to give us a call,” and I can’t help but feel sad. I’m sad because I wish I could call up the station and say something to the effect of,

Hey, I’m so glad that you are praying for people. Right now, I am feeling like I’ve been hit by a ton of bricks. My partner Sarah has a condition called Meniere’s disease that’s progressing rapidly. We just found out that Sarah has lost all hearing in the right ear. Over the next several weeks, the doctor is going to start a series of injections to try to stop the vertigo attacks but the injections are risky. We’re trying to hope for the best, but I can’t help but be afraid that Sarah might lose more hearing in the left ear before Christmas. We’re trying to be proactive by learning ASL. Sarah has friends who know more ASL than I do, and it helps that Sarah has a knack for languages. I wish I could do better so I could be able to sign for Sarah during periods of significant hearing loss, especially when we’re at church together. This burden is hard to carry because there are so many unknowns, and I’d feel better if people were praying for Sarah, for the medical team, and for us as a family as we navigate through this together.

And truth be told, I can’t ever see myself sharing this prayer request with the radio station or my church’s congregational listserv. There’s something very wrong with the universe where I feel safer putting this prayer request on the blog before I’ve even shared it with the entirety of my Facebook friends list. I’ve thought about this prayer request for days. Every time it crosses my mind, the same question pops up: “Is there any way to make this request without using the word partner?” I find myself paralyzed because the answer to this question is empathically “No.” My emotional and spiritual realities right now are what they are because I am Sarah’s partner. I am going to be here through thick and thin. I am going to figure out how to drop everything to be by Sarah’s side if and when I am needed. I am going to do my very best to learn ASL because I am sure as hell not going to lose my ability to communicate with Sarah. I do not care if other people think I am making mountains out of molehills. At the end of the day, I’m the only person who can look myself in the mirror to answer if I’m living a life of integrity. And with that conviction, you can bet the farm that I am going to call Sarah my partner because I know Sarah would choose the exact same word if our positions were switched.

The instant I choose to call Sarah my partner, I see a tremendous amount of ugliness in the Body of Christ. I can’t bring myself to call the Christian radio station because I’m scared of hearing, “There’s no way we can pray for you and your partner. If you really cared for each other, you wouldn’t be living together.” Putting the word partner out there on a congregational listserv means that even the people most marginally attached to my Sunday morning community may, and likely will feel compelled to speak judgment into my life. People who come most Sundays know that Sarah and I are partners even if we choose not to use that word at church, and even if they choose not to think about it more often than once a week. There are members of our community who would be willing to pray for me or Sarah during individual difficult circumstances, but seem afraid to pray for both of us together lest it appear that they are condoning sin.

So many Christian communities are carefully balanced apple carts where using a word like partner in a prayer request can ignite years of debate. On the blog, I feel safer because there are 193 other posts to reflect on our experiences as a celibate, LGBT, Christian couple. If someone decides to be a jerk in the comments, we can choose to moderate the comment or to answer his or her comment in part by highlighting other posts we’ve written. I like feeling the security of having a reasonably civil venue where I have some control over how the discussion unfolds. It bothers me that I have been in Christian environments for over 15 years where I know that my fears of judgment, gossip chains, and rumor mills are entirely well-founded.

And when I think about how every other LGBT Christian I know can relate to my fears on one level or another, I get irate. How have we gotten to a point where two syllables in a prayer request have the potential to split congregations? How do we claim to be a “loving community” when we deny principal caregivers space to share their burdens with others? How do we even begin to communicate to others that we would much rather find ourselves closer to the heart of the Body of Christ?

I don’t have good answers to those questions. I’m stuck trying to figure out how to find my strength in Christ even when I feel explicitly rejected and judged by those who make following Him their public priority. Right now, I find myself relying on selective hearing, a driving bass line, and a pretty solid drum beat.

I’m in a war, every minute. I know for sure I’ll never win it. I am David up against Goliath… You. Are. Bigger than every battle I’m facing… All by myself, I fall to pieces, but You are strong when I am weakest…You. Are. Bigger than every battle I’m facing…

And there’s a distinct part of me that prays fervently that as I find some places where I can be transparent about what I’m going through, life might be just a little bit better for the next LGBT caregiver to request prayers for his or her partner.

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.

