Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve found several interesting articles, blog posts, and videos. We also realized that it’s been a while since we last linked our readers to what we’ve been reading and discussing at home and with friends. Today, we’re giving ourselves a break from writing, and we encourage you to check out the following if you haven’t already:

We were excited to find this six-minute video featuring several people who have chosen celibacy or sexual abstinence for varying lengths of time and for many different reasons. We enjoyed the diversity showcased in the video, and we’re happy to see that these kinds of stories are being told.

Last week, Melinda Selmys at Spiritual Friendship wrote a thoughtful post on misconceptions about the transgender community.

This article from Inside Higher Ed was published in July, but we’ve noticed that it continues to generate discussion amongst our friends. It gives a brief overview of what’s happening at two Christian colleges that have won exemptions to Title IX.

Speaking of Christian colleges, Julie Rodgers wrote a blog post about her recent move to Chicago to take a job at Wheaton College. Though neither of us attended Wheaton, we related to Julie’s reflections on her own experience as a freshman there:

I was recruited to play basketball and I had to sit out the second half of the season because I failed fitness class. I failed fitness class because gay Christian angst (along with doubt and despair) made getting up for an 11am class feel impossible. My perception was that I was the only student on campus that wasn’t memorizing entire books of the Bible while taking 18 hours of upper level coursework and leading early morning discipleship groups. It wasn’t until years later that I learned I hadn’t been alone. Now, after a decade of being shaped by God’s grace, I’ve been given the opportunity to tell students in similar places they’re not alone either.

Speaking of the gay Christian angst Julie references, Stephen Long at Sacred Tension wrote a compelling post a couple of weeks ago on this topic.

If you’re interested in reading or participating in discussion on Matthew Vines’ God and the Gay Christian (which we reviewed a while ago), you’ll want to check out this invitation to dialogue that Rachel Held Evans has issued to her readers.

Yesterday, Lindsey found an insightful post at Swinging from Grapevines titled, “Please Stop Telling Us Why We’re Leaving the Church.” It offers a millennial’s perspective on why members of the millennial generation are becoming uninterested in and disengaged from faith communities.

If you live near the University of Notre Dame, you might want to consider attending the Gay in Christ: Dimensions of Fidelity colloquium on October 31 and November 1, 2014. It’s free and open to the public, but attendees need to register.

Eve Tushnet’s new book, Gay and Catholic, will be released soon. We’re super excited to review it. In the meantime, read Eve’s series of book extras that she’s publishing on her blog. They’re all tagged “Gay Catholic Whatnot.”

Because we’ve had a couple of recent posts about wildlife and respect for God’s creation, we wanted to share this opinion piece by Richard Conniff. Our favorite quote from the article:

Wildlife is and should be useless in the same way art, music, poetry and even sports are useless. They are useless in the sense that they do nothing more than raise our spirits, make us laugh or cry, frighten, disturb and delight us. They connect us not just to what’s weird, different, other, but to a world where we humans do not matter nearly as much as we like to think.

And continuing with that theme, within the past week the Wildlife Center of Virginia has released two of its rehabilitated bald eaglet patients. You can see the videos here.

That’s all for today. Have a blessed Wednesday!

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