Category Archives: Family

A week after Obergefell vs Hodges, and I think I am still breathing

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A reflection by Lindsey

Hello readers. My apologies for what seems like radio silence. When I am overwhelmed, my instincts are to hide, curl into a ball, and hope things resolve themselves quickly. Sarah and I were already awaiting Sarah’s surgery date with considerable anticipation. We’re accustomed to smiling, staying strong, and doing our best in the face of stressful situations. By God’s grace, we’ve managed to keep our feet and our sense of humor through it all. It hasn’t been easy, and there are times where it has definitely been hard.

The past week has been arguably one of the hardest to navigate in the three years that we have known each other. The only other week that even comes close was when I suddenly and unexpectedly lost my job two days after Christmas 2013. However, after I lost my job, I experienced my friends and my family rallying around me and Sarah to help us strategize and regroup. Having a supportive community makes a world of difference when you are trying to remind yourself, “Everything is going to be okay. Breathe. Everything will work out. Breathe. You still have options. Breathe. There is a way forward. Breathe. You can do it. Breathe.”

This past week has brought a flurry of official pronouncements. I have been drawn, seemingly like a moth to a light, to reading every statement that is likely to provide some insight as to how clergy within my Christian tradition see the question of pastoring LGBT people in the aftermath of last week’s decision. It is simply remarkable how many statements fail to consider the question, “What should we say to congregants who are LGBT who desire to live their lives in harmony with this Christian tradition’s teachings?” I have lost count of the number of LGBT Christian friends who have approached me to parse the implications of their churches’ reaction to Friday’s ruling. Many statements contain directives that all people who enter into civil same-sex marriages ought to come under church discipline without any hint of an exception.

Did I mention that in ten days I will be keeping vigil in a hospital’s waiting room as Sarah undergoes surgery?

If you were to ask me to name my top fear, I would tell you that I am most afraid of Sarah losing health care access. Currently, Sarah’s health care access rests entirely on my employer extending coverage to domestic partners. We first opened the conversation about protecting ourselves legally over 20 months ago. We’ve been encouraged to grant one another durable power of attorney and write our wills naming each other as beneficiaries. It’s hard to believe that a document one can create using free internet templates would be the answer to our legal worries. If it were truly that easy for the two of us to protect ourselves legally, please tell me why I have never seen a conservative Christian discussing how granting durable power of attorney and keeping one’s will up to date provides adequate legal redress. Additionally, I cannot escape the observation that accessing health insurance in the United States seems to be contingent on where you work and to whom you are married even after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are terrified that Friday’s decision will mark the eventual end of domestic partner benefits, a fear that appears to have merit. One analysis suggests that unmarried partners comprise over 7 million American households. That analysis helps me feel just a bit less alone.

When I’ve shared my fears and anxieties with friends over the past week, I’ve encountered a range of reactions. The vast majority of people ask me why we haven’t already entered into a civil marriage. A handful of people suggest that no one would ever have to know if we contracted a civil marriage for legal purposes and certainly leaders in our tradition couldn’t possibly be thinking about someone in my situation when they authored their public statements. Some people shrug off my concern by reminding me that being a Christian is costly and that I’m not being asked to do anything unreasonable.

I have lost track of the number of times I’ve wanted to throw something in the past week.

Like Sarah, I can rejoice with my friends who have been rejoicing that they no longer need to worry about whether they will have their relationships legally recognized. I know couples who have made legal arrangements in upwards of four states in an attempt to care for each other. I had heard numerous personal stories of people driving around with every legal document imaginable in their glove compartments in an effort to ensure hospital visitation rights. Trying to sort my own affairs relative to my relationship with Sarah gives me deep and profound empathy for every LGBT person who has asked the question, “If and when the time comes, will this legal document carry any weight?” In the past week, at least 3 friends have posted pictures of their freshly procured marriage licenses online complete with extended discussions of why they are so glad they finally can access these pieces of paper in their home states. For them, this is the document that legally permits them to care for one another and alleviates any anxiety. I can only imagine what that feeling must feel like. I know I would be rejoicing if Sarah and I managed to figure out what we needed to do in order to ensure that we could care for each other even if calamity hits.