When Churches Talk from Both Sides of Their Mouths

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In the past week, friends have shared with us two news stories where gay men active in church communities have been effectively forced out of their churches after they entered into same-sex marriages. The first story we saw concerned a Montana gay couple who have been a relationship for 30 years before marrying in Seattle in 2013. The couple was asked to secure a civil divorce, cease living together, and write a statement affirming marriage as being between one man and one woman. The second story we saw involved a Minnesota church music director being asked to resign after marrying his long-term partner. In today’s post, we wanted to focus on one aspect of these developing stories. If you click the above link about the gay couple in Montana, you can read:

Huff and Wojtowick both said they never intended to force the issue of same-sex marriage, or to provoke a conflict with the Catholic Church. If fact, neither man is entirely comfortable in describing their relationship as a marriage, preferring instead to refer to it as a civil union or a domestic partnership.

“Neither one of us believes the term should have been marriage,” Huff said. “We understand that marriage is a union between heterosexual couples.”

Instead, Huff and Wojtowick said they sought a legal union to safeguard their joint financial interests heading toward the later years of their lives.

“We’re getting old,” Huff said. “There is no other avenue for us in the Catholic Church to protect ourselves financially — our Social Security benefits or our home, which is in both our names. If something happened to one of us, we need some protection.”

Let’s begin by clearing the air about our intentions in writing this post. We are not making an argument in favor of same-sex marriage. We are also not arguing that any Christian tradition should change its understanding about the nature of marriage. We are calling out the hypocrisy that results when churches say they want to protect LGBT people from unjust discrimination while also actively campaigning against every form of legal arrangement that would allow couples to commit to caring for one another until the end of their earthly lives.

First, we wonder if some of these churches are at all willing hear why LGBT people want legal recognition in the first place. The gay couple in Montana had been living together for 30 years before seeking legal recognition for their relationship. According to every news source we’ve read, they travelled quietly to Seattle in search of a legally-binding civil acknowledgment. Now 66 and 73, these two men decided it would be a good idea to start arranging for retirement benefits, joint assets, and end-of-life care. We wouldn’t be surprised if when the younger partner hit 65, both men realized, “Wow, we’re getting pretty old,” then began exploring their options for fear of being disenfranchised in the event of one partner’s illness or death. As we’ve read the articles, we’ve found ourselves scratching our heads and wondering, “Is the pastor of this church even listening to the couple’s concerns about retirement and end-of-life issues?” Accessing various forms of legal protection requires that people have legally recognized relationships. When churches resist every possible legal arrangement that confers rights to LGBT couples, those churches effectively communicate that they don’t care about hospital visitation, health care proxies, inequities in employment and housing, financial stability, and end-of-life care. Some people might say, “The church is just protecting marriage.” While one could make that argument, it’s also true that many churches have fought hard to prevent civil unions, domestic partnerships, and other legal options for LGBT couples. Marriage is but one form of legal acknowledgment, and over the past three decades, conservative churches have resisted all forms of legal recognition.

Second, we wonder if conservative churches realize how the “choices” they offer LGBT people are formulated in terms of all-or-nothing. Again, the Montana couple had lived together for 30 years while attending their church on a weekly basis. Everyone knew that the two men were a couple. They’re from a small town. Yet, the pastor asked the couple to divorce civilly and to stop living together even though their living arrangement did not result from their getting a civil marriage. For all we know, this couple might be a celibate pair like us. It’s possible. We’ve known other celibate pairs who have sought civil marriages because after researching legal options, they felt they had no other choice for meeting their legal needs. Our own experiences have shown us that conservative churches are rarely interested in listening to the problems their LGBT members are facing because it’s easier to parrot, “Just don’t have sex. Don’t have close relationships with people of the same sex, or of the opposite sex. Spend the rest of your life making sure that no one thinks you’re sinning sexually.” Lindsey remembers seeking spiritual direction where all of the pastoral advice centered upon avoiding any appearance of evil lest there be scandal. One person when so far as to recommend that Lindsey live on the outskirts of a monastic community. When churches insist that all LGBT members live single and celibate lives that could never possibly be construed as experiencing emotional or spiritual intimacy with others, churches effectively send a message that it’s far preferable for LGBT people to come home to an empty house every night to fight intense battles with loneliness and isolation than to grow from rich human connection. Along with this comes the message that the way a legal arrangement “appears” to others is more important than preventing injustice against LGBT people.

