Category Archives: Friendship

Mechanisms of Affection

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A reflection by Lindsey

The discussion about faith and sexuality features some enduring questions that Sarah and I end up answering at least once a week. One such enduring question is, “What expressions of affection are permissible given a particular form of relationship?” As people in a celibate partnership, we frequently have people asking us how we express affection to each other. Christians as a whole are used to drawing lines around “acceptable” forms of affection. These lines of thought turn affection into a mechanical system of inputs and outputs, assuming that certain affectional inputs will always result in sexual intimacy or at minimum, a near occasion of sin for the unmarried.

I’m an engineer, and I honestly love mechanisms. Mechanisms are cool. I’m always jazzed to encounter something, anything, that has exposed mechanisms. I love seeing how things work. A mechanism is a remarkable thing that converts doable human actions, such as turning a crank, to do any number of things like sharpening a pencil, opening a can of food, sewing, or riding a bike. Assembled rightly, mechanisms allow us to connect input x with logical output y. Mechanisms assume a bounded set of initial conditions, like the switch is either on or off. Mechanisms only work in one or two ways. The crank turns clockwise or counterclockwise. If the crank moves side to side, then it’s either broken or on a slider. I love mechanisms because they are startlingly predictable.

But people don’t work the same way. The process of growing in love for another person is both dynamic and unpredictable. Interactions between two people are incredibly nuanced. The relationship between two people changes all of the time. All sorts of things influence how we interact with one another. The same action has different meaning depending on the context. A hug can offer comfort, intrude into someone’s personal space, signal close friendship, demonstrate one person’s ability to control another person’s movement, assure safety, or welcome more physical intimacy. There is nothing mechanistic about how affection “works.”

Some people I’ve met seem to have a paranoia around physical intimacy. In American Christian churches, any expression of affection gets met with skepticism, mistrust, and anxiety. We seem to be so preoccupied in having “right” forms of intimacy that we miss the point of intimacy all together. Alternately, we may perceive that our culture has rendered sex essential and sees nearly every affectionate action as a prelude to sexual intimacy. Focusing on mechanisms of affection (where again, action x has outcome y) blocks our ability to see critical components of physical intimacy: intentions and circumstances.

When people query how I express affection with Sarah and others, my answer has two components: 1) it depends and 2) it’s none of your business. The first component is the most important to me. There are few, if any, universal precepts to say that a particular form of affection always communicates love. I don’t see myself pulling actions out of an affection toolbox. I am trying to respond to a real person in front of me at a particular time. My responses vary depending on the circumstances in which I find myself. The second component comes because I do not feel obligated to explain why I determined that a particular expression of affection would be loving in a specific instance.

I’ve discerned over time that some actions do more to foster my celibate vocation than other actions do. I find myself surprised at the way regularly eating dinner together, even if that means eating at odd hours, helps me to understand hospitality better. Before I met Sarah, I viewed dinner hospitality as a kind of dinner party that had a solid start time. Dinner is at six! However, I’ve learned that approach simply doesn’t work for us or the people with whom we want to share dinner. Now I see dinner hospitality as an opportunity to create space for others to be themselves while letting them be honest about their needs. Because I’m the person who enjoys cooking, I usually handle preparing the meal. I’ve now come to see meals as a sacred time where people share vulnerably. Along the way, I’ve learned that I’m never just chopping vegetables to make soup… and sharing about the ins-and-outs with someone who wasn’t present frequently seems to impinge on sacred territory. Sometimes it’s best to invite that person over for dinner, knowing that particular dinner will have a mysterious quality to it all its own.

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.

Loving Differently

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A reflection by Sarah

A couple of months ago, Leah Libresco who blogs at Unequally Yoked called for a series of guest posts on the theme of “loving parishioners in their particularity.” Each of the posts in this series is insightful and challenging, offering issue-specific commentary on the question, “How can the Church do better at loving and welcoming people relative to ways they are different from others?” In the days since my surgical procedure last Friday, I’ve been thinking back to many of these posts and how delighted I was to see this conversation developing.