But, that rejoicing does not negate the fact that both Sarah and I have spent the better part of two years discerning what a celibate partnership looks like for us. We have done our best to live our lives as transparently as possible with our priests while also devoting considerable energy towards writing about celibacy and being LGBT in the Church. I’ve personally spent over ten years asking Christ to illumine my own vocation, striving to cultivate compassion and grace for every person I’ve met along the way. I earnestly believed that others were trying to do the same. Unfortunately, in the past week, it seems like any compassion or grace that others might have previously shown me as evaporated. Where is the compassion when conservative straight Christian friends tell me that it’s entirely reasonable for bishops to tell me that I must choose between sacramental care in my Christian tradition and doing what I can do to ensure that Sarah has continuing health care coverage? Where is the grace when my newly legally married friends accuse me of willfully neglecting Sarah to appease the homophobic whims of a man wearing a funny hat? Even more importantly, where do I find the way of Christ as I try to live faithfully within a vocation that has proved to be abundantly life-giving?

There are no easy answers here. In my ideal world, we would figure out a way to divorce health care access from one’s employment and marital status. Everyone would be able to see doctors and get the care they need. Given that historically Christians built an incredible number of hospitals, I’m surprised that churches haven’t been more active in creating systems for health insurance. If employers can offer health insurance policies covering their employees, why haven’t churches explored options to create health insurance for their congregants? Additionally in my ideal world, we would be able to recognize diverse structures of adult relationships. Your ability to give and receive care from another adult would not depend on your familial or marital status. I do not think it’s necessary to use civil marriage as a catchall category for all caregiving relationships between two adults if the two people are not related through family of origin.

I know we don’t live in my ideal world. In my ideal world, Sarah would not be needing to have surgery in ten days either. I’m an engineer, and brainstorming crazy out-of-the-box ideas is one way I cope with uncertainty. A week after the decision in Obergefell vs Hodges, I feel more uncertain than ever. I think I’m still breathing, hoping, and praying that Sarah and I will find our way through the legal quagmire…. I think.

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.

Sexual Violence, Manipulation, and Cheap Grace

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This is the second post in our series on sexual abuse. You can read the first post here.

A reflection by Sarah

Forgiveness is one of the most central ideas in all of Christian teaching. Christ commands us to pray, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who sin against us.” As he hung dying on the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” Forgiveness seems like a straightforward concept: forgive everyone, always, and as many times as necessary. Yet anyone who has tried to put these teachings into action can attest to how challenging forgiveness can be. One reason forgiveness is so hard is that perfect forgiveness requires understanding both God’s mercy and God’s justice in a perfect way. Forgiveness, like other components of God’s mercy and justice, reflects the unfathomable and unknowable heart of God. When discussing sexual abuse, it’s paramount to sit in the tension between God’s mercy and God’s justice.

When I first became aware of the news about Josh Duggar’s sexual abuse of his sisters and at least one other girl during his teen years, I was not surprised that his response to the public focused on his asking for and receiving forgiveness both from God and the victims. What did surprise me was seeing that a large number of people I know believe this should be sufficient grounds for ceasing criticism of Josh and his parents and letting the crime remain a “private family matter.” It’s naive to think such a situation should ever have been a private family matter in the first place, and it’s even more naive to think forgiving an abuser is simple and straightforward. I do not claim to know what Josh Duggar’s victims’ psychological and spiritual processes have looked like over the years. It’s possible that they have indeed forgiven him fully. But it’s much more likely that there’s more to the story than we will ever hear. It’s possible that the forgiveness Josh claims they have extended to him is not actually forgiveness. I draw from my own personal experience in saying this.

In some manifestations of conservative Christianity, forgiveness is used as a tool of manipulation. This does not happen only in the Quiverfull movement, but across a wide variety of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions. To put some flesh on what I mean by “manipulation,” I’ll share a bit more detail about my own story.

One morning when I was 14, I had finally worked up the courage to tell my parents that I was being abused by a deacon at our church for two years at the time. We were at church early, the perpetrator had fondled my breasts and vaginal area while I was waiting outside the door of the women’s restroom, and I could not contain the truth any longer. I ran into the sanctuary, pulled my mom out and into the restroom, and began to tell her about what had been happening to me. I had barely scratched the surface of the details when I noticed her facial expression. It was cold and severe as she informed me that she thought I was either exaggerating or outright lying. No sooner than she dragged me back into a pew did my abuser approach her and comment on how tall I was growing, and that my height would come in handy next weekend when the church windows needed cleaning. My mom was completely fooled and forbade me to say anything about my “tale” to my dad immediately after church. I could not help myself, so I disobeyed and began blurting out random details of the story as we drove home. My dad’s response was to throw a screaming fit in the car, which terrified me into retracting part of the story and justifying my “incorrect” perception of my abuser’s behavior. This only made things worse, and I spent the rest of the day crying myself into a migraine as my parents told me that I was mentally ill, sexually deviant, unfit to be alone with my younger sister, at risk for tearing apart the entire church community, and in danger of going to hell. That evening, every inch of my privacy was revoked and I was forbidden to speak to anyone about this.