Third, we wonder if churches can see the ways they often force LGBT people to endure public humiliation. Several of our LGBT Christian friends have raised questions about whether other congregants would be asked to write a formal statement affirming a particular set of theological ideas. Should an engaged straight couple have to write a formal statement affirming their belief in teachings on premarital sex? Looking at the local news coverage, we think it’s clear that the two men would be much more comfortable with language like civil union or domestic partnership to describe their relationship because of how they understand the word marriage. The first news story we saw focused on 300 congregants preparing to meet with the bishop to discuss the situation. It seems these two men never imagined that 300 people would even become aware of their civil marriage in the first place. Again, the couple sought to establish a civil arrangement quietly out of state. It doesn’t seem like they wanted to be the center of attention. When churches actively resist every form of legal arrangement that permits LGBT people to care for one another, churches actually create situations that shine a spotlight on LGBT people even when no attention is being sought.

Fourth, we wonder if churches realize how harmful it is to emphasize swift discipline over spiritual direction in an ongoing relationship with the pastor. A little-known detail of the Montana story is that the pastor had only been with the congregation for four days. We don’t know how the pastor even became aware of the couple’s out-of-state arrangement. The couple went to Seattle over a year ago for the purpose of becoming legally recognized, and according to their own statements, they weren’t interested in proclaiming this to the world. Not knowing the full details of the events in Montana, we are left to question whether a person who thought the couple may have made legal arrangements combed public records to prove the couple had indeed married. Yes, this actually happens in churches, and it’s a lot more common than some people might think. Sarah remembers a time at one of Sarah’s former churches when a heterosexual couple contracted their marriage civilly before meeting with their pastor to discuss having their marriage blessed by the church. The couple intended on abstaining from communion until they could have a meeting with the pastor. Before the couple could schedule a meeting, a congregant had searched the public record and had alerted the pastor that the couple had married. The pastor’s immediate response was to deny the couple communion in a public manner before ever discussing the matter with them (despite the fact that they were not seeking to commune at that time). The couple was a bit confused as to how the pastor knew before they had told him what happened, and that the situation played out as it did because another parishioner had searched the public record. While we do not know exactly what happened in Montana, we think this is an important issue to raise more generally because we’ve seen a pattern of people using public records to out others in pastorally difficult circumstances. In situations like the one Sarah witnessed, claiming that the actions of the couple caused scandal seems disingenuous when the matter would not have become public at all if it hadn’t been for the actions of another parishioner. It seems to us that the record-comber is largely responsible for the ensuing public scandal. When churches demand that everyone in the congregation actively resists the evils of same-sex marriage at all costs, including opposing any legal options that could possibly lead to the legalizing of same-sex marriage in the future, churches can inadvertently turn their congregations into guard dogs with a penchant for gossip.

We’ve written a couple of times before about our own legal difficulties, and our frustration with the phasing out of civil unions. Though we intend to follow our own priest’s counsel about working out legal protections for our relationship and we have no interest in getting a civil marriage, the Montana story, the stories of LGBT firings from parishes and religious schools, and other stories like these worry us greatly. Sometimes we find ourselves so worn from the way these issues are discussed in conservative churches that even going to church feels like a chore. If a member of our parish were to ask us what advice we would offer conservative churches for how they discuss LGBT legal issues, our first response would be, “Stop talking out of both sides of your mouth, and acknowledge that issues like healthcare, end of life care, and retirement benefits are not just red herrings in the gay marriage debate.” Conservative churches that are serious about preventing injustice against LGBT people need to, as Lindsey often says, make friends with the question mark. Learn about the real legal problems we face, and the experiences of our daily lives. Consider that supporting a person in solving legal difficulties is not the same approving of same-sex marriage. Ask us what we see as injustices. A church that is truly behaving in a Christian manner cannot speak out against LGBT discrimination while intentionally drowning out the legal concerns of its own LGBT members.

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.

Do celibate partners “complete” each other?

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We’ve been approached by many people who wonder why our relationship began in the first place and why it’s not “good enough” for us to live as celibate singles. Frequently, people assume that we’re together because it’s the best way of coping the loneliness of celibacy. At the same time, it’s not uncommon for those who have met us in person to suggest that we are absolutely perfect fits for one another. We addressed the loneliness question a while ago; today, we’d like to share briefly about perfect fits and the idea that partners should “complete” each other.

We have a lot of fun together as we embark on one adventure after another. We’re reasonably confident that sharing our lives enables us to become our best selves. We are confident that Lindsey empowers Sarah to do things that would otherwise be impossible for Sarah, and vice versa. We love working as a team through thick and thin. Nevertheless, we are also certain that neither one of us could ever meet all of the other person’s needs.