Loving others as they are instead of who we would like them to be is hard. When we see people in our parishes experiencing difficulty or lack of welcome due to some form of difference, sometimes our first reaction is, “Let’s find a way to help that person be more like everyone else, or at least remind him/her that in Christ we are all the same. That will solve the problem.” I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve had these thoughts myself. “Of course the best way to welcome a black person at a predominantly white parish is to treat him/her like everyone else,” or “Isn’t that what the person in the wheelchair wants? For others to acknowledge that the disability doesn’t make a difference in God’s eyes?” I’ve been guilty of this in the past. And since my own forms of difference have become more noticeable within my current parish environment, I’ve been thinking more often about how hurtful and unloving these attitudes are — no matter how compassionate and equalizing they may seem.

Over the past few months I’ve been engaging in conversation with friends and loved ones about ways to be hospitable and loving to people with chronic illness and people who are Deaf or are dealing with hearing loss in adulthood. Going through various highs and lows associated with my Ménière’s disease has made me more keenly aware that, “Just treat everyone the same” is not enough. But if it isn’t the best response, what does it mean to show hospitality and love to parishioners in their particularity? I do not have a complete answer to this question, but these are some scattered thoughts based upon my own experiences.

I believe firmly that asking questions is an essential part of loving another person. We cannot assume that we know and understand the needs of people whose life experiences are different from our own. Simply asking, “What do you need from us as your Christian family?” is a great first step. Not all people are accustomed to being forward about their needs, but this opens the door for conversation. A hearing person is not the best determiner of a Deaf or hard of hearing person’s needs within a community of faith. A healthy person is not the best determiner of a chronically ill person’s needs. A straight person is not the best determiner of a gay person’s needs. Yet for some reason, many of us think we already know how to “solve the problem.”

That brings me to another facet of this issue. As we’ve said here before with regard to LGBT issues, people are people — not projects. Kind as this may seem, it is not necessarily loving to visit a chronically ill person and tell him or her, “You seem to be doing fine! You’re sitting up today.” Many people in this situation will hear the comment as invalidating. In the same way, it is not loving to tell an adult who is going deaf, “It seems like your hearing is getting better. You can hear me now and hold a conversation with me.” I’m not in the habit of policing people’s words, but I do think it’s easy to make such statements without realizing their implications. If you tell me you’re glad to see that I’m hearing better, especially when we’re in a quiet room and you’re sitting beside me and speaking at 60 decibels, what you are actually telling me is that you value me as a hearing person — not as a person created in God’s image. You are communicating that you see my hearing loss as nothing more than a problem to be solved. A more hospitable approach to discussing health and disability issues with people who are chronically ill or disabled would be to remind them consistently that you love them because of who they are.

I also believe that loving parishioners in their particularity means acknowledging that intentions only go so far. We might have the best of intentions in what we do or say to show love to a person who is different from us, but our intentions matter very little because really, it’s not about us. When we say or do something that causes offense and our first response to being called out is, “I didn’t mean any harm by that,” we’re being selfish. We are communicating that the other person’s feelings of unwelcome are less important than our own need to be helpful. “You’re hypersensitive. Political correctness makes everyone a bad guy. When I was growing up, ‘deaf and dumb’ is what everybody called them. I didn’t mean anything by that.” This sort of remark serves only to disenfranchise a person who is already feeling less than welcome at church. Chances are, the offended party already realizes that you didn’t intend offense. He or she is likely seeking an opportunity to discuss the issue further and explain why certain actions, language, and attitudes are harmful to others. Loving people as they are means being open to that conversation.

Loving people in their particularity means learning to treat others as you would like to be treated…while realizing that this is not equivalent to, “Just treat everyone the same.” No other person deals with exactly the same things as you do. Perhaps I’m wrong about this, and feel free to challenge me, but I would guess that none of us really want to be treated exactly the same as every other person.

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.

“I believe God does not require celibacy for LGBT people. How do I support my struggling celibate friend?”