Over the next few months, the need for repentance was hammered into my skull day after day. Not my abuser’s repentance — my own. I was told that I should not commune and that I should instead be contemplating the state of my soul. Most of my mental space was consumed by suicide plans and how I would manage to find one that would work given how closely my parents were monitoring me. All this time, the abuse was continuing. I never had the chance to share the full extent of it because my parents’ condemnation was so swift and unwavering. Eventually, my dad saw what he thought might have been the deacon fondling me. His advice was that I should stay away from the deacon but be understanding and forgiving because of the deacon’s old age. Much later, my mom saw the abuse with her own eyes. Around the same time, a friend from church shared with me that she had also been abused by this deacon. When her parents and my parents eventually talked to each other I learned that this problem had been occurring for years with multiple victims, and those in the community who knew about it preferred to sweep it under the rug.

From that point forward, my parents began saying to me, “We’re sorry. Forgive us,” as though that should be enough to end the pain and bring about healing. Simultaneously, they made it clear that I was never to inform anyone of what had happened to me, and that disobeying this request would only cause more problems for me. At one point they took me to see a local psychiatrist who was all too willing to let them control what I said and did not say about the abuse. The psychiatrist — a mandated reporter, a person with a license to practice medicine — did not report anything. I was never asked for my opinion about how justice could be served. My abuser got away with everything. He was never held accountable by the community in any way. By the time I was an adult and considered reporting the abuse myself, he was ill and mostly homebound — no longer a threat to community safety. He had the privilege of reposing with the public image of a virtuous Christian who was a role model in the community for decades.

As the years have gone by, my parents have begged for my forgiveness repeatedly. They ask me why I can’t just move on with my life, why I can’t accept their apology, and why I am still so bitter and resentful years after the last occurrence of sexual abuse. They inquire as to why I don’t just focus on the good memories of my childhood, as though the good times outweigh the reality that I was sexually abused and the abuse was hidden. What they don’t realize is that forgiveness is a process, and in situations like these it can take a very long time. To them, moving on with my life means not needing or wanting to talk about this anymore. It means shutting up, doing all the life things I’m doing now at age 30, and just not thinking about what happened all those years ago. To them, bitterness and resentment are the same as having strong feelings about it half my life later.

This is the problem with the brand of grace that’s peddled throughout much of American Christianity: Jesus forgives all sins immediately after we say that we are sorry, so it follows that every Christian who wants to be forgiving like Jesus will let go of any wrongdoing once the offenders have apologized. That is the mentality I was raised with, at least when it comes to forgiving parents for making accusations of lying and sexual deviancy in addition to covering up child sexual abuse. That’s why when I was a teenager, I thought parroting “I forgive you” to my parents was the only way to show faithfulness to Christ. I believed that the state of my soul was dependent on it, especially after years of hearing stories about how miserable my grandmother was when she reposed because of all the grudges she had held during her lifetime. I honestly believed that I had forgiven them until my mid-twenties when I realized that I had never really processed what had happened to me and how I felt about the fact that no one was ever held accountable.

“I’m sorry” does not yield automatic forgiveness. Grace is not a gum ball machine where a person can insert a quarter, then go skipping along and blowing bubbles in ten seconds. It’s easy to assume that a survivor is bitter and resentful when you are not the one who has to live with the lasting consequences of a child molester violating your body and your parents insisting on covering up the whole situation. This is why I am skeptical of the claim that Josh Duggar’s victims have forgiven him, and therefore all is well. Perhaps they have, but why are we assuming that is so? Why are we so willing to say that this situation is a private family matter where the victims chose to forgive and move on with their lives? The language in every statement from the Duggar family about this issue suggests a high likelihood that Josh’s victims were manipulated into “forgiveness.” Whether that is the case or not, it happens constantly in conservative Christianity and is inexcusable.