When we tell the story of how we met, we reference that we fell into a pattern of sharing life together easily and unexpectedly. Our friendship continued to grow where we found ourselves naturally supporting each other across many areas of life. We’re grateful for the ways that we stretch and push each other to be better people.

But stretching to share life with another person doesn’t complete anyone. In many ways, sharing life introduces new challenges. No matter the level of sexual activity, every couple encounters problems that affect each partner differently. Relationships require adjustment when the lesser-affected person chooses to opt into a new way of life. Even the seemingly benign choice of sharing life together creates a rippling of change where all of a sudden little things really matter. People in committed relationships have to compromise, adapt, and embrace never-before-considered opportunities. Not only that, but they also need to learn to recognize instances in which certain needs can’t be met within the context of the partnership or marriage alone.

We think it’s especially problematic, to the point of being deeply spiritually harmful, when partners believe that they can or should be able to complete each other. We think this for several reasons, one being that such an approach to committed relationships risks isolating the couple from their friends, geographical community, and faith community. Leah Libresco at The American Conservative wrote an insightful article in July 2014 on problems with marital completionism, stating the following:

Spouses shouldn’t wind up completely sated by a relationship, able to retreat from the rest of the world. Married people, just like singles, have some needs that are best met by a friend or by a neighbor or by family. Our mutual, unsated needs draw us together in service to each other.

Few partners will be in danger of making a complete retreat, utterly emotionally self-sufficient as a dyad, but aiming at this goal is as destructive as achieving it. Spouses in this situation are likely to sell their friendships short, failing to rely on them, as the theatre-going wife does.

We couldn’t agree more. Whether a relationship is a marriage or some other kind of committed partnership, it’s curious that so many 21st century westerners (particularly Americans) assume that the goal of doing life with another person is finding total satisfaction in that relationship. It seems unlikely to us that many partnerships that strive for such will actually become islands unto themselves, but even attempting is a recipe for destruction.

We struggle to understand why the completionism model appeals to couples in the first place. It’s rooted in our culture’s myth that romantic love is the solution to most of life’s major problems, and that there’s one special person somewhere in the world who is meant for each of us. Many churches help to perpetuate this myth by upholding marriage as an ideal state of life for Christians and emphasizing “the two become one flesh” to the point of shaming married people who seek out support and love from the community as individuals. But our question is, why is this arrangement desirable? It’s possible that more people than not see marital completionism as an expectation. People learn from their churches and the broader culture that most aspects of married life should be exclusive to the two partners, and this becomes a goal for the couple — sometimes unconsciously. Still, we wonder why more people aren’t challenging it.

Though our relationship is not a marriage, we see regular evidence of marital completionist ideology in our interactions with folks who are interested in learning more about how our relationship works. We get questions like, “How can celibacy possibly be challenging or sacrificial for either of you? You have each other,” and, “Why are you experiencing a problem with x, y, or z? You’re going to love each other no matter what.” It’s true that our life as a celibate couple differs in many ways from the lives of celibate singles, and that we’re always going to love each other no matter what comes our way. But we don’t complete each other. Being in a loving relationship does not mean that we have all the resources between the two of us to face every possible life issue that could arise. It also doesn’t mean that having each other is or should be “enough” to prevent loneliness, sadness, boredom, or frustration. We feel so strongly about this that when other people tell us, “You two fit perfectly together like pieces of an incomplete puzzle,” we are quick to remind them that even small puzzles usually have more pieces than two. We never would have found each other if either of us had been looking for the person who would make us perfectly happy. To quote from Leah’s article again:

In the meantime, they’ll be missing out on the best part of marriage—the presence of a partner in the ongoing project of becoming better versions of yourself. The spouse you pick shouldn’t be the one who makes you happiest, but the one who makes you more kind, prudent, and generous, and to whom you can give the same gift. You join to grow, not to accommodate the desires of your present self.

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. This is just as true for celibate partnerships as it is for marriages. Though we do bring each other a great deal of happiness, our relationship works not because we bring pleasure into each other’s lives, but because we are better people together than we are apart. Sometimes, one of us is not at all happy with the way the other is posing a challenge in a given moment. It’s a ding to the ego. Spiritual growth can be painful as well as joyous, and we’re willing to stand by each other through all of it as well as reach out to our friends and community during good times and bad. As we see it, marital/partnership completionism stands in the way of growth toward unity with God, and this does no one any favors.