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We’re grateful for all of our readers. We know that we have many readers who hold various forms of progressive sexual ethics and appreciate that our blog helps them think more about the nature of celibacy. Many believe that people who have the gift of celibacy should be able to choose a celibate vocation independent of considering sexual orientation as a motivating factor. These readers share our frustration with the tendency of some church communities to issue celibacy mandates to LGBT Christians while making no effort to create healthier spiritual environments for vocational discernment. Recently, we’ve received some questions like this one:

I like reading your blog because it’s very clear that you personally feel called to celibacy and find your celibate vocations life-giving. However, what is the best way to support and encourage someone who struggles with imperfect celibacy? I completely understand why some people who don’t have the gift of celibacy nevertheless interpret Scripture or their own personal calling to be to follow that path. But it seems like sometimes some of the most sensitive, caring, and spiritual people still struggle with this. I don’t mean a case where celibacy is imposed by someone else, but when someone truly has a deep spiritual conviction to be celibate and yet struggles and fails at that. Their lives seem dominated by struggle, guilt, shame, and occasionally risky sexual behavior where I struggle to see how celibacy is bearing good fruit in their lives. I want to respect their convictions while, at the same time, helping to paint a positive picture of what life in Christ could look like. I don’t want to elevate my own same-sex marriage as a potential answer for my friends in this position, but…. what can I do?

This is a good question, and it doesn’t have an easy answer. It points to our collective difficulties in understanding celibacy and vocation. Often, there are gaps between our vocational aspirations and our lived experiences in the here and now. Some of the most intense times of spiritual bitterness can happen when people are confronted with how their actual vocations differ from the vocations to which they aspire. It’s not uncommon to experience “imperfect celibacy.” In fact, we would guess that most intentionally celibate people live celibacy imperfectly. Yes, there are some ways to fail within a celibate vocation that cause friends more distress than other kinds of failures. Here are some thoughts based on how we approach these questions with our own friends:

Try to understand the vocation to which your friend aspires. Sometimes it can be helpful to ask what hopes and dreams a person has for living into a celibate vocation. Many of our hopes and dreams have their roots in improving our abilities to practice radical hospitality. We believe that any vocation should help a person grow towards Christ. Especially if a person is in his/her twenties or thirties, looking to the future (without ruminating on it unhealthily) can sometimes be helpful. Often in times of immediate vocational crisis, people can feel as though their current or past conduct has disqualified them from particular ways of life. The grief over this is real. Nonetheless, sometimes people in these situations overstate the repercussions of how they fear their actions have closed doors. We’ve found it beneficial to use reflective listening techniques to try and help friends in vocational crises identify immediately accessible things that can help them live into their aspirational vocations just a little more.

Reflect on, and possibly share, your own experience being transformed by Christ in the midst of vocational struggles. We all have places where there is a gap between our convictions and our abilities to live out those convictions. Thinking more deeply about specific places where God has helped us grow towards our own convictions can be useful. Lindsey has experienced a profound sense of God opening up hospitality as a way of life. Although Lindsey has always wanted to be generous and welcoming, Lindsey has had to work to find ways to practice authentic hospitality as an introvert. Likewise, Sarah has always wanted to be a mother, but typically celibate vocations do not involve having biological children. Sarah has had to (and continues to) discern how strong maternal instincts can fit into a celibate vocation. Throughout our respective processes, we’ve both experienced amazing transformational moments. Cultivating deep empathy for a friend becomes possible when you bring to mind times and places where you need to have deep empathy for your former self.

Appreciate differences between your own spirituality and your friend’s spirituality. Discerning vocation is about finding one’s life in Christ. A variety of spiritual disciplines that aid in vocational discernment exist within different Christian traditions. We find ourselves writing constantly about making the kingdom of God visible because we’ve found that this core idea resonates with readers from diverse Christian traditions. However, we know that vocation is profoundly personal where each individual needs to connect with his or her own Christian tradition at many steps along the way. When we are talking with friends struggling to live their vocations, we do our best to center conversation within their specific Christian traditions rather than exalting our own.