You may have read this whole post and decided that I am a bitter, resentful person who cannot find enough strength in Christ to forgive my parents or my abuser. I have been working for several years on forgiving my parents, and I will probably be continuing that work for several more years. That’s okay. It takes time. I have a kind and patient spiritual director, and will soon be looking again for a kind and patient therapist. Though I cannot yet say that I have forgiven my parents, I can say with confidence that I have forgiven my abuser fully. He sinned against me terribly, but I am no longer angry with him. I hope that in the hereafter, I will get the chance to meet his redeemed self and come to an understanding of the whys that still run through my mind from time to time. On the day I learned of his death, I prayed for the repose of his soul. Some survivors will think I am crazy for this, but I genuinely hope that he is at peace and free from whatever demons and passions that had hold of him when I was young. Getting to a place where I can say all of this has taken hours of therapy and spiritual direction and has required the support of my extensive family of choice. It cannot be forced. A person cannot be manipulated into hoping that her abuser is at rest rather than in torment. I would not hold this attitude up as an expectation for any other survivor. I could not have gotten to this place if I had not willingly distanced myself from the cheap grace messages I had been exposed to in my earliest years as a survivor.

As I engage in discussions on Facebook about the Duggar scandal, something one of my friends commented continues to stick out to me. The implications of this comment are frightening: “Any Jesus who would forgive something like this is no Jesus of mine.” I have to wonder if this kind of thought would still come up in response to sexual abuse if Christians did a better job of teaching forgiveness. If what I had learned about forgiveness as a child and teen was the traditional Christian understanding of forgiveness, I would agree with her. When we reduce forgiveness to, “Being sorry and apologizing is good enough to erase the sin entirely,” we distort the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection. We communicate that Jesus will save the child molester who makes a public showing of remorse, no questions asked…but when it comes to the child who has been severaly sinned against, her  salvation is dependent upon being manipulated into “forgiveness.”

Forgiveness is intimately connected to God’s judgement. When humans make so many misjudgments in cases of abuse, it can be difficult to trust that God can and will enact truly perfect justice. Until there is perfect justice, the cries of victims will continue bear witness to a world in desperate need of redemption. And so I continue to pray, “Lord have mercy. Show us a new way to relate to one another where abuse no longer exists. Bring healing to all of those who have been wronged. Open the doors of repentance to any who perpetuate the evils of abuse.”

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.

“Is sexual attraction a requirement for a relationship to be more than friendship?”

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Today, we are responding to another thoughtful question from a reader:

“I’ve seen the stuff written about celibate same-sex relationships recently and I have questions for you two. When people get married they are usually attracted to each other. When people are in relationships and aren’t married, aren’t they also attracted to each other? Why be in a relationship with someone if you aren’t sexually attracted? Wouldn’t that be more of a friendship? Is sexual attraction a requirement for a relationship to be more than friendship? It sounds like you don’t think so.”

We’ve been responding to this question and others like it for months now in comments, so it’s probably the right time to address this in a full post.

First, it’s important to clarify what a person means when asserting that a particular relationship is “more than friendship.” This phrase could be interpreted in at least two ways: either as “greater or more significant than friendship” or “more than the reductionist understanding of ‘friendship’ that has come to determine the word’s meaning for most modern westerners.” The two of us would not say that our relationship is greater or more significant than friendship. After all, our relationship began as we grew closer in friendship to one another, and we still consider ourselves friends. However, we prefer not to use the friendship model for describing our relationship. Both of us have a strong distaste for categorizing things that involve a high degree of mystery, and we don’t see any need to define our relationship using one word in particular to the exclusion of all others. We tend to stay away from friendship language in general because neither of us feels that it suits our situation, and we do not sense, as some other celibates do, that reclaiming the term “friendship” is part of our vocation. While our relationship is not greater than friendship, we understand it as different from friendship. It’s difficult to discuss exactly how if most people focus on whether we are “just friends” or a “sexless marriage” as though those are the only two ways of describing an arrangement between two celibate people who share life and have made lifelong personal commitments to each other. The phrase “just friends” contributes not only to the devaluing of friendship, but also to the devaluing of alternate approaches for discussing relationships outside the marriage/friendship binary.