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.

Building a Life Together: Imagining the Possibilities

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As we interact with more and more people both online and in person, we encounter new challenges that compel us to reflect on aspects of our life together in ways we have not yet shared on the blog. We’ve seen how others with different perspectives react to us and our manner of living our faith and sexuality, and a common thread we’ve noticed is that people often learn of our circumstances and question how likely we are to continue living as a celibate couple 5, 10, 25, 50 years down the road. Both here and in other places on the internet, we’ve seen it suggested that in all likelihood, we’ll either give up on celibacy at some point or give up on our dream of a future together. Perhaps these speculations are fueled by the human tendency to skepticism over anything that deviates from social and cultural norms, but we have to wonder if part of the issue is that we haven’t devoted much time yet to sharing what we envision for the future of our community of two. Over the past few weeks as we’ve been looking back over posts from eight or nine months ago, we’ve realized that most of our posts specifically related to celibacy focus on how we got to where we are now rather than where we see God leading us. In today’s post, we want to share with our readers five possibilities we imagine for our future as a celibate couple. Some of these are directions where we are confident that God is leading us. Others are fuzzy, distant possibilities that will require years more of prayer, guidance from our spiritual fathers, and candid conversations with those we love and trust most.

When thinking about life together over the long haul, we keep returning to our shared spiritual life and how much effort it takes from both of us to ensure that we are living into this aspect of celibacy. We came to our current Christian tradition from very different religious backgrounds. It has been an adventure to watch and learn from how God shows us that our distinct perspectives on spiritual matters complement each other. Nevertheless, we constantly hope that God continues to develop in us a truly shared spirituality. In some ways, it seems like we’ve experienced some first fruits in surprising places. We welcome every way God might draw us closer to Christ through continuing to merge our various spiritual practices, and we believe firmly that God is calling us into a deeper, more unified spiritual life together as our relationship with each other continues to grow.

We also have great hopes that God will continue to show us more about our vocations as teachers. Though we work in vastly different fields (Sarah in theology and Lindsey in engineering education), we’ve already seen bits of evidence that God is calling us to strengthen each other in our commitments to helping students get the most meaningful and intellectually challenging educational experiences possible. Sarah’s experience of teaching as been that it comes naturally and is a great joy, even amidst occasional frustrations. Until getting to know Sarah, Lindsey’s experience of teaching was anxiety provoking and sometimes came with significant dread. As we’ve begun sharing a household, we’ve found that both of us have uncovered important details about our vocations as teachers. Sarah has inspired Lindsey to take greater interest in the needs of students, and to seek teaching opportunities that are the right fit emotionally even if not affiliated with more prestigious educational institutions. For the first time, Lindsey has begun to see teaching as a clear part of Lindsey’s vocation. Lindsey has challenged Sarah to empathize more with students who have little interest in theology but are taking a course in this field for a university requirement — particularly students majoring in STEM fields. As a result, Sarah is developing a better sense of how to reach students who enter introductory theology classes with apathy. Every term we’re both teaching, we notice more examples like these. If God intends to use both of us as educators, we pray that he will continue to open up new insights to us within the context of our relationship.

All our regular readers know by this point that one of our primary goals in blogging is to offer support to other lay people like us who are discerning the possibility of making a commitment to celibacy — particularly those who are LGBTQ and/or pursuing celibate partnerships. So many people have contacted us with questions about their own life situations. Each time we receive this sort of email, we devote some time to praying for that person and asking God to help us respond in the most helpful manner. As this happens, we find ourselves hoping for additional opportunities to help other lay people who are considering living some non-monastic form of celibacy. Neither of us knows much about legal matters, but we’re fortunate to have a friend at our church who is knowledgeable in this area and is willing to guide us to the best resources for ensuring that we have non-marital legal protections. Once we learn more about the process of managing our legal relationships to each other, we sense that God might be calling us to provide help and support for other couples like us as they sort these and other matters for themselves.

Though we try to write in an accessible, reflective style on the blog, we also have an interest in making a more academic contribution to conversations about lay celibacy. Our own Christian tradition has a long history of celibate vocations, but nearly every resource we’ve encountered from within our own tradition discusses celibacy solely within the context of monasticism. Sarah is especially interested in taking on future academic writing projects that explore the question, “What would a theology of non-monastic, lay celibacy look like in our Christian tradition?” Both of us have seriously considered creating an online repository of documents and other media related to celibacy that represents a plethora of Christian denominations. We’ve been contacted by untold numbers of people whose denominations say nothing whatsoever about celibacy (or so it appears), or have only negative things to say about the practice of celibacy. If God opens the door for us to provide these kinds of resources to the people who need and desire them most, we would consider it a great honor to fill that role.

