Category Archives: Intimacy

Celebrating Christmas when the world doesn’t feel right

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A reflection by Lindsey

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

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

Enter Christmas.

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

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

Isn’t it supposed to be Christmas?

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

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

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

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

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.

Vulnerability Brings Charity to Life — Henri Nouwen

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As we share about our experiences as celibate LGBT Christians, people ask us frequently if we know about Henri Nouwen. Nouwen has achieved a kind of celebrity status amongst participants in this conversation, especially those who are Catholic. His life, particularly while living at L’Arche, offers arguably one of most vivid portrayals of what celibacy can look like in our current cultural context.

Because Nouwen is so well-known, we have decided to take a different approach to this celibate profile. Instead of giving an introduction to Nouwen (several already exist) we would like to describe some ways that his life and writings map to our four core values of celibacy: vulnerability, hospitality, shared spiritual life, and commitment.

Nouwen’s life offers a counter-cultural embrace of vulnerability. He understands that leadership comes when a leader offers his or her vulnerable self:

“I am deeply convinced that the Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self.” –from In the Name of Jesus

Nouwen has a way of appreciating that every person can gift others with his or her vulnerability. One reason Nouwen stands out to many people we know is that he voluntarily entered a life of serving people with a range of physical disabilities. Yet, Nouwen attempted to pass on a vision of disability that was rooted in profound respect for the image of God found in each person rather than viewing those he served as problems to be solved. Nouwen wrote a book called Adam, God’s Beloved where he detailed how Adam — who needed around-the-clock care — became his teacher and guide. It is clear that Adam taught Nouwen much about how simply being present with another person can be transformative, inspiring Nouwen to pen things like:

“Those who really can receive bread from a stranger and smile in gratitude, can feed many without even realizing it. Those who can sit in silence with their fellow man not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears in grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart, can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship, the fellowship of the broken.” –from Out of Silence: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Being present for a friend or loved one often requires a great deal of commitment. Nouwen frequently described commitment as the kind of compassion that draws near to the vulnerable. In Nouwen’s thinking, vulnerability and compassion are two sides of the same coin and integral to the Christian life.

“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” –from Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life

And compassion helps people move from hostility to hospitality:

“Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.” –from Reaching Out

Vulnerability enables us to find common ground even with people most different from us. Responding with compassion brings us to a place of hospitality for others through seeing our common humanity. This incarnational way of living helps us cultivate a shared spiritual life because we start to identify with others’ vices and others’ virtues:

“To care means first of all to empty our own cup and to allow the other to come close to us. It means to take away the many barriers which prevent us from entering into communion with the other. When we dare to care, then we discover that nothing human is foreign to us, but that all the hatred and love, cruelty and compassion, fear and joy can be found in our own hearts. When we dare to care, we have to confess that when others kill, I could have killed too. When others torture, I could have done the same. When others heal, I could have healed too. And when others give life, I could have done the same. Then we experience that we can be present to the soldier who kills, to the guard who pesters, to the young man who plays as if life has no end, and to the old man who stopped playing out of fear for death.

By the honest recognition and confession of our human sameness, we can participate in the care of God who came, not to the powerful but powerless, not to be different but the same, not to take our pain away but to share it. Through this participation we can open our hearts to each other and form a new community.” -from Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life

Nouwen’s writings are accessible to do many people because his work is vibrant with spiritual wisdom. If you are still looking for Advent reading and waiting in hope for the ability to live out charity and other Christian virtues, we strongly recommend Nouwen’s writings, especially those on compassion. We wouldn’t be surprised if many of our readers are already familiar with Nouwen’s work. Feel free to share your own reflections in the comments.

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

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.

When Others Judge

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Advent is a time when it makes sense to seek a bit of a new start. This past year has piled on many different challenges, each challenge establishing its own new “normal.” We’re slightly embarrassed by how hard it’s been for us to respond thoughtfully to our email. However, we refuse to dismiss any reader query even after a period of substantive delay. That said, we now attempt to answer a reader’s question that arrived several months ago:

How do you respond to being judged? How is it different when the judger is a parishioner vs. someone in authority such as a priest? Is it different when the thing you’re being judged for is something that’s true (e.g. being LGBT) vs. when it’s something false (e.g. having a sexual relationship that violates your church’s teachings)?

It’s hard to imagine a single person who likes being judged by others. We often go to such great lengths to avoid being judged by others, even when we find ourselves falling prey to the idolatry of people-pleasing. However, judgment happens because it’s an easy thing for people to do. Christ warned us all about judging the speck in our brother’s eye before seeing the plank in our own. It’s easy to tell when something is out of place in another person’s life and incredibly hard to tell when something is out of place in your own.

The two of us talk regularly about various spiritual challenges we are facing. We can’t help but note that harder spiritual challenges frequently demand more difficult, more consistent, and more persistent action. We’ve committed to the sojourn together. Discussing the various ways we fall short does not feel like a judgment from on high, but it does involve making reasoned judgment about what is best for one or both of us to grow toward Christ.

Thinking about the way we use judgment between the two of us helps us respond when we are judged by others.

  • Is the person commenting on something he or she has directly observed?
  • Is the person committed to accompanying one or both of us along our spiritual journey?
  • Is the person identifying actions that he or she must undertake directly to offer more meaningful support?
  • Has the person considered the costs associated with taking his or her recommended course of action?

We find that our response is different when all four questions get answered “No” than when there’s at least one “Yes.” Even when all four questions get answered “No” we try asking whether there’s any truth in what a person has said. It’s a lot easier to let things go when people are projecting their own stereotypes upon us.

The easiest question to answer in the affirmative is, “Is the person committed to accompanying one or both of us along our spiritual journey?” We tend to view the local church as an incredibly important spiritual community. If a person is in our local church, then we’re more likely to consider the merit something he or she has said. There are certain people who have a track record of saying assorted uncharitable things about us that aren’t true. We do our best to remember where they are coming from and to pray for them to grow spiritually themselves.

We also don’t mind talking with people when they are concerned about something they have observed directly. It’s not judgmental gossip if they have seen it themselves. Many times, incorrect judgments happen when people are unfamiliar with something. As celibate people navigating in a parish compromised of married people, we regularly encounter people who think that it’s appropriate to make an analogy between their before-marriage lives and our lives now. If they are parents, they frequently think about the relational counsel they would give their own children. We find ourselves explaining the differences between teenagers and people in their early thirties, and we’ll also share our experiences from various celibate communities. We try to remember that 1) everyone always has the potential to learn something and 2) learning occurs in communities. All people, especially the two of us, have blind spots. If someone points something out to us that they’ve observed, we consider what they’ve seen and examine our consciences.

Generally speaking, when we experience negative forms of judgment, people have not considered the third and the fourth questions at all. People rightly observe that we live together. They might decide our arrangement is scandalous. We have considered various facets of how living together spurs us both towards Christ-orientated ways of life with our spiritual directors, close friends, and each other. However, we’ve also noticed that the people who are most vocal about how living together is inappropriate are those who are completely unwilling to learn more about how we care for and support one another. Many people will use decreeing “righteous judgment” as a way to excuse themselves from the demands of being in a caring community with others.

When all four questions get answered “Yes” judgment rarely feels like judgment. Living life together in community demands that people have hard conversations together in order to help one another grow towards Christ. People work together to figure out the best ways forward that lead everyone to spiritual maturity. There’s a sense that we all are doing our best to pursue Christ together, learning along the way.

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