Now to an assumption present in this reader’s question. The claim that people who are married are usually attracted to their partners is probably not testable considering cross-cultural differences in what leads people to marry. The fact that levels of sexual attraction to one’s partner can vary throughout the course of a relationship leads us to question the idea that all people in paired relationships experience sexual attraction to one another. Why be in a relationship with someone if there isn’t sexual attraction? There are many possible reasons: spiritual growth, intellectual attraction, the desire for non-sexual companionship that reaches beyond what western society considers “friendship,” financial stability, learning how to be less selfish and more compassionate, and so on. We consider it a problem that so many people today have made sexual attraction the ideal focus for seeking a partner. This mindset devalues other parts of the mystery of attraction. If you replaced “sexual” in the title of this post with “intellectual,” “spiritual,” “emotional,” or just plain “mysterious,” would you be inclined to ask the same question?

Attraction is mysterious and has a various dimensions. Who could possibly identify all of the reasons why one feels compelled to strike up conversations with a stranger or deepen relationships with specific people? People are relational. But it’s rather uncommon to find any person with whom one falls into an organic pattern of relating. These people really stand out in one’s relational circle, and it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly who, what, why, when, where, and how. As we’ve thought about our closest relationships, we have seen that some defy categorization to the point of being almost laughable. As an experiment, try thinking about your best friend. We would wager that you thought of several people from many different places across your lifespan. Now try thinking about people with whom you have a commitment to be present through thick and thin. Once again, it’s likely you called to mind several people from different spheres in your life. Who would you talk to at work if you were facing a crisis? Where would you hang out to enjoy your Friday night? Who has your back whenever you need your support? How have you kept up with people even as life circumstances have changed? One of the reasons why we’re generally averse to taking the approach of reclaiming “friendship” is that we consider many of our friends in this category as a part of our “family of choice.” When people commit to being present in all things, they change the character of their friendships. 

Some readers might say, “But being present through thick and thin is a vow that married people make to one another.” We say, “Yes, that’s true. We would hate for any two people to get married without committing to sharing life together earnestly. Nonetheless, marriage isn’t the only relationship defined by commitment.” People make all sorts of commitments. We commit to working in particular workplaces and gathering with specific groups of people. Local churches exist because Christians commit to gathering as a community. One of the ways we can tell if a person is truly committed to a particular local church is if that person remains even after times of significant change. Attraction precedes any question of commitment. How can we make an authentic commitment to anything unless we first take notice of it? There’s a point at which we connect so deeply to other people and places that it’s difficult to see ourselves as simply “two individuals.” That’s why we can speak of becoming a “member” (quite literally, a body part) of a church. And sometimes the word “friendship” fails to capture the beauty and mystery of particular relationships.

Ultimately, using the word “friendship” to describe every close relationship that isn’t marriage or a genetic or adoptive relation devalues both the concept of friendship and the idea that there are possibly more kinds of close relationships. We’re generally agreeable to thinking about how close relationships take on the character of being family. Yet trying to force fit so much into the friendship box seems more an effort to satisfy those disquieted by celibate partnerships than to have meaningful conversation about the mysterious gift of human relationships.

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

The Challenges of Allyship

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A reflection by Lindsey

Doing life with people is hard. It’s tremendously difficult, especially when trying to live at the intersections of power and privilege. An ally is a person who sits at these intersections trying to listen, trying to learn, and trying to be present. Sometimes it’s essential to be an advocate for the people closest to you.

I’ll admit, sometimes it’s just plain weird to think of myself as Sarah’s “ally.” The word doesn’t come to mind when I think about our relationship. But then I think about everything I’ve learned from Sarah about life with chronic illnesses, surviving sexual violence, and negotiating rapidly changing ability levels. The more I learn, the harder it is for me to not care. I even find myself incredibly invested in causes I never knew existed before I met Sarah. I want so badly to cast aside my own prejudices and advocate zealously for the dignity of every human being.

Except it’s not that easy.

I can’t turn off my own story. I can do my best to foster compassion, to create space, and to listen, but I’m always living in my own story. So often my story gets in the way. It’s hard for me to look at how power and privilege block what I’m able to see. Most of the time I really don’t want to see from another’s perspective.

In the past several months, I’ve watched Sarah grow towards becoming a late-deafened adult. Along the way, I’ve learned a bit about deafness, the Deaf community, and Deaf culture. It’s amazing how I’m seeing a part of the world that I’ve never seen before. And it’s also hard to realize how I’ve lived my whole life simply assenting to a view that hearing is a superior way of being. In reality, there’s something mysteriously amazing at how deafness enables a different way of experiencing the world, even as my experiences of silence remain remarkably different from Sarah’s.