Since we first began making plans for sharing a household and living together as a family, we’ve also been discussing how to broaden the scope of our practice of hospitality. Though we both consider our relationship with each other the most meaningful relationship in our lives next to God and the saints, we would welcome the expansion of our two-person community. As we’ve prayed about how God might be calling us to extend our family, we’ve both felt inspiration to (eventually) move into a larger home and offer the unused bedrooms to people who are recovering from addictions and experiencing difficulty reintegrating into work/school after taking time off to focus on getting healthy. We want to offer a safe space where those in recovery can get their needs met for basic resources and emotional support and stay for as long as necessary. Because of Sarah’s experience with different addictions, this issue is near and dear to our hearts. Very few people outside the recovery community realize how few opportunities for this kind of support exist in the “real world” outside of treatment centers and group meetings. There is a great need for resources to bridge that gap. For the past several months, the two of us have felt a clear sense of call to work toward this goal in future years when we are more financially established.

Of all five items discussed in our post today, the next is certainly the fuzziest, most undeveloped possibility for our future as a celibate couple. Sarah has mentioned before that one of the most difficult aspects of celibacy for Sarah is the fact that celibates do not get to become mothers and fathers, at least in the biological sense. Sarah has devoted and continues to devote considerable time to reflecting on how best to direct the desire for motherhood. While Lindsey has never felt any inclination toward parenthood, the two of us occasionally discuss the possibility of taking in foster children and what that would mean for the celibate vocation we live together. In an ideal world, there would be no need for foster care. In an almost-but-not-quite-ideal world, there would be enough interested couples living marital vocations that no need would exist for celibates like us to be foster parents. But we don’t live in an ideal world or even close, and there are so many children who will never know what it is like to be loved by a parental figure. There are kids who will spend their entire lives in group homes and abusive foster care situations because there are so few good potential foster parents. Then, there are some kids who can’t be placed because available foster families aren’t able/willing to manage disabilities, behavioral problems, mental health diagnoses, etc. We don’t plan on pursuing this anytime in the near future as it is a decision that would require long and serious discernment, but if God should call us to provide an unloved, uncared for child with a Christian home, basic needs, a solid education, and two very loving and firm adults, we pray that we’ll be prepared to answer that call.

These examples are mere glimpses into the hopes and dreams we have for our future as a team, a partnership, and a family. The possibilities are both exciting and frightening, and we hope that the right decisions on all of them will become clearer as we grow in greater love for God and each other. We have a mutual feeling that this isn’t the last time we’ll be addressing this topic.

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.

Defining Celibacy, Revisited

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In one of our very first posts on this blog, we took some time to define celibacy. We offered a working definition of celibacy that centers on vulnerability, hospitality, shared spiritual life, and commitment. Not surprisingly, many commenters have been pushing back against our definition of celibacy for months, offering some variant of 1) those characteristics are/can be true of anyone living a Christian life or 2) non-celibate people certainly display those characteristics as well. It’s tricky for us to say how our practice of these values as celibate people is distinct from how non-celibate people can practice these same values. We share a strong disapproval of stereotypes of celibate vocations, and we’re concerned about doing the same thing if we were to discuss how these values manifest themselves in non-celibate relationships. We don’t see ourselves as qualified to tell married people (or even other celibate people) how they live or should live the four characteristics in our definition. Nonetheless, it’s worth revisiting how we define celibacy in response to some of the comments we’ve received.

To begin, it’s important to note that we understand both celibacy and marriage as vocations people enter into as adults. Part of living into one’s vocation is maturing in how one participates in the world. We’re sure many readers can bear witness to how marriage forced them, or others they know, to grow up in some profound ways. We believe that making a commitment to a celibate vocation also spurs a person towards maturity. Since both vocations provide a sort of proving ground for becoming an adult, we shouldn’t be entirely surprised that they challenge people to exercise certain values. If you flip through the New Testament, you’ll find a lot of different lists of what values increase when a person commits himself or herself to Christ. Vulnerability, hospitality, community, and commitment happen to be the four words we’ve chosen to call out relative to our experience of the celibate vocation.