Encourage and respect your friend’s search for compassionate spiritual direction within his or her Christian tradition. At the end of the day, we don’t consider it our job to provide a specific spiritual prescription during times of vocational crisis. We reserve that task for spiritual directors who commit to walking alongside the people to whom they minister. We believe ardently that every person needs a spiritual director. It’s essential for those struggling with vocation to find compassionate spiritual directors who can meet them where they are at right now, appreciate how Christ is calling them to participate fully in the Kingdom of God, and make wise recommendations about how to bridge the gap between a person’s current lived experience of vocation and his or her aspirational vocation. When a friend shares about his or her struggles with imperfect living of vocation, our natural next question is, “Do you have a spiritual director who is helping you with these struggles?” Spiritual directors are awesome because they have studied the wisdom of particular Christian traditions to guide people through life’s difficulties. If our friend says that he or she does have a spiritual director who is offering sound, compassionate, and wise counsel within the context of his or her Christian tradition, we trust that our friend is in good hands and remind our friend that nobody can snap a finger and live vocation perfectly.

We’re never terribly surprised when any person has trouble living out his or her vocation. Living into the fullness of what Christ is calling one towards is hard! As always, we welcome discussion in the comments. Feel free to ask follow-up questions, respond to our suggestions, and make suggestions of your own.

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

On Tokenism

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A reflection by Lindsey

I’ve been meaning to write this reflection for months. The idea came into my head when Jake Dockter started tweeting various Christian conferences about the diversity of their speaking lineups. Jake’s questions focused on why so many conferences tend to headline older white fathers. If memory serves me correctly, one particular conference he pointed out had over 30 speakers where only 4 were women and not a single speaker was clearly non-white. Then a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post discussing why it matters when white people don’t have black friends. I figured now is a good time to write down some thoughts on tokenism.

If you’ve ever been the minority in any context, chances are reasonably good that you been tokenized in one way or another. As one-half of a celibate LGBT Christian couple, I often feel like I’m a minority within a minority within a minority. I wonder why people value diversity, especially when it seems that “being diverse” seems more about filling a dance card with people who are different from one another than it is about being inclusive.

I think we hadn’t been blogging for more than a month before we received our first inquiry about whether we would consider a speaking engagement. We were thrilled at the possibility of speaking because that particular organization has a reputation of hosting a wide array of LGBT Christian speakers. We could appreciate how our being a celibate couple would offer a different perspective than other speakers who were invited. However, we’d hesitate before accepting an invitation to speak at an event for any organization wanted to promote our way of life as the “answer” for LGBT Christians. The first approach is about being inclusive while the second approach strikes me as checking the “diversity” box.

I don’t want to be anyone’s “LGBT Christian friend.” I can always tell when I’m in that role because I shift into having to educate other people more often than usual. It’s exhausting. I can respect the fact that because I’ve done a lot of thinking and writing about what celibate living might look like for a lay person, many people are interested in hearing my thoughts on celibacy. Yet I cringe every time I hear someone say, “This is my friend Lindsey, an LGBT person living celibacy.” Even other celibate LGBT people can weaponize Sarah’s and my stories to say that anyone is capable of living a celibate vocation.

I hope that more people can begin to see tokenism for what it is. Tokenism happens when we are interested in checking off a box. Once someone has a gay friend (or a black friend or a hispanic friend), then he/she can stop making efforts. I’d contend that being inclusive is remaining open to letting one’s friend circle grow and stretch through conscientious engagement with the world.

I don’t mind being someone’s first LGBT friend. I consider myself to be a worthwhile person to know, and if my new friend hangs out with me for any length of time, then he or she will likely realize I have other awesome friends. I didn’t consider any black people among my circle of real friends until I lived with my black roommate during my sophomore year of college. Chris and I had a habit of going out for chai tea and playing cribbage whenever we were stressed about anything, but getting to know Chris as my friend helped me respond better when other black students I knew tried to increase my awareness of social injustices facing black Americans. As Chris and I sipped chai tea, we had a natural place to share our lives, to ask questions, to listen to each other, and to grow as human beings. Getting to know each other helped me do the hard work of reflecting on my experience of whiteness and made it easier for me to build friendships with people that have very different experiences with regard to race and ethnicity. My friendship with Chris and working through my own experience of race and ethnicity helped me be more inclusive because I could see some social structures a bit more clearly. One reason why I feel so adamant that people not represent Sarah’s and my stories as absolutely representative of all LGBT people is I know for a fact that our stories are different from those of most other LGBT people.

Our friendships with people different from us cause us to think more deeply about our own experiences, enabling us to empathize with each other. When we learn this empathy, we can move beyond tokenism and into a more naturally inclusive way of living.