I’ve been thinking a lot more about allyship lately. As I reflected recently, learning to be who I am as a white person taught me a lot about being who I am as an LGBT person. Sarah also recently introduced me to The Help. And I continue to think about how allies can let our own stories get in the way even when we have the best of intentions.

At a meta-level, The Help already raises big questions about whose story the author is actually telling. Abilene Cooper, a black maid, brought a lawsuit against author Kathryn Stockett on the grounds that Stockett had represented Cooper’s life story without permission. Watching the film adaptation of the book, I found myself asking a lot of questions about being an ally.

To quickly set up my observations, Skeeter Phelan (played by Emma Stone) is trying to make it in publishing. She takes on a job writing a cleaning advice column to gain some more experience. Skeeter doesn’t know much of anything about cleaning, so she gets permission to ask her friend’s housekeeper Aibileen a bunch of questions. She realizes that she would love to write about what it’s like for black women to work as maids in 1960s Mississippi because their perspective hasn’t been heard before. It’s new, it’s fresh, and it deeply connects to Skeeter’s own relationship with the maid who raised her. However, Skeeter jumps into her project with both feet before she realizes what she’s doing. She’s a bit taken aback that the maids she knows aren’t keen on speaking with her. She goes to the courthouse, figures out what she’s doing is illegal, and proceeds more cautiously. Aibileen cautiously agrees to start sharing stories.

I see a lot of myself when I look at Skeeter. She jumps in with gusto before taking any time to listen and learn. Shortly after Sarah had found out that one ear is medically deaf, I saw a story flying around the internet about a “fake interpreter” working at an Ebola conference. I was furious, so naturally I shared the story on Facebook with a guarded statement of “From what I can tell, this interpreter doesn’t seem to be doing a good job. ASL-fluent friends, what say you?” I was definitely not prepared to put my foot in my mouth after I learned the interpreter is a Certified Deaf Interpreter working on a team with another signer. But my friends corrected me, asked me to change something in my initial comment, and took some time to explain to me how Certified Deaf Interpreters work with a hearing interpreter. The hearing interpreter signs an initial English-to-ASL translation to the Deaf interpreter who then polishes the ASL such that it’s more intelligible for native ASL users. As it turns out, using Certified Deaf Interpreters is a best practice. Being an ally means learning, sometimes putting yourself out there, quickly putting your foot in your mouth when you screw up, and listening some more.

Being an ally is not fun, and it frequently means sitting with the discomfort that you are wrong a lot more than you are right. It means working to perfect your “I’m sorry. Please let me know what sort of corrective action I need to take,” muscles. I’ve had to own my story of privilege time and time again as I reflect why I didn’t understand something that should have been so plainly obvious. I’m so grateful for everyone who has had space to correct me when I’ve screwed up, and I’m profoundly humbled by the way folks have responded to me during times when I’ve missed the point entirely.

I’d love to be a part of the solution in making the world more welcoming and more hospitable to people who are different from me. But in order for that to happen, I need to learn how to position my story such that it makes space for other people to share theirs.

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.

Author’s note: This post has been edited to remove some unintentionally vidist references that negatively portrayed blindness. If other folks see places where my language has fallen short of my goal, please consider taking to the comment box to let me know what I’ve done unintentionally and suggest some alternate ways of communicating the same meaning.

The Church I long for

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A reflection by Lindsey

It is now the Wednesday after the Gay Christian Network Conference. I love this weekend when I gather with people so obviously different from me and so eerily similar to me at exactly the same time. Call it what you will, but I can’t help experiencing it as a feast of humanity that warrants its own octave of reflection.

Mostly I reflect because I’m angry and frustrated almost immediately after I get home. It doesn’t take long before leaving the protective bubble of GCN Conference before I get that cold cup of water to my face that puts me back squarely in reality. It doesn’t take long to remember that GCN Conference is a special place, simply because the GCN community has learned to say, “I’m so glad you’re with us,” to every single person who decides to come join us. I get frustrated and angry that few local congregations know how to extend that welcome.