Arguably, one of the most famous lists in Scriptures is found in Galatians 5 where Paul lists the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (We took this list from the ESV, and the wording of your preferred translation might differ.) We would be hard pressed to think of any Christian we know who does not display these fruits of the Spirit to some degree. In all honesty, we’ve seen again and again that the children in our parish frequently do the best job at displaying these fruits. Neither one of us has any predisposition for searching out ways our fellow Christians fail to display the fruits of the Spirit. We’re much more prone to ask ourselves the question, “How can we cultivate good spiritual fruit?”

We think making a commitment to one’s vocation involves making a decided choice to cultivate spiritual fruit in specific ways. For us, our celibate vocation has challenged us to commit to the practices of being vulnerable, extending radical hospitality, forging a shared spiritual life, and opting into this way of life with 100% of ourselves. We learned about these practices by prayerfully observing as other people have lived celibacy. Many of these people are monastics who live in communities of various sizes. We don’t regard ourselves as having any particular authority on celibacy, and we are still discerning our vocation as a community of two. Individually and corporately, we have seen how the practices that define our celibate vocation have borne good spiritual fruit. For example, praying together about how to support Sarah’s health has helped Lindsey experience peace even in some exceptionally trying times. Sharing our thoughts vulnerably with one another and building a shared spiritual life has encouraged Sarah to exercise greater faithfulness in talking with God throughout the day. Because we share so vulnerably with one another, we know each other’s weaknesses and can challenge the other to choose the way of Christ in a much wider range of circumstances than ever before.

What strikes us as we consider the uniqueness of our way of life is that each practice connects with every other practice. These values are a package deal. With God’s help, we try to keep them going strong 100% of the time. As humans, we fall short of that goal often. Nonetheless, our eyes remain fixed on this particular path. But drawing a clear line that divides our celibate vocation from every other non-celibate person is next to impossible. Throughout time, there have been billions of married people sorting their values in ways that makes sense to them. It would be rather presumptuous for us to assert, “There has never been a married person who would describe vulnerability, hospitality, a shared spiritual life, and commitment as core values of a marriage.” We’ve never tried to make a claim that all celibates live one way and that all married people live in a wholly distinct way. There are places of unavoidable overlap in values that may manifest differently in individual couples. For instance, we know many married couples who regard welcoming children into their family as an essential aspect of their vocation. Welcoming children is a form of radical hospitality even if our friends rarely would use the word “hospitality” when describing why they are so committed to welcoming children. We do our best to avoid celibate triumphalism. It would be wrong to highlight how a monastic community in Guatemala runs an orphanage and overlook an untold number of married couples called to practice a similar ministry. We’re also entirely averse to writing anything on this blog that amounts to “We’re awesome because we do x, y, and z.” It’s difficult to say what God has called us to because of the way the tasks fit uniquely within our celibate vocation rather than because we’re better Christians for doing them.

The spiritual life rarely has neatly defined limits even as Western society has collectively howled for divisions and separations between “opposites.” Offering a working definition of something does not necessarily mean rendering it wholly distinct from all other things — even things in seemingly opposite categories. If you want to make Lindsey super irritated, try asserting that STEM disciplines are completely separate from the liberal arts disciplines. We have spilt so much ink since the Enlightenment trying to establish clear categories of difference. However, there is value in recognizing BOTH/AND constructions. Both men and women are people and bear God’s image. Both clergy and laity have important roles in the life of the Church. Both celibacy and marriage are vocations. We all live in the tension of being both sinner and saint. Recognizing the commonalities between things previously regarded as disparate deepens our appreciation of a world created by a God who is limitless, mysterious, beyond definition.

Our definition of celibacy fits snugly into the place of both/and. If how we live our vocation inspires non-celibate people to be more vulnerable, to practice more hospitality, to steward a communal spiritual life, and to consider making authentic commitments to one another, then perhaps it is bearing some good fruit. More to the point, as celibate people living in the world, we’re constantly inspired by non-celibates who make these values work amidst the craziness of life. If we recognize ways that our life looks different from other people’s lives, those differences likely stem from the fact that everyone is different. God isn’t up there in heaven shouting down to us clearly if some values are inborn and others need to be cultivated within our vocation. Truth be told, we can all grow towards Christ. And as long as we fix our eyes on Christ and pattern our lives after His example, we should be rejoicing that our lives look similar.

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