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

On the Decline of Hugging

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A reflection by Lindsey

Everyone who knows me knows that I love hugging. I regard Lindsey hugs as a global public good. Hugging can tell you a lot about people, especially if you’re lucky enough to embrace another person who knows how to speak the language of Hug. Yes, I firmly believe that hugging is a language. And unfortunately, hugging is quickly on the decline.

I have some hypotheses as to why people have stopped hugging. However, I don’t find any of these possible reasons especially convincing. So I wonder, why are people so willing to send hugging to the margins of acceptable touch?

The word acceptable gives us some clues. Somehow, some way, an untold number of westerners have bought into a cultural myth that hugging belongs only in one’s family. You can hug your mom, dad, aunts, uncles, grandmas, cousins, siblings, grandpas, and anyone else who might receive regular invitations to your family reunions. Venture outside of these limits of acceptable hugging, and all of a sudden, you’re somehow indicating a romantic interest.

I’ve been in plenty of venues where I find myself asking, “What message is this hug sending?” But more so, I wonder what the other person is communicating to me. Is he/she nervous, confident, stressed, jubilant, comfortable, completely weirded out, or some other mash-up of various emotions? When one speaks Hug, one can learn an untold number of things about another person from a single embrace. Hug speakers expect that no two hugs are ever the same because no two people are ever exactly the same. It’s not enough to know that, “Bill likes to have every last bit of air squeezed out of his lungs,” and, “Sam would always prefer a high-five over a hug.” Huggers need to be adaptable, adjusting their hugs to meet people wherever they are.

Good hugging requires a high degree of emotional awareness. You need to know what’s going on in yourself, read what’s going on in another person, and make adjustments accordingly. Good hugging is hard. It allows the two people a level of connection they may not otherwise experience. And I think most people just aren’t comfortable with that much vulnerability. After all, if you’re going to hug someone properly, you have to share physical space for a bit. It can be easier to keep your distance from others.

I think the world is a better place when huggers can hug. I do understand that not everyone is a hugger and I wouldn’t want to pressure anyone to change his or her hugging style. However, I do think many Western cultural contexts frown mightily on hugging and put huggers in a proverbial straight jacket: keep those hugs to yourself! Many people would caution celibates to avoid hugging lest hugging lead down the slippery slope of sexual temptation.

From my perspective, freedom to hug is part of the wonder and joy of my celibate vocation. I see hugging as an overflow of radical hospitality. It’s a part of my vocation I’ve always been good at. I remember working at Scout camp and giving good night hugs. Some weeks, the campers literally lined up for my hugs. The trend has continued. It’s rare for me to visit friends and not spend a good chunk of my day giving hugs. I love it when people say, “Lindsey hugs are the best part of these gatherings.”

It’s never quite computed in my mind why people assert that a celibate vocation means cutting oneself off from all forms of intimacy with others. I believe that celibate vocations open us up to the possibility of deep human connection. For me, that connection frequently comes through hugging. Something about hugging helps me feel deeply connected to myself and to another person. I’m able to come alive in a different way than usual. Not everyone has the same appetite for hugging, but different people can meet the same need in other ways. For Sarah, that same sense of connection comes from long, energetic, enthusiastic conversations. I occasionally experience a desire to be incredibly excited for long stretches at a time. There are some select friends I’ll share those experiences with because I want to be accepted exactly as I am in those moments. But my intimacy needs aren’t the same as Sarah’s, so Sarah’s way of connecting with others doesn’t work quite as well for me as hugging.

I have to wonder if hugging is quickly on the decline because people would prefer to avoid being vulnerable with one another. It’s humbling to be asked for a hug. It can be even harder to ask for a hug yourself when you need one. No one wants to be the emotionally high-maintenance friend. We avoid conceiving of ourselves as interdependent on anyone, making occasional exceptions for our close family. However, when we draw firm and static lines around who we can be vulnerable with, we also find ourselves talking about “acceptable” people to hug. I think those lines do much more to hurt us than to help us. And so, one hug at a time, I hope to create more space for people to share their vulnerability with me and experience acceptance.

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.