Leaving conference is always hard for me because I catch a vision for what local churches could be… and what I think local churches should be. Don’t hear me wrong: the GCN conference community could be a complete farce; people could be on their best behavior for a weekend before returning home to say the things they wish they really could have said. I’ve come to believe otherwise though since I attended my first conference in 2008. The connections I’ve made through GCN have been shockingly supportive, loving, and amazing during some of my most trying times. GCN has been there for me as God has guided me along arguably one of the most counterintuitive spiritual journeys known to humankind. I wish that more local congregations encouraged people to be children of the Church where people could ask really hard questions within a community of faith. I wish churches were the kind of places where people could wonder aloud, learn how their Christian tradition approaches theological inquiry, and grow in wisdom and in strength. I mostly wish that more churches embodied Jeff Chu’s hopes and dreams for Christian community:

The table I long for—the church I hope for—is a place where we let others see where the spirit meets the bone and help heal the wounds. The table I long for—the church I hope for—has the grace of the Gospel as its magnificent centerpiece. The table I long for—the church I hope for—is where we care more about our companions than about winning our arguments with them, where we set aside the condescension that accompanies our notion that we need to bring them our truth. The table I long for—the church I hope for—has each of you sitting around it, struggling to hold the knowledge that you, vulnerable you and courageous you, are beloved by God, not just welcome but desperately, fiercely wanted.

It’s a bit odd for me to be writing this post because I belong to a closed-communion Christian tradition that I love incredibly. I strive every day to live into the fullness of what my Christian tradition teaches, however short I fall. Within my Christian tradition, I was able to find the space necessary to discern my own vocation. It’s certainly never been easy, but I’m so appreciative of the ways this tradition helps me look at God, Christ, myself, other people, and the world at large. And it’s hard for me to know that many people in my own tradition wouldn’t touch a space like GCN Conference with a 10-foot pole. Sometimes, I think that if my fellow parishioners spoke about GCN, their words would be dripping with contempt. That makes me sad because I wonder if people unintentionally close doors to others genuinely seeking Christ because they’re just different enough where it’s impossible for them to blend in with the woodwork.

Chu’s vision of the conversation table is marvelous, compelling, and inspiring in so many ways. But this vision only partially captures Christ’s radical welcome to the table. Consider what we read in Luke’s gospel:

When one of those who reclined at table with him heard these things, he said to him, “Blessed is everyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!” But he said to him, “A man once gave a great banquet and invited many. And at the time for the banquet he sent his servant to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come, for everything is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to examine them. Please have me excused.’ And another said, ‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’ So the servant came and reported these things to his master. Then the master of the house became angry and said to his servant, ‘Go out quickly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crippled and blind and lame.’ And the servant said, ‘Sir, what you commanded has been done, and still there is room.’ And the master said to the servant, ‘Go out to the highways and hedges and compel people to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.’”

This is one of those parables where I catch a glimpse of the radical welcome of Christ. I see Christ going out to the ends of the earth to bring every type of person who will permit themselves to be invited. I’m struck that Christ’s welcome goes far beyond the sea of humanity I see on any given Sunday, including the Sunday I spend attending the GCN Conference. I know that this parable also appears in Matthew’s gospel specifically as a wedding banquet, and I’m grateful for the way my Christian tradition has called my attention to the importance of a wedding garment. Nonetheless, the table I long for and the church I hope for is filled to the brim with the poor, the crippled, the blind, the lame, the near, and the far off. The table I long for and the Church I hope for constantly bursts at the seams because of the people already inside while simultaneously expands itself to add more seats at the banquet. The table I long for and the Church I hope for is full of people who consider themselves the luckiest people alive to be present at such a feast and so refrain from judging anyone else present.

And I can name that vision and ache because I can’t think of a single venue where we’ve managed to be this kind of community. I wonder if this kind of community can only exist at the end of time when Christ has come to restore all things. So many communities seem preoccupied with what people are wearing. In Matthew’s record, the king realized a man wasn’t wearing a wedding garment. The king exercised the judgment. Making decisions in the here and now about who can participate fully in the sacramental life is a fearsome task, and I pray daily for all those entrusted with this power to use it for spiritual good. I don’t want that job for an instant.

I find myself wondering how to live into how Christ has extravagantly welcomed me. I wonder if it’s right to view myself as still walking towards the feast, coming into the door, or sitting at the table. Perhaps I’m doing multiple things at once. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that compels banquet guests to throw on their wedding garments with glee. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that compels guests to squeeze just that much tighter to create room for more people. I can’t help but wonder if it’s gratitude that brings out the very best of human behavior.

How can we be a grateful and welcoming community? What needs to happen such that no surface-level qualification keeps people out of our local churches? How can we put on Christ who is Light, Love, and Truth? What can we do so that the Holy Spirit has room to guide, comfort, encourage, and convict us all as necessary? How do we create that much more room for others to join in the feast?

And so I continue to wonder